What God has Made, He can Restore.
There is a particular sort of arrogance in listening to somebody describe an experience which has troubled them for years, and then informing them that they have misunderstood their own feelings because those feelings do not fit the explanation you prefer. I have encountered this often enough that I no longer believe it is always an innocent misunderstanding, because there are people who seem genuinely offended when somebody refuses to accept the identity, motive or belief they have assigned to them
What makes this especially difficult to understand is that some of these people believe in God themselves the say, and have no difficulty speaking with conviction about their own understanding of right and wrong. they consider their beliefs worthy of respect, their feelings deserving of consideration and their personal experiences important enough to be taken seriously, yet when I attempt to explain my own, they immediately begin searching for some defect which would account for them. apparently conviction is admirable when it produces the correct conclusions, and evidence of something being wrong with a person when it does not.
I have been called an internalized homophobe, an internalized transphobe, and several other things by people who seem to believe that finding the appropriate term for me is the same as understanding me. I do not particularly enjoy being accused of things, but the accusations themselves are not what trouble me most. What troubles me is the confidence with which they are made, often by people who know very little about my life and have shown no particular interest in learning more, they hear a statement, decide what sort of person would make it, and then proceed to address that person instead of me. Once they have settled upon their explanation, anything I say afterward is treated as further evidence that they were correct, because disagreement itself can apparently be interpreted as proof that I have failed to understand my own condition.
There is very little room for an honest conversation under those circumstances. If I agree with the explanation given to me, I am praised for recognizing something about myself, and if I disagree, I am told that my disagreement is the result of shame, fear, prejudice or some other failing which the other person has conveniently appointed himself qualified to identify.
My relationship with femininity has never been especially comfortable, and I have made no great secret of this. there are aspects of being a woman which i resent, and there are things about my own body and the expectations attached to it which have caused me considerable distress. I do not always know how to explain that distress properly, some of it concerns my body itself, some concerns the way I have been regarded by other people, and some belongs to experiences which I have no desire to make public merely to satisfy somebody else's curiosity. none of this is particularly pleasant to admit, and I would prefer that people did not treat such admissions as invitations to argue over what I must secretly be.
I understand myself as a woman. I know that I am female, biological in every way, and I have never considered my discomfort with femininity sufficient reason to claim that I am something else. this does not mean the discomfort disappears, neither does it mean that I am obliged to enjoy every aspect of being a woman. There are days when I would very much prefer not to have to think about it at all, I can acknowledge that honestly without turning it into a declaration of another identity, and I do not see why anybody should find that so difficult to comprehend
There seems to be an expectation that certain experiences must lead to certain conclusions. If a woman dislikes aspects of femininity, there must be a particular explanation for it, and if she does not accept that explanation, she must be concealing something from herself. If she has religious convictions about sex and the body, those convictions must have been adopted to disguise some deeper personal conflict. If she speaks about chastity, she must be ashamed of desire, and if she speaks about moral obligations, she must be incapable of accepting herself. Every statement is made to serve an interpretation which existed before she opened her mouth. It does not seem to occur to these people that a person might have examined her own life seriously and reached conclusions which they would not have reached themselves.
My Catholic faith certainly informs how I understand the body, sex and the obligations which accompany them. I believe that human beings are created male and female, that the body is not an accidental inconvenience to be disregarded, and that our feelings about ourselves do not possess unlimited authority over what is true. I know these to be the truth.
There is also a distinction which I wish people would make more carefully, between what a person experiences and what that person believes ought to be done about it. I can experience resentment toward my own body without concluding that the resentment must be obeyed. I can find certain expectations of womanhood difficult without believing that my sex has ceased to matter, and I can acknowledge that somebody else understands his experiences differently without adopting his conclusions as my own.
I have been told, in various ways, that I should accept myself, but people rarely seem interested in what acceptance would actually mean to me. They appear to have a particular answer prepared, and they expect me to work toward it.
Perhaps this is why I find the world of unconditional self acceptance so unsatisfactory when it is offered as an answer to every difficulty. It can mean something reasonable, such as refusing to despise oneself for having limitations or experiences one did not choose, but it can also become a demand that a person stop questioning himself altogether. I have no wish to spend the rest of my life in a state of contempt toward myself. I would rather admit that something within me remains unresolved than accept a comforting explanation simply because other people have assured me that it is the correct one.
Why honesty is treated like such a terrible thing when it comes from somebody whose beliefs other people dislike is somethingi don't understand. ehat exactly am I supposed to do instead ? pretend that I believe things I do not believe, adopt opinions that are not mine, and present myself as somebody entirely different simply because that version of me would be easier for others to accept ? i can't see how that would be any better, especially when these are often the same people who insist that everybody should be free to be themselves.
And would they not be even more upset if they eventually discovered that the person they thought they knew had been pretending all along ? I would have spent all that time allowing them to believe something about me that was never true, merely to avoid making them uncomfortable. I do not want to build friendships upon dishonesty, neither do I want to spend my life carefully concealing my convictions so that other people can continue liking a version of me which does not exist. If somebody cannot accept that I believe differently from them, then pretending otherwise will not resolve that disagreement, it will only conceal it.
i have never expected everybody to agree with me, and I do not understand why disagreement must mean that one of us is forbidden from speaking honestly. I would rather somebody know what I actually believe, even if they dislike me for it, than have them love me under the impression that I am somebody I have never been.
And I believe that God will put right whatever remains wrong within me, because Satan has no authority over what belongs to the Lord. he may tempt me toward resentment, confusion and despair, and he may take pleasure in every weakness through which I am drawn away from God, but he is not my creator, he is not my judge, and he has no power to determine what I shall become. I have no intention of surrendering myself to him merely because I have struggled to find peace with the body God has given me. If there is something within me that must be corrected, then God shall correct it, and if there is something I must learn to endure, then He shall give me the grace to endure it. I do not belong to satan, nor to the world, nor to those who believe they have the right to tell me who I am. i belong to God, and whatever is disordered within me shall be brought before Him until it is made right, satan cannot save me, the world cannot redeem me, and neither shall have the final word over my soul.
Deo Gratias.