(Re)Sacralizing Queer and Trans Bodies through Serious Parody

From popular kitsch through art displayed in galleries to works of popular culture such as music videos, contemporary trans and queer people engage not only in critique of religion but in active reclamation of the sacred. Insisting that religion belongs equally to them as to the straight and cisgender people who typically hold the reins of religious power, trans and queer artists and activists use the arts not only to claim religious space and belonging but also, and even more importantly, to inscribe their bodies in the sacred and the sacred in their bodies, affirming truths that they have always known but that all too often have been torn forcibly from their flesh and their souls. This lecture focuses on one particular group of such activists: the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an international, religiously unaffiliated, non-celibate order of self-described queer and trans nuns who for over forty years have been engaging in community activism on four continents. While often seen by both fans and foes as simply mocking Roman Catholic nuns, the Sisters insist that they are emulating them, performing the roles of nuns for communities rarely served by religiously affiliated orders. They accomplish their simultaneous critique and reclaiming, I argue, through a strategy I call “serious parody” – a strategy that may serve and may already be serving other activists and artists in their efforts to affirm the sacrality of those whom oppression has desecrated.

Melissa M. Wilcox (any pronouns) is Professor and Holstein Family and Community Chair of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Dr. Wilcox has authored or edited seven books, including most recently Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody; Queer Religiosities: An Introduction to Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion; and (with Nina Hoel and Liz Wilson) Religion, the Body, and Sexuality.