#queertheology

Comments:

@/aalekiaa: "What do u mean by il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel"

@/gd_rd_me_of_gd: "It's a quote from Jacques Lacan, which translates to "there is no sexual relation." In Lacanian psychoanalysis, this formula basically mean that recognition is always just out of reach."

@/aalekiaa: "I speak french but i don't understand like why is recognition always out of reach? I need to read his stuff lol"

@/gd_rd_me_of_gd: "oh i see, it has to do with his pessimistic reading of unconscious processes. Like it kind of in the context of this post is something im using to say “we are each alone in our experience of the world” and there is no total merging between two people. But he would extend the formula many topics, including the always-impossible attainment of any object of our desire, because he believed desire in itself springs from an unfillable anoriginal lack that we nevertheless try and fail to fill. For example, he talked about how in terms of gender identity, totally being any one gender is actually impossible for humans. He also says that many peope seeking a world without masters and domination fail to recognize the reality that revolution is a constant process, not a linear one-and -done. He even extends this sense of perpetual misrecognition to self-recognition, saying that is all begins in a moment in childhood when we realize that the ‘me’ i see in the mirror is not me but a reflection of something i can never actually see (and similarly with the perpetual inadequacy of self-concept—i can never fully be my own idea of myself because all language at least partially fails to translate reality). Like i said, pessimistic and humbling! In my work as a theologian, im trying to sometimes incorporate his insights in the style of Zizek because i very much feel the inadequacy of theological language. But i also really like thinking about i and thou relationships in the style of martin buber, and i think there’s ways to draw out whats on this slide more eloquently eventually."

@/aalekiaa: "oh my god thank you so much for this detailed explanation!! I just got "the object relation" and i think i wanna incorporate some of those ideas in my dissertation on identity after psychiatric trauma. Do u have any other reading recommendations in that vein?? Thank u again so much and i love ur substack xx"

This is a love letter – a curiosity, a hope towards our freedom.

Dear siblings, I am trying to find out what we mean. I know I won’t know it for all of us. And I know I won’t know it alone. I am only ever myself, in my body. And I believe you about your bodies too. I know lots of people don’t. And no one wants to tell the story differently. Because the story we have already feels so precious. But I think maybe the story isolates us from each other. We pick it up as the Narrative That Matters, because it is the first one that kind of fits.

Like the first time you put on that dress. The first time you squeezed into that binder. The first time there was eyeliner.

We were so certain we all looked good. And we did. And we’ve grown since then.

I hope for a theology for the guys who all go camping, huddled in the van before breakfast, tenderly administering each other’s shots so that we don’t have to be in charge of stabbing ourselves one more time.

What I want to do in my work is simply to administer the shot. To reflect back on our dosage. To be in charge of the sharps for a minute, so you can take off the binder and revel in the sunshine the way we never do at the beach because the surgery is too expensive, or we want kids first, or we’ve actually always hated our bodies, and dysphoria was just another word we gave ourselves, or they gave us.

I’m writing for the women whose dysphoria has gotten worse as the other pieces click into place. Maybe that is what I feel – dysphoria about the imago dei. People keep saying I’m in the imago dei, and I don’t know what they mean. Or I do, and I don’t think that’s how it really is. I like the idea, I can perform the apologetic, but I don’t feel like that. Or I do feel like that, and I wonder what it is I’ve signed on for. I worry about the masculinity. I worry about the passing.

But, you may ask, why does it matter? Don’t we have theological arguments about that? Aren’t we all imago dei - made in the image of God?

It matters because Alexis killed herself. It matters because Stephanie has days where all the imago dei in the world won’t quiet the dysphoria. It matters because Mason is still dealing with their pronouns being fucked up, and by people who claim to love and care about them. It matters because all the imago dei in the world isn’t making Medicare pay for Ryn’s chronic pain medication, or Aiden’s anxiety, or Crystal’s allergies and respiratory issues, or Daryl’s eating disorder, or Moira girlfriend, whose job security relies on hernot  publicly dating a trans woman, or Brian’s sobriety, or August’s sobriety, or Caryne shaking and crying in their car as teenagers surround the vehicle pounding on it. Imago dei isn’t thick enough to get my friends through another winter without killing themselves. It doesn’t give Scout back hir home or hir childhood. It doesn’t un-institutionalize Leo for those 18 months. It doesn’t get Janice out of jail.

And I am so tired of the story. 

But what about the verses in Genesis? Leviticus? Romans? How do you explain....? What about...? Then someone else counters with Galatians and David and Jonathan and Jesus and the Centurion’s servant. And the wheel spins on.

I know how badly you want a simple, clear, 100% unquestioned answer. 

It doesn’t exist. 

There are a million reasons it doesn’t exist (language, translation, culture, etc.) but the root of it all is that it doesn’t exist because the Bible isn’t a singular text of rules. It’s not a history book or a science book. Hell, it’s not even A BOOK. 

It’s a library of books all written by different people in different time periods. Different Scriptures argue with other Scriptures. They contradict each other. They are in dialogue with each other. 

And if all of THAT weren’t confusing enough add in the countless scholars throughout centuries that have disagreed and fought and punched each other (for real) and called each other names. They ALL had different interpretations of what texts meant. 

“SO what? Do we throw it out? You must not take the Bible seriously!”

I actually take the Bible very seriously. I’ve devoted my life to the study of it. And it’s BECAUSE I take it so seriously that I refuse to let it be reduced to a simplified rulebook. I refuse to let it be used to condemn people it doesn’t condemn. I refuse to let it be mistreated and used as a weapon.

Just because there are no simple answers doesn’t mean the text is worthless. Instead it’s a collection of poetry, stories, songs, and more that are written by real people in real places at real points in history. They are struggling to make sense of their place in the world and their relationship with the Divine. It’s gritty and messy and filled with mistakes because that’s what it means to be human.

But it’s also filled with immense beauty, with passion, with struggle. It tells the story of a people struggling with who’s in and who’s out (and a God who is always calling them toward more inclusion). It’s the story of a people who struggle with what it means to do justice (especially in the face of Exile and Empire). It’s the story of a people who struggle to make the presence of God known through how they behave. 

The Bible still has immense relevance today but only if you read it the way it was meant to be read, not as a rulebook full of easy to understand facts but as a testament to the human struggle to connect with God and do right by each other. 

And let me tell you, if you can get off of the “BUT WHAT ABOUT AHHHHHHHH....” hamster wheel you will uncover such beauty and depth and the Bible will be so much richer. 

Your parent(s)’ love and support for you is incomplete if they haven’t abandoned their homophobic theology for your sake. If your parent says, “I love my child, but I can’t accept their lifestyle” then they’ve revealed their true loyalty as belonging to their beliefs - not their family. Some conservative Christians would call this commitment.

Woe to you, progressive church,

complacent and self-satisfied.

Shame on all you who espouse welcome,

As though the word was worth anything

at all

on its own.

You, who congratulate yourselves,

           Open-minded, open-doored,

                       And so unwilling to open yourself

                                   To destabilize your binary god.

God is calling you out

           But you won’t hear her

Because God is a black trans woman,

           And she has never set foot to your church.

Much less found herself in it.

And even if she did and she does,

           Would she be celebrated

Assuming she made it past that one greeter who is still fucking up her pronouns

           Eight years later

 I came to your worship and I met your Father God

           And he was not so different from the Father who disowned me

Even though his house was on a different block

He was still a white man

Whose KINGdom reigns

He still sat on his throne in every one of your songs

           And You in the pews

Brothers and Sisters in his son

still had no place for my genderqueer siblings

Who struggle to love God and themselves in spite of you

           And the way you misgender them

           An average of six times a day.

 And God does not have time for that,

God is with the widow and the orphan

And the homeless queer youth

God has called you to love

           Fearful at the social services office,

after being kicked out of the shelter last night

                       Because God does not have proper government ID

 God has abandoned you, oh Pride march allies,

And left you to chanting your platitude

That love is love is love

So you turn instead to the Other

For approval, for assurance,

           And you have come to expect their emotional labor

                       For the sake of your own understanding

OF the Other, not of yourself.

 We thought we were the perpetual wound in the body of Christ

           But it turns out you are.

Therefore we are commanded to leave you

And to take the rainbow with us

           God’s name will be sung in trans tenor and femme bass,

           While the genderfuckers vogue before the Lord

                       Without fear of appropriation.

Jesus told me she’s done with straight lines, spears, and crosses now.

She loves her new body, in its expansive queer reforming self

And she has plenty of room for us there.