An AI-generated image based on the writing below. Another case (see here and here) of Andrew Sullivan lying about Trans* desire.
Today, I ended my paid subscription to Andrew Sullivan’s The Weekly Dish. I did so because his anti-Trans* click-and rage-baiting is evil.
I. What Pragmatic Liberalism Means for Trans Rights
Politically, I describe myself as a pragmatic liberal. By pragmatic, I generally mean that I think our politics should be attuned to what we human beings can and want to do to make our lives better. When politics refers more narrowly to a campaign to win electoral votes, I think pragmatism means championing progressive values that most Americans support.
That’s very good news! But there is less fortunate news in this same poll.
In a recent clump of words about Trans* desire, Sullivan rightly points out that support for Trans* freedom has narrowed. According to Demsas’s poll, most Americans now support legislation to make use of public restrooms and participation in sports dependent on one’s birth sex and banning safe and reasonable healthcare that supports a minor’s desire to transition from one sex and/or gender to the other.
What this means pragmatically is that the next Democratic nominee for President should focus their campaign on ending discrimination against Trans* people in employment and housing.
Focus is not the same thing as “selling out.”
If Trans* rights and freedoms are important to you, then yes — winning elections is everything. That requires focusing on what the American public is willing to support.
Think about it: Can a Democrat veto legislation limiting the rights of supportive parents of Trans* children if they don’t win enough electoral votes to become President? Obviously, no.
Pragmatism, however, is not always about what is “true.” It is almost always about what works for a person or group of people. And this is where the liberal in my self-description as a pragmatic liberal comes in.
By liberal, I mean, to echo John Rawls, a form of political power based on reason and reasons that may, at least in principle, be accepted by all citizens as justification for a particular action. By reason, Rawls means “public reason” or “political reason,” and such reason excludes metaphysics or other “comprehensive doctrines.”
Religious reason, for example, is, in its own way, reasonable, but it is not a form of public reason. It is not public or political reason, reason all citizens are, in principle, capable of exercising because all the information we need to assess to make the case for some kind of action is not commonly available.
So, a Democratic candidate can make a pragmatic and reasonable case for making it illegal to discriminate against Trans* people in the workplace and in housing. Again, that is very good news!
II. Where Sullivan Gets It Right — and Where I Think He Lies
Sullivan makes a few pragmatic and reasonable points in his post.
As I noted above, support for Trans* freedom has narrowed. Sullivan is absolutely right about that. Sullivan is right about a second thing, too: “the real world keeps intervening.”
“Readers keep telling me to shut up about this topic,” Sullivan writes. “I’ve lost some good friends. . . . [M]y social life has shrunk.” The real world is rejecting Sullivan’s unreasonable, unconscious fantasy of Trans* desire as justification for political action.
The real world is telling Sullivan it is unpersuaded by his fantasy of gay kids being forced to transition by evil, greedy doctors. Furthermore, it rejects the idea that because a majority of Americans support legislation banning Trans* discrimination in the workplace and in housing, Trans* people “already have [those protections].”
The real world, moreover, thinks it is unreasonable to ignore Trans* people. Pace Sullivan: “And so what sacred trans people say they want [Sullivan is opposed to sacralizing minorities, by which he seems to mean taking what minorities want for their own lives seriously] . . . is all that matters” (emphasis original).
What Trans* people are asking their fellow citizens to do is to listen honestly and openly to their testimonies. And it is in this context that Sullivan makes a third good point: some Trans* stories are not pretty.
III. The Fantasy of ‘Mike’ and the Real World
In his recent post, Sullivan describes a tragic figure named “Mike.” “Mike” represents Sullivan’s most potent fantasy: that of Trans* terrorists — doctors, parents, therapists — destroying (“castrating”) the lives of genuinely gay male kids.
My contention is not that “Mike” doesn’t regret transitioning, but rather that his regret does not establish that he was forced into transitioning. Frankly, Sullivan is, on this point, lying to us. There is simply no reasonable evidence that “Mike” was forced into or thoughtlessly and recklessly offered Trans* healthcare.
Surely, some people regret transitioning. I really feel for them. I am interested in hearing the facts of their cases.
Yet their stories do not amount to a reasonable basis for public policy decisions, because they are not representative cases. In fact, it is Sullivan who does “Mike” a great disservice by misleading the public about the facts of his specific case.
Of course, Sullivan is free to live in his own fantasy. But his picture of Trans* desire is simply not politically reasonable. It betrays the evidence that any of us can assess with our eyes and ears, provided that we have eyes to see and ears to hear as citizens.
Unfortunately, Sullivan is committed to the same mind-snapped-shut mentality that he attributes to his opponents.
Speaking of his opponents, Sullivan describes the structure of their brains as “a bunch of synapses.” This may be his way of calling them “bird-brained.” The epithet is rooted in ignorance. Bird brains are, if you will, bunches of synapses, and birds are extremely intelligent.
Close-mindedness, however, is something found in both stupid and smart people.
I think the only thing that will open Sullivan’s mind is another real-world intervention: a significant drop in his paid subscribers. If you have a paid subscription to The Weekly Dish, I humbly ask you to consider unsubscribing. Unsubscribing is even easier than subscribing.
AI generated imaged based on the essay below. Notice the young Andrew Sullivan in the foreground?
Girl: “Are you sure you are not really a girl?
Boy Sullivan: “Of course not.”
Parent: My child knows who they are.
Adult Sullivan: “But do they? . . . I sure didn’t.”
I.
In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Andrew Sullivan contends that the gay rights movement has “radicalized, and lost its way.” Sullivan asserts that the gay movement has abandoned traditional, virtually normal politics (i.e., the defense of marriage equality and the expansion of non-discrimination protections in the workplace and housing for gays, lesbians and trans adults) and adopted a fascistic queer gender ideology—a transgender ideology that disregards the naturalness of the “sex binary” and seeks to impose itself, like a “theology,” on society—and especially on children and teens.
The irony is that Sullivan’s argument perfectly aligns with conservative theological reasoning. Sullivan follows the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, naturalizing a conservative theology of sex while masquerading it as liberal neutrality.
II.
Taking sex as a synonym for gender and vice versa is a hallmark of conservative theological thought. For example, Associate Justice Thomas Alito, writing for the majority inMahmoud v. Taylor, observes that “[m]any Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly” (24).
In queer and gender studies, the term gender ≠biological sex. As David M. Halperin reminds us, “Sex has no history. It is a natural fact, grounded in the functioning of the body and, as such, it lies outside of history and culture” (“Is There a History of Sexuality?,” in the The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, 416 [416-431], emphasis mine).
In contrast to sex, gender (like sexuality) does have a history (although a much longer one than sexuality). It refers to the cultural habits and practices that a society determines make, for example, a male (= sex) a man/masculine (= gender).
Sullivan’s conservative theological sex ideology comes through in his definition of homosexuality. “My sexual orientation,” Sullivan shares, “is based on a biological distinction [= sex] between men and women: I am attracted to the former and not to the latter” (emphasis mine). What this implies is that (homo)sexuality is, for Sullivan, like sex: an entirely biological, neutral fact of the human condition.
Sullivan complains that “[d]issenters from gender ideology are routinely unfriended, shunned and shamed. . . . That’s the extremely intolerant and illiberal atmosphere that now exists in the gay, lesbian, and transgender space” (emphasis mine). If that’s true, it’s unfortunate because Sullivan’s conservative theological sex ideology does have an upshot: it implies that homosexuality “reflects divine creation.”
Like many proto-gay boys, I learned in middle school that having a penis does not necessarily make one a legitimate boy. According to my peers, the way I walked, talked, dressed, and styled my hair all cast doubt on the legitimacy of my penis. Thus, I was a queer, fag, and so on.
My middle school experience amply illustrates an essential point: sex has a gender. Sullivan may insist that sex/sexuality is “a neutral fact of the human condition,” but sex/sexuality is not merely a natural/neutral fact. Sex/sexuality is also an object of human interpretation.
Sullivan and his fellow conservative Catholic/religious friends are all too aware that politics will ultimately determine what sex/sexuality means. Sullivan and company want to end the hermeneutics of sex. They want the last word, and they know the deciding battlefield is the public school system.
III.
Sullivan worries that queer gender ideology is akin to an insurrection, a “societywide revolution” against traditional sex/sexuality norms. He is especially concerned about queer ideology being taught in our public elementary schools.
To Sullivan’s mind, helping children recognize that the relationship of sex to gender and vice versa is wiggly, by allowing them to play with pronouns and their gender comportment in public schools, is to play God. It has the power to resurrect Anita Bryant!
She is risen! She is risen, indeed!
The Supreme Court recently ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents can opt their children out of public school lessons that include books with queer themes, including same-sex marriage, on religious grounds. Consider the mercifully brief sample of Associate Justice Alito’s “legal” reasoning for the majority below (for a complete analysis of the Court’s overreading and misreading of the relevant children’s books, listen to the recent episode of the podcast Strict Scrutiny):
In light of the record before us, we hold that the Board’s introduction of the “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks—combined with its decision to withhold notice to parents and to forbid opt outs—substantially interferes with the religious development of their children and imposes the kind of burden on religious exercise that Yoder found unacceptable.
To understand why, start with the storybooks themselves. Like many books targeted at young children, the books are unmistakably normative. They are clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected. . . .
Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, the only book that the dissent is willing to discuss in any detail, conveys the same message more subtly. The atmosphere is jubilant after Uncle Bobby and his boyfriend announce their engagement. Id., at 286a (“Everyone was smiling and talking and crying and laughing” (emphasis added)). The book’s main character, Chloe, does not share this excitement. “‘I don’t understand!’” she exclaims, “‘Why is Uncle Bobby getting married?’” Id., at 288a. The book is coy about the precise reason for Chloe’s question, but the question is used to tee up a direct message to young readers: “‘Bobby and Jamie love each other,’ said Mummy. ‘When grown-up people love each other that much, sometimes they get married.’” Ibid. The book therefore presents a specific, if subtle, message about marriage. It asserts that two people can get married, regardless of whether they are of the same or the opposite sex, so long as they “‘love each other.’” Ibid. That view is now accepted by a great many Americans, but it is directly contrary to the religious principles that the parents in this case wish to instill in their children. It is significant that this book does not simply refer to same-sex marriage as an existing practice. Instead, it presents acceptance of same-sex marriage as a perspective that should be celebrated. The book’s narrative arc reaches its peak with the actual event of Uncle Bobby’s wedding, which is presented as a joyous event that is met with universal approval. See id., at 300a–305a. And again, there are many Americans who would view the event that way, and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so. But other Americans wish to present a different moral message to their children. And their ability to present that message is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.
Next, consider the messages sent by the storybooks on the subject of sex and gender. Many Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly. Id., at 530a–531a, 538a–540a, 543a, 625a. But the challenged storybooks encourage children to adopt a contrary viewpoint. Intersection Allies presents a transgender child in a sex-ambiguous bathroom and proclaims that “[a] bathroom, like all rooms, should be a safe space.” Id., at 323a. The book also includes a discussion guide that asserts that “at any point in our lives, we can choose to identify with one gender, multiple genders, or neither gender” and asks children “What pronouns fit you best?” Id., at 350a (boldface in original). The book and the accompanying discussion guidance present as a settled matter a hotly contested view of sex and gender that sharply conflicts with the religious beliefs that the parents wish to instill in their children (23-24, unattributed italics mine).
The Court rightly observes that “there are many Americans who would view [the marriage of two men as a joyous occasion], and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so.” What the Court does not recognize is that such a view is not only that of “many Americans,” it is also the nonmetaphysical position of their Government.
If the Court’s majority were at all inclined to affirm the appropriateness of the Government teaching a nonreligious, nonpartisan view of sex in our public schools, it would have concluded the following: There are many Americans who would view the marriage of two males as contrary to their religious beliefs, and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so. However, the Government has no role to play in teaching theological metaphysics. Religious instruction is the obligation of parents of faith and their respective religious institutions.
We are right to worry that the majority opinion in Taylor takes religion from the football field (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District) into the classroom by implicitly questioning the legitimacy of the Government’s nonreligious view of sex. In my opinion, Taylorgoes far beyond protecting religious liberty. It protects the status quo by incentivizing the teaching of traditional, religiously inflected sex ideology in our public schools.
But Sullivan is worried about Big Trans “overhauling the education not only of children with gender dysphoria, but of every other kid as well.”
Sullivan does not mention Mahmoud v. Taylor in his opinion piece for The New York Times. Besides the shared insistence on the naturalness of a conservative theological understanding of sex, one other thread links Sullivan’s essay to the majority opinion in Taylor.
Sullivan, like the majority in Taylor, is expressly concerned about (gay and lesbian) youth being coerced by authority figures, such as teachers and doctors, into believing what he considers to be an unnatural gender ideology.
“As a child, uninterested in playing team sports . . . ,” Sullivan writes, “I was once asked by a girl when I was just 10 years old, ‘Are you sure you are not really a girl?’ Of course not, I replied” (emphasis mine). Nonetheless, Sullivan wants us to believe that he may not have given the same answer to the same question if the questioner had been “someone in authority—a parent or a teacher or a doctor [or a priest?].”
Alito expresses a similar concern in Taylor,
“The books therefore present the same kind of ‘objective danger to the free exercise of religion’ that we identified in Yoder. Id., at 218. That ‘objective danger’ is only exacerbated by the fact that the books will be presented to young children by authority figures in elementary school classrooms. As representatives of the Board have admitted, ‘there is an expectation that teachers use the LGBTQ-Inclusive Books as part of instruction,’ and ‘there will be discussion that ensues.’ App. to Pet. for Cert. 605a, 642a.” (25, emphasis mine).
Among the things Alito thinks coercion means is teachers communicating to young students a nonmetaphysical interpretation of sex, namely that it is not a synonym for gender and vice versa. Alito writes, “The upshot [of how Alito [over]reads Born Ready, written by Jodie Patterson and illustrated by Charnelle Barlow] is that it is hurtful, perhaps even hateful, to hold the view that gender is inextricably bound with biological sex” (25, emphasis mine).
The Court affirms the right of conservative religious parents to direct the public education of their children in Mahmoud v. Taylor. InU.S. v. Skrmetti,a case in which the Court’s majority allows states to ban gender-affirming care (while permitting the same treatments for minors not seeking gender-affirming care), the majority declines to resolve the legal question about the right of parents to direct the healthcare of their (trans) children. In this case, the Court neutralizes the authority of parents who are not (religiously) conservative or religious to care for their children, trusting the (conservative) Government to “parent” them.
IV.
Sullivan goes a step further than the Court’s majority in Skrmetti. Sullivan wants us to believe that no one is looking out for trans kids (except him and his fellow compassionate conservatives, of course). Even the supportive parents of trans children cannot be trusted to direct their healthcare.
Sullivan provides three reasons to remove the power to provide healthcare to children from the hands of their parents:
First, supportive parents trust their children’s testimony. Though young Sullivan was very clear with his female classmate about his sex, he questions whether or not trans children “know who they are.” He even contradicts himself, asserting that during the period between the ages of 9 and 13, he was unsure whether he was a boy or not.
Next, Sullivan argues supportive parents are the cucks of a fascistic queer ideology (i.e., of Big Trans). Specifically, they are illiberal cucks. They do as Big Trans tells them to do (i.e., force our kids to transition) for fear of being canceled—and they cancel others, like Sullivan, who refuse to obey the will of Big Trans.
Finally, Sullivan also believes supportive parents are reactionary cucks of a fascistic queer ideology. Sullivan asserts that if Trump (i.e., an election denier, encourager of insurrection against the U.S. government, Project 2025 supporter, and, according to one judge, a rapist) is for, say, the biological truth of gender,the cucks of a fascistic queer ideology are necessarily, unthinkingly against it.
What critics of the majority’s decision in Skrmetti (e.g., the 5-4 podcast) miss is that Trump’s conservative theological assertion of the “biological truth of gender” is underlying their reasoning.
State laws denying gender-affirming care to a teen male who desires to become a female is not, to the majority, discrimination based on sex. Healthcare providers may not deny gender-affirming treatment to a male because he is male. In many states, they must deny said treatment because he is a male who desires to become a female.
Recall that in Taylor, the Court’s majority similarly empowers parents to affirm a conservative theology, namely that sex and gender are inseparable. The rest of us must live with it—or else.
V.
Sullivan’s opinion piece for the New York Times is gross—and not principally because it is a conservative theological argument. It is also problematic because it is an example of the homophobic literary genre (e.g., queers are victims of queers; conservatives = persecuted; healthcare may be denied to women/queers; states should be allowed to decide the legality of queer life, etc.).
There is one aspect of Sullivan’s anti-trans/queer rhetoric that I find especially problematic: his deployment of the heuristics of fear. Echoing the logic of the late Cardinal Ratzinger (see, e.g., §10), Sullivan wants us to believe that we have only ourselves to blame for violence perpetrated against us as a consequence of our insistence on our difference from the (virtually) normal.
In The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks At Our Political Crisis(2018), a book inspired by Hillary Clinton’s electoral loss to Donald Trump in 2016, Martha C. Nussbaum draws on psychological research to describe two “heuristics” of fear. The first is the “availability heuristic,” and the second is the “cascade heuristic,” which has two aspects: reputational and informational (47-51). These heuristics can function to overwhelm our ability to carefully consider whether or not fear is warranted in a given situation, instead activating our instinctual impulses.
In his opinion piece, Sullivan employs the availability heuristic, creating an immediately recognizable image of imminent, life-threatening danger. He argues that the radicalization of the gay movement by trans/queer ideology is collapsing public support for gay and lesbian civil rights.
Sullivan combines the availability heuristic with thecascade heuristic, motivating people to come together to overcome an imminent, life-threatening danger: trans/queer ideology. If we don’t act, gay and lesbian civil rights, our rights, will be erased—and we will be subject to violent acts (the reputational aspect of the cascade heuristic).
Sullivan also offers us new information. He contends that advocates of trans/queer ideology are essentially raping children, forcing them to transition. Moreover, by forcing trans kids to transition, trans/queer advocates are ending the lives of gay and lesbian kids, as Sullivan believes a lot of trans kids are just confused gay and lesbian kids (the informational aspect of the cascade heuristic)
The heuristics of fear are highly motivating. They compel us to act together to avoid immediate danger.
The problem arises when the fear they amplify is not based on a sober assessment of evidence, facts, data, or our experiences. For example, there are good reasons to avoid the path of a tornado. However, when our fear is unwarranted, as it is in the public’s assessment of trans lives and experiences, it can destabilize democracy.
Unwarranted fear, especially combined with disgust, can destabilize democracy by motivating violence. Trans/queer ideology, Sullivan imagines, inspires “a sane backlash” against trans/queer people—and not only them, but virtually normal gay and lesbian people, too. As many trans people and queer gay men and lesbians already know: the threat of violence for being misaligned with (virtually) normative straight (male) society is not an idle one.
VI.
Queer gay men and lesbians stand in solidarity with their trans comrades (a word I use intentionally to enflame conservative passions) for many reasons, not least of which is our shared experience of the violence of (virtually) normative gendered politics. David M. Halperin observes,
If homophobia sometimes functions less to oppress homosexuals than to police the behavior of heterosexuals and to strong-arm them into keeping one another strictly in line with the requirements of proper sex and gender norms, for fear of appearing queer it may be that one of the functions of transphobia is to police the behavior of lesbians and gay men and to terrorize them into conforming to the gender style deemed appropriate to their respective sexes (How To Be Gay [2012], 307, emphasis mine).
Yet, Sullivan believes that the radicalized gay movement is the real threat to a liberal or reasonably pluralistic society (see John Rawls). He asserts that the ever-expanding alphabet of queer welcome (e.g., L.G.B.T.Q.I.A+), and the new colors added to the pride flag to incarnate it, nowadays “demarcates a place not simply friendly to all types of people . . . but a place where anyone who does not subscribe to intersectional left ideology is unwelcome.”
Youth are the worst offenders of Sullivan’s law of welcome. The “young queer generation” are contemptuous, according to Sullivan, of “those who came before them.”
Dear Andrew,
It’s true. Trans/queer youth and adults don’t want to hang with you.
It’s not us. It’s your habit of villainizing, demeaning, and disparaging our lives and loves.
I don’t doubt that you believe you care about trans/queer youth and adults. However, if you take a moment to listen, you’ll likely gain a better understanding of why hanging out with us just isn’t currently working out for you.
As they say in Chicago, “He only had himself to blame.”
Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett of Pod Save America recently interviewed the inimitable Representative Sarah McBride (D-Delaware). Among McBride’s interesting insights and arguments is the idea that the two major U.S. political parties are gendered. Republicans are gendered masculine (or identified in terms of fatherhood). Democrats are gendered feminine (or identified in terms of motherhood).
Here’s their conversation (if you prefer to watch, jump in at 12:44):
Rep. McBride: I’ve been thinking about how do you fight back against Trump in a smart way . . . because we are so susceptible to sort of this Trump derangement syndrome dynamic. We’ve been screaming about democracy. . . rights and the rule of law for so long—and clearly, this country voted for someone who incited an insurrection. . . .
The Democratic party is the woman of politics and the Republican party is the man of politics. It’s why Donald Trump can scream and yell and people see him as strong—and why when [Democrats] scream and yell we’re seen as hysterical and shrill. It’s why Donald Trump can hate and insult more than half of this country—because we tolerate deadbeat dads, but Democrats can’t say anything about any voters that [impugn] their motives and their good faith—because a mom has to love every single one of her children. So, I’ve been thinking about how do you grapple with that reality that is a real double standard. . . .
Lovett: Let’s test this new way of talking . . . . You’re trying to make people understand how dangerous it is that Donald Trump is coming after basic academic freedom, but you’re worried it’s not going to resonate with people. How do you talk about it?
Rep. McBride: With all of these actions that we’re seeing against immigrants, against institutions, [the Trump Administration is] picking on the most unpopular, the most vulnerable. They’re picking on people who are easy targets. I do think . . . you have to go back to what we were talking about before, which is that if they can do it [to them], they can do it to you . . . . They can do it to my constituents . . . . I think we can do a better job by making the main character [of our story] our constituents.
Changing our political situation requires, McBride claims, recognizing how political party affiliation is gendered. For example, Republicans can get away with being angry, but Democrats must always be empathetic. “[A] mom,” McBride says, “has to love every single one of her children.”
Motherhood is often the object of politics because the public sphere, the sphere of politics, is gendered masculine. The traditional story is that politics is for men; the management of the home is for women. For McBride, motherhood is the subject of political action.
But what is maternal politics, exactly? In her response to Lovett’s question about how to discuss maternal politics in the context of education, McBride attempts to clarify the character of partisan gendered politics. Her answer, namely that the mother protects “easy targets” of public abuse, isn’t specific enough–so it can’t inspire serious Democratic political action.
In what follows, I ask a revised version of Lovett’s question to McBride: How do you talk about maternal politics in the context of early childhood public education? To answer the question well, we need a definition of maternal politics that is specific enough to avoid confusion (e.g., terrorist organizations like Moms for Liberty claim to love all children) and to provoke serious liberal and/or progressive public action. I propose the following definition:
Maternal politics = public action(s) to secure and defend a boy’s rightto become a man who desires like a woman/mother.
Why a boy’s right to desire like a woman/mother? Consider recent oral arguments before the Supreme Court of the United States regarding an opt-out option for religious conservatives who do not want their children exposed to readings that mention/feature same-sex desire in the public school classroom. It was a book about male same-sex marriage that caught the attention of conservative Associate Justice Samuel Alito.
Conservatives are manifestly not as passionate or concerned about a girl’s public education. What they care about is the reproduction of traditional or normative masculinity. Hence their focus on male same-sex desire. Conservatives think that male homosexuality is especially threatening to the future of straight maleness.
I think my definition of maternal politics helps explain the recurring outbursts of straight anxiety about male homosexuality and the “indoctrination” of boys in our public elementary school. Furthermore, the specificity of my definition of maternal politics (one of many possible proposals) allows us to form a more direct and beneficially partisan answer to (the revised version of) Lovett’s question about gender politics and academic freedom in Trump’s U.S.
Here is the take I will explain and defend below: Conservatives have used the public school system to indoctrinate boys, and we have generally failed to resist it because we (unconsciously) agree with the “obvious” meaning of the conservative premise: boys should be boys. Instead, we should reform early childhood public education by securing and defending a boy’s right to desire like a woman/mother.
A traditional public school education entails learning skills, especially (though it is never explicitly acknowledged) the skill (and appreciation) of straight maleness (i.e., normative masculinity). Between the ages of 5 and 6, boys are forced by law to leave the sphere of maternal power (i.e., the home/family) and enter the public school system. It is in the public school classroom that they begin to learn, formally (i.e., curriculum) and informally (i.e., socially), to desire “proper” manhood or straight maleness.
The irony is that the reproduction of “proper” manhood necessarily requires/inspires homoerotic desire. Boys must be motivated to undertake an education in normative masculinity. Thus, they are taught to want men/manhood.
You may argue that what boys are taught is the protocols of normative masculinity rather than to desire adult males–but the foundation of straight logic is that sex, gender, and sexuality are inextricably linked. Male/penis > masculine > heterosexual. In other words, a boy can’t want masculinity without also wanting men.
A second irony: the propagation of masculinity requires a boy to desire like a woman/mother. The transmission of normative masculinity from one generation to the next requires, at least initially, the misalignment of sex, gender, and desire (i.e., male/penis desiring man/masculine). It is at this early stage that normative masculinist logic shows its ass (= its vulnerability).
The vulnerability of normative masculinity is its unnaturalness. In other words, “proper” maleness does not inevitably proceed from being born with a penis. “Proper” maleness must be taught.
The fact that straight maleness is taught is not exactly the problem. The way normative masculinity is taught is the source of its tyranny.“Normal” masculinity is presented uncritically, and it requires uncritical acceptance to be mistaken for normal (i.e., natural) or, as the Trump Administration prefers, for “biological truth.”
Traditionally, this is why the acknowledgment of (male) homosexuality in public schools has been a source of straight panic. It exposes the hole of straight maleness: straight masculinity is not natural. It is optional.
Nowadays, homosexuality is not as often considered inherently opposed to straight masculinity. It’s an interesting development. Today, dudes sucking dick (homie head, brojob, etc.) is just another way for boys to be boys.
Straight ideology is flexible, and gay identity politics is clever. It’s a win-win situation: straight masculinity remains (if not natural) inherently desirable, and male homosexuals are welcome to enjoy its privileges–well, at least if they are good students, willing to learn/embody the protocols of “proper” masculinity.
So, recent arguments before the Supreme Court about readings in public schools that mention same-sex desire may be read as a form of social progress. Before books that acknowledge the reality of happy adult male homosexual relationships (happiness being what I think Justice Alito means by the “subtle” moral message of the book that offends religious conservatives) defiled God’s male children, the biggest threat to the “proper” education of our male children was the gay male English teacher. And before the English teacher became sus, the “gay” male philosopher was considered the corrupter of male youth.
“In a famous passage in The Divine Comedy,” writes David M. Halperin in “Deviant Teaching” (2007, 146-167), Dante represents himself as encountering, in the course of his journey through Hell, the soul of [philosopher] Brunetto Latini . . .” (146). Why did Dante put poor Brunetto in Hell? “His sin is tellingly not named in Canto 15, but other passages in Inferno remove any doubts about its identity. Brunetto is damned for sodomy” (146).
When Dante asks him about his companions in Hell, Brunetto answers that “all were clerks and great men of letters, in the world defined by one [and the] same sin” (148). “Sodomy,” Halperin declares, “is evidently a sin to which literary scholars, critics, and writers (such as Dante himself) are particularly prone” (148).
Halperin, a public university English professor trained as a classicist–and no stranger to controversy–reminds us of “how ancient is the association between teaching and sodomy, between paedagogy and paederasty” (149). “[T]he abolition of any clear or firm distinction between the relation of teacher and student and the relation of lover and beloved is,” Halperin writes, “one of the most notorious consequences of Plato’s metaphysical theory of erotic desire” (149). Teaching “has an extended history of association with deviance and has long figured as a deviant practice” (151).
If gender were a “biological truth,” as the Trump Administration claims it is, then straight anxiety inspired by the fantasy of homosexual indoctrination in public schools would be a genuine absurdity. The reality of old school straight anxiety exposes a glitch in the code of masculinist transmission: gender is a social–not a biological–reality. It must be taught and learned.
For a boy to become a man, he must leave the maternal sphere, the home. He must also leave his father’s side. A boy’s father “is too closely tied to the boy by blood and domesticity . . . so they cannot fully . . . incarnate the cultural ideal of male identity . . . ” (151).
“Every proper boy,” Halperin writes, “has to have at least two daddies” (151, emphasis original). Boys learn to become traditional or “proper” men in the public sphere (e.g., schools, sports teams, etc.).
The glitch in the heteronormative educational regime is further exposed by how it represents the social transmission of masculinity (154-155). Consider how the Sambia of Papua New Guinea ritualize the reproduction of strong warrior men.
Elder males take boys ages 8-9 off into the forest where they are forced to perform oral sex on adolescent males. Halperin observes that the young boys are taught to think of “cock-sucking as a kind of breast-feeding” (155).
Ingesting semen, the boys receive the nourishment they require to grow “into real men who will be strong warriors” (155). They continue to ingest semen until they turn 15, at which point they become “the breast” for younger boys.
Listening to social and religious conservatives today, one would never know that third and fourth grade boys in the U.S. are not being taught to suck cock in public schools. What they are being taught, and in ways not entirely different from how the Sambia “represent to themselves symbolically the means by which they reproduce themselves socially,” is how to become proper Western men (156, emphasis original).
Halperin considers the 1953 Western movie Shane an example of a Western form of masculine transmission. The movie’s focus on the mechanics of masculine reproduction makes it a standout Western (157).
Shane is about how a 9-year-old boy, Joey, is made into a man (i.e., taught how to shoot a gun and fight) by a mysterious stranger, “a gunfighter and a killer” (i.e., a social deviant), a cowboy named Shane (158). Joey’s father cannot teach Joey how to become a man because he is too busy managing and defending the family farm. For obvious reasons, Joey’s mother can’t possibly teach him how to become a man.
Halperin compares Shane to the Holy Ghost. “It is only when Shane’s potent shadow falls across the holy American family that the family succeeds in . . . reproducing masculinity . . . and ensuring its own futurity” (159–for my reading of the Holy Ghost, go here). And “[g]unfighting in Shane is,” Halperin observes, “like cock-sucking among the Sambia: both are cultural practices connected with initiation into the symbolic order of masculinity and heavily laden with phallic meaning” (160).
The relationship between Shane and Joey mirrors the relationship between Shane and Joey’s mother, Marian. It is not sexual, but it is erotic. Marian wants to play with Shane’s pistol, too.
Like his mother, Joey feels some kind of way about Shane. In desiring him, Joey gives Shane the “charismatic power necessary to enable those enamored of him (Joey and male viewers) to accede to manhood by means of identification, emulation, and endless, unfulfilled desire for him” (160).
Moreover, Joey’s desire for Shane is no accident. Like Socrates, Shane has a way with his young male students (160-161). Shane makes his manhood hot to both Marian and Joey (= it’s object a). He inspires Joey (and male viewers) to observe his gunobsessively. Masculinity is transmitted “ocularly” in Shane (162).
In seeing/receiving Shane’s manhood, the male viewers “make the supposedly identity-affirming, gender-consolidating experience of masculine identification coincide, as if nothing could be more normal, with the urgent and inescapable solicitation of homoerotic desire” (162).
Question: Did Shane indoctrinate Joey? Did Shane require Joey to accept his warrior manhood uncritically to begin becoming a “real” man? No. Joey wanted the manhood Shane offered him.
Masculine indoctrination requires boys to accept Shane’s manhood as “biological truth.” In that way, Shane becomes the “proper” man, the kind of man boys must become to be considered real men, the type of man women must desire and whose prerogatives they must support to be identified as pious/conservative/real women.
Shane’s “Republican manhood,” if you will, undoubtedly continues to appeal to women/mothers and their boys. I accept that, and I am prepared to secure and defend a boy’s right to want Shane and to become a man who either desires women/mothers or other men who desire men like Shane.
There is nothing inherently wrong with conservative masculinity. That is, I think, a liberal (if not progressive) position to hold–and it is consistent with McBride’s–and my own–definition of maternal politics. “[A] mom has love every single one of her children.”
Apparently, dads have a choice in the matter.
What I reject is the fascist spirit that often animates a traditional education in straight maleness. Republican manhood is manifestly not appealing to every boy. It is not even appealing to every boy’s parents, and there is no reason to believe it will appeal to all who will enter a boy’s life as an adult male.
Moreover, it is an offense to common sense and reason (and I, as a biblical Christian theologian, think it is an offense to the gospel of Jesus Christ) to enforce, as a matter of (unacknowledged) policy or law, Republican manhood. If “biological truth” requires the enforcement of norms and/or the sword of law, just how biological–or true–is it?
The assertion of the biological truth of gender reveals that social and religious conservatives have, like a God, forgotten themselves:
For with the old Gods things came to an end long ago–and verily they had a good and joyful Gods’ end! Theirs was no mere “twilight” death–that is a lie!
Rather: one day they–laughed themselves to death!
This happened when the most godless words issued from a God himself–the words: “There is one God! Thou shalt have no other God before me!” . . . a God, most jealous, forgot himself thus:
And thereupon all the Gods laughed and rocked their chairs and shouted: “Is just this not Godliness, that there are Gods but no God?”
In a gloss on this passage, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips writes, “God, in Nietzsche’s fabulation, forgot Himself, and even His own name; He thought he was God, THE God, when He was simply one among many others (inner superiority means we are on the wrong track, it means we are too intimidated) (Unforbidden Pleasures [2015], 42).
In another text–but in a similar context–Halperin describes how the “inner superiority” of straight maleness may work out in the context of sexuality and gender, nowadays:
If homophobia sometimes functions less to oppress homosexuals than to police the behavior of heterosexuals and to strong-arm them into keeping one another strictly in line with the requirements of proper sex and gender norms, for fear of appearing queer [remember: declaring “no homo” after receiving, e.g., homie head will protect you from appearing (too) queer] it may be that one of the functions of transphobia is to police the behavior of lesbians and gay men and to terrorize them into conforming to the gender style deemed appropriate to their respective sexes (How To Be Gay [2012], 307, italics mine).
As we discovered earlier, the propagation of straight maleness can accommodate a disconnect between sex and sexuality. Nowadays, being a homosexual doesn’t necessarily make you a sus male (i.e., gaaaaaay).
The chronic misalignment of sex/penis (male) and normative gender style (straight maleness) does, however, remain socially problematic. At some point, one must put childish ways behind them.
At this point, straightness has shown a lot of ass. It concedes that heterosexuality is not natural. No one (bi, lesbian, gay, straight, none) knows what determines one’s sexuality (or lack thereof). It also concedes that straight maleness (i.e., normative masculinity) is not natural: it does not proceed naturally from having a penis. It must be taught (and even enforced).
And given that gender does not proceed naturally from sex or depend on one’s sexuality, it follows that anyone, of whatever sex or sexuality, can, if they so desire, learn a specific gender style. Women can, at least in principle, learn to embody normative masculinity.
What all this means is that the claim of straightness to have no other Gods before it is laughable. But the Gods before it need not laugh themselves to death! Instead, they can get on with baptizing newly persuaded converts.
The epigraph of How To Be Gay, a description of gay male masculinity, or masculinity that is gendered feminine because it is resistant to straight maleness, reads: “Let the pagans beget and the Christians baptize” (see also How To Be Gay, 532-533).
The epigraph of How To Be Gay echoes the central argument of Halperin’s essay, “Deviant Teaching”: The “introduction . . . to [non-sexual methods of instruction in maleness,] to non-standard ways of seeing, to distinctive ethical and aesthetic modes of relating to the surrounding culture, to a unique set of sensibilities, and to dissident ways of reading cultural objects (movies, opera, Broadway musicals, emblems of fashion and styles, embodiments of masculinity) [is] what I have been calling deviant teaching,” and what, in How To be Gay, is called gay male subculture (“Deviant Teaching,” 165).
Gay male subculture, as a deviant form of masculine propagation (i.e., it resists the allure of straight maleness), is similar to straight maleness in that it does not depend on either one’s sex or sexuality. It is a style that anyone who finds persuasive may learn to embody.
Gay maleness is among the gods a boy may reasonably desire. Accordingly, maternal politics entails defending and securing a boy’s right to become a man who desires women/mothers or other men who desire gayness.
As a non-normative gender style, a lifestyle misaligned with one’s sex, gayness is a form of Trans*ness (I use the * to indicate gender nonconformity in addition to sex nonconformity). However, Trans*ness moves us well beyond gender misalignment to sexual misalignment.
In her interview on Pod Save America, McBride addresses one of the challenges of Trans* politics (42 minutes in):
I think one of the challenges that we have in conversations around Trans identities that’s different than conversations around gay rights is that most people who are straight can understand what it feels like to love and to lust –and so they’re able to enter into conversations around sexual orientation with an analogous experience. People who aren’t Trans don’t know what it feels like to be Trans–and for me the closest thing that I can compare it to is a constant feeling of homesickness, just this unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach that would only go away when I could be seen and affirmed and live as myself . . . .
I imagine one reality that Rep. McBride is expressing here is that her body initially provoked a conversation: Is this you? She answered either “No” or “Not exactly.” I am guessing (because I am unfamiliar with the details of her experience) that McBride desired a new alignment of sex and gender–and one made possible by a radically new understanding of sex: sex, like gender, is not a natural fact. Sex is an opportunity for conversation rather than indoctrination.
Although Evangelical men really want women to have penises, male to female Trans* experience constitutes an upheaval of normative thought. It inspires intense—and, unfortunately, intensely irrational—emotions.
The animus directed toward Trans* women is a fruit of the fascist spirit that often underlies the commitment to the reproduction of Republican manhood–and one that more than a few fruits enjoy. We have only to think of Andrew Sullivan.
Sullivan is usually an interesting and nuanced public intellectual, but his screeds against “big trans” are becoming increasingly overdetermined (i.e., inspired by irrational forces). On a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Sullivan comments:
I love the idea that Democrats should get back into building things, into making things happen, into deregulating, into supercharging the economy. I just think that until the Democrats address some of the core issues, they seem not to want to control immigration. They have extremist views about race. They think that boys should compete with girls in sports, and that children should be… have their sex reassigned. Until they grapple with that. . . .
We have not taught civics in this country. They’re too busy learning that America is white supremacist without learning that there are three branches of government. They’re all separate. They’re kept apart so that we can be freer than other countries. Why are we teaching that? We should be teaching that (italics mine).
The claim that Democrats “think . . . that children should be . . . have their sex reassigned” is blatantly false. I am curious, though, about the Levitical themes of Sullivan’s commentary: separation and purity.
Sullivan seems to think biological males should not be separated from their penises–even when they desire to be so separated. In his view, effeminate gay boys are being misled by “big trans” into thinking they are Trans* women rather than gay males. “Big trans,” again in Sullivan’s view, is “transing away the gay.”
The second of Sullivan’s falsehoods, related, I think, to the first, is: “We have not taught civics in this country.” Sullivan seems to believe that “we” have not learned anything about the separation of powers–and too much about the separation of racial groups enforced by those same powers for several centuries.
Is his argument that “we” would become less preoccupied with white supremacy if “we” were taught the philosophy of “separate but equal”? If I am not mistaken, “we” were taught in school that Sullivan’s approach is not unique in history. Hence the focus on white supremacy.
I don’t think it’s uncharitable to read the argument of the unruly forces underlying Sullivan’s Leviticus-like political theology this way: In a good society, penises should remain attached to their original bodies; races, like the branches of the U.S. government (like the sexes?), should be separate but equal.
Maternal politics, at least as I understand it, entirely rejects Sullivan’s (unconscious) definition of a “good” society. Instead, it defends and secures a biological male’s right to discern who they are, really–including a woman/mother who desires women and/or men who desire a new alignment of sex and gender.
Maternal politics, as I understand it, is a form of deviant politics. Securing and defending the right of boys to become (wo)men who desire like women/mothers takes us into scandalous and fraught territory.
How do we talk about maternal politics across a range of issues that are important to our fellow citizens? In other words, how do we make it an electorally desirable politics? If we allow ourselves to have a real conversation about the political body, what is our answer to the question, Is this us?
If maternal politics appeals to us, it could be defined more broadly as taking public action(s) to secure and defend everyone’s right to have complicated conversations about the political body, especially now. Among the lessons Trump has (unknowingly) taught us is that we require a genuine upheaval of political thought.
Mary breastfeeding Jesus, Basilica di Santa Chiara, Napoli, Italy.
I.
I.1
Kiki and Herb encourage us to crucify Jesus. Let’s sing along:1
I.2
“Banging In The Nails” is a compelling performance of a queer critique of religion. The object of Kiki and Herb’s critique is Catholic piety, represented by “the Nazi pope,” the late Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger). What it means to crucify Jesus, to bang in the nails, to put the crown of thorns on his head, and so forth, becomes more apparent in the context of Ratzinger’s legacy.
[T]he proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase (emphasis mine).
In addition to placing the blame of “violent reactions” on homosexuals for insisting on being treated with dignity and respect, Ratzinger also advises us, homosexuals “who seek to follow the Lord,” to carry our crosses:
What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian’s suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ.
Ratzinger wants homosexuals to conspire with Rome and crucify our desires. He believes that murdering same-sex desires is a “fruitful sacrifice.”
Kiki and Herb perform an alternative to Ratzinger’s theology. They crucify Rome’s Jesus instead of same-sex desire.
Crucifying Rome’s Jesus, we free ourselves from the reign of Roman terror on homosexual persons. We free ourselves to take pleasure in our “condition.” We free ourselves to think for ourselves, to think about how it feels like to us to be subjects of same-sex desire. “Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, banging in the nails,” we also potentially free ourselves to think about what we can do with Jesus now, now that we have executed Rome’s Jesus.
1.3
Traditional gay theology is a helpful resource for resurrecting Jesus, for giving Jesus a new, gayer life(style). In “What Is Traditional Gay Theology(, Now)?,” I argue that gay Christian theology is the discipline of recognizing, describing, and unfolding the implications of identifications with devalued femininity (i.e., gay identifications) within the Christianmythos.
The Gospel of Matthew is one source of the Christian mythos. It is in this text that we discover a spirituality of gay identification.
I.4
The reading of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew pursued in this essay is inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 film The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Il vangelo secondo Matteo).2 In the film’s opening scene, Mary’s face confronts us (first image below). She is looking directly at her fiancé, Joseph. For this reading, the significant aspect of this scene is Mary’s simple black head covering.
The black head covering is worn by a group of women witnessing three men entering Jerusalem (second image below). These men have come to search for “the child who has been born the king of the Jews” (Matt 2:1-2).
Jesus, too, is clothed in a simple black head covering. At the end of John’s sermon against the attitudes of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the face of Jesus fills the screen (third image). The style of Jesus’ head covering (fourth image) and the specific presentation of Jesus’ face (see, again, third image), as if he is looking back at Mary, return us to the film’s opening scene, stylistically linking Jesus to Mary and Mary to Jesus.
Pasolini connects Mary and Jesus in the context of Jesus’ baptism, an event in which the Spirit of God is the central figure (3:16-17). Pasolini’s aesthetic inspires curiosity about how Mary, Jesus, and the Spirit are textually intertwined in the Gospel of Matthew.3
I.5
The Greek grammar of Matthew 1 (see below) links Mary and the Spirit to each other and a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival. Ek, ex (ἐχ/ἐξ) mark the spot, if you will.4
Specifically, in Matthew’s gospel, Mary is a figure of the Spiritof God. Matthew defines the Spirit in and through Mary, described in and through a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival.5
Matthew inextricably links Jesus Messiah to the maternal figure, Mary/Spirit (1:16, 18, 20). Jesus Messiah embodies Mary/Spirit, a cunning/rebellious and virtuous/conventional spiritual life within the tradition that privileges the Father in the (his)story of redemption. In Jesus Messiah, gay identification bursts into the world as a messianic practice or politics.
II.
II.1
Matthew is not the obvious choice for those interested in Mary’s significance in Jesus’ life. The Gospel of Luke, far more than Matthew, dwells on Mary’s role in Jesus’ story. Indeed, Luke’s gospel concerns motherhood—and that is the problem.
In The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narrative in the New Testament (2003), the late Theodore Jennings, Jr. observes that, in Luke, there is “an episode particular to itself that undermines the importance of biological motherhood, including, by implication, the role of Mary” (184, emphasis mine). Jennings refers to Luke 11:27-28: “As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that you suckled!’ But [Jesus] said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.’”
Jennings argues that “Luke . . . undermines [Mary’s] role insofar as it is based on biological grounds . . . . Her place in the narrative as one who is honored is not as “mother” but as believer, which corresponds precisely with the intention of Jesus’s saying [elsewhere, namely Luke 8:19-21]” (184-185).
Luke undermines the dignity of (biological) motherhood, recategorizing Mary as a “believer.” Matthew, Jennings argues, undermines the dignity of “human fatherhood,” prohibiting the practice of calling anyone father:
Jesus’ program for his disciples clearly entails the abolition of distinctions among them and thus the abolition of hierarchical relationships. In this connection [Matt 23:8-12], Jesus prohibits calling anyone “father” and thus prohibits the recognition of the claims of paternity and so of authority on the part of any human being, including biological fathers . . . . The saying attributed to Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel clearly undermines human fatherhood . . . (184, emphasis mine).6
Matthew’s critique of (biological) fatherhood is apparent in the gospel’s genealogy (1:1-17). Matthew’s genealogy connects Mary to a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival, a movement within the dominant tradition emphasizing the normative place of the Father in the (his)story of redemption.
II.2
Matthew 1:16 is a significant piece of Matthew’s critique of normative fatherhood/manhood: “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of [ex] whom is Jesus.” The Greek preposition ex in Matthew 1:16 connects Mary to a historic movement of maternal rebellion and survival:
1:3: “Judah the father of Perez and Zerah ek tēs Tamar;
1:5: Salmon the father of Boaz ek tēs Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed ek tēs Ruth;
1:6: “David was the father of Solomon ek tēs tou Uriah.”
The ek of Matthew 1:16 also connects Mary and Jesus, and so links Jesus to a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival. 1:16 begins just like verses 3, 5, and 6, with a male name, in this case, Joseph. However, the typical de egennēsen ton (he begat), followed by the name(s) of his son(s) and then of the mother, does not come after Joseph’s name. Verse 16 does not read like this: Joseph the father of Jesus by Mary. It reads like this: Joseph is the man (or husband) of Mary, of whom is Jesus.
Joseph’s name is followed not by the name of his son(s) but rather by the name of hissocial role relative to Mary. Joseph is Mary’s husband.
The disruption of the typical formula begets unexpected results. Following Mary’s name, the formula proceeds predictably, the main difference being its feminine gendering: Marias ex hēs egennēthē Iēsous (Mary who begat Jesus). Notice that Mary’s name is in the place where we usually find the name of the father. The name of her son, Jesus, follows her name. The feminine hēs makes it clear that Jesus is Mary’s son.
Notice also that the designation Messiah is in the place where we typically find the mother’s name: Marias ex hēs egennēthē Iēsousho legomenos Christos (Mary, who begat Jesus, the one called the Messiah). In this way, Matthew links the messianic role to the maternal role.7
II.3
The maternal role in Matthew 1 is quite scandalous. Matthew 1:18, the first verse of the narrative about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, emphasizes just that point: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from [ek] the Holy Spirit.”
Mary’s pregnancy occurs before she “lived” with Joseph. The genealogy does not shy away from Mary’s erotic rebellion. It amplifies it, literally connecting her to other queer women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah.”
Anna Case-Winters makes several observations in her excellent theological commentary on Matthew that highlight the oddness of the inclusion of women in Matthew’s genealogy:
There is no question that the Gospel of Matthew is written in a patriarchal context and reflects the patriarchal view of the secondary status of women and children . . . . In contrast to the society in which women were largely invisible, in the Gospel of Matthew, women have high visibility both in Jesus’ life and in the ministry of Jesus. . . . The genealogy, though patrilineal, breaks the traditional patriarchal pattern ‘was the father’ with the inclusion of five women in the line. . . . There are other extraordinary things about this genealogy. One of the most striking is the inclusion of the names of women. Luke’s genealogy does not include any women, not even Mary. Including women, as Matthew does, in a genealogy that is traced down through the male line is uncommon.8
In his An Ethic of Queer Sex: Principles and Improvisations (2013), Jennings helpfully situates Mary within a specific queer lineage (esp. 98-101). “In this line of remarkable women (which concludes with Mary),” Jennings observes, “there is a strange priority given to women who are sexually disreputable . . .” (100).
Tamar is one of those “remarkable” and “sexually disreputable” women. She is unwilling to let the men in her life shirk their responsibility to her, even if that means she must play the role of a prostitute (Genesis 38).
Rahab is, like many sex workers, observant and seems to grasp how the upcoming “street skirmish” is going to go. She shrewdly takes sides in the battle, saving her entire family from destruction (Joshua 2:1-22, 6:1-27).
Ruth, furthermore, refuses to abandon another woman for the sake of security in the arms of a man. Moreover, Ruth seduces her kinsman, “brazenly [taking] the sexual initiative in chapter 3” (Ruth 1:16-17; 3).9
Finally, Bathsheba, “Uriah’s wife,” a woman who, like Mary, is erotically tarnished, but, unlike Mary, is punished (by God), nonetheless remains with David and produces another son, Solomon (2 Samuel 11-12). Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder points out that we often forget “Bathsheba’s role in securing the kingdom for her son, Solomon” (see 1 Kings 1:11-31).10
II.4
It is clear why Mary belongs on the same list as a woman like Tamar. She becomes pregnant by untraditional means. However, Tamar, for example, is erotically rebellious, but she is also a conventional woman. She takes bold, untraditional action to safeguard traditionalfamily values.
Mary seems to play no active role in her own story. Her future depends on Joseph’s (good)will. If that is true, then her connection to queer women like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah” is not entirely justified.
Mary’s story requires a queer(er) analysis. To make sense of the connection between Mary and women like Tamar in Matthew’s genealogy, we may interpret the angel’s speech in Joseph’s dream as an expression of Mary’s defiance of Joseph’s will to dismiss her.
III.
III.1
Before dreaming, Joseph concludes that Mary has been disloyal to him. So, he decides to send her away. His resolve to do so discreetly, rather than publicly, earns him the title of “just man” (1:19). Satisfied with his plan, he falls asleep and begins to dream.11
An angel appears in Joseph’s dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their injustices” (Matthew 1:20-21).
There are at least two ways of reading the angel’s speech in Joseph’s dream. We may read the speech literally, supposing it is a divine message delivered to Joseph. One problem with that interpretation of Joseph’s dream is that it deprives Mary of agency. If Mary is a passive recipient of God’s/Jospeh’s will, why is she linked to women who make bold choices in their stories?
We may also read Joseph’s dream psychoanalytically. Reading the dream in a psychoanalytically informed way clarifies the more obvious details of the text, especially Mary’s relationship to a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival. It also aligns Matthew’s witness with Luke’s by giving Mary a voice.
III.2
In his Interpretation of Dreams, Freud observes that “the dream-work cannot create speeches.” According to Freud, the speeches (and conversations) we hear in our dreams “have really been made or heard.”12
Yet, the dream work does a lot with the speeches and conversations we have actually heard. For example, what appears as a single speech in a dream is often an effect of the dream work. The dream work “drags [fragments of speeches] out of their context . . . incorporating some portions and rejecting others. . . often [abandoning] the meaning the words originally had in the dream-thoughts and give[s] them a fresh one.”13
Speeches may undergo editing and even recontextualization in dreams, but the dream does not create them. I want to use the Freudian idea that “whatever stands out markedly in dreams as a speech can be traced back to real speeches which have been spoken or heard by the dreamer” to make sense of the angel’s speech in Joseph’s dream.14
III.3
The angel in Joseph’s dream gives a speech to Joseph. Freud describes speeches in dreams as having an acoustic and a motor aspect.15 The angel meets those criteria, speaking and (dis)appearing in Joseph’s dream. What is not clear is who actually gave the angel’s speech to Joseph.
One possibility is that Joseph gave the speech to himself. In that case, the speech functions in the dream as a reminder of the disturbing object of his desire, namely Mary. Again, the problem with this interpretation is that it deprives Mary of agency.
It is easy to understand why Mary belongs on a list of erotically suspect women, but they are also fierce women. They manifestly do not wait for men to make choices for them.
It is more plausible that Mary gave Joseph the speech he heard in his dream. We may rigorously speculate that the dream work’s redemption of Mary, transforming her into an angelic figure, enables Joseph to listen to what he finds disturbing: Mary’s defiance of his will to dismiss her, discreetly ruin her future, and sabotage the redemptive will of God.16
Mary insists on Joseph’s fidelity, and he ultimately offers it to her (1:24-25). Although, we should not imagine that it was easy for him to change his mind about Mary (and Jesus). Notice that when the Gentile magi arrive to pay homage to the “child who has been born king of the Jews,” they find “the child with Mary his mother” (2:2, 11). Joseph is textually absent at this critical moment in his son’s life.
Joseph’s redemption is the first miracle associated with Jesus’ birth, and his redemption is consequential. Joseph becomes Jesus’ real dad because of Mary and by adoption (not by biology/nature). Jesus becomes a “son of David,” and so he becomes the real “Messiah, son of David, the son of Abraham,” because of Mary and by adoption (1:20).17
III.4
Matthew explicitly links Mary to a tradition of feminine rebellion and survival. Matthew unambiguously identifies Jesus with her (1:16). Thus, Jesus Messiah is of the Marian tradition of feminine dissidence and conventionality and within the dominant tradition privileging the Father in the (his)story of redemption.
Jesus is also of the Spirit (1:18, 20). What is the character of their relationship? The answer to that question is related to the character of Mary’s relationship to the Spirit.
IV.
IV.1
Matthew describes Mary’s baby as “of [ek] the Holy Spirit” (1:18, 19). Some readers may be inclined to heterosexualize the Spirit’s relationship with Mary and credit the Spirit with somehow inseminating her. However, in New Testament literature, the Spirit is associated with the feminine/maternal role. Consider, for example, Romans 8.
IV.2
Paul believes the Spirit dwells in the Roman Christians (8:9). If the Spirit of God dwells in them, then it follows that the Spirit of Christ dwells in them, too. Paul connects the Spirit and Christ in his theology.
In an earlier letter, Second Corinthians, Paul clearly defines the relationship between the Spirit and Christ: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (3:17). “The Lord” refers to Jesus Messiah, to the one who, Paul claims in 3:14, removes the veil that blocks recognition of him as Messiah. Notice that Paul collapses the distinction between the Spirit and Christ: “The Lord is the Spirit.”
Paul makes a similar argument in Romans 8. For Paul, believers are pregnant with a pregnant Spirit. The spiritual life refers to the Spirit’s pregnancy developing within believers. Believers, now pregnant with Spirit/Messiah, “groan inwardly” as Spirit/Messiah grows within them (8:23).
In the interim, between pregnancy and birth, the Spirit parents believers. The Spirit “bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (8:14). The Spirit “helps us in our weakness” (8:26). The Spirit “intercedes” for believers (8:27).
The eschatological hope is for the Spirit to birth Christ within believers. The birth of Christ within believers finally conforms them “to the image of [Christ] . . . the firstborn in a large family” and thereby fully realizes their adoption as children of God (8:29).
For Paul, the Spirit is like Mary. The Spirit is like a woman unnaturally pregnant with Jesus Messiah and a fierce protector, supporter, and teacher of her children.
IV.3
In Matthew, the Spirit is also like Mary. Just as Matthew 1:16 defines Jesus as Mary’s son, so Matthew 3:16-17 explicitly defines Jesus as the Spirit’s son: “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove (hōsei peristeran) and alighting on him. And a voice (hē phōnē) from (ek) heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.'”
Ek appears in 3:17 but does not function here as in Matthew’s genealogy. More important in this context is the voice’s declaration, “This is my son.”
The fact that the voice’s identity is initially unclear strengthens the temptation to read God the Father into this text as the identity of the voice in 3:17. Matthew’s grammar, style, and theology, in addition to themes in biblical literature more broadly, connect the Spirit of God in 3:16 to the voice of 3:17.
The grammar of the Greek text connects the Spirit and the voice. Matthew describes the Spirit’s behavior as dove-like (hōsei peristeran) in 3:16. Dove is gendered feminine in Greek (hē peristera). The voice, hē phōnē, of 3:17 is also gendered feminine.
There is also a stylistic symmetry between 3:16 and 3:17. The Spirit and the voice are from heaven. The voice, like the dove-like Spirit, descends from or comes down from heaven.
The dove-like Spirit calls attention to biblical themes especially relevant to this reading of Matthew, maternal themes like birth and rebirth. The Spirit flying above the waters of Jesus’ baptism is reminiscent of the avian Spirit hovering over the waters of the formless earth at the birth of creation (Genesis 1:2). The dove-like Spirit also reminds us of the flood’s aftermath when Noah sent out a dove to find dry ground to begin rebuilding the earth (8:8-9).18
The dove-like Spirit recalls the circumstances of Jesus’ birth in Luke. The young Jesus is presented before the Lord in the temple in Jerusalem, and his parents sacrifice two doves there (Luke 2:24). Finally, the dove-like Spirit calls to mind the character of Jesus’ reforming messianic politics in Matthew. Jesus overturns “the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves” (21:12, see section VI for 10:16b).
Up to this point, the emphasis in Matthew’s narrative has been on the presence of the dove-like Spirit in Jesus’ life. Jesus is of the Spirit (Matthew 1:18, 20). John the Baptist testifies, “He [i.e., the Messiah] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (3:11; see also 12:18). The Spirit will soon lead Jesus into the wilderness (4:1). God the Father does not explicitly appear in the Gospel of Matthew until 5:16.
Theologically, Matthew does not give God the Father a voice. The Father observes, listens, judges, wills, and saves—but the Spirit does the talking in Matthew (see also Romans 8:26-27, 1 Corinthians 12:3). Communication is the role of the Spirit.19
As Jesus sends his disciples “like sheep into the midst of wolves,” he advises them not to worry about “how you are to speak or what you are to say” (10:16, 19). They will be given the required words, “for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (19).
For all these reasons, we are justified in identifying the voice of 3:17 with the Spirit of 3:16. At Jesus’ baptism, it is the Spirit of God, and not God the Father, who declares, “[Jesus] is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (3:17).20
The Spirit, like Mary, is Jesus’ mother.
IV.4
Does Matthew’s Jesus have two mothers? No, as Matthew makes it impossible to de-link Mary, Jesus, and the Spirit.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is not the Spirit’s son by adoption; he is internal to the Spirit (1:18, 20). Jesus is also not Mary’s son by adoption; he is internal to Mary (1:16). Jesus is not of two wombs.
Jesus is of the maternal figure. He is of Mary/Spirit. She is his at once erotically rebellious and conventional mother.
IV.5
The radical emphasis on the Mother/Son relationship highlights how thoroughgoing is Matthew’s critique of (biological) fatherhood. It raises the question of God the Father’s relationship to Jesus.
One of Freud’s patients reports that his “Nanya” told him that Joseph was “like” a father to Jesus, and God was his “real father.”21 His Nayna is wrong about Joseph and right about God.
God/Joseph is the real Father of Jesus—not naturally, but through (the advocacy of) the Spirit/Mary.22 We typically describe this kind of parent-child bond in terms of adoption.
V.
V.1
Matthew inextricably links Jesus to a non-standard, feminine or maternal politics. Thus, we should expect Jesus’ messianism, aligned in Matthew 1:16 with the maternal role, to swerve to some degree from the dominant culture’s understanding of legitimate messianism. We should expect, that is, Jesus to incarnate a resistant relationship to the culture of normative masculinity also represented in the genealogy—and of which Jesus is, by the advocacy of the Spirit through Joseph by adoption, connected as a “Son of David.”
V.2
The significance of Jesus’ specific messianism is highlighted by Rosemary Radford Ruether. She asks, “Can a male savior save women?”23
Jennings responds to Ruether’s question, arguing that Jesus Messiah is relevant to women because he enters into solidarity with them. Jesus “becomes the one who shares the attributes traditionally associated with women.”24
For Jennings, Jesus shares “the attributes traditionally associated with women” because he represents a third gender. He is androgynous, in some sense male/masculine and female/feminine.
I argue elsewhere that theories of androgyny tend to collapse the distinction between sex and gender. Theories of androgyny tend, that is, to confuse social realities (gender) with biology/genetics (sex), unintentionally naturalizing the normative sex/gender/race/class regime they are attempting to resist.25 Thus, an androgynous Jesus cannot save women.
V.3
Our answer to Ruether’s question builds on the specific character of Jesus’ non-standard messianism, defined in and through his identification with a devalued feminine or maternal figure, namely his mother, Mary/Spirit. She is a maternal figure who is simultaneously rebellious and conventional. Matthew identifies Jesus with her; thus, his messianism is of her: at once dissident and ordinary.
VI.
VI.1
Jesus describes his spirited messianic politics just as he is sending his disciples back into their traditional religious world “like sheep into the midst of wolves.” Jesus authorizes them to drive out “unclean spirits . . . and to cure every disease and every sickness” (10:1, 5, 16).
The success of their mission depends on embodying the proper spiritual logic. The disciples must be like him, like his mother. They must “be wise (phronimoi) as serpents (hoi opheis) and innocent (akeraioi) as doves (hai peristerai)” (10:16b, 17:5).26
Jesus teaches the disciples to be dove-like, virtuous/conventional/socially valuable.27 He also encourages them to be snake-like, clever minds/rebellious/socially disturbing.
The disciples are not to be like Satan, a poisonous snake, a sickening force in the world (Genesis 3:1; Revelation 12:9; Matthew 7:10). They are to be like Jesus, like his mother, like the bronze snake of Numbers 21: they are to rise up and heal the afflicted.28
The bronze snake of Numbers 21 nicely illustrates the harmony of the terms of Jesus’ messianic politics. So do the hai peristerai of Matthew 10:16b.
VI.2
Hē peristera refers to “a bird of the family Columbidae [frequently] glossed as either a pigeon or dove (but the use of the latter term in preference to the former suggests a difference that cannot precisely be determined from usage in our texts). . . .”29
From a scientific standpoint, there is no difference between a dove and a pigeon. However, the (ancient) social meanings of the dove and the pigeon diverge: pigeons represent what is socially insignificant/disturbing, and doves represent what is socially significant/valued.
However, pigeons are like doves. They are simple, peaceful, and often colorful birds. Their cooing sounds are soothing. They are not aggressive or harmful animals.
Pigeons often live near or with humans. The unhoused sleep in, for example, church porticos, parks, and under bridges—the same spaces pigeons typically occupy and make their homes.
The unhoused often seek food in tourist areas and entertainment districts. Pigeons also frequent these zones of local commerce.
Local governments in the U.S. often treat the two populations in identical ways.30 They control pigeons and the unhoused by making it illegal or difficult to feed them, decreasing support for safe housing, spiking various surfaces, blasting loud music or harsh sounds in, for example, the church portico, and chasing them out of public spaces, like parks and popular tourist destinations.
Pigeons are called “flying rats” and “trash animals” for a reason. Pigeons, like the unhoused and snakes, are socially disturbing. Pigeons disturb us because they shit on our secular and religious values, like piety, law and order, wealth, and so on.
VI.3
Jesus shits on the temple in Matthew 21:12-17. “Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves” (21:12).
Jesus disturbs the status quo and liberates the “doves” from the prison of respectability. The reason for the disturbance is simple and innocent. By shiting on respectability, Jesus empowers the “blind and the lame” to enter the temple and be healed by him (21:14).
Like the bronze snake, the pigeon illustrates the equipoise of the terms of Jesus’ messianism. Like the bronze snake lifted up in the desert, the pigeon hovers in the air, a figure of rebellion and survival, a figure of Jesus’ anti-social messianic politics.
VI.4
Women, in particular, find Jesus’ anti-social spirituality appealing. In Matthew, “[m]any women were there [at Jesus’ crucifixion], looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee” (27:55).
At the end of his life, Jesus only has mothers and sisters. Likewise, at the beginning of his resurrected life, only women are present to greet him. Women are the first to preach the resurrection of the dead (Matthew 28:1-10).
Jesus’ female disciples answer Ruether’s question about the relevance of a male savior for women. Jesus can save women because while he is a male, his messianism is not essentially about males. His messianism is a queer form of masculinity (gendered feminine because it is departs from normative masculinity), rebellious and conventional, and anyone who finds it persuasive may adopt it as their lifestyle.
It was with the birth of the hegemonic Catholic Church . . . that seems finally to have precipitated the consolidation of rabbinic Judaism as Jewish orthodoxy, with all its rivals, including the so-called Jewish Christianities, apparently largely vanquished. It was then that Judaism and Christianity finally emerged from the womb as genuinely independent children of Rebecca. As Rosemary Radford Ruether put it a quarter of a century ago, “the fourth century is the first century for Christianity and Judaism” (6).31
It was not until the fourth century and the rise of the power of “the orthodox Church and the Rabbis to declare people heretics” that the two children of Rebecca, intertwined siblings in her womb, emerged as two distinct religions (15, see Genesis 25:21-34).
Boyarin observes that while there were differences between the two as early as the second-century (Matthew was written written sometime between 70-107 CE), “the border between [them] was so fuzzy that one could hardly say precisely at what point one stopped and the other began” (11, emphasis mine). Differences between “rabbinic and Christian Judaism” begin to emerge and harden in response to the experience of martyrdom, specifically to the question of whether to avoid or seek death for the sake of one’s faith. Tricksters and martyrs are the main characters of this drama.
VII.2
Tricksters represent attempts to escape martyrdom through cunning or wit. They are explicitly gendered feminine. Martyrs represent a spirit of “manfully provoking death” (52). Theirs is considered a virtuous response to martyrdom. Martyrs are explicitly gendered masculine (48ff).
The gendering of tricksters and martyrs potentially expresses a broader cultural dynamic between the victorious Romans and the subjugated Greeks. The gendering of cunning as feminine and virtue as masculine may demonstrate “the Greek tradition of cunning, metis, as a value, versus the Roman supreme value of virtus is at play here” (63-64). In patristic sources, for example, Clement (i.e., Greece) represents the trickster option, while Tertullian (i.e., Rome) represents the martyr option.
Both rabbinic and patristic sources initially keep the options open; they do not, that is, conclude that one response to martyrdom is better than the other. However, as the debate unfolds, “Christian textuality seems bound to answer the question,” baptizing, if you will, the martyr (i.e., Roman) option (66, emphasis mine).
VII.3
At first glance, it would appear that “Christian textuality” means siding with Rome, with Empire/dominant masculinity. However, the ideal martyr, for both Jews and Christians, was defined in and through femininity, specifically through the virgin female.
It is in and through female virginity that the Rabbis and Fathers construct a dissident masculinity. They imagine Rome as a rapacious or lusty male (as feminine because, in the ancient world, women are thought to be susceptible to all sorts of pleasures). In identifying with the female virgin, the Rabbis and Fathers are disidentifying with Roman “masculinity.”
Boyarin observes that male Christian writers are often former, influential Roman “pagans” (79-80). They have power, prestige, and wealth they are willing to give up to become and remain Christians. The female virgin enables male Christians to reframe their defiant femininity as virtuous masculinity. Giving up their life is an assertion of their masculinity, the means by which they preserve their virginity (i.e., faithfulness).
For the Rabbis, Rome has a double meaning. It signifies pagan Romans and Christians. Rome is both a religious heresy and a secular power, two whores tempting Jews to abandon their virginity (i.e., faith). The female virgin enables male Jews to reframe their defiant femininity as virtuous masculinity, just as she did for male Christians. In resisting Romans and Christians, they preserve their virginity (i.e., faithfulness) in the brothel.
VII.4
The Rabbis and Fathers construct their dissident masculinity by using a definition of female as feminine. The virgin martyr is the ideal female (i.e., a dead/voiceless woman).
The male categorization of females as virgins plays out in different ways for Christian women and Jewish women. The virginity of Christian women is flexible; it can be expressed by abstaining from sex or by entering into marriage.
Whereas the Rabbis left the question of how to live faithfully in an ethos hostile to queer faith open, rabbinic textuality decides the question of virginity. Jewish women cannot die virgins. Their virginity is for their husbands.
There is no escape from (Roman-like) male domination for either Jewish or Christian women. Christian women can, however, choose to abstain from family life. There is no such freedom for Jewish women, as the Rabbis were more in agreement with Rome regarding the importance of the biological family.
Identification with female/femininity/virginity enables the Rabbis and Fathers to construct a dissident, anti-Roman male/masculinity. However, the Rabbis and Fathers purchase their valorization at the expense of actual women, leaving women with little to no freedom to decide for themselves how to live faithfully in a world hostile to queer faith and to women (of faith) in particular.
Boyarin’s rigorous textual/historical description/grounding of Reuther’s provocation allows us to retranslate the meaning of Jewish and Christian difference in terms of gender: it is the difference between two, non-standard males/masculinities built upon the ideal female as virgin, both of which subjugate women.
VII.5
Matthew’s gospel is part of this rabbinic and (Jewish) Christian tradition, which defines how to live faithfully in a world hostile to queer faith. Like the Rabbis, Matthew does not take sides on “martyrdom.” Matthew’s Jesus teaches his disciples to avoid persecution: “When they persecute you in one town, flee [pheugō] to the next . . . ” (Matthew 10:23). Matthew’s Jesus also demands that they “take up the cross and follow” him (10:38).
Matthew’s gospel does not take sides in the broader cultural debate. It does not choose between Greek and Roman values, between cunning and virtue. The messianism of Matthew’s Jesus recombines them, describing faithful living in a hostile environment in terms of cunning and virtue, trickster and martyr, snake and dove.
VII.6
Like the Rabbis and Fathers, Matthew builds an anti-phallic, anti-Roman, or counter-masculinity in and through the virgin. However, Matthew’s virgin differs in two significant ways from that of the Rabbis and Fathers.
Unlike the Rabbis and Fathers, Matthew describes a dissident masculinity in and through the virgin maternal figure. Matthew defines the gender-neutral Spirit in and through Mary. Matthew describes Mary in and through a tradition/lifestyle of erotic maternal virginity.
Matthew’s maternal figure, Mary/Spirit, may refer to actual women, but it is not essentially about women. By defining dissident masculinity in and through the virgin maternal figure, Matthew avoids circumscribing bodies and pleasures. Matthew does not tell us in advance what bodies and pleasures are of Jesus, of Mary/Spirit.
Matthew defines Mary/Spirit’s virginity by linking her to women who are manifestly not virgins; they are all mothers by unconventional means. This makes perfect sense of Mary’s virginity if she is a figure of the Spirit. Matthew emphasizes rebellious sexual desire as a characteristic of the Mary/Spirit by making the point that Mary/Spirit’s son is not a product of male agency/power/rule.
Matthew is especially clear that biology/nature cannot save us (Matthew 3:7-10, 19:10-12).32 In the (Jewish) Christian imagination, Jesus Messiah’s birth is the only birth of ultimate significance to us.
Jesus is internal to Mary/Spirit. She is responsible for birthing him in us, fully realizing our adoption as children of God.
The displacement of salvific pregnancy onto the figure of Spirit/Mary frees women and men to decide for themselves what their bodies are for now that they are pregnant with Jesus by the Holy Spirit. It frees spirited women and men for pleasure, including sexual pleasure, because the body is no longer reducible to a temple/economy/piety of biological/natural reproduction.
The freedom to faithfully choose what to do with their bodies may account for why ancient women found Jesus’ messianic masculinity to be lifesaving. It may account for why women continue to follow Jesus today.
Unlike the Rabbis and Fathers, Matthew crucifies Rome’s Jesus instead of desire for a pleasurable faith and faithful pleasures. The Mary/Spirit is Matthew’s hammer. By singing along with Matthew, we potentially rise to new life, reorienting our relationships to one another, male and female, and to the world.
VII.7
In Matthew’s gospel, Mary is a figure of the Spirit, and Jesus Messiah is of her, of a tradition of maternal rebellion and conventionality, snake-like cunning and dove-like virtue, queer reproductivity and virginity. Our description of the Spirit in Matthew avoids the problems related to trinitarian definition/personhood outlined by Linn Marie Tonstad in God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude (2017), and it clarifies what it means for us to believe in Jesus today.33
Matthew prioritizes the Spirit/Son relationship, thereby deprioritizing the overtermined relationship between Father/Son. In prioritizing the Spirit/Son relationship, Matthew does not overpersonalize either the Spirit or the Son, creating a new disciplinary identity of womanhood, motherhood, or humanity. The Spirit is a feminine figure, a proxy identity for dissident or queer masculinity. Jesus Messiah is the embodiment of her in the world of Roman masculinity.
In prioritizing the Spirit/Son relationship, Matthew does not “castrate” the Father/Son relationship, creating a “vagina dentata.” Mary/Spirit is not an anti-male or anti-masculine woman. She is a rebellious and conventional figure of queer masculinity that anyone who finds it persuasive may embody.
Finally, Matthew does not, as Tonstad does, abstract the Spirit. The Spirit is defined in and through a specificsocial struggle for dignity and survival, and so it is defined in the terms of that struggle, in the gendered terms that organize life in the (ancient) world. The Spirit is a figure of resistance to Roman male domination, whether secular or religious.
If we are of Jesus, Mary/Spirit is our mother, too. We are pregnant with her and groan inwardly as she gives birth to Jesus in us. Our hope is to fully realize our adoption as the children of God by being like Jesus, the incarnation of Mary/Spirit in the world, the desecration of Roman orthodoxy.
NOTES:
This essay is a reconceived version of my final dissertation chapter, “Messianic Politics.” I thank David M. Halperin for sharing with me the recording of Kiki and Herb performing “Banging In The Nails.” It was recorded by an unnamed source. ↩︎
Pasolini was a gay man. He was also interested in Saint Paul. See hisSaint Paul: A Screen Play, trans. Elizabeth Castelli (2014 [1977]). ↩︎
I do not pursue Pasolini’s “reading” of Jesus further because I focus on building my own based on Matthew’s text. ↩︎
I do not mean that a person named Matthew wrote the gospel under that name. I have chosen this convention for the sake of clarity and convenience. Citations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted. ↩︎
Jennings qualifies Matthew’s critique of fatherhood. It is, more specifically, a critique of human fatherhood. See note 16 below. ↩︎
Ek/ex is a common preposition in Matthew (e.g., 2:6, 3:9, 3:16, 5:37), yet it functions uniquely in Matthew 1. Here, its usage attunes us to a particular lineage, connecting queer women, to Mary, to the Spirit, to Jesus. Ek/ex in Matthew 1 prepares us to read the Gospel for this scandalous memory. It teaches us to be on the lookout for other kinds of queer feminine connections in Matthew’s gospel. ↩︎
A very different, compressed version of II.4 was originally published in my essay, “‘Saint Hillary.’ On Unserious Activism,” in Taking It to the Streets: Public Theologies of Activism and Resistance, ed. Jennifer Baldwin (New York: Lexington Books, 2019): 101-113. See, esp., 106-107. ↩︎
Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953-1974), 418, emphasis is original. All citations of Freud’s work below are from the Standard Edition. ↩︎
In Greek, angel (ho angelos) is gendered masculine. My interpretation fits this detail, as Matthew resituates Mary in the father’s/man’s place. This is a reasonable reading because grammatical conventions do not describe what we more commonly understand as sex and/or gender (comportment). In other words, the fact that the word angel is gendered masculine in Greek does not necessarily mean that the angel character is imagined as male/having a penis. Textual context always determines what is (im)possible for one’s reading of it. ↩︎
This is consistent with the message of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:7-10). Moreover, as one of Freud’s patients understood, an emphasis on motherhood is a critique of fatherhood as such. In From the History of An Infantile Neurosis, Freud observes that his patient’s “sexual researches . . . gained something from what he was told about the sacred story . . . . He now heard that Mary was called the Mother of God . . . . [A]s a result of what he was told, he was bewildered as to who Christ’s father really was. He was inclined to think Joseph. . .but his Nanya said that Joseph was only ‘like’ a father and that his real father was God . . . . He understood this much: if the question was one that could be argued about at all, then the relation between father and son could not be such an intimate one as he had always imagined it to be” (65, emphasis mine). ↩︎
Freud often comments on the connection of water to birth. For example, in the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud observes: “Birth is almost invariably represented [in dreams] by something which has a connection to water: one either falls into water or climbs out of it, one rescues someone from water or is rescued by someone—that is to say, the relation is of mother to child” (153, emphasis original). Freud further argues that the dreamer does not know this because they know that “all terrestrial animals” evolved from “aquatic creatures” or because they know that they started out in “amniotic fluid,” but rather because they have been taught the myth of the stork (160). “He is told in his nursery that the stork brings babies . . . from the water” (160). The stork myth (i.e., an adult lie) is problematic because it “contributes much to making children feel lonely and to developing their independence” (318). In The Future of An Illusion, Freud extends his analysis to the sphere of religion: “The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new-born babies are brought by the stork. . . . We have been convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth . . . and not to withhold from [children] a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level” (44-45). Religious doctrine and the stork are weirdly intertwined here because of what is at stake in the so-called innocent lies adults tell their children about sexuality. Soon, the child discovers the role of the father in their birth, traumatically disrupting their seamless relationship with their first love, the mother. They are now dependent on their rival, the father, for protection: “The father himself constitutes a danger for the child, perhaps because of his its earlier relationship with its mother. Thus it fears him no less than it longs for and admires him. . . .The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult’s reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge—a reaction that is precisely the formation of religion” (24, emphasis original). Matthew’s emphasis on the Mother/Son relationship may also turn out to be a critique of religion. The ritual of baptism, for example, may teach us to take the Father/Son relationship less seriously. ↩︎
This is further justification for aligning the angel with the Spirit/Mary. See note 14 above. ↩︎
A voice “from the cloud” repeats this declaration at Jesus’ transfiguration, adding the command, “Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5). See VI.1. ↩︎
Lyrics from Taylor Swift’s song, “Marjorie”, perfectly translate 10:16b: “Never be so kind / You forget to be clever / Never be so clever / You forget to be kind.” ↩︎
In Gustave Flaubert’s tale, A Simple Heart ([1877] 2005), Félicité is self-effacing, long-suffering, dutiful, and so forth (i.e., a simple heart). Her parrot, Loulou, becomes the love of her life. Upon Loulou’s death, she has him stuffed, and she installs him in her room. “When she went to church, she would sit gazing at the picture of the Holy Spirit and it struck her that it looked rather like her parrott. The resemblance was even more striking in an Epinal colour print depicting Our Lord’s baptism. The dove had wings of crimson and a body of emerald-green and it looked for all the world like Loulou” (34-35). ↩︎
See “hē peristera” in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Fredrick William Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000), emphasis mine. ↩︎
Matthew 19:10-12 is a unique saying about eunuchs, connected to Isaiah 56:4-7. See Jennings, The Man Jesus Loved, 105-154, for commentary on this unique saying. ↩︎
A sermon based on the Gospel of John 19:25-29 (FYI: the word “home” is NOT in the Greek text):
*
As Jesus is dying on the cross, the disciple he loves—the boy he loves—the one, we are told, who is responsible for the Gospel of John, is on his mind. In the final moments of Jesus’ life, his beloved’s future is his ultimate concern.
We don’t know the identity of the man Jesus loved, but what we do know is that he is the only disciple Jesus is explicitly said to have loved.
We also know that he is the kind of guy who prefers the company of women. He is with the women at the foot of the cross.
We know too that the relationship between Jesus and this man is one characterized by physical and emotional intimacy. And their intimate connection is no more pronounced—or obvious—than it is in this moment, in the final moments of Jesus’ life.
As he is dying on the cross, Jesus no doubt feels like a motherless child: ripped from the circle of maternal security, cursed and abandoned to the whims of colonizers. Maybe he is even second guessing himself. Why could he not just be normal, act like every other king? In his moment of despair, doubt, questioning—Jesus is concerned that his man learns the lessons that will ultimately result in his resurrection.
Jesus makes sure that the man he loves is adopted by the maternal figure. Jesus declares, “Woman, here is your son.” To his beloved he says, “Here is your mother.” The text tells us that Jesus’ beloved “from that hour took her into his own.” In other words, the man Jesus loved accepted being placed under the exclusive care of the one the narrator calls Jesus’ “mother,” the one Jesus calls simply “woman.”
This text—indeed, the Gospel of John—clearly reveals Jesus as a lover of another man, as one who is concerned in his final hour with the well-being of his boyfriend. Here at the end of Jesus’ life, we are once again reminded that Jesus is not like all the other boys, like all the other rulers and kings. We are reminded that Jesus is a “mama’s boy,” more like a queen than a king.
And that is what the Romans were getting at when they plastered, in the languages of both the colonized and the colonizer, “King of the Jews” above the crucified Jesus’ head. They were calling Jesus the F-word, the 6 letter homophobic slur. The message of Rome is clear: the cross is where not being like all the other boys, not being like all the other kings and rulers, the cross is where being queer will get you; the cross is where being a mama’s boy will get you.
Not much has changed. Consider how we are taught to think about a boy’s secure attachment to his mother.
There is a tradition that is made up of the writings of primarily white psychologists talking about white boys and their relationship to their mothers. Their fear is that a white boy left under the care of his mother will become chronically effeminate, a hopelessly effeminate boy, a monstrosity, one who lacks a positive masculine self-regard.
There is also a tradition of primarily white scholars talking about African American boys and their relationship to their mothers. In this tradition, the dangers multiply: African American boys cared for by their mothers become incapable men—not only gender deviant but also unable to take care of themselves and their families economically, and so end up in jail.
These are the white lies we are told about our secure attachments to the maternal—and their power should not be underestimated. They clearly tell us that if we are mama’s boys, we will be defined as monsters, demons, Satan himself. They teach us that our particular lives and loves are hellish and evil, cursed, and that we will be treated accordingly. Hell is for queers.
But as Lil Nas X has shown us, hell is not such a bad place—especially if you’re the King of it.
In his now in/famous music video, Lil Nas X, judged and condemned, descends—in fact, he slides down a stripper pole, into hell. He feigns interest in Satan before ultimately wringing Satan’s neck.
Lil Nas dethrones Satan and becomes the king of hell, Satan himself. Lil Nas X becomes what Rome said he should fear: the face of damnation itself.
In his music video, Lil Nas fully embraces what Rome names as a hellish lifestyle. He quite literally puts himself in Satan’s shoes. This is his liberation, his resurrection.
Lil Nas X perfectly understands his situation. He knows that he is not really a hellish creature. But he also knows that that is how Rome sees him—really.
And not just him. You will recall that when Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who killed Michael Brown, testified before a grand jury, he described the young African American man he killed this way: “It looks like a demon.”
Lil Nas X understands his situation. Like Jesus, he descends into hell, and he embraces fully what Rome condemns, tortures, and murders. In fact, Lil Nas X and Jesus may have learned this from their mothers.
As Hortense J. Spiller argues in her now classic essay, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” speaking specifically of the symbolic situation faced by African American women, an African American mother may “[actually claim] the monstrosity . . . which her culture imposes in blindness, . . . might rewrite after all a radically different text for a female empowerment.”
Hellish creatures: that is what we are to Rome, that is how Rome sees all of us who dare to defy its laws in the name of Justice. Why not claim it? We know the truth; we know the Gospel, that “now, apart from the law, Justice is revealed.”
But where we see Jesus, where we see Justice, Rome sees Satan.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Michael Brown is a child of God.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Lil Nas X is a preacher of the Gospel.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Jesus is the Messiah.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Jesus is the Word of God.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Jesus is our Salvation.
What Rome thinks is foolish, we know as the wisdom of God.
To those of us being saved, Jesus Messiah is the wisdom of God. Jesus Messiah is the way, the truth, and the life.
And what he wanted for the man he loved is a secure attachment to the maternal figure. That is what he wants for all of us who love him: that we may be(come) what Rome fears most, the desecration of its power over us.
