Dazzling Darkness
Introduction 2nd edition About a year after Dazzling Darkness was published, I was invited to speak at a university about being trans and religious. It was an occasion which brought home to me how much trans self-understanding had shifted since I’d transitioned in the early nineties. At the time I spoke, I thought I was reasonably forward-thinking, representing a leading curve in philosophical-theological thinking about what it means to be trans and a person of faith. I gave my talk to this group of young, educated and intelligent people and invited their questions. Rapidly, it became apparent that rather than being cutting-edge, I was something of a back-issue. These students were not hostile, rather they were puzzled. These young LGBT+ people, some of whom identified as trans, mostly found it curious that I thought of myself in binary terms; that I simply saw myself as a woman, rather than as, say, ‘trans-feminine’ or ‘nonbinary’. I think they saw my understanding of my sexuality as ‘lesbian’ as rather too defined. Why not pansexual or demisexual? While I think they appreciated my grip on how trans people ‘queer’ identity, they seemed unconvinced by my comfort at living within the social binaries that are standard in ‘cis-normative’ society. Some of them were disturbed by the way I had valued the support of psychiatrists in my experience of transition and medical and surgical reassignment. I suspect that some thought I had internalised transphobia. I sensed that many thought I had internalised a hierarchy in which trans people like me – who have lived
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