Trans Literature Review: The Testosterone Files

Watch the Review of 
The Testosterone Files

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Trans Literature Online reviews "Testosterone Files" by Max Wolf Valerio, a native American descended from the Blackfoot Confederacy, who shares his life as a transgender man after being a contributor to the foundational collection This Bridge Called My Back. In particular, the author shares the effects of testosterone on his body and the myriad changes in his life he underwent as part of his transition.

Comment to offer suggestions for upcoming reviews!

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Trans Literature Review: The Last Time I Wore A Dress

Watch the Review of 
The Last Time I Wore a Dress

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A new Trans Literature review of "The Last Time I Wore a Dress" is now online! Dylan Scholinski is a fantastic artist who shares the story of a time when his parents forced him into a mental institution that tried to "correct" the fact that he is transgender in a process called Conversion Therapy.

Comment to offer suggestions for upcoming reviews!

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A Queer Christian Blessing: Prayers Upon the End of the Seminar

A poem for my students
inspired by the Spring 2019 syllabus

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May your life be full of many beginnings

And may you never lose your creativity.

May you find and form communities

But may your feast tables always have seats open for the stranger.

May you speak truth to power

Even when it flies in the face of what people have known

May your letters never just be one way

But ongoing correspondence across the ages.

May you cherish the good that is given

But not be afraid to explore change and new worlds.

May you be big enough to see across many vistas

But small enough to retain a sense of wonder and uncertainty.

May you give light and life to your inner self

And may the world learn better how to see that light.

May you imagine visions of worlds big and small

And may you have faithful companions to help bring them into being.

May you find room enough in your wading pools for a neighbor,

Because there are more than one way to love.

May you reach out of isolation

And find community and strength in one another.

May you find to wisdom and strength for the mountains you must climb

And may we make the road easier for those who come behind us.

May the road ahead be brighter than the roads behind

As one good grows apart from another good and yet shines brighter for its company.

May we find ways to survive even the worst of times,

And find support that will not take advantage of us in our moment of need.

May you gain the courage to leave places and things that do not serve your growth

And yet bring with you those things and people who can help you on the way.

May you love goodness and know truth beyond yourself,

And find ways not to exploit but instead to amplify the good and truth of others.



May you reject moral apathy, intellectual laziness, and boredom,

As you focus on the elements of goodness, truth, and beauty around us.

May you walk away from this class learning something of how to learn

And keep it with you as you become more yourself in the years to come.

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Sapphic Visions: the Queer Erotics of Hildegard Von Bingen

"Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation. You’re a world—everything is hidden in you."

Hildegard Von Bingen

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Assignment Overview

In this exercise, the seminar will creative a "vision" that queers (alters, disturbs, widens) Christianity through contemplation on the virtues and circumstances of Hildegard Von Bingen. These visions will take the form of a visionary presenting specific insights on the given topic and the other members of the group representing the students or adepts presenting questions or alternative points of view. The goal is to rehearse and then present discourses that arise from or cut across the life of Hildegard Von Bingen. All of these discourses call on students to offer their own insights and experiences. This means that visions and queries are rooted in the historical figure and context of Hildegard but applied to later and current events. Again, this is not a recitation of facts and dates but rather an invitation to contemplate and discourse around important contributions that arouse of women-center relationships, the erotics of chastity, queer family, convents, the divine feminine, mysticism v. scholasticism, and the body v. the mind.

Each group will be given some time in class to research, script, and rehearse. Because the goal is to incite conversation, the visions and adepts' queries need not be pre-written word for word. The task is to generate a discussion which will conclude with the visionary and the adepts inviting others into the dialogue.

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Sample Groups

Vision 1: The Love Between Women,
Hildegard Von Bingen and Sister Richardis

Convents were attractive to a wide ranger of women for diverse reasons, not least because of either a lack of attraction for reproductive sex with men or a desire for intimacy with women. This intimacy need not always be reduced to sexual intercourse, just as heterosexual relationships should not be. Yet for women who love women, convents were places where same gender community and intimacy could be enjoyed. Numerous cases of overtly sexual or chastely erotic relations between nuns are found across the generations. A famous such pairing existed between Hildegard Von Bingen and Sister Richardis. Some scholars strongly suspect that their relationship was sexual. Others believe their intimacies manifested in other forms. In any case, this love between women was greater than any other relationship either of them possessed, especially with any living man.

Because sexual intercourse, including queer sex, tends to focus on penetrative sex, society has often not been able to define sexual relations between women. This failure to define women's love for other women, especially by men, has led to many queer female relationships to be overlooked or excused. The misogynist question, "what do women want?" has riddled generations of men. The question, "what do women want from other women?" usually never gets asked even if it could be answered. In any case, within the contexts of women exclusive spaces, queer women's relationships are allowed to grow and evolve to include the sexual but also forms of intimacy than are unknown in male-dominated society. What was going on between Hildegard and Richardis? The men of her world may never have been able to properly guess.

Vision 2: Queer Erotics of Chastity
and Non-Reproductive Sexuality

Despite being defined by heterosexuals by their modes of sexual activity, queer people have a wide range of intimacies and erotics that go beyond the normative definitions of sex. As in normative relationships, queer relationships include a great deal that is not explicitly sexual. Yet even when these relationships get heated, they need not always involve traditional sexual contact. Demisexual and asexual relationships may privilege forms of intimacy that are either non-physical or do not involve genital contact, such as handholding, nuzzles, cuddling, and sitting comfortably quiet together. Indeed, with modern kink, BDSM, and queer communities, a wide range of relationships and erotics can be explored that are both non-reproductive and non-penetrative. Toys, impact play, role playing, power exchange, and bondage all offer a variety of ways for people to explore each other and themselves intimately without genital play being involved. These experiences can be not only erotic but spiritual. Many of these practices and instruments are based on medieval faith practices wherein the mortification of the body was meant to excite spiritual growth and discipline.

Then again, heterosexual culture has also defined and condemned queer erotics for being non-reproductive. Yet non-reproduction is itself something that can be erotic, life-giving and even spiritual. Despite this privileging of reproductive futurity, non-reproductive forms of sexuality, gender, and community are central to Christian traditions. The convent is one such place in which non-reproductive life was celebrated as bringing one closer to God. In these contexts, asexuals and demisexuals might rejoice in the freedom from being expected to engage sexually. Lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals and even heterosexuals might rejoice in being in intimate relations with a community of all women. Again, the freedom from reproductive sex may be viewed as a relief and may orient the person towards other forms of relationship and pleasure. Chastity itself can be one of these queer erotics that bring its own form of excitement. 

Vision 3: Queer Family
and the Convent

Queer family often looks different. For many LGBTQIA people who are not accepted by their family of origin, a family of choice is the their primary support. Then for queer couples who elect to have families of their own, the children are often either adopted or mixed. Then there are queer families which are not concerned with reproduction in the normal sense of the word. Rather, family forms informally with elders taking on the parenting role or friends soon becoming like siblings. In special cases, intentional communities such as those women's communes and lesbian communes can form. Some of these collectives are built to last year-round and others are temporary affairs, constituting weekly events, monthly meetings, or yearly festivals. In the case of some lesbian separatists, specific rules and structures form that dictate who can join as well as what the roles of members will be.

Like these queer families and intentional communities, convents form familial structures that use the language of mother, sister, and daughter while not being related by blood. For many of the members, the convent becomes more of a family to them than their family of origin. As in other queer communities, adoption and choice are how the family grows rather than by heterosexual reproduction. These non-normative forms of sexuality, gender roles, and community can themselves be considered queer. Then there are the countless queer people who have joined convents over the generations: lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, asexuals, non-binary or gender queer people, as well as both trans men and women. In your group, your task is to consider the ways in which convents may contribute to how we understand queer family as distinct from the traditional heterosexual household.

Vision 4: Nuns
and the Divine Feminine

A result of the co-mingling of faith life and womanhood together in the exclusive spaces of convents was a development in theology of the feminine. While the patriarchy of the Orthodox and the Catholic Church was definitively male, with the advent of convents Christian culture began to transform and nuns increasingly became the on-the-ground workers for the Church. With growing population and relative power, womanhood began to shift in Church discourse from being a primarily secondary and subjugated gender towards being an alternative form of being as well as approaching the divine. As convents developed separately from monasteries and other male influences, a theology of the divine feminine rouse in prominence. The question turned from problematics (how do we deal with the faultiness of women in contrast to a deity characterized as masculine?) to celebration (how might God embody and honor the feminine?)

In your group, consider the ways in which a spirit of femininity may be said to exist? Is it social, natural, super-natural? How does the life of Hildegard Von Bingen and the development of convents illustrate the possibilities and conflicts that arouse when a theology of femininity began to speak back against patriarchal church politics? How might a feminist, a gynophilia, lesbian, or lesbian feminist perspective inform or reform Christian theology?

Vision 5: Theology of the Body:
Women Mystics vs Male Scholastics

In the Middle Ages, scholastic theology celebrated the re-examination of Classic Greco-Roman texts and Reason-centered theology. Yet nearly all of these scholastics were men. Women rarely found their respect as theologians and when they did it tended to be based in mysticism. Mystic approaches to theology were rooted in direct contacts with spirits over the mediation of the written word, the sensuality of the physical body over the mind over matter emphasis of male scholastics. This corresponds to traditions in which men are supposed to be more rationale and ruled by logic while women are supposed to be more emotional and ruled by their bodies. Women mystics followed this patriarchal division in certain ways, yet in other ways demonstrated how the eroticism of female bodies and emotions can allow for different ways of encountering the divine. Consider in what ways that mysticism's defense of devalued gender and embodiment represent a queer turn in theology.

How does the various bodies and emotions of women allow for distinct insights that are might not occur as readily in male dominated theological circles? How does a theology that arises out of the body defy certain limits and ways of knowing which focus on the mind? How does mysticism allow women to work around assumptions that exclude women from reading or writing about the Bible, Classical philosophy or scholastic theology? How have queer women, non-binary folx, and trans people of all sorts developed alternative forms of knowing and speaking that fill in the limits, blanks, and gaps left by heteronormative cisgender men?

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Rainbow Mail: Queer Christian Letters In Response to the Epistles

"On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect."

1 Corinthians 12: 22-23

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Assignment Overview

In this exercise, the seminar will respond to selections from the Epistles. These texts are framed as letters to early Christian communities in the first century AD/CE. Many of them are written by St. Paul who is considered by many to be the first theologian of Christianity, on the grounds that he did not encounter Jesus before his death. They represent one part of an ongoing correspondence between members of a faith tradition that was still defining itself. Readers can imagine the epistles that were written before or after the letters that are available in Christian Bibles. In fact, that is exactly the task for today!

Breaking into small groups, you will form committees working for the Queer Christianity Congregation. As an emerging church, you have received a series of letters and texts from fellow members of "The Way," especially from one very passionate convert from Tarsus, Paul. Because of the number and fervor of the correspondence, each committee is tasked with responding to a different item in the mail bag, taking care to represent the mission of the open and affirming, pro-LGBTQI ministry at the Queer Christianity Congregation. Indeed, the particular letters you are tasked with engaging today articulate Paul's problematic theology around gender and sexuality.

As a 21st century ministry, your committee's response will take the form of a Youtube "mail-bag" video. Each video will be about 7-10 minutes, including (1) a restatement of the letter's content, especially those passages which reflect problematic theology around gender and sexuality, (2) counter-arguments that critique the fallacies of the letter, and (3) an acknowledgement of points where the letter's statements or spirit might be synthesized for the Queer Christianity Congregation without betraying any of its missions. The video should take time at the end to respond to at least 3 comments from the viewers.

Note: as an in-class exercise, the "video" may be a framing device for an oral report before the class and the commenters are questions raised by the fellow class-mates. An actual video need not be produced. Alternatively, a written letter may take the place of a video or oral presentation if circumstances make those methods difficult.

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Sample Groups

Group 1: Queer Love
1 Romans 1

Read "1 Romans 1" with special attention given to lines 22-27.

"22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error."

Terms to research: gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, gynosexual, androsexual.

Group 2: Queer Afterlives

1 Corinthians 6

Read "1 Corinthians 6" with special attention given to lines 9-11.

"9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."

Terms to research: cisgender privilege, down low, in the closet, coming out, heterosexism, heteronormativity, HIV-phobia, stealth.

Group 3: Christian BDSM

Ephesians 5: 22-33

Read "Ephesians 5:22-33" with special attention given to lines 22-24.

"22 Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. 24 Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands."

Terms to research: BDSM, bottom, top, versatile, femme, butch, and switch.

Group 4: Queer Identity

Galatians 3

Read "Galatians 3" with special attention given to lines 27-28.

"27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

Terms to research: agender, asexual, androgynous, gender queer, gender fluid, bisexual, and pansexual.

Alternative Scripture

The assignment might also be expanded to include other texts or pieces of scripture that are not in letter form. Playing on the theme of anti-LGBTQI passages, Genesis 18 might be one such candidate. The questions may have to be adjusted in these cases.

Group 5: Sodom and Sodomy

Genesis 18-19

Read "Genesis 18-19" with special attention given to when and why Sodom is condemned to destruction and what the primary crimes are against the angels and their protectors.

"18: 20 Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! 21 I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know.”"

"19:4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; 5 and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.” 6 Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him, 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”"

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Starter Questions

1) What is the overall message of the letter? What are the specific claims that address gender and sexuality? How are they phrased and imagined? What are the underlying cultural, leaps in logic, and theological assumptions that seem to underpin the claims?

2) Does the overall message correspond to the core values and beliefs of the Queer Christianity Congregation? How might the specific claims be answered directly? How might the phrasing of the letter be deconstructed or reimagined? In what respects are the cultural differences between Paul and the QCC made evident? What leaps of logic are rather too far for credulity? What theology or scripture might be offered to counter the letter's claims?

3) Granting that in either the specifics or in the general spirit of the letter there is something positive to be received, what elements or sentiments of the letter might still be useful for the Queer Christianity Congregation?

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Queer Christianity: The Medieval Orientations of C.S. Lewis

"There is no safe investment. 

To love at all is to be vulnerable. 

Love anything, and your heart will certainly 

be wrung and possibly be broken. "

C.S. Lewis

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Course Overview

We live in a moment when the relationship between queerness and Christianity is being reconsidered and hotly debated. To better understand this debate, as well as the differences and potential common ground between members of the queer and Christian communities (including those who belong to both!), this seminar examines the history of Christianity and its relationship to queerness. Is Christianity a force for domination or liberation? Orthodoxy or creative multiplicity? Normativity or queerness? To answer these questions, we will read literature that explores how Christianity has both suppressed and in some sense created queerness, as well as how it has been reclaimed by queer communities. We will also look closely at how these historical tensions are being played out locally today. Special attention also will be given to the range of intersecting identities and communities that have responded to the meeting of faith and sexuality in various ways, drawing from diverse contexts of race, ability/disability, gender, and class. Readings include selections from the Bible, books about theology, and documentaries and memoirs attesting to the experience of LGBT Christians. In particular, this semester we explore the "Medieval Orientations of C.S. Lewis." In this four part course, we interrogate the long dialectical history between LGBTQIA persons and the Christian Church. At this intersection stands C.S. Lewis, a pillar of Christianity to be queered, as well as a representative of many queer medieval orientations towards gender and sexuality. So grab your copy of Mere Christianity and a pack of rainbow markers!

The seminar begins with a queer reading of scripture, focusing on key sections of the Jewish and Christian Bible which address gender and sexuality. We begin by considering the meanings and purposes of the Creation myths from Genesis I and II, as well as how God as Creator has been understood and represented within later Christian thought; such as the singing into being of Narnia and Middle Earth in the fiction of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. What happens when we look as Creation not as a fixed made object but rather as a dynamic sometimes rhyming, sometimes dissonant ever changing song? Next, the books of Law are read within their historical and cultural context alongside the concepts of moral philosophy: are there true ethical ideals, natural laws which inform social justice, or true selves which deserve honor and respect? The person, preaching and practices of Jesus - from the sermon on the plains to his summation of the law and the prophets - will be added together in order to assess their implications for LGBTQIA persons. Finally, students will consider to what degree the legacy of Jesus in the Christian Church was affected by the various interpretations of the Apostles such as their Acts and the letters of St. Paul.

Following the eras in which scripture was being composed and compiled, we turn to the traditions of theology which have influenced how Christian churches have related to gender and sexuality. Influential early theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas will be queried and queered as they are put into conversation with various queer saints from St. Hildegard to St. Marinos and St. Joan of Arc. Modern queer theology will also be considered for its content and style, demonstrating how different theologians and eras approach questions of identity and embodiment in different ways. A running theme of this section is the philosophies of love and desire which run from Plato and Augustine to C.S. Lewis and Mr. Rogers. Next, the Queer Christianity seminar will move from Philosophy to Art and Literature to consider the ways in which afterlives figure into Church doctrine and into the LGBTQI community. How do trans women deal with the hells into which they are placed and imagined? Where does Dante locate queerness in his vision of Purgatory? How does Queer Christianity walk between the roads towards the shadowlands or to the bright country from C.S. Lewis's Great Divorce? The semester ends by leveraging the skills in exegesis, theology, and imagination against the institutions of ex-gay ministries in the films The Transformation, God Loves Uganda, and the Miseducation of Cameron Post.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course you will be able to

• Think critically across multiple perspectives
• Engage with thinkers who passionately disagree with you
• Argue according to the dialectic method
• Compose your thoughts in clear and engaging writing
• Honor differences as important to propelling your thinking forward

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Selections from the Reading List

Queer Scripture

• The Bible
• Creation Myths
• The Law
• Jesus
• The Apostles

• Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians, Westminster John Knox Press (2018), 978-0664263102

• C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperOne (2015), 978-0060652920
• C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (Space Trilogy, Book 2), Scribner (2003), 978-0743234917

Queer Theology

• St. Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions
• St. Augustine of Hippo, The City of God
• St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
• St. Hildegard Von Bingen, Primary Sources
• St. Marinos the Monk, The Vita
• St. Joan of Arc, Primary Sources

• Barbara Sukowa (dir.) Vision - From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen, Zeitgeist Films (2011) 
• Morgan Neville (dir.) Won't You Be My Neighbor? Universal Studios (2018) B07D591ST1

• D.J. Lee, Rescuing Jesus, Ch. 8: Femmevangelical  
• K. Lochrie, Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t 
• M. Althaus-Reid, Queer God, Ch. 3: Trinitarians and God the Orgy 
• Plato, Symposium on Love, “Aristophanes,”
• Hedwig & the Angry Inch, “Origin of Love”   
• C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, HarperOne (2017), 978-0062565396

Queer Afterlives

• Leelah Alcorn, Transgender Queen of Hell, Tumblr

• Marguerite Bennette, Angela: Queen of Hel, Marvel Comics (2016) 978-1302900014

• Dante, Purgatorio, Anchor Press (2004), 978-0385497008

• C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, HarperOne (2015), 978-0060652951

(Ex-)Queer Ministries

• Aiken and Aparicio (dir.), The Transformation (1996) 

• Roger Ross Williams, God Loves Uganda (2013) 

• Desiree Akhavan, The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)

• C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, HarperOne (2015), 978-0060652944

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