This is the second part of a multiple part series about the term gender. Conservative religious organizations and ex-gay organizations use the term gender — and variants on the term gender — to group together GLB & T people in a manner that GLB & T people don’t group themselves together. This series will explore groupings around the term gender, and the term’s variants.
–Autumn

It’s not quite yet common knowledge in western society that there are significant differences between being a gay man and being transgender woman, but more and more people are becoming aware that being gay and being transgender are pretty far from the same thing.

However, it appears that in the collective minds of NARTH, there’s barely a line between gay men and transwomen. Here’s my educated guess as to why:

NARTH’s tie-in of gay and transgender people utilizes the medical community’s Gender Identity Disorder (GID) diagnoses. Specifically, GID in Children is considered a pre-homosexual/pre-transsexual diagnosis {from the link: Zucker and Bradley (1995, p. 53) noted that “homosexuality is the most common postpubertal psychosexual outcome for children [with GID].”}, while GID in Adults is the diagnoses for transsexuals.

Dr. Joseph and Linda Ames Nicolosi’s A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality is largely about explaining the GID in Children diagnosis to religious parents of effeminate male or emasculate female children, and then what explaining what they believe one should do if a child is diagnosed with GID in Children. NARTH’s website, in a reprinted paper from its 2002 Conference {The Treatment Of Childhood Gender Identity Disorder (GID), Dillworth, Marc S., Ph.D.}, affirms the GID in Children diagnosis, and affirms a treatment model which is “…the same as Drs. Rekers and Nicolosi.”

NARTH, Exodus International, the Illinois Family Institute, Focus On the Family, Americans For Truth, and the Concerned Women For America have made use of the term gender confusion. Sometimes the context of gender confusion is related to transgender or transsexual people, sometimes it’s related to homosexual people.

Looking at ex-gay ministries’ and conservative religious organizations’ gender component for both gay and transgender people, they likely view both gay and transgender people as rejecting God’s plan for the sexes. They believe God has set an ideal for man and woman which is a marriage between one man and one woman — the man is the head of the household and the woman is his complementary helpmeet. Together they make a whole, as modeled by Christ and the Bride of Christ (the Church). The assumption by many in ex-gay ministry and conservative religious organizations is that homosexual relationships, and by extension transexual persons even outside of relationships, are Satan’s counterfeit versions of what God has created or ordained.

The homosexual seeks to violate this divine Plan by rejecting his role as husband, father, and head of the family. He seeks instead to take the role of the woman and in sexual brokenness looks for a man to fulfill what should be his God-given role.

Similarly the transsexual also seek to violate this divine Plan by rejecting the role as husband, father, and head of the household. He too seeks to take the role of the woman and in sexual brokenness looks for a man to fulfill what should be his God-given role. Except he is even more lost in his depravity because he seeks to surgically alter his body to reject even the appearance of living in his God-given role.

And, much as how ex-gay ministries and conservative religious organizations tend to focus on gay men, and not tend to focus on lesbian women, ex-gay ministries and conservative religious organizations tend to focus on M2F transsexuals that are sexually attracted to men, and tend not to focus on M2F transsexuals that are sexually attracted to women — and they tend to ignore F2M transsexuals altogether.

To sum up, call the reason gender, gender confusion, or call the reason Gender Identity Disorder — on a path to sexual brokenness — however NARTH and other conservative religious organizations/ex-gay ministries identify this gender component, I believe it’s at the heart of why gay men and trans women are lumped together. Gender Identity Disorder is just the means by which they see a key tool to medicalize gay and transgender people; I don’t think it’s by accident that gender is one of the NARTH’s, conservative religious organizations’, and ex-gay ministries’ watchwords.


Timothy Kincaid And David Roberts contributed significantly to this piece.

Previous:
Part 1: Transgender / Ex-Transgender Glossary

Next Sunday:
Part 3. Who Does (Or Could Possibly) Identify As “Ex-Trans”

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