Intersex Theology

Anywhere between 1-1.5% of humans are born with ambiguous biological, sexual parts. Somewhere around .1 or .2% of births are so sexually ambiguous that they receive medical attention and often surgery. This does not seem like a huge number, but taking into account the millions of births each year, humanity is taking in thousands upon thousands of people who are intersex, often known as hermaphrodites (though true hermaphroditism is only known in the non-human animal kingdom). The parents of an intersexual person truly face a difficult decision. They may be encouraged to have the newbor undergo surgery in which they choose the sex of the child and raise her/him as that gender. Some may choose to allow that child to grow up and choose on their own which gender they will choose to live as. Either way, this is an incredibly difficult decision. It is not uncommon for a child whose sex was chosen for them by their parents to grow up and be raised as that gender, yet later struggle immensely with their sexual identity, possibly identifying with the other gender. If the parents choose to allow the child to grow up as intersex, the child is very likely to face severe ostracism from the world around them.

We live in an incredible gender dualistic world. It is important to note that there are some societies where intersex people are not only accepted, but honored, namely in societies where sexually ambiguous or intersex deities are revered and worshipped. In the western world, however, intersex people are often thrown into the sexually deviant (and misunderstood) realm, along with homosexual and transgendered people. Though this gender and sex dualistic view is supported by many, many segments of society, religious or not, I would like to focus specifically on the mainstream Christian theology surrounding intersex people. Western Christianity, in particular evangelicalism, along with conservative Catholicism, is obsessed with gender. In the American context, books like Wild at Heart and Captivated, gender specific Bible studies, male bonding, girl's nights out, and a obsession with dating and marriage are incredibly common and form much of the thread of American Christianity. In American Christianity, there is no room for sexual ambiguity- there are men and there are women. God created it this way. It is part of God''s order.

A person who is intersex is born intersex. It is not a disease or a handicap. It can be considered a birth disorder, but most would agree that is a very loaded term. Intersexuality is a natural thing, as being born with a mental or physical disability is natural (I compare intersexuality to mental and physical handicaps because handicaps are ony handicaps because they are not the norm- if everyone was born without legs or with Down's syndrome, being born without legs or with Down's syndrome would not be a handicap. A handicap is a handicap because that person cannot thrive in a world where their condition is the exception, not the rule). It seems as if American Christianity has moved past ascribing handicaps or most birth abnormalities to some presence of sin in the world. It is not uncommon to even hear language such as "gifts" and "blessings" when speaking of people who hold physical or biological characteristics that are not the norm, in particular people with mental disabilities. Yet it seems as if American Christianity has not come to the point where a person who is born with an ambiguous sexual identity is considered beautiful, or even a gift. Why is that? It is highly likely, in my opinion, that this is because "these people" do not fit into the American Christian worldview, propogated by prominent Christian leaders and groups, of a gender and sexual dualistic world, where men are men, and women are women- anything that challenges this "natural order" is only met with confusion at best, ignoring as common, and ostracism and labelling as-a-result-of-sin-in-the-world at worst.

Intersexuality is natural in the same way that autism, Down's syndrome, and physical deformation are natural. They are only handicaps and disorders because they are different.* Yet if an intersexual person were to enter into mainstream American Christian circles, my guess is that they would eventully begin to pick up hints that they were somehow a violation of God's established order. But how could they be if they were born this way? Another part of God's order that seems to be pushed is the idea that humans should, for example, work and play and talk. How then, could a person who is born in a vegetative state be part of that order? The simple answer is that people tweak that so that that person can be included- as a "gift", as a "blessing", though maybe "in disguise".

Jesus came from and dwelt in the margins of society- where the sick, poor, handicapped, and otherwise God's-order-violating lived. Because this is where Jesus, who is the Gospel, came, this is where theology must come from. Theology, to be Christian theology, cannot be born in the established, whole, powerful segment of creation. Those who are intersexual are at the margins of most societies today, with American Christianity certainly being no exception. They are the exception, not the rule. If mainstream American Christianity has no room for the intersexual person, whether they have chosen a gender or not, and whether they fit into that gender's societal "role" or not, then the theology of American Christianity is not a Christian theology at all. A gospel that only has good news for the healthy, whole, and otherwise "normal" is not good news at all. Let those good news continue to be that we are all created in the image of God, exactly as we are.

by: Rod


*My intent here is not necessarily to critique the concept of a handicap, and at the same time it is not to advocate the sociological designation of people as handicapped- that is an entirely different discussion, and one worth going into, I might add. For this discussion, I am going with the mainstream perceptions of people as disordered and handicapped, though I am certainly not ascribing any negative connotations to these words.

It Is Time To Re-Evaluate the Systems.

Sometimes we forget

Get caught up in the words

And stop ourselves from allowing us to see the commonality in our goals

And other times we stop ourselves

From voicing our opinion

And standing up for what pulls at our hearts

And for others, what just makes sense

In those times that we stray from the path

We somehow are reminded

Before we get lost

That while we are here

Our present does not guarantee our future

In fact it threatens it

So dive into the cliché

Of living life for today in mind of tomorrow

Knowing that the latter is affected by the first

We are not promised anything

Nor are we owed anything

Therefore function in a way that will benefit the people

And that will leave none stuck under your thumb

Function in a way that will respect the ideas of the free thinkers

In order to encourage others to think freely without the fear of

Persecution or condemnation

And finally always remember that

We will continue to function in the ways that we do

Until we question why we do…

And in that dialogue…in those questions

We will begin our journey to Freedom♥.

A better place.

I say B,
You hear C.
You leave mad,
I stand confused.

You say D,
I hear C.
I leave sad,
You stand confused.

Hurt would be avoided
If we took the time to listen;
Took the time to see life
From each other’s shoes.

Love would be attained
If we took the time to listen;
Took to time to see life
From each other’s shoes.

Before we speak,
Let’s swap views.
Let’s take the time to see life
From each other’s shoes.

Listen!

While I am in Camden most of my posts will be about the conditions here... mainly because my mind seldom wonders away from the things that I see here...always trying to connect the dots to what I have read or seen before...and also trying to map out new dots based these experiences and those past experiences....here is something that has been on my mind for the last few days

One thing that has bothered me for some time now is this notion of what "Correct English" is...

Some of the people that I volunteer with make fun of the way most of our students speak here...or they will blatantly correct them while they are saying something. And man does it frustrate me. While, I understand that there is a majority socially accepted way to how one should express their selves in a "business setting", I fail to see how that became the "correct" or "proper" way to speak.

And just because my students choose not to communicate in that way why is it okay to correct them or make fun of them?

And I know this is not the only place where this occurs because I have been corrected on and made fun of because of how I may pronounce certain words which is in large part due to growing up in a family where American "English" was not always used.

In my class I let my students speak and express their selves in ways that make them feel comfortable. But I let them know that "yes" when they go for job interviews or something like that they will have to speak in the way that has been deemed "socially acceptable" but how they speak and express their selves is not incorrect or wrong it is just different and other people are too ignorant to realize that...

But I would like to hear from you, the reader....what do you think about "improper" and "proper" English? By saying that one way is correct and the other is not are we not silencing those whose voices are already at a whisper?

Grace&Freedom♥

Spiritual Warfare

Sunny summer day.

Air conditioned pizza place.

Pop music playing in the background, its waves joining the waves of artificial cold.

Young guy enters.

Sunglasses, flip flops flip flopping.

Orders the two slices of pepperoni and a drink combo.

Takes his cup, fills it with ice- whoops, a little too much, pours some out.

Some orange soda sounds good. Fills it with orange soda, puts the lid on, sticks the straw in.

Sits down.

“Two slices of pepperoni!”

Gets up, takes his plate.

Sits down again.

Bows his head to pray.

It’s a long prayer.

No lips moving, no expression.

There is no way of knowing for sure, but he may be thanking God for the pizza.

For the hands that prepared it.

For his family.

For his friends.

For his country.

For the freedom to pray in public.

In Jesus’ name, amen!

Okay, stop. Let’s dissect for a second.

This is a battlefield.

A spiritual war zone.

Bad words in these circles?

We have all heard it-

The person just back from their trip to “love on” the third world.

Proudly displaying their tans and “ethnic” purses.

“People in other countries are so open to the spiritual world!”

“There was just this feeling of darkness as I was walking through those streets.”

Soon, they might find themselves in the pizza place.

At the mall.

At Disneyland.

Eating, drinking, shopping, playing, consuming.

“It’s just relaxing!”

“God blesses us with so much!”

“This reminds me of my childhood!”

The roots of what they are buying, eating, drinking, taking pictures of-

They are non-existent.

All that exists is the finished product, the final show.

Long, unpaid hours.

Backbreaking labor.

Children deprived of a childhood.

Exploitation?

Landfills spilling over.

Fumes drowning our lungs.

Pigs squealing in agony as they are harvested for their fruits: pepperoni, hot dogs, chorizo.

Century-old trees being chopped away to make chairs and to make room for our burgers, steaks, tacos.

Clean water flushed away everytime we need to piss out our soda, or we put too much ice in our cup.

The raping of the Earth?

None of these things exist.

The truth is deep fried and wrapped to preserve the continuation of luxury, of convenience, of great taste, and of fun.

The truth is drowned out by the lights, by the fireworks, by the good memories.

The truth is covered by a plastic lid so that we won’t spill on our leather seats.

The truth is on the clearance rack, hidden by a bright red tag.

Young guy takes his last bite, throws his trash away into the trash can, bound for the landfill, and drives

home.

Unaware of the war around him.

-the war waged where the other side has no chance of defending itself.

Prayer directed to the “spiritual war” in far off regions.

Failing to see the violence in his own choices.

Blinded by comfort, success, convenience, luxury, “blessing”.

by: Rod

Who will stay?

INTRODUCITON

The situations in which my students live in are ridiculous, yet I am aware of those who live in worst. However, when I see what has been given to them to create this so called “American Dream,” I think to myself the government might as well come to Camden and spit in all of their faces…

PART I

I look at my students and sometimes I get so frustrated with them. Because I believe that we are a people who have survived many things and many things have been fought for in order to secure the liberties (no matter how few) we have today. And even though many of us grow up in conditions that are far from what America has promised I still believe that we have no excuses because worst has been done to those who have come before us. So when I ask my students what they want to be in the future and they say basketball players, football players, or going into the army… or when I hear them say that there is only the league or the Army after they graduate high school…I get so frustrated with them because I think of those who risked there lives to teach each other to read in the dirt…I think of those whose parents have traveled to America in order to better our lives….but I have not figured out a way to show them that there is more out there….that they have more options than what the world is showing them…

And I say to myself what should I tell them… “Do better in school”….”Pay attention in class”… “Make sure you get good grades”….how can I tell them that after I hear the stories of how their schools treat them like inmates, how the teachers suck, and the school board couldn’t care less if the students were learning because test scores get you money not free thinkers…not critical thinkers…not independent thinkers…but students who can bubble in “right” answers…

PART II

Myself and one other girl are the only two black American interns here at this program…

PART III

On Saturday I had the pleasure of going to DC to meet an uncle who I have not seen since I was six years old. Later that day I was introduced to a cousin who I have never met before. After speaking with my cousin for a while he invited me to a Bar-B-Que.

I believe in Los Angeles and maybe even the entire west coast in itself lacks something that I saw a lot in NYC and DC. It was this sense of community within the Middle and Upper Middle Class Black Americans.

The Bar-B-Que was filled with people my cousin had went to grad school with at Cornell and people he attended Morehouse with and people who worked on the Capitol Hill and people who have accomplished receiving their Masters and Doctorial Degrees and people who worked with him…in a nutshell they represented most of the up and coming prominent African-Americans, 1^st,2^nd,3^rd,4^th, and 5^th generation Black Americans in DC and the surrounding area.

It was something that I had never experienced before and felt truly empowered by it…

The city of Camden is predominantly made up of Black Americans with descendents from Haiti and other Caribbean countries along with those whose ancestors were slaves in America…

PART IV

After I left the Bar-B-Que….I sat for a very long time…I picked up the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed that same day. I read the Introduction to the Anniversary Edition written by Donaldo Macedo and he writes about a conversation he had with a personal friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 60s. The man who is identified as African American confesses to not going back to the ‘community’ in over twenty years. Donaldo writes something that I have been thinking about for a while now…He writes “having achieved great personal success and having moved to a middle-class reality, this African American gentleman began to experience a distance from other African Americans who remain abandoned in the ghettos.”

When I read that I thought of what I experienced at the Bar-B-Que…and then I thought about Camden….and how many of the volunteers are not Black…all of the churches we have gone to in order to raise money have been predominately white churches…

And I am not one to draw conclusions…I know there are many factors being who Urban Promise reaches out to that may affect who volunteers and who donates….but say the least I wonder how many of those who I met at the Bar-B-Que would be willing to move back…to help those neighborhoods that some of them left behind in order to move into Suburbia….

PART V

On Mondays’ and Fridays’ we have “Bible Buddies”. During this time we just hang out with a group of kids. One of my Bible Buddies is Lenny he is a Black Puerto Rican. Lenny is about to go to the 8^th grade and is probably the most respectful person I have ever met. So we were talking about what he wanted to do…he quickly answered with “Anything that will get me out of Camden, this city is wack.” I asked him why wouldn’t he stay to help change it. Lenny said what I think a lot of people in the ghettos believe…or would also say…and was actually my response for a very long time… “it isn’t my problem…I’m leaving…someone else can fix it”….

So I say all of that to say that it will be very interesting to see as the Black middle class continues to grow if they will turn back to help those who are still in the ghettos…It will be very interesting to see if they will rebuild there neighborhoods or escape them…

And then again are they suppose to?….why should they sacrifice and stay “behind”? Isn’t the goal of growing up in the “inner city” is to get out of it?

CONCLUSION

But if they leave…who will fight for those who couldn’t leave?

Grace&Freedom♥

Weddings, Virginity, and Patriarchy

Last weekend I had the opportunity to be a part of my good friends wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony filled with even more beautiful people. However, though I was trying my hardest to be happy for my two friends, I was disgusted by just how patriarchal this tradition is.

Though most of you reading this have probably already experienced similar moments of epiphany, I will cite two common examples of how the traditional wedding ceremony perpetuates patriarchy.

1. The pastor asks, “Who gives this woman, to be married to this man?” The bride’s father responds, “Her mother and I.”

2. After the bride and groom kiss the pastor declares, “I now present to you Mr. & Mrs. (Groom’s first and last name).”

Both of these traditional components of a marriage ceremony support the idea that woman are property that is traded between households. No one gives the man to be married, nor does a bride ever brand her husband with the name of her mother.

As I was standing at this wedding, reflecting on all the weddings I have attended I thought to myself, would my wedding be any different? YES! If I truly believe that patriarchy is oppressive, I cannot consciously act in a way that perpetuates it.

So if I marry, this is what my wedding will look like.

1. I refuse to brand the person I marry with my last name.

2. I will not keep friends from my side of the wedding court just because they have a vagina. Traditionally, grooms select groom’s men to represent their ability to protect their bride to be. In contrast, brides select bride’s mates to compliment their beauty. This is an archaic tradition founded in a patriarchal ideology that I cannot support. My side of the court will be the friends and family that I wish to be there to publicly support me in the ceremony.

3. Neither of our families will give us away. If I marry, it will be because another person and I, as autonomous individuals, decided to commit to each other. Not because our families found our union economically, politically, or socially advantageous.

4. In wedding ceremonies, as well as in art, women are commonly portrayed as passive objects of beauty and men as the able actors. One of the clearest manifestations of this is the common phrase, “You may kiss the bride.” Since the man is the actor it therefore falls upon him to complete the necessary action. At my wedding, we will kiss each other.

5. Either both of us wear white or neither of us wears white. Traditionally, the bride’s white dress symbolizes her purity. However, neither purity nor a symbol of purity is required of the groom. Though the reason for this double standard is clear few ever take a moment to think about it. Traditionally a bride’s value is dependent on her beauty. If her virginity has been compromised then it is held that her beauty is as well. Since a groom’s value has been traditionally placed on his strength, his virginity is not a major concern (though more often then not a man’s experienced in sex is held with greater stature) and therefore must not be symbolized in the ceremony. Virginity is a social construct that has been used to oppress women and has no inherent value outside of that which we place on it; there is no physical state of virginity.

6. Any suggestions?


Para la liberación,
Mateo