When the psyche or the biology is so powerful that the person is not in full control, we may be dealing with a situation that is not for the confessional, but for the therapist.)
Hi Brother JR
It’s good to be in contact with you, someone who in at least one respect is my moral superior. I recognise that I could never come up to your standards of Obedience, Obedience, Obedience. I’m too full of the Sin of Pride. Not for me the “Nuremberg Defence” of “I was only following orders”. That’s not out of some virtue, quite the contrary. It’s out of sheer Pride, that in the ultimate, I’d put my own judgement, fallible though it most certainly is, over that of my superiors. I believe a certain fallen Angel did much the same.
Good job I’ve not taken a Nun’s vows. I couldn’t keep them. I’d have to say “Here I stand: I can do no other.” Not that I’m a great fan of Martin Luther.
Henry V Act 4 Scene 1
KING HENRY(Incognito)
…Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honorable.
WILLIAMS
That’s more than we know.
BATES
Ay, or more than we should seek after, for we know enough if we know we are the king’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.
But I digress.
Brother JR, I’m Intersexed. Not one of the common varieties either, nor even the rare ones. One of the rarest, not one in a million, one in several million. A protandrous dichogamous pseudohermaphrodite, to be technical about it.
Dichogamy in humans is rare. Most Intersexed people may be born with an ambiguous sex, but at least it doesn’t change. Dichogamous people do, though 99% or more are protogynous. Meaning born looking female, but masculinising later. That’s rare enough, only a few thousand cases in the USA.
I was born looking unambiguously male. I just didn’t have a normal male puberty. My gender identity, my sense of self, was always female. But when you look like a footballer, not a cheerleader, there isn’t much choice. You try to be the best Man any Woman can be. All you have to do is look in the mirror to see that everyone else is right, you must be male, even if you’re imperfectly formed. I was formally diagnosed as an Intersexed male in 1985.
At age 47, I did get a puberty, partial, anomalous, but undoubtedly female. Which astonished everyone, especially me. I mean, I
knew I was female, but I didn’t
know I did, if you get my drift. Anyway, after lots of blood tests, ultrasounds, gene tests etc it was decided I was a severely Intersexed female. By then I didn’t look remotely male.
“biology so powerful the person is not in full control” describes it perfectly.
I did have a choice though. To get sex reassignment surgery and so become a eunuch and to have a mastectomy, to try to live as a man… but Brother JR, to be a transsexual woman, a woman with a mainly male body but mainly female brain, is utterly Hellish. It feels Perverse, Wrong, Awful. I’d escaped, I did not have the willpower to go back. I did try, subscribed to an FtoM magazine to learn techniques… but I couldn’t bring myself to even open a single issue. That may be wrong, but then, it may not be. Maybe trying to be what I wasn’t was wrong. The few other cases where that was tried resulted in severe damage to various organs too, and they’d always discontinued treatment as it was too dangerous.
I’ve attempted to get advice here and in other places. From the Church, I get “we haven’t decided yet” at best, condemnation no matter what I do at the worst. In Australia, where I live, the Church is adamant that I’m female, and to have a relationship with a woman would be sinful. In the UK, where I was born, the Church is equally adamant that I’m male, and to have a relationship with a man would be sinful. Yet neither says I’m called to celibacy, merely chastity.
I wish they’d make up their minds. Maybe I
do need therapy, because I think this situation is utterly crazy, and not a little sick. Everyone’s so utterly
certain I’m committing some horrible sin and am destined for perdition, they just can’t tell me what that sin is, exactly.
I’ve accepted that I deserve damnation - see Pride, sin of. For one thing, my idea of truly eternal suffering would be some place that’s beautiful, peaceful, pain-free… and where I know that others who I care about are undergoing the tortures of the damned, and there’s
nothing I can do to help. If Hell exists, then so does the Almighty. And while I don’t have faith in His existence, if He does exist, then I know absolutely and beyond question that He is Just but also Merciful. That doesn’t require faith, I just know it. Gnosis. So He will allow me to ameliorate the suffering of others, to do penance, and most of all, allow me to say “Sorry” to those I’ve wronged, even in my torment.
Again I digress. I guess though that I have difficulty seeing homosexuality as being a particularly abominable sin, worse than extra-marital sex of other kinds.
No matter, thanks for all your good works, and your obvious untramelled devotion to trying to do what is right. Another area where you’re my superior.
Zoe
(blech!)
