Introduction
My name is Joy and I’m a bibliophile. The primary reason I chose my particular central Illinois home over all the other (newer, prettier) houses in the area is that I fell in love with the built-in bookshelves and wood paneling in the study. I love to read pretty much anything I can get my hands on: poetry, novels, classics, philosophy. I’m currently finishing up my PhD in philosophy, a profession I chose because it intimidated the hell out of me. My days are filled with researching and writing my dissertation, teaching philosophy classes at local community colleges (my passion!), walking my rust-colored Beagle-mix and cuddling with my four beautiful, rambunctious cats. In January I married the love of my life. My husband, B, is an incredibly kind, handsome and intelligent trans man whom I adore and can’t wait to raise children with. I identify as a transamorous lesbian. I’m drawn to people who transgress and challenge the gender binary. I’m mostly attracted to women with masculine gender presentations and I’ve always found trans men incredibly hot. I love that there are so many ways to “do gender” and I deeply admire people who let their bodies have a “voice” and gender-present in a way that feels authentic to them, whatever that might be.
Tell me about an average day in your life.
The average day in my life really depends… If I’m teaching that day, I wake up incredibly early to get materials together, review my notes and do some last minute grading and class prep. My average day in the classroom usually involves me running around the room, yelling about justice, meaning and truth and leading discussions that push at the boundaries of my students’ beliefs. I also get whiteboard marker all over my hands and occasionally on my face. Then I go home, let the dog out, have a glass of wine and hang out with my husband. If I’m not teaching, the day starts off a little bit later (6:30am instead of 4am). I might watch an hour of Frasier on Lifetime while I drink my two cups of coffee. Then I hit the books until my husband comes home. I’ll make dinner and then we’ll relax on the couch with a glass of wine and watch a show on Netflix or DVD (lately, Nurse Jackie, Game of Thrones or American Horror Story).
What is something you are especially passionate about?
I’m passionate about a lot of things these days. First and foremost, my passion is teaching. I’m constantly thinking of ways to get and keep my students engaged. Teaching beginning philosophy students is tricky: you’ve got to convince them that abstract ideas can actually make a profound difference in their everyday lives. If you can’t do this, you’ve just got a class full of students working for a grade rather than from a deep-seated feeling of enthrallment. Secondly, I’m passionate about justice for under-privileged minorities. My philosophical specialty is critical philosophies of race, so I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about institutionalized racism, empathy and how I can deal with my own complicity in a system that privileges whiteness at the expense of racial minorities. I’m also passionate about equal rights for all of us in the GLBT community. I think that Americans find the “T” especially hard to understand and as a result, the trans community is subject to a shocking amount of violence and discrimination. There are a growing number of resources for folks who identify as trans, but still not enough. Also, there aren’t that many resources for intimate partners of trans men and women. I hope one day to make a contribution to this void.
How did you first know that your orientation and/or gender identity was “different?” What was/is the process of embracing that like?
It took me a very long time to realize that I’m not heterosexual (I hate the word “straight”). I was homeschooled by very Christian conservative parents so I had only a very vague idea of what “homosexuality” (I also hate that word) was. I remember going to my dad one day after trying to figure out for days what “homosexual” meant, and saying, “So, I know that we are against homosexuality. But I was wondering if you would tell me what it is.” I “knew” it was wrong before I even understood what it WAS. To this day, I am amazed by that. My dad gave me a cursory description of male and female homosexual sexual acts in a way that made me wonder why a woman would ever want to be a lesbian (somehow, intuitively, it made sense to me why someone would want to be a gay man). It is telling, of course, that my dad described sexual acts in explaining homosexuality rather than discussing love and the acknowledging the mysteries of attraction between two individuals. Homosexuality was all about sex and sex was bad, so of course homosexuality was bad. It made all kinds of logical sense to my young mind.
After the conversation with my dad, I simply didn’t think about homosexuality. At all. Until college. I had crushes on boys and endlessly fantasized about my first kiss and my wedding night. Then I left home for a secular university (I’m still not sure why my parents let me do that). I knew something was going to happen to me there. I just knew it. And I was scared. But I went anyway because I knew an important experience was waiting for me there.
On the very first day of college—dorm move-in day—I saw my suitemate’s best friend from across the room. She… didn’t really look like a girl. She was wearing baggy jeans, an old t-shirt and some sort of beret. Her hair was really short. She didn’t walk like a girl. I was stunned by her. Absolutely floored. I thought to myself, “She looks… cool. I want to get to know her.” I found out a few months later that she “had the lesbian thing going on”—the first lesbian I’d every (knowingly) met. Shortly thereafter, we embarked on a long, not-at-all innocent friendship and eventually she became my first girlfriend.
The process of “embracing” my sexuality was long and fraught with pain. I struggled hard against my same-sex attraction in college. I prayed like there was no tomorrow (which I thought there wasn’t if I turned out to be gay). I prayed hard and then I turned right around and flirted with as much passion as I could muster with the girl I was falling in love with. I couldn’t help myself. It felt so natural and right.
I tried dating guys. I couldn’t get past the first date. I was deathly afraid that the guys I went out with (whom I generally liked, at least as friends) would touch me. I vividly remember a date I went on with a Christian guy from college that I liked well enough. The date ended on the front porch of my parents’ house. On the ride home from the movies I had concocted a “porch plan.” We would walk up onto the porch, I would tell him I had had a good time, and then I would dash into the house (alone!) as quickly as I could, slamming the front door behind me. Once on the porch, I put my master plan into motion. But when I went to unlock the front door and dash into the house (alone), I realized that my parents had changed the locks and my key no longer worked. A panic attack to end all panic attacks then ensued. While hyperventilating, I called every member of my family on my cell, demanding, “SOMEONE COME DOWN AND UNLOCK THE DOOR RIGHT NOW!” I was desperately afraid this guy would try to kiss me goodnight, if given the chance. In retrospect, I feel bad for the poor, lovelorn guy standing on the porch with me, watching all of this unfold. Needless to say, trying to date guys was an utter disaster for me. It simply didn’t feel as natural, safe and fulfilling as my romantic experiences with women.
I asked God every day to take away my same-sex attraction. He did not. I became very depressed, so much so that I felt like my body was just going to shut down spontaneously. I was so miserable I thought I would just die quietly in the night because I no longer had the will to live. Then my (Christian!) therapist suggested to me that maybe God didn’t actually care if I were gay. Afterwards, I gave myself exactly five minutes to consider how it would feel if I actually believed that God didn’t mind if I were gay. In that five minutes, I felt a strong sense of peace, calm and love. My world didn’t come to an end. I didn’t experience God’s displeasure. In fact, for the first time in years, I felt like I might actually be okay. That was it. Shortly thereafter, I decided not to fight it anymore. I decided to embrace a lesbian identity. That’s probably the healthiest decision I ever made for myself.
Are you “out?” If so, what was the coming out process like? What advice do you have for folks still in the closet?
I am out. When, how and if to come out is a very personal decision, one that I wasn’t ready to make until about five years after I come out to myself and my close friends in college. For me, the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, aside from coming out to myself, was coming out to my family. My parents have very conservative attitudes surrounding sexuality. I knew that coming out to them was going to be very difficult and dramatic. I enjoyed having a relationship with my parents, but concealing a huge part of my life became increasingly difficult. I would go home for the holidays and cry every night from the strain of being treated like someone I was not. On New Year’s Eve, 2008, I decided to come out before the end of 2009. I immediately set a plan into motion: I started seeing a therapist for support and preparation and let all my close friends know that I was going to need them like I had never needed them before. I set a date for my coming out. But due to an unfortunate series of pretty traumatic events, I was outed three weeks early. It didn’t happen on my terms and I didn’t get to be the one to tell my parents. They were absolutely devastated and so was I. I was asked not to come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas that year.
Our relationship has never recovered. To this day, I haven’t been back in their home for a holiday. Ultimately, my parents believe that heterosexual marriage is at the core of Christianity and also at the core of their family. Based on that, they saw my sexuality as a rejection of heterosexual marriage and therefore as a rejection of Christianity and also their family.
My parents will always be my family to me, but not in the same way that my husband, our close friends and eventually our children, are my family now.
Despite how traumatic and painful coming out was for me (and, in some ways, still is), I have never regretted it for a moment. Honesty and authenticity are some of my most cherished values. I can completely understand why people might not want to come out. For some of us, the risk of losing our families of origin is quite high. But I knew that I had to make that sacrifice. The closet was suffocating me. I wanted to give my family the opportunity to get to know me—the real me. As difficult as it is to deal with their rejection, coming out has made me a happier and healthier person overall. I feel whole, rather than fractured. I can be myself in every space that I enter. I can say to anyone, “This is who I am. And I am not ashamed.”
For anyone who isn’t out but is thinking about it, I would tell them what an older gay man once told me. He said, “Once that comes out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in.” That reminded me to make sure I was really ready. For me, getting ready meant being in therapy—a lot of therapy. First and foremost, I needed to work on my own internalized homophobia. I needed to learn to accept myself before I could ask my parents to accept me. Next, I made sure I had a strong support system. This is so important. Know who you can call if things don’t go well. Have people in your life who will make you rainbow cookies, blow up balloons and celebrate that you are out and proud. Surround yourself with people who are more than happy to have you join their families for Thanksgiving and Christmas and who will shower you with love and acceptance. That’s what ultimately got me through my difficult (yet liberating) experience.
What attitudes and ideas were you raised with in regard to gender and sexuality, and how have those ideas changed? How might you teach your own children differently or the same?
I was raised to believe that women were created by God to be helpers. Men are best suited to spiritual leadership while women are best suited for raising children and supporting their husbands. I was told again and again that I wouldn’t be truly happy and fulfilled if I were single and career oriented. True happiness comes from supporting a husband’s career and having his babies. I resisted this ideology for as long as I can remember. I just could not accept that the role of a woman was to be subservient. I resisted these attitudes in a variety of ways: for many years I planned on joining some branch of the military after high school, particularly the Coast Guard (women in the military was a big no-no). I learned to do chores that were typically considered “man’s work,” like mowing the lawn and moving heavy furniture at church. Part of me wanted to “fall in line,” “cultivate a meek and quiet spirit” and be the ideal Christian woman. But most of me hated that I wasn’t free. My choices were limited by my biology and intuitively, I felt that this was wrong.
What will I teach my own children about gender? Andrea Gibson, one of my favorite contemporary poets, talks about having “babies like poems” and letting them “write themselves.” I love the idea of allowing children to define themselves rather than trying to mold them into my “ideal man” or “ideal woman.” I want my children to understand the link between gender and social expectations, and then I want them to feel free to be whoever they want to be.
What I was taught about sexuality was, of course, very traditionally conservative. My dad was very clear that the only proper sphere for any and all sexual gratification was man/woman marriage. That rules out a lot of stuff. And that sort of attitude certainly ensures that growing teenagers with brand new hormones flooding their bloodstreams are going to feel guilty all the time. I certainly did.
I was discouraged from dating in high school and instead, went to numerous Joshua Harris conferences where the merits of courtship were extolled. Apparently, a woman’s heart is like a pie. Every time you date someone, you give away a piece of the pie, which means that, if you date a lot, there will be almost none left for your groom. Dating cheats your future husband out of what is rightfully his. I marveled at how easy it was for a woman to spoil her body and her heart! I was also taught that the way I dressed was primarily responsible for a man’s lust. If a man thinks impure thoughts about me, I’d better cover up more of my body. It was my job to protect the eyes of my brothers in Christ. If their thoughts were not chaste, then I had failed somehow, somewhere.
Sex was draped in mystery and infused with a frightening power. Sex was to be constantly avoided and sexuality, vigilantly policed. It was exhausting.
Now I believe that owning one’s sexuality is a big part of being a healthy, responsible adult. Premarital sex, or sex with more than one partner in your lifetime, isn’t going to “spoil” you. I think it is quite healthy and normal to enjoy consensual sex with other adults and there are very effective ways to minimize the potential consequences. I think it would’ve been very frightening and damaging for me to have sex for the first time on my wedding night after minimal physical contact (as recommended by the Josh Harris/courtship types). Instead, I had sex for the first time when my partner and I felt that it appropriately expressed our level of intimacy. This was way better. As long as sex is happening between two consenting adults, how and when (and between which genders) it occurs is really none of anybody’s business.
When my kids are emotionally ready and start asking questions, I want to have direct and honest conversations with them about sex and sexuality. I want to cultivate honesty and openness around sexuality with them and make sure they know that there’s not just one right way to do relationships. I want to teach them respect for their own bodies and respect for the bodies of others, as well as the importance of consent. I want my children to feel free to talk to me about anything, particularly in their teenage years as sex, romance and sexual identity become increasingly relevant to their lives.
What is the best relationship advice you’ve ever given or heard?
My roommate in college taught me the most important thing I’ve ever learned about relationships. She taught me that sometimes love it hard. And when it IS hard, that’s when it’s most important to stick by your loved one, even if your own needs aren’t able to be met for a (brief) time. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you let your partner abuse you, walk all over you, or ignore you. But sometimes, you just need to be there for your loved ones. I was extremely depressed in college, starting in my sophomore year when I started struggling hardcore with same-sex attraction. All I wanted was to be alone. My roommate, with whom I had forged a close relationship during our freshman year, refused to leave me alone. I pushed her away time and time again. And she kept coming back to take care of me. If it weren’t for her, I don’t know if I would have survived college. She taught me the true value of unconditional love, something that no one (not even my own family) had shown me up to that point. Love was always conditional. I had to earn love by being a good Christian girl and keep it by being an even better Christian girl. My roommate didn’t make me earn it or keep it. She just gave it, even when I made it hard as hell. I’ve tried to bring that lesson to every relationship, romantic and otherwise. Sometimes partners and friends need you to be there for them, even when it is hard. They need you to love them, even when they are unlovable. Again, this doesn’t mean being someone’s doormat long-term. It means that sometimes we are called upon, for a season, to love partners and friends through trials and tribulations, even when they are giant, unpleasant messes. Real love—hard love—means loving people even when they aren’t everything YOU want them to be.
How do you identify religiously/spiritually? Were you raised with any particular set of religious beliefs? How, if at all, have those beliefs changed? How, if at all, has your orientation and gender identity affected your religious beliefs?
Currently I identify as an agnostic. It’s amazing how hard it is to type that word when I’m describing myself. Up until quite recently, I identified as a Christian. I stopped identifying as a conservative, evangelical Christian sometime in college when I started attending a liberal Episcopal church. But I held onto Christianity for a long time. I told myself, “No matter what happens to me, no matter how I change, I will not lose my faith.” As a lesbian, I think it was important for me to hang onto Christianity so I could prove to the world that it was possible to be both gay AND Christian, despite what I had been taught growing up. But as I’ve continued my philosophical education and found common ground with existentialist philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus I’ve been less and less able to justify my religious faith intellectually. That’s part of the struggle. Another part of the struggle is the fact that, since I came out, I’ve been repeatedly beaten over the head with the Bible by people I used to respect. I’ve been barraged with Bible verses, sent books on “God’s design for men and women,” told that I’m offensive to God and that I must be such a disappointment to my parents. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to justify my choice to live authentically to Christians who refuse to listen. Usually they won’t even ask what my journey has been. They don’t want to know. Instead, they say, “I see how you’re living. Let me tell you how wrong you are and how sad you’re making God.” No one, not one conservative evangelical, has bothered to ask me how I went from being the “perfect Christian girl” to having a committed, romantic relationship with a trans man. No one asked what that journey was like for me. No one acknowledged that it was fraught with pain, struggle and crisis and that I’m much happier now than I ever was before.
I’ve been to progressive Christian churches that will accept my partner and me—up to a point. They accept us until we want to get married in the church and they say, “It’s too soon.” We can go to church there as long as we don’t ask them to celebrate with us the biggest commitment we will ever make, as long as we’re not TOO queer.
I’ve had enough. Enough rejection from Christianity, enough being treated like a second-class citizen (or worse). It’s hard to read a Bible that has been used to curse you more than it’s been used to bless you. At least right now, I can’t in good conscience commit to “truths” from a book that has been used to justify slavery, Jim Crow and the oppression of my queer brothers and sisters.
What is one thing you wish someone had told you when you were younger?
That my body has a voice. My body is not just a vehicle that my soul drives around, like some ghost in a machine. Despite what the Apostle Paul may say, my flesh and spirit aren’t at war with one another. My flesh isn’t the root of all evil, fighting against the spirit. If your flesh is sinful, then you should mistrust it, or so the logic goes. I spent years mistrusting my body, which means I didn’t listen when it told me that I needed rest or good food. When my body notified me of my limits, I ignored that voice and pushed on. Needless to say, I remember being sick a lot, especially in college. Since the flesh was the root of all evil, it was the thing that needed to be punished when my desires didn’t fall in line with “God’s expectations.” So I punished myself as I struggled with same-sex attraction, through excessive exercise, starvation and self-mutilation.
Since then, I’ve discovered that my body is an essential part of my humanity. Letting my flesh have a voice is healthy and wise.
What is one question you would add to this questionnaire, and how would you answer it?
Q. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who is struggling to reconcile religious faith with homosexuality?
A. It can be done! As much as I struggle with my own anger and with Christianity versus intellectual honesty, it can be done. Mel White’s book, Stranger at the Gate: To be Gay and Christian in America, was instrumental in helping me accept myself when I occupied the space between conservative Christianity and a lesbian identity. I also found anything written by out and proud Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson extremely helpful. The Metropolitan Christian Church (MCC) also provided the first gay-affirming church experience I would ever have. If Christianity is as much a part of you as your non-normative sexual identity is, know that they can be reconciled and coexist beautifully and peacefully. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
What is your favorite LGBTQ online resource?
The answer to this question will be different for everyone. There’s absolutely nothing like being part of an LGBTQ online community whose members come from similar educational and religious backgrounds! Look for LGBTQ folks who have similar experiences and stay connected. I can’t emphasize this enough. As long as you’re connected with people who have had/are having similar experiences, you’re going to be okay.
“You like words like damn and hell now, don’t you?”
Just kidding. This post won’t tell you how to be straight. That’s all in your biology, babe. What this will help explain to you are some of the helpful things you can do, when you find out that a friend is not straight (or not cis gendered).
Leaving Maycomb 