What is gender?

[Ricky_C]

Two things:

One, I think that this definition of gender, that’s separate from biological sex, isn’t inherently bad. It’s a manifestation of who God has mentally created a person to be, and if they just happen to be masculine when they’re female or vice versa, then that’s just the set of interests God has given them. But our physical bodies are also who God has created us to be, and trying to change that through mutilation of the body is interfering with what God has created.
The issue with gender as different than sex is that the idea of gender originally comes from biological sex, as “male” and “female” are descriptions of the body, but now we’ve used the same terms to describe a different concept. What gender by the new definition means now is really individual identity, which is fine, but by using “male” and “female” to describe that idea, it’s been connected in a way that interferes with God’s creation of human beings as male and female.
I’m not too informed on this, and I don’t think my points are as clear as I’d like them to be, but that’s what I think. I’m definitely open to other ideas on this, because I don’t believe my morality on this topic is the best. As far as the question “Is it morally acceptable to identify as another gender, as long as we don’t change our physical bodies?”, I honestly am not sure. Because of the reasons above, I suppose right now I’d say “no”, but it’s something that needs to be expanded on, and that I need to form a clearer morality about.

Second is a (possibly off-topic) question I believe I may know the answer to, but want to ask just in case there’s something I don’t know. While God did create people as male or female, there are some people who are born intersex, having parts that are in between male and female and in some cases both male and female parts. God intelligently and divinely designed these individuals as they are, and we know He can make no mistake. In that case, what does this say about intersex individuals? Would it be acceptable to physically change their bodies to fit the common male and female bodies, or would this be as morally wrong as a person’s decision to undergo a sex change operation?

Also, on a final note, I’m not sure whether or not this really needs to be said, but it’s a good idea to remember that we shouldn’t judge people as good or bad based on their beliefs on these things; we can certainly guide people in the right direction (which is what we’re all trying to do in this thread!), but only God has authority to judge us for what we do. I’m pretty sure no one’s been doing this at all, but just to make sure that this conversation doesn’t go into a bad place.

 

[Midwest88]

Gender is a social construct - girls things and boy things are only labelled that way because society meddles on people’s view of each gender. There is no girl gender and no boy gender - you only see those things because you were raised in a society with “boy toys/jobs” and “girl toys/jobs”.

At the same time, people want to change gender, because they are not happy with the body they were born into. So, a man who believes himself a woman, would go through surgery just so he could simply do “woman things” (that silly social construct of gender!)

In sum: I really don’t know what they want gender to BE. It is a “social construct”, and yet people need surgery to change it… I’m at a loss here

So if I, as a man, want to wear make-up, wear a bra, heels and a deep v cut dress that’s “totally normal”? If anyone gives me the stink eye, well, that’s just the societal norms they were raised with.

As I pondered about my own sex and psych, I have concluded that my genitalia has a strong influence on my supposed societal constructed gender. I’d even bet that if there were no societal influence I’d still feel like “I need to be the man” in my personal relationships.

 

[Midwest88]

At my college we have a course called “Philosophy of Gender” and it sure isn’t about grammar! LOL Maybe more people would take it if they called it “Philosophy of Sex!”

What department is this under? I’d like to know the syllabi to see the course outline and the books required to read. I have a strange feeling that it’ll fall in line to a sociology course I took a few years ago dealing with gender and sex. Now, to have an entire course devoted to “the philosophy” of gender … I wonder what intellectual hoops one had to jump through to create a course like it.

 

[GEddie]

The soul **does **have a “gender”; the gender of the biological body.

It has to, because it is the soul of the body (as per Peter Kreeft).

While it may be harmless to take on gender roles opposite to, or omit those associated with, the surgical issue does make sense in our current hyper-sexual society: If sexuality is all we are, then identifying with the other gender means needing to do sexual things as the other gender. Which means changing the body.

Of course, no intervention can truly change the natural body’s gender. That remains the same unto death.

Also, the very fact that they came up with 51 genders for human beings shows that Facebook is a plot from Hades

ICXC NIKA

 

[GEddie]

What department is this under? I’d like to know the syllabi to see the course outline and the books required to read. I have a strange feeling that it’ll fall in line to a sociology course I took a few years ago dealing with gender and sex. Now, to have an entire course devoted to “the philosophy” of gender … I wonder what intellectual hoops one had to jump through to create a course like it.

Jumping through such hoops is precisely what philosophers are about.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Bookcat]

From Pope Benedict XVI’s address to the Roman Curia which covered various current topics -so it is not a pastoral document addressed to persons who have this painful difficulty - he would have addressed them in a different way - but he does though address here the problematic nature of such a theory of gender:

"The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper. While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question. He quotes the famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: “one is not born a woman, one becomes so” (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient).

These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term “gender” as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.

According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man."

~ Pope Benedict XVI

w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2012/december/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20121221_auguri-curia.html

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

With the talk of transgenderism, what is gender? Are human reducible to their physical sex? Or this there something more to this question?

I think there might be. I don’t think gender separate from sex makes sense in a materialistic context. But I wonder if the soul may have a “gender”…

What do y’all understand “gender” to mean? Can it apply to the soul? Or does it apply to something else? Is it permanent and intrinsic to us, like our sex or our race? Or is it transient, like long hair and piercings?

Crazy times we live in. We consider ourselves educated, we think we are the pinnacle of the evolution of knowledge and the mind. We look down on all previous generations as less educated and knowledgeable. And we are the ones asking “What is Marriage, What is gender?”

Hmmm who are the backward odd ones now?

 

[CHRISTINE77]

My daughters all played with dolls without any prompting
Show my little nephew a fire engine or tractor and he is as happy as pig in the proverbial
No one forced them to play with those toys
They just did
Gender is not a social construct
It is deep seated

It’s the same with Legos. Although they keep trying to market Legos for girls, they just aren’t interested!

(Of course there are exceptions to every rule).

So what is normal? Normal is the norm, how most people are. Abnormal is away from the norm. It’s okay to be abnormal, but really people should quit calling abnormal normal!!

 

[TarkanAttila]

We can take male or female hormones, but we all have either male or female DNA, and that is not able to be changed. Our DNA determines our biological gender, either male or female. No amount of hormones can change that.

God Made Them Male and FemaleBut the organized matter receiving the soul is either male or female.

Have either of you - any of you - heard of intersexed persons?

In a more serious note… I’ll say that I believe people can identify with a “gender” different from their biological sex.

Hormonal levels would be enough to determine one’s preferences in a basic level. Less testosterone makes a person less prone to violence, more “maternal”, better at linguistics rather than math, and whatever else we indentify as a characteristic pertaining to the “female gender”. This is a theory that I believe in - do not take it as fact, please.

My interaction with AnnaMagda4Christ would make me lean that way myself. It doesn’t sound like enough to me, but…

That said, I do not believe this is enough to move one into mutilating their own body.

Oh, yeah. That would have to be a pretty rare case. Even once might be too often.

However, feeling disgust of one’s own body is not a matter of gender identification - it is outright a Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Wanting to remove a body part should be considered a mental disorder (which could be treated if one wanted), not a social justice issue.

I don’t know if most TGs feel that way, per se. I feel like that’s more the vibe the media wants to dominate the conversation. Verily and truly they are trying to take everything to its extreme, insane logical conclusion.

We also don’t pay surgery for kids that think they are cats, just so they can get a tail and whiskers.

I give it a few decades.

And, by the same line of thought, we shouldn’t tell trans-gendered people to keep harming themselves until they are happy with their bodies. You can be feminine in a male body, and you can be masculine in a female body. Body “genders” have their advantages, and a “masculine woman” is just as woman as any feminine woman can be. But she definitely doesn’t have to become a man! (as a woman: who in their sane mind would want to be a man? )

I don’t know, but women are slowly working their way down to our level.
I think your position, from what I’ve read, makes a great deal of sense. I’ve read both the work and comments of AnnaMagda4Christ, and I heard Walter Heyer interview with Al Kresta. Between the two of them, it would seem a thorough mental examination would be a wise idea before even diving into hormone therapy. It’s a cross to bear.

As for the soul… I never thought about it.** I’d think souls to be neither male nor female**. We don’t really talk of a “woman’s nature” and “man’s nature” - God gave our souls a “human nature”. Anything we feel - as men and women - comes from our mortal bodies. We have hormones and organs that DO affect how we react to the world and how we see ourselves.

That is true. It is. But even souls have different aspects. “Personalities”, you could say. Spiritual beings aren’t just blah. Otherwise, what difference would there be between Michael and Lucifer? Or how could we call God just, loving, all-knowing, etc?

I’m not convinced the soul/spirit is just the part of us that outlasts our body, and is weighed down by our body. I think the soul has traits, too. And I think femininity and masculinity can go deeper, in a spiritual way, too.

But I really like your questions. I’ll look into Church teachings on this - the Church usually has the right answers

I haven’t actually found anything official…

This is about as close to anything as I could find as a repository on this subject. It’s odd; no one has really taken up the question of gender/sex before.

catholictrans.wordpress.com/category/faith-2/theology-philosophy/

The correct view, seems to be some sort of middle ground. The liberal (to use American political terms…which I dislike) is correct to point out that sexuality is not just my gentiles. The conservative is correct that sexuality is not the whole of one’s identity.

I wonder if the question of “gender” might be one we’ve royally muddled. There are so many things we use that to refer to - gender roles, perceived genders, subconscious gender, gender identity, assigned gender, and many other things.

AnnaMagda4Christ is doing an article series on how our society tends to use the word “gender”. S/he made a chart. It makes some sense to me. Perhaps it might help you.

catholictrans.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/what-is-gender-or-why-the-term-is-both-meaningless-and-indispensible/

Crazy times we live in. We consider ourselves educated, we think we are the pinnacle of the evolution of knowledge and the mind. We look down on all previous generations as less educated and knowledgeable. And we are the ones asking “What is Marriage, What is gender?”

Hmmm who are the backward odd ones now?

Our forefathers would have reduced it to our genitals.
What, however, does one do with the rare situation of a hermaphrodite? It has happened before. That ought to be somewhat troubling for anyone who would reduce sex to the genitals.