Out of the Dark: What Trans Lives Reveal About Surviving Religion
Based on a 2014 survey, this essay revisits what trans lives reveal about inner life and spiritual endurance at a time of renewed religious hostility. In the fall of 2014, I set out to ask a deceptively simple question: what does spirituality actually look like in the lives of transgender people? At the time, public conversations about transgender lives were only beginning to edge into mainstream awareness. The language we now use so easily, especially the word non-binary , had not yet entered common circulation. Most people in my community described themselves as trans men, trans women, gender-queer, or gender-fluid, using the language that was available to them then. If this same survey were conducted today, many of those same participants might well describe themselves differently. The map of language has changed. The terrain of human experience beneath it has not. I was not trying to make a theological argument or defend any religious institution. I was not trying to produce a...
