Imagine: Step inside my LDS gender-creative heart
Next in our “Imagine” series! At times it is hard for straight cisgender folks to understand the LGBTQ world, but on this blog we’re lifting up insights that make it easier.
by Marci McPhee
"I wish to urge upon the Saints . . . to understand men and women as they are, and not understand them as you are" (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 8:37, April 6, 1860, emphasis added).
Step inside my LDS gender-creative heart: a compilation from my family and friends
As a toddler, Christmas morning is a disappointment, because you get a lot of “boy stuff” you don't like. You grow up thinking that presents aren't that fun, until you discover that there's a whole “girl section” you never knew about. But mom and dad act weird when you ask them for those things.
In adolescence, at the same time as you begin to discover your powerful sexual feelings, you feel the shame of church teachings you have heard all your life, telling you that the way you experience those feelings is horribly wrong. But you don't know how to not feel what you feel. You parents may try to be understanding and supportive (or maybe they don't), but they don't know either.
You look ahead to your life, and you can only imagine crushing loneliness. You can't have a female housemate (even if you're not attracted to her); you can't have a male housemate without raised eyebrows (even if you’re not attracted to him); you don't want to marry someone you're not attracted to; and lifelong celibacy feels like a death sentence. Never to have someone hold your hand or kiss or go with you to the prom. Forget about sex or having a family -- just someone to be with, to show affection to you, and for you to love in return. And being a dad? Impossible -- this is not for you. Sounds like a lifetime of emptiness in an apartment by yourself.
You get your patriarchal blessing, which should be a spiritual high of your life, and you are told that you will marry a girl in the temple. The thought is repugnant to you, and you can't figure out how that could ever happen in your future. You wonder whether your God even knows you, to say such a thing to you in your patriarchal blessing. Or whether He's going to work some miracle that you know is statistically small if not impossible, but it just might happen in your life, because it says so in your patriarchal blessing. You try to focus on the other wonderful blessings, but this piece is just so confusing it makes the whole experience troubling.
The good news is that there is hope. It takes courage and imagination to find the folks who can help you live your best life. And I, for one, resolve to be one of those supporters for anyone I meet.
"There never seems to be a polite way of saying, 'Look, the problem isn't me. It's your inability to greet me as I am instead of how you want me to be” (Blaire Ostler, Listen, Learn and Love, Richard Ostler, 157).
Also in our “Imagine” series: