"Ethics And Crossdressing"

by

Dr. Jaye E. Reviere

The heels of my pumps clicked as I suppressed a shudder of delight, a shiver from the cold, and kept my pace deliberate. The walk from my Blazer to the front door of the church was short, but if I'd not had on a long skirt, heavy and appropriate for the winter's chill, it would have seemed far longer.

Inside, a young lady met me. After a warm hug, came a question: "Jaye, how can you stand wearing a skirt in such cold weather?" My mind raced a moment. "I don't mind the cold," I replied, "when the wind swirls up the south end of my skirt, it reminds me I'm not wearing hated pants!" She laughed warmly.

Over the past dozen or so years, a good deal has been written about the psychological issues involved in being a crossdresser. This involved developing a knowledge as to why we are what we are.

With the powerful, sweeping rising of religious fundamentalism, we are continually bombarded with a straight-laced stereotype. We don't fit the stereotype of what a heterosexual male is thought properly to be. We are very different. Fundamentalism with all its emphasis on Bible literalism and law, sees us as being something horrible and an abomination.

Just what really is the situation? Are we an abomination in the eyes of our Creator? Are we sinful just because we are as we are? Are we offensive to other Christians? What of life for us?

These are vital questions. They are concerns with which we need to deal and come to a place of peaceful assurance for ourselves. These are issues each of us must resolve individually. No one else can resolve them for us. Each is between the individual and God.

What those of us who have walked long upon the road of faith can do, however, is share our thinking and experience with others. In this sharing we can perhaps offer some light, some room for insight, and some reassurance that the constant drumbeat of fundamentalism pounding our ears has not deafened us to the small voice of God, who created us as we are.

That's right! It is God's idea for us to be different. We can't know the mind of God. We can only infer it from the revealed word, from the movings of the Holy Spirit within, and from what our pitifully limited human senses can detect. Because we are, it is abundantly evident we are made to be as we are. We are assured of two irrefutable things. God makes no mistakes, and we are created for a purpose. It is, I believe, up to us to search and prayerfully seek to find the purpose God has for us, particularly in having created us to be apart from the common heard of humanity.

Toward this end, may I offer some of the things I've discovered in my life journey? We are taught, and rightly so, as Christians, That we are created in the Image of God. I submit that this is not as so many humans presume, something physical. Rather, this Image of God in which we are created is purely spiritual image. You see, God is SPIRIT and has no one physical being. Thus God has no physical image.

Now, God being Spirit sees not what is external in our physical sense, and in the physical realm which was made merely to support and sustain the spirit beings we are while we are living in the physical. I have come to believe, it is essential for us to be the spirit beings, within the confines of this physical realm in which God has placed us, in just the way God made us to be. For those of us who find being different an essential element of our being true to our creation, we must be different in order to be as God intends us to be.

In this way of understanding, we are an abomination in the sight of God when we work so very hard to be anything other than what God made us to be. When we deny, when we hide, when we repress, and when we go overboard or extremes, we are not being what God made us to be. When we are doing these things, we are an abomination before God. When we go simply, quietly, respectfully, and reverently about being the human being God made us to be, then we are a joy to our Creator.

This defies the literalism with which fundamentalists impose a mean and angry demanding face on God. This is, I have come to believe, how God sees us: Inside, rather than superficially. If our spirit is in concert with the Holy Spirit dwelling in each of us, the outside is totally immaterial.

Because God made us as we are, our being, who, what and how God made us is obviously not sinful. We offend our Creator (sin) when we try so very hard to be what humans say we should be, when this is inconsistent with what God made us to be.

We are, in some cases, offensive to other Christians. This poses ethical issues for us. I sat in church demurely, with my skirt well down around my ankles, although it was quite warm inside, and offended no one. This church is one in which many gay people come together to worship. I had called and been assured I would offend no one BEFORE I went there in a dress the first time. This was the ethically responsible thing to do. Yes, we are offensive in some cases to some believers, and I believe we are responsible to go out of our way to do what we can to avoid giving deliberate or knowing offense. Even if temporarily we have to impose restraint and restriction upon ourselves and on the exercise of our true Christian freedom.

What of life for us? This is the rhetorical question which cries out for an answer for each of us. It is a question only the individual can answer. It is a question with which I have grappled in my personal being for many years. It is a question for which resolution began in prayer.

I hated being different. I hated the desires I had. I hated the scorn with which I was treated if I allowed someone to see me as I really was. I hated not being like "one of the guys." I hated being feminine. I hated being left out. I hated all these things and more. I hated all this because I hated myself. I hated myself because I was different.

I lay in prayer. The prayer was in profound anguish. I was defiant. I was hostile to my God. I was demanding. I was a petulant child demanding to be how I wanted to be, not hoe God made me to be. I was demanding to be how humans said I had to be, not how Almighty God had chosen for me to be.

My one way conversation with God was angry, demanding, and insistent. Then it was interrupted. I think God finally had enough of my being like a stubborn two year old kid who demands to have his way, even when a loving parent knows there is a far better way.

An awesome voice, still, soft, a bit angry sounding, and yet infinitely loving and tender, spoke in my spirit. The words are burned in my soul forever: "How dare you not want to be as I have made you to be! How dare you, indeed!"

My attention was commanded instantly. A peace settled over me and I began to experience comprehension. My personal theological background had been very fundamentalist, and I was more than merely conversant with the literalist interpretations of the Bible, which abound in fundamentalist thought. I began to see the impossibility of human comprehension of the Bible in purely intellectual terms. Human intellect cannot grasp the infinite, because human intellect itself is finite. With this conclusion, I was astounded and doors to spiritual understanding began to open wide.

Then I began to realize, God had indeed made me as I am. After all, my spirit bore witness to the awesome presence of the Holy Spirit who had spoken those awful words: "How dare you …" in my soul. With this realization there came a peacefulness about being different, a peacefulness I cannot describe. Suddenly, I began to understand God had made me different for God's purposes. I didn't know them then, and I don't know them know. It is enough for me to know they are.

The "How dare you …" of God kept ringing in my soul as I began more and more to let go of my fundamentalist thinking, and began to hear more and more of the more profound teachings of other groups within the traditional and liturgical church. It all began to make more sense. If my human intellect could not grasp the infinite simply because it is not big enough, and if God had made me different, then I had to be as I am in order to be faithful to my Creator. I had to let go of my human ideas and human self direction and simply walk in faith believing the Holy Spirit within was doing what God promised: taking care of all the details of my life.

What of the ethical issues we raised earlier? Like everything else, they are under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I don't have any hard and fast rules by which to live. I am aware, as St. Paul said, I am free in the Lord to be who, what, and how God made me to be, but I will willingly and even gladly deny myself exercise of this freedom so that I do not offend a weaker believer.

Parenthetically, I might add, I am convinced in the very core of my being, those who still struggle with their faith by imposing judgements based on human interpretation of spiritual things are weaker believers. This is not to say I am anything special or better than anyone else in the faith. No, it is just that in this one aspect, this thing of imposing human judgements on divine considerations, those who continue to walk by the sight of human intelligence and not by faith alone, are weak. Some are weaker than others. Those who live by human judgements are among the weakest.

In the wisdom of God, some of us are created different. Some of us are made in a way in which we do not fit the common mold. It is God's choice and the exercise of God's divine right for this to be. It is our challenge to be who, what, and how God has made us, and to do so gently, lovingly, and in the consideration for the feelings and weaknesses of those who are ordinary and who are vulnerable to being harmed by our unwise use of the freedom God gives us to be the people we are created to be.

The single ethic I propose is this: Give no offense when there is a way you can avoid giving it without compromising and surrendering your faith and your very being as God's created person.

This ethic applies, I believe, in all cases. It applies in our comings and goings, and especially in our personal relationships with those with whom we are most involved. It particularly applies to our families and those God has given us as friends. Telling members of our families, sharing crossdressing with our friends, and being open about who, what, and how we are is a constant concern. Each case, each relationship is a unique case, and to each unique case the one ethic applies.