LGBT+ and the Church

QVI. Gender Nonconformity

The Question (and Statement):

➢ Given that some trans individuals suffer from gender dysphoria, thereby making it a real conflict of mind and body, the Church being in opposition to transitioning which eases the dysphoria is immoral, wrong, and/or transphobic. How could you defend it? 

➣ Gender nonconformity is not a disorder.

The Answer: 

This is going to be a bit multifaceted. With such in mind, I'll describe these concepts just so we are on the same page with these matters before they can be properly discussed. 

First: Gender and sex are not the same things. Sex more strictly describes biology, though it once was interchangeable with gender more loosely, and is linked to the sexes: male and female. Anomalous circumstances like in cases of intersex people exist. Though this is true, it is recognised that there are usually predominant sexual characteristics — the inside may reflect one way, and the external may present in some ways otherwise. It is complicated and in the Christian sense usually requires pastoral care; on the other hand, for the minor physical deviations of what is predominant, there is cosmetic care available. 

Nevertheless, gender does refer to social conditions, but historically this has been intimately linked to sex.  In previous chapters, I discussed this somewhat: while the Bible expresses them at times interchangeably, one term still oriented itself to the biological side and the other more socially (even to such a degree that it could be used interchangeably with spousal terms). It did not address it in such a way that these were wholly separate, but intimately linked. 

The Cambridge Dictionary gives an example of this when it defines gender as "the physical and/or social condition of being male or female". Gender expresses the "social condition" of a person's sex. Man is an expression of male; woman is an expression of female. The Bible treats this matter in the same way, although more firmly: It cannot be separated. A male is a male, therefore a man; a female is a female, therefore a woman. 

With this in mind, let's consider cases of gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is a disorder. In the diagnostic manual for disorders, it lists a series of symptoms that would constitute having and being able to be diagnosed as having it:

Noticeable incongruence between the gender that the patient sees themselves are, and what their classified gender assignment; 

An intense need to do away with his or her primary or secondary sex features (or, in the case of young teenagers, to avert the maturity of the likely secondary features);

An intense desire to have the primary or secondary sex features of the other gender;

A deep desire to transform into another gender;

A profound need for society to treat them as another gender;

A powerful assurance of having the characteristic feelings and responses of the other gender.

The second necessity is that the condition should be connected with clinically important distress, or affects the individual significantly socially, at work, and in other important areas of life.

It is not the fact of being nonconforming which makes it gender dysphoria. On the contrary, it is the real impediments brought about by it; that is, "the second necessity", it states, "is that the condition should be connected with clinically important distress". The noncongruence is only a mere factor of having it. 

In fact, the very name of it had been intended to convey this. Dr Kenneth J. Zucker of the University of Toronto's Department of Psychiatry, who had been a part of the team revising GID (Gender Identity Disorder, its original name), writes: "The diagnostic label was changed to gender dysphoria (GD), which was based on two considerations: first, it was selected as a more accurate term which highlighted the aversive emotional component of the condition and was already a term that has had a long history in clinical sexology. It was also consistent with the general argument that the diagnostic term should, in a more transparent manner, indicate that it pertains to "distress" (dysphoria) and not identity per se..." (Zucker, 2015)