WOC’s Anti-Oppression Team Reaffirms Trans Inclusion

The Anti-Oppression Team is responsible for developing strategies that deepen WOC’s commitment to full inclusivity and equity within the structure of WOC itself and in the Roman Catholic Church. WOC values diverse identities, genders, and ministries as we strive to create a church and society where everyone is free to respond to God’s call without regard to race, sexual orientation, gender, or disability. In light of this commitment, WOC has updated its guiding values, including an embrace of transgender equality that today’s post addresses.

Alarming new anti-trans legislative proposals are appearing in state houses across the United States. These bills have goals like defining youth athletics according to a person’s assigned sex rather than their gender, blocking transgender adolescents from receiving gender-affirming healthcare (such as puberty blockers), or making it a crime for parents to provide gender affirming care for their children. LGBTQ advocates are working hard to stymie the damage of such laws, but there will inevitably be damage. We must not forget that the stakes here are the very lives of trans youth.

Backers of these legislative proposals claim the key issue here is actually about protecting girls and young women. They claim restrooms will be less safe, athletic competitions less fair, and adolescents’ lives less flourishing if transgender people are afforded equal rights. They ignore the mounting evidence against each of their claims. Medical experts have been clear in recent years that supporting transgender children has positive effects and supports their well-being. Opponents of trans equality still cling to an ideological commitment that trans women are not, in some ways, actually women (though often in much coyer language).

Such arguments are a smokescreen. We should not be fooled. The concern is not about protecting girls and young women; it is about the larger conservative project of inhibiting transgender rights.

Unfortunately, the arguments about girls and young women are appearing in some quarters of Catholic women’s movements, and they are getting a positive hearing. Some of these Catholic feminists are truly trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) who flat-out deny transgender women are women. Perhaps more common are Catholic feminists employing an alternative, and frankly more dangerous, tack wherein the anti-trans arguments are “raised as questions” or “occasions for dialogue.” Some who do so may be well intentioned. But good intentions are insufficient when lives are at stake. Too many transgender Catholics already hear messages of exclusion, hatred, and discrimination from the pulpit, and we should not add to these by questioning and invalidating their lived experiences. To treat trans people as a discussion point, not people worthy of dignity and voice, is to continue to perpetuate harm.

Whatever tack is taken, whether it be the outright denial of transgender people’s humanity or the more subtle question-raising, at the core of each tactic is a biological determinism on par with the Vatican. The theology of gender complementarity championed by Catholic leaders is the root of so many ills in the church today, including the denial of ordination to anyone who is not a cisgender (and ostensibly heterosexual) man. It is premised on the idea that genitalia is destiny. Most Catholic feminists and theologians perceive this theology as misguided and incoherent with what we know of sexuality and gender in contemporary society. We rightly reject it. 

And yet, somehow when it comes to transgender people, we witness some Catholic feminists backsliding into the idea that genitalia is destiny, and decide who truly counts as a woman. They also fear that affirming transgender youth and adolescents will somehow lead to an attack on feminism and women’s rights and an erasure of women’s issues and experiences.

Our work for equality and justice as Catholics must be bigger. It must be intersectional and explicitly transgender-affirming. When we look at the history of feminism, we see the flaws in previous waves. White women who led first wave movements were openly segregationist. Second wave leaders sidelined the rights of queer women. Questions of race, class, sexual orientation, and ability are often still not sufficiently and justly addressed. These dynamics are true of the Catholic feminist movement, too. 

We have an opportunity to get it right when it comes to transgender solidarity. The call for Catholic feminists in this moment is clear. We need to make sure that we prioritize the lives and experiences of transgender people, allowing them to tell their own truths and not attempting to regulate their bodies and activities out of fear-based, harmful theologies. We affirm that trans women are women. We affirm that non-binary people are a necessary part of this movement. And we will not cede ground to anti-transgender voices under the guise of a false feminism who cannot affirm likewise.