Yet another Cissexist bisexual or “political lesbian” Radfem gets it wrong

Over on Facebook, my friend Zoe Brain pointed out an interesting but sad article this morning.

Someone named Bev Jo, as a “guest” columnist on the anti-trans Gender Trender blog, writes an essay entitled  Fighting the "Lie" of Trans, which summarizes everything that’s wrong with the cissexist POV on trans people adopted by many radfems based on the patriarchist birth-genital-essentialist position of the Roman Catholic Church, imported into radfem philosophy by the false spinnings of the twice-born Athenas, Catholic college-based professors, Mary Daly and her empire-building protégé, Jan Raymond.

On Facebook, while riding on the commuter train this morning, I summarized a response as follows:

The only time I ever lied about myself was when I was trying to assimilate in accordance with societal expectations. All the writer is doing is showing a particularly malicious, clueless, institutionalized pseudo-patriarchist cissexist POV no different from the cissexist birth genital essentialiam brought into Radfem philosophy by Catholic college professors, twice-born Athena fembots Daly and Raymond, who corrupted Radfem philosophy from the inside.

But sitting at the computer in my office after work, I decided to read and analyze Bev Jo's article a little more deeply.  I have just started reading Mary Daly's book Gyn/Ecology in an effort to better understand why Radfem philosophy took a cissexist turn, beyond the surmise that I've made based on my exposure to the writings of Daly's protégé Raymond.

Right in the beginning, Bev Jo tells us she is a Lesbian, and then proves she can’t be one!

She parenthetically claims

“Who women choose to love is a choice, not something as trivial as ‘sexual orientation.’”

That is a statement that can only be made by

(a) a woman with a bisexual sexual orientation who has a natural orientation that allows for such a choice, and who chooses to suppress her heterosexual side, or

(b) a woman whose natural sexual orientation is actually heterosexual, but who is so wrapped up in radfem philosophy that she rejects her natural orientation, suppresses it, and “chooses” to assimilate – for such as make that “choice,” the choice itself can be a cause for psychological imbalances.

So I don’t know what Bev Jo’s sexual orientation is, but she proves by her own words that she herself has no place in lesbian space, except perhaps to the extent that bisexual women are welcome.

So, having appropriated the identity of a Lesbian, she proceeds to assume the patriarchal authority to exclude others who have more right to Lesbian space than she herself does. This pseudo-patriarchy is not new, it has been a hallmark of Radfem cissexist thought since even before Mary Daly wrote her metaethics book Gyn/Ecology.

If anyone has made “death threats,” they are responsible for their own behavior. There is no excuse for oppressed trans women to make futile death threats against their oppressors. I am aware of an unfortunate use of violent imagery in a Facebook conversation by two trans advocates who should know better, but I am not aware of any actual death threats.

Bev then asks a rhetorical question about women’s reactions to “men claiming to be women.” I can only ask a counter-question – where are the men who are claiming to be women? I am a woman, I am a lesbian, and I was erroneously assigned male at birth, but I am not and never was a man, even though I spent years trying to live a lie and assimilate with societal expectations based on that erroneous assignment.

Bev Jo does not have a right to call me a man. I have more of a right to deny her right to call herself a lesbian, because he own words indicate that she cannot possibly be a real lesbian.

Bev Jo in her essay shows her amazingly incredible ignorance about transsexual women. She certainly has never met me, and it seems clear to me that she has never actually met a real trans woman. If the story she tells about her “stalker” is not made up, the person she describes does not fit within the parameters of being a trans woman.

She also does not seem to understand what it is like to be a girl, growing up in a situation where everyone expects you to be a boy. Unfortunately, those of us who have had that experience resent it when someone else takes our narratives and distorts them. I have already had the dubious “honor” of being quoted more than once on the “mansplainin’ transplainin’” site. One of those quotes was an explanation of how I felt when I was four years old in the 1950’s, from the perspective of being a four-year old. The people who run that site thought that my simple child’s-eye view of the differences between boys and girls, and my realization that I was being told I was with the wrong group, was quite amusing. I am sure they enjoy their cruel little laugh at my expense.

When Bev Jo describes how some women look (referring to them as “female impersonators”) she does not realize that there are many trans women who don’t need artifice. It would seem that she gets her ideas about what trans women are like by poring over the writings of the notorious Opus Dei psychiatrist Dr. Paul McHugh, an eating disorders specialist who advised the Vatican abut trans issues. Her description is almost exactly what McHugh wrote:

McHugh wrote in a 2004 article entitled “Surgical Sex” in First Things:

“The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They wore high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing;”

Bev Jo writes similarly:

“they look like drag queens with their heavy, ugly makeup, plucked unnatural eyebrows, garish costumes, etc.”

Bev Jo’s apparent reliance on yet another patriarchist source like McHugh is more evidence of the nefarious influence the Roman Catholic Church has exerted on radfem philosophy.

Bev Jo rejects those of us who have surgery, and she rejects those of us who do not or cannot have surgery as well.

Bev Jo has apparently not been exposed to the mass of scientific evidence that shows that trans women are not, and never were, men, regardless of whether we have GRS.

Bev Jo has shown herself by her words to be an agent of the patriarchy.

She even writes. “It’s a basic weapon of patriarchy to divide women.” And then she proceeds to do just that – making sure that there continues to be a barrier between cissexual women and transsexual women.

I know who I am. I know that the scientific research backs me up. I have developed self-confidence. I am a woman, I am a lesbian, and no pseudo-patriarchist cissexist radfem is going to steal my identity, just because they themselves don;t know what a woman is.

You’ll note I am not using the term “transphobia.” The better terms to use are “cissexist” and “cissexism.” The relationship, particularly that of the institutionalized variety cause by a lack of understanding of trans lives, is eerily similar to institutionalized racism – and just as white people have to work very hard to see institutionalized racism, cissexual people have to look very hard to see the institutiopnalized cissexism that permeates the society.

If not by virtue of being cissexist, how is it that the Roman Catholic Church and the Radfem philosophers are so totally aligned on the issue of trans women?

One thing Bev Jo gets right – the alliance between some Radfems and their fellow separatist TS separatists, is still a variety of cissexism. Just as radfem philosophy as it relates to trans women is pseudo-patriarchist, the position of TS separatists is a pseudo-cissexist imitation of the radfem position, which makes it pseudo-pseudo-patriarchist. The willingness of the TS separatists to oppress other trans women as a means to gain entry for themselves into radfem circles, is pretty disgusting.

Bev Jo wants to organize het women to join with radfems. Um, that strategy is probably a non-starter – particularly with what Bev Jo already wrote in the beginning of her article about straight and bisexual women.

One would think that women – all women, straight, bi, asexual and lesbian, cissexual and transsexual, ought to be able to get along.

Why should Bev Jo be strategizing at marginalizing the most marginalized women, just because we are different and not cissexual?

Bev Jo should know that the National organization for Women already supports trans women – maybe she should get a clue from them.

As to being in opposition to NAMBLA, I am surprised that is an issue. Even the gay men I know are condemnatory of NAMBLA, why should women hesitate to condemn child abuse?

Well, when we get to Bev Jo’s conclusion – even RuPaul would acknowledge that female impersonators are not women. But RuPaul identifies as a gay man, even though he does costume very well. RuPaul is not a trans woman. I doubt that RuPaul would want to be called a trans woman or a transsexual, or a transgender person.

On the other hand, if one were to watch the RuPaul Drag Race show, some of the people who work as “drag performers” actually *are* trans women – and while they are involved in drag culture they are often working toward transition.

It may be hard to tell the difference by looking at them, and Bev Jo has already shown that she can't tell the difference, but all anyone has to do is ask.

So, when Bev Jo asks for lesbians to put females and lesbians first, she should be inclusive of trans women who are lesbians.  The fact that she isn't?  That is very, very sad.

But when you start with false premises, as Bev Jo does, it is really difficult to come to a correct conclusion.

Radical Feminists: tied to social conservatism and the Catholic Church

The birth-genital essentialist movement in the United States is composed of an unlikely alliance of social conservatives (whether they be populists, tea-partiers, Republicans or fundamentalist Christianists, Jewists or Islamists), the Roman Catholic Church’s Magisterium, and the proponents of the kinds of “radical feminism” that derive their creed from the Roman Catholic-influenced teachings of Mary Daly and her protégé, Janice Raymond (both of them Catholic, with careers teaching at Catholic universities).


Birth genital essentialism denies the reality experienced by people who identify as transsexual or transgender, a reality that was denied by medical experts in the 1960’s, but a growing body of medical scientific research in the past seventeen is proving that transsexual and transgender people are not delusional members of the sex we were assigned at birth.

The unfortunate victims of this birth-genital essentialist coalition are the various members of the trans community. I hasten to add that the “trans community” is not actually a community so much as it is a diverse collection of people who share a single characteristic of not being cisgender.

Let’s limit ourselves for the moment, to simplify things, to those whose identities are consistent with those of the opposite sex. (at the end, we can re-include the more gender-diverse)/

I’ve just read an otherwise rather intelligent article entitled Feminism, sex and gender, by someone whose handle is "No Anodyne" at the “radfem Hub” site.

I thought it read very well until the writer started going off the rails because of the writer’s cissexual, or rather cissexist, blindness to those who are different.

Here is a particularly troubling excerpt:

The way this conflation [of sex and gender] happens is through the concept of “gender identity” — that is, the person accepts the gender role of man or woman, regardless of that person’s biology. A biological male can “identify” as a woman and a biological female can “identify” as a man. Remember that there is absolutely no scientifically-proven evidence that gender (man and woman, masculinity and femininity) has a biological basis. The only thing that is provable is whether someone is female with XX chromosomes or male with XY chromosomes and has the primary sex characteristics that almost always accompany those genotypes. (Intersex conditions do nothing to refute this. Just as the fact that a very small percentage of people are born without arms does not convince us that having arms is not a standard state for humans.)

What happens when we say that anyone who says they are a woman is a woman, is that sex is erased as a meaningful category for a legal basis for discrimination. If sex is the same as gender and gender is whatever an individual says it is, then there is no way to create laws that protect females as a biological sex.

The writer’s concept of “gender identity” is oversimplified and startlingly similar to the primitive conception expressed by some Republican members of the New York State Assembly when they were debating the passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act a couple of weeks ago.

Both the writer and these conservative Republicans have themselves hung up on the idea that “gender identity" means “a man” can just up and announce that today he’s “going to be a woman” and run into a women’s rest room so he can rape the female occupants.

However, that is just not the case. The person who asserts a gender identity that is that of the opposite sex often feels that way from the age of somewhere around four. After spending decades in trying to hide the true self beneath the façade, the individual starts transition. That is not some “man” just saying “I identify as a woman” without actually identifying as a woman.

The writer ignores 17 years of scientific evidence since 1995 that started with research identifying parts of the brain where trans women have the same neuronal density as cis women, and trans men have the same neuronal density as cis men, and has continued to the evidence of genetic predispositions explaining the mechanism by which a brain can develop along one sex’s blueprint, while the genital tact development follows the other.

Once we get out of the cissexual world in which gender identity, the 23rd chromosome pair and the genital tract development are all consistent, we have a tiny percentage of people who are different. Trans women are not and never were men. Trans men are not and never were women. Being trans is biologically-based, and the studies are there to prove it (and rather than list them again, just refer to the addenda to “My June 14, 2011 Letter to Dean Skelos on GENDA”essay posted to this blog on June 15, 2011. I recommend that the author read these scientific studies rather than assuming that the source for “gender identity” as an oversimplified concept involving a "choice" are the Roman Catholic Church, conservative politicians, or worse, the opaque and pretentious pseudo-academic writings by Judith Butler about gender as “performance.”

But the writer, starting with a false premise of “gender identity” that has nothing to do with the development of the brain and seems to be a matter of “free choice,” like deciding whether to have coffee or tea with breakfast, then goes on to ignore the fact that a small number of people are different and do not fit into the cissexual binary based on their birth genital tract development.  To the cissexist writer, people who are different are a tiny minority and just do not matter when it comes to the identities, rights, and feelings of the majority.

The blasé dismissal of “intesex conditions” as being relevant is a huge cissexist boo-boo on the writer’s part. Trans people with genetic and ontological differences should not be ridiculed, victimized and told that we do not belong where we belong, just because some cissexual woman feels that because she was born with a uterus, no one born without one can legitimately be a woman. (There is a “lite” version of that centered around the vagina that is used by some post-op separatists to differentiate themselves from those who are not “real.” To me, all they are doing is drawing a pseudo-cissexist bright line in a place where it accepts them, and only them, as an exception.)

The assertion that because the law might protect “gender identity and expression” that this somehow would have to replace “actual or perceived sex” as a protected class in human rights laws, is patently absurd. No one is replacing sex with gender. It’s either adding an added criterion for the class previously defined as sex, or adding a separate classification altogether. Nothing is taken away.

That idea that adding gender to human rights laws hurts sex as great a fallacy as the NOM position that allowing gender-neutral marriage will adversely impact opposite sex marriages. There is no connection.

Radical feminism needs to shake off its Catholic roots, and the error that has crept into feminist analysis.

Trans people, particularly trans women, were once  victimized by gender stereotyping as much as anyone else. And we still are victimized. In 1970, I was refused treatment for transsexualism because I was attracted to women – and the psychiatrist explained that “they wouldn’t cure me of one mental disorder to give me another.”

Others had to jump through hoops and convince their psychiatric gatekeepers that they were stereotypically ultra femme in order to get their surgery letters –the same psychiatrists (like Paul McHugh from Johns Hopkins) who later criticize the trans people for fitting into the stereotypes the gatekeepers insisted that fit.

Ultimately, neither transsexualism nor lesbianism is a mental disorder, though the psychiatric establishment is a little slow to acknowledge the former.

 
I get the fact that radical feminists want to transform themselves into the patriarchal ideal of reducing womanhood to being a walking, talking uterus, (the only difference being that the radfems rightly prefer to be walking, talking uteruses with a choice and control over their own bodies – that’s a good thing (having control over their own bodies, not the "walking, talking uterus" part!) and would still be there if they stopped oppressing my people.)

But womanhood is not that simple – how one identifies is based on our brain structures, and not our genitals or reproductive organs. A women with a hysterectomy does not stop being a woman.

In a comment, to the article, the author expands on the fallacies, stating that the trans argument is

“I FEEL like a woman therefore I AM a woman.”

That is partly true – the standard narrative dating back to the 1950’s for women born trans was that of feeling like “a woman trapped in a man’s body.”  But it ignores the modern science.  The reality is that we have women’s brains, at least in the relevant parts related to identity, and we have a male genital tract at birth.

The radfem comes back with:

“ there are females who don’t FEEL like “women” they FEEL like HUMANS, yet they ARE objectively females, so the trans argument is false for that reason alone”

There is no logical connection of one to the other. The fact that some people are weakly bigendered to the extent that they identify as a-gendered (neither male nor female, just “human”) is merely a different kind of identity. Nothing is refuted. There are also people assigned female at birth who identify as men and transition, they are men born trans and they were never really women at all.  We who are trans are WBT and MBT, and not M2F or F2M, (or the even worse radfem acronyms M2T and F2T, which reflects their erroneous birth genital essentialist-based assumptions).

She continues:

“ the socialization of females is important in our society, but that is what makes the discussion about GENDER important, but that has nothing to do with SEX (biological reality)”

With this, I’m getting gender as in “gender stereotypes” and “gender expectations based on sex assignment.” How much pain trans people go through as children because of the expectations based on the color of the blanket we were wrapped up in when we were born. Mid-life transitioners like me have to get a crash course in socialization – I think I was able to condense about 16 years into six months, but having had a daughter, I think I had a head start.  It's an important thought she has but not relevant to whether trans women are women - if we need help with socialization, it would be nice if help were provided rather than scorn.

She concludes the argument with

“ it is SEX, biological reality, that separates males from females. And it is not how we feel about that biological reality”

I agree that it’s about biological reality – but sex, and the biological reality of it is a lot more complicated and diverse for those who are intersex and trans than that XX XY genetic oversimplification, or the penis v. vagina oversimplification. Sex is not just the uterus v. the prostate. Some people, whether they are intersex in one way or another, including trans people, fall outside the stupid standard box.  And how we feel is often a reflection of that biolgical reality.

Those of us who do fit into the brain-based identity consistent with the opposite sex, ought to be allowed to socialize and be recognized on that basis. If there has to be a requirement that we no longer be reproductively capable with the OEM equipment, I can live with that, long term HRT does that pretty well – the one thing I can state with a certainty is that we are biologically different and never belong to the original sex. In a binary-based society, we belong with that opposite sex, or we need a special niche that hasn’t existed in Western culture since the rise of Christianity and the attempt to exterminate the gallae.

As to those I left out of the discussion at the outset - just like we have bisexual people, we have various kinds of bigender people whose identities, also highly likely to be biologically based, don't fit into the standard binary.  Just ebcasue they don't fit the binary assumptions does not mean we have to shoehorn them into the assumprions.  I may not fully uinderstand them, but I respect the fact that they are different.

Dismissing trans and intersex people because we are a tiny minority is cissexist oppression, and should be called out for what it is.

Until it can free itself of cissexist assumption about people who are not cissexual, the branch of radical feminism that rejects trans women only proves it is rooted in patriarchy and allied with the Roman Catholic Magisterium and conservative Christianists in an unholy alliance to oppress trans people for being different.

Until then, all the cissexist "radfemsplainin'" about  trans and intersex people is a lot like "mansplainin'" - explaining things to people who know exactly who we are, as if we didn't exist and don't count. I get it, but I don;t have to like it.

Another “Galileo Moment” from the Vatican?

Benedict XVI’s 2008 Christmas greeting message to the Roman Curia and Prelature, given on December 22, 2008, is finally available in an official English text from the Vatican website. Not having an official English translation previously made it more difficult to divine the exact meaning of the Pope’s words.

There is a controversial part of the address which was interpreted in the press as being a condemnation of transsexuality, homosexuality, or both, depending on how the translation was made into English from the previously available Italian or German versions. While I am aware of (and disagree with) the Vatican position on transsexual people from the 2003 Catholic News Service news report of a leaked Year 2000 “sub secretum” document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, after reviewing the official English translation, I am not entirely sure that the Pope’s statement really constitutes a condemnation of my people. But the Pope’s talk can be interpreted as an attack on feminism, gay marriage, and “gender” that isn’t based on birth-genital-essentialism.

Here is the relevant portion:

“Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian creed, the Church cannot and must not limit herself to passing on to the faithful the message of salvation alone. She has a responsibility towards creation, and must also publicly assert this responsibility. In so doing, she must not only defend earth, water and air as gifts of creation belonging to all. She must also protect man from self-destruction. What is needed is something like a human ecology, correctly understood.

If the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and demands that this order of creation be respected, this is not some antiquated metaphysics. What is involved here is faith in the Creator and a readiness to listen to the “language” of creation. To disregard this would be the self-destruction of man himself, and hence the destruction of God’s own work.

What is often expressed and understood by the term “gender” ultimately ends up being man’s attempt at self-emancipation from creation and the Creator. Man wants to be his own master, and alone – always and exclusively – to determine everything that concerns him. Yet in this way he lives in opposition to the truth, in opposition to the Creator Spirit.

Rain forests deserve indeed to be protected, but no less so does man, as a creature having an innate “message” which does not contradict our freedom, but is instead its very premise.

The great scholastic theologians described marriage, understood as the life-long bond between a man and a woman, as a sacrament of creation, which the Creator himself instituted and which Christ – without modifying the “message” of creation – then made part of the history of his covenant with humanity.

An integral part of the Church proclamation must be a witness to the Creator Spirit present in nature as a whole, and, in a special way, in the human person, created in God’s image.

From this perspective, we should go back to the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sex as a consumer good, the future against the exclusive claims of the present, and human nature against its manipulation.”

Time Magazine’s brief commentary, based on earlier unofficial translations indicated:

“Without actually using the word [transsexual], Benedict took a subtle swipe at those who might undergo sex-change operations or otherwise attempt to alter their God-given gender. Defend "the nature of man against its manipulation," Benedict told the priests, bishops and cardinals gathered Monday in the ornate Clementine hall. "The Church speaks of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this order is respected." The Pope again denounced the contemporary idea that gender is a malleable definition. That path, he said, leads to a "self-emancipation of man from creation and the Creator."”

I think it may be a stretch to call this a “subtle” swipe at transsexuals, without looking at the background that leads ti this conclusion. It would require a misunderstanding of the nature of transsexuality to come to this conclusion. Of course, there is every indication of serious error in the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to transsexual people that involves just such a misunderstanding.

There is very little in the way of official and available doctrinal material published by the Church on the subject of transsexuals. The most prominent item is a “sub secretum” document sent by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to papal nuncios in the year 2000, and then distributed to bishops in 2002 (and then leaked to Catholic News Service in February 2003). My only source for the test is the tantalizingly brief CNS report – I have never seen the actual document.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- After years of study, the Vatican's doctrinal congregation has sent church leaders a confidential document concluding that "sex-change" procedures do not change a person's gender in the eyes of the church. Consequently, the document instructs bishops never to alter the sex listed in parish baptismal records and says Catholics who have undergone "sex-change" procedures are not eligible to marry, be ordained to the priesthood or enter religious life, according to a source familiar with the text. The document was completed in 2000 and sent "sub secretum" (under secrecy) to the papal representatives in each country to provide guidance on a case-by-case basis to bishops. But when it became clear that many bishops were still unaware of its existence, in 2002 the congregation sent it to the presidents of bishops' conferences as well. "The key point is that the (transsexual) surgical operation is so superficial and external that it does not change the personality. If the person was male, he remains male. If she was female, she remains female," said the source.

From what I can glean from the news reports, the position announced secretly by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith appears to be a “birth-genital- essentialist” view, that gender identity is determined by the physiology of one’s genitalia at the time of birth. Genitalia develop along one of two duct systems wolffian and mullerian, both of which are present during fetal development. The duct system that remains undeveloped eventually withers away after birth. The result of the Church’s genital-based essentialism is the belief that there are only two possible sex assignments, each based on genital shape at birth.

This genital essentialism fails to take into account the physiological development of the entire fetus. Focus solely on genitals, though, and in better than 99.9% of all people, the other physiological developments, particularly in the brain, are consistent with genital development, and thus, for those people, the Church’s genital-based essentialism actually seems to work.

However, the Church ignores the scientific evidence of different physiological development in the makeup of transsexual brains that leads to a gender identity that is opposite that which is expected based on genital expectations. This leads to an erroneous understanding of te nature of that one-in-a-thousand who does not fit into the societal and Church expectation of gender.

The psychological factor of gender identity has a physiological basis in brain structure, according to the most recent scientific authority. This was first identified in a Dutch study made in 1994. While in most people the brain structures are in accord with the external genitalia, which is not true with transsexuals and transgender individuals.

The physiological situation with genital formation is also not clear-cut in all cases. In addition to male and female, there are intersexed individuals. Intersex is the current term that covers persons formerly identified as hermaphrodites, that is persons with genital structures that contain some of the elements commonly attributable to “male” and some elements commonly attributable to “female” sex assignments. It also includes those individuals with chromosomal variations that vary from standard XX and XY in the 46th chromosome. In addition, there are persons with XY chromosomes who have an insensitivity to androgens, whose chromosomes are technically “male” but whose bodies develop into a “female” form because of an inability of their cells to process testosterone.

The social issues relating to transgender, transsexual and intersexed individuals are not easily dismissed. We are not some sort of new phenomenon, we have been around since the dawn of human history. Scientists, no longer blinded by ancient Aristotelian pronouncements or Victorian Darwinian theory regarding “sexual selection” have begun to observe that binary gender is not the universal rule, even in the animal kingdom, often used as a rationale for observations of natural law.

It is easy for the Church hierarchy to dismiss a tiny minority of people who are different as being “disordered,” rather than recognizing the serious error the Chuch itself has made in its birth-genital-essentialist assumptions.

The Church hierarchy uses a very selective interpretation of sacred scripture to come to the conclusion that humanity is divided into male *or* female.

If we refer to the Bible and other ancient sources, it is clear that intersexed, transgender and transsexual people existed in biblical times. There are over twenty references in biblical texts to “eunuchs.” This is a catchall for a number of different sexual minorities not classified in accordance with the binary in accordance with external genitalia.

The clearest recognition of this comes in Matthew 19:12, in which Jesus is quoted describing different sorts of eunuchs. Some are born eunuchs, some are made eunuchs by human intervention, and some become eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus was careful as to the last, stating that only those who can accept this should accept it.

If we look at the Pope’s 2008 Christmas greeting message to the Curia and Prelature on one level, it would seem to be first an attack on feminist philosophy that stresses equal human rights and dignity. Just in March 2008, The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a ruling against “gender-neutral” references to God, such as “The Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier” and reaffirmed the patriarchal formulation of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Cardinal Urbano Navarrete (a Jesuit priest recently elevated to the rank of Cardinal in a rare case of receiving the rank without being ordained a bishop, who is also one of the Vatican’s “experts” on transsexuals) penned the official commentary of the ruling. Any baptism using a gender-neutral inclusive formulation has been ruled to be invalid.

On another level, the Pope’s Christmas greeting to the Curia and Prelature is yet another of the Church’s attacks on gender-neutral marriage. The Church can only legitimately speak to sacramental marriage for members of the Church, and not to the secular civil recognition of marriage and marriage rights. For the Church to go beyond the sacramental issue and to widen the scope to insist that its official prejudice be inscribed into secular law, is an outrage, especially in nations such as the United States that recognize the free exercise of religion, and prohibit the government from imposing a religious belief on the people as a matter of law.

If the Pope’s statement Is to be construed as an attack on the transgender community, it requires an acceptance of the prerequisite genital-based “gender essentialism” which is the first fallacy in the Church’s gender identity structure. And we know from what little material there is that is available, that this is the Church position – so I must conclude that even if the language may make it seem a bit less clear, the Pope’s message may fairly be construed as yet another demeaning of the transgender community.

The scriptural reading on which we should meditate when we read the Pope’s message is Matthew 7:15-27 (Douay-Rheims translation):

15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

16 By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit.

19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire.

20 Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them.

21 Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.

22 Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name?

23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity.

24 Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock,

25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.

26 And every one that heareth these my words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand,

27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof.

Benedict XVI is one of these false prophets – he wears the mantle of the shepherd of the flock, but by showing that he has little concern for different sheep, he reveals his ravening wolf nature. By basing his, and the Church’s, arguments on false premises that are against scientific wisdom, he is like the tree that bears evil fruit, or the man who builds his house on a foundation of shallow sand without deeply-rooted pilings.

The message as against feminism? The Catholic Church bears the evil fruit of patriarchal domination. One need only read German Theologian Uta Ranke Heinemann’s work “Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven” to get a grasp of the sexist misogyny that has gripped the Roman Church from the time of the Church Fathers in the fourth century.

The message as against gender-neutral marriage? Many of the documents issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the issue of homosexuality are based on false interpretation of sacred scripture.

The message as against transsexual and transgender people? The foundation of the Church’s “sub secretum” teaching is founded on the shallow sand of an ill-conceived understanding of natural law, based more on Aristotle and “Scholastic theologians” than on the observations of modern science. It is a teaching that, like the condemnation of Galileo, will not stand up to the rain, the flood, and the wind of rational scientific inquiry.

When God created human beings, we were created “male and female” in the image and likeness of God – this means that God is “male and female” for us to be created in God’s image. And each of us, individually, is not only male or only female, but is “male and female,” just as God is. Indeed, some may be “mostly male” and others “mostly female” and still others may have distinct parts that developed ion different directions. But we are all children of God.

Benedict’s word’s are truly based on “antiquated metaphysics” and are not rooted in science or natural law. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as “man and woman,” Benedict means rather “man *or* woman” – and he disregards the “language of Creation” found in his own Sacred Scripture.

In the past year, a Reform Rabbi from Pleasantville, New York, reported on his discovery of a hidden Name of God found in the Tetragrammaton (the four letters that represent “the Name of God” – usually rendered in English as YHWH). The Rabbi realized that if the Tetragrammaton were to be read and pronounced *backward* it would result in the Name of God working out as Hebrew (hu/hee) for “He/She” – which correlates directly with the clue found in Genesis 1:27 – that “male and female” is the image and likeness of God.

Rabbi Mark Sameth writes in his article, after thirteen years of research, “If we read the text as a mystic might, paying extremely close attention, assuming that the text conceals more than it reveals, we may find hints regarding God’s androgynous nature, so to speak, peeking out through the surface level of the Torah.” He comes to the conclusion, correctly I think, that the God of the Israelites was not a masculine, patriarchal deity, but a he/she bi-gendered God. This is a far cry from the sexist, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic utterances of Benedict XVI – stated in soft tones and with great apparent concern for the welfare of humanity, but with the sharp teeth and fangs showing beneath the mantle.

Against this backdrop of an all-inclusive God, the Roman Catholic Church’s ruling clinging to masculine-gendered terminology for the Trinity even more “antiquated” and illogical. Of course, recognizing a bi-gendered God might mean that the Vatican would have to revisit the idea of the eligibility of women for the priesthood, and the eligibility of transgender people for any kind of religious vocation.

The Roman Catholic Church eventually “got it” when it came to Galileo, even if it took nearly 400 years for Benedict XVI’s predecessor John Paul II, to get around to apologizing for the Inquisition’s actions under Urban VIII, and rehabilitating Galileo, previously found to have been a heretic.

Perhaps Benedict XVI could learn from this quote from Galileo “The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach how to go to heaven and not how to go to the heavens.”

Maybe Benedict might work on helping Roman Catholics make their own marriages work better, rather than imposing on a secular world the narrow, ill-conceived antiquated, outdated and and unscientific views of the Church on the rights of women, gays and trans people. When the Church meddles with Caesar, it is as bad as Caesar meddling with the Church.