My name is Rya and I use they/them/theirs pronouns an I'd like to bear my testimony that I exist and I do not have a victim complex, I have been victimized by harmful rhetoric. Those are two different things. The church did not offend me, it oppressed me.

I'd you think my gender or pronouns are a sin that's between you & your god, not me & mine.

I hold 1 Nephi 14: 17 accountable for my self hatred as a youth. Imagine reading this verse as a young afab enby, who would characterize themself as 49% masculine and 51% feminine if I had to use that as a metric (and I think that's an inadequate metric for measuring gender but I digress) and fight of the "firey darts of the adversary" which were their feelings of "gender confusion" that made me sick to my stomach every time I got misgendered.

I learned how to read by reading the book of Mormon. Naturally, I was reading it with a very specific set of questions for the Lord, because I had some shit to say to that motherfucker. (For everyone offended I just called the god of mormonism a motherfucker, he literally raped Mary, the mother of Jesus and didn't let black families get sealed in the temple so chill out.)

The phrase of "there are only two churches" really stood out to me as a child. I took that as a direct answer from the Lord on the issue of gender. There was "the church of the Lamb of God" (read: gender assigned at birth) and "the church of the devil," (meaning your actual gender.) God was right, there were only two genders, which meant I was wrong, I felt wrong, I wanted to do wrong, and I couldn't seem to stop feeling that way no matter how hard I tried or how much I prayed.

And of course, I could use my agency to choose whether or not be be "the mother of harlots" by choosing whether or not I was going to "act on my feelings of gender confusion" something which my parents taught me was wrong basically since I was born. Thankfully I never said to my parents "I'm gender confused" because they probably would have told the bishop and I would have gotten taken to conversion therapy with a "liscened" practitioner.

My dad always reminded me that I was too sensitive, that I got my "feelings hurt" about things that shouldn't have hurt my feelings. Like him making blonde jokes about me, or calling me a girl, or using she/her pronouns. I imagine he's talking about the fact that I lived in a vast world of fantasy, myth, and magic, a world in which I didn't have to be a girl, I could just be Sir Rya the gender bending, horse back riding, bow & arrow toting enaree, galavanting through bronze age India.

My mom said to me this summer "honey, nobody knew trans people existed, how was I supposed to know trans people existed" so I decided I'm gonna give it a few years and then she can talk to me again. My mom has a master's degree and a trans woman lived kitty corner from us, but she didn't know trans people existed. 🙄 I sorry mommy, just because you didn't know I exist doesn't mean I didn't exist. I think you love me because you do lots of wonderful things to show it, but it's a little hard to feel it in my body when you act offended that I'm not over the fact you basically did at home conversion therapy on me.

Thank God my older sister has celiac disease and that my parents took her and my siblings to a child psychologist when I was 6, and the psychologist told my parents to stop spanking their children, or I doubt I would have made it to my 8th birthday without attempting suicide. When I was 3 or 4, I ran away from home. I had planned it with my best friend Franklin, but he wimped out so I decided to do it myself. I don't have memories of this event persay, they're more akin to nightmares lost deep within me. I didn't find out it happened for real until I was 19. I figured I had made it up, that it was a bad dream that got too real, like my phobia of orca whales, a movie inspired nightmare that kicked down the 4th wall and disrupted my mental and physical health at a young age. Identity foreclosure, am I right folx?

I was a decent swimmer as a child, because that shit was not a game to me, it was something I needed to learn in case I ever met an orca in the wild. We did hard things in my family, that was one of our mottos: "We can do hard things." I was a boy scout, in fact I was the BSA Western Region Area 2 West Venturing President when I was 17. I did all the hard things. Suppressing my Non-Binary gender identity and presentation was not just hard, it was impossible, and it gave me a bona-fide diagnosed mental illness. (A couple of em actually, so sit down Karen) I'd die before I'd do that again. I'd rather be forced to murder a man with my bear 🐻 bare hands tied behind my back by biting off his genetalia than be forced to wear a skirt to church. Anyone who supports theraputic interventions which promote the suppression of queer identity, behavior, or actions is practicing pseudoscience statistically demonstrated to devestate mental health outcomes, and is a pharisee washing the blood of young children off their hands because the kids killed themselves, you just loaded the gun with your words.

Mormons need to do better. The Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints needs to do better. Flags are not enough, not when Ty Mansfield is still conducting research at an accreddited state university.

I say these things in the names of Dustin Parker; Neulisa Luciano Ruiz; Yampi Méndez Arocho; Monika Diamond; Lexi; and Marsha P Johnson. May their bodies rest in peace as we draw power from their memory. Amen.