We Don't Have to Understand

When I first became actively involved in the LGBT community nearly four years ago, I knew there was a lot about them and their issues I did not understand. Thanks to my making the effort to observe and ask LOTS of questions and the time and compassion of others to thoughtlyfully and sincerely answer them, I understand much more than I did then.

One important concept I have also learned is that I don't HAVE to understanding everything that is going on with someone to love them and accept them fast who they are. The story of Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner is one of those situations.

I covered this story when it first went public early last year--Penner was transitioning into Christine Daniels, who was still going to cover sports for the Times and additionally blogging about the transition process.

According to this post on the Trans Group Blog (hat tip to PageOneQ), the blog has been taken down because Christine has decided to reverse the process (which was still far from complete) and has returned to work and live as Mike.

The news has been a bit of a shock to the transgender communities, even if Penner is far from the first person to de-transition. It's left me feeling a variety of things -- mostly sorrow. I'm sorrowful that I'm sure Penner's de-transition will be misused by Christianist fundies to argue in favor of discriminating against trans people. But mostly I'm sorrowful for Penner. In interviews and her blog posts, Daniels seemed so happy and full of hope -- maybe a little naively -- about her future. Whatever has transpired over the past 18 months, Penner must have become pretty miserable to have reached the point of deciding to go back, and even if he has no regrets about doing so, I'm sure he's still hurting at the moment.

If deciding to transition is one of the hardest decisions someone makes in their life, deciding to de-transition is arguably even harder. But the point of "real life experience" as it's known is precisely to find out whether living as a different gender is something you want to to do for the rest of your life. Sometimes you only figure things out by trying them. People make life-altering decisions in all sorts of ways. People get married, get divorced, take jobs and quit them, they move cross-country. Sometimes it's a bad decision, sometimes it's a bad decision that others can see but the person involved can't, sometimes it's what seemed like a good idea at the time, sometimes it's was a good decision that had unexpected consequences.

Why do people de-transition? Sometimes male-to-female transitioners can have unrealistic expectations about what life is going to be like as a woman, the sexism they have to live with -- in addition to the homophobia they can also encounter if their attraction to women means they go from being seen as straight men to being seen as lesbians. Needless to say the sports world probably wasn't friendliest place for MTF transitioner. Sometimes trans men discovered that while becoming men bring privilege it also brings burdens they'd never imagined. Likewise, they can under-estimate the hostility they encounter from some lesbians who angrily denounce them for switching teams. Likewise, sometimes people get stuck in being seen as trans woman not women (or trans men, not men). All of which can be too painful to handle. After all the point of transitioning is usually to make life easier, not more difficult.

Honestly, I don't get it.

The good news is, I don't have to, and neither do you. I hope Lena, the writer of this post, is wrong with her expectation of right-wing fundamentalists using this as propaganda against other transgenders, but I suspect she is right on.

That is not acting with the heart of Christ.

When Jesus told us several times to "love our brother as ourselves" He didn't add qualifiers like "if he is just like you" or "if he shares the same faith you do" or if you understand his sexuality.

We are simply supposed to love. I've never met Mike Penner, but I freely offer him the love of Christ because Jesus instructed us to do so. If you don't get that, let me know and I can help you understand what having the heart of Christ is truly all about.