Quote of the Year: Jenny Everywhere (Caitlyn Jenner pt 3)

Jenny Everywhere left a profound and beautiful essay in reply to the first follow-up to this series, and it was so eloquent that it deserves its own post. Everything below this is her work; I've simply done some formatting to turn it from a comment to a blog post.

Ms. Everywhere wrote:

I almost never quote the Bible. My tenure as a born-again Christian (yes, I was!) only lasted a year or so, and had the benefit of being at an MCC church, among other GLBT persons, and my then girlfriend with me. It was a comfort in a very dark time, and when it was over, it was over. But I had a thought back then, which I have returned to from time to time.

1 Peter 1:24-25 says:

24 For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:
25 But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

The issue of the transgendered is a dichotomy -- the spirit and the flesh. Flesh is as grass. It is as a beast, and Man has the dominion over the beasts. The soul, however, is directly the work of the Almighty, and is not that which may be marred by the works of others. 

A soul may be lost or cherished by its own free will, but the Creator does not make a marred soul. The person is as the SOUL determines. Not as the flesh determines. 

The soul is the light of God within the temple. 

The body IS the temple. 

You ARE a soul. You merely HAVE a body.

When the roof of the church is broken by a falling tree, do you refuse to repair it, because it is the roof of the House of the Lord, and may not be altered? Of course not. The congregation holds Bingo nights and Carnivals, and passes the plate so as to gain the funds to fix it! What is unchanging and cannot be altered is the soul within the church, shared amongst the congregation.

So when a person believes, in their heart of hearts, that their soul does not match the structure of the temple, that something is awry, do we claim the soul is mistaken, and refuse to fix the temple? Or do we do what must be done so that the soul shines out strong and secure? 

You are a soul. You merely HAVE a body.

 Do we not fix the roof?

Over the past decades, we have polluted our world with all sorts of things. PCB's, vinyl softening agents, estrogen washed into rivers and lakes from sewage treatment plants, the remains of birth control pills peed into the water supply, and most importantly, drugs given during the 50's and 60's that were intended to prevent miscarriages. Those drugs were potent estrogenic compounds, and the dosages were little understood, and were thus heroic in size. They were usually given partly into the first trimester, right when the body might decide a developing child wasn't quite right and spontaneously decide to try again. I'm of the mind that the soul is not wasted, but simply held until such a time as "again" comes around, and is once again placed where it should be in those cases. And if strong drugs prevent the miscarriage, then what effect might they have?

They might prevent the second testosterone wash in a male fetus. The first wash causes the body to differentiate in keeping with a Y chromosome, but the second patterns the brain. If that second wash from the mother's body is overshadowed by an extremely intense dose of estrogen, might it prevent the second wash from repatterning the brain -- which, like the body, starts in the female pattern -- from finishing the Y-chromosome's work? Between drugs and estrogenic compounds of all sorts as environmental toxins, it's little wonder it happens all too often! We have a storm, blowing in the populace, sending trees crashing into the roofs of some of the churches!

And all too many of the Creator's ministers are telling us not to fix the roof, but to dim the lights inside so we cannot see the dripping of the water and the groaning of the rafters. We are told the soul must continue to suffer, so the body is preserved -- no matter how much the soul hurts, and the person cries.

I cannot see that as anything but cruelty.

I have known and dearly loved many transgendered persons, both M2F and F2M, and cannot bring myself to believe that their souls are all wrong, and we must instead believe flawed bodies -- though all flesh is as grass, and withereth.