Trans archdeacon story in the Telegraph – and my dilemma

[RevUlsion]

The Telegraph reports that a vicar is being investigated for calling trans archdeacon Rachel Mann a ‘bloke’.

Comments from Telegraph readers are predictable: ‘Well he is a bloke, and the Church is selling out to woke ideology’. Comments from gender critical people too: ‘Here we go again: another man pretending to be a woman.’

On the other side, progressives inside and outside the Church are outraged at what they see as disrespect and bigotry.

My dilemma is that I’m strongly gender critical, but I suspect a small number of people have real gender dysphoria (as opposed to AGP, sexual motives for entering women’s spaces etc). If anybody has real gender dysphoria, Rachel Mann does.

Somebody with long-term dysphoria who goes as far as having their bits removed as an adult, as Rachel has, instinctively seems to me quite different from men with penises and wigs demanding access to women’s spaces.

Interested to know what others think about this distinction.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/16/church-of-england-investigates-vicar-trans-archdeacon/

I'm not sure that Rachel's sincerity of transition is really the issue for the church here. The issue is (or should be, if we were talking about this properly) whether transition itself is a Gnostic-style response to unease with one's embodied self and whether that is compatible with taking a leadership role in the church. I've no idea if that's what was said in the video but it seems to be an important conversation we (Christians that is) are not having.

Asserting a trans identity often involves buying-in to core Gnostic principles (denying the importance of physical reality, believing that there's a mind-body dualism, that your mind and inner self are more important than the reality of your body, deciding that the solutions/interpretation of dysphoria should come from within rather than from any external source). I think it's really unclear whether this as a worldview is compatible with Christianity.

It's not exactly the same as the Gnosticism which was around in the early days of the church - it's more like it turns Gnostic thinking in on oneself rather than on the external world or on God. But it's a very odd phenomenon, because if you applied those thought principles to God or to the world it would be straightforwardly unacceptable/unorthodox. So I am not sure it is entirely sensible to be ordaining priests steeped in that worldview, especially given how important the physical body is in Christianity. To say nothing of how a transitioned priest is supposed to be able to pastor someone who is distressed by a relative transitioning, or who is just an ordinary sex realist.

I find it odd a person can reconcile a belief in a Christian loving and powerful god with a belief that you were born in the wrong body and need to change that body to be your true self. It makes no sense.

Why isn’t Mr Mann the one under investigation for posting his perve poetry in public?

Imagine being a member of his congregation, especially as a teenager. Are vicars generally allowed to do this kind of thing (hope not) or is it the “Do whatever you want all the time” meme in action?

It does seem that gender dysphoria now means different things to different people.

To girls it seems a horror of dealing with breasts and menstruation and to a lot of men* it’s less about discomfort with a male body but wanting some stereotype that’s actually massively sexist.

*I don’t discount there being men with severe discomfort about their own bodies but they seem to be fewer in number (or just quieter).

It does seem that gender dysphoria now means different things to different people.

It's a good example of how an umbrella term can be unhelpful.

Kind of like "homosexual" or "straight" - that's a useful distinction in a lot of circumstances, so grouping males and females together can make sense, but "men attracted to men" and "women attracted to women" really are quite different, so having separate words for "gay" and "lesbian" is worthwhile sometimes.

Even before you get into finer details of motivation, "gender dysphoria" must cover at least distinct 4 things:

1. man wanting to be a woman
2. man uncomfortable with being a man
3. woman wanting to be a man
4. woman uncomfortable with being a woman

Each of those is a 100% sexed behaviour - as Helen Joyce keeps pointing out "wanting to be a woman" is something only a male can do.

And the occurrences of those are clearly vastly different. There's symmetry in the concepts, but not in actual behaviour. (Who knew, the sexes have different sex-related behaviour?)

I haven't seen Blanchard and Bailey's paper referenced for a while. (Here in 2023, there's a bunch of seminal circa-2017 writing that is in danger of being forgotten, I think.) This goes into more detail of the populations:

Gender dysphoria is not one thing

Yes. Like the word 'kind' it's lost all meaning. I'm not interested in the sincerity of the male who would like me to perform a lie to enable him. There isn't a shading of 'being used and coerced' that I'm ok with.

He can identify how he likes and so can I. He has no responsibilities to perform anything for me or provide labour to meet my emotional needs and neither do I.

Yes, this is how this should be considered. Does gender ideology and transition conflict with Christian faith? It seems too often people expect the Church of England to simply comply with ‘modern culture’ when Christianity is countercultural - to be Christian is to try and stand apart from the ways of the world. Though corruption of belief within the church is hardly a new thing:

Matthew 7:21-23:
21 Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

Really helpful – the question whether trans identity is fundamentally incompatible with core Christian beliefs, and with senior office in the Church.

Rowan Williams, Steve Chalke and others wrote in an open letter last year that being trans is a 'sacred journey of becoming whole'. I'm not convinced, mainly for the body/soul/Gnostic reasons you give.

In my experience, few in the Church are willing to have this discussion. The dominant mood, at least in the C of E and Church in Wales, is 'just be kind', no doubt fuelled by shame at the Church's historic attitude to gay people.

I hope the recent setting up of LGB Christians (ie lesbian, gay and bi Christians who don't support a trans agenda) will be a helpful step forward.

Thankyou Necessary, I notice that, as a precursor to the Cass report, this paper is already highlighting that children who don’t undergo social transition are more likely to desist than those that do

Sorry, wrong thread!

He's a man,there's no dilemma.

Rowan Williams, Steve Chalke and others wrote in an open letter last year that being trans is a 'sacred journey of becoming whole'.

What utter bollocks.

Precisely. The alternative is accepting your bodily unease as a sacrifice demanded of you by God. Unpopular today with pretty much everyone, but still a valid response ( of course I don’t mean that medical issues should be ignored or not alleviated).

Mann is a self declared lesbian. Another reason for ( most) women to be 🥺

“Rowan Williams, Steve Chalke and others wrote in an open letter last year that being trans is a 'sacred journey of becoming whole'. I'm not convinced, mainly for the body/soul/Gnostic reasons you give.”

I think this is akin to the falsehood of ‘being their authentic self’. All while living what amouts to a lie. They live their perception of how women live, they never live the authentic female experience. They cannot even conceive what that is. It is effectively living their fantasy.

Yet it has been framed as being ‘authentic’ and as being ‘their whole self’. This is a falsehood.

'sacred journey of becoming whole'.

What does that pretentious tosh even mean? It's like some awful sentimental meme on FB with a picture of pooh and piglet walking hand in hand, there is no substance of any kind.

Did someone delete the ninth commandment while I wasn't looking? The one about not bearing false witness.

Is envy still one of the deadly sins?

Also, that poem about looking at a girl's behind on a bus is creepy as hell. I'd have thought it enough on its own to disqualify someone from being employed as clergy in the C of E.

The tenth is perhaps even more relevant:

Thou shalt not covet.

Tom Wright also thinks there are clear parallels with Gnosticism - he has cautiously stuck his head over the parapet.

I have a lot of time for Rowan Williams but I was really frustrated by that letter, particularly as it was arguing for a trans conversion therapy ban. It just showed a total lack of grip over the practical issues it would cause for therapists, priests, parents, teachers and children.

Perusing Rachel Mann's pre-ordination career: it looks like Rachel was married to a woman before transition, subsequently was unsuccessful first time at BAP and moved diocese before finally being approved for ordination. I don't know how common it is for someone to be ordained after not being recommended by one BAP, but it shows that someone somewhere had serious doubts.

Male overly interested in a teens arse...there used to be a word for that...

Definitely raising safeguarding red flags. Definitely needs to keep out of women's single sex spaces.

The Church does have a very authoritative precedent for dropping Commandments: didn't Jesus say that the Old Testament was obsolete and that there was no need to follow all of its commandments? He set the pick-and-choose precedent.

Perhaps Alistair Crowley's commandment is more attractive to this brand of clergy: Do What Thou Wilt.

No, he didn't say that. The closest he came was the thing about the Sabbath being made for man, not man for the Sabbath, which opens the possibilities of how you act in order to keep it holy. But not that keeping the sabbath holy is no longer necessary. And he was steeped in Old Testament knowledge - having a new Covenant does not imply the abolition of the old Covenant - just opening it up to all humanity, not just the descendants of Abraham.

😁