I believe in reincarnation, and for a long time I have believed that people who know they are in the wrong bodies know it because their spirit/soul remembers who they were before, in other lifetimes.
I myself have no memories of past lives as a man; as far as I know, I have always been female in every life.
I have partnered with Butches who have active memories of past lives as men. Some of them have been happy with this, and some have been completely uncomfortable with it.
Before I believed in reincarnation and multiple gods/goddesses, Butches didn't make a lot of sense to me (and Transsexed people even less!) because I was trapped in the dominant religious binary, believing that we all had to conform to specific ways of being. So I would say, yes, my spirituality has a strong bearing on my understanding of gender, and certainly gave me the freedom to explore myself as a gendered being. I don't think I would have the same understanding at all if I had kept a different spirituality, because I just wasn't open to understanding anything while I was busy following other people's rules... I was too scared to allow differences and diversity then.
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