Is Being Trans a Religion?

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I am a person of many talents. 

I play several instruments. I’m a ballet and modern dancer. I’m a more than halfway decent trivia teammate. And I’m an excellent cook.

But it does seem that I have a talent that shines well above the rest, and that’s managing to have opinions that make almost everyone angry.

Take, for example, my ongoing disagreement on trans rights with some of the biggest names in the New Atheist movement, including Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins. Them and many atheists that follow them, having been referring to the transgender rights movement as “the religion of trans” for years now. In their minds, because there is no blood test or other easily visible measure to determine a person’s gender besides self identification, trusting trans people to know who they are is equivalent to believing in a God that they cannot see or definitively prove exists. To this particular philosophical camp, trans people asking to be called by a certain name or pronouns is equivalent to the trauma faced by the victims of the Crusades. 

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been called “the pope of trans,” I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice, right?

Which is why I couldn’t help but laugh at least a little bit when I came across this piece published by “Answers in Genesis,” a Christian anti-evolution website, which claims that Dawkins and Coyne, while correct about “biological sex” are directly responsible for opening the door to “ the various postmodern faiths, like critical theory, queer theory, and their various denominations.” According to the author, Harry F. Sanders III, the “old guard” atheists, in their attack on Christianity, have trained the new generation to “turn[] on them and embrace[] religious beliefs more cultlike than anything evangelical Christianity ever put forward.”

What a day when both a hard core creationist and the New Atheists agree that I am a part of some new age cult.

I find it endlessly fascinating how quick we all are to call anything we disagree with a “religion.” I myself have walked that line in the past, though I think I do a decent job of clarifying that I think so-called “secular” transphobia is a result of the colonial influence of Christianity, and not a religion in and of itself. “Religion” as a term in and of itself is actually somewhat difficult to define, and everyone has their own definition based on their own lived experience and cultural contexts. You can take entire classes based around the idea of trying to answer that question alone.

Let’s look at some definitions of the word together.

First, why don’t we tap into our inner 8th grader writing the first sentence of a persuasive essay, and see what Webster’s Dictionary has to say on the topic:

Religion:

1: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices

2

a:

(1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural

(2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance

b: the state of a religious

a nun in her 20th year of religion

3: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

Now I, for one, find this definition to be…unhelpful, at least for our current undertaking, because it requires us to define what “attitudes, beliefs, and practices” qualify as “religious.” The third possible definition is also too broad to really be helpful. I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, but technically have no proof that it will do so, so that could be considered a belief “held to with ardor and faith.” (Apologies for the cliche, I read “Sunrise on the Reaping” last week and am still not over it.) 

But we do get a general vibe from this, the idea that it is both a set of beliefs and the actions associated with it.

Let’s get more specialized then. Religion is under the umbrella of philosophy, so why don’t we move in that direction.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives us this article outlining some of the different approaches to defining the concept of “religion.” The author notes that the term “religion” has not always referred to our more modern understanding of our beliefs regarding the divine, saying:

“It was adapted from the Latin term religio, a term roughly equivalent to “scrupulousness”. Religio also approximates “conscientiousness”, “devotedness”, or “felt obligation”, since religio was an effect of taboos, promises, curses, or transgressions, even when these were unrelated to the gods.”

This approach might map somewhat onto ideas surrounding gender and transness. For example, people who support trans identity might feel an obligation to correctly identify their trans community members, or think that it’s taboo to intentionally refer to someone with their deadname or the incorrect pronouns. Conversely, folks like Dawkins and Coyne might say it’s a violation of their own conscience to use anything other than genitals to determine how a person should be referred to, unrelated (at least in their minds) to a relationship with any kind of divine being.

But I think there’s a reason we no longer use this approach to define religion in a world that has evolved to embrace religious pluralism and tolerance. In the Classical world, you could not separate religious devotion from public life, or any other approach to existence. The modern approach of the separation of church and state, and true religious tolerance would not be fathomable. The closest thing to our modern understanding of religious tolerance would be the idea that not all faith/ethnic groups were forcibly converted in the ancient world, instead being second class citizens to the conquering religion. While in practice we still struggle with the idea of true religious equality, generally speaking in the United States that is not how we conceive of religious tolerance.

Secular life exists in the modern era, and while I think understanding this prior conception of “religion” is important, it doesn’t answer our more modern question.

Moving on in history, we come across the post-Reformation writer, Edward Herbert, who posited the five “Common Notions” that characterize a “religion:”

1. there is a supreme deity,
2. this deity should be worshipped,
3. the most important part of religious practice is the cultivation of virtue,
4. one should seek repentance for wrong-doing, and
5. one is rewarded or punished in this life and the next.

There are some obvious flaws to this definition, namely that this is an extremely Christo-centric, or if I’m being both overly general and overly generous “Abrahamic-centric,” understanding of religion. After all, most people immediately recognize that there are absolutely religions that do not claim a belief in a supreme deity, like certain forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. 

But this is absolutely the framework that I most often see used by proponents of the idea that “transgender is a religion”, so let’s take a moment to work through this one. 

Many “secular” transphobes compare gender identity to the idea of a “soul”, and one could also say that transness honors a “supreme deity” of the self. Someone who takes on this argument structure might also say that by asking people to respect their identity, trans people are requiring this deity of the self to be worshipped. Trans people are also seen as preaching a virtue gospel of pronouns and identity, “cancelling” those who disagree and requiring punishment and “repentance” for wrong-doing.

While you can map transness onto that definition, I think that to do so is a bad faith approach, meant to serve as some kind of “gotcha.” Beyond the problem that this definition does not adequately define “religion” outside of a Christian context, as already noted, it is an intentional misinterpretation of the arguments made by the majority of trans people. I do not know a single trans person who legitimately views themselves as a “supreme deity,” and if having a preference for how to be referred to is a form of “worship” I have bad news for you about calling married women by their husband’s last name, or referring to people with doctorates as “doctor.” The rest also maps onto literally any moral system, with the exception of the idea that there is an afterlife. God or not, humans are inherently trying to engage with questions of ethics, morality, and the consequences of causing harm. If trans identity is a religion under this framework, so is literally any moral system, including secular law.

After all, you can view the “supreme being” of the secular American legal system as the Constitution, that should be “worshiped” in our adherence to it. We make laws as a reflection of what we, as a society, think is “virtuous” and use a carceral system to both punish people for their actions and to encourage “repentance.” Yet I do not think any of us would consider this a “religion,” by any means.

Seemingly, secular transphobes define religion as a “belief in anything that is not observable in the natural world.” Just as they view a belief in God as “irrational” because there is no physical proof, the idea that trans people have a sense of self that is contrary to our physical bodies seems equally “irrational.” Nevermind that gender diversity is as old as human civilization, it is seen as a form of “postmodernism” – seemingly the greatest sin one can commit.

“Postmodernism” is one of the biggest buzz words amongst transphobes, both secular and otherwise. Whether you worship the God of the Bible or the god of “hard science” postmodernism is apparently the devil of our current age. 

Luckily, at least at a very basic level, “postmodernism” is somewhat easier to define than “religion” is. Before we can define “postmodernism” though, let’s briefly look at the word “modern.” Generally coming about during the Renaissance and the “Age of Exploration,” the Modern Era is considered to span from roughly 1500 to sometime in the mid 20th century, and more specific to philosophy is characterized by a cultural shift towards human reason, scientific observation, and skepticism over superstition and cultural tradition. The works of Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, and Hume all provide traditional examples of modernist philosophy specifically. The modernist strain of philosophy focuses heavily on the idea that there is an all encompassing “truth” that human beings are capable of finding through reasoned debate and observation of the natural world. Social “progress” seen through a modernist lens would then bring humanity more in line with the structures observed in the natural world, and dismantle the social creations borne of tradition, culture, and religion.

It’s important to note that while “modernist” philosophy is the root of western atheist philosophy, it is still one that is deeply informed by a Euro-Christian colonial worldview. Modernism operates under the assumption that one view is “correct” and of course, that view would be of the white men philosophers that championed the movement, which of course aligns with the culture they came from. This is not to say that there is nothing to be gained from their work, I’ve studied modernist philosophy in depth myself and draw from many of the base ideas surrounding democratic forms of government, but it is a historical reality that must be acknowledged. I also do not think that it is a coincidence that the people most likely to use “postmodern” as an insult or criticism are often from that very same demographic. Dawkins himself identifies as “culturally Christian” when privileging White Christianity above other religious beliefs. I do not think any of this is a coincidence.

“Postmodernism” therefore, is what came after “modernism.” It’s inherently reactionary, as the name implies. Generally considered to be borne of the mass death and destruction of the World Wars, postmodernist philosophy challenges the idea that there is a “universal” truth that can be found only through “reasoned” observation of the natural world. As humanity attempted to make sense of the horrors we had committed against each other, philosophers sought answers outside of observations of the animal kingdom, and racist mythologies about indigenous peoples (looking at you John Locke and your description of the “state of nature” and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “noble savage”). We had to grapple with questions of “why” we did such things, and in turn ask ourselves how we might better understand the world to prevent it from happening again. In my view, the postmodern approach to what is and is not “real” and “true” turns away from the idea of the “natural world” and instead looks at the world we actually live in.

Plenty of things that seem essential to twenty-first century society are only “real” because we say it is. Money is a classic example of this. A dollar is worth a dollar because we all have agreed it does. (Don’t try and bring up backing it with gold, the U.S. hasn’t used a gold standard since 1971, and even then our valuation of the shiny pretty mineral is arbitrary as well.) I can only exchange a piece of paper, or even more abstractly as I rarely carry physical cash anymore, the concept of a piece of paper existing in a bank account, for a tangible good or intangible service because everyone is on the same page regarding both the value of the paper and the value of the thing being purchased. Exchange of foreign currency happens because different cultures have different understandings of how to value currency. Cryptocurrency only has value because people have decided that it does.

Under a postmodern framework there is a lot of emphasis on words and their meanings because they tell us a lot about how any particular group perceives the parts of the human experience outside of the “natural world.” There is less emphasis on what the “correct” outcome, or what the “truth” is, because so much of our social structures are built upon mutual agreement, and those types of agreements are inherently subjective. It does not require a full rejection of the concept of “objectivity” – there are some “objective truths” that can still be embraced under a postmodernist mindset, like the idea that vaccines can prevent disease, or that air contains oxygen. Postmodernism simply recognizes that not everything can, or should, have a naturally proven explanation. Postmodernists are more concerned with asking what concepts mean and how they impact the world around us, rather than trying to find a unified theory of human existence in a lab or under a microscope.

I am a postmodernist, I don’t view that as an insult. In my own context it is merely the application of a worldview that recognizes that humans and the societies that we create are infinitely complex, and there is no philosophy that isn’t ultimately influenced by the culture that the philosopher was raised in. It is my own rejection that the presupposition that just because I grew up in a white supremacist, Christian colonialist culture that it must be the most correct framework, while at the same time recognizing that I have my own inherent biases that come along with it that I have to acknowledge in my theoretical work. My description of my gender experience being “nonbinary” for instance, is completely contextual to a society that prioritizes a gender binary to begin with. Had I been raised in a culture with a different structure for gender, I would use different language to explain my internal experience. 

All of that being said, I think we can return to the question of defining religion, based on the cultural contexts that I, and the majority of my readers, exist within. In my own work, I generally define “religion” as follows:

A set of core beliefs, shared or individual, about the world, its origins, our purpose within it, our relationships with others, and our moral responsibilities and obligations as human beings, in combination with the practices and traditions that are informed by those beliefs.

There will likely be people who agree with me on a lot of things, but not on this definition. Particularly atheists, who often say that they “have no religion” because they do not believe in a god or identify with a religious institution. But I would posit that religion, in the sense that someone “has” something, is simply a shorthand that we use to communicate the things listed above in their most general sense. While individuals have unique and complex answers to all of the questions above, we use labels like Methodist, Catholic, Agnostic, Atheist, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc., as checkboxes to quickly describe the ways in which we approach the world. Nuance comes into play when we continue the conversation and ask what those specific labels mean to us as individuals.

Of course, you don’t have to agree with this definition, that’s actually a big point of this essay, but at the very least it provides you with an understanding of how I understand religion, which should hopefully be helpful for engaging with my work.

So to finally return to the question in the title of this blog: is being trans a religion?

In my view, using my definition? No. The concept of being trans or gender diversity in general simply does not align well enough with that definition without having to do contortionist levels of stretching.

Being trans, or accepting that trans people are who we say we are doesn’t say anything about the origins of the world. If it describes our purpose within it, it is only in the sense that our purpose is not merely based on our reproductive systems, and I think the question of purpose goes far beyond that. Being trans or accepting transgender people might impact our relationships and moral responsibilities and obligations, but those impacts are the end result of a belief in respecting oneself and others, and doing as little harm as possible, not beliefs in and of themselves. And while there is such a thing as “queer culture” and “traditions,” Pride is one such example, those are a result of our interactions with each other and various historical moments, rather than the active expression about those core beliefs outlined above. It’s no different than the fact that Americans celebrate the 4th of July or the Superbowl. They’re practices and traditions, but not ones that have anything to do with religious belief.

In my opinion, anyone who tries to tell you that being trans is a “religion” is ironically operating in bad faith. By framing transness as a “religion,” transphobes are able to accuse trans people of censoring dissent when we stand up for ourselves, and wave away the wealth of scientific, anthropological, and historical evidence that supports the idea of gender diversity being a natural part of human diversity and social expression. And I would hazard a guess that for the most part, they know this. The word religion activates a defensive part of the brain that fears repression, or even merely having our beliefs misrepresented. It is something we care about deeply, and which impacts our lives in an unfathomable number of ways every single day. People have strong emotions regarding religion, and strong emotions, while important, are often easy to manipulate.

Being trans is not a religion, and I will not accept people trying to manipulate others into thinking that it is in order to strip me and my community of our rights.

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Kat (they/them) is a queer lawyer, activist, and theorist focusing on the intersections of law, queerness, religion, and politics, with the occasional bit of theology, political theory, and legal theory thrown in for good measure. Originally from rural southern Indiana, Kat earned their B.A. in Political Science in 2019 before continuing on to earn their J.D. in 2022, both from Indiana University- Bloomington. A former Equal Justice Works Fellow for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Kat has spent their professional career fighting for the separation of church and state and LGBTQIA+ rights. Outside of work you can find them at a ballet or contemporary dance class, sipping on dirty shirleys at their local gay bar, or playing video games with their cat, Merlin.