Emerging Gender Identities: Understanding the Diverse Experiences of Today’s Youth

by Mark A. Yarhouse; Julia Sadusky

Publisher:

Brazos

, 2020

Overview

This book offers a measured Christian response to the diverse gender identities that are being embraced by an increasing number of adolescents. Mark Yarhouse and Julia Sadusky offer an honest, scientifically informed, compassionate, and nuanced treatment for all readers who care about or work with gender-diverse youth: pastors, church leaders, parents, family members, youth workers, and counselors.

Yarhouse and Sadusky help readers distinguish between current mental health concerns, such as gender dysphoria, and the emerging gender identities that some young people turn to for a sense of identity and community. Based on the authors’ significant clinical and ministry experience, this book casts a vision for practically engaging and ministering to teens navigating diverse gender-identity concerns. It also equips readers to critically engage gender theory based on a Christian view of sex and gender.

Key Features

• Presents a vision for practically engaging and ministering to teens navigating diverse gender-identity concerns
• Offers a measured Christian response to the diverse gender identities
• Equips readers to critically engage gender theory based on a Christian view of sex and gender

Contents

Part 1: Making Important Distinctions

• The Transgender Experience and Emerging Gender Identities
• How Language and Categories Shape Gender Identities
• Controversies in Care

Part 2: Seeing the Person

• Foundations for Relationship
• Locating Your Area of Engagement
• Locating the Person: A Relational-Narrative Approach
• Engaging Youth: Looking beneath the Surface
• Ministry Structures for Youth
• Recovering a Hermeneutic of Christian Hope

Top Highlights

“In the early twentieth century, the psychiatric community catalyzed the shift from the punitive legal paradigm to the medical paradigm by distinguishing biological sex, gender identity, and sexuality.” (Page 15)

“Those who adopted a political identity in relation to transgender experience worked to ensure that this identity was not treated as an inferior or disabled identity defined exclusively in medical and psychiatric terms.” (Page 19)

“the opposing view credits the rising numbers to social contagion.” (Page 22)

“A second, opposing explanation of the current trends comes from those who are most wary of these trends—especially the trend of late-onset dysphoria among natal females. Groups like 4thWaveNow describe the trends as a form of ‘social contagion.’” (Page 23)

“Tey Meadow put the development this way: ‘Gender is no longer simply sutured to biology; many people now understand it to be a constitutive feature of the psyche that is fundamental, immutable, and not tied to the material of the body.” (Page 16)

Praise for the Print Edition

Julia and Mark have written a much-needed book about a beautiful and complex topic. Every page oozes with grace and wisdom. Mark and Julia not only have the academic credentials to speak into transgender-related issues, but they have also spent countless hours listening to and loving the very people they’re writing about. They have helped us see that this topic is not just about issues; it’s about people.

—Preston Sprinkle, author of Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

I am not overstating things when I say that this book is a page-turner. Why? It takes the important topic of gender identities and treats it with courage, truthfulness, and respect. Yarhouse and Sadusky anticipate readers’ questions. They carefully explore the historical and theological implications of the questions. But they never forget that they are writing about people with real pain who are seeking to understand a reality in light of their desire to love Jesus and retain their faith. Not everyone is going to like this book. But Yarhouse and Sadusky’s challenge is for men and women of faith who work with children, young adults, and others who are experiencing gender identity issues to seriously grapple with the complexities so that they—as parents, pastors, health-care practitioners, and educators—will be known as people who will tackle difficult problems in such a way that the people of God will feel beloved.

—Shirley V. Hoogstra, president, Council for Christian Colleges & Universities

We are faced with a dizzying ongoing evolution in cultural understanding of and recommended responses to a kaleidoscope of emerging gender identities. This book offers richly informed and thoughtful Christian analysis of these phenomena, along with compassionate and challenging recommendations for ministry. Yarhouse and Sadusky have the breadth of knowledge and experience to challenge readers to move toward more theologically grounded and pragmatically effective engagement.

—Stanton L. Jones, provost and professor emeritus, Wheaton College; coauthor of the God’s Design for Sex family sex-education book series

Product Details

• Title: Emerging Gender Identities: Understanding the Diverse Experiences of Today’s Youth
• Authors: Mark A. Yarhouse, Julia Sadusky
• Publisher: Brazos
• Print Publication Date: 2020
• Logos Release Date: 2020
• Pages: 238
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Church work with transgender people; Gender identity › Religious aspects--Christianity; Transgender people › Identity; Church work with teenagers
• ISBNs: 9781493434435, 9781587434341, 9781587434952, 9781493423811, 1493434438, 1587434342, 1587434954, 1493423819
• Resource ID: LLS:EMRGNGGNDRTDYYTH
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:40:55Z

About the Authors

Mark Yarhouse (PsyD, Wheaton College), a licensed clinical psychologist, is the Dr. Arthur P. Rech and Mrs. Jean May Rech Chair of Psychology in the School of Psychology, Counseling, and Family Therapy at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, where he leads the Sexual & Gender Identity Institute. Yarhouse has authored or coauthored several books, including the well-received Understanding Gender Dysphoria.

Julia Sadusky (PsyD, Regent University) works as a clinical psychologist in Denver, Colorado. She also serves as a youth and ministry educator, offering trainings and consultations on the intersection of sexuality, gender, and theology. Her research experiences and clinical training have focused on the study of sexual and gender identity, including providing individual, family, couples, and group therapy for those navigating sexual- and gender-identity concerns. She is an advisor for the Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender.