Wednesday, September 16, 2009

DON CHARLES' POST: I AM CASTER SEMENYA

I strongly urge you to please read the two part post entitled, I Am Caster Semenya that was just written by my good friend, Don Charles on his blog, Christ, The Gay Martyr.

In an email Don Charles sent, he wrote the following:

If you are in any way non-traditional in your expression of gender, society will indeed make you suffer! Prepare yourself for ridicule. Prepare yourself for ostracism. Prepare to fend off irrational hostility that can escalate into violence against your person. Prepare to be condemned by your school, your church, your family. Prepare for difficulty earning your living, for jobs that you keep or lose based on how tolerant of difference your supervisors and co-workers are. Get ready to be banned from the Boy Scouts, from the US military, from the pulpit, from the wedding chapel. This is how they do you when they decide you are "queer"! The wrenching testimony that Gay, Lesbian and transsexual people could give a fact-finding commission would make South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation hearings of the 1990s look like silly parlor games.

God doesn't put people in boxes, and neither must we! God specializes in diversity, and for anyone to put this young woman through this sadistic ritual abuse is nothing short of small-mindedness, mean-spiritedness, and sinful!

Here is a brief excerpt from Don Charles' post that I hope will whet your appetite to read his two-part post in full:

Are you a butch Lesbian? An effeminate Gay man? A transsexual who refuses to hide? An intersex person in body or spirit? If so, then you are one of God’s transgender children, too. You are Caster Semenya! I am Caster Semenya. We are all Caster Semenya, and we should all be mad as Hell, and we shouldn't . . . we mustn't . . . tolerate this sexist, transphobic oppression anymore!

The same goes for any Christian, regardless of gender identity. The inclusive Gospel of Jesus Christ mandates humankind to repent of transphobia: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength (Mark 12:30). How is it possible to love the Lord but despise His creations?


Please click on this link to read his two-part post, I AM CASTER SEMENYA in full.
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4 comments:

DC HAMPTON JACOBS said...

Thanks for the kudos, Jerry, and I urge you, when you're ready, to put your own thoughts in writing about Caster Semenya and binary gender oppression. The essay was also posted at Pam's House Blend, prompting someone to post a typically retrograde Pam's House Blend comment!

Jerry Maneker said...

Thanks Don Charles. I could never articulate the feelings we share on this issue in the superb way that you did on your post! Anyone who can't empathize with the suffering she must be enduring, lacks both compassion and fundamental decency!

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your post, and I know that your post will open up the minds of countless people to the fact that those whom God creates to be of blended gender are especially gifted and made fully in God's image. Best wishes, Jerry.

genevieve said...

Don Charles' post was right on. Caster should have never gone through all this but it shows what many of these people know about gender-which is absolutely nothing.

Jerry Maneker said...

And the tragic irony, genevieve, beyond the trauma visited upon this young woman, is that God especially gifted blended gender people to be in conformity to God's own image; to be a gift to the world that, tragically, is not only misunderstood but rejected by one-dimensional people--just like these same kind of people reject God, save for the god they create in their own small-minded image. Best wishes, Jerry.