With sex and gender the majority of people, myself included, automatically sees it through the eyes of cisnormativity since we are all heavily influenced by our binary concept of them. It’s especially common in American conservative Christianity where it’s clung to ignorantly and arrogantly. But that’s not the case with the whole world. In Thebes an ancient Egyptian writing mentions tai (male), sḫt ("sekhet") and hmt (female) as three three different genders. In the Philippines they commonly see at least three genders such as the ladyboy. Ancient Greece had Hermaphrodites, the Gala of Ancient Greece and numerous indigenous tribes had the two spirit. All of these nowadays are thought of as intersex and/or trans people. Even in the Bible Jesus mentions this third group of people, though it’s often translated merely as eunuch.
Matthew 19:12NRSVue
12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
Many of us understand about castration of a man making them a typical eunuch, but that can’t apply to those born since birth. That means at birth some were born with genitalia that was not normal. It was not the anatomy of antypical boy or of a typical girl. Some scholars even think this may refer to some who as they grew up acted ways not conforming to gender norms. So we can tell at the very least those born with different genitalia were intersex and as its broadest use possibly transgendered. This is not strange for ancient Jews since well before Christ was even born by several hundred years the Mishnah mentions the tumtum sex which meant hidden. Ancient Jewish people actually six sexes mentioned in their literature. Besides them and male and female there were androgynos, ay’lonit and saris. So Jesus would be well aware of the two opposite sides of the humanity and everything in between.
Again we know that intersex people exist because we have physical proof. They often have sexual organs that are in between typical organs. With some intersex people, and some people who are not intersex, we see people with chromosomes that are not typical. We see men and women with xXY and men with XXXY. Some women also have XXX or just simply X. Some men also have XXY and XXYY. So you will notice that genetically, we have far more than just XX and XY. So if we have men and women with ambiguous or unusual genitalia and men and women with different types of chromosome pairing , including some women with XXY that can get pregnant and men with XXY than can get women pregnant it’s not much of a leap to consider that perhaps some men feel more like women and some women feel more like men even if their outward appearance seems typical.
For a fact we see some scientific evidence for this. We see in this science daily article citations for genetic variation in transgendered people.
Gene variants provide insight into brain, body incongruence in transgender You can look up tons of studies on scientific research into gender.
So now that we past some of the theological and scientific aspects of this we can look at the social aspects of why recognizing transgender people exist. One of the biggest concerns we see with trans people is that they often suffer from violence. The violent actions of others who bully and attack them for being different to self harm and even suicide. For a fact around 40% of trans people attempt suicide and about every 45 seconds somewhere in the world a trans teen or young adult kills themself successfully. The reason why they kill themselves is because of the cruelty they face at the hand of others. Cruelty that comes from people who are often religious , such as other Christians in America, who deny the science surrounding this issue.
There are a lot of other things such as biblical studies into the various gendered variations of god in the Bible or masculine vs feminine gendered roots to the various names of god and so on. I think for these forums, what I’ve already posted is much more than the majority are aware of or willing to accept but as a Christian im simply glad to shed light on this abuse often directed towards my trans brothers and sisters in Christ. Plus I’m copy and pasting this to several other sites. So no time lost.
You can find numerous books by biblical scholars who affirm the validity of this subject.
thebiblefornormalpeople.com
danielomcclellan.wordpress.com
bibleproject.com
