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Articles

Did God make me this way? Expanding psychological research on queer religiosity and spirituality to include intersex and transgender individuals

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Pages 214-225
Received 30 Aug 2011
Accepted 26 Apr 2012
Published online: 13 Jul 2012
 

The purpose of this article is to traverse the fields of psychology, human sexuality and religion to find themes of commonality that can be used to shed light on how faith forms the unique life journeys of intersex and transgender people. The specific aims of this article are twofold: (1) to begin to explore the role that religion and spirituality may play in the lives of transgender and intersex individuals and (2) to provide a roadmap for psychologists and other social scientists to conduct future research in this area. We began by conducting a literature review of intersex and transgender religiosity and spirituality. After summarising the articles uncovered, we then offer suggestions on how current psychological methods and theories – including spiritual journeys, empowerment, positive psychology and stress-related growth – can be used to advance research on the role that religious and spiritual beliefs play in intersex and transgender lives. Our hope is that this article will expand the psychological study of religion and spirituality (both the positive and the negative aspects) to encompass sexual and gender minorities.

Acknowledgements

This article was inspired by our respective experiences during the 2010 International LGBT Psychology Summer Institute at the University of Michigan. We thank Y. Gavriel Ansara and Lih-Mei Liao for providing the intellectual spark that ultimately led us to write this article, along with Nicola Curtin, Peter Hegarty, David Shmerler, Abigail Stewart, Michelle Vaughan and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. We are aware of the ongoing debates regarding appropriate self-referencing labels for sexual and gender minorities (see Ansara, 2010 Ansara, Y.G. 2010. “Beyond cisgenderism: Counselling people with non-assigned gender identities”. In Counseling ideologies: Queer challenges to heteronormativety, Edited by: Moon, L. Surrey: Ashgate.  [Google Scholar]; Fassenger & Arseneau, 2007 Fassenger, R.E. and Arseneau, J.R. 2007. “I'd rather get wet than be under that umbrella”: Differentiating the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people”. In Handbook of counseling and psychotherapy with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender clients, Edited by: Kathleen, B., Ruperto, P. and Kurt, D.B. Washington, DC: APA.  [Google Scholar]), as well as the underlying complexity surrounding issues of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity for intersex and transgender individuals whose lives do not adhere to the traditional male/female binary in ways that are quite divergent for each of these distinct groups of people. We do not believe that inserting ourselves into this debate is in the best interests of this article, therefore we elected to utilise the terms ‘intersex’ and ‘transgender’ throughout.

2. For the purposes of this article, we rely on Halkitis et al.’s (2009) operational definitions to distinguish between religiosity (i.e. religious behaviour) and spirituality (i.e. faith and/or belief). The use of this distinction in sexual minority populations is supported by the work of Rodriguez (2006; 2010).

 

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