Queerness, Christianity, Autism and Vaginismus with Andy Thornton

Welcome to the first Doing It episode of 2021! In this episode, Hannah is joined by Andy Thornton (they/he), who is a bigender illustrator, sex educator for the School of Sexuality Education, and Stonewall's Person of Faith role model. Andy discusses their experience being queer and non-binary as well as what being bigender means to him and how the way they identify relates to being a Christian. He and Hannah talk about the difference between tolerating and affirming Christian communities, social constructs of gender, and go on a tangent about language and sexual orientation. Finally, Hannah and Andy also discuss autism and vaginismus. It's a jam-packed episode this week!

MORE ABOUT ANDY THORNTON I'm a Stonewall LGBTQ+ Person of Faith Role Model so I make noise about how God loves queers, and I mentor young people who are struggling with their Christian and queer identities and help them to embrace and love themselves! I'm also technically an author and illustrator as I published a trans children's book called Rebekah's Secret Grandpa. I've just graduated in Sociology at Bath after doing an art foundation at Oxford Brookes, and now I'm a freelance digital marketer and illustrator, working mainly with SSE (+ facilitating in schools) and Rixxo. My dissertation researched experiences of trans and bi Christians who are excluded from both queer and Christian spaces, with hour long interviews with 17 students who identified with one or both of those identities. I recently talked about my findings, and my experience as a queer Christian Quaker, on the podcast Blessed Are The Binary Breakers (which was split out into two episodes: 1 & 2), and about being a trans ally on the podcast Nobody Panic.

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/humansatsuma/ - Art Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lesgetbetter/ - Portfolio: http://andythornton.work/ - School of Sexuality Education Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/school_sexed/

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