Introduction

Abstract

and quiet, earnest way of expressing himself. He was a self-identified coloured man who kept his hair cut short and neat, and he favored roomy shirts and slacks that hid his body. He was easily embarrassed and avoided group gatherings when he could. I first met Adrian in 2004 when he was in his midtwenties; he often seemed to be on the margins of conversations and was very socially awkward. I was surprised when a ministry leader told me that by the time I met him, Adrian had made significant social progress. When he first started attending a weekly support group for ex-gay Pentecostal men he could not look anyone in the eye, even in one-on-one conversations, and he stared at his hands or the table on the rare occasions when he spoke. Besides attending groups for Christian men with "same-sex attraction, " or sexual desire for other men, Adrian also underwent weekly individual counseling sessions for over a year with Brian, the ministry's white American founder. Adrian was in his early twenties when he first came into the ministry offices at Church of the Reborn, a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church. Adrian had decided to undergo a sex change operation and entered the ministry without any hope that he could change his sexual preference. He went to his initial counseling appointment to prove to himself that he had exhausted all other "healing" options. He had already investigated the process for transitioning and planned to meet with a psychologist to begin liv-Introduction 3 His arms rested on his upper thighs instead of his knees. His body took up more space and he remained in this stereotypically masculine position throughout the rest of lunch. Adrian believed his masculine interior would continue to grow and transform as he naturalized his masculine exterior through posture and walking. He told me, "I think I have worked that [effeminacy] off. I don't even know how I used to walk because I've totally lost the ability to walk like that [pause] I think. " Through practice Adrian had returned to what he referred to as his "natural" voice and gait. The language that Adrian used is notable-that of work, practice, and "forcing" himself to speak and walk differently. He believed that working on his exterior would initiate an interior working-that his masculinity would grow with each deeper voice intonation and time spent sitting with legs wide, taking up space. Adrian was working to cultivate his ideal self-a deep voice, masculine walk, and heterosexual desires. He had an intimate relationship with God, who he believed would guide him to express himself in a manner that was read by others as masculine. Adrian felt that with God's love he could transform himself in body and spirit. God would eventually lead him to heterosexual desire and marriage. With God's guidance, he could begin to sexually desire women, not men, and have a transformed affect and comportment. Adrian was part of a diverse group of men who entered the ministry in an effort to transform their gender and sexual selves. Men are the majority in most ex-...