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On Being “Socialized as a Male”
If someone says that I have been “socialized as a male” they usually mean that social forces are so powerful that my brain has been formed into being a man’s brain. Therefore, any patriarchy or toxic masculinity conditioned into cis men has also been conditioned into transfemmes to a similar…
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Mysticism and the Art of Genderfuckery
I was never very good at being a boy. Boys are supposed to like sports and hunting and engine grease and playing with trucks. Not girly things like dolls and home decoration and fashion and playing with an easy bake oven. Boys are flannel and denim and dirt under their…
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A Rite of Queering
In his classic text “Liberating Rites,” theologian Tom Driver suggests that a ritual is a “transformance”—a performance designed to change a situation. Rites of passage are about a fundamental change in status or identity. For many, “coming out” is a sort of rite of passage. But it is one that…
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Brother Juniper and the Pig’s Foot: At Play with a Holy Fool
I wrote a piece about the tradition and vocation of “holy fool” for an upcoming issue of Geez Magazine. I’ve written an accompanying piece here, focusing on my favorite holy fool in Western Christianity. To me, the classic example of holy fool within the Western Christian tradition is Brother Juniper.…
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Changing Yourself to Find Your Self: Reflections on Judgement and Gender Expression
As I continue in my process of gender transition, I’m asking myself what I want to change about myself and why. Criticism and judgement abounds in our society—animated by both the soul-less force of consumer capitalism and the toxic religiosity of Christian supremacy. Ours is a performance culture, were we…
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Waiting with Simone Weil
Waiting is a theme throughout the prophets and the psalms. Waiting upon God seems to be the general posture of the prophets. It is the posture of those who experience the absence of God. Those who long for justice. Like Habbakuk. These are the words of the prophet Habbakuk: O…
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Attending to Holy Longing
Underneath our desires, exist deeper desires. As we slowly, with curiosity and self-compassion, sit with our desires, we may get glimpses or senses of those deeper desires. As we continue, deeper and deeper, we find basic desires…core desires that might be better described as “longing.” Find a comfortable place free…
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Vexing the Vainglorious Ashe Van S.
If you follow me on social media, you may have noticed that I’ve been very vulnerable about my transition in ways that many (if not most) people could find awkward. When I started my transition, I committed to do so publicly. I’ve shared pictures of myself trying to look pretty.…
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A Spirituality of Radical Compassion
My earliest (as far as I can recollect) mystical experience came to me at Camp Joy Bible Camp in rural Minnesota. It was the custom their to have a campfire the final evening. It was a sacred fire of the fundamentalist sort; between songs, campers were encouraged to share “testimonies.”…
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Queer Rebellions Against God
When other Christians get upset at me for being in rebellion against God (because, you know, I’m queer and stuff), most of the time it is because they believe the Bible insists upon a strict gender binary and commands heterosexual monogamy as the only faithful way to live. And since…
Though it is almost almost irrelevant to modern content consumers, blogs still fill the middle-space between social media posts and feature-length formats. Some of my social media posts get a polish and end up here. So too do fragments that might seed future books.
