Tindo: "Being Human"

Episode 7 December 15, 2025 00:39:13
Tindo: "Being Human"
The Collective Table
Tindo: "Being Human"

Dec 15 2025 | 00:39:13

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Hosted By

Jason Coker Jenell Coker

Show Notes

Since the essence of empathy is to understand people who are different than you are, it requires the willingness to cross borders of one kind or another. But what happens when the hardest borders to cross exist within ourselves—across competing desires, beliefs, and identities?

In this episode, host Jason Coker introduces Tindo, a beloved member of the Oceanside Sanctuary community. Born intersex and assigned male at birth, Tindo was surgically reassigned as female at three months old and raised as "Cynthia." After living for five decades in a gender identity that never quite fit—including time as a debutante and women's auxiliary member—Tindo began a courageous journey of self-discovery to reclaim their authentic self.

Tindo shares their powerful story of navigating the medical and societal trauma of being an intersex person in a binary world. They discuss the profound "empathy journey" required to forgive their parents for decisions made without consent, and how they found spiritual affirmation in the words of Jesus. This conversation is a testament to the power of self-compassion and the possibility of post-traumatic growth.

Join us for a conversation about the borders we cross to find our true selves, and the grace we find on the other side.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Learn more about us at oceansidesanctuary.org

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Before we begin a brief content warning. This episode contains discussion of intersex issues, including childhood surgical interventions and their long term effects. Some listeners may find this difficult and it may be inappropriate for younger ears. Please exercise your best judgment. [00:00:21] Speaker B: I'm ready to kind of connect with people in a genuine way or not at all, you know, and so to me, you know, I deal with a lot of people that sort of feel like the conventional wisdom of. Of my story of being intersex is like, hey, what? You know, like, keep that on the down low, you know, like, why are you sharing that? I think because of my lived experience. I have, like, I gotta tell you this because this is a deal breaker for me. Like, this is who I am. This is what I've been through. I'm not trying to force anything on you, but this is me at my most authentic. [00:00:58] Speaker A: Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Collective Table podcast. This is Jason Coker and I'll be your host for today if this is your first episode. Janelle and I have spent this whole season making the case for empathy. And we've been doing that by telling people stories in a way that we hope makes it really clear just how good and vital empathy is to this whole business of being human. And maybe you've noticed, but one thing we've learned is this. If the essence of empathy is to understand people who are different than you are, that requires the willingness to cross borders of one kind or another. Well, today's story is all about crossing borders of a different kind. Societal borders, family borders, medical borders. Even the borders of one's own self and one's own body. This is Tindo's story. Janelle and I first met Tindo at Pride by the beach, an annual festival hosted every June here in downtown Oceanside by the local North County LGBTQ Resource Center. Tindo showed up at church the very next day, and within a day or two, emailed me an article. I mean, I meet a lot of people, right? [00:02:17] Speaker B: Right. [00:02:18] Speaker A: And I don't think I've ever had the experience of meeting somebody and then having them send me an email that's like, here's this article from the Chicago Reader. [00:02:29] Speaker C: Got something to tell you I want you to read. [00:02:31] Speaker A: And I was like, I think this Tindo person's trying to tell me something. [00:02:35] Speaker B: Like, let me just full disclosure, what you're dealing with here. [00:02:40] Speaker A: The article Tindo sent was a 2018 piece from the Chicago Tribune written by Nara Schoenberg. In it, Schoenberg profiles several Chicago area people who are intersex, including Tindo who was originally from Chicago and back in 2018, was still going by the name Cynthia. More on that later. It's important to understand that people born under the umbrella term intersex have bodies that don't fit binary notions of male or female. This happens for several reasons. Sometimes they're born with female XX chromosomes and have internal ovaries, but externally, their genitalia are ambiguous or male present. Sometimes it's the opposite. They're born with male XY chromosomes, but their genitalia are ambiguous or female appearing. There are also people born with XXY chromosomes. This is known as Klinefelter syndrome and is generally included in the definition of intersex because it usually affects male sex development, resulting in reduced testosterone, small testes, and infertility. There are also people born with XYY chromosomes. This is known as Jacob's syndrome and is usually excluded from the definition of intersex because it doesn't often cause problems with sex development. You may think you don't know anyone who is intersex, but chances are you do. It's quite common for intersex people to be unaware of it until they reach adolescence or even adulthood, when they encounter complications in their sexual development. In some cases, people never discover this about themselves. And because of that, it's hard to know exactly how many intersex people there are. But our best estimate is they represent about 1.7% of the population. And that translates to about 5.6 million people in the United States, roughly equal to the number of Americans with naturally occurring red hair. Human bodies, of course, exhibit a broad range of variety that includes our genitals. So sometimes at birth, doctors will visually classify an intersex person as male or female because their genitals appear within the usual range of human differences. But other times, intersex people are born with genitals that don't appear to fit our binary notions of sex. And until very recently when that happened, doctors would very commonly, with permission from the parents, surgically alter that baby's genitals to fit society's notion of what counts as normal. And that is what happened to Tindo. [00:05:52] Speaker B: The reality of my life is it came, you know, the world, the worldview came at me with a scalpel and, you know, literally. I mean, literally. And so, and I don't mean to say like, ooh, you know, I've been carved up like a Virginia Hamp, but it's like that. That is, that was the solution of the world. The world said, we fix you. [00:06:10] Speaker A: These surgeries often involve reducing the size of the clitoris, enlarging vaginal cavities, construction of a penis, and the removal of gonads. Most of these are medically unnecessary procedures, but they have very serious consequences, including scarring, trouble urinating, difficulty menstruating, recurring urinary tract infections, and later in adulthood, pain during sexual arousal and orgasm, or loss of sexual function altogether. It's common for these problems to require multiple follow up surgeries to address these complications. On top of this, intersex persons often experience psychological distress when their hormones or gender identities or sexual attractions run contrary to the social expectations of their assigned sex. The pain and trauma caused by these kinds of struggles, which become especially acute starting in adolescence, can be severe. According to some studies, intersex people attempt suicide at rates of up to 20% higher than the general population. Given all this, it's important to keep in mind that intersex children did not and cannot consent to these procedures. And that is one of the most painful wounds they experience. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Because I didn't even know it all, my father's retired physician, I didn't even have all my medical records, you know, like, I started this slow process of like, you know, what can I find out about this? And, you know, going back to the hospital back in Illinois, where this was, you know, the early interventions were performed on me, you know, are there archival records, which is not always, you know, easily, you know, obtained, and I was able to get mine and, you know, like, whoa, this actually happened. [00:08:15] Speaker A: Tindo's story was largely concealed by their parents. And Tindo was well into midlife by the time they went digging for their medical records. But what they know is this. They were born in Chicago in 1965 and declared a boy at birth. Their parents named them Stephen. Sometime later, having concluded that Stephen's anatomy was more complicated than had been anticipated, doctors at Children's Memorial Hospital in Evanston, Illinois, determined Stephen would do better as a girl. Surgery was performed on them at three months old to reconstruct female genitalia. Steven was renamed Cynthia. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Then, like, there's my dad's signature giving consent to have my, you know, have my body, you know, you know, operated on. And, you know, you're sort of like reading, you know, like the, you know, the biography of your life that somebody else wrote. You're like, whoa, like, this happened to me. [00:09:17] Speaker A: Later the family moved to San Diego, and throughout their childhood as Cynthia, Tindo felt conspicuously different in a way they couldn't quite understand. They remember being more modest than the other girls and felt out of place in the usual girl spaces and struggled with social expectations of femininity. They weren't in touch with the complicated reality of their intersex body. And that led to real challenges and confusion. [00:09:49] Speaker B: And then that led into, like. Like the junior high years was when I was taken for the first time to an endocrinologist to like, you know, okay. As my mother, you know, put it, you know, she came into my room, like, the night before we were gonna go to a doctor's appointment. She basically tried to frame it as like, well, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna get you started on your period. And like, for me, I wasn't a girl that was like, oh, when am I gonna get my period? You know, it wasn' When's my turn to become a woman, mom? You know, like, I was really kind of more of like a, like, wannabe tomboy. [00:10:21] Speaker A: Tyndall's parents did everything they could to reinforce their femininity. [00:10:26] Speaker B: And my mother, who was overtly very kind of feminine and very feminine presenting and very womanly, it was. She was sort of tasked with, like, okay, it's time for you to go through the change here, right? And it was like, I'm like, what's gonna happen to me? You know? Cause I was more of kind of a clodhopper, like, you know, why do we have do this? And. But I also wasn't very. I wasn't rebellious. I wasn't a real hellraiser. It was kind of like her, like, okay, you know, this is womanhood. You know, like it or not. [00:11:04] Speaker A: It was especially her mother's job to teach her how to be a girl and grow up to be a woman. This caused real tension in their relationship. [00:11:15] Speaker B: I wasn't really into it, but I didn't push back. They might have thought it wasn't, you know, like, I wasn't that compliant. Probably because they saw, I think, a lot for them. Like, what I was picking up was like, a vibe of anxiety from them. And I was sort of thinking, like, why are mom and dad so uptight? Because they were looking for signs of everything going well. And I'm like, what's the. Like, what's. What's the goal here? [00:11:40] Speaker A: Cynthia joined their mother in women's groups and activities at church. They joined a women's philanthropic organization together. As a teenager, they volunteered as a candy striper in the local hospital. Tindo's parents even signed up Cynthia to participate in the long running and prestigious La Jolla Debutante Ball in San Diego. [00:12:03] Speaker B: I was a debutante. My parents had me in a. Oh, yeah. I was formally debuted into society, presented society at the Hotel del Coronado. I had, you know, I donned a lovely white dress of purity. And, you know, my brothers and my dad all were dressed up in a tuxedo. And, you know, here we are. Here's our lovely daughter who we originally thought was a boy at birth. And we. We named Steven Johnson. And lo and behold, that's not what the doctors thought was best. So now we have Cynthia Ann, you know, and it's just this whole, like, okay, let's pretend. [00:12:48] Speaker A: All told, Tindo spent the better part of 50 years living as Cynthia. Several years later, after their mother passed away, Tindo was done pretending. This reckoning with who they had been also produced a genuine understanding and empathy for their other selves. And this led to new possibilities for who they might become. [00:13:12] Speaker B: Tindo is a nickname I was given as a child. And when I got to a point like, you know, you can say, when did you become Tindo? Like, you were Cynthia? Well, I was. First. I was Steven for three and a half months, and then it was like it was Cynthia. When did Cynthia say, I'm done with. You know, that was probably like around five years. Five, you know, five or six years ago. Yeah. [00:13:33] Speaker A: Which is pretty recent. [00:13:35] Speaker B: Pretty recent. I mean, I'm 60, so it's like, all right, in new situations, it's. I'm. I have the freedom to start fresh and say, okay, now, because I'm dealing with a fresh community and fresh faces, I can start fresh as Tindo. [00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:48] Speaker B: And define myself and who I am and my experience and how I want to be, hopefully be seen and show up authentically. [00:14:13] Speaker C: Hey, everyone, it's cj. We hope you're enjoying the collective table and finding something meaningful here, something that connects with your heart and your journey. If you are, we'd love for you to help others find it, too. The best way to do that is simple. Rate and follow the collective table wherever you listen to podcasts. When you follow, you'll never miss a new episode. And when you leave a rating or a short review, it helps more people discover this community of love, liberation, and faith in action. And while you're at it, share an episode with a friend, someone you think might find encouragement, hope, or inspiration in these conversations. It only takes a moment, but it makes a big difference. So go ahead, tap that follow button, leave us a quick review, and share the collective table with someone who could use it today. Thanks for listening and for being a part of the collective table. [00:15:15] Speaker A: Tindo's story explicitly reveals something that I think is true for all of us, that the hardest borders to cross exist within ourselves across competing desires, beliefs and identities. In Tindo's case, the competing identities were stark. Tindo was Cynthia for five decades and before that, Steven for just three months. The gender binary that is external to most of us is deeply inscribed on Tindo's body and mind. And that battle was being reinforced on both sides by hormonal changes, family dynamics and social pressures. [00:15:59] Speaker B: The story of my life, you know, born intersex, had this whole, you know, oh my God, something's different about this child. There's a bodily difference, you know, that was socially alarming. It was a source of, you know, anguish and uncertainty and fear, you know, from my parents and what do we do? And in their otherwise like perfect Norman rock, you know, everything's going perfectly and then you, here comes this different child. And it really set the tone. It kind of sort of set things in a different direction. [00:16:29] Speaker A: For my parents, more than anything, what comes through in conversation with Tindo about this journey is the work they've done to empathize with their parents. [00:16:40] Speaker B: I've really been on an empathy journey of reconciling my feelings about what happened to me, my parents role, the decisions they made without my consent. But now looking back going, you know, what if I were them? What happened to me was not unreasonable for who they were and for the times. [00:17:04] Speaker A: At this point in the conversation, Tindo really steps into their parents shoes and demonstrates an ability to use their imagination to truly understand where their parents were coming from. [00:17:18] Speaker B: You know, you gotta look at that snapshot of like, these were young people that they came from a lived experience of like, this is how the world is and everything was going great for them. My dad was just starting his career as a doctor. My mom was like, already had my two older brothers and she's a mother and she came from her own family dynamic of adversity as a young girl. So it's like everything was going great and then here I come. So for me, in doing the hard work of sort of self realization and looking at my own life, I have to also revisit it from the lens of their lived experience. And that's been a process. [00:17:57] Speaker A: Over the past three decades, psychologists have begun to rethink the long standing assumption that trauma leaves only damage in its wake. The field of post traumatic growth pioneered by Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun in the mid-1990s emerged as researchers noticed a consistent pattern. Many survivors not only recovered from trauma, but but experience deeper meaning, stronger relationships, and a renewed sense of personal strength Precisely because their old assumptions about life had been shattered. This framework shifted the conversation from what did trauma do to you? To the more positive frame, what can emerge in you because of what you lived through. Within this evolving landscape, the role of self empathy, often studied as self compassion, has become increasingly central. Scholars such as Kristin Neff and Paul Gilbert have shown that the way we relate to our own suffering profoundly shapes whether trauma is integrated or avoided. It seems to be the case that when people can turn toward their pain with gentleness, curiosity, and a sense of shared humanity rather than self criticism or shame, they open the psychological space required for the deeper work of meaning making. Recent studies demonstrate that this kind of self empathy predicts higher levels of post traumatic growth by lowering internalized blame, which calms the body's threat response and enables the reflective processing that leads to growth. In this sense, self empathy becomes a kind of inner scaffolding. It holds us steady as we confront what we would rather not feel, giving us the stability to ask more transformative questions like, who am I? What's my purpose? And how can I connect with others. In this way? Far from being toxic, self empathy is emerging as one of the most powerful spiritual tools we have for surviving trauma and growing personally. It's not hard to recognize this pattern. In Tindo's story. They ask these same questions with gentleness, curiosity, and courage, and it has led to greater growth and empathy for their parents. But it has also taken years, and that work isn't finished. [00:20:47] Speaker B: I'm glad I still have this relationship with my father. I see him weekly, and that's important to me. And the arc of that relationship is very much one of, like, change. I see the change in him. You know, he still holds, you know, holds tight to his foundation of, like, well, this is what it means to be human. And I only can know this and this and, you know, all of this. You know, they, them, theirs, and, you know, you're pro and even, you know, going by tindo. [00:21:17] Speaker A: But they keep working at it, and there's a sense of hope in the process. [00:21:21] Speaker B: And I'm hoping to get there. Like, I feel like I'm on this, like, this journey of getting to a place where, like, you know, he's gonna be 90 in November. And it's like, is it possible that, like, we could have this, like, you know, on golden pond moment where, like, you know, Jane Fonda says to her, you know, curmudgeonly old father, like, you know, I feel like we've always been mad at each other, but I want to be friends with you, you know, and I am friends with my dad. And we do have a lot of love. But this history, this narrative, it's burned deep into both of us. [00:22:00] Speaker A: This is a harder process. For Tindo's memories of their mother. She was the one responsible for socializing Tindo into being a girl and in that sense was the source of much of their pain. [00:22:16] Speaker B: It's a gift. And it's also, you gotta, it's like the jagged little pill. Like, okay, if I'm gonna have fond. [00:22:24] Speaker A: I appreciate you dropping an Alanis Morissette. [00:22:27] Speaker B: Well, you know, if I'm gonna have fond feelings for her, it's cause I'm gonna have to create them. I'm going to have to want them, which is very much like the spiritual path. Like, you know, if we're going to want this, you know, love of our fellow man, you're going to have to work at it. [00:22:45] Speaker A: But because their mother is no longer around, the anger related to years of hurt and being socialized into an identity that didn't fit is harder to process. [00:22:57] Speaker B: Oh, that's all there. It's all there. Yeah. And yet it's sort of like you realize like anger and that kind of fury and rage and that's kind of like a quick snack, you know, like, it's like I just want to have my, you know, self righteous indignation. But the real banquet of being human is like seeing the whole story. [00:23:22] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:23:30] Speaker C: Table listeners. It's CJ again. A lot of people out there might not realize that this podcast is part of a real life faith community. The Collective Table podcast is a production of the Oceanside Sanctuary, a progressive Christian community whose mission is to foster collective expressions of inclusive, inspiring and impactful Christian spirituality wherever it is needed. And as a 501c3 nonprofit organization, that mission is only possible because of the generosity of people just like you. So if you believe in what we are doing, if you benefit from this mission, please Visit [email protected] Give to become a supporter today. Together we can keep building communities of love and liberation. [00:24:27] Speaker A: Tyndo is the first to point out that this is spiritual work. In Matthew chapter 19, some fellow teachers approach Jesus and ask, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause? What's not mentioned in the text is that but they're essentially inviting Jesus into a well known debate between two influential rabbis at that time. And the debate was this. Deuteronomy 24:1 4 states that a man can divorce his wife if he finds something indecent about her. Now, Rabbi Shammai taught that this text refers to one thing and one thing only, sexual infidelity. That was the only acceptable reason, according to Rabbi Shammai, that you could divorce your wife. But Rabbi Hillel taught that a husband could legitimately find nearly anything to be indecent, including preparing a bad meal. Jesus questioners want to know where he stands in this debate. Jesus answers that men should not be allowed to simply discard their wives for any triv. This isn't a way of trapping women in marriage. It's a way of protecting them from being made destitute by the cruel and fickle whims of their husbands. But there's something fascinating about Jesus response. First, while he agrees with Rabbi Shammai, he's uninterested in the precise legal meaning of the Hebrew word erwah in Deuteronomy 20:24, which is translated into English as either indecent or shameful. That's surprising, because the whole debate hangs on how that word is interpreted. But Jesus ignores that. Instead, he points to the creation story and reminds his fellow rabbis that marriage joins together the tensions of masculine and feminine in a way that no man should separate. Jesus implies something here that Philo of Alexandria stated explicitly. Philo was a Jewish philosopher who lived in Egypt during Jesus lifetime, and he pointed out that the first human at the beginning of creation, the Ha Adam in Genesis 1:27, is depicted by the text as androgynous. Man and woman as gender distinctions did not exist until Genesis 2:22 and 23, when God splits Adam into two distinct people. In other words, before Eve was created, Adam was intersex. Marriage then, for Jesus, is a symbol of the ontological reality that being human means embracing and reuniting these opposing tensions. Not surprisingly, then, Tyndo finds great personal resonance with this passage. [00:27:46] Speaker B: When you're on a path of faith, you want to believe that there's something foundational about it that resonates as true for you personally. Where is the personal truth for me in the Bible, you know, and to have, you know, to have this person of historic, you know. [00:28:07] Speaker A: Position. [00:28:07] Speaker B: Jesus, you know, make reference in first person in red ink. And to see the spoken, you know, the written word, but the spoken word of God, of Jesus, or God in the form of Jesus, say, we all know there are eunuchs. [00:28:27] Speaker A: This is the other really fascinating part of Matthew 19, when his disciples hear that men shouldn't just be able to discard their Wives, whenever they felt like it, they were alarmed. Maybe they say, it's better not to marry at all. Jesus responds by saying, well, there are other options. We all know there are eunuchs. Some are born, some are made, and some choose to be eunuchs. Jesus is doing more here than simply saying, hey, you can always be single. For him, the category of eunuch seems to operate as a category of being that falls outside the binary of male and female. [00:29:15] Speaker B: And of course, he's preaching on marriage, you know, and. And that there are some that, you know, may not qualify. And that's another aspect of my story that I sort of grapple with. Like, okay, so, like, you're embracing this idea of being a born eunuch, someone who's born different. And Jesus is saying, yeah, we know that there are sort of qualifiers for marriage. And being a eunuch may be one that, you know, sort of precludes you, you know, from having this blessing. [00:29:41] Speaker A: If we take Jesus words at face value, he seems to be divorcing gender from sex. By acknowledging that some people, despite their genitalia, may not be bound by the same social expectations to marry, Tyndale finds a lifeline in this brief passage. How does that. How do those words in red, as you put it, how does that relieve some hurt for you? How does that relieve some pressure for you? [00:30:13] Speaker B: Because so much of the narrative and the lived experience of being intersex is a feeling of, I'm wrong. I was. You know, I came into the world in a way that was seen, that registered as wrong as this is. This is abhorrent. This is anathema to what we are. You know, there's only men, there's only women. And it's like, we have. You're a mystery. And there I have this wonderful sort of vindication. I have an acknowledgement and validation from the one source that, like, whose other opinion matters, right? I mean, it should be everybody else saying the same thing, but it's like, I have it in red ink from the guy. [00:30:58] Speaker A: So does that help you live into that with some pride? [00:31:01] Speaker B: Absolutely. It's like I got my tap on the shoulder like, you're tindo. You know, this is God saying, you're good. We know you. Like, he's saying, we all know these people. Like, where are we hearing that in society today? Like, we like. Is our president saying, well, we all know there are inner. Like, we all know. No, we're not. And just. It's so. To me, it's like, I'm good. Like, if this is the Hill, I'm gonna die on, like, I'm okay with. [00:31:43] Speaker A: A growing body of queer, feminist and intersex affirming scholarship argues that Jesus's reference here to three types of eunuchs in Matthew 19 signals an intentional recognition of gender diversity in the ancient world. Eunuchs were widely understood as gender liminal or third gender figures lacking the reproductive markers that defined normative masculinity. By affirming eunuchs from birth and those who embody non procreative lives for the sake of the kingdom, Jesus grants positive theological value to people whose bodies or identities don't conform to binary norms. These interpreters see this passage as opening space for gender expansive and gender transgressive identities within the life of the kingdom of God. [00:32:42] Speaker B: And that's why it's like, thank you Jesus for making it okay. And it's like there are people who are invoking your name, you know, to come after me, right? And it's like I got very loudly and so. And I've thought about this. I'm like, if I had to go before like a congressional panel and say, hey, hey, pull out your Bibles there, Mr. Southern Republican. I mean, and not coming after anyone because they're Republican or from a Southern state, but it's like, would they even, Would they even, would that even register with them? Would that even matter to them? [00:33:18] Speaker A: This is not hypothetical. On April 10, 2025, during the floor debate over the Texas state budget, Republican Representative Andy Hopper and Democrats Lauren Ashley Simmons had this tense exchange. [00:33:35] Speaker D: Gender is not a social construct. It's firmly rooted in biological reality. [00:33:39] Speaker E: I'm sorry, can you say that again? [00:33:41] Speaker D: I said gender is not a social. [00:33:42] Speaker E: Okay, so again, intersex people. What about them? We were talking about two biological sexes. What are we talking about when they're. Regarding intersex people? [00:33:51] Speaker D: Yeah. Could you explain it one more time? Like, I think we all would to like, like have an explanation where we can understand, and I think we're quite, quite following. [00:33:58] Speaker E: You are not sure what intersex people are, if they exist or not. But you want to defund a program about something that you don't under, that you don't quite understand. I'm, I'm, I'm trying. That's why I'm seeking clarification. [00:34:11] Speaker D: Yeah. So the truth that is rooted in our biblical understanding that God set forth from the beginning of creation is that you, your gender is fixed at birth and you cannot change it. [00:34:23] Speaker E: You haven't yet answered my question about where do intersex people fall into that equation? [00:34:30] Speaker D: Yeah, those intersex individuals are still XX or xy, so you can't change that. [00:34:38] Speaker A: At issue here was Representative Hopper's amendment to eliminate state funding for the University of Texas at Austin and other public universities for including diversity, equity and inclusion programs. This moment underscores how efforts to legislate narrow understandings of sex, gender or identity are based on deeply ignorant premises divorced from any scientific reality. More to the point, these efforts seek to deny access to resources for people who are often the most vulnerable and normalize stigmas that will further endanger their safety. The embarrassing irony of Andy Hopper's words is that he clumsily appeals to the Bible when, as we've seen, the Bible actually acknowledges a gender spectrum. And that isn't only true for ancient Jewish culture. A wide variety of non Western cultures embrace gender plural categories. These include the Hijras of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Wariyas of Indonesia, the Katoi of Thailand, the Fa' afa Fenei of Samoa, the Ashtime of Ethiopia, the Mahu of Hawaii, Tahiti and Polynesia, and the two spirit people found in many Native American tribes in north and South America. Many of these are genuine third genders, not unlike Jesus eunuchs. In other cases, they reflect a kind of gender fluidity that mirrors that particular culture's God or gods. Not unlike the God of the Hebrew Bible, who is frequently called by the Hebrew name El Shaddai, which can be translated as the many breasted one because of God's maternal characteristics. [00:36:39] Speaker B: What does that, you know, what does that mean to somebody who would come to me, who would come after me in 2025 and say, no, no, no, we're not having this third gender crisis. No, we're gonna send you to the doctor and you're gonna get put through the meat grinder and you're gonna come out a boy or a girl bent, depending about what we as society feels, you know, is the most reasonable approach to deal with your situation. Like, well, we'll still go ahead and fix these, these funny looking kids and their funny looking genitals, because we can't have that. [00:37:28] Speaker A: I mean, I don't know, you know, I don't know how many of our congregants will listen to this interview. But, but if I were like, oh yeah, I interviewed, you know, Cynthia for the podc. Like, who's Cynthia? But if I said, I, you know, I interviewed Cynthia or Tindo for the podcast, everybody would know who Tindo is. Like, everybody knows who Tindo is. [00:37:47] Speaker B: You're right. [00:37:48] Speaker A: Like, you are very well known here and loved here who you are. [00:37:53] Speaker B: I feel it. And that that's why I'm here. You know, you, I think you know, you're. You're in your, your faith home, your spirit, you know, your spiritual home, my faith community, I should say, when you feel like you're seen and I, I feel seen here. [00:38:21] Speaker A: Thank you friends, for joining us here at the Collective Table Podcast. I hope you enjoyed hearing Tindo's story. If so, would you please do me a favor and do two things? Subscribe so you'll be sure to get all of our updates and then share this episode with a friend. Even better, share the whole season. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or anywhere you get your favorite podcasts. The Collective Table is created by Jason and Janelle Coker and is a production of the Oceanside Sanctuary Church in Oceanside, San, California. This podcast is directed, edited and produced by Nico Butler. Theme music composed by Nico Butler. From all of us here, may the peace of God be with you. We'll see you next time.

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