When I got back to New York, I was removed from all my former activities (graphics team and Big Shine) and placed in the “moms’ group” to focus on my faith by preaching and studying.

That was the typical medicine for someone that was “spiritually sick”: Remove them from all their responsibilities and let them focus on the basics.

Traditional gender roles were highly reinforced in the WMSCOG. It was men’s responsibility to lead churches and do construction work, while it was the women’s responsibility to cook, clean, and take care of kids.

The moms were considered to be the primary caretakers of children and only moms, not dads, were expected to volunteer in the kids’ room. Kids were supposed to reflect the spiritual health of their moms, not dads.

Being in the tech team in New Windsor, I had escaped from having to cook, clean, and take care of kids, which had been my usual duties while I was at the house church in Delaware.

Now that I was in the “moms’ group,” the pressure on me to once again conform to gender norms intensified. The moms talked about seemingly nothing but cooking and their children, the only topics that were allowed besides the Bible and God.

I didn’t identify as nonbinary yet at the time because I was disconnected from the LGBTQ+ community and didn’t know being nonbinary was a thing. But I felt uncomfortable with the other moms and didn’t feel like I could relate to them.

My dysphoria with traditional gender norms had been somewhat hidden while I was in the tech room, a co-ed environment where I also worked personally with men whom I considered my friends.

But suddenly my entire church experience became what felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with respect to my gender and role, and I now had no work to distract myself from it.

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Just a bit of background: In the WMSCOG, all church members are divided and assigned to teams and groups. This allows every member to be closely monitored by team and group leaders.

I also want to qualify a couple things. First of all, I am speaking here only about my location, the New York church. I’m not sure how the kids room was run and whether dads were involved in other locations. Also, obviously being female is not tied to cooking, cleaning, and taking care of kids. Those were just the roles that the WMSCOG gave to women. It wasn’t only those activities that caused dysphoria for me, either.

Often, I’d be sitting at the table with the other moms and have no idea what to say. I felt like I had nothing in common with them. I didn’t even like to think of myself as a “mom,” which felt too gendered for me. It had nothing at all to do with whether I loved my child or took care of her, which I tried to do to the best of my ability—it was simply awkwardness caused by gender dysphoria.