The sad truth is, many forms of Christianity and society at large operate on a foundation that gender is binary with strict rules. This is to create a patriarchal order and arrangement of of society that controls people, their bodies, their sex life so we can all fit in. By having 2 genders of men and women, and stuffing everyone into one of these two boxes, they can make rules like “God expects women to be subservient to their husbands, women give birth and therefore must be more nurturing, and women must be more emotional since they love their children and therefore less logical” and other gender roles. Intersex people are totally erased, and dehumanized. You must be a man or woman first, only then are you considered human. It also allows society to police women’s bodies. Since women can have babies, then everyone woman must be scrutinized for how much sex she has, if she has an abortion, if she is attractive enough where men find her pleasing in general, ect. By having a gender binary, society is able to see who it can put down as lower and create a male centered hierarchy. For example, reason we see so much violence towards trans women for example, is the patriarchal assumption that men are better off than women and no man would chose to lower himself to a woman’s status. Of course women want to be men (since men are suppose to be superior), but what man would degrade his gender by wanting to live as a female? People there tong this belief system are seen as dangerous and people want to erase them physically. Often people who hold this false belief system assume trans women are really men wanting to violate women’s privacy, such as JK Rowling.

If there’s not a gender binary, than how are we suppose to police women’s bodies, make them servants to men, and argue they are less intelligent? How are we suppose to control who and how people have children if we can’t guilt them into letting their churches control their sex life, sex decisions(chaste until marriage, monogamy, no birth control) and partner choices? How are we to argue women are less deserving of independence by their very biology if what really makes a woman and woman isn’t as black and white as birth genitalia?

Churches can be all about love and acceptance, ect, but they’re also often about creating a cultural norm that controls people’s lives and maintains a status quo around patriarchy. Policing people’s bodies, sex life, and gender expression are a variable in this equation. The “God doesn’t make mistakes” argument makes no sense. One could argue yes, God doesn’t make mistakes, he made my daughter a girl, regardless of the genitalia he gave her at birth. That’s not a mistake, women can be born in any sort of body, as can men, non-binary people ect. And trans people aren’t hurting anyone when they life their lives as their true gender, the only thing they hurt is patriarchal binary gender roles. But people want to protect that, so they take other people’s gender expression personally.

Thanks for writing this Shannon.