A transgender student at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, could face punishment from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and expulsion from the university if they proceed with “top surgery” to treat their gender dysphoria.
Kris Irvin, who goes by “they/their” pronouns, says they have felt they are a boy stuck in a girl’s body since age 3, and has suffered from gender dysphoria since puberty, reports the Salt Lake City-based ABC affiliate News4Utah. Irvin says the gender dysphoria led to severe depression and anxiety.
“It’s a hatred for your body because your body doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to in your mind,” they said. “I would wear two sports bras all the time to try and flatten myself out. Even when I hit puberty, I thought ‘Please don’t grow. Please don’t grow.’ I used to pray that I would get a disease where I would have to get a double mastectomy.”
Irvin found out about the possibility of “top surgery” from other transgender members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who had undergone the procedure, which gave them hope that they could one day live according to their gender identity.
“For me, top surgery is the last piece of the puzzle,” Irvin said. “It’s the last thing I need to do in order to be comfortable with myself and in my body.”
Unfortunately for Irvin, the surgery is very expensive. Irvin also suffers from fibromyalgia and says it’s difficult to work, go to school, raise their son, and save up enough money for the procedure. To help get extra money, they started a GoFundMe page, but was soon after confronted by their bishop.
“My bishop called me into his office and said, ‘If you proceed with top surgery, then we will have to proceed with church discipline.’ That could compromise my ecclesiastical endorsement, which would mean I couldn’t go to BYU,” Irvin told News4Utah. “I do want to say I love my bishop. I think he’s an amazing man. He’s served our family really well and I really admire him. But I think he’s wrong on this issue.”
Irvin said it’s particularly unfair that the other transgender members who first told them about the surgery were able to undergo the procedure without punishment.
But because the church has no set guidelines for dealing with transgender members, decisions — like disciplining Irvin — are often left up to the discretion of individual bishops.
Irvin said they wrote a detailed email to their bishop trying to explain their gender dysphoria, but the bishop refused to back down from his earlier stance.
Irvin said it made them suicidal, and pointed out the hypocrisy that members of the church have not been disciplined for pursuing cosmetic, non-medically necessary surgeries that radically alter their bodies.
Irvin is 30 credits shy of graduating from BYU, meaning they expect it to take at least another year before they can finish their education.
Unfortunately, with a lack of flexibility from their bishop, it means Irvin must either forego the surgery until they graduate, or move forward with the procedure and transfer to a non-religious college.
Even though they love their experience at BYU, Irvin said they just can’t wait to have the surgery, adding: “It’s just awful. I don’t want to go through another summer with the breasts that I have. It’s just uncomfortable. It’s make me depressed. It makes me feel disgusting and awful and I can’t do it.”
A spokesman for Brigham Young University released a statement to News4Utah saying: “BYU does not have a formal policy; we handle every case on an individual basis. Ecclesiastical leaders do provide annual student endorsements. However, the final decision regarding a student’s enrollment rests with the university.”
When asked why they don’t just leave the LDS church, Irvin said they want to serve as an example to other queer youth, and hope to highlight some of the challenges that queer Mormons face that need to be addressed.
“I want to be the person that I needed when I was growing up because I felt awful. I felt alone. I felt weird. I didn’t feel okay talking to anybody about this. It’s awful. No one should grow up the way I did,” Irvin said. “Being transgender is not a mental illness. That is one of the biggest misconceptions about transpeople. Be welcoming, be loving, be kind. You don’t know what somebody’s going through.”
San Francisco has named Per Sia, one of the first performers to read at a Drag Queen Story Hour event, as the city's new Drag Laureate.
Appointed by Mayor Daniel Lurie on October 29, the 44-year-old Per Sia is only the second person -- and the first transgender individual -- to hold the title.
D'Arcy Drollinger, owner of the Oasis nightclub, was San Francisco's first Drag Laureate. The position -- one of only two in the country, alongside West Hollywood's -- comes with a $35,000 annual stipend for a three-year term funded by the San Francisco Public Library, which also supports the city's Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate programs.
A transgender teaching assistant at the University of Oklahoma has been placed on leave after a conservative student accused both the assistant and the course's professor of discriminating against her for citing the Bible in an essay that received a zero.
The student, OU junior Samantha Fulnecky, a psychology major, had been assigned a 650-word essay reacting to a study on whether children's popularity correlates with how closely they conform to prescribed gender norms, reports Oklahoma-based NPR station KOSU.
The study -- Gender Typicality, Peer Relations and Mental Health -- found that popular children are more likely to be described as "gender-typical" by their peers than children who are frequently teased. Among those who are teased, young boys show the worst mental health outcomes.
Ahead of Transgender Day of Remembrance on Thursday, November 20, Advocates for Trans Equality, a national organization, released a report honoring the 58 known transgender people who have died in the United States over the past year.
First held in 1999, Transgender Day of Remembrance was initially intended to mourn those transgender people lost to violence. The first organizers memorialized Rita Hester, killed in November 1998 in Boston, and Chanelle Pickett, murdered in November 1995 in Watertown, Mass.
Since that first memorial service, cities and regions throughout the world have adopted November 20 as a day to commemorate transgender and nonbinary individuals who have died -- whether due to murder, suicide, or natural causes.
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