Transsexual Witnesses of Jehovah
A
Brief Autobiography
My Personal Blog: http://www.sam-davies.blogspot.com/
For I shall declare
the name of Jehovah.
Do YOU attribute greatness to our God.
The Rock, perfect is his activity,
For all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness, with whom there is no in justice;
Righteous and upright is he.
Deuteronomy 32: 3-4.
Born, Samantha Louise, in England during early summer of 1969, my Mum said I was mature for my age. The beautiful cultures outside of the European environment always interested me, and to my delight, my atheist father and non practicing Catholic mother migrated to Australia in 1972, where we three traveled with tents, sleeping bags and rough terrain vehicle for two years, later towing a caravan before settling permanently in Darwin, the Northern Territory. A couple of months after our arrival we became refugees of Cyclone Tracy that practically wiped out Darwin on Christmas Day 1974 while we sheltered in a neighbor’s caravan with eight others.
Though my body indicated otherwise, I have always been a boy emotionally and psychologically. When the hard reality hit home that my uncomfortable exterior was female I knew I was in deep trouble and fought to find a way out. I experienced depression from the early age of four. What kept me going was an indescribable compulsion, deep within, that wrapped around me like a comforting blanket, reassuring me that I had to keep going regardless of how long, and regardless of the pain. One day everything was going to be 'fine'.
During a religious instruction class at age seven, a brief encounter with the Bible's opening verses confirmed my suspicions that there was a Creator, an Almighty God, and it was surely He who would make all things 'fine'. But where was this Creator; my indescribable comforting blanket of reassurance?
I held my own heartfelt beliefs regarding the Creator’s character and any religion He approved, which no religious organization seemed to share. For me, religion that represented God must comprise of individuals who believed strongly in a Creator and the Bible; such people must be politically neutral; they didn't go to, or involve themselves in, war. They must believe that Jesus is the Son of God and not God himself, as God was beyond the clutches of death, but Christ wasn’t.
Also the loving Creator and Father of all mankind didn't discriminate because of skin, gender, age, financial status, physical abilities or education. No more than a black and white couple would discriminate between their offspring who where different in skin shades, personality and abilities. The Creator was the ideal parent who treated all his children with patience, love and compassion; but at the same time He cared enough not to tolerate such injurious habits like drunkenness, that had lead to the domestic violence and eventual destruction of my parent's marriage. God did not love unconditionally or accept any and all behavior; that would be irresponsible parenting on the highest level.
At the age of nine I traveled, on my own, half way across the world to live with my Mum’s parents in England who became like second parents to me for two years, while my father terrorized my mother back in Darwin. During this time I attended a Catholic school and was forced to attend church every Sunday –hating every moment, with my Grandfather. My Grandfather became a beautiful role model and the father I never technically had and we spent every available moment gardening or going on excursions together to nurseries or places of interest. I thank my Mum to this very day for sending me to England where I experienced the two happiest years of my life apart from the two spent traveling Australia where the bush life became part of my blood before settling in Darwin.
Returning to Darwin in 1981 I was presented with a three month old half sister whose father I hoped would become my step father, but due to various reasons this didn’t eventuate. I couldn’t relate in any way, shape or form to my sister, and to make matters worse she was a real girly girl who adored dolls and adamantly rejected my attempts to interest her in my boy toys and boy orientated interests; this caused no end of distress for both parties. My violent and depressed temperament had me frequently slap her on the backside for the first eight years of her life, due to ceaseless attempts to irritate and rebel against everything I asked of her, and I had no idea how to cope or handle the situation. We both had no father around, and my Mum struggled to bring up her children on her own with no maintenance or emotional support. I just battled to stay alive amidst strong suicidal desires.
At school I beat up the school bullies and came to the aid of any bullied child I noticed, so became both respected and feared. The fighting was a great outlet for my rage at being trapped in a girl’s body with all the injustices of being ignored for who I really was.
Despite a few having thoughts that I would make a great politician for the downtrodden I decided at the tender age of eight that politics was a useless growth on the posterior of mankind and would have nothing to do with making matters worse.
From the age of sixteen to nineteen a man helped me avoid suicide by being there to talk with and practiced on me alternative therapies that stabilized somewhat my deteriorating emotional and physical health. At the time I didn't know about female to male transsexuals (FTM’s), I had only heard of, and seen, male to female transsexuals (MTF’s). I didn't disclose to him my male spirit, mind and heart. Early childhood experience had me cautious since my claims of maleness had brought ostracism and ridicule at school and I found adults were worse than children. Adults had the power to destroy. I could beat up the children who teased me, but the adult world was far different and I trusted no one.
To compound my school woes and feelings of body incongruity and desires to die, I also mourned the inevitable destruction I saw around me of a once beautiful Earth by mankind some time in the near or distant future from continued rape of the world’s resources and invasion of native peoples lands and cultures. A destructive rampage like relentless termites that destroyed any ideas I entertained for disappearing into the Amazon’s jungle or Australia’s bush.
I was disillusioned by everything!! Over the years I had formed a growing dislike for the commercialism surrounding any and all holidays. So by the age of nineteen I made my own stand to have no involvement in Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day or any other holiday I saw as commercial exploitation of people or an insult to Christ and our Heavenly Father; and went as far as dismissing my own birthday that signified my birth into misery and not a celebration of a life I would have preferred hadn’t come into existence.
One night I prayed to God more passionately than ever for Him to kill me as I couldn't take any more the constant desire to suicide and the relentless loneliness. All of a sudden I was overcome with peace and I promptly fell asleep. I was still living at home and making life unbearable for my Mum and sister. I felt my uncontrollable rages would have me journey down my father's life path; a violent path I vowed never to emulate.
Despite three months independently practicing original Buddhism in a fruitless effort to find peace I was as miserable as ever. I was fearful of who I was becoming and what I was doing to my family. The morning after my lamenting prayer there came a knock at our front door. I was greeted by two nervous young men who asked me if I would like to live forever, after which they promptly held up a book entitled: "You Can Live Forever in a Paradise Earth." I declined their offer to live forever along with the instruction book but, instead, asked if they believed Christ was the Son of God. They said they did, and then they walked away.
I had no sooner closed the door behind them when a strong compulsion to visit my alternative therapist took hold.
Within half an hour I was sitting in his lounge room lamenting like I had the night before that I had felt a strong spiritual inclination all my life, but could find no one to explain the Bible’s writings and teachings. He smiled and retrieved a book from a cupboard. It was the same book the two young men had offered, but had neglected to show was full of scriptures (or I would have taken it). I remembered my prayer the night before and eagerly accepted the offer of a bible study with him and his wife.
I read the 'Live Forever' book in two days and checked the sited scriptures with several versions of bibles I had collected over the years. Life's questions answered at last!! The Creator wanted the Earth to be a paradise inhabited by respectful, peace loving people with no national or racial barriers under one theocracy. I was happy.
I said I wanted to be a Jehovah's Witness. My alternative therapist, who I didn't know was a Witness until he offered me the book, said I couldn't be a Witness until I had studied the Bible, as no one could dedicate their life to Jehovah without accurate knowledge. I was disappointed as the book seemed pretty clear to me, as did the scriptures. But I didn't argue. Six months into studying I raise the question of baptism with the elders who also said no. Eight months into studying I was baptized.
Unfortunately, scriptural enlightenment doesn't cure medical problems; and eight months into being an official baptized, very active Witness, my world started to quickly crumble. I tried my hardest to change my appearance leading up to baptism and after. I went from wearing boy's or neutral clothing before I knew anything about Jehovah, to wearing nothing but dresses, skirts and women's shoes and even grew out my crew-cut. This only resulted in my feeling like I was acting out some wrongly designated role which I played very badly every moment of the night and day. I was only allowed to conduct bible studies with women, and when these women told me their private thoughts and concerns I felt I was invading their lives and privacy. An all consuming guilt struck me. I could only think of scriptures that showed what sort of people would be put to death at Armageddon; I felt I had become part of the mentioned liars, deceivers and cowards.
My day dreams of having a beard and male body clad in a suit and tie intensified no matter how hard I tried to stop it through prayer, personal bible study, or through the door to door ministry. Even sleep brought me no peace, as my dreams showed me all male. I loved being a Jehovah's Witness, but hated not being able to suicide. Fortunately my love for Jehovah out weighed my hate for myself or my situation. I begged Jehovah tearfully day and night to let me know what was happening to me.
Two years into being a Witness my health crashed so severely doctors thought I might have a disease. On consulting with a specialist I blurted out my male feelings while sitting in a dress and harshly tied long hair. The doctor said there were others like me - men trapped in female bodies; transsexuals. Everything was suddenly so crystal clear. I was asked not to contact any female to males until hormone and chromosome tests could rule out possible chemical causes for my thoughts and feelings, or any likelihood of being intersexed.
My chromosomal make up was XX, the worse news I had ever heard. It was like hearing a heavy key lock tight an impenetrable prison cell door that had been designated never to be opened to the prisoner inside, though innocent. Crushed, I broke down and cried in the doctor’s office. She asked if I wanted gender reassignment. I immediately said yes, but to do so would have me excommunicated from my church. "Your choice," was all the doctor could say.
Choose to lie and lead an intolerable double life and continue down the path of a slow death spiritually and emotionally or be truthful and face disfellowshipping. What choices!!
I phoned long distance Brooklyn Bethel, the Headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in USA. I was advised to keep up the good fight and pray, study and witness more; I could overcome my unnatural feelings of being a man if I had enough faith in, and love for, Jehovah. Something I was to hear too often and which ate away ever so slowly at my healthy relationship with Jehovah like an infestation of maggots. Sadly, maggots would have been more preferable since they only cleared away rotting flesh. Misguided and inappropriate human counsel on the other hand only caused sores and added infection to my deepening spiritual and emotional wounds.
After nine and a half more years of falsehood, lies and communication both through letters and phone calls with Brooklyn Bethel, I was reduced to an emotional cripple. I was not serving Jehovah; I was complying with man's expectations of me. I felt so dirty when I put the dresses on as this violated Deuteronomy 22: 5 though the Brothers insisted it didn't. They said I violated my Father's laws when I presented myself as a man and if I continued to even verbally express myself as a man I would be disfellowshipped.
All this caused not only great grief for myself but also for my close Witness friends who couldn’t understand why I was being disfellowshipped, as there were no sound scriptural grounds presented by the Brothers and they could also see through the latest medical research that gender dysphoria was a congenital medical condition. To complicate matters I had also married a fellow Witness, Robert, in 1994, who was born with cerebral palsy and was quadriplegic, as I was not permitted to be alone with someone of the opposite sex, though we didn’t love one another and I desired to be my friend’s full time carer and not anyone’s marriage mate. Robert turned out to be a Rachel (a MTF but mostly neutosexed; (refer to her biography on this site) which made the Brothers even more suspicious. Though many of our spiritual Brothers and Sisters accepted Rachel as a woman and me as a man, and loved us for who we were, the Brooklyn Brothers who had the final say didn’t.
Two years previous to this, in 1998, I had a double mastectomy that could have led to disfellowshipping if I had not shown my action wasn't unscriptural. The Brothers in Brooklyn reluctantly agreed that there was no case for fellowshipping.
My hormone treatment with testosterone began in June 2000. In my letter of appeal to the Brothers in Brooklyn I showed from the scriptures that Jehovah did not agree with their ill-informed and uneducated published opinion of the Transsexed, and that being the case I would, under no circumstances, stop my transitioning. Who will be a guest in Jehovah's tent? He "who is walking faultlessly and practicing righteousness and speaking the truth in his heart...He has sworn to what is bad [for himself] and yet he does not alter." - Psalm 15:2, 4c.
Pleasing Father came first. Father doesn't want any of his servants totally immersed in suicidal thoughts that make them emotional cripples. If the Brothers couldn't accept the fact that transsexualism was an incurable medical condition that was not a mental illness or a moral issue, it was their problem not mine. I didn't want to be disfellowshipped, but I wasn't going to dissociate either, and most importantly; I wasn't going to destroy my relationship with Father by turning irretrievably bitter towards Him. I could distinguish between God's view and that of human blindness. The unbalanced and dogmatic responses from Brooklyn over medical reports and findings only confirmed that they were being guided by their own dangerous bias and not by Jehovah’s instructions, spirit, insight and love.
Any church, organization, group or individual implying that the scriptures referring to cross-dressing or immoral conduct of any kind, are applicable to the transsexed when they are undergoing or have undergone sex-change or transition, have gone beyond what is written; they have misapplied and twisted the scriptures and their contexts as well as recorded history.
The following scriptures offered by the Brothers in Brooklyn, and other outsiders, are not grounds for disfellowshipping the professed or transitioned transsexed, nor are these scriptural grounds for denying entry into the Organization those transsexed who have conformed their lives to doing the will of Jehovah regardless of being transitioned or not:
“No garb of an able-bodied man should be put upon a woman, neither should an able-bodied man wear the mantle of a woman; for anybody doing these things is something detestable to Jehovah your God." Deut. 22: 5.
"Anyone conquering will inherit these things, and I shall be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowards and those without faith and those who are disgusting in their filth and murderers and fornicators and those practicing spiritism and idolaters and all the liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur. This means the second death.” - Rev. 21:7, 8.
"Therefore God, in keeping with the desires of their hearts, gave them up to uncleanness, that their bodies might be dishonored among them, even those who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and venerated and rendered sacred service to the creation rather than the One who created, who is blessed forever. Amen. That is why God gave them up to disgraceful sexual appetites, for both their females changed the natural use of themselves into one contrary to nature; and likewise even the males left the natural use of the female and became violently inflamed in their lust toward one another, males with males, working what is obscene and receiving in themselves the full recompense, which was due for their error." - Rom. 1:24-27.
"And you must not lie down with a male the same as you lie down with a woman. It is a detestable thing." - Lev. 18:22.
Baptized in 1989; disfellowshipped December 2000; reinstated only if I denounce being a man and say I have sinned and now repent as a woman. As I am no liar, this isn’t going to happen. Rachel was disfellowshipped a week after myself, for legally changing her name to Rachel Stacey Davies. After 12 years of marriage Rachel and I divorced in January 2006, so our relationship could be seen for what it always has been. I am her carer, not her husband; she is my friend, not my lover.
As long as it pleases Jehovah, I will continue to walk in His truth and righteousness. "Be wise my son, and make my heart rejoice, that I may make a reply to him that is taunting me." - Pr. 27:ll.
In man’s shaky decrees that lead to death for the transsexed I shall not trust. "There exists a way that is upright before a man, but the ways of death are the end of it afterward". - Prov. 14:12.
On the other hand Jehovah’s "word is a lamp to my foot and a light to my roadway." - Ps. 119:105.
There is nothing godly, self-sacrificing or righteous in becoming an emotional cripple. Christ asked for mercy, not inappropriate suffering and sacrifice. "Hearing [them] he [Jesus] said: “'Persons in health do not need a physician, but the ailing do. Go, then, and learn what this means, ‘I want mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came to call, not righteous people, but sinners.”' - Matt 9:12, 13.
I take to heart what Father says in his word to us. "For this is what the High and Lofty One, who is residing forever and whose name is holy, has said: "'In the height and in the holy place is where I reside, also with the one crushed and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly ones and to revive the heart of the ones being crushed"'. - Isaiah 57: 15.
He sees our figurative heart. "Do not look at his appearance and at the height of his stature, for I have rejected him. For not the way man sees [is the way God sees], because mere man sees what appears to the eyes; but as for Jehovah, he sees what the heart is." - 1 Samuel 16: 7.
"You WILL know the truth and the truth WILL set you free." - John 8: 32
Agape my fellow trans Brothers and Sisters and those who stand by us; remain strong, faithful and only speak truth.
Sam Luke-Anthony Davies
My Personal Blog: http://www.sam-davies.blogspot.com/
PO BOX 794, SANDERSON 0813, DARWIN, NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA. ratwoodies@yahoo.com
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Agape,
Sam Davies.