Liturgy for the Transgender Day of Remembrance Service 20 November 2016
Transgender people are people whose gender identity does not fully correspond to that expected by their biological sex. This is an umbrella term which can be expressed in different ways. Transsexuals can be regarded as transgender people who completely identify with the gender which is opposite to that which is expected by their biological sex.
Current tensions arise in part because of a dispute about the nature of the conditions. One group, mainly the Professional Medical Institutions consider transgender identities to be natural personality variations within the normal range of development, which arise very early in life and cannot be changed either by the predations of others, or by the persons concerned. Opposing groups consider them to be personality disruptions, where scares over recruitment and predation arise. The lived experiences and management methods are almost opposite to each other. Great harm can occur when incorrect diagnoses are made
For all transgender people the search is for identity and the rejection of what is wrong, it is not about behaviour or sexual desire. Gender reassignment is often urgently sought. However it should be noted that gender reassignment is not considered to be change in gender identity. Transgender people sometimes describe themselves as being “born into the wrong body”, but this is a truth of early personality formation, endocrinal influences, and earliest experience. Most people consider trans women to be women because of our behaviours, the ways we interact with society, our advocacy of feminist matters, and our expressions of common interests and concerns. Few, if any transgender people, believe that we literally change biological sex. Among transgender people who surgically transition the term "gender reassgnment surgery" is most commonly used.
The source of the conflict is not about transgender people, it is about how gender identity is formed. The Professional Institutions and World authorities consider the core elements of gender identity to form very early in life, at a time when children first begin to separate the self from the other. The gender-critical groups consider transgender identities (but not sexual orientation) to arise entirely from later experiences which are gained by social conditioning alone. As a consequence the existence of these early core elements, and the massive proactive advances in neurological development during the early years, which contribute to the development of transgender identities, are dismissed or denied. Because of this, gender-critical groups consider male to female transsexuality to be a perversion of male homosexualty. This misdiagnosis is why the damage occurs. Gender and sexually variant people are fellow travellers in their interaction with societies, and in line with the Professional Institutions, both conditions should be treated as personality variations instead. However being transgender is not an indication of sexual orientation. As wide a range of sexual orientations are found amongst transgender people as those which occur in society at large. For transgender people this is a search for self identity, no other sexual or behavioural implications are involved.
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Susan Gilchrist 11 October 2016