Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
With My Body, I Thee Worship: Part Four

With My Body, I Thee Worship: Part Four

Last updated on: March 26, 2022 at 5:57 pm by Gabriel Blanchard

With My Body, I Thee Worship: Part Four 2022-03-26T17:57:42-04:00 Gabriel Blanchard

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Go here for Parts One, Two, and Three.

Enter the Implications

Okay. So most people are straightforwardly one sex or the other, but there’s a tiny minority who have a mixture of characteristics from both. Big deal. What does this have to do with transgender ideology? Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote that “One is not born but becomes a woman” in The Second Sex, but you don’t become intersex—in its own way, it’s as “objective” as male and female are.

Well, the fact that such mixtures can and do exist raises a question. What is gender?

Is it simply a word for what kind of body your soul inhabits, without any metaphysical element of its own? If so, then logically, there are at least as many genders as there are kinds of body: even if only a tiny number of people have, say, a 60%-40% male-female blending of traits, at least that tiny number of people have a gender that’s 60% masculine and 40% feminine. Unless we’re going to say that your gender is whichever sexed traits predominate; but if so, why? That certainly implies that the 40% female part is, in some sense, not supposed to be there—but if that’s true, then gender is clearly something other than just “what kind of body your soul inhabits,” because we’re deciding how the body should be based on pitting some metaphysical masculinity against the actual, quantifiable female part of it.

Or maybe masculine and feminine genders are metaphysical realities, and there are no in-betweens or mixtures, but the body determines (or at least always shows) which one you have. But this doesn’t work, because in that case, intersex people’s bodies should be not merely rare, but categorically impossible.

The Law of Their Members

Okay. Well, perhaps gender is normally revealed by the body, but can sometimes be in conflict with it—either because God meant the body to be something far more subtle than we’ve yet understood, or because the fallen world we live in can interfere with the proper relationship between body and soul.

Considering that disease and death are both features of our bodies in a fallen world, this second possibility seems pretty reasonable. And judging from intersex conditions, if we’re not willing to admit that more than two genders can exist, we kind of have to admit that there can be a conflict between metaphysical gender and physical sex.

But once we countenance that possibility, how can we dismiss the possibility of transgender identities? The whole idea is that there can be some kind of mismatch between the person’s sense of who they are, or are meant to be, and the physical reality of their body. We know that exists already. Why is the specifically trans version so definitely off-limits?

Either/Or

Based on what we know about intersex people, as far as I can tell, only one of two possibilities is reasonable for Catholics:

“Gender” is simply a name for how the soul inhabits the sexed body, with the corollary that—while the overwhelming majority of people are either male or female—there are, technically, as many genders as there are varieties of intersexuality.
“Gender” is a name for some kind of metaphysical or spiritual reality, distinct from physical sex, with the corollary that trans identities may be valid.

Option 1 here seems to line up with the general tenor of Theology of the Body, though that work doesn’t explore intersexuality (if I recall correctly). It has the obvious merit of simplicity, and the drawback of making certain things harder to understand; it’s difficult to see any reason why Holy Orders should be restricted according to sex on this view, for example.

Option 2, to me, feels much more intuitive. It’s given explicit expression by C. S. Lewis near the end of Perelandra and throughout much of That Hideous Strength (both of which were published several years before The Second Sex, in case anyone cares to claim that C. S. Lewis of all people was doing a gender ideology under the influence of radical French feminism). It would be foolish to argue that any one culture’s social conventions about gender are absolute; yet the mere fact that gender conventions exist so widely at all suggests that most societies recognize something more than the sex of the body is involved here.

Oldfangled

Moreover, gender conventions aren’t the only things that most cultures and periods seem to have. People talk sometimes as if being trans were a modern fad, invented by Satanic feminists in order to destroy gender and dethrone God and make your kids use swears. And while it’s true that modern ways of thinking about the experience of trans people are, well, modern—as is the word “transgender” itself—the thing they were designed to articulate and explain is not.

Time for a history lesson.

Go here for Part Five.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

January 16, 2022

With My Body, I Thee Worship: Part Three

Next Post

February 9, 2022 On Side B Drama

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abuse antifascism art bad Catholic celibacy chastity Church crucifixion culture war eros forgiveness gay gender homophobia ikons language liturgy peace poems politics Pope Francis prayer pro-life race recommendations reform repentance review sacraments saints satire scandal schism scripture sex suffering theology Uncategorized violence

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the voice in Revelation 6 say about food prices?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Food will be multiplied No one will go hungry A day's wages for a measure of wheat Free food for all