I just spent a wonderful week with my niece in Rome, where I had been maybe 30 years ago “in a previous incarnation,” and surely we ended up entering a couple of churches where we were told to either cover ourselves or discover ourselves according to the guard’s gender assessment of us. It made my niece nervous to enter, as if she had to pass a test. As for myself, they presumed I was male and requested a removal of my cap, which is the easiest sun protection to travel with, but it demonstrated to me that these rules were no different than the head and body covering rules of other religions that some people (especially Catholics) are quick to judge as wrong. In fact, entering the basilica at St Peter’s (the Vatican), they had a barrage of men scanning the visitors and running to confront offenders, in a manner reminding me of the Taliban. Okay, they didn’t have guns and didn’t threaten to kill or torture people, but they were rude, and masculine. The nuns we saw seemed unhappy, as if they had been asked to wash the floors for these men (maybe they had been).
Anyway, I vaguely remember, having been raised catholic, that these were supposedly personal rules of respect for the god that was in there, but they became rules of the society that attended church. In that respect, I’m sure it’s the same with other religions, and if you’re a guest anywhere, you abide with their requests such as taking your shoes off when you enter… But at a catholic church, the rules are different according to your sex (and one of the assigned genders), so if you’re somewhere on the trans spectrum, expect to be judged on appearances.
So much for the Vatican, we were both confirming that this institution didn’t need us. But a few days after I was back home, some press release from the Vatican came out to tell everyone how they didn’t approve of gender fluidity, which they seemed to confuse with sexuality, and even marriage. Everything in the same strictly binary concept of the family they’ve been peddling since… I should research that, but so many have who had an interest in it, I don’t think it’s always been so strict with these rules. Of course, they hardly changed anything over the centuries, while civil society has. Even the parallel patriarchal structure of the military had to change (I still disagree that only cisgendered women can wear a skirt, and they’re given a different hat). But while floating along the incessant flow of tourists in the Vatican museum, I saw a reference to the birth of the concept of the virginity of Mary being invented by a pope not too long ago, something like the 19th century, not surprisingly, Victorian times when all things male were starting to be challenged.
Anyway, I was triggered (as we now say) by the catholic church’s reaffirmation of their strict belief-based rules that there shall be no gender fluidity, because that is exactly the kind of ideas the priests put in my mother’s head. Were she alive today, she would remind me I’ve been having bad influences, and the priest told her to tell me. I recently got rid of my lifelong self-destructive ideas by figuring out that my mom was a bad influence, and she failed to act out of love. Once I figured that out, and now that I consider myself as a person and not an anomaly, statements like those of the catholic church reinforce my understanding that they are just trying to preserve their institution by keeping their people ignorant. To me that means they should not be given any attention, and especially the people as represented by their governments shouldn’t give churches charitable statuses unless they are truly inclusive and charitable.
That was on top of my mind these days, blurring my thoughts. I had wanted to ignore the church, but the church made its way to my newsfeed to insult me, so remaining silent wasn’t a good choice.
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