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Rev. Yost's avatar

Thanks for this thoughtful analysis. I'm a former teacher now Pastor with multiple decades of experience working with Transgender folks and the data shows what I've experienced. I'm a non-binary pastor so I'm kinda a rare breed statistically which is why my DMin project is researching the Spiritual Care of LGBTQIA folks.

Thanks again!

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Gary Erdos's avatar

Thank you for the analysis and thank you, Rev. Yost. When you complete your project, will any of us be able to find it/ learn what you found?

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Surfer-Atlantis  Martin's avatar

I never knew it was possible for a nonbinary individual to become a pastor much less that there are churches and religions that genuinely accept gender queer people… Is there a way you can directly teach me more? (Yes, this was commented with great anxiety lol)

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Kayla Jentes's avatar

Hi! I just saw this comment and I wanted to let you know that many of the mainline churches are gender affirming. Additionally, there are many more progressive non-denominational churches too. You will likely have to find a bigger city to come across those ones. Typically, if you look for an episcopal church near you then you will be in good hands. Good luck!

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Kayla Jentes's avatar

Another person just liked this comment and it reminded me that I just posted an article today on Jesus’ view on gender so if you want to check that out, just head over to my profile.

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Joseph's avatar

And yet, all of the trans people I know (about a half dozen), I know from my urban, Anglo-Catholic Episcopal church!

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Grey Squirrel's avatar

I'm eclectic with a background in Chinese folk religions, but I interact with the broader polytheist community at events such as Pagan Pride Day. We are the "Write In" types.

In the broader polytheist community I would guess that 1 in 4 are non binary or trans and this includes a huge share of people over the age of 50. I also encounter lots of trans people in Western Buddhist and New Age scenes as well.

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Jeremiah's avatar

"I have always seen this as the “I don’t want to be easily labeled” choice. It would logically follow that people who don’t want to be put in the standard male/female categories would also bristle at being placed in a traditional religious category."

This has been an ongoing question for me. To what extent does identifying as nb/gnc indicate a desire to express an externally unconstrained identity, and to what extent does it represent something fundamental and unchanging about the person's nature (besides a tendency to nonconformity).

In the early days of this movement I read a bunch of books. Those books often described places in the world where there's some kind of durable third gender. In those places (Thailand, some African tribes, South American Islands, etc...) that third gender is always highly constrained and it plays a very specific societal role. In some cases, that role is a specifically religious one.

Based on that research, it seems to me that if something of this current movement will last, it'll likely be something highly constrained like that, or something which primarily takes a virtual, technology-mediated form.

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brother nin's avatar

I appreciated the post but I would also like to see data on binary trans people. I'm not really convinced that nb/gnc people are the crux of any current debate about gender. (I'm partly commenting also on a post of yours from maybe a month ago about nb people as well.) Even eg. the most recent executive orders re removing third gender options federally was imo more saliently about "biological sex" vs gender, as I expect that registered third-gender/nb/etc citizens are a pretty small minority compared to legally recognized binary trans people.

I'm... also confused by the numbers here re zoomers, as myself a marginal zoomer, in a major west coast city, and in scenes that lean very queer, I'm pretty surprised to see such high rates reported nationally of nb/gnc, though I don't have an explanation.

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Jeremiah's avatar

Living in a very liberal city, my experience mirrors your confusion about how high these numbers are. Even limiting to my local area and only Gen Z, I still don't see anything like 1% of people visibly identifying as nb/gnc. Based on the results here, that should be like 5-10%.

The most logical way to see this seems to me explained by the responses to surveys from Gen Z that they "feel more themselves online than IRL." Is it possible that a majority of these folks only express their gender identity online?

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Todd Hobart's avatar

Is this data capturing transgender people? For someone I know, they were born female, now identifies as male, and would not identify as non-binary on a survey or anywhere else.

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Dustin's avatar

Maybe I missed it, but does anything change if you restrict the male/female vs NB/other comparison just to Gen-Z people?

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