(Main image: sidewalk chalk art by the author at BYU in 2021 – in support of queer students and faculty members.)
There are new policy updates this week in the church handbook that directly affect transgender and non-binary members in a painful way. It’s been a major topic of discussion online all week, including in feminist spaces like our blog here at Exponent II.
A prominent LDS podcaster named Greg Matsen unfortunately used his platform to celebrate the changes, and this morning he posted a new video in which he claims, “Nobody cares about the women anymore when you’re dealing with the transgender issue. Nobody cares about the young girls that are completely forgotten. And when I say completely forgotten, there isn’t a single article…that asked women what they think about this. Not one! You know that whole push several years ago saying, Why aren’t there more women up there on the stand, in church? Where are the women in these articles?”
Well Greg, the women who were asking for more women on the stand are still talking as loudly as ever if you want to listen to them. Additionally, I happen to be a woman who supports transgender rights – because transgender issues are feminist issues.
See, I don’t think equality for girls and women will ever be accomplished within a male-led church by women speaking up for our rights alone. I now believe the route to equality will come only through a close partnership with the queer community. Women have been making excellent points since the founding of the church with very little progress. We are stuck in a patriarchal system with only two genders, one of which is divinely ordained to be in charge of the other one. Progress will persist at a snail’s pace if we wait for the men in power at the top to make changes those of us at the bottom have spent lifetimes begging for.
Currently we embrace the idea of a binary sex as the way of eternity. Men and women are two opposite sides of the same coin, with separate and distinct roles. Men are supposed to wear pants, hold the priesthood, preside over stuff and make money. Women are supposed to stay at home, have babies, clean the house and be presided over.
What happens when LGBTQ people enter and disrupt this perfect balance required for patriarchal structures to thrive? A gay marriage throws everything off. If two gay women are married, which one is going to have the final say on decisions? (Will they have to invite a neighbor man over to decide stuff for them?) What about two gay men? They both have the priesthood, so who gets to preside? Who quits their job to support the other pursuing his career? Would we have to redefine marriage roles as completely equal and let each couple decide what is personally best for them?
In the temple, men and women sit separately and make different covenants. If non-binary or transgender people are included, where will they sit? Which covenants will they make? When will they bow their head and say “yes”? Would the entire temple ceremony have to be re-written so that everyone makes the exact same promises to God, and no one is over anyone else?
I think those final outcomes sound fantastic. I believe including queer people into our holy places is by far the fastest way to fix our issues of gender inequality – faster than any other method we’ve ever attempted.
I didn’t always care for gender roles growing up, but I also couldn’t imagine an alternative. It was explained to me when I was a little girl, along with the birds and the bees. You have to have a penis to hold the priesthood, the priesthood is what gives you power, and I didn’t have a penis…so I didn’t get power. It was very straightforward. Who was I to argue with science?
But as it turns out, that science was wrong. Human biology regarding sex is wildly more complex and beautiful than only male or female bodies. Many bodies fall somewhere in between male and female, and those people are some of the most interesting and insightful humans I have ever interacted with precisely because they exist outside of the boring norm. Being genderqueer is not strange, it’s not a defect, it’s not a mental illness, and it most certainly is not a sin. Bodies that defy the gender binary simply by existing challenge the patriarchal system we live in and can dismantle it faster than anyone else ever can – including myself by writing endless blog posts. We Mormon feminists need our queer friends in the battle for equality more than they need us, and we can’t forget this fact.
Below is a photo from 2023 Trans Pride in Provo with two of my friends who have written multiple excellent guest posts here on Exponent II blog. Left to right is Jett Winward, my dog Macho, myself, Molly (Jett’s partner), and Ilea Brinkerhoff – all under the aptly titled banner “Trans Joy”.
Speaking of Pride events, Exponent II will have a booth at Back to School Pride Night in Provo on Saturday, September 14th from 2:00-8:30 pm, put on by the Raynbow Collective. Please come and visit us there!
Finally, to all of our friends in the queer community that are hurting this week, know that we at Exponent II love and support you. We welcome your guest posts and would love to share our platform to elevate your voices. Thank you for being our partners in creating a better and more equitable world for generations to come.
7 Responses
Couldn’t agree more with this premise. The crackdown comes because of absolutle necessity by leadership to gatekeep who gets priesthood and who doesn’t. (The “we all have priesthood power” apologetics ring hollow in these situations, don’t they??) And I think it’s disingenuous for the church leadership to cloak the situation in terms of “danger” for others, hence the need to treat trans folk like criminals. The real “danger” is only to the existing power structures when/if treating trans folk and LGBTQ individuals as full members of the community becomes the norm. We need the LGBTQ community to break down the walls. I hope we are able to support these folks not just because it’s the right thing to do but because it lifts everyone.
Thank you for this helpful message. I have struggled to defend my allyship with trans members because I lacked the words to sum up something so instinctual and natural to me. Your article helped me to find my words: after a lifetime in such a patriarch-dominated community, trans people show me a world where we get to just coexist as fellow humans without the hierarchy that gender creates. I needed this. Thank you.
Gender identity is the epicenter of church governing, not theology…If the church loses its stand on defining gender and the rolls they want for each gender, they lose their hold on their power. This article points that out so well.
We do need each other, but when I use the restroom or a locker room, I still want to only share that space with females. I want the privacy I could always expect and demand until recently.
I have an idea: why don’t we switch our entire bathroom and locker room system to something that would be more comfortable to every single person using them? Instead of communal changing areas and bathroom stalls (with cracks you can see into by accident), we could start building individual changing/toilet and sink rooms.
I’ve seen this done in more and more places (especially European countries, I think), where (for example) at the airport instead of two gendered restrooms there is a long line of individual unisex rooms with locking doors for privacy. Inside there is space for little children you might have with you (unlike stalls, which don’t have space), and kids are kept corralled safely with you while use the toilet, you wash your hands and get put back together.
Not only does this new design help adults with young children use the restroom easier, it helps people caring for disabled or elderly people of the opposite gender who need help in the restroom. It also eliminates the frustrating differences in line length between men and women’s restrooms because you all just wait together, equally, for the next one to open up. They look so, so much more convenient and comfortable to use than a typical restroom.
Likewise, the communal shower and changing areas of locker rooms cause stress and concern for young and old people everywhere. Nobody really loves changing in front of other people, and secret cell phone footage can be taken and distributed of both both young people and adults changing – in either locker room – and posted on the internet. Why do we continue to ask people to undress with the technology available today in places that can be secretly recorded by anyone with a phone? Private changing rooms everywhere (the gym, the local pool, middle schools) make so much more sense than the way we currently do it.
I read once about how (back in the day) no one wanted to cater to people with disabilities because of the cost to change everything – but eventually everyone was forced to by legislation. In a happy surprise, it actually improved the lives of all people, not just the disabled citizens. (For example, putting in wheelchair ramps and cutting places in the curb where wheels could easily roll down to cross the street helped not only wheelchair users, but parents who were pushing strollers. When closed captions were added to streaming services for hard of hearing customers, people started using them en masse (I’m one of those people 🙋♀️) and realized exactly how much dialogue we’d been missing. I hate watching movies without the captions on now.)
If we started to adjust our restroom and locker situations to the reality that people exist outside of just male and female, we’d likewise end up making the experience of using a public restroom or changing at the swimming pool better for everyone!
I think we should stop assuming that the way we’ve always done things is the best way. Queer people can show us needs we didn’t even realize we had. Maybe someday we’ll be telling our great grandkids (to their disbelief) about how we used to have to poop in a tiny stall next to our friend – with a door that has a big crack you could see in through.
I have had the exact same thoughts and made the exact same comparison to business adapting for wheelchair access. If society is going to say gender isn’t binary, then quit forcing it into the binary system we’ve all agreed on up until now.
Love this! It’s like a big hug of words and ideas. Thanks, Abby.