My Memories Of Nuns Are Getting Wacked…

With a ruler on my knuckles for smudging the ink with my left hand.Because I was left handed, my hand would smug the fountain pen ink as I wrote which was a big no, no with the nuns. These trans people have a different experience with nuns.

Cloistered Argentine Carmelite Nun Reaches Out to Trans Women
Bondings 2.0

Regular long-time readers of Bondings 2.0  may remember our posts about Sister “Monica,” a U.S. nun who pioneered ministry to transgender people.  We’ve covered her involvement in this groundbreaking work a few times (here and here, for example), and you can read about her ministry and why she chooses to remain anonymous, using only the pseudonym Sister “Monica” when she appears in the media.

In another part of the world, another Sister Mónica has emerged who is doing similar outreach work with the transgender community.  This Sister Mónica (which is her real name) lives in the Neuquén province of Argentina and is a member of the Discaled Carmelite Order, a contemplative community.  Her ministry has even attracted the attention and support of Pope Francis.
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The story recounts how Sister Mónica’s pastoral life has always been with those on the margins of society, and that an encounter with a young transgender woman focused her attention on the needs of this community.  The nun described the story:

” ‘I feel that God wants me to accompany the wounded and that’s why I take responsibility. They often tell me I stand with them; it’s that I feel that from that place I can understand them. Because when we look at them from the other side, it’s impossible. I get in deep,’ the sister adds.

“And because of this kind of attitude, it’s not surprising that in December 2005, when Romina, a trans woman, approached Lourdes parish, the bishop decided this was a job for her.

“Romina went at that time to the church because she wanted to donate a tenth of her wages. ‘When the priest asked her where it came from, she told him from prostitution, and she explained that that was the only work she could get. At that point, the priest called me and told me about the case.’ “

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The witness of Sister Mónica should challenge all of us to take one more step along the journey of advocating and standing in solidarity with trans people.  It is people like her who are building God’s reign of justice and peace in the world and in our Church.

It is great that Sister Mónica is working with the trans community, hopefully her work will bring about a better understanding between the Catholic Church and the trans community.

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Tonight I am a guest lecturer at a Catholic University for a multicultural education course and I understand that the director of education programs will be attending my talk. A friend teaches the course at a number of colleges and universities in the state and I do the part on gender identity each time.

These are some of the comments that I received from the students from other classes.

I was so inspired by Diana this week. She knew who she was and wanted to show the world. Even at an older age, she wasn't content to live out the rest of her life as someone else, so she did something about it. It must have taken so much courage to even just tell her brother. It's even better that her family was so accepting of who she truly is. She also was really informative about her community as a whole. Some of the points she raised, about bathrooms and such, were very interesting. I really knew nothing about any of the stuff she talked about so it was very informative.

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I found Diana ______ to be an interesting speaker. Her powerpoint lecture was cleared up a lot of definitions that society usually clumps together as all being the same thing, but in reality, they’re different. For example, cross-dressing is not the same as transgender, which is also different from transsexual. Also there is a difference between gender expression and gender identity. These distinctions are important and society tends to ignore these differences and associate all transgender things under one category. I thought Diana was going to spend more time discussing her own personal experiences, but besides a few anecdotal remarks here and there, the lecture was directed toward definitions and understanding the transgender coming out process as well as the obstacles and challenges that come along with that regarding self-esteem and the health risks involved. One statistic she mentioned the stood out was that 41% of transgender people have suicidal inclinations as a result of not being accepted by their family, which is very sad and upsetting. I also found it interesting when she discussed how transgender people struggle to find employment as well as finding homes/places to rent; these are issues that I never really thought of before in regards to the transgender community. Interestingly enough, a day later I saw an article on Forbes that said Kroeger's is now going to offer its transgender workers full benefits including surgery and drug therapy for gender reassignment as part of the employee health plan. It was also interesting how Diana's information and anecdotes aligned to a lot of what the mother in the article "Learnign to see" [Transgender Tapestry Issue 112]. For example, the mother discusses how all those years of concern for her son and his introverted ways all throughout life and the variety of interests he had(classes in school, internet etc) and didnt have (dating,girls, prom etc) was him trying to figure out who he was/is. Diana explained that it took her 50 years to figure it out and come out to her brother that she was a transgender. The mother in the story played a similar role to that of DIana's brother in her life.