Ladies and gentlemen, and I do mean ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the worst take you'll see all week:
Each and every one of these saints mentioned by this "academic" is looking down and weeping right now.
Also, this view-to-like ratio is the best I've ever seen.
Yes, this was ratio'd into oblivion. But before we get there, let's consider the case written in The Conversation, a magazine that claims to be journalism but with "academic rigor."
The "academic" in this case is Sarah Barringer, a Ph.D. candidate in English from the University of Iowa. "Transmasculine characters" are her specialty and she thinks that several Christian saints fit this mold of transgenderism.
There are at least 34 documented stories of transgender saints' lives from the early centuries of Christianity. Originally appearing in Latin or Greek, several stories of transgender saints made their way into vernacular languages.
The author then goes on to talk about three women who were considered saints and cut their hair to go live in a monastery. She believes that these stories are so important to Christianity and even affirm "transness" as part of the faith.
In the medieval period, saints' lives were less important as history and more important as morality tales. As a morality tale, the audience was not intended to replicate a saint's life, but learn to emulate Christian values. Transitioning between male and female becomes a metaphor for transitioning from pagan to Christian, affluence to poverty, worldliness to spirituality. The Catholic Church opposed cross-dressing in laws, liturgical meetings and other writings. However, Christianity honored the holiness of these transgender saints.
First off, even in her own explanations of the stories she gets it backwards, female to male (in the course of the stories) would be transitioning from pagan to Christian. Not the other way around. But for some reason she reframes it in this paragraph to just assert that transitioning itself, either direction, is "holy."
Apparently Christianity honored the "holiness" of trans people because of a strange interpretation of some saintly stories.
Alright, let's just get to the comments.
I'm calling for a complete and total shutdown of "journalism" and "academia" until we can figure out what the heck is going on with those dorks!
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