Transsexual Witnesses of Jehovah
Other's stories
My friend Rachel
Rachel was born
biologically male in
Born ten weeks premature and the second born of twins, she spent the first three and a half months of her life in hospital fighting to stay alive. Her twin brother, David, died of a brain hemorrhage two days after their birth; it is believed if David had survived he would have been more severely handicapped than Rachel. Rachel suffered brain damage leaving her technically a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy.
Rachel’s birth was complicated further by the fact that her umbilical cord was wrapped around her brother’s neck during a vaginal delivery and needed cutting in order to free him. The were only two nurses and a midwife available during this life and death situation as the delivery doctor was late and the delivery team were unprepared for twins as the doctor insisted Rachel’s mother wasn’t carrying twins despite her insistence that she was. Several minutes after David’s two pound twelve delivery, a one pond fourteen ounce Rachel arrived on the scene and quickly went down to one pound eight.
Spoilt rotten while in the hospital by numerous medical staff, Rachel was to have a rude awakening to a harsh family environment on being brought home. Placed in mum and dad’s room she was unfamiliar with her new environment and naturally screamed the place down. Her father thought he would fix the problem by entering the room and then hold his had over her mouth so she couldn’t breath and inevitably stopped crying. He repeated the treatment until, soon, all that was needed to quiet the infant was to open the bedroom’s door. She soon correlated crying with being smothered by a large firm hand and learnt to lay there all alone for hours on end without a sound.
Rachel had an elder brother and was shortly followed by three brothers and a sister.
Rachel was painfully aware that some of her family reflected many qualities of what Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t suppose to be; aggressive, crude, self-consumed, gossipy and unloving. Rachel, on the other hand, radiated warmth, love and compassion. It was grandma on her mother’s side, who installed a love for Jehovah in her heart by initially reading from an adult publication titled Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained which remained a favorite over that of the children’s publication ‘My Book of Bible Stories,’ later provided by the Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Up until the age of seven Rachel was placed in a room by herself during family bible study despite her answering up at meetings at the Kingdom Hall and giving mature answers; generally the rest of the family sat in silent non participation. It wasn’t till one day during a family study at home, while Rachel was listening from afar, her father asked a question to whether anyone knew who the male child was in Revelation, that she became part of the family study. No one could answer but Rachel unable to contain herself gave the correct answer from her distant location and was from that point on included.
She taught herself the
basics of reading by watching the famed children’s program
When it came to her gender identity Rachel perceived that things weren’t quite right at the age of four when she realized that, despite her wanting to be like the girls at the Kingdom Hall and put on pretty dresses like them and join in with their talk and games, she had a boy’s body.
Rachel had fortunately developed a personal relationship with the Creator by the tender age of four and was able to pray to Jehovah. It was in prayer that she turned to her heavenly Father over her intense distress on feeling different to her physical appearance. From the age of four she disappeared into a neutral mindset and like some machine just did what was required of her as a boy but without the male feelings.
Rachel from infancy had suffered all five sensory hallucinations, taste, sight, sound, touch and smell. As a child she discussed this with her father who told her she had a vivid imagination. Rachel interpreted his explanation as being a normal thought and feeling process experienced by every one to a lesser or greater degree and though nothing more of it.
Discussing her sensory
anomalies became paramount later in life though, and in her mid twenties she
underwent a brain scan revealing the extent of the brain tissue atrophy
(death/damage) suffered at birth. The atrophy covered the entire surface of
her brain and a major section of the left optical region and explained, to
some degree, why she suffered visual abnormalities similar to a stoke victim
with comparable brain damage in that area. The scan also showed similarities
in brain structure to those with schizophrenia and, after several years of
me battling with an arrogant and judgmental public mental health system on
her behalf, she was permitted trial of an anti-psychotic drug that reduced,
in her case, the hallucinations up to ninety-five percent; much to the
dismay of the treating public psychiatrist at that time. She remains on
medication for schizophrenia and post trauma syndrome and has been free of
the intense all consuming hallucinations for some years and is now treated
by a caring and respectful private psychiatrist. Sadly, there are few psychiatrists
like him and if we were to move to another state of
And when did I –Sam, the author of this website – come into Rachel’s life? Well, Rachel had observed me from afar at meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses and had been doing so with increasing interest since her arrival from Perth in 1992, or there about, with her family with whom she still lived and sat with during meeting attendance. Now it was December 1993.
I had also been doing my own observing of Rachel who at the time was known by all as Brother Robbie - a strong spiritual pillar of the congregation - that many anticipated would become one of a few unmarried young elders of our Organization. I generally sat against the back wall due to my severe depression and deteriorating health [mentioned in my short autobiography on this site], and this location gave me the opportunity to observe all in attendance at a safe distance for the sake of my own sanity – or what remained of it. What I observed in Rachel was a loud and very animated individual who was a nervous wreck and it wasn’t till I saw her in her family environment that I understood the reasons for her being like a cat on a hot tin roof.
Rachel had for some time tried to meet me but as her family left shortly after the meetings ended she didn’t have much opportunity to wade through the mass of fellow believers before I had disappeared to some other area of the Kingdom Hall. Frustrated she hailed me from the other side of the Kingdom Hall one Sunday, before the meeting started. Turning around I found the person hailing me was an individual who I had so far successfully avoided contact with from the day she had entered the Kingdom Hall self propelled in a dilapidated electric wheelchair. I had avoided her because I had a strong feeling that association with this person would result in trouble of some sort or other; and coupled with this I didn’t want to form a friendship with anyone who I felt would drop me like a hot potato if they knew I was transsexed. Though my transsexed condition was no secret as I had made it abundantly clear what my situation was [but none are as deaf as those who don’t want to hear] this did not necessarily mean she had been told. Taking a deep sign I approached her and we started a conversation that ended with a decision to study the bible weekly together at her house.
By the end of the meeting I decided there was not going to be a bible study, as I wasn’t prepared to be dropped as a friend when she got wind of my gender situation or, worse, she might suffer ridicule and suspicion for being the friend of the Sister who thinks she is a Brother. She laughed and told me she knew about my ‘situation’, didn’t care and she would see me at her house at the arranged time.
I was VERY happy. I thought I was about to have benign male company with someone who wanted to discuss the bible and who didn’t want me to explain my right to exist and Rachel was ecstatic to have a friend to talk with. Unfortunately everyone else didn’t see things as innocently.
After three weeks of association I decided I would like to be her fulltime carer and free her from a negligent family; as things stood she was so emotionally ill she was heading fast toward institutionalization. It was clear to me from our first meeting that Rachel didn’t come across as male, so I felt safe from any chance of her seeing me as a Sister to marry. I thought she was one of those gender neutral individuals I had heard about many years ago.
I wasn’t permitted to be her carer. We either married or associated only with the benefit of a chaperon. I couldn’t take it. I was a heterosexual man, despite my female appearance shouting otherwise, and not in the least bit interested in anyone’s fears that Rachel and I were going to commit fornication if left alone together. But I was forgetting that I was only seen as a confused Sister who wished to undermine the headship of men; and Rachel was the good Brother who not only was going to be an elder but if we got married ‘Robert’ would be such a wonderful husband I would get over any delusions I had about being a man. Rachel was no petite cripple; most people who first meet Rachel ask if she was a quadriplegic due to a football accident with a goal post or tackle, as she looked like she would fit in comfortably in any front line defense and had a deep booming voice to top it all.
I was torn. Rachel concluded we should marry as we weren’t marriage material for any one due to her severe disabilities and the abundance of my own problems. It would be a paper marriage that would allow us to care for one another without being disfellowshipped. She asked me to think about it and I reluctantly agreed. I wasn’t prepared to see my best friend put into an institution or see her remain with her family. We told everyone that we weren’t in love but had decided to marry to avoid disfellowshipping and this would enable me to be her fulltime carer; there seemed to be no other viable options. No one listened. I was seen as the confused Sister who had at long last met her knight in shining armor and who had been swept off her feet by her knight’s electric wheelchair and the marital bed would take care of the rest. We reassured the elder who was the celebrant for our congregation, and was not in agreement with our marriage plans, that our marriage would take place in the registry office not the Kingdom Hall, as marriage was a sacred union between a man and woman who loved one another and we weren’t going to have people think more of our marriage façade. As it was Rachel and I naturally resented the situation, the last thing we were going to do was deck out in traditional marriage attire for a false marriage and keep alive the fairy tale love story that some Brothers and Sisters so badly wanted.
In March of 1994
marriage papers were signed at the
Six years into our marriage I became marked as a demonized individual who had brain washed and ruined the spiritual life of one of their beloved Brothers and now had condemned us both to death when Armageddon came. I was considered spiritual death and unclean to any who came in contact with me, as though I was some powerful charismatic cult leader. Rachel had ability to control her own actions, but it was easier to blame someone else for Rachel’s apparent change in personality than to face the facts.
Over our twelve years of marriage Rachel suffered many health scares that brought her within an inch of her life on several occasions thanks to the public health system. I suffered slander, accusations of neglect and abuse of Rachel from her family, government workers, doctors, surgeons and practically anyone else we came in contact with for the first nine years of our marriage, and only managed to survive by the skin of our teeth when the rare genuinely caring individual within the public health system believed in us enough to make sure we got some help or I managed to provide the needed evidence to fob off my accusers. With all the outside pressure we also had the Brooklyn Brothers threatening us, and any of our Brothers and Sisters who supported or recognized our gender dysphoria, with excommunication if Rachel and I deviated from being Brother Robert married to Sister Samantha.
Inevitably I was disfellowshipped for refusing to repudiate any claims to be a man trapped in a woman’s body and refusing to cease gender reassignment. Rachel was disfellowshipped for changing her name to that of a female’s and following my apparently same loose conduct and desires of the flesh as perceived by the Brooklyn Brothers. She, like me, was accused of lack of faith and not genuinely loving Jehovah. If she really loved Jehovah she would repudiate me and be Brother Robert, and claim that gender dysphoria is a mental condition or perversion of character that can be fought by those with enough faith in and love for Jehovah.
Today Rachel concedes that she is more than likely neutral in mind and not necessarily transsexed, she can live as a man - though not a man; or a woman - though not a woman - depending on the situation she finds herself. She has come full circle in discovering herself. It is Jehovah who will ultimately decide the fate of all of us, no matter what our situation in life, and not any person, group or organization. Jehovah’s Kingdom that will shortly replace this dying world will also do away with the deadly judgmental thoughts directed toward all those who have been cast into the gender wilderness by far too many an arrogant individual from all facets of life and society. It is not our X or Y chromosomes that will decide our future; it is the person we are, our spirit and our essence that can not be placed under the microscope of human scrutiny.
PO BOX 794, SANDERSON 0813, DARWIN, NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA. ratwoodies@yahoo.com
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Agape,
Sam Davies.