Portraits in Faith: Rain Khoo
252 بار بازدید -
4 سال پیش
-
https://portraitsinfaith.org/rain-khoo/
Honoring transgender persons
“As I approached puberty when I was 11 or 12, I had this sense that I was not fully female. And in puberty I visualized myself as a male but was then told by my good and well-intending Christian friends that that was a delusion. And, of course, going further into conservative Christianity really enforced that. They would tell me these are only illusions and you should burn it away and you should submit yourself to God’s ways as the Bible says. So for more than 20 years I had these recurring dreams, sometimes nightmares, where I was trying to turn myself into a male. I tried suppressing the internal force to become male but it just kept coming back. I told myself, ‘Oh, this is sin, this is sin, you have to kill it, you have to kill it.’ So it was kind of like self-flagellation because it’s not something you can remove from your spirit. So I hit that point, and as with most things that we would rather push away we distract ourselves with other things, right? That’s why entertainment is such a large industry in this world!
“After really slowing down and being in that quiet space where God exists, where my relationship with God is, this whole buried issue came flooding out. Everything that I had suppressed about my transgender identity was also layered on by my sexual preference. So, how I identify is that I’m transgender male, maybe gender fluid, but those are, as you know, convenient rules and buckets. In terms of sexual orientation, I’m attracted to men. Because of this layering of gender identity and sexual orientation, I never figured it out when I was growing up as a teenager. Back then, gender identity and sexual orientation were seen as one. It was only somewhere between the 10 years when I wasn’t reading any of the literature that science started teasing apart these two. So when the self-identification finally happened, certain things broke loose. I had to give the self-identification time in order to grapple with my spiritual journey with God because my indoctrination was saying that this was wrong. ‘This is what you rejected many years ago so why is it that we’re entertaining it now? Is that because you have stopped believing in Jesus Christ?’
“I spent time in quiet meditation with God with words from the Bible and there was one evening I remember quite clearly. I was jogging. I was just listening to see whether God would speak. Then a question appeared in my head with clarity: Do you love your children? (I have two kids.) I felt that was such a strange question and I said, ‘Of course! I love them and there’s not anything they need to do to be better and they don’t even need to do anything. They just are and I just love them.’ Then the revelation came to me that that is the way it is. ‘I am with you’ as well as ‘God is with us.’ There is really nothing we need to do. All those are human expectations, societal expectations and truly everyone is a beloved by God. And that was the tipping point for me for accepting my own identity.
“Then I took some time because I needed to be sure before sharing with my partner. At that time, we had been together for 15 years. We had a very good conversation. I think that he took it as well as I could expect anyone to take it. Of course, it did shake up his world a bit because he identifies as a heterosexual male. It changed certain things in our relationship but I would say that we hold a lot of common values and principles and one is that family comes first. Not just the kids, but also our parents. What is the best family social unit that will best support everybody and each other? So that has always been our way of working through our differences.”
Honoring transgender persons
“As I approached puberty when I was 11 or 12, I had this sense that I was not fully female. And in puberty I visualized myself as a male but was then told by my good and well-intending Christian friends that that was a delusion. And, of course, going further into conservative Christianity really enforced that. They would tell me these are only illusions and you should burn it away and you should submit yourself to God’s ways as the Bible says. So for more than 20 years I had these recurring dreams, sometimes nightmares, where I was trying to turn myself into a male. I tried suppressing the internal force to become male but it just kept coming back. I told myself, ‘Oh, this is sin, this is sin, you have to kill it, you have to kill it.’ So it was kind of like self-flagellation because it’s not something you can remove from your spirit. So I hit that point, and as with most things that we would rather push away we distract ourselves with other things, right? That’s why entertainment is such a large industry in this world!
“After really slowing down and being in that quiet space where God exists, where my relationship with God is, this whole buried issue came flooding out. Everything that I had suppressed about my transgender identity was also layered on by my sexual preference. So, how I identify is that I’m transgender male, maybe gender fluid, but those are, as you know, convenient rules and buckets. In terms of sexual orientation, I’m attracted to men. Because of this layering of gender identity and sexual orientation, I never figured it out when I was growing up as a teenager. Back then, gender identity and sexual orientation were seen as one. It was only somewhere between the 10 years when I wasn’t reading any of the literature that science started teasing apart these two. So when the self-identification finally happened, certain things broke loose. I had to give the self-identification time in order to grapple with my spiritual journey with God because my indoctrination was saying that this was wrong. ‘This is what you rejected many years ago so why is it that we’re entertaining it now? Is that because you have stopped believing in Jesus Christ?’
“I spent time in quiet meditation with God with words from the Bible and there was one evening I remember quite clearly. I was jogging. I was just listening to see whether God would speak. Then a question appeared in my head with clarity: Do you love your children? (I have two kids.) I felt that was such a strange question and I said, ‘Of course! I love them and there’s not anything they need to do to be better and they don’t even need to do anything. They just are and I just love them.’ Then the revelation came to me that that is the way it is. ‘I am with you’ as well as ‘God is with us.’ There is really nothing we need to do. All those are human expectations, societal expectations and truly everyone is a beloved by God. And that was the tipping point for me for accepting my own identity.
“Then I took some time because I needed to be sure before sharing with my partner. At that time, we had been together for 15 years. We had a very good conversation. I think that he took it as well as I could expect anyone to take it. Of course, it did shake up his world a bit because he identifies as a heterosexual male. It changed certain things in our relationship but I would say that we hold a lot of common values and principles and one is that family comes first. Not just the kids, but also our parents. What is the best family social unit that will best support everybody and each other? So that has always been our way of working through our differences.”
4 سال پیش
در تاریخ 1399/02/04 منتشر شده
است.
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