TRANSGENDER: A SHAMANIC PERSPECTIVE

Shamanism begins with a remembering that we belong to the natural world. We are part of her, and she takes care of us. We learn to trust her. And for the same reason, we trust the body we are born into, whether it is male or female. It is not the wrong body! This is very basic.

But what happens if you experience the other gender within yourself? Again, TRUST IT! You have an interesting journey to undergo. You are both genders, you are gifted, you bring a perspective to life that others do not have. If your people are civilised, they will look to you. If they are uncivilised, they will taunt you for being different.

You may look just the same as everyone else. Or you may be a man living as a woman, or vice-versa. Many people do not like difference. They want to know what is what, and they fear the unknown. You will need to let their arrows bounce off you, and not take it personally. This is a warrior training that forges character, for few people have the strength to live outside herd approval.

Your dual nature is a gift from Spirit. When you present as the other gender, there is a ceremonial element to it, an archetypal power that passes through you. You may want to do it all the time, or just when the call to do so is there.

Gender is real and distinct for the great majority of people, and it tells them who they are. It is a partial identity, but it is the identity they need to live. To say that gender is just a social construct is to deny a very basic and ancient fact of existence. It is harmful to push this at people. If you grew up on a farm like I did, you will know that a lot of our gender-associated behaviour is biologically, not socially, determined.

Basic as the distinction is between male and female, it is also fluid. In achieving a deeper balance during the course of our lifetimes, we may feel we have become both genders, or neither. This is what Jan Morris, one of the earliest men to have transgender surgery, said in his eighties.

We live in a literalising culture that does not understand Ceremony and Spirit. When people opt for surgery and start to insist they are the other gender and that others must recognise them as such, they are literalising a god or goddess that is working through them; they are trying to become it, and in doing so they turn a gift into a curse. It is a tragedy.

What is also a tragedy is young people joining a bandwagon, thinking that changing gender will solve their problems, and adults colluding in this and offering irreversible chemical and surgical mutilation. The stories of castrated or breastless young people who are now 'detransitioning' are heartbreaking. Their accounts are difficult to listen to. For most of them, the research shows that the real issue is that they are gay, and they need time to realise this.

Identity is not such a big deal. It is ultimately illusory, even though ordinary humanity needs it for psychological well-being. Humans are relational as much as they are autonomous, and who we are is a product of a negotiation with the outside world. This is something we learn in the school playground. You can't insist on how people see you. It is natural and part of their development for a 2 year-old to insist that really they are a princess or a superhero, and adults play along with it. But for an adult male to insist they are 'really' a woman is delusional and infantile. It is fuelled by a medical lie that we can physically change gender. We cannot. There is only ersatz and mutilation. There is money to be made from this lie, doctors know it is a lie, and hopefully there will eventually be an accounting and a reckoning for this malpractice.

If you are at ease with who you are, you do not need to insist on how others see you. Nor do you need to go on marches about it, displaying it in public. You quietly get on with who you are. The sacred is degraded when it is turned into a political campaign.

Many people such as artists will have both genders working through them. Both are needed, to some degree, in order to be creative. They may not feel the need to present as other than the gender they were born into.

There is a natural process whereby we encounter the other gender within during the second half of life: this is Jung's Anima and Animus. Men become better able to listen to themselves and to others, listen with their feelings; and women become better able to know what they want, and not feel so obliged to please others and to take care of them.

So here's to masculine women and feminine men, and the riches they bring. My perspective is indebted to the Native American Two-Spirit tradition, which is worth looking up on Youtube.

 

And, something for everyone, 

 

here is the 10 min youtube version of this post. You can find my youtube channel, full of 10 min videos here.