As a Woman

When you stumble on a subject you know little about it is always reassuring to have the input of experts, especially if two or more speak consistently with informed voices. The subject of Paula Stone Williams’ book As a Woman, is one that more than 99% of people cannot claim to “know about” from direct emotional or spiritual experience, because, we learn, the transgender population makes up only about 0.5% of humanity. I speak of two experts because after meeting Paula and reading her book I was reminded of Jan Morris, whose writing I much admire, and I decided to reread her classic book Conundrum. So, as explicit in Paula’s subtitle the subject is her gender transition from Paul to Paula at age 60. Jan Morris made the transition in her 40s. Philosophically, I tend towards the paradoxical view that as humans we all simultaneously share similar and different perspectives on life and experience. I think it fair to say that Jan and Paula both shared similar experiences despite their different backgrounds. Perhaps in this case the differences, Jan having a successful pre-transition career as an Anglo-Welsh foreign correspondent, and Paula having a prominent ministry career in Christian Communities in America, are less educational for we readers (the 99.5%) than the similarities.

The similarities for those who undergo transition (from male to female in both these cases) may start at the most basic level, where they encounter the response of vast majority of us (99.5%) who experience some level of surprise, shock or even prejudice and outrage (among the intolerant), at the audacity, one might say bravery, of someone compelled by deep emotional and spiritual forces to do something which the 99.5%, lacking any such compulsions, and looking from the outside, consider extraordinary and life changing. I don’t have the vocabulary, but both Jan and Paula recount their subtle and secret convictions as young children (James and Paul) that they were “boys” trapped in female bodies. To excerpt Jan “if sex was a matter of glands or valves, gender was psychological, cultural or in my view spiritual.” However we might define biological, psychological, or spiritual, the evidence points to a powerful self-awareness visiting these and others of similar experience at an early age, when all children become aware of a world of gender differences. The conventional conditioning imposed by society may, and clearly often does, mitigate against embracing the desire to transition, but evidently does not prevent developing relationships that reveal subtler psychological and spiritual needs, including sharing one’s convictions with empathetic confidants, friends and partners. My mother was so fascinated by Jan’s story that she made a point of going to visit her.

I too was fascinated by Paula’s powerful presence and empathic interest in me as a person. I don’t have the vocabulary, but she has a certain “je ne sais quoi.” I am obviously not the only one with such an opinion as Paula’s magnetism has, through her TED talks, attracted more than six million viewers (https://www.ted.com/talks/paula_stone_williams). The transition story may have a certain intriguing fascination for us lot (the 99.5%) but Paula and Jan clearly enhance their transition stories by force of personality and accomplishment, not just curiosity value. Jan also received thousands of letters, one likely from my mother, after she revealed her transition story. Both Jan and Paula maintained empathetic, and as they tell it, essential loving relationships with their long-term spouses. This did not prevent both women undergoing much soul searching as they navigated new relationships with their children, and new relationships with friends, professional spheres, the world at large, and most interestingly with themselves and their inner lives.

It would be a little crass to dwell on the navigational obstacles faced by Paula as she encountered prejudice in the Christian establishments that she had been associated with for so long, especially as she had occupied prominent positions, which she was forced to forsake. Bluntly she was cast aside. Reality is such that there is a segment of that monolithic 99.5% that is indeed prejudice and ignorant about what we, and they, still need to learn about the spectrum of cultural, psychological and spiritual issues that surround all that makes up the LGBTQ world. Even if this world is increasingly accepted by some, it is not adequately understood by those not deeply engaged, who may narrowly perceive separate compartmentalized worlds. Again, the inherent paradox of human experience means all individuals can simultaneously occupy the same and different experiential compartments.

Paradoxically some of a strict evangelical bent, uncomfortable with Paula’s transition, often regard humanity as comprised of two different genders, destined, after marriage, to integrate in spiritual harmony, fusing as one, but not in the same body! For an individual to experience both gives new meaning to Vive la difference! and opens the mind, as Jan and Paula demonstrate, to a kind of rebirth and broadening of perspective on what it means to experience being both other, and also still one’s authentic self. Transitioning they say involves a type of softening and appreciation for womanhood as certain edgy male habits dissolve, and they learn “so that’s how men so often treat women”? Paula even has a chapter entitled “what I wish I could tell Paul.”

Those of a medical bent will know that two generations ago the right hormones, and empathetic physicians, were essentially unavailable to smooth the always-difficult transition. The oversimplified, popular notion of ‘sex change’ is misleading as those who transition are paying homage to their authentic sense of gender which has not changed. (My emphasis). Conundrum was published in 1974 so, for obvious reasons, attitudes to transitioning have changed, probably most in the USA since the Obama administration. For cultural reasons it seems Jan’s transition was accepted by most friends and neighbours in rural Wales (Cheers for the Welsh!) whereas Paula battled the institutional evangelical mind set. However, she also found empathy among those with more refined, and often feminine sensibilities, including members of a ‘new’ religious community. Steeped in theological scholarship Paula quotes Richard Niebuhr as saying: “religion makes good people better and bad people worse.”

After years in ministry Paula has honed her voice, and admits, as I already observed, that she “might bring more presence into a room than some women.” She is sufficiently self-aware to know when she crosses the line of cutting people off [reminding me of the famous Disraeli quote about one who was “inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity”]. Or we might quote Ali G: “check yourself before you wreck yourself.” Paula’s presence comes through in her book. She voices her opinions and observations directly and with enthusiasm, checking them along the way. Was she always this forceful presence now seen on the TED stage? Or is her enthusiasm a manifestation of an authentic and joyful rebirth? Probably ’tis both, and we are perhaps lucky to enjoy the high energy momentum she shares with us through her book. Like Jan Morris, Paula Stone Williams tells a rare but highly authentic story. Perhaps like all good autobiography essentially themes involve transitions and plumb the deeper mysteries of who we are “as humans.”