Old Blog, New Direction

I have once more changed the direction of this blog, which began life as my only blog, including reflections on transgender matters.  I then switched the trans concerns to a separate site Trans Scribe and this became a seldom used personal site.  One of the few posts is now the only one remaining from prior to this relaunch.  It records my second coming out, being open about the link between my present life and my previous one as Rev Dr Mark Walker.  That blog post reflects the political motivations that drove that second coming out, but those political motivations can no longer be put into practice as I now work for the British Government, and therefore I cannot be involved in campaigning against either the current government or any other party, who might form a future government.  I considered making this blog one for purely personal reflections, but I have never felt that a blog about what diet I am on, etc., is going to be of any interest to the general blogosphere.  Instead, I have decided to use this blog for my theological refelctions. 

That one remaining prior post talks about my re-engaging with my Anglican preisthood and in recent months I have re-engaged also with my background as an academic theologian, through doing some research in the British Library.  That research plus my ongoing involvement in St James, Picaddilly, places me very much in the progressive camp of the theological and faith world, and the blog title of Mercia’s Musings lends itself well to relaunching this blog as Mercia’s Musings on Progressive Faith.  As I have sat in the British Library or St James Church many different ideas have come that could over the years become books, but in the era of the blogosphere there is no need to wait to persuade a publisher that people would actually be willing to part with hard cash for a printed version of my musings.  So I decided that these meandering musings should find a home on this blog, which I hope to update more regularly than in its previous incarnations.

Coming Out Again

I seem to have been hiding away on this blog, with nothing posted since November 12th – obviously I got carried away with all that Rembrance Day stuff and then forgot about everything else.  So it’s about time my blogging instinct got turned in the direction of this blog.  I have not been completely absent from blogging, as this is my personal blog, but there is also Trans Scribe – a blog about trans matters in general – and Equality Bill 2009 (UK) – about the campaign to make the UK government legislate in favour of all trans people.  Speaking of Rembrance Day, I am coming out again, and Remembrance Day was a major feature of my past about which I now being fully open.  No I was not in the army, but I was (and technically still am) an Anglican priest.  As such, I have spent the previous 16 years of my life very involved in such things as Rembrance Services, Christmas Carol Concerts, Holy Week Vigils, and Easter Eucharists.  Unfortunately, my experience in my last priestly post was not a positive one, largely because I was vexing about what would the parishioners think if they knew that the curate was transsexual.

When I made the decision to live as a woman full-time that meant leaving paid employment as a priest, and I kept my religious involvements largely away from the Church of England (having moved from Cork to Manchester by this point).  I attended Manchester Metropolitan Community Church [MMCC] and was even on their dish washing rota until last week.  I also began to explore Quaker worship, attending a Quaker Quest course for enquirers and being an occasional attender at the univesity and Central Manchester Quaker Meetings.  Quakerism was not for me, although as a flat-voiced person I liked the thought of worship without singing, and as someone who preached weekly for years, I liked the thought of worship without a sermon.  Ultimately, the Metropolitan Community Church also turned out not to be for me, even though the worship in the Manchester church is very close to the moderate Anglo-Catholicism that I had known in the Church in Wales.  I had not wanted anything more to do with the Anglican Communion, as my own problems had co-incided with a lurch to the right in Anglicanism that targeted Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals, and I knew that the fact that Transgendered people were ignored did not mean that they were welcome – and anyway I am a strong supporter of LGBT being the best place for trans people to exist.  I did miss Anglicanism, though, and being a bit of a girly, it was my tears that showed it.

The first Anglican service that I attended since leaving Cork, was the 1st birthday eucharist of the Diocese of Manchester’s Communion service, which is a monthly gathering for the diocese’s LGBT members, and which meets in the same Church of England parish church that MMCC use, St John’s Chrysostom’s Church, Victoria Park, Manchester.  I was holding back to tears as the Bishop of Manchester, Rt Rev Nigel McCullough, celebrated the eucharist and realised how much I missed being an Anglican priest.  Then at Christmas, I attended the MMCC communion service, and could not hold back the tears at all, as I thought that for the previous decade and a half it would have been me celebrating the eucharist.

What really changed things for me in relation to re-embracing my status as an Anglican priest was going with the University of Manchester LGBT Society to see Milk, the oscar-winning biopic of the murdered LGBT rights campaigner, Harvey Milk.  I already had a vague awareness of Harvey’s story, but it was something right at the start of that movie that struck home (note that this is not a historically accurate part of the movie, but an amalgam of a series of events in Milk’s pre-San Francisco life).  Harvey is in bed on his 40th birthday with new boyfriend Scott Smith and says, “I am 40 years old and I have never done anything that I am proud of”.  That struck home with me as a 41 year old who had begun to live full-time as a woman at the age of 40.

When I had made the decision to live as a woman, it was because I felt that I had the brains and the nerve to fight on behalf of other trans people, and that such a fight could not take place while I remained concerned that someone would out me.  So I began a gradual move to my beloved Manchester, and began being interviewed for office jobs, with the idea that this would leave me free in the evenings for voluntary activities to benefit other trans people.  However, after two unsuccessful interviews I began to think could I not do more if re-trained as a mental health professional, and when the Salford Advertiser carried an advertisement about training as a mental health nurse at Manchester University, I applied and was acceptted.  Nursing, however, meant compromise.  I had set out with the idea that even if I could pass as a natal (biological) woman, that doing so would not help Manchester people to get used to transwomen.  Yet as a student nurse, I was working out how to play down my androgynous looks until such time as I could properly fit in as a female.  That is why Harvey’s words brought me up short.  At 40, I had made the decision to be Out and Loud, and I had let a worthy desire to help trans people with mental health turn me into a compromiser.  Right at the start of that movie, I was already thinking “I am heading in the wrong direction.”  That feeling increased as the rest of the movie revealed Harvey Milk to be the sort of LGBT leader that I could look up to – he was radical, Out and Loud, yet concillatory towards all LGBT factions, so long as those factions did not fight against Gay Liberation.

Whether I continue as a student nurse is very much open to question, but re-embracing my Anglican priesthood came about because of the political activism that I became involved in.  I was briefly a member of the recently formed Gender Spectrum UK lobbying group, and I had been selected to lead their Equality Bill campaign.  As an initial step, I noted on a forum only viewable to campaign members that I was Rev Dr Mark Walker in a past life and that I would seek to use the media interest in Church of England clergy to boost the editorial impact of press releases. However, Gender Spectrum as an organization proved too immature to be a campaign vehicle, as members were still arguing over what sort of campaigning organization it was, so I resigned as campaign lead on the Equality Bill to become a freelance campaigner on this vital and urgent issue.  I did, however, remain a member of Gender Spectrum long enough to be notified of a (non-Gender Spectrum) campaign about a vile episode of Moving Wallpaper, in which a transsexal is verbally abused and finally sacked while working as a writer for a production company.  It was supposed to be comedy, but it was pure transphobia.  So I decided to come out (and loud) over that, and as the campaign was taking place on Facebook, I changed my Facebook profile picture to me as a male priest, and it will remain as that until a proper apology is given by ITV1.

As I was talking about being an Anglican priest, I realised that in working for trans people, I could have more impact as an unlicensed priest in a sometimes homophobic and transphobic establishment denomination than being a fully welcome member of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.  So now I am coming out again, not as an ex-Anglican priest, but as a current, if inactive, one.  Although, I am stopping short of changing my name to Rev Dr Mercia McMahon.