I agree that they should not be mocked or excluded but respected.
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I wouldnāt call it threatening. I call it unscientific. Why possibly stigmatize girls who may be less feminine than others, but who are not males with the disorder?
That seems like something one could say regarding homosexuals as well but of the many I know I canāt think of one whoād accept that description. If there is any argument for this position Iād like to hear it.
I can see calling transgender people aberrant. That would fit in the same way it does for being left handed. But what justification would there be for calling it a mental illness? I guess it fits when it causes people discomfort or distress to conform to the gender identified with their birth sex. But should we then say the mental illness has been cured when by undergoing surgery to transform their bodies to better approximate the sex they feel themselves to be, they thereby alleviate that distress (which does often seem to be the result)?
I have more questions than answers about all this and my experience with transgender people is miniscule. But living where I do I know many homosexual people who I like and admire quite a bit in a number of ways. I suspect if we knew more people who were intersex or transexual we would likewise just begin to see them as people.
@Dana_Oleskiewicz, we seem to have widened the scope of the conversation quite a bit, including into an area you have researched far more than I have. Do you have anything to add?
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In general, we try to steer the conversation away from sexual orientation and sexual behavior issues and questions like the ethics of gay marriage. People have different theological positions and BioLogos does not take one. In any case, the topic tends to bring up ideas that are offensive to people who hold the opposite ideas, which is something weād like to avoid arguing over.
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Patrick - Follow the scientific research!
Stigmatization in society and the negative outcomes that arise from it, such as low self esteem, mental anguish, and suicide, is significantly less when we acknowledge that strict boy or girl boxes is NOT representative of reality. There is a gray area beyond boy/girl that is defined by our human biology (hormones, genetics, psychology, genitals, etc). Frankly, that is exactly how the Lord has created āusā (humans) in the collective sense. The data does not lie (i.e. the article posted).
Offering a āthirdā category for gender diverse individuals in the public square, even if in the minority, communicates to them that their humanity and personhood is just as relevant as the majority who so easily claim a boy or girl designation. This reduces societal stigma for those who God has created as different, not damaged. Ostracizing nonbinary people is weakened, not strengthened, when we are willing to listen to their experiences and accommodate their uniqueness. After all, isnāt that exactly what Scripture teaches us to do (Galatians 3:28)?
Resistance to this revelation comes from a place of not understanding it, thus we label the nonbinary as āweirdā and āevilā. Likewise, we once did so to the those inflicted with epilepsy. There is a desire to keep the status quo that is more familiar and safe (binary). However, that is in our (cis-gendered) best interest, not theirs (intersex, nonbinary, transgender). It is not loving to our neighbors who were born as gender diverse, also a Godās people just as worthy as the majority to exist as themselves, without religious rules to conform (Galatians 5:6).
The Lord welcomes our quest to better understand these āothersā (gender diverse) in society and to love ALL our neighbors, not just the majority who happen to neatly fit into the prevailing gender binary perception of what it means to be human.
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Fair enough and as I expected. But I keep getting the impression those topics are trickling up regardless. Intersex certainly seems to be enough of a confront for starters. But more otherness awaits whenever. 
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Any discussion about gender and diversity skims very close to the āsā¦eā¦xā ssshhh as a behavior concept. Listening usually ends. It opens up a whole other theological question that is likely to result in a conversation that is not fruitful.
What we focus on here is gender, not sexuality (they are different). Although the two are obviously related, pondering sexuality is too big of a hill to climb theologically when we are still in the infancy of fully understanding human bodies and minds related to gender.
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Experts and caregivers do not treat the transgender condition as a mental illness. When medical care is provided (different for each patient, but can include hormones and/or surgery), the quality of life is significantly improved as to mirror that of non-transgender individuals (the cis-gendered), at least for those living in supportive families and/or communities.
The World Health Organization also no longer considers gender incongruence as a mental illness: Being Transgender Not a Mental Disorder, WHO Says
ADHD is categorized as a mental illness that is managed, not fully treated. Transgender individuals, conversely, can receive treatment that effectively reduces or eliminates dysphoria, thus it is not an illness or disorder. There is a difference.
Of course, this is complicated by the fact that so many people in our society do not understand gender incongruence and thus support legislation to remove the ability of medical staff and parents from seeking the necessary care when it is most critical to receiving it, at a young age. The myths and misinformation is extremely immense, especially so in religious communities. Thus, it results in societal treatment of transgender people (and intersex, nonbinary) that is prejudiced and most unkind.
And that is why a āthirdā category as gender diverse is so severely rejected. What we donāt understand, we often treat with bias. It is common for their life experiences as the intersex, nonbinary, or transgender to be judged according to our own cis-gendered, binary experiences rather than respectively seeing through the eyes of the gender diverse individual to which we are suppose to treat in loving care.
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I sure do. Here are a few tidbits:
- After retirement, my wifeāa public, elementary school teacher decided that she could use me as a volunteer aide in her bilingual, third-grade classroom. One day, the lesson plan required introduction of the students to the concepts of facts and opinions and the difference between the concepts. My contribution was several brief examples of each and an invitation to come up with student-generated examples.
- One of the examples that I gave went something like this: āAll of you have mothers. Tell me something about your mother.ā (I wrote their responses on the board). The most common response was āMy mother is nice.ā I spring-boarded off of that one and explained that the statement that āI have a motherā is a fact; but the statement that āMy mother is niceā is not a fact, itās an opinion.
- The next day, many of the studentsā mothers had a word with my wife. Later, at lunch-time, my wife informed me that a good number of them had complaints about something I had told their children. Their complaint was that their children had come home from school, the day before, saying that Mr. Sampson had told them that their mothers werenāt nice.
- In my version of Genesis, God created three fruits: Apples, Bananas, and All Others.
- In my version of Genesis, once upon a time, God created a domain of stability and saw that it was Good. In the stability domain, snakes had four legs. One day, one told Eve: "āYou surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat fruit from the tree in the middle of the stability domain your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.ā When Eve, and then Adam, ate of the fruit, they became like God, and an instability domain formed, which threatened to spread throughout the stability domain. When their deed was discovered, they were expelled from the stability domain and have been obliged to live in the instability domain ever since. For its involvement in the event, the snake was condemned to crawl on its belly thereafter. And thatās why snakes donāt have legs like the other reptiles. [Source: Catastrophe Theory by Vladimir Igorevich Arnold, Department of Mathematics,University of Moscow, Springer-Verlag (1984); Chapter 7. āSingularities of Stability Boundaries and the Principle of the Fragility of Good Thingsā.]
- Some folks believe that the concepts of āNormā and āNormalā in the Instability Domain are facts. I say that is false; āNormā and āNormalā in the Instability Domain are myths, not always useful and often harmful. The myth of the norm, and the mess itās made.
- I really like Martin Lutherās 28th Thesis, in the Heidelberg Disputation, to wit:
- Godās love does not find, but creates, that which pleases it. Manās love comes into being through that which pleases it.
So that is what cis-gendered means. I definitely havenāt been keeping up. Guess that makes me a cis-sy?
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The majority of us. Cis-gendered is when biological sex assigned at birth aligns with sense of self as either male or female
For the transgender person, gender (sex characteristics) do not align with their sense of self. Since we do not know how to safely change sense of self (reparative therapy is dangerous!!) to āfixā it, hormones and surgery on the body rather than the mind are used to mitigate the disconnect (incongruence/dysphoria) resulting in much happier and healthy people. Research supports doing so, even though doing so is not socially accepted.
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I think we agree. Leastwise I donāt think ānormalā should be used as an excuse to narrow the field of which others we are told to love as ourselves.
Your story from your stint as an elementary school teaching assistant is pretty funny. Once we get away from being around kids it is easy to make those kinds of error. I taught middle school for 25 years and I think that was a good age group for me. Sometimes capable of soaring insight and reason, never immune to child-like spontaneity.
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Andā¦ this is why there is an appearance of a sudden explosion in gender diverse individuals (must be āevilā then, right?) - with Gen Z offering the most acceptance among us of gender-expansiveness for society.
No. Likely, the rate of incidence for two-spirited people has been stable throughout time. What is different today is the ability to connect as a minority group to others who are also part of the gender-expansive group through the use of the internet. They no longer suffer in shame and silence but have become visible.
True - middle schoolers are quite capable of soaring in their insight and reason (and child-like love of others prior to forming internal biases).
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My least favorite group: little lolitas still playing with dolls and starting to carry verbal knives scare the bejeezus out of me and the lion cubs dreaming of their own harems or playing king-of-the mountain were exasperating. My favorites were the 8+/- year olds, whose frontal lobes were starting to form.
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I was so naive with the girls when I first started teaching, seeing them as āeverything niceā. It didnāt take long to find out that many can hurt each other with words as much as the boys can physically.
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This is where we have to make clear the meaning of words.
Are you using non-binary to describe those with genetic problems in how they express their maleness or femaleness? Or does it include those who think that because they donāt feel a certain way, that their gender must be wrong, and they can choose a gender at will totally separate from their biological sex?
Actually, regardless of treatment or support from others, the suicide rate for trans is very high.
Iāve read of at least two trans that have had the surgeries and hormones and really regretted it, and advocated for counseling.
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Pardon my ignorance, but were they advocating for counseling because they didnāt get any, or because the counseling that they received failed to include the multi-page āhere are all the possible things that could happen which may make you regret your decision to undergo surgery and transition to a lifestyle permanently filled with hormone treatments and visits to appropriate medical authoritiesā?
Both/and, possibly. And your ignorance is forgiven since I provided no citations. 
It wasnāt the magic fix they were hoping for and expecting.
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Best advice Iāve ever gotten was from my father who told me: Donāt give advice. [The third time he told me that, I asked him if he was giving me advice. He laughed and never did it again.ā]
Of course, I have a hard time remembering any advice from my father that I followed.
My advice to someone considering transgender transitioning is: You may want to check with a support group consisting of folks who have done it and regret it and a support groupāif there is oneāconsisting of folks who have done it and are glad they did. And if the surgery room is in a garage, donāt do it.
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