Beyond Either/Or: What Trans Wisdom Teaches Us About Becoming Whole

In full disclosure I must tell you that I’m a Unitarian, Buddhist-leaning, lefthanded, SEPTUAGENARIAN, progressive whose main religion is kindness.

I’d like to begin today by sharing a quote by Alok Vaid-Menon, from their book, Beyond the Gender Binary.

“We want a world where boys can feel, girls can lead, and the rest of us can not only exist but thrive. This is not about erasing men and women but rather acknowledging that man and woman are two of many stars in a constellation that do not compete but amplify one another’s shine.”

Unitarian Universalism has always been a tradition that asks not only what we believe, but how we believe. We are a people suspicious of certainty, wary of dogma, and deeply curious about the ways the world might be more whole than we have been taught to see it. Much like Unity, "We honor all spiritual practices and the diversity of paths leading to enlightenment.”

We share the notion that Easter represents the resurrection of hope, love, faith, and life itself within all of us.

So today I want to ask a somewhat radical question that may feel new, or even uncomfortable for some, but that I believe sits right at the heart of our current world’s problems - of which there are many:

What if emerging knowledge of transgender is not just about gender—but about the evolution of human consciousness itself?

Can there be a trans revolution—not merely of bodies and pronouns, but of religion, economics, politics, and race? I believe the answer is yes. And I believe that such a revolution is already underway.

Consider The Violence of Duality: From the moment we are born, we are sorted: Male or female, Saved or damned, Rich or poor, Right or left, Black or white, Us or them.

These binaries promise clarity. They offer order. They reassure us that the

world is manageable if we divide it cleanly enough.

But clarity is not the same as truth. Binary thinking has shaped nearly every system that is now failing us. Capitalism depends on winners and losers. Politics depends on enemies. Religious fundamentalism depends on purity and exclusion. White supremacy depends on rigid racial categories enforced through violence. And patriarchy depends on strict

gender roles policed at the level of the body.

Duality is efficient—but it is also brutal. And it is no accident that those who live between categories—queer people, trans people, bi-racial folks, religious heretics, atheists and cultural border-dwellers—have so often been treated as threats. Because they expose the lie!

As a kid, I was considered a tomboy. I played sports, made forts in the woods, played baseball in the street, had mostly boys for friends, and had no use for my poor mother's wishes that I learned to sew, cook and be a well behaved young lady. I didn't want to be a boy, I just had more fun playing with them.

I remember Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother's house with all the aunts, uncles and cousins in attendance. My mother and my aunts awoke early to help my grandmother, prepare an amazing Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. The men and the kids were out playing in the yard until dinner was served. We all piled in to enjoy this amazing feast . . . which lasted about . . . maybe 10 minutes . . . including dessert, and then all the men left the table to watch the football game, us kids ran outside to have fun while my Grandmother, and my aunts were left to clean up the mess. Here it is important to mention that my mom, my aunts and my grandmother all worked full-time jobs!

It was at that moment, as a precocious 10 year old, that I realized which club I would rather belong to. Twelve years later, I came out as a lesbian. I suspect the major reason for the “choice” was role rejection rather than any biological or traumatic reason.

What Do Trans People Reveal?: The comedian, poet, and activist Alok often says something that unsettles people in the best way. Alok reminds us that gender is not a fact of nature we discovered—it is a system we invented. And systems can be changed.

Alok speaks about how trans bodies are framed as “confusing” or “dangerous,” not because they are inherently so, but because they refuse to obey a worldview that insists everything must be either/or.

In Alok’s words, trans people are not “new.” What is new is the attempt to erase them.

Across cultures and centuries—Two-Spirit people, tomboys, lady boys, sworn virgins, gender-variant mystics—human beings have always lived beyond the binary. What modern Western society did was to narrow the acceptable range of human expression and then punish those who exceeded it.

So transgender is not an anomaly. It is a revelation, and potentially a guide to the resurrection of hope, love, faith and life itself within us all.

Let’s consider gender as a Spiritual Teacher. In my Unitarian tradition, we often say that revelation is ongoing. Truth does not arrive once and for all. It keeps unfolding. An evolution of sorts. What if trans people are part of that unfolding - that next step in our human evolution?

Trans experience teaches us something profound: that identity is not fixed, that embodiment is not destiny, and that authenticity may require transformation.

This is deeply spiritual knowledge. Think about it. Nearly every spiritual tradition speaks of rebirth, metamorphosis, shedding old skins, dying before dying, and some sort of resurrection. Yet when people actually do this with their bodies and their lives, society panics. Why? Because trans people demonstrate that the self is not confined to what can be seen, categorized, or controlled. They show us that becoming is more fundamental than being. And that insight does not stop with gender.

Now, Let’s go Beyond Sexual Duality: Because, If we can release the binary of male and female, what else might loosen its grip? If gender can be a spectrum, a process, a story—what about sexuality? What about desire itself?

Queer and trans communities have already shown us that love does not obey neat categories. That intimacy is creative. That attraction is contextual. That relationships can be shaped by consent rather than tradition. This doesn’t mean chaos. It means choice. It means replacing compulsory norms with intentional ethics.

And once we accept that in our most intimate lives, it becomes harder to justify rigid binaries elsewhere.

Let’s Consider Going Beyond Religious Duality: Religion, too, has been trapped in duality. Believer or heretic, Orthodox or deviant, Sacred or profane. But trans wisdom invites us to see spirituality as a threshold experience—a crossing rather than a wall.

Many trans people speak of transition in spiritual terms: not as rejection of the body, but as deeper inhabitation of it. Not as rebellion against creation, but as collaboration with it. What if God is not found in fixed categories, but in transformation itself - in our own evolution, in a resurrection of spirit that is personally genuine?

What if the sacred is not purity, but authenticity? Unitarians and the Unity church already gesture toward this truth. We affirm pluralism. We honor doubt. We trust experience. Consider that Trans theology doesn’t contradict our faith — or our beliefs, but that it completes it.

Going Beyond Economic Duality: Capitalism thrives on binaries: productive or useless, employed or expendable, wealthy or poor. Hardworking or lazy.

Trans people often fall through these cracks. They are denied jobs, housing, healthcare—not because of lack of ability, but because systems are designed for conformity.

Our comedian/poet, Alok often speaks about how transphobia is intertwined with capitalism: how gender norms discipline workers, how deviation is punished economically, how survival itself becomes politicized!

A trans-informed economic vision would ask different questions:

What if human worth were not tied to productivity?

What if care were valued as much as profit?

What if survival were guaranteed, not earned?

These are not “trans issues.” They are human ones.

Going Beyond Political Duality: Politics today feels like a war between absolutes. Red versus blue. Patriots versus traitors. Progress versus decay.

Trans existence refuses this framing.

Trans people are living evidence that complexity is not weakness. That contradiction can be fertile. That change does not mean betrayal.

A trans-informed politics would move us from domination to negotiation, from purity tests to coalition-building, from fear of difference to curiosity about it.

It would recognize that democracy, like gender, is not a static identity but a living process.

And finally, Beyond Racial Duality. Race, too, is a constructed system enforced through rigid categories. And just as with gender, those who blur the lines—bi-racial folks, immigrants, diasporic communities—are often treated as destabilizing.

There is deep resonance between trans liberation and racial justice. Both challenge the idea that bodies should determine destiny. Both confront the violence of classification. Both insist that identity is lived, not imposed.

Alok speaks powerfully about how colonialism imposed both racial hierarchies and gender binaries simultaneously. To dismantle one without the other is incomplete work. Trans revolution, if it is real, must be intersectional—or it is not a revolution at all.

So—Can There Be a Trans Revolution?

Yes. But not the kind that simply flips who holds power.

Not a revolution that replaces one hierarchy with another.

A trans revolution would be quieter—and more radical.

It would be a revolution and a resurrection - an awakening of how we think.

It would teach us to move beyond either/or toward both/and.

Beyond certainty toward curiosity.

Beyond fear toward relationship.

It would invite us to see difference not as threat, but as information.

And it would ask each of us to examine where we cling to binaries because they make us feel safe.

You do not have to be trans to learn from this wisdom. You only have to be willing to let go of the illusion that the world is simple.

The work before us is not to erase categories entirely, but to hold them lightly, to remember they are tools, not truths.

In a time of polarization, trans people offer us a glimpse of another way to be human—one rooted in becoming rather than policing, in authenticity rather than obedience.

May we have the courage to listen.

May we have the humility to unlearn.

And may we, together, participate in the slow, sacred resurrection of becoming - more - whole.

May it be so.

~Linda Starkweather, shared June 2026