But what if my god is trans?
“Is your god male, female, or nonbinary?” It’s a question I’ve heard countless times, thought he nonbinary addition is fairly recent. Pick from this list of concrete options which gender your deity has! Sometimes additional options are “multiple” or “none” or “fluid.” But one option I never see on these lists is “trans.”
Bringing up the idea of a trans deity has produced a lot of dissent. An individual deity who has been defined in their mythology in a way that fits somewhat with our modern notion of what trans means, that’s usually okay. That can be the deity for “the trans people.” That deity’s whole “thing” is that they’re trans so of course they can be trans. That’s okay, that’s accepted. Well, it’s not accepted outright everywhere, and there’s plenty of attempts to plaster over the trans-specific elements of that deity, but cis people are much more likely to accept that a deity with a trans-seeming mythos could be trans.
But the idea that any deity could be trans? That’s been met with very dramatic and visceral pushback. The denials or rationalizations are quick and the reasons given are numerous. “Deities are beyond gender so they can’t be trans.” “I guess a trans person’s deities would *appear* to be trans for them, but that’s all that’s happening.” “Deities don’t have bodies so they can’t be trans.” “Deities are perfect so they can’t be trans.” “Does everything have to be about you being trans? Do you just hate everything that’s cis?”
My deity is trans. He told me so. He didn’t say: “I have taken on a trans appearance in solidarity with you.” He told me, outright, explicitly, unambiguously, that he is trans. That an integral part of his mystery is being trans. That a fundamental part of him that defines his existence is trans, that being trans impacts everything he does, even if it’s never perceived as such. That even if no one ever acknowledged it or discovered it, it was still there, and it was real.
He didn’t say he wasn’t cis or how his transness impacted cis people. He didn’t limit his gender to only one specific thing in the process of revealing he was trans. He didn’t deny the possibility of multiple genders or the fact that as a deity, he experiences gender in a different way than a mortal does. He didn’t talk about his body or lack thereof. None of that was the wisdom I needed at the time and none of it was relevant to his point: that he’s capable of being trans, and that he is trans, and that he can very well identify himself as such without our help.
He’s not known for being trans, it’s not in his mythos. He’s not some deity that only I have met, he’s quite prominently known in lore and actively worshipped by millions (my ballpark guess). I’m leaving out who it is because the notes will turn into a debate on proving or disproving his transness, which isn’t even the point. The point is that trans people don’t just have one or two deities whose surviving lore establishes that they’re trans. They can find transness in many deities–and it’s often not too hard to find.
Gender is a mystery, and mystery is the stuff that deities are made of. Being trans is one part of that mystery. How it works? Also a mystery. How can an entity unlimited by the constraints of space and time be cis or trans or agender or genderfluid or neutrois or genderblender or genderqueer or all of those things or none of those things? That’s not a question with an answer, because the point of a fundamental spiritual mystery is not to become a well-known universal fact. The nature of a mystery is to taunt, to tempt, to tantalize, to scandalize, to confuse, to disturb, to provoke thought endlessly, to inspire wonder, to inspire anything at all, to teach, to train, to challenge.
If the statement “my deity is trans” provokes reactions of discomfort, upset, denial, confusion, or anger, then examine those feelings. Where do they come from? Where do they REALLY come from? Maybe this mystery is trying to teach you about something very powerful. Immediately attacking the idea of a deity being trans prevents a person from examining that notion seriously and seeing what else they have to learn.
Is my deity (also) cis? I have no way of knowing. There are many things about my deity I cannot know because I’m mortal and finite and he is not, and this doesn’t bother me. I’m not denying that he could be cis, but I have no way to evaluate it myself because I have no knowledge f what cisness feels like because I have never been cis. On a fundamental level I can’t understand being cis. That’s someone else’s mystery, and I have no knowledge of it. That doesn’t make my deity’s cisness not real, and it doesn’t even make my deity’s cisness not real to ME. It’s just that my deity’s cisness isn’t my concern because it’s something I can’t relate to, and it’s not part of our spiritual relationship, and thus not part of my practice with him. I am not an authority on my deity’s cisness, and thus I don’t expect cis people to be an authority on their deity’s transness.
What do I wish I could expect? Some manner of respect in regards to my spirituality and where transness shows up in it. Acceptance that I know the transness of my deity and where that shows up in my practice much better than a cis person, or anyone besides myself, is ever going to.
And I’d appreciate a bit of chill, to be honest, when it comes to cis people’s reactions to trans people talking about their own spirituality, especially if their comments were to a small probably-trans audience. Trans people are a tiny minority of the pagan population and there is no conceivable way that we would be able to shift public perception to make everyone think that, as a hypothetical example, deities can’t be cis at all. That’s just not something that’s possible, so it’s not something that is rational to react to as if it’s a credible threat. We’re never going to impact your practice. Only you and your deity can do that.
romaincrisis
prguitarman
ellievsbear
tangentwithtanner
2087
janainaart
