[Magdalen] I'm confused

[Grace Cangialosi]

I need a little help here, and I feel foolish for having to ask, but I do. It relates to the terminology for transgender people. I've been wondering about it for awhile, and then this morning I met the trans neighbor of a 92-year-old parishioner who had just passed away and found myself feeling totally confused. Mind you, I didn't express that, but it's been on my mind all day. And she will be coming to the funeral on Saturday, so I will be meeting her again, as will all those in attendance. And knowing this congregation, I anticipate that there will be comments and questions put to me after the funeral is over, probably on Sunday.

What I don't know is which way the term "trans" is applied.  If a person was born biologically male and is now living as a female, with or without surgery, is she considered a trans woman or a trans man? Same question for the reverse situation. This woman introduced herself with a woman's name, and I took that at face value, but I experienced some cognitive dissonance because of her appearance, which was decidedly masculine, as was her voice. And she had shaved. But she had breasts...  Obviously this isn't important in deciding how I'm going to relate to her, but my discomfort about whether I might do or say the wrong thing  let me know that I need to get a handle on this. I'm sure that, just as gays and lesbians have come out and taken their places in society in a way that causes scarcely a second look, the same will be true for trans men and women.  But that isn't the case yet, at least not for me.

Finding myself in this confusion is a bit ironic, because the last patient I had as a volunteer Hospice chaplain at least 20 years ago was a woman with AIDS, and she was transgender, though I didn't realize it for a long time. She had had the reassignment surgery in the 70s and had worked as a platform model in New York. In addition to AIDS, she had scleroderma from the breast implants and was part of the class action suit against Dow Chemical. I never had the slightest bit of discomfort with her and grew very fond of her as our visits continued.

As I visited her weekly, I learned her whole story, and as she became sicker, I met her parents who lived in West Virginia. The tragedy in the situation was that they were very strict Pentecostals and had no idea how to deal with the fact that their child, born Jimmy, was now a grown woman named Christine. Her mother asked me point-blank if she was going to go to Hell. I assured her that I did not believe she would.
When she died, I did her funeral and burial as she had requested, and then the family requested that I have no further contact with them.

So anyway, back to the original question of which way the term "trans" is applied.
Thanks,
Grace