A new book titled Transgender Youth: Perceptions, Media Influences and Social Challenges has been published by Nova Science. Research team members from the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity have two chapters in this edited volume.
One chapter is titled, “Transgender Christians: Gender Identity, Family Relationships, and Religious Faith.” This chapter presents a study we conducted of transgender Christians. We took a narrative approach and invited participants to share the “chapters” of their lives in relation to gender identity and faith. They discussed initial chapters of gender identity awareness, a subsequent chapter about the conflict they experienced with others about their gender identity, and then a chapter on religious identity. This moved toward a chapter back to gender identity concerns (religious identity did not resolve gender incongruence), followed by a chapter in which participants described ways they have learned to cope with their gender identity concerns.
The second chapter is titled, “Christian Parent’s Experiences of Transgender Youth During the Coming Out Process.” This chapter is based on a study we conducted that is really a subset of a larger study of the experiences of Christian parents when their children come out to them as LGBT. The subset presented in this chapter are the parents whose children came out to them as transgender. We discuss common responses to disclosure of a transgender identity, as well as what happens to the parent-child relationship over time.
Mark Yarhouse 