Digital Transgender Archive

Gender and Faith Beyond the Binary

The Digital Transgender Archive is so proud to be posting our newest collection, Twilight People, which illuminates the experiences of trans people of faith. Contained in the e-booklet of the Twilight People Project are many narratives of complex people rooted in their faith, yet uncompromising in their embrace of everything that makes them who they are. In the foreword of the booklet, Sean Curran (they/them/their) outlines the promise of such a project that explores the liminal and contested sphere that gender-variant people of faith inhabit:

"Gender identities can be AFFIRMED, DISCOVERED, and RENEWED through religion, faith, and spirituality, just as religious, faith, and spiritual identities can be REINVENTED, STRENGTHENED, and CELEBRATED through gender diversity."

This collection challenges the assumption that genderqueer/non-binary identity and trans-ness must be locked in opposition and combat to faith and even that faith itself should be interpreted so monolithically. Umber, featured and interviewed for the project, urges readers to be open to the feminist possibilities of the Qur’an, “I think it’s about what you choose to teach… I really do think the Qu’ran is very feminist.” Umber explains that their identity transcends womanhood:

"I’m like a series of identities that somehow come together. At the same time as feeling that, in this world, I’m a woman, I feel that I’m not, I feel that I’m so beyond woman."

Twilight People spotlights two under-represented transgender communities, non-binary identified persons and religious believers, through a thoughtful compilation of the unique experiences that come about from living in/as both of these worlds.