In the Image of God

schraubd

A recent study found that Jews are the demographic group most accepting of trans individuals in the United States.

When certain Christians assert a religious freedom right to discriminate against trans individuals – particularly, a right to misgender them – their argument typically proceeds something along these lines:

1. They believe every individual is created in the image of God.

2. Part of that image is the person’s sex (and by extension, gender).

3. In particular, a person’s sex/gender is inalterably assigned by God from conception.

4. They are forbidden from lying or falsifying God’s choice.

Therefore, they say, they are religiously obligated to refer to people by their chromosomal sex, regardless of how they identify or publicly present. This religious duty, in turn, is used to press against rules and policies which require respectful treatment of trans individuals (including refraining from deliberately misgendering them, deadnaming them, and so on).

What’s interesting about this framework is that a lot of it actually resonates with how I view the relationship of my Jewish faith and trans individuals – with some crucial alterations. To wit:

1. I believe every individual is create in the image of God.

2. Part of that image is the person’s sex (and by extension, gender).

4. I am forbidden from lying or falsifying God’s choice.

The major distinction, of course, comes in prong 3:

3. A person’s sex/gender is not necessarily or inalterably assigned by God from conception, but rather can be part of a person’s own process of discovering who they are. Where such self-discovery leads to a person to conclude they are trans, non-binary, or any other identity that departs from the sex they were assigned at birth, they are not deviating from God’s plan. They are uncovering their authentic self as God has created them.

The result of this process is part of God’s image. Those who refuse to accept it are not cleaving to God’s image, they are rejecting it.

God’s process of creation is not, in my understanding of Judaism, a set-and-forget sort of deal. It is not a matter of passively being puppeteered by a divine hand. It something we do together – we are partners in creation. To deny the results of that partnership is, for me, a denial of God’s plan and practice just as much as it is for adherents of other religious views who adhere to a more static and calcified notion of the role of the divine.

And so for me, and I suspect for many Jews, the religious freedom obligation pushes in the other direction. Many conservative states have, or are considering, laws which require (at least in certain contexts) non-recognition of trans identity. For Jews (and others) who share my religious precepts, these laws would force me to deny – to bear false witness to – a key attribute of how God created some of my peers. I do not believe – and this is a deep, fundamental commitment – that God’s “image” of trans persons was for them to be locked in a body or sex or gender identity that clearly is not authentically theirs. When they find their full self, they are equally finding God’s image of themselves.

Consistent with my lengthily expressed feelings on the subject, I suspect that what’s good for the goose will not be good for the gander. Despite the clear parallel, liberal Jews who assert religious liberty rights to be exempted from laws seeking to enforce by state mandate a transphobic agenda will not meet with the same success enjoyed by their Christian peers.

Nonetheless, there is value in promoting this sort of framework, and in unashamedly asserting Jewish independence from hegemonic conservative Christian notions of true religiosity. It is not woven into “religion” that God’s image requires rejection of trans individuals’ full selves. That is a choice, an interpretation of some religions or of some who call themselves religious. Other religions, other religious persons, have a different interpretation of how to respect and dignify the facet of God that is in every one of us.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/vlsH4T2

unbidden-yidden

I’ve heard a similar argument from progressive Christians, and so this regressive view is in no way required in order to be a devout Christian, either.

If you are cisgender and a devout progressive Christian: this is an excellent place to assert both of those privileges in order to push back on this regressive public rhetoric.

penrosesun

Story time:

In college, I was close friends with a Haredi student at my university. This man was deeply religious, and not to put to fine a point on it, deeply conservative. He’d expressed what I think most people would characterize fairly homophobic views before, openly, in situations where he received substantial push back, including from other Orthodox and Haredi Jews on campus, and he’d resolutely stood his ground on these things.

At the time, I was not out to everyone, and we had a lot in common and got on extremely well, just so long as we never ever ever touched on any topic even remotely close to political anything. We studied Talmud together briefly, and we’d regularly organize Shabbat board game groups together, and we pooled resources to ensure that there was always pickled herring at the local minyan’s kiddush, since we both loved it and were heartbroken that so few other students our age did that the minyan had stopped getting it. And for years, I knew: when this guy graduated, I was going to tell him who I was - because I cared about him as a friend and felt I owed him that - and then we’d never speak again, and our friendship would be over.

On the last Shabbat before his graduation, I came out to him, and he sat very quietly and listened… and then he said something which truly shocked me to my core. He asked me if I intended to medically transition. I said that I wasn’t sure – that there were risks, and costs, and practical concerns, and that, sure, if someone could just wave a magic wand and give me the body that matched my gender instantly and painlessly and for free, I’d want that, but that that was of course impossible. And this Haredi man – who I had heard refer to the rainbow flag as “a symbol of immorality”, who I had heard say to a queer rabbi guest speaker’s face that he thought that gay men should remain celibate for their entire lives – he looked at me, very seriously, and said with zero hesitation at all, “how can you say that? Of course its possible – in olam haba.” And then he proceeded to tell me about a piece of Talmud he had studied just a month or so before, in which there was the question of whether an old man who felt that his best life and most true identity was the years he had lived as an old man would be restored to his youth in olam haba – and how that rabbis had concluded that in such a circumstance, he would not be, because youth would not be an ideal form to him. And he told me – dead seriously, the sort of seriousness you only ever see from someone who believes in the World to Come with truly unshaking devotion – that since I knew I was a man, that could only mean that Hashem had created me as a man, and that that was my true and ideal self, and therefore that the only possible form that could be waiting for me in olam haba must be a male one – that the circumstances which led to Hashem giving me the body which I had in this life were beyond his ability to reason, but that he was sure that it must be a reason particular to my life and my soul, because Hashem was never wrong.

We did eventually fall out of touch, in part because we still had a lot of pretty irreconcilable political beliefs, and over time, that gulf grew too big to ignore. But that was the day that I stopped putting up with people who rejected my gender identity on the basis of “religious beliefs”, for good. Because if this man who was on the far right wing end of the religious/political spectrum could understand that Hashem does not make mistakes and that my gender identity was in the image of the divine, then what was some random “goes to Church to judge her neighbor” Christian busybody’s excuse? If he could see it, so could they – and I had no reason at all to respect their personal choice not to.

scoobhead

rating ways to advertise the locked tomb

"lesbian necromancers in space": 5/10. technically true, except that gideon isn't a necromancer and for the most part they aren't in space. can also be tonally misleading; implies a fun space opera adventure and fails to mention the impending emotional devastation. that being said it is iconic and (mostly) effective

"murder mystery in a haunted gothic castle": 8/10. MUCH better at capturing the tone and plot of the first book, but still a little off. imagine picking up the book because of this blurb and then watching gideon nav make a mean girls reference in the first 20 pages. the whiplash could kill you

"a locked tomb mystery": 5/10. nondescriptive and a little misleading, but i can't give this any lower than a 5 because the pun is very good. gideon would love this one and that should count for something

"gay goth among us": 10/10. i'm not even going to pretend like this one doesn't nail it. try and argue against this. you can't. captures the murders, the space-y setting, the queer characters, the tone and aesthetic, AND the contemporary humor. chef's kiss

"enemies to lovers 'i hate everyone but you' slow burn": 1/10. true if you squint. the relationship between gideon and harrow would make booktok weep

"catholic homestuck": 9/10. this means nothing and explains everything

this tweet by tamsyn muir:

[Image ID: A tweet by "tamsyn should be writing" @tazmuir: "sure, I edited from 12 o'clock to 4.30, but how much of that time did I spend on the discovery that the basis of my novel is 'what if these two were... teenage girls'", followed by an image of Skeletor and He-Man. /end ID]

10/10. conveys the pop culture savvy of the series, the complex dynamic between the main characters, and the humor of the writing style all at once. also makes me laugh every time i think about it

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

In the Image of God

rating ways to advertise the locked tomb