Pete Burns and the Iconography of the Unrepeatable in AS & A Level Theology and Sociology

In the hallowed silence of a life lived as a Consecrated Virgin, one might expect to find a heart detached from the neon-lit aesthetics of 1980s pop culture. Yet, as a theologian committed to the ‘orthodoxy of tenderness’, I find my intellectual and spiritual journey inextricably linked to a great sign of contradiction in the form of my love, devotion, and adoration of the late 1980s pop sensation and genius, Pete Burns. He was my greatest crush as a toddler during the 1990s and has remained so, even though I have been forced to hide that fact until the age of thirty-seven.

To the world, Pete Burns was a spectacle of gender-bending artifice; to me, even as a toddler growing up playing alongside preteen and teenage boys of my Roman Catholic neighbourhood in the early 1990s, he was an authentic manifestation of a specific, delicate male power — a ‘pretty’ man who was unapologetically, fiercely male. For too long, both the Roman Catholic Church and secular society have operated under a categorical violence that insists on a rigid binary, that to be a so-called ‘real man’ is to be burly or macho, and to be a so-called ‘real woman’ is to be conventionally fragile and submissive to the burliness of only a macho male. This article seeks to dismantle these toxic misconceptions by examining the ‘I am Pete’ philosophy, which is the refusal to be reduced to labels like trans, gay, or queer. By weaving together my own experience as a tomboy woman — now a Biblical Theologian in the making, a highly qualified IBDP and Cambridge Board teacher, and a Consecrated Virgin — submissive to this androgynous male ideal, and my theological conviction that the Imago Dei (Image of God) transcends our narrow cultural costumes, we will explore a more profound truth. We will ask, especially of AS & A Level Theology students: what if the ‘delicate manliness’ we find in figures like Burns, Prince, or even a nuanced reading of the Christ-figure, is not a wrong choice per se, but a more complete reflection of a God who is both the Lion and the Lamb in Christian Biblical Theology? It is time to move beyond the tyranny of labels and toward a theology of the unrepeatable person. A person like the indomitable, immortal, and fondly remembered Pete Burns.[1]

My theological journey did not begin in a library, but in front of a television screen in the year 1989, the very year I was born and Pete Burns turned thirty years of age. While other girl children were being socialised or conditioned to admire the hyper-masculine macho archetypes of the era — with the many He-Mans, WWF fighters, rough punk rock-stars, heavy metal musicians, tough action actors in Hollywood, and so on — my heart was captured by the androgynous magnetism of Pete Burns, the frontman of the pop group Dead or Alive. To my infant and then toddler eyes, he was not a freak or a wrong choice; he was the quintessential ‘handsome man’. I could never keep my eyes off him, and whenever the TV was on, I would search for his handsome, and to me, the most beautiful and gorgeous face I had ever seen.

I saw all his innovative music videos and energetic stage show performances, and the one that used to tug at my heartstrings was the official music video of Pete Burns’ song ‘My Heart Goes Bang (Get Me to the Doctor)’, and even a song that we neighbourhood Catholic children seemed to be fascinated with — ‘In Too Deep’ — with its underwater theme, which infused our 1980s and 1990s childish imaginations with ideas of play-acting in my building’s courtyard as if we, like Pete Burns, were underwater and swimming like mermen (I was the only mermaid!) with the fishes, dolphins, crabs, jellyfish, and so on — and we were ‘in too deep’ to come to the surface. And I was simply in love with Pete Burns.

But the same neighbourhood Catholic boys who used to play Pete Burns’ songs on repeat on their cassette, record, or CD players suddenly turned a rude corner when they realised this same Pete had stolen my heart.

I recall with vivid clarity the horror of my neighbourhood preteen and teenage boys, my maternal family, and even my estranged father when I announced my desire to one day marry Pete Burns. I was two years old. In my innocent toddler eyes, I did not see a gender-bender; I saw a beautiful male soul with a gorgeous face and an even more gorgeous voice. Later in life, Pete Burns — now over forty — whose physical suffering, his famously botched plastic surgeries, evoked in me a profound, maternal, and spousal desire to care for him. I wanted to offer a love that was a sanctuary for a man the world chose to mock.

My godmother made sure I stopped watching Pete Burns’ music videos, and forcibly got my family to stop me from playing with the boys of my neighbourhood by the time I was three years old, ordering me to play only with girls my age. I had to play with kitchen sets, pink ponies with violet tails, Barbie dolls with a breast size that made me wonder whether, when she slept, her breasts did not flop back upon her painted face, and tea sets galore — and even the tea was fake. I would be spilling those as well, to the chagrin of my female friends, who were most annoyed with me — the quintessential bull in a china shop meant only for cows. What I wanted to do was ditch the tea and get back on my cycle and race with the boys again, or play-act a new Pete Burns song like a ‘dude’, or act ‘punk’, or learn these cool things called rap and basketball from my male friends older than me.

As I matured, this suppression shifted from concern to a darker form of entitlement. My older male Catholic neighbours would vow to one another (in front of my face!) that they would eventually ‘get me’ and ‘show me what a real man felt like’. To them, ‘manhood’ was a conquest; to me, their macho posturing was a source of profound disgust. Even as they attempted to woo me in college in later years, my heart remained ‘cloistered’, ruled by the Androgynous Christ and the Pete Burns archetype — a male power secure enough to be delicate, and beautiful enough to command devotion without force.

My godmother’s attempts to force me into ‘girly’ play with dolls and kitchen sets felt like a foreign language. Mind you — I was not ‘anti-submission’; I was simply refusing to submit to a caricature. I would have gladly embraced a domestic role if it were requested by a man like Pete Burns or an Androgynous Christ, proving that my tomboy nature was not a rejection of femininity, but a requirement for a specific, authentic male energy. Because by now, for me, Pete Burns was the archetype. I would then go on to be fascinated by Prince, Michael Jackson, and finally, through it all, I fashioned my image of Christ into a very Androgynous form — I felt that Christ in his human as well as Divine nature was much more like Pete Burns than perhaps an irritating misogynist of a burly man.

The reaction of the adults around me was my first encounter with the Church, society, and most importantly Theology’s toxic gender policing. By labelling my attraction as ‘wrong’ or ‘horrific’ (my godmother leading the throng of misogynists all the way!), they were doing more than criticising a pop star; they were suppressing an authentic expression of my own soul’s blueprint. They assumed that because Pete Burns was effeminate, he was ‘lesser than’ a man. They were blinded to the ‘male power’ of Pete Burns that I, even as a child, recognised. It was a power that did not need a burly physique to be authoritative; it was a power that was comfortable in its own skin, even when that skin was being surgically altered and criticised. I remember my male friends teasing me by showing me headlines of Pete’s many botched surgeries either on MTV or in the newspapers, and later on the internet. When they would ask me, pointing to his pus-oozing lips, whether I would be ready to kiss those lips now, I would just nod and say a very forceful ‘yes’ — because I instantly felt his pain and horror at being cheated by his plastic surgeons, and I instinctively wanted to be his nurse. Even after he pursued his many reconstructive surgeries and altered his face often, I still only admired and loved him, but I had no way to express myself for fear of being mocked by my family and community members, not to mention my elitist school friends.

Today, as a Consecrated Virgin, that innocent love has not disappeared; it has been transfigured. The desire to nurse and care for a beautiful, suffering male figure is not unlike the vocation of the Church herself, who is called to be the Bride of a ‘pretty’ and ‘delicate’ Christ — one who was beaten, marred, and ‘had no beauty that we should desire him’ (Isaiah 53:2), yet remained the King of Kings.

My suppression was a symptom of a world that fears any male who refuses to be a ‘macho’ caricature. By rejecting my choice of Pete Burns, they were rejecting the possibility that tenderness and masculinity could coexist.

This refusal to conform to ‘girly’ stereotypes in me, while maintaining a submissive heart for the right male archetype, is the very seed of my vocation. As a Consecrated Virgin, I have rejected the ‘burly’ men who sought to ‘show me what a real man is’ in favour of the Supreme Androgynous God. And I am not one bit apologetic about it.

What the adults failed to grasp was the theology of my submission, which is something AS & A Level Theology students need to understand for their subject as well. I was not ‘anti-submission’ where that kitchen and tea-set thing was concerned, nor was I regarding it as a so-called lesser ‘female thing’ to do which supposedly ‘did not deserve the dignity of labour and love’ that it definitely and always shall possess, period; I was simply refusing to submit to a caricature. Remember, I said I would have gladly played at a kitchen set or accepted a domestic role if it were requested by a man like Pete Burns or an Androgynous Christ. Then my submission would not be a reaction to a ‘role’ but a response to a specific male energy. I was a tomboy in the world, but I possessed a ‘submissive feminine side’ reserved exclusively for the man who is proud to be male without being a macho misogynist.

Otherwise, what would be the difference between me and my macho male compatriots?

Though, as I said, the idea was not to justify a stand — it is just the way I am. And everyone has a right to authenticity and not to be categorised in a box. In the eyes of the Church’s critics, or comparative theologians and religious scholars, I am a woman who ‘gave up’ on men. In reality, I am a woman who refused to settle for anything less than the divine beauty I first glimpsed in the ‘pretty’, suffering, and fiercely male face of Pete Burns.

It is time to dig deeper into this form of the Iconography of the Unrepeatable at an AS & A Level analysis integrating the subjects of Theology and Sociology, which I teach at these grades in the International Board, among twenty-five other subjects in the Humanities at the AS & A Level as well as the IBDP level. And for me, after Christ, no one represents that better than Pete Burns, whom the world lost ten years ago in 2016.

The Sociology of the Un-Duced: Beyond Gender Typification

In our quest for social order, we have fallen into the trap of typification — the sociological process of creating ‘types’ to simplify our interactions. We look at a man like Pete Burns and immediately try to deduce him: ‘Is he gay? Is he trans? Is he a rebel?’ When we do this, we stop seeing Pete and start seeing only our own labels. He often pointed this out to everyone on TV and in the news.

True equality is not merely about giving different ‘labels’ equal rights; it is about the radical freedom to exist without being reduced to a label at all. An important difference!

The suppression I felt as a child was an attempt by the adults in my life to, as it were, ‘deduce’ me. They saw my ‘tomboy’ nature and my attraction to androgyny and androgynous men, and tried to force me into a box they could approve of, until they totally gave up by the time I was in degree college and already a well-earning member of the family, not to mention a scholar and stellar student. But authenticity cannot be sought through the approval of others.

Because authenticity is revealed and not assigned. As I learned through my devotion to the Androgynous Christ, by using the mental prototype of Pete Burns and other androgynous men like him — a person’s truth is something they reveal to us as we experience them. It is not something we decide for them.

This aligns with what sociologists and phenomenologists call Human-Centric Relationality. It proposes a shift from deduction (analysing someone to fit them into a category) to experience (letting the person exist as a whole, unrepeatable reality). In a theological context, this is the movement from seeing someone as a ‘problem to be solved’ or a ‘category to be managed’ (ah — so much, basically, of what the Roman Catholic Church is all about! But let us face it, they are not the only ones ‘fixing’ things since donkey’s years!) to seeing them as an Icon of the Divine.

But what was Pete Burns’ standard of equality?

Pete Burns famously refused to be a spokesperson for any specific ‘box’. He was simply Pete. In a truly equal society, we would stop asking, ‘What are you?’ and start asking, ‘Who are you?’

‘People always want to know — am I gay, bi, trans, or what? I say, forget all that. There’s got to be a completely different terminology and I’m not aware if it’s been invented yet. I’m just Pete.’

— Pete Burns

Pete’s lesson to us — especially students at the AS & A Level studying Theology and Sociology — is profound. At this point, putting his point of view across to the world would, I think, be more important to him than even his international number-one hit single, ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’.

When I desired to care for Pete in my childhood, I was not seeking a ‘gender-appropriate’ relationship. I was seeking a connection with a unique, beautiful, and brilliant soul, a genius with a great voice; that is something that attracts me to certain people instantly.

When we allow people to be their authentic selves — without the weight of our deductions — the connection we form adds to the ‘betterment of all’. We move from a society of segregated ‘types’ to a community of integrated ‘persons’. For the student of theology, this sociological shift is deeply spiritual. It mirrors the way God loves us in any religion, not only Catholicism or Christianity. God does not love ‘categories’; He loves you. He does not deduce our worth based on how well we fit into macho or girly stereotypes.

If we are to help those in our community struggling with their authenticity, we must first learn the art of non-deduction. Very difficult to learn these days in this testosterone-overloaded right-wing extremist world we are currently living in. We must learn to sit with the ‘other’, experience their unique brilliance, and add our love to that connection without demanding they change to fit our comfort zones.

The Art of the Encounter: Practical Steps for Students

If we are to move from a world of ‘labels’ to a world of ‘persons’, we must change how we engage with one another on a daily basis. For the student seeking authenticity, and for the theologian seeking the Divine, here are three practical ways to live out this ‘Philosophy of Non-Deduction’:

1) Practise ‘Sacred Observation’: When you meet someone who does not fit your ‘box’ (like a feminine man or a masculine woman), resist the urge to categorise them. Instead, silently ask: ‘What unique brilliance is this person revealing to me right now?’ Let them be the teacher of their own identity.

2) Reject the ‘Macho’ Default: Challenge the idea that ‘manly’ equals ‘rough’. Look for the ‘Gentle Male’ archetype in history, art, and your own life. Recognise that tenderness, beauty, and grace are not feminine traits — they are human traits that can be expressed with immense male power.

3) Honour Your ‘Soul’s Blueprint’: If you are drawn to something the world calls ‘wrong’ or ‘weird’, do not suppress it. Your authentic attractions are often the keys to your vocation. Like my childhood love for the androgynous Jesus, your ‘unique turn-ons’ may be pointing you toward a deeper truth about the nature of God.

The Church’s toxic obsession with rigid gender roles is a form of spiritual poverty. By reclaiming the ‘Androgynous Christ’ — the King who is also the Lamb, the Lion who is also the Lily — we create space for everyone to breathe. We stop ‘deducing’ our neighbours and start ‘experiencing’ (oh, at last!) them as the unrepeatable icons they are.

Theology of the Person

When traditionalists or critics push back, they will likely use words like ‘scandalous’ or ‘unorthodox’ to describe me associating, or relating, Pete Burns with someone of the nature of Jesus Christ. Well, my task, not only as a professionally qualified Catholic Theologian but also as a highly qualified AS & A Level Theology teacher, is to show them that my love for Pete’s firmness, charisma, genius, and beauty is in fact a very old, very deep way of seeing the Divine.

Traditional critics often want to universalise everything into boring, flat categories. In its defence stands the Theology of the Person, which I wish to put forward for scrutiny.

When they say, ‘Why Pete Burns?’ I answer, ‘Because God does not create “categories”, He creates “persons”.’ By loving the specific genius and workaholic nature of Pete, I am practising the same specific devoted love God has for each soul. It is a sacramental love in the Catholic Theological case, in the category of Sacramental Theology — seeing the invisible grace of God through a very visible, unique human being.

In many traditional circles, too, ‘effeminate’ as a word is used as a slur. But look at the Aesthetics of the Catholic Saints.

Look for yourselves at the ‘pretty’ and ‘delicate’ depictions of St. Sebastian, or the ‘tender’ masculinity of St. John the Apostle (the ‘Beloved’). Pete’s beauty is not a ‘lack of manliness’ but an excess of aesthetic power. Pete is always remembered to have been a firm, strict person where his professional and private life was concerned. I, as a person, am not attracted to weakness; I am, indeed, attracted to Pete Burns’ firmness and strictness — which are the qualities of a King who happens to be beautiful.

People often mocked Pete Burns for his surgeries, but I saw it all as a reason for nursing love. This is the most Christian part of my story — probably more Christian than misogynists wanting to marry their promiscuous and lecherous young Catholic men to young Catholic virgins. While others saw ‘botched surgery’ on Pete’s face, I saw a suffering body in need of devotion, love, and adoration. This mirrors the Church’s love for the ‘Marred Christ’, because beauty remains even in brokenness, and love’s highest calling is to stay with the person who is being mocked by the ‘macho’ world.

For the AS & A Level student, the life of Pete Burns is more than a pop-culture footnote; it is a Theological Problem that demands we look at the Imago Dei with fresh eyes. It forces us to ask: is our definition of ‘Manhood’ based on the Bible, or on the cultural prejudices of our neighbours? And at this point, I would say: why only the Bible? Do we not find such prejudices — prejudices that are simply so primeval — in other world religions as well?

For the AS & A Level student, this narrative serves as a sophisticated case study in Religious Experience and Christology in the subject of Theology. Using William James’ criteria, my lifelong certainty of Pete Burns’ beauty can be viewed as what we call a ‘noetic’ revelation — a deep insight into a non-stereotypical Divine power. We can challenge the Primary Precepts of Natural Law by arguing that if the Telos (end goal) of humanity is to reflect a God who is neither strictly macho nor fragile, then androgyny is a holy reflection of that wholeness.

Furthermore, Kenotic Theory — the idea of Christ ‘emptying himself’ — suggests that Jesus let go of worldly power structures, including toxic masculinity, to become the ‘Gentle Male’. Pete Burns thus becomes a modern icon for students to understand a Christ who is both the Lion and the Lamb.

Pete technically was born a Jew, so even from an Old Testament perspective, all the Old Testament prototypes of the future New Testament Christ were similar to what Jesus ultimately became: think of the gentle and ruddy shepherd boy David, the tender-hearted Abel who was killed by his ‘macho’ elder brother Cain, Jacob the Patriarch who was ‘smooth-skinned’, fair, and openly mentioned in the Bible as being effeminate, preferring to cook food or help his mother Rebecca at home rather than go hunting with his grizzly-bear hairy and burly older brother Esau, Joseph the dreamer, who never worked but wore a coat of many threads or colours and was a diminutive man with a frail body structure (which made it easy for his brothers to manhandle him in the desert before they sold him off as a slave to Egypt), and High Priest Melchizedek, who comes to a battlefield to celebrate with the Patriarch Abraham not with weapons of war but with bread and wine, which are symbols of sacrifice.

I am just Fiza

Concerning my life in particular now: not only was I criticised for being attracted to androgynous men and even an androgynous form of Jesus, but my own gender identity and sexual orientation were at times called into question by something I was not even aware I was doing — my body language and mannerisms. People simply felt that my mannerisms and body language were totally manly in nature.

I have been pulled up and apart for this many times in my life, but mainly when I found myself surrounded by too many women — like at my B.Ed. college run by Carmelite Nuns and then at Podar International School, Santacruz, where I was doing my PGCITE course. In the latter case, even there, only the women around me kept pulling me up for my obvious manly mannerisms.

Strangely enough, though, young men do not seem to have a problem with these mannerisms of mine. In fact, to be truthful, they find them sexually attractive — as I have been told over the decades. It gives me a certain ‘edge’, or makes me ‘different’, though I hardly even notice what I am doing. It even bagged me certain school and college modelling situations when I was in undergraduate college and, to date, more male admirers than I can bear.

I was also always pulled up for being ‘too friendly’ with males rather than females. People do not realise that I am simply comfortable with men, much more than I am with women. Males feel extremely comfortable with me as well, as friends and buddies (only!), whether young or old. We get along very well, like sugar and candy. We joke, speak freely about anything and everything, play a few rounds of basketball or cricket whenever and wherever we can, and yet respect each other in the process and respect each other’s boundaries. (For example: I do not like people — men or women — touching me; I do not touch people, and I make sure that the same is followed for me. I am not a ‘touchy-touch’ person. I prefer listening and hugging a person with my smile and words more than my touch.) It is just me being the tomboy that I am. Think of Anjali, played by Bollywood actress Kajol in the film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and there you have me — sans all that crying over a heartless best friend and manipulator like Rahul, and sans that God-awful post-interval transformation.

I have analysed this phenomenon, this aspect of my life, especially now since I am on my way to immersing myself more fully in finishing my MTS and then promptly starting my Doctorate in Theology, focussing on the Theology of the Body from a non-binary perspective among other things. What I have come to see is that it is a common irony: tomboy women who project a confident, male-coded body language often attract hyper-masculine men into their circle and life, either as friends or as a romantic interest.

This is just the simple mirror effect at work — these men may be unconsciously drawn to my ‘male mannerisms’ because they find comfort in my directness; but the romantically inclined ones then try to force me into a traditional ‘womanly’ box, which I refuse to fit into, which then makes the connection or friendship a bit confusing for the male. But then sense sets in, and things are sorted quickly.

I would say that I am quite a heterosexual woman with an Androgynous/Fin-Male preference, living a Consecrated life. My obvious rejection of ‘macho’ culture is a theological stance for the dignity of the person over the rigidity of the gender role.

I find it very funny when my teacher colleagues and other friends and distant family find it strange that I am heterosexual with an androgynous male preference, when they were of the opinion that all Catholic Nuns and Priests have no sex drive or libido, or, at maximum, are cold. I have heard this thrown at me practically all the time at my PGCITE training school that, after a while, I just gave up explaining the fact that, ‘If I were cold, then my virginity really would not be a sacrifice to Jesus in the first place, would it? Because you cannot sacrifice something you simply do not have!’ It is like someone going totally bankrupt, losing his entire family to death, and now demotivated to start all over again. Then this person, in frustration, says he will renounce the world and take up the life of an ascetic. But you must realise, in his case, as Sri Yukteshwar Giri (one of my favourite Ascended Masters and Paramahansa Yogananda’s teacher) always used to say — it is not this person who renounced his riches and life; his riches and life renounced him!

Let us not get into the psycho-spiritual dimension of celibate life in Catholicism among priests, monks, nuns, and other consecrated persons in the Roman Catholic Church — it is too encompassing a topic for lay people to grasp easily, and probably because of that:

1) Not many people opt for this kind of ascetic life.

2) The wrong people join up ultimately and then feel really frustrated and disillusioned very early into their new form of life, or start corrupting it with their frustrations.

It is more than enough now to say that this in itself is a toxic form of interpretation of an ascetic’s motivations to take up this life, in any religion, and I think people need to:

1) Study world religions more often to understand this aspect of life that they misunderstand. Try studying AS & A Level Theology for starters. I would have been even happier to recommend the IBDP subject World Religions, but sadly it is currently on its way out of the IBDP curriculum, and you will find it difficult to procure the textbooks and information related to the same.

2) Study themselves more often than even the above. Meditation, Lectio Divina, maintaining a reflection journal, mindfulness sessions, talking ‘with’ God and not ‘to’ God in the midst of nature or in a silent church or chapel or lonely temple or in a quiet corner of a mosque or masjid, can do wonders.

My preference for androgynous or effeminate men, while remaining strictly attracted to their male identity and power — which I even witness in the person of Christ — is a distinct experience. It aligns closely with how icons like Pete Burns viewed themselves: he often stated he was ‘proud to be a man’ and had no desire to be a woman, despite his highly decorated, feminine appearance.

Since I identify as a woman exclusively attracted to men, I am, obviously, heterosexual (straight). My specific ‘type’ is focused on a particular gender expression — men who blend male identity with an androgynous or ‘pretty’ aesthetic. I am attracted to the male power of someone like Pete Burns, Prince, or Michael Jackson — men who were undeniably male but expressed it through grace, beauty, gentleness, and style, rather than rough masculinity. Please note that my description of being a tomboy who wants to be submissive to an effeminate man is a role reversal of social expectations, but not a reversal of biological or sexual attraction. I am making this very clear at this point because it looks like IB and IGCSE schools in Mumbai these days are very stuck on putting their teachers in approved ‘boxes’ all the time and are obsessively dedicated to labelling their teachers; and so, to clear their own highly deluded ignoramus misconceptions, I am making myself clear.

I feel sad, though, that more than men (men never!), women always have issues with my aesthetic, my choices in life, and the way I wish to authentically express myself. In the light of the teachings of Mahavatar Babaji, who is the legendary Yogi and ‘the’ timeless living legacy of the Kriya Yoga path itself — followed by many people, mostly Hindus in India (I follow the teachings of Mahavatar Babaji and am devoted to him, but I cannot effectively follow the Kriya Yoga path because of my delicate physical health condition, so I only follow a very strict form of Raja Yoga; but I am forbidden to go ahead of that, to preserve my physical wellbeing) — I just take it that probably these women have never been allowed to live out of the boxes constructed for them since their birth, and so I empathise with them. I hope they realise that there is more to their lives and the lives of their female IB and IGCSE students than fitting into mere ‘boxes’ and ‘labels’ constructed and approved by others who really do not care — otherwise they would not have constructed the boxes in the first place.

Boxes are meant for packaging fruits, not people.

Labelling is meant for medicine bottles, not people.

My being a Catholic Consecrated Virgin is the profound and courageous intersection of personal identity and professional vocation. My perspective as a Consecrated Virgin and a professional Catholic theologian gives me a unique ‘outsider-within’ vantage point to critique the Church’s rigid frameworks from a place of deep devotion. So, then, my attraction to the delicate manliness of figures like Pete Burns or Prince is not a distraction from my faith; in fact, it is a theological lens of sorts.

When I talk of the ‘effeminate Christ’, did you realise I was touching on a long tradition in Christian mystical theology? Many saints (like Julian of Norwich or St. Bernard of Clairvaux — my favourites in this category of Theology! Check out their writings.) described Jesus using ‘feminine’ or tender imagery (the ‘Motherhood of Christ’!). In some early Christian thought, the ‘image of God’ (Imago Dei) was seen as a perfect balance of all traits — male and female. By being drawn to men who embody both ‘male power’ and ‘delicate beauty’, I am essentially looking for a reflection of that divine wholeness, which rejects the toxic macho mould that seems to have engulfed not only Catholic Theology currently but every other religious philosophy and world religious thought right now.

Let us examine the Effeminate Christ concept in Theology, focussing yet again on AS & A Level Theology for my students.

An Erudite Breakdown of the Effeminate Christ Concept

In the tradition of mystical theology, particularly during the Middle Ages, the effeminacy of Christ was not seen as a lack of manhood, but as the fullness of the Godhead. AS & A Level students should look to the writings of Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century mystic, who famously developed the theology of ‘Jesus as Mother’. Julian argued that while Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity and biologically male, his functions are essentially ‘feminine’ in a divine sense — he conceives us in the womb of the Church, ‘labours’ on the Cross to give us birth, and ‘feeds’ us with his own body in the Eucharist. This is a vital point for A-Level students. It suggests that the Imago Dei (Image of God) is a trans-gendered reality where the virtues of nurturing and delicacy are perfectly integrated into the male person of Jesus. Can you also see echoes of Shiva Bhagavan and Krishna Bhagavan, and their own trans-gendered reality in Hindu Philosophy and Mystical Devotion, happening here? TOK (Theory of Knowledge) students take note.

A high-level exam answer would also explore the Cistercian tradition, specifically St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s commentaries on the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. St. Bernard presents a Christ who is the ‘Beautiful Bridegroom’. This Christology emphasises a ‘pretty’ or ‘aesthetic’ masculinity that is attractive to the soul. In this mystical framework, the soul (regardless of the gender of the believer) is always ‘feminine’ in relation to God’s ‘masculine’ initiative. However, the Christ who meets the soul is not a macho-man conqueror but a Tender Lover. For students, this provides a scholarly ‘shield’ to argue that the pretty and gentle male archetype is not a modern queer invention, but a core element of traditional Catholic mysticism used to describe the intimacy between God and humanity.

Then there is the aesthetic of the Man of Sorrows (Imago Pietatis) in Jesus. To achieve the highest marks, students must analyse the Iconography of the Man of Sorrows in Christology. In late medieval art, Christ was often depicted with soft, flowing hair, delicate features, and a slender frame — an aesthetic strikingly similar to the androgyny found in modern figures like Pete Burns. This was a deliberate theological choice to contrast the ‘Power of the World’ (the burly Roman soldiers) with the ‘Power of the Spirit’ (the delicate, suffering Christ). This effeminacy was a sign of Christ’s Kenosis — his willingness to be ‘weak’ so that God’s strength could be made perfect. When students write about the Androgynous Christ, they are actually discussing Christological Paradox at its best — the King of Kings who conquers not through macho-man (a.k.a. despotic Roman Soldier) violence, but through the feminine power of sacrificial vulnerability.

From a sociological and educational standpoint, teaching the Effeminate Christ helps students dismantle what we might call the ‘Macho Heresy’ — the false belief that biological sex dictates a rigid set of personality traits. If the perfect human, Jesus, possessed the otherwise feminine traits of tenderness, beauty, and nurturing, then it follows that these traits are inherently masculine when expressed by a man. This allows students to argue that the Church’s current toxic machismo is a cultural corruption of the original Christian vision. By experiencing the delicacy of Christ, students learn to stop ‘deducing’ gender and start recognising the Transcendence of the Person, which is the ultimate goal of both theology and equality.

Here are some specific artworks that serve as primary evidence for the effeminate or androgynous Christ in medieval theology. These images demonstrate that the ‘Man of Sorrows’ or the ‘Bridegroom’ was often rendered with a deliberate aesthetic of vulnerability and maternal care.

The above is a Pietà-style painting, where Christ’s features are incredibly delicate, his hands are slender, and his overall expression is one of tender, passive beauty. This illustrates the Kenotic concept of Christ emptying himself of traditional masculine power to enter into a state of total, sacrificial vulnerability.[2]

The above is perhaps one of the most striking images for the purpose of depicting the feminine Christ. It depicts Christ showing his wounds and the Host to a Clarissan nun (1460–1478). The painting was made for the monastery of Saint Clare on Murano island and shows a rather feminine Christ holding his wounded breast.[3]

In various illuminated manuscripts, such as the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg as shown in the above image, Christ’s side wound is depicted in a distinctly almond shape — a yonic symbol known as a mandorla. This was a profound Christian theological metaphor for the wound as a ‘womb’ that birthed the Church, a concept that is used to discuss Christ’s biological male identity being expressed through maternal function.[4]

Here are more of those ‘vulva’ images of Christ’s side wound.[5]

When students of theology analyse these images, they should use the term Andachtsbilder — which indicates devotional images designed to trigger an emotional, rather than a purely intellectual, connection to the Divine. By citing these specific paintings, frescoes, or illuminations, they can argue that the ‘Pretty Christ’ was a vital tool in late medieval piety, moving the believer from the status of a ‘servant’ to that of a ‘bride’ through the power of aesthetic attraction.[7]

It is as simple as this: gender in Christian or Catholic Mysticism is a function, not a boundary. Christ uses his male power to protect, but his feminine delicacy to connect. This is the effeminate Christ in its most erudite sense — a figure who is too big for a single label, much like my inspiration, Pete Burns.

Jesus’ emptying of himself involved letting go of worldly power structures, as I have stated before, including the Macho-man archetype. By being delicate in a manly way, Christ becomes accessible to the so-called tomboy and the outcast alike. Pete Burns thereby becomes a modern icon for AS & A Level Theology or Religious Studies students to understand a non-binary Christology.

The Sociology of the ‘Un-Duced’: Beyond Performativity and Typification

In the study of A Level Sociology (9699) in particular, we often explore Judith Butler’s theory of ‘Gender Performativity’. Butler argues that gender is not an internal essence but a set of repeated acts — like clothing, mannerisms, and speech, performed over and over — that creates the illusion of a fixed identity. However, the life of Pete Burns offers a radical case study that pushes Butler’s theory to its theological limit.

When Pete famously stated, ‘I am just Pete’, he was performing what we call a ‘Categorical Refusal’, as it were. He was not trying to perform womanhood or subvert manhood; he was simply existing outside the socially constructed boxes that the state and the Church use to typify individuals. For the student, Pete is the ultimate example of Agency over Socialisation — a person who refuses to let the labels of the world deduce his soul.

In many TV interviews after his Big Brother comeback and rise to fame again, Pete Burns, when talking about his wardrobe or fashion sense, used to mention with sadness that it was not necessary that men’s clothing had to be so dull, colourless, and boring — when men could do so much more and have so much fun with their varied choice of clothing and colours.

Thus, this case study of Pete Burns teaches students that the Gender Binary is an oversimplified model that fails to account for individuals who refuse to be ‘deduced’ by the sociological gaze.

Furthermore, my personal experience as a tomboy woman attracted to this androgynous male archetype — of Pete Burns, and now even of the androgynous Jesus Christ — provides a window into the Crisis of Masculinity. Throughout my childhood and college years, I was subjected to ‘Correctional Socialisation’, as we call it in A Level Sociology, by my godmother and neighbours, and so on, who attempted to force me into traditional feminine roles (dolls, kitchen sets, tea sets) and macho relationship dynamics, both of which I simply never gave in to. From a sociological standpoint, the aggressive vows of my male neighbours to ‘show me what a real man felt like’ represent what we, again, call in AS & A Level Sociology ‘Hyper-masculinity’ — a defensive performance of power used to reassert dominance when traditional gender boundaries are threatened. And, believe me, they seemed quite desperate — which is sickening even today, when they are now in their forties, married, with children, and still hyper-masculine towards me in various sickening ways, direct and indirect.

My repulsion toward this macho culture and my attraction to the delicate male power of Pete Burns suggest that human attraction can be essence-based rather than norm-based, bypassing the traditional socialisation of the Opposite Sex. It is saddening for me even today to see the way women and girls feel so awkward conversing with men, or even starting a healthy conversation with them, or talking to them about things that concern both parties. What I see is this ‘they are they’ and ‘I am me’ kind of cold war always going on, especially between men and women in the work atmosphere, let alone in a school or college — and it really is sad to observe and experience.

And if you look even more closely — or rather, ‘listen’ more closely — you will realise that, at least in India, most conversations between men and women are founded on flirtation. It may not initially begin so, but it very quickly moves towards that, and that alone, which, again, is sad to see: that when we relate with each other, even if we are committed to someone else, our interactions are almost always sexually oriented — as if, to each other, we have no common ground but in intimacy, which is correlated to the ‘vice of dominance’, as I term the whole thing. Watch when men and women are conversing with each other at an office coffee stop, and the way men converse only with each other — you will see the difference in the conversational dynamics at once.

And ultimately, that intimacy is based on the ‘vice of dominance’, which is misogynistic, whether the abuser is male or female. Because real feminism is not when, instead of a male dominating a woman sexually and emotionally, a female should do so. That is not feminism; it is merely the same misogynistic ‘vice of dominance’, but with the gender dominating the victim simply switched.

Ultimately, in the Sociological sense, Pete Burns represents the transition from a Modern to a Postmodern understanding of identity. In a Postmodern world, identity is fluid and fragmented, allowing individuals to ‘pick and mix’ elements of their persona. Burns’ refusal of labels in favour of ‘Just Pete’ is the ultimate exercise of Individualism. It moves the sociological conversation away from what a person is (a category) and toward who they are (an unrepeatable agent). This encourages students to move beyond Deductive Sociology — in which we assume we know someone based on their appearance — and toward a sociology of authenticity, where the individual is the sole authority on their own identity.

Just Pete

I have lived for a very long time without being able to express how much I admire the genius, beauty, and music of Pete Burns. When I was young, because I tended to watch Pete’s videos on MTV and Channel V and later VH1, I was banned from watching these music channels and even purchasing his CDs or cassettes.

I could not tell my school friends how I adored this man, and how I wished they could change the damn crooning Backstreet Boys CD to Pete Burns’ and Dead or Alive’s Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, Sophisticated Boom Boom, or Youthquake. I loved Nude, but I dared not even mention that album; and in any case, beyond Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Boyz II Men, Westlife, Aqua, and Vengaboys, they could not think of anything else.

But now, after ten years since the world lost Pete, I have decided to open up about my love and adoration for him. It is my process towards being authentic to myself and my vocation as a Consecrated Virgin and an International Board Teacher. It will then make it easier for me to work more fully and thoroughly in the Catholic Theological realm, to research more on the theological concepts that create more inclusiveness rather than toxic exclusivity — because Jesus is meant for everyone. God is meant for everyone. Pete was meant for everyone.

This article, therefore, is dedicated to the memory of Pete Burns. To the man I have loved with a quiet, devoted heart since toddlerhood, but never dared to admit out loud until today. Pete — you were a genius, a beautiful sign of contradiction, and fiercely, unapologetically yourself. Your firmness, charisma, and courage to exist beyond the labels of the world move me to a radical hope — that the Jesus I serve as a Consecrated Virgin is far more like you (tender, brilliant, and unique) than the stereotypical macho-man caricature society has created. Thank you for being the pretty man who taught a young tomboy the meaning of true male power. You are an icon, and will always remain unrepeatable.

My heart still goes bang-bang-bang-bang for you …

But, knowing you and your radically awesome sense of humour, I can picture you screaming out from heaven, maybe to your ex-wife and best friend Lynne Corlett or to your dear ex-partner but lifelong friend Michael Simpson, to get me a doctor soon who will be willing to do some sessions with me.

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[1] Throughout this article, ‘AS & A Level Theology’ is the author’s preferred discipline-label for her teaching of the Cambridge International AS & A Level Biblical Studies syllabus (9484). The substantive content covered — Christology, kenosis, the Imago Dei, religious experience, mystical theology, and Natural Law — sits within the 9484 syllabus framework, but the author treats it under the broader academic heading of Theology, in line with standard Catholic and university usage of the term. There is no separate Cambridge AS & A Level Theology syllabus.

[2] Carlo Crivelli, The Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels, c. 1470–1475. Tempera on poplar, 72.4 × 55.2 cm. The National Gallery, London (NG602). Originally the topmost panel of a polyptych painted for the Franciscan church at Montefiore dell’Aso, near Fermo, in the Italian Marches. The composition draws on Donatello’s bronze relief of the dead Christ for the high altar of Sant’Antonio in Padua, where Crivelli trained. See The National Gallery, London, online catalogue entry, NG602.

[3] Quirizio da Murano (Quirizio di Giovanni da Murano), The Saviour (Christ Showing his Wounds and the Host to a Clarissan Nun), 1460–1478. Tempera and oil on panel, 87 × 114 cm. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. Painted for the monastery of Saint Clare on Murano island. For a focused iconographic study of the gendered reading of the wound in this altarpiece, see Marla Stevenson, “Queering the Picture: Reading Quirizio da Murano’s Altarpiece of the Saviour” (MA thesis, University of Victoria, 2010).

[4] Jean Le Noir (attrib.), with Bourgot (?), Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, Duchess of Normandy, before 1349. Tempera, grisaille, ink, and gold on vellum, c. 13 × 10 cm. The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 69.86). Bonne of Luxembourg, a Bohemian princess who married John, Duke of Normandy, in 1332, died of plague in 1349; the manuscript must therefore predate this date. The book later passed to her son Charles V of France and entered the royal library.

[5] For the side-wound miniature, see folio 331r of the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg: Jean le Noir, Bourgot (?), and workshop, Miniature of Christ’s Side Wound and Instruments of the Passion, before 1349. The image is approximately two inches in height — the length traditionally given for the wound itself. For a recent curatorial discussion, see Melanie Holcomb and Nancy Thebaut, Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, distributed by Yale University Press, 2025), the catalogue accompanying the exhibition at The Met Cloisters, 17 October 2025 – 29 March 2026.

[6] The Measure of the Side Wound and the Body of Christ, c. 1484/1492, German, fifteenth century. Engraving / illuminated print. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The image type — sometimes called the arma Christi or “instruments of the Passion” devotional — frequently presents the wound at its “true” length, allowing the viewer to measure devotion against the literal scale of the sacred body.

[7] On the category of the Andachtsbilder — devotional images designed for affective rather than narrative response — see Hans Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion, trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer (New Rochelle, NY: A. D. Caratzas, 1990).

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Bibliography

A Note on This Bibliography

This article was composed from internalised reading and a lifetime of reflection rather than from a single research session. The bibliography below is therefore reconstructive in nature: it identifies the principal scholarly, primary, and devotional sources that substantiate the claims, references, and frameworks deployed in the essay. Sources are grouped thematically rather than alphabetised in a single list, so that readers may trace each strand of the argument — biographical, theological, art-historical, sociological, and philosophical — to the literature that supports it. Scriptural references follow the conventions of citation by book, chapter, and verse, and are drawn from standard critical editions of the Bible.

1. Pete Burns: Primary Source

Burns, Pete. Freak Unique: My Autobiography. London: John Blake Publishing, 2006.

The autobiographical source of the much-quoted statement on labels (‘People always want to know — am I gay, bi, trans, or what? I say, forget all that. There’s got to be a completely different terminology and I’m not aware if it’s been invented yet. I’m just Pete’), as well as Burns’s own account of his upbringing in Port Sunlight, his German-Jewish maternal heritage, his early career, and his cosmetic-surgery history.

2. Pete Burns and Dead or Alive: Biographical and Journalistic Sources

Department of History, University of Liverpool. ‘Pete Burns: An Unacknowledged Scouse Icon.’ Department of History Blog, 6 February 2024. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/history/blog/blogs-2024/lgbtq-history-peter-burns/.

Reynolds, Simon. Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. London: Faber and Faber, 2005.

Standard cultural history of the post-punk and new-wave era in which Dead or Alive emerged; provides context for Burns’s Liverpool scene alongside Pete Wylie, Julian Cope, and Holly Johnson.

Strangeways, Michael. ‘A Toast to Pete Burns … Who Defined Fluidity for a Generation of LGBTQ People.’ Seattle Gay Scene, 24 October 2016. https://seattlegayscene.com/2016/10/a-toast-to-pete-burns-who-defined-fluidity-for-a-generation-of-lgbtq-people/.

Dead or Alive. Sophisticated Boom Boom. Epic Records, 1984. Studio album.

Dead or Alive. Youthquake. Epic Records, 1985. Studio album. Includes ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’, ‘In Too Deep’, and ‘My Heart Goes Bang (Get Me to the Doctor)’.

Dead or Alive. Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know. Epic Records, 1986. Studio album. Includes ‘Brand New Lover’ and ‘Something in My House’.

Dead or Alive. Nude. Epic Records, 1989. Studio album.

Burns, Pete (interview). ‘Pete Burns: I’m Absolutely F*cked.’ Attitude magazine, 2006. Interview on the dissolution of his marriage to Lynne Corlett, his civil partnership with Michael Simpson, and the legal action over botched cosmetic surgery.

3. Scriptural References

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition. Approved for Catholic use by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1991. The base NRSV translation was produced under the auspices of the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States, Washington, D.C., 1989.

All scriptural quotations and allusions in the article are drawn from standard critical editions of the Bible. Specific passages referenced or alluded to include:

• Isaiah 53:1–12 — The Suffering Servant; the verse ‘he had no beauty that we should desire him’ (Isa. 53:2) is directly quoted in the article.

• Genesis 1:26–27 — The creation of humanity in the image and likeness of God (the Imago Dei).

• Philippians 2:5–11 — The Christological hymn on the kenosis (self-emptying) of Christ.

• Genesis 4:1–16 — Cain and Abel.

• Genesis 25:19–34; 27:1–46 — Jacob, Esau, and the smooth-skinned/hairy contrast.

• Genesis 37–50 — The Joseph narrative.

• 1 Samuel 16:1–13; 17:1–58 — David, the ruddy shepherd-boy.

• Genesis 14:18–20 and Hebrews 7:1–28 — Melchizedek, the priest who brings out bread and wine.

4. Theology: The Effeminate Christ and the Jesus-as-Mother Tradition

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. See especially chapter IV, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing’, pp. 110–169.

The foundational scholarly study of the medieval tradition of describing Christ in maternal and feminine terms. The central essay is the indispensable academic reference for any discussion of the gentle, nurturing, or ‘feminine’ Christ in Bernard of Clairvaux, Aelred of Rievaulx, William of Saint-Thierry, Anselm of Canterbury, and others.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books, 1991.

Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love (the ‘Long Text’ or ‘Showings’). Edited and translated by Elizabeth Spearing. London: Penguin Classics, 1998.

Primary source for the late-fourteenth-century theology of ‘Jesus as Mother’, particularly chapters 58–63 of the Long Text, where Julian writes of Christ as ‘our true Mother’ who feeds us with himself in the Eucharist and labours on the Cross to give us spiritual birth.

Bernard of Clairvaux. On the Song of Songs (Sermones super Cantica Canticorum). 4 vols. Translated by Kilian Walsh and Irene M. Edmonds. Cistercian Fathers Series 4, 7, 31, and 40. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1971–1980.

Bernard’s eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs are the principal patristic-medieval source for the bridal mysticism in which the soul is the bride and Christ the gentle, beautiful Bridegroom. Indispensable for any defence of an aesthetic, tender Christology rooted in mainstream Catholic tradition.

Anselm of Canterbury. The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm with the Proslogion. Translated by Benedicta Ward. London: Penguin Classics, 1973. See especially ‘Prayer to Saint Paul’ (‘And you, Jesus, are you not also a mother?’).

Aelred of Rievaulx. Spiritual Friendship. Translated by Lawrence C. Braceland. Cistercian Fathers Series 5. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications / Liturgical Press, 2010.

Beckwith, Sarah. Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings. London: Routledge, 1993.

Bestul, Thomas H. Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

5. Christology: Kenosis, Imago Dei, and the Man of Sorrows

Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter. Translated by Aidan Nichols. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990.

Balthasar’s classic defence of a kenotic Christology — Christ ‘emptying himself’ (Phil. 2:7) of worldly power — provides the theological grammar for the article’s reading of Pete Burns’ vulnerability as a Christological figure.

Coakley, Sarah. Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. See especially the essay ‘Kenōsis and Subversion: On the Repression of “Vulnerability” in Christian Feminist Writing’.

Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Jesus — God and Man. 2nd ed. Translated by Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe. London: SCM Press, 1977.

Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Steinberg’s controversial but indispensable study of how the depicted body of Christ in late-medieval and Renaissance art, including the visible humanity and vulnerability of his flesh, was understood theologically rather than merely aesthetically.

Marrow, James H. Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979.

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1947. Reprinted, Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981. On the Primary Precepts of Natural Law and the Telos (final end) of human nature, see Prima Secundae (I-II), questions 90–97.

The standard primary source for the Thomistic doctrine of Natural Law and Telos directly invoked in the article. Indispensable for AS & A Level Biblical Studies and Religious Studies students engaging with the Natural Law tradition in either its endorsement or its critique.

6. Iconography and Medieval Devotional Art

Belting, Hans. The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion. Translated by Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer. New Rochelle, NY: A. D. Caratzas, 1990.

Authoritative study of the Andachtsbilder — devotional images designed for affective rather than narrative response — referenced in the article.

Crivelli, Carlo. The Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels, c. 1470–1475. Tempera on poplar, 72.4 × 55.2 cm. The National Gallery, London (NG602). Originally the topmost panel of a polyptych for the Franciscan church at Montefiore dell’Aso, near Fermo, in the Italian Marches.

Quirizio da Murano (Quirizio di Giovanni da Murano). The Saviour (Christ Showing his Wounds and the Host to a Clarissan Nun), 1460–1478. Tempera and oil on panel, 87 × 114 cm. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. Painted for the monastery of Saint Clare on Murano island.

Stevenson, Marla. ‘Queering the Picture: Reading Quirizio da Murano’s Altarpiece of the Saviour.’ MA thesis, University of Victoria, 2010. Available via UVic Libraries Institutional Repository: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/2306.

A focused scholarly treatment of the Quirizio painting’s gendered iconography of Christ’s wound, including its reception by Poor Clare communities.

Le Noir, Jean (attrib.), with Bourgot (?). The Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, Duchess of Normandy, before 1349. Tempera, grisaille, ink, and gold on vellum, c. 13 × 10 cm. The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 69.86). For the side-wound miniature, see folio 331r.

Holcomb, Melanie, and Nancy Thebaut. Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, distributed by Yale University Press, 2025. Published in conjunction with the exhibition at The Met Cloisters, 17 October 2025 – 29 March 2026.

‘Mysticism and Queer Readings of Christ’s Side Wound in the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg.’ Smarthistory. https://smarthistory.org/jean-le-noir-bourgot-miniature-of-christ-wound-passion-prayer-book-bonne-luxembourg/.

Lewis, Flora. ‘The Wound in Christ’s Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response.’ In Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, edited by Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor, 204–229. London: British Library, 1996.

Easton, Martha. ‘The Wound of Christ, the Mouth of Hell: Appropriations and Inversions of Female Anatomy in the Later Middle Ages.’ In Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander, edited by Susan L’Engle and Gerald B. Guest, 395–414. London: Harvey Miller, 2006.

Réau, Louis. Iconographie de l’art chrétien. 6 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955–1959. Standard reference for the iconography of St Sebastian, St John the Beloved, and other male saints depicted with delicate features and lilies.

7. Sociology: Gender, Performativity, and Masculinity

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.

The foundational text of gender performativity theory, directly invoked in the article as the lens through which Pete Burns’s ‘Categorical Refusal’ is read.

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Connell, R. W. Masculinities. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005.

The standard sociological reference for hegemonic and hyper-masculinity, the ‘crisis of masculinity’, and the typologies of male power that the article critiques.

Connell, R. W. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.

Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday / Anchor, 1966.

Source for the concept of typification — the process by which individuals are sorted into social categories that then structure interaction. Central to the article’s critique of ‘deductive’ rather than ‘experiential’ engagement with persons.

Schutz, Alfred. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Translated by George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967. Original German: Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt, 1932.

Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday / Anchor, 1959.

Halberstam, Judith (Jack). Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.

A major scholarly account of female masculinity that supports the article’s reflections on the tomboy identity and on the male-coded mannerisms attributed to women like the author.

8. Postmodern Identity and the Sociology of the Self

Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.

Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.

Hall, Stuart, ed. Questions of Cultural Identity. London: SAGE, 1996. See especially ‘Who Needs “Identity”?’.

9. Religious Experience and Philosophy of Religion

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. The Gifford Lectures, 1901–1902. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902. Reprinted, London: Routledge, 2002.

Source of the four marks of mystical experience — ineffability, the noetic quality, transiency, and passivity — invoked in the article’s discussion of the author’s lifelong certainty regarding Pete Burns as a ‘noetic revelation’.

Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by John W. Harvey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923.

10. Hindu Philosophy and Yoga

Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946. Numerous reprints.

Source of the teachings of Sri Yukteswar and Mahavatar Babaji as referenced in the article, including the parable on renunciation that is paraphrased therein.

Yukteswar Giri, Swami. The Holy Science (Kaivalya Darsanam). 1894. Reprinted, Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1990.

Vivekananda, Swami. Raja Yoga. 1896. Reprinted, Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 2003.

Eliade, Mircea. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958. The standard Western scholarly study of classical yoga, sāṃkhya, and the tantric and ascetic traditions out of which Kriya Yoga and Raja Yoga developed.

Doniger, Wendy. Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

11. Theology of the Body and Consecrated Life

John Paul II. Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. Translated by Michael Waldstein. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006.

Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago: Instruction on the Ordo Virginum. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 8 June 2018.

The current authoritative document on the vocation and identity of Consecrated Virgins in the Roman Catholic Church.

Schillebeeckx, Edward. Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God. London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963.

12. Cambridge International Curriculum References

Cambridge Assessment International Education. Cambridge International AS & A Level Biblical Studies (9484): Syllabus for examination in 2024, 2025, and 2026. Cambridge: Cambridge Assessment International Education, 2023. Available at: https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/programmes-and-qualifications/cambridge-international-as-and-a-level-biblical-studies-9484/.

NB: Cambridge International offers Biblical Studies (9484) at AS & A Level; there is no separate ‘Theology’ syllabus at this level. Where the article uses the term ‘AS & A Level Theology’, the Cambridge syllabus referenced is Biblical Studies (9484).

Cambridge Assessment International Education. Cambridge International AS & A Level Sociology (9699): Syllabus for examination in 2024, 2025, and 2026. Cambridge: Cambridge Assessment International Education, 2023. Available at: https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/programmes-and-qualifications/cambridge-international-as-and-a-level-sociology-9699/.

International Baccalaureate Organisation. Theory of Knowledge Guide (First Assessment 2022). Cardiff: International Baccalaureate Organisation, 2020.

13. Cultural References

Johar, Karan, dir. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Mumbai: Dharma Productions, 1998. Hindi-language film. Source of the character Anjali, played by Kajol, referenced in the article as a comparator for the author’s own tomboy persona.

Prince. Purple Rain. Warner Bros., 1984. Album and film. The androgynous male archetype invoked alongside Pete Burns and Michael Jackson.

Jackson, Michael. Thriller. Epic Records, 1982.

14. Suggested Further Reading for Students

Davies, Brian, and Brian Leftow, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Anselm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Jantzen, Grace M. Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian. 2nd ed. London: SPCK, 2000.

McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350). Vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: Crossroad, 1998.

Hampson, Daphne, ed. Swallowing a Fishbone? Feminist Theologians Debate Christianity. London: SPCK, 1996.

Beattie, Tina. Theology after Postmodernity: Divining the Void — A Lacanian Reading of Thomas Aquinas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Bibliography compiled to accompany the article ‘Pete Burns and the Iconography of the Unrepeatable in AS & A Level Theology and Sociology’ by Fiza Pathan.

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(c) Fiza Pathan 2026