What Jesus had
Trendy god-botherer says Jesus was maybe trans.
Jesus could have been transgender, according to a University of Cambridge dean.
Dr Michael Banner, the dean of Trinity College, said such a view was “legitimate” after a row over a sermon by a Cambridge research student that claimed Christ had a “trans body”, The Telegraph can disclose.
The “truly shocking” address at last Sunday’s evensong at Trinity College chapel, saw Joshua Heath, a junior research fellow, display Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion that depicted a side wound that the guest preacher likened to a vagina.
Time out. I have to spend a few minutes laughing here.
Right. Some medieval and Renaissance paintings of the crucifixion show a stab wound because there’s a bit in John where a soldier poked him with a spear. Now what is a stab wound from a spear going to look like? It’s going to be a slit, right? Not a big gaping hole and not a little hole like a bullet wound, but more of a slit. Heeeeeeey insight: “slit” is slang for vagina. Boom, there’s your vadge in Jesus’s side. Is that profound or what?
Heath, whose PhD was supervised by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, also told worshippers that in the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, from the 14th century, this side wound was isolated and “takes on a decidedly vaginal appearance”.
Maybe because the artist was having a laugh.
Heath also drew on non-erotic depictions of Christ’s penis in historical art, which “urge a welcoming rather than hostile response towards the raised voices of trans people”.
Naaaaaaaaaaah. I’ve had enough of those raised voices to last several lifetimes.
“In Christ’s simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body,” the sermon concluded.
That’s just silly. Where’s the makeup? Where are the crippling shoes, the Prada briefcases, the botoxed lips?
There was a complaint letter.
Dr Banner’s response to the complaint, seen by The Telegraph, defended how the sermon “suggested that we might think about these images of Christ’s male/female body as providing us with ways of thinking about issues around transgender questions today”.
Well, one, what if we don’t fucking want to think about “issues around transgender questions today”? What if we’ve heard way way way more than enough about those “issues” and think we should talk about real issues instead? What if we think there are vastly more important issues, like the death of the planet, wars on women in Iran and Afghanistan and the list is endless, the grotesque gap between the poor and the rich in the US, wars, racism, famines, pandemics? What if we think boring little drones whining about their idenninies just don’t matter that much in comparison?
I think the only appropriate response here is: “Let them fight!”
Exactly the kind of profundity in Judith Butler.
It’s the kind of thing my friends and I made fun of in high school when first learning to write about symbolism and whatnot. We’d find the most tenuous, shallowest, most superficial similarities and connections, ultimately generating readings that directly opposed the straightforward interpretation of the text. Or turned everything into sex, because we were teenagers. Either way.
That social justice “scholarship” uses the same methodology to interpret not just literature but also reality itself might be amusing, if it weren’t infuriating.
It’s both at once. Which is a lot like popcorn, also the Hoover dam.
Sorry mate, but he was specifically stated to be a man.
Anyway, my god what a silly approach from the author. “Imagine this thing which resembles another thing actually was the other thing!”
Right? We might as well all just start stabbing potatoes and apples and then exclaim “Look, vaginas!!”
TGAG
Hang on. “Evidence” based on “Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion” is from images created centuries after the event being depicted, interpreted through the lens of gender-theoretical wishful thinking invented centuries later still. That is a helluva long chain of evidence, but then if you’re a gender studies “scholar” you can just make shit up as you go along, without the tedious burden of proof. Assertion is sufficient; it’s self ID for “evidence.”
But maybe there’s more to it than we’re giving credit for; perhaps one of these artists came into posession of a contemporaneous, eyewitness sketch made on Golgotha? We already know that depictions of The Last Supper are notoriously fraught with controversy ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iXNJtNZbds ). It should come as no surprise that The Crucifixion should engender similar conflicts. We must keep an open mind. I am open to persuasion.
Yes, I could see how an over-Butlered man might get excited about the idea that the thrust of a spear could open a neo-vagina in the body of a brave and stunning, marginalized, spiritual being, who was born into, and trapped within a vessel of human flesh, destined and condemned to be invalidated and mis-gendered, fated to submit to the scorn, hatred, and genital inspections of the world. It almost writes itself. Christ in the image of Trans. Now that’s centering! Too bad they didn’t stick the landing, though. For this hypothesis to be truly persuasive, along with the abdominal “wound-vaginas,” the depictions of Christ on the Cross should have featured Their Crown of Thorns sitting atop blue hair.
I’ve always found it quaint how some people, astronomers, theologians, or civilians, go to the trouble of coming up with an actual astronomical phenomena upon which the Star of Bethlehem might have been based, a planetary conjunction or comet being favourites. But in order to hang the tale (which is in Matthew only) on one of these bright objects that actually do appear in the night sky, they have to to throw out other aspects of the story, like how it led the magi, and then stood still over the place where Jesus was. There are no astronomical phenomena that behave in this manner. You can either have your “scientific” validation, or you can have your miracle. You can’t have both. One vitiates the other. (Never mind the magi were supposed to be “from the East”, yet they had seen the star “in the East”, which would suggest that magi from Mesopotamia, say, should have been heading towards India, rather than Palestine. It’s postmodern geography. Whatever.) This “Jesus was tran” idea sounds like more of the same, without the sort of tenuous constraints of the “astronomy” appealed to in the Star of Bethlehem story. Once you’ve cut the surly bonds of reality, you can let your
ravingsimagination soar freely.Hot damn. You’ve outdone yourself.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on What Jesus […]
Thanks! Sometimes I start out only intending a line or two of snark, but one thing leads to another and it ballooons into something much bigger. It’s like the absurdity of it all acts like a mental stimulant, with ideas falling over themselves to get out. I’m just happy they sometimes make sense.
Same. Stuff pops into head as one types. You mine a rich vein!
I’ll tell ya one, YNNB. The alien spaceship that beamed Jesus down. Whaddya say to that, huh?
I was reading once (sorry, I don’t remember the source, and I’ve read so many books on the topic it’s hard to figure out which one from the past) about the way the churches are designed to simulate female sexual organs, so that when one enters through the vagina-shaped entrance to the sanctuary, they are being “born again”. There were a lot more things the author talked about in the same vein, having to do with church obsessions with sex, particularly the female sex, but that’s the one I mostly remember.
So that proves trans claims, right? Unless you realize that being obsessed with vaginas, and being obsessed with the female sex as the same thing, is the exact opposite of trans.
I’d say I’d be amazed if there weren’t people out there who believe exactly that.
Thank you Google: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/ufo-believer-sensationally-claims-jesus-23125086
@iknklast #13:
“The Da Vinci Code”, though Dan Brown may have been using something else as the source of his ideas. And yes, that was what popped into my head too…
In any case this is amongst the most fucked up Death of the Author readings on a fictional character I’ve ever seen…
Definite head tilt, what more proof do you need?
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B4UyGhoZ3mw/Un7do6geLsI/AAAAAAAAK18/JFom-Kc4vCY/s1600/jesus+christ.jpg