The transgender child is a highly contested figure in the politics and culture of the United States today, with medical transition being a particularly volatile flashpoint. This paper demonstrates how both religious and secular narratives are deployed against childhood transition, analyzes their shared political theological commitments, and proposes an alternative framework. Using Megan Goodwin’s concept of contraceptive nationalism, I discuss how religious arguments against childhood transition frame trans adults as both a sexual threat and religious outsiders, imagining them as an anti-Christian “cult” that preys on vulnerable youths. Secular arguments against childhood transition, meanwhile, presume the existence of the secular self described by Charles McCrary in Sincerely Held: a rational self buffered against undue outside influence. In this model, transition is a choice that may be made by a reasonable adult, but children are insufficiently formed selves to make such a consequential choice. Both narratives share a commitment to cisness, as a structuring fantasy of normative development and repetition, as well as an understanding of transness as “bad religion” beyond the acceptable bounds of religious pluralism. We urgently need alternative theological and political narratives that affirmatively promote transition as a good for all who seek it, including children.
Religious arguments against childhood transition constitute a form of what Megan Goodwin names “contraceptive nationalism”: rhetorical strategies that construct religious outsiders to the United States as sexual threats and thus as dangerous to the body politic. While contraceptive nationalism is more usually deployed against communities that self-identify as religious, in this case it is the opponents of trans people who define transness as a religion. From the Pope to megachurch pastors, anti-trans Christians repeatedly claim that being trans is not only a rebellion against God, but an alternative and evil religion – often a “cult.” This cult is alleged to recruit vulnerable young people, “grooming” them to adopt a new gender identity and “mutilate” their bodies. The violent language indexes the urgency of their plea to “protect” children from transness.
Secular arguments against childhood transition, while sometimes deploying the tactics of contraceptive nationalism, more often use a different tactic. Positioning itself as the more reasonable foil to heated religious arguments, the secular delegitimization of trans children permits transition in adulthood, as a lifestyle choice that may be pursued by fully formed adults. In this view, transness is a property that may be possessed by the secular self described by Charles McCrary in Sincerely Held: a sovereign, rational self buffered against undue influence from outside forces. The exclusion of children from this secular self seems logical, and yet this sovereign self is susceptible to ever narrower circumscription, as more and more people can be excluded from the definition of rationality: youth up to the age of 25, disabled people, and even those “brainwashed” by the trans “cult” have all been proposed as incapable of the necessary reason.
Despite their different grounding and disparate tactics – the rationality of the secular self or the contraceptive nationalism of conservative Christianity – both arguments are united in their antipathy toward childhood transition. I suggest that both secular and religious arguments against trans children share a certain political theological disposition: namely, a commitment to cisness as the prerequisite for legitimacy. Cisness is the governing norm of not being trans, which is taken for granted and assumed not to require explanation; and it is also a structuring fantasy of normative development and repetition of the same. The assumed naturalness of cisness justifies the imposition of strict gender norms and the foreclosure of alternative pathways, such as transition.
In the face of a government that is rolling back trans rights across the board, and is specifically targeting the provision of medical care for transgender children, we urgently need not only to refute the arguments deployed against transness, but also to develop alternative theological and political narratives. We must reject the teleology and naturalness of cisness and instead promote an affirmative vision of transition as a positive good for all who seek it, including children. This requires an openness to novelty, a welcoming of creativity, and a theology of children that views them not as raw material that must be molded into gender normativity, but as strange and wild little beings who deserve the safety and the freedom to become who they will.
The transgender child is a highly contested figure in the politics and culture of the United States today. This paper demonstrates how both religious and secular narratives are deployed against childhood transition, analyzes their shared political theological commitments, and proposes an alternative framework. Religious arguments against childhood transition frame trans adults as both a sexual threat and religious outsiders, imagining them as an anti-Christian “cult” that preys on vulnerable youths. Secular arguments against childhood transition, meanwhile, presume the existence of a rational self buffered against undue outside influence. Both narratives share a commitment to cisness, as a structuring fantasy of normative development and repetition, as well as an understanding of transness as “bad religion” beyond the acceptable bounds of religious pluralism. We urgently need alternative theological and political narratives that affirmatively promote transition as a good for all who seek it, including children.