In his editor’s letter for the October special issue, Brett Krutzsch writes of the proliferation of anti-trans bills in recent years and the dedication of the Revealer to illuminating the stories of transgender Americans.
The special issue thus begins with Katrina Thompson’s “Breaking Down Gender Binaries, Building Muslim Community,” where she profiles transgender and nonbinary Muslims who have built trans and queer-inclusive Muslim spaces in the United States and Canada.
Next, in “Many Paths to Freedom: Trans Buddhism in the United States,” Ray Buckner explores how transgender Buddhist teachers are transforming Buddhist practices by taking trans people’s existence as their starting point for new insights on Buddhist teachings.
Then, in “Virtual Communities are Critical Lifelines for Transgender Sikhs,” Harmeet Kamboj investigates how trans and nonbinary Sikhs have used social media to form communities that offer important connections and opportunities to reassess Sikh teachings about gender.
The next two articles in our special issue toggle between the present and the past to show how people have lived outside of the gender binary for centuries. In “Two-Spirit Indigenous Peoples Building on Legacies of Gender Variance,” Abel Gomez writes about Two-Spirit Native Americans and First Nations peoples and how, prior to European colonialism, many indigenous nations revered those who were neither male nor female.
Then, in “Turning to the Talmud to Find Gender Diversity that Speaks to Today,” Max Strassfeld shares how the rabbis of the Talmud, writing during the first six centuries of the common era, identified eight gender categories and codified those gender possibilities within Jewish law.
Our final two articles focus on today’s anti-trans politics. In “Beloved Children and Holy Resistance,” Justin Sabia-Tanis shares what Christians and other religious people should do to support transgender equality.
Then, in “For We Were Strangers: Trans Refugees and Moral Panics” Gillian Frank considers how legislation that targets transgender teens mirrors some earlier anti-gay and anti-abortion legislation, in turn offering a roadmap on how to respond to this wave of anti-trans bills.
The issue also features the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “Gender Diversity in Islam and Judaism.” Katrina Thompson joins us to discuss how transgender and nonbinary Muslims are creating supportive spaces for trans and queer Muslims. And Max Strassfeld joins us to chat about the rabbis’ eight gender categories in the Talmud and what their awareness of bodily gendered diversity can tell us about transgender politics today. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
