Ur-Transness

Reflections on a Transgender Classification System

Some Background

Mark Yarhouse is a Christian Psychologist who, for theological reasons, is not affirming of transgender identities. With that said clearly and up front, he is also (to the best of my knowledge) an academic and professional in his field who conducts and reports on his research with integrity. As a result of these two facts, he has had to be creative in how he thinks and talks about trans-ness. His theological commitments require him to classify trans identities as ultimately invalid (he tries very hard to pad this statement but that is what his position boils down to in the end) while his academic and professional commitments drive him to acknowledge that transition and being recognized in our gender identities is psychologically helpful and even life saving for transgender people.

He has been wrestling with the tension that holding on to both of those commitments creates for quite a while now (his book Understanding Gender Dysphoria came out back in 2015) and a taxonomy he developed early on seems to have served him well. Specifically Yarhouse divides attitudes towards transness into three categories or frameworks: The Integrity Framework, the Disability Framework, and the Diversity Framework.

From Yarhouse’s Understanding Gender Dysphoria

He then subdivides the Diversity Framework in the a Weak and a Strong form. Yarhouse himself can be a little cagey about which framework he is most comfortable with—he “sees value in all three”—but overall his work and writing are most commensurate with the Disability Framework as he outlines it.

Austen Hartke is a Christian theologian and a transgender man. In his 2018 book Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians Hartke adopts Yarhouse’s taxonomy as a useful way of classifying attitudes towards transness. Unlike Yarhouse, Hartke’s preference is for the diversity framework:

[I]t is worth noting the outcomes of this affirming third structure. Unlike the results produced by the two other frameworks—where nonaffirming religious views are tied to suicidal behaviors in transgender youth—the supportive results that come out of the diversity framework have been shown to reduce levels of depression and anxiety in transgender kids. This alone makes the diversity framework worth taking seriously as an option.

and he concludes his book with:

[W]hen transgender Christians are accepted and celebrated in Christian communities, the Good Shepherd’s flock is put back together, and we once again become more than the sum of our parts. We get a preview of God’s kingdom here on earth, and Luke 15 tells us there is rejoicing in heaven.

My goal in this essay is to discuss the diversity and disability frameworks. The Integrity framework is built on poor theology and enforced by twisted consciences that have trained themselves to privilege dogma over the experiences of real people. I dismiss it on those grounds and will have nothing further to say about it.

My Own View

Using this system of categorizing approaches to trans-ness, I would locate myself somewhere between the weak and strong versions of the Diversity framework. Specifically I am convinced that queerness is a blessing that God has given to humanity. I believe that God delights in the diversity of people in the world. In a way similar to my own delight in the differences between my three children; I believe that God absolutely loves all of the (non-harmful) different and creative way of being that humanity invents, discovers, and embodies. I know that some theologies make so much of our fallenness that they will sometimes insist that there is nothing good about humanity. I beg to differ. Without for a second denying the pain, suffering, and cruelty that humanity creates, succumbs to, and endures; I maintain that God acted out of positive love for a creation in whom They delight when They joined Themself to humanity in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The incarnation was many things but one of those things is God’s declaration that humanity is worth saving—more than that, worth uniting with.

This is understanding that, in the incarnation, God is united to humanity thereby elevating humanity rather than diminishing God is in fact, central to understanding the theology of eucontamination that my brother and I have been advancing for the last few years.¹ Human diversity and human creativity are central elements in the joy that God takes in us. As J.R.R. Tolkien put it On Fairy Stories

[W]e make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker

In the act of creating beings with a will and with creativity, God chose to create partners—sub-creators—whose discoveries and inventions are given the high honor of enriching God’s good creation.

So at a theological level I am almost naturally drawn to the framework which views trans-ness, as one of the many elements in the diverse multiplicity of creation with which God has blessed us and with which, in return, we delight God. To make that clearer I will need to highlight a distinction between ur-transness and constructed transness. Ur-transness² references the phenomena we experience: people whose bodies do not align with the modes of gendered being and expression that most frequently occur in a given society; ur-transness references the on-the-ground experience that many trans people have of our physiological sexes (primary and secondary) as not accurately representing our sense of who we are as persons. At the same time, constructed transness references trans-ness a category that we use to identify people who share a particular cluster of experiences. Thus constructed transness is something that humans came up with as away to get our heads around a particular set of psychological, physiological, and potentially spiritual, phenomena. People in other times and cultures have found different ways to categorize the same and overlapping on-the-ground phenomena. The variety of third and fourth gender categories and titles throughout history and across cultures³ which variously overlap our contemporary category(ies) of trans-ness are all examples what I am calling constructed transness. Thus ur-transness is a gift that God has given to humanity—diverse ways of seeing and being in the world and of relating to ourselves, our bodies, and our neighbors—while constructed transness in all of its manifestations across time and space is an ever imperfect and improvable gift we give to God and to one another as sub-creators finding new ways to construct and organize our communities and our world.

In case I have not made the case for ur-transness as a blessing quite as clearly as I might, let me elaborate on that point for a moment before moving on. All that is from God is, definitionally, a blessing. We could have been creatures with a drive to eat but without any sense of taste; so taste is a blessing. Variety is a blessing. Without it our world would be so much duller, which we wouldn’t mind if we hadn’t also been blessed with an appreciation for novelty (as well as routine) and with a deep enjoyment of learning, creativity, and discovery. Fun itself is a blessing; a pure bounty. And so then is queerness. Remember of course that queerness exists only subjectively in relation to that which is viewed as “the norm”⁴. If there were no sense of norm then also there would be nothing that could be queer in any sense of that marvelous word. And one day we might hope to enjoy a world where queerness has expanded it’s glory to the point of encompassing all so that, in the words of C.S. Lewis:

Each figure as he looked at it became the master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye disentangled all else and brought it into unity—only to itself be entangled when he looked to what he had taken for mere marginal decorations and found that there also the same hegemony was claimed, and the claim made good, yet the former pattern not thereby dispossessed but finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated.

one day all that is marginal will be seen to be no less at the center than that which we currently see as central, while all that is at the center will be itself glorified by taking a place on the margins. which is to say that in the Kingdom of God, all are queer and all are glorious in their queerness.

Transness (and I am speaking here of ur-transness) is a blessing partially because it is one of the a ways of being that God has given to humanity. I could (and I imagine I will) talk about the great benefits—and also the suffering—that come from being trans generally and being trans in this cultural historical moment; but for all of it, transness is not blessed for the benefits it brings, it is blessed for its status as a way of being gifted by God. There is nothing I could be paid which would compel me to give up being trans and accept life (if it were possible) as a cis man or cis woman, not because being cis is a bad thing but because such a change would require me to be remade into something that is not-me. And whereas our sanctification is, in theological terms, the process of becoming ever more fully who we are, transformation into a cis person would constitute some hideous anti-sanctification—becoming less who I am.

Moving then into constructed-transness; that too I experience as a blessing—albeit a qualified one. Constructed-transness, the identity based category which in my cultural historical moment is used to conceptualize and process ur-transness, is a thing of human invention. And like so many human inventions, it brings about great joy and some real sorrow. Constructed-transness glorifies God as a sub-creation of God’s good creation. It is a manifestation of our obedience to the command in Genesis 1:28. It is a part of how we have gone about “filling the earth and getting our heads ‘round it”. And it has led to the formation of beautiful community. My trans siblings and my trans community are sources of deep joy and delight—for me and for most anyone who is able to let down their prejudice long enough to see us for the beautiful, hilarious, resilient, stubborn, ridiculous, intense, and passionate community that we are. Constructed-transness has given me a way of understanding my own ur-transness that works for me and for many others. Constructed-transness is also a vital tool in understanding and ultimately countering the hatred that is leveled against those of us who are ur-trans, different in one of those ways, queer.

And so, yes, the diversity framework. I position myself between Yarhouse’s weak and strong versions because my participation in ur-transness would seem to forbid any full embrace of a total deconstruction of sex and gender; my understanding of the historical and cultural creativity and invention that accounts for constructed-transness makes me unable to fully subscribe to the weak version of the framework. I am ur-trans and, as an American in the first half of the 21st century that means that I participate in—and understand myself through the lens of—constructed-transness.

Some Thoughts on the Disability Framework

Yarhouse’s “middle position”⁵ is what he calls the Disability Framework. This way of thinking about transness involves seeing it (and “it” here designates ur-transness: the on-the-ground facts of identifying with a gender different from the one you were assigned at birth based on your genital physiology) as a disability and analyzing various “treatments” for that disability from that perspective.

For the sake of context, Yarhouse suggest that this view sees transness (ur-transness) as inherently morally neutral such that from the point of view of this framework the interesting and important questions all derived from the various recommended treatments for the “condition” of being trans. There is something significant to commend Yarhouse for at this point: He is an honest man who does honest scholarly work with integrity. Certainly I disagree with his conclusions but in all that I have read or heard from him I have never had occasion to accuse him of dissembling, fudging, or misrepresenting the data as regards his work. That isn’t to claim that he is perfect in his research (what researcher is?) much less in his analysis of that research. His theological and religious commitments seem to preclude any possibility of his reaching a trans-affirming conclusion; but in a milieu in which so many Christian voices engage in motivated reasoning, misrepresentation, sloppy scholarship, and simple dishonesty, Yarhouse’s is a refreshingly honest voice⁶.

The very short summary of Yarhouse’ research and analysis is that he concludes transness is at least sometimes not “curable” in the sense of bringing someone around to identifying with the sex they were assigned to at birth based on the shape of their genitals and that efforts to bring about such an effect can significantly harm the “patient”. Meanwhile various degrees of transition are effective in alleviating dysphoria⁷ (the suffering that derives from an incongruity between trans people’s sexed bodies and our gender identities). He is then as conservative as he is able to be in his conclusions and suggests that, under supervision of a therapist, transgender people likely should be allowed to transition to whatever minimum degree may turn out to be necessary to alleviate our dysphoria.

Essentially Yarhouse suggests that transness is a psychological disability and that the only reliable therapy for it is (at least sometimes) some degree of transition. He refrains from officially endorsing transition, just as he refrains from endorsing trans reparative therapy but he does present its unique efficacy in treating dysphoria as an ethical problem that Christians ought to engage.

I have found over the years that this framework has a lot of appeal for allies and for a lot of transgender people, while it tends to be less popular with anti-trans folk (Christian or otherwise). That fact alone endorses this view to an extent; it is, at the least, seen as useful to those who care about trans liberation (or at least about the dignity and rights of transgender people). This framework has further utility as the framework that nearly all transgender people who want to transition⁸ (a choice that not all of us make for reasons ranging from financial or circumstantial inability to a simple lack of desire) are forced to use in order to gain access to the the medicalized (and several of the legal) components of transition. There is a legitimate fear on behalf of our community that if we drift too far away from the disability framework we risk losing insurance coverage and possibly all medical access to those modes of transition.

Additionally the disability framework has the virtue (and vice) of being a sort of easy onramp to transgender acceptance on the part of those (cis and trans people) who would otherwise reject trans identities. The disability framework foregrounds transgender suffering and recommends both acceptance and transition as remedies. Many people still think of humanity as neatly divided into men and women who can all be readily assessed as such by simple visual inspection. This needs to be radically deconstructed and rebuilt to acknowledge significant diversity and a wild lack of certainty, but that is a heavy lift (witness the reactions of so many to our contemporary post-evangelical “deconstruction” movement. Those who aren’t ready for such a radical shift may nevertheless be convinced to accept that “some men suffer from a condition where they feel like women on the inside and the only way to ease their suffering is to let them transition and to treat them like ‘real’ women”. On the one hand this half-way step to full acceptance of trans people is a useful thing to have; on the other it is deeply invalidating and it tends to reinforce the wrongheaded notion that cis people have a sort of natural right to gatekeep legitimate “manhood” and “womanhood”. The disability framework has the effect of treating trans womanhood as intrinsically less valid than cis womanhood, trans manhood as intrinsically less valid than cis manhood, and non-binaryness as less valid than binary identities and presentations. As Julia Serano put it back in her 2009 keynote to the 8th Annual Philadelphia TransHealth Conference, recognizing that there is nothing intrinsically undignified about having a disability or medical condition in itself:

So if the issue is not pathologization per se, why is it that we, as trans people, often experience such an intense, visceral, negative reaction to these theories and therapies? I would argue that it is because they invalidate us. The definition of the word invalidate is: to discredit; to deprive of legal force or efficacy; to destroy the authority of; to nullify.

I have been asking myself for a while now whether or not I would be more comfortable with the disability framework if, as a society, abelism were diminished or vanished altogether. I do not for a second want to increase the stigma already placed on the disabled community by an abelist world and if transness can accurately be understood to be a disability then I will proudly take my place among them. If disability were not stigmatized and disabled people were not invalidated then would there be any problem with the disability framework?

While the problems inherent for trans people in the disability framework would diminish significantly in a less ableist world—a world we all have a responsibility to be working towards—I am entirely unsure whether they would not vanish altogether. With that said I am wildly open to correction and instruction on this point. I do wonder whether in fact, in a society without abelism, our framework for disability itself would not simply dissolve into a diversity framework wherein we recognized the dignity inherent in all ways of being in the world and all of the interventions that we now call medical would not be re-cast as diverse aids to flourishing in the world—desired by some and undesired by others. But I am swimming now in deep watersand cannot go much further.

What is clear is that in this present abelist world, the stigma that attaches to disabled people readily extends itself to trans people when transness is viewed through the disability framework⁹. All of the condescension, invalidations, and even repugnance or disgust that our society cruelly directs at disabled people has no difficulty in attaching itself to trans folk as well. It is also clear that, Yarhouse’s use of “disability contains none of this complexity. For Yarhouse there are vital ethical questions to be asked about how a disabled person ought to be treated but there is no question that all he categorizes as a disability is to be seen as a diminishment from an abled “norm”.

Furthermore, as a trans woman who is actively engaged in the trans community I cannot help observing the pernicious effects that embrace of this framework has had on us (whether intrinsically or as a consequence of our own internalized abelism I must leave it to the reader to decide) and especially on those of us who are also members of religious communities. Trans people ourselves will sometimes adopt the disability framework for any number of reasons. Some of us experience a strong need to justify transition and, prior to deconstructing significant internalized transphobia, the disability framework offers the most available justification in the form “it was the only option I had for escaping my dysphoria”. Many of us persist in rooting any negative reaction that our families, friends, and communities have to our transness or to our transition, not in their religious or social transphobia or in the cisnormativity that caused us to go this long without realizing or feeling able to disclose who we really are but in transness itself. Of course being transgender is not itself a source of significant suffering beyond whatever gender dysphoria we might experience; being transgender in the context of a transphobic cisnormative¹⁰ world often results in significant suffering—suffering that is caused by transphobia and cisnormativity—but the medical model seems to incline trans people towards experiencing our transness as something unfortunate that has befallen us and that we can only hope others will be willing to help with rather than the joy that it has the potential to be.

Ultimately though, my biggest concern with the disability model has to do with the way it positions people to think about trans folk. I referenced above the sort of half-way or tolerant/indulgent approach that some cis “allies” who adopt the disability framework tend to take with trans people categorizing—for instance—trans women as “men who need to be treated like women and who need to live as women for the sake of their mental health and that’s OK”. The two primary problems with this approach are first that it centers and elevates the cis person as having the just capacity to choose whether or not (or when) to recognized trans people for who we are—a right that they do not in fact posses—and second that the whole outlook is grounded in the conceit that trans women are really men, that trans men are really women, and that non-binary people are not really non-binary. The first problem is one of cisnormativity and privilege and the second is one of legitimacy.

When I am asked to opine on the question of trans women in sports I like to make a point of reframing the question along lines that explicitly filter out any transphobia or delegitimization of trans people: I point out that trans women are women and that the question here really is therefore whether all women should be allowed to participate in women’s sports or only some women. That reframing doesn’t necessarily demand a particular answer¹¹, but it does clarify things. If you want to refuse any particular group of women access to women’s sports then you need to do so in a way that can be justified. I like doing this because I find that it tends to highlight where the cis person in question is still operating out of a framework which views trans women as really men who might or might not be granted access to women’s spaces for therapeutic purposes under certain conditions, and where they have managed to reframe their understanding of trans women so that we are experienced as women

Ask nearly any trans person and they will tell you that it is, eventually, pretty easy to recognize the difference between someone who sees you as really your gender and someone who sees you as really the sex you were assigned at birth based on your genital morphology. When we recognize transness as part of the glorious diversity of creation, it is far easier to see our trans siblings for who they are instead of seeing them as what they never were. Trans people are men, women, and non-binary people who are trans or as we say: Trans men are men, trans women are women, and non-binary people are non-binary.

1. See our papers Eucontamination: A Christian Study in the Logic of Disgust and Contamination as well as Queering as Eucontaminant Reorganization in The Other Journal as well as Eucontamination: Enacting a Centered-Set Theology in a Multicultural World in the Journal of Psychology and Theology

2. In the development of this category I am indebted to Umberto Eco’s coinage of “ur-fascism” to designate pan-historical fascisms and fascistic tendencies. If other trans theorists have already coined the term I am not aware of it but will be more than happy to give credit. I am also deeply grateful to Dr. Laura Robinson for a stimulating a delightful conversation about queer historiography in which I first used the term in an effort to express something like the trans-historical fact of gender incongruity. You should definitely follow her on this platform.

3. See this Wikipedia article for a functional list of “Third Gender” categories across history and culture.

4. For the more exacting reader I want to clarify that I am using “norm” here in its normative rather than its numerically/mathematically descriptive sense. That which is normal or “the norm” enjoys the status of being unquestioned and treated as appropriate, right, and healthy. It is the “norm” by which society judges all that deviates from it.

5. See my essay Queering the Center for an explanation of why and how positions are often subconsciously and unjustly privileged for no reason beyond being middle positions.

6. Yarhouse here stands in stark contrast to Dr. Paul McHugh and Dr. Preston Sprinkle whom I have written about HERE (McHugh) and HERE (Sprinkle)

7. Dysphoria is a term that seems to be wildly misunderstood by anti-trans people as well as by more than a few allies. Gender Dysphoria (the proper term) refers to the psychological distress that may be caused by a misalignment between a person’s gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth or their (pre-transition) sexed physiology. It does not refer to the misalignment itself. Definitionally to be transgender is to experience that misalignment. It is entirely possible to be transgender without having any mental or psychological distress associated with that incongruence. Put simply, you do not have to experience dysphoria to be trans.

8. “To transition” is, in this context, the act of changing one or more modes of one’s being in the world in order to more fully align with our gender identities. Common forms of transition are:

• Legal Transition - updating our legal status and documents to more accurately reflect our genders

• Social Transition - updating the way we present ourselves and our social expectations to more accurately reflect our genders

• Medical Transition - updating our bodies—usually through hormone therapy and/or surgeries though there are other common treatments—to more accurately reflect our genders

9. Though I risk wearying the reader with excessive back-and-forth I should observe here that this may well signal a value in the disability framework insofar as solidarity with other marginalized communities is both a civic and a theological virtue.

10. “Cisnormativity” is the expectation of cisness (non-trans-ness) as the healthy unquestioned default or norm. Cisnormativity is responsible for the fact that our society and culture are structured to expect and cater to non-trans (cisgender) identities and ways of being in the world while frequently neglecting, or treating as an add-on, trans identities and ways of being in the world.

11. Notice that this reframing does undo any suggestion that trans women should be allowed in women’s sport out of pity or for therapeutic reasons. The question is merely one of justice; on what grounds can a woman be legitimately disqualified from participation in women’s sports.