Feel: #FaithFeminisms

I remember when I first wore a dress. 

I felt liberated, real, true, even. 

But then I remembered that my feelings were to be viewed skeptically and through sin's omnipotent lens. Sin, I was told, pervades everything we do and that our feelings are particularly susceptible since, well, I actually never heard why this was just that it was. So, I turned rational and tried to think and be very platonic in how I functioned. I did this by reading apologetics, reading Aquinas and other super logical and rational and (seemingly) emotionally cold writers and thinkers. But none of it resonated. It turned into a preaching to the choir within my own head. 

I realized well before accepting my status as a trans woman that I was emotional, a feeler according to Myers-Briggs. I felt more than I thought and the two rage because both are important to me and not mutually incompatible. And then I realized, fuck, the Church is basically screwing women over simultaneously. Because in every discussion I have ever had with men about women's roles in the Church I've heard it said, "They're too emotional/susceptible to things in the wind," and other such nonsense along those lines. So, basically, the Church has told women: you all (always a dangerous statement) are feelers and feel emotion deeply but that's where sin attacks most and is most powerful. So, basically, to be blunt: women you're screwed and need to stay at home because sin over takes you too easily. More blunt: women, you're weak. Even more: women are incapable of rational, "cold" or "objective" thought. This is what the Church taught me. 

To be a woman, then, was to be less. And to be called any type of names associated with femininity, or behavior, was to be lesser and weak. 

I know this because my dad called me a baby and a girl if I cried and got upset and "too pouty". My dad and mom told me to be a man, to know how to be a man, basically that women are there to be sexed. 

And then I realized a truth latent within me: I am a woman. I am a feeler. The latter not because of the former and that I can think clearly too. So, on top of being a a trans woman in the Church and the whole Deuteronomy 23:1 mentality of the Church regarding girls like us, and on top of the murder rate, I was told: you can't be a feeler, you can never ever trust your deepest feelings. 

This is where feminism comes in. Feminism, in caricature and truth, has always been about being strong; being a woman, however the hell you do that. Feminism has always been about how women are human, too. We feel and breathe and think, too (shocker!). But, more importantly, feminism says it's okay to be mad and sad and annoyed. And feminism welcomes me, a trans woman excluded by word and deed from all other places, in. 

Look. I get it. Feminism has connotations which make everyone uncomfortable. But that's only because masculinity is king. And that transphobe Mary Daly was right, "If God is male then male is God." And Christian society is all too guilty of this. 

But there is light. 

There is hope. 

Like when my mentor is a DCE in the Lutheran Church Missouri-Synod and refuses to be a stay at home mom (for now) because she needs to be around people and minister. 

Like when people accept me for who I am and ask for correct pronouns. 

Like when women such as Jes Kast-Keat, Krista Dalton, Sarah Moon, and others are teaching me and redefining what women can do within the Church. Saying, it's okay to be super badass and femme and not so femme and queer and smart as all get out and be a woman, too! 

Like when women in the Church tell their stories unashamedly. 

Like when men step back and let women speak their truths. 

Like when Jesus cries and feels. 

There is hope. Because if Jesus, the embodied God-Man, cries and feels then feelings are not sin tainted and are good. If Jesus feels then we can feel. And I feel okay with that. 

So. Feel, follow your undeceived hearts, know yourself, be brave, be badass, and don't let the patriarchal bullshit get you down. 

#FaithFeminisms