Taj M. Smith is a writer, speaker, and spiritual leadership coach based in Massachusetts. You’re most likely to catch him at a coffee shop or in a park with a sci-fi or fantasy novel when he’s not in front of his computer.
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You Don’t Have To Understand Everything About Trans People To Love Us
From Will & Harper
THE DAY AFTER I told my mother I was transitioning, I sat across from a childhood friend, who I’ll call Sarah, in Los Reyes, my favorite Mexican restaurant in my hometown. It was 2009, and I had come home from college specifically to give my mom the news. I hadn’t seen Sarah in six years but I remembered she had a strong faith that she shared openly and invitationally. As soon as I sat down, she asked how I was doing. Something in me broke open, yearning to be seen. I was a mess — sadness and anger dipping in and out of despair. I said something like, “My mom’s just never understood me, and now she’s not going to try to understand.” Sarah got quiet and nodded before replying, “So? I don’t understand either, but I’m here because I love you.”
Whatever I said in response doesn’t matter as much as the truth I learned: Friends and family can love and support one another without understanding them.
In last year’s documentary Will & Harper, Harper Steele, a trans comedy writer living in New York, has one such friend in the comedian Will Ferrell. At the beginning of the documentary, we learn that Steele announced the news of her transition via an email to her loved ones, Ferrell included. Upon hearing the news, Ferrell, who’s been friends with Steele since the two met on Saturday Night Live 30 years ago, is shocked but wants to be supportive — he’s just not sure how.
“So many of us don’t know what the rules of engagement are,” Ferrell says. “And in terms of our friendship and our relationship, it’s uncharted waters.” So he invites Steele to go on a road trip with him.
Ferrell describes Steele as a rough-and-tough, beer-drinking Midwesterner who loves finding seedy roadside bars and truck stops on cross-country drives. But both he and Steele are worried those dive bars will not be safe now that Steele is living as a woman. So the motivation for the trip is twofold: They can learn how to navigate the new circumstances of their friendship, and Steele can learn to navigate the places she’s always loved — this time as the person she’s always known herself to be.
God Created Me To Be a Transgender Man
Hands graphic via Alamy. Design by Mitchell Atencio/Sojourners.
Speech opens a door to previously unknown experiences. In a way, speech — or language — makes and unmakes the world as we know it. When I speak about myself, I tell you the truth of who I am.
So, in an era where people of faith, specifically Christians, are popularizing anti-trans language, it feels like my responsibility to say something — anything — to lift up those of us who identify as transgender and Christian. The truth I want to communicate here is this: God made me to be trans.