Transgender Day of Remembrance - A reflection at Open Table #lgbtqia+ #comeasyouare

Reflection by Revd Dr Tima Beardsley for Open Table, Liverpool 15.11.20 - Gospel reading: Luke 22:7-20

Jesus identifies the venue of the Last Supper by sending Peter and John to look for someone carrying a jar of water, and to follow them into the house. A Queer reading of this episode is that this individual is a male and so blurring gender expectations as carrying water was normally a woman’s role. Maybe that was the case, but the Greek word in the text is not the word for male person: it’s the word for human being. This mysterious person is more of everyman/every-person figure, prompting the thought that Jesus longs to share himself in any or all of our homes. And it is in our own homes that we find ourselves for this commemoration in 2020. 

This has been the most extraordinary year – and not just because of Covid-19. As a trans person I’ve been shocked by the push-back against my community, centred mainly around proposed government reform of the Gender Recognition Act.

The articles, posts and comments that have been written about us have been extraordinarily wounding. I decided early on that I wouldn’t be engaging with this stuff. It’s damaging to the self and the soul. Yet it became so pervasive that it was hard to avoid and sometimes curiosity got the better of me.

On one occasion I stumbled across an article questioning the commemoration we’re engaged in this evening – Transgender Day of Remembrance. According to the author, most of the trans people we remember tonight didn’t die because they were trans but because they lived in violent societies. That’s just the way life is for many people, they said, whatever their gender, in Latin America. In a few sentences their gender identity had been erased.

It’s helpful, of course, to point out intersections like race, economic and social status and context. But these additional factors don’t negate the vulnerability so often attached to being gender variant. They simply increase the likelihood that one will be a target for violence.

And then there’s sex. Many trans women who are murdered are killed because they’re involved in sex work. We don’t judge them for that. Prior to the changes to employment legislation in the UK in 1999, many trans women in this country were in the same predicament, because unable to find any other work.

We don’t judge – FULL STOP. Jesus tells us: ‘judge not, that ye be not judged.’ Nor do we think ourselves better than them. Or that such things only happen in countries far away.

Five years ago, in the district of west London where I live, Vanessa Santillan, a Mexican trans woman, who lived and worked as an escort, was beaten to death and robbed by her husband who then abandoned her body. In a statement, her family described her death as ‘irreparable … our family will never be the same again without Vanessa, we cannot stop thinking how unjust her death was."

Two years ago this month, again, not too far from where I live, in a hotel room at Heathrow airport, another transgender woman, Naomi Hersi, was brutally murdered by a client and his female partner. Her family responded, ‘Grief has swallowed us up. It’s consumed us.’ 

We do not judge how these women earned their living, for if we do, not only shall we ourselves be judged: we will deny their humanity, fail to respond in charity and prayer to their deaths, and miss out on the God who is to be found at the margins.

Twenty years ago, when I was transitioning – all that remained was to transition at work –

it was suggested to me and my friend, Mel Cherriman, also transitioning at the time, that we set up a support group for trans people in Brighton and Hove, where we both lived. We needed a name for the group, and I suggested ‘the Clare Project’. This was because I'd been reading about some Franciscans in the US who were involved in outreach work among transgender Latinos – and yes, they were sex workers. In their home these trans women had set up an icon of St Clare, who appeared to be their patron saint. That's where the name of the Clare Project came from. St Clare definitely pushed the boundaries of gender in her day: she wanted to belong to St Francis's band of brothers.

Clare also means light and in our support group we were trying to shed light on our own situation. So, Clare became our patron too. Our circumstances were not the same as those women in San Francisco, but they could easily have been. Yet amidst the difficulties they endured, or perhaps because of those very difficulties, they had offered us inspiration for our struggles.

It’s interesting how inspiration comes. I was attending a Sibyls’ Quiet Day when the Sibyls’ book, This is my body: hearing the theology of transgender Christians was close to publication. It had a different title at that point. We were trying to get the word ‘trans’ into the title and my co-editor, Michelle O’Brien, had come up with the, intriguing, but somewhat provocative, Transubstantiations. Our Catholic publisher, DLT, was OK about it. Interestingly, this initial title was eucharistic. At the quiet day – over lunch, when we could talk – I happened to say something about the book and then, shortly afterwards – I don’t recall the context – something about Our Lord’s words ‘This is my body’. As soon as I said the words, Shanon Ferguson commented, ‘And that should be the title of the book’! And so it became.

We didn’t spell out the resonances of the title in the book itself. But we didn’t need to. The resonances were implicit. Church leaders had tried to tell us what we should, or rather shouldn’t, be doing to our bodies as trans people. But these were OUR bodies. Not to do with as we liked, of course. But to do with responsibly, guided by professionals, and, if we were Christians, with prayer.

Some Sibyls had been excommunicated for being trans. In those days Sibyls’ meetings always included Holy Communion, celebrated by a sympathetic priest, because that might be the only place where some Sibyls’ members would be able to receive the Sacrament. ‘This is my body’ says Jesus, and by its title our book asserted that we, gender variant people, are part of Christ’s body, the Church, and that we didn’t have to apologise for who we were.

At the Last Supper, Jesus breaks the bread, and says, ‘This is my body’, signalling that his physical body was to be broken for us. Tonight, as we recall our trans siblings who have died in the past year, many in violent circumstances, it is fitting that we celebrate the Eucharist, in the hope that Christ will transform our poor bodies that they may become like his glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby he will gather up all things into the orbit of his mercy and love.