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you're

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tuned into Assigned Sex Unarchived, the podcast told By Us, For Us. I'm your non-binary cousin, Shaun Dawson, and this is a safe space where we're honest about what it means to show up as Black, trans, and genderqueer.

Today I've got TJ, Nandi, and an anonymous guest with me, and we're unpacking spirituality, religion, and faith through the eyes of people who grew up in church. Look, I know a lot of us sit with this question. What happens when the place that taught you God also taught you to hate yourself? Let's get into it.

I would say I am very much 100 % culturally Christian, but I am not a believer at all. And I think sometimes folks feel the need to distance themselves from the culture and all the other part of it. I know I can't help it. In the way I talk and the reactions I have to things, it's very much rooted of being raised culturally Christian. But as far as any belief in, really any religious.

ideology and spirituality. feel, you know, love my friends are doing indigenous and traditional African religions. That all just seems like a lot of work. You know, a lot of reading and you got to learn a lot about ancestors. there's, there's alters. This just sounds like a lot of work. so I am, I am agnostic. We'll say that I'm agnostic. I'm sure there's something out there, but I don't want to do the work to figure it out.

I am in the same boat. do not want to do the work. Adulting is already enough for me. So like adding something else to the list to like learn and figure out just isn't for me. I'm like all over the place. So I grew up in church and I still hold those the values that I was raised around to my core.

speaker-1 (02:18.048)
But I'm definitely not religious and I'm more so spiritual and I do acknowledge a higher power and God. And then I also acknowledge other mystical whatever you would want to call them. So it's like, thank you, God. Thank you, Earth. Thank you, sky. Thank you, moon. Thank you, stars. Like, yeah. But I.

No hard feelings, because I was raised Christian. I don't harbor any hard hard feelings towards Christianity. I just know that practicing religion doesn't work for me. I'm not cut from that cloth. yeah, that's it.

speaker-2 (03:07.694)
I think I'm somewhere in between TJ and Lady. I'm definitely culturally Christian. I say amen all the time as like an agreement statement. It's just something about me, but I don't, I'm not a Christian at all.

I guess I would identify more as agnostic, because I think there's something bigger than me. What is it? I don't know. And then I would consider myself like a hoodoo practitioner. Yeah, I'm like a hoodoo practitioner. I do a little bit of conjour, and yeah.

All right, Nandi, we'll stay with you. Take me back to little Nandi, like the kid in the pews. What did the Sunday look like for you?

man, Sundays were long. My mom was a minister of music or like choir director or whatever. So I spent my Sundays either at church all day. So from like 8:30 in the morning for Sunday school until like four o'clock. If there was a special service after, also had to be at that too.

Sometimes we would go to multiple churches on a Sunday because my mama had to play one early service and then she would play like the regular service. So Sundays for me was just at church singing along. I would try to participate. I love the music part of it. But yeah, I'm definitely singing along in the pews because I know all the songs and I'm also ready to go when my mama says it's time to go.

speaker-0 (04:56.14)
Real. Lady, I mean, I know a little bit more about you. So what type of church did you come grow up in?

I grew up in a non-denominational Christian household. And my dad's a preacher. Both my parents, my dad and mom are preachers. And my dad's church was Christianity, we practiced Christianity.

Okay, and what does Sunday look like for you growing up?

Um.

I just remember I remember more than just Sundays it was it seemed like church was like every other day there was something with church or choir rehearsal or Bible study or or going to some service and then and then there was Sunday which was like the big shebang where you know you you dress formal and then you go to this place my dad's church they had they were three different

speaker-1 (05:55.662)
residences. And I vividly remember the second one more. was like this old, old style church. was kind of like a, like what you would see in a movie.

one of those like really big and it's kind of scary looking on the inside like you think it's haunted. So I just remember being there. just remember once a week being having to be there and I wasn't paying attention to anything. I was just running the halls and just like being crazy. And then as we got older the church moved to its longer term resident in a different neighborhood and it was just like there's Sunday service. Then you might get some food in between and then you have to go to

someone's other church that evening and it just sucked the life out of your Sunday and of course the Saturdays were like studies and church and stuff like that. There was a lot of church.

I see. TJ, your Sundays was the same? You was in church all day on Sunday? Yeah, I guess, you know, it differs Sunday by Sunday and also like with age things. Definitely remember.

there's like the old church and the new church, but we'll talk about, I guess, more of like the newer church when they moved to a larger facility. My dad as well is a pastor. My dad became a pastor the year, like six months after I was born. So like pretty much my whole entire life. I remember like Sunday school. you know, having gone to Sunday school and really liking it and being a person who liked to read, I was able to like lead other, you know, the younger people Sunday school. And then that would also led me to be

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in charge of like, not in charge, to be one of the people who could do the nursery. So I always found ways to get out of church. Like, and so everybody was up in there. So I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm gonna help out with the kids, right? So I have to sit through that particular function. You know, our fourth Sundays where they would do like choir, like the youth Sundays. I, to this day, I can't stand, don't invite me to something when no children are singing. Any adults, we ain't practicing on my ears.

But they used to make me be in the choir, then eventually later, I would just stand there, like mouth the words, I wouldn't do anything. And so then they were like, okay, you can be an usher or other stuff like that. I think I found the church to be more fun when you're like, A, being able to be friends or finding like other activities where I didn't have to necessarily be inside and like listen to everything. And I definitely did a lot of that kind of stuff. remember, yeah, I remember even, you know.

Even in like maybe fourth grade, they're like, oh, you can go with the kindergartners to Sunday school because you can help out with the kindergarten teacher and you can help them read and this that and other. So I always find that, you know, some services, some church services will go to visit other churches, some local, some in Miami. I love it when we to Miami, the other church might feed us, but I will always like hot defense. There's one particular church that I will go to KFC and I come back on the bus because we have to the bus down there with my own food. So.

It was there. was at church a lot, but I was also finding like other ways to like do me and make an enjoyable experience. I'll read books to church too. I'll be reading my books.

When you said that you were a usher, I just kept picturing you in your usher outfit.

speaker-2 (09:16.11)
Yeah, pointing people, directing them, being like, give me that gum.

right

He wasn't doing that.

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So it's time for a little black trans and gender queer history. Today we're centering the story of Lucy Hicks Anderson. Lucy knew she was a girl by the time she was nine years old. Her mama was a little bit concerned, so she took Lucy to a doctor and the doctor basically said, let her live as a girl. So as a teenager, Lucy changed her name.

left school and started doing domestic work to take care of herself. She did that kind of work for years and years until she was able to own and run a whole brothel in Oxnard, California. But in 1945, there was an outbreak of venereal disease in Oxnard and the people were saying it started at Lucy's spot. So the city ordered everybody who worked there, get a medical exam.

During that exam, they clock Lucy.

Once they discovered that they tried to destroy her, they voided her marriage and then they charged her with perjury saying that she lied on her marriage license by signing that there was no legal objection to the marriage. Both Lucy and her husband ended up being tried by the feds. During that trial, Lucy did not back down. She told him a person can look like one sex and actually be another.

She said, I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am a woman.

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That was bad. She also told reporters, I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am. A woman.

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Instead of sending her straight to jail, they put her on probation for 10 years. 10 years of probation is wild, by the way. But that wasn't even the end of it. The government decided that she had been illegally getting money as a soldier's wife because her husband was in the Army. So Lucy and her husband were tried again, this time for fraud, and they were convicted.

After she got out of prison, they wouldn't even let her move back to Oxnard. So she relocated to Los Angeles and that's where she lived until she passed in 1954.

Lucy Hicks Anderson was a Black trans woman who insisted on her womanhood in a world that tried everything to deny it. She was the first trans person in U.S. history to fight for marriage rights in court.

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Lucy's story is a reminder that we've always been here and we're not going anywhere.

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As far as when you said my body, remember how church reminded me that my body was changing because I remember there would be deacons who never paid me any mind. It was just like, whatever. And then like suddenly one day shift and it's like, Hey, can I get a hug? How you doing? Like it was like this whole now I see you. But, so that was one of the ways I remember there was this minister that could not stand at the church for so many reasons. but he would tell me he

later got he was a police officer and he later got arrested for something anyway that's not the point but he would like you need to wear you know you need to wear longer dresses right you're causing the boys in the church to like have like thoughts and sin i would always be like you know i could wear a paper bag and people won't have whatever thoughts but i was like if you have a you know issue with what i'm wearing i'm a child right

Talk to my parents, talk to the people who are buying it. I just remember a lot of conversations about my body. I cut my hair maybe in like 10th grade and another minister was like, know, the hair is a woman's glory. And I was like, again, clearly the, you're not going up to my father who's the pastor who's, you know, is your boss and having these conversations about my body to them, but you feel so really comfortable and emboldened. So let's talk about my trans-sense. think my body just, I can feel the differences of how people

approached me about my body, the comfortability that people had telling me things about my body, I think that made me feel just highly uncomfortable and just felt like it was always just really inappropriate.

speaker-1 (14:28.638)
Damn, that's fucked up. I'm sorry, I'm pissed. I'm upset for you. Oh my gosh, and it's not even religion it's the people that make it what it is and Whatever because it's such a bad rep. Um, so I apologize Anyway, um for me mtf tgirl here

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I was never directly, so how I felt in my body was kind of where I always had this weird, interesting relationship with my body where there was always a disconnect. So in church, I didn't necessarily stop there.

I would look at what the women were wearing and I'd be like, oh, that's really, like, I love, I love fashion and clothes. And so I would be looking at the Sunday fits and maybe the heels or maybe the jeans. Cause like my dad's church was very come as you are. So sometimes people would be in there in sweatsuits and like whatever. And so I was just paying attention to the fashion and then just longing and yearning to wear something that felt more authentically expressive for, for how I felt on the inside. I didn't like wearing

suits my gosh and the older I get the harder it became to wear a suit I was just like I cannot do this anymore like I am not this is not the same me my body is not feeling this my mind isn't feeling this yeah it was it was tough like as a kid though it's all about play and and to T's point finding ways to occupy the time and make fun of

you know, the circumstance that you're in because when you're a kid going to church is boring unless you're in Sunday school or you're in like the kids program with the other kids and then y'all can have like share that camaraderie and be kids and like be messy and all that stuff. But yeah.

Wearing suits definitely did not make me see my body in a positive way. Cause I just, never saw my body as a, I mean even though genetically it's a male body, but I never saw that my body as being the body of a boy or a man.

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Nandi, was there ever a moment for you when something shifted in church and you were like, hey, God's not the problem here. These people are actually the problem.

Oh I never thought necessarily that like God was the problem. I always knew that it was people that was the problem because my

Even though when I was little, my mom played in churches as her side hustle job. We didn't go to a church until I was 10 years old because my mom actually was kind of put out from her home church that she grew up in when she got pregnant with me because she wasn't pregnant. And so my mom had a lot of church hurt.

and always kind of talked about that it was like people, it deeply like scarred her and like how she navigated like new churches. We visited a lot of churches, but I never thought like, like it's definitely like the quote unquote God that's the problem. I actually do think it is the God that they believe in that is the problem because they think they're mirroring what

they're being taught, right? So I do think there is some fault to be laid there with the version of God that people align themselves with, but people are also deeply flawed. And so is the God that they believe in, right? Like the God that these people believe in is deeply flawed like them. It's not a perfect God like they always say that it is. So I never thought it was about, yeah, the God per se.

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I think black people's survival is like divine. think like black creation and imagination and resilience is divine.

Yeah, I think divine is something that's not always like a tangible thing, but sometimes we can see a tangible form of it. But those are the things I really like, resting as divine is like kind of like the ways we find like gifts in life itself and survival and like the lessons that we learn. I kind of find divinity there. Yeah, and relationships, of course. That's like my main thing.

TJ, if you could go back and sit with little TJ, what would you tell them now about God, about spiritual homes? What would you whisper to in their ear?

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Good question.

speaker-0 (19:34.542)
I don't know. I'm like, what would I need to hear? Keep questioning. think keep asking questions is probably what I would say. One of the things I used to also do was write notes to my daddy. I think my daddy probably regrets allowing me to ask as many questions as he did, but I would have notes at the end of his sermon. I'm like, I didn't buy this. This didn't make sense. And then we'll kind of discuss. sometimes, was like, OK, I get it now. I still don't get it.

I think I was always questioning things as a young person. used to be like, well, I've got to amen. So I will always say awomen at the end and like maybe leaning more into it. And then there was a point where I think sometimes doctorine had got heavy, but always leaning back to like that curious person as a child to keep asking questions. So was like, if I was raised,

You know, Muslim, I would think Islam was the way. Like, what do you mean that this is the only way, this is the only truth in Christianity is only by circumstances that I even got here. Yeah. Keep asking questions. I feel like Christians don't like when you ask questions. Yeah. Think my dad regrets it. Should have struck it down. It's one way. Can't be asking questions.

I don't know. I think my dad he, I popped questions and he likes them.

My and my mom My mom is super scholarly with it And my dad is you know He's he's he's chill. He's really chill about it like I'll probe them and they're There cuz they're they my parents specialized more so in street ministry so there there was a little bit more like I guess like lax in their energy

and they would just be ready for whatever someone would come their way with, like, well, why this, why that? And they would just sit there and just, like, engage in a dialogue. I think we did that recently. I was talking to my dad about atheists, about, like, back in December, and it was just, a really chill back-and-forth conversation.

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actually the last time I went to my father's church, he said something that I thought was, I found it transphobic, it was Father's Day, this was 2017, and I said, you know what? I'm never, I mean, he had sent an apology, we had conversations about it, but it's cool. Like, you know, he can grow, he can do whatever he got to do. But guess who would never see me in that particular church again? I probably, my friend had a funeral and I totally...

It wasn't until I was in the parking lot, was like, shit, I gotta go into a church. I don't go into churches. I went to Yvette Flinders Church when I was in, what's name of that place? In Oakland, and I'll be down to go to open churches, it's Sundays I wanna sleep. It's just not part of my-You feel me, it's my day off. Let me chill let me have my weekend

speaker-2 (22:27.64)
Well, I'm constantly lobbying to be your Easter and or Christmas and or Mother's Day minister of music. Let me lead your choirs through one month of rehearsals so that you can have the most hittinest Mother's Day Easter or Christmas service. I will then disappear until the next time, but I, I don't like church and like I, but I

I do love places that have rockin', praise and worship. Now my problem is I cuss and I throw ass while I'm like, clapping and stuff. So I do kinda, I be like, sing bitch, and I forget where I'm at. So I don't go to church like, a lot, but I did go to church last Easter at my daddy's church because their band was rockin'.

Unfortunately, the choir not as rockin', they only really did one good song. So I was like, yeah, this is why I don't come. And yeah, I've been, since Richard Smallwood, I watched that on YouTube. That was like going to church for me. So that was good enough. I do mostly YouTube church and listen in to Spotify, my worship playlist.

Yeah, you know, my parents, they're my homies. We're cool. They have, you know, there was this quote to the, it says something to the effect of when you young, when you're young, you fight for freedom. When you're old, you cry for mercy or something like that. And I've watched my parents kind of grow older together and become these elders and really.

come softer in their thinking not not that it was like so I forgot to mention this earlier when we were talking about being comfortable in the body no one ever directly approached me so like yeah I started consciously growing my hair out in seventh grade when like boys and girls were rocking braid downs so I was like shit they're doing it and they're doing it so let me jump on this bandwagon so I can like

speaker-1 (24:41.19)
live my best girlish life in my head and have hair. So I started growing my hair out in seventh grade and it would be braided and sometimes I would jell it down and mat it down thinking I was like Lil Kim in the Junior Mafia video and players anthem. so eventually the hair got longer and it would usually be braided but then the older I got, I would wear it straight. I would wear it straight.

give me a nice relaxer and I would, would, you know, whatever. But no one ever said anything to me directly, but here and there and every now and then they would press my mom. Someone would say something to my mom. It would be like every couple years or so. And I think she would internalize it and not say anything. And then later on she would be like,

she would say something she'd be like, these people coming up to me in church and you need to stop acting like that. I'm like, um, but the relationship now, like I left when I was, soon as I finished undergrad, like soon as I did that, I was just like, I'm taking my life. My life is my life now. I'm going to do what I want to do when I want to do it.

I started transitioning that year. There was a lot of friction between me and my parents when I started. There was a lot of friction. And the solution was, know what? I'm out. I'ma go do this. This is gonna happen.

It can either happen with or without your support, with or without your love. We can have a relationship or we can not have a relationship. And I bounced. I met a dude off of BGC Live, which is a throwback. Before there was Grindr, there was BGC Live. And Tammy, before all of those, there was BGC Live, which I missed and I prayed that they bring it back one day. anyway, I had connected with a guy who lived in Queens on BGC and he invited me to

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to go and stay with him in New York. So I went to New York and I gave my parents that space and that distance and they felt it. I no longer live there. Y'all can't control, you can't, that friction about what I'm doing.

me taking my life and having the control and power over my life to do what it is I want to do without your permission without your consent without your approval that's mine and so you can either process it from afar and I just go do my thing and y'all do y'all's or we can come together and be in each other's lives and they chose the ladder and so now we're in this really great place it's pretty sweet I love them I'm going to see them in like two weeks and like mommy's sick because my dad's going out of the country for two weeks and my mom's over 70 and she do not

need to be in a house by herself because sometimes she falls. But we're in a really good place and we

I can talk to my parents about a lot of things, they're very understanding. I talk to my mom about a lot of things, because moms want to know. My dad doesn't want to know everything. just wants like the, he wants to know the basics. He doesn't need to know the details. like, I don't know. He doesn't want to know that. Yeah, I know you did some strip club work. But my mom will be like, okay, so what was that experience like and what happened and how were the other, you know, like.

So we're in a really good place now and I'm very thankful because at their core my parents are very loving people and and so with that I've

speaker-1 (28:14.998)
I've seen the good side of Christianity just from watching my parents just be annoyingly kind and gracious and forgiving and good to others even when they backstab them or they do all these things. My parents always live in love and I'm thankful that that applies to their children. As crazy as we are, they still love us. We're in a really, really good place now.

It's awesome that like everybody's found a way to like have a conversation with the divine like outside of like institutional church. And I think that's what I was just trying to bring to this episode because I feel like there's a lot of queer trans people in church and they feel like they're not supposed to like

something's wrong with them and they try to fix themselves.

But also like church wouldn't even be, yeah. And church wouldn't even happen without queer people. That's like something I think about all the time is like, I grew up with so many queer people in church. The first people I, queer people I ever saw were like ministers of music, choir directors. Like those are the first people I ever saw. So like church doesn't have like a chill cold on the divine, you know?

They don't own that.

speaker-0 (29:48.11)
Yeah, I'll also say, I think even now I have so many friends who are queer and trans, who are pastors, who are ministers, who are like, like we don't, they don't actually have to go back to church with regressive theology. I see, you know, traditional churches who are becoming more progressive with their theology and there is always like growth. think like Lady talked about with, with her family and her parents. remember

I was with my mom someplace. we were at the movie and it was like a commercial for Power Rangers. I said, you still think it's demonic? Because we can watch Power Rangers when I was giving the demonic evil. And she's like, I've grown, right? Like give me a space to grow. And I said, yeah, she's not the same person or understanding, you know, what the 90s everything was demonic, right? And now I'm here in like 2000 something else, give people space to grow. Just like churches and the theological spaces are growing in our, but you know, it's important to push folks too.

you

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Alright y'all, that's all I got for today. If this episode dragged you a little bit or hugged you a little bit, please share it with someone you love or that one person you know that really, really needs to hear it.

And if you're black, trans, or genderqueer, and you're listening like, okay, I got something to say too, hit me up. I'm always looking to sit down with more of us for future episodes. You can find me, your non-binary cousin, Sean Dawson, on all platforms at I Am S Dawson. Y'all be safe out there, and I'll catch you on the next episode.