I wonder if I like trans girls as well as boys

Hi, and thanks for your question!

You are quite right when you say that lots of things happen in the teenage years. This is because the body starts to produce hormones which lead to changes in the body and the brain. A lot of people experience big mood swings during puberty, and these can lead to positive and negative emotions. It’s also quite normal that feelings of being in love come and go; a lot of people get strong sexual feelings which they have never experienced before. This is totally normal and part of becoming an adult.

You write that you are wondering if you like trans girls as well as boys. In other words, you wonder if you perhaps like people who are born as boys, but who feel more like girls and therefore define themselves as girls, even though they have a boy’s body. You also ask if this is sin.

It’s never wrong or sin to like other people. But when you ask the question in the way you do, we assume that you wonder if it is wrong to be sexually attracted to, or be in love with, people who define themselves as transexual. The feelings of attraction and of being in love can appear suddenly, and without us being able to control them ourselves, and it is not sin to have feelings like that. The Bible does not say it is wrong to have feelings or to be in love.

What the Bible does say something about, is what God says about sex and what the framework is for an intimate relationship between two people. The Bible says that God created people as man and woman (Genesis 1:27), and that He created sex so that the man and woman could be fertile, that they could create a family together and have children (Genesis 1:28). Sex is also to be a gift, binding the man and the woman together (Genesis 2:24), and bringing joy and enjoyment (Proverbs 5:18–19). At the same time sex is extremely personal, making us vulnerable. So the Bible is clear that God’s will for us is that sex only belongs in a lifelong marriage between one man and one woman.

There are some people today who think that gender is not decided by the body, but by what a person feels. So they don’t say that a person is born as a boy or a girl, but that a person is ‘given’ a gender at birth. They mean that a person can be a boy even though they are born in a girl’s body, or a girl born in a boy’s body. In this case they use the word ‘transexual’ to describe the person’s experience that their gender isn’t the same as what their body shows.

At the same time, science shows that gender is decided by chromosomes which are found in every cell in the body. These are XX for girls, and XY for boys. Whether we are a boy or a girl is decided when the sperm joins the egg . Even though today it is possible to take hormones and have surgery to make the body look more like the opposite gender, every single cell in the body has the same sex chromosome for the rest of the person’s life. The Bible has the same understanding, which says that people are made in God’s image as man and woman (Genesis 1:27). People are not just made withbodies; we are our bodies. God has created us as one thing, in which spirit, soul and body are equally important. With that perspective, gender is not something that is decided by what we feel, rather we are created as either man or woman.

The big changes that take place during puberty can make some young people for example feel that they are attracted to both boys and girls, or that they doubt if they really are a boy or a girl, but this does not last till they are adults. Research has shown that up to 80–90 per cent of all children who felt that they should have been the opposite gender, no longer have these feelings when they were adults. Because there are so many changes taking place during puberty, it can be smart not to jump to conclusions that you are for example transexual. The fact that a person feels an attraction to someone who defines themselves as transexual, doesn’t mean that that person is bisexual (someone who is attracted to both genders), or pansexual (someone who is attracted to people who have different gender identities).

If you find it hard to talk to your parents about these things, then it might be a good idea to talk to another adult who you trust, for example a pastor or youth leader in your church.

You can also read the answers to these questions:

What to do when a girl falls in love with another girl?
How do you know if you are gay?

Best wishes, boyandgirl.info