Perhaps the most confusing issue of our age and the one that may vex members of the Body of Christ the most, surround the topic of gender. This topic has become so enormously confusing over the last several decades that at first one can hardly be blamed for succumbing to the emotional arguments in favor of promoting such heart-rending difficulties. “Gender” has been used as a tool to deny the real essence of human nature. Revealed truth teaches us that God made us male and female; the new “gender” theory rejects this obvious distinction in favor of a multitude of “gender” possibilities, defying the truth about maleness and femaleness.
While there is no doubt that the seeds of confusion surrounding gender have been prodigiously sown, this means that we have an even more pressing duty to clarify these issues using rightly-ordered reason subordinated to Church Teaching, in order to catechize our brothers and sister so that we may all treat this issue with truth and charity.
To untangle the majority of confusion surrounding this issue, we must first have a look at the real meaning of the word “gender” and try to discover what it really means and how it ought to be appropriately used. Its current use as a large collection of categories for human sexuality is wholly disordered and cannot under any circumstances be promoted by faithful Catholics. It diametrically opposes Church teaching and is harmful to those who are taken in by its arbitrary deceit.
Where Does the Word Gender Come From?
The old verb form of the word “gender” can be traced at least back to the late 14th century French meaning to “engender, beget, or give birth to” and this came from the Latin generare which meant the same. As a noun, “gender” had meant the “kind, sort, class, species, or character.” This came from the Latin genus, which has a broader use extending to “race, stock, family, kind, rank, order, species etc..” Aristotle used the word genos as a Greek grammatical term referring to male and female sex. This particular use of gender as a noun denoting male and female sex is witnessed in English from the 15th century. However, it wasn’t until 1963 that “gender” took on an erotic value; and the degeneration of that word has been rapid ever since.
The Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages have always referred to words in a grammatical sense as either masculine or feminine. This was the understanding of gender in language up to the modern age. The term “gender” today has replaced what we would have called “sex” before the 1960’s. This use of the word “sex” was as a noun and its intended use was to inquire about the maleness or femaleness of a particular human person. Today we use the word “sex” almost strictly for the pleasures of the genial bed, and rarely for biological dimorphism. Now we use the word “gender” almost exclusively to talk about how particular humans describe themselves pertaining to certain variations of maleness and femaleness.
Sexual Confusion Begins
Although the word gender refers to what we called “sex” in the past, it no longer refers to male and female, but many other things grounded in misguided notions of the human person. The modern problem in understanding “sex” and “gender” is grounded in three foundational issues. Primarily we suffer a grave misunderstanding about the nature of authority. Second, we deny the universal common truths about human beings made in the image and likeness of God. Third, we have a problem understanding the relationship between being and doing.
God, our Father in Heaven, is the Author of Life, the Creator of all that is good. As such, He is the Law. Christ the Logos is the divine revelation of that Law and His law is naturally written on our hearts. God is the authority who governs all that is right and wrong. We must measure our actions against His objective standard.
This modern age denies Christ’s authority in favor of his own subjective authority. Thus we have our deepest and most intractable problem concerning understanding what is objectively disordered about inventing our own definitions of “sex” and “gender”. If we do not agree that God’s authority is the measure by which we ought to judge our actions and beliefs, then there is no possibility of having a fruitful conversation about such a thing as “gender”, because everyone will have their own subjective opinion. This is a denial of proper authority. God’s supremacy as the Creator and arbiter of all truth is challenged by man as we crown ourselves our own authorities.
God is the Creator; male and female He created us. We are made in the image and likeness of God (cf. Genesis 1:26-27); it is a self-evident truth that we are either male or female. The Christian anthropology is grounded in the ontological reality that one is either male or female. This truth determines the very things we are able or not able to do. For an example, those of us created male can never give birth to a child. Those who were created female can never be a father. To say otherwise is to deny obvious truths about universal traits of common being present in all of us for all of time.
Because we have denied the universal nature of male and female, we have run into a problem of being and doing. The truth that we have always been male and female can be demonstrated by our perfect complementarity physically, mentally and emotionally. We arrange our marriages and families in order to comply with God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” as we participate in the glories of creation with our Creator.
What we are by virtue of our natures determines the kinds of things we can and ought to do. The problem with “gender” is that we have inverted the order of reality to claim that what we desire to do The very wide variety of such desires has led to the inordinate throng of invented ‘genders’, such as genderfluid, intergender, neutrois, pansexual, and (ironically) third sex.
Sexual Confusion Reigns
The plain and simple truth concerning “sex” and “gender” is that we are either male or female. It can be demonstrated scientifically by chromosomes and a host of other verifiable repeatable observations. It can be philosophically deduced by first principles of the perennial tradition by philosophical anthropology. Most soundly, it can be demonstrated theologically by revealed truth: “Male and female He created them.” The Christian anthropology to which all the faithful must ascribe sets forth the simple truth that we are either male or female.
And yet, we’re terribly confused in this age, because, This false “sexual freedom” has caused many to abandon the authority of Christ, and to determine for themselves the nature of reality against all common and holy sense.
Deacon Fournier explains that this isn’t freedom. “It turns people into objects of use and degrades the dignity of human sexuality. Sadly, the same spirit of the age fails to recognize the integral unity of the human person, body, soul and spirit, and has turned the human body into a machine.” Our bodies, we wrongly suppose, are to be used by us for whatever purposes we deem desirable.
The modern world ignores revealed truth, the right ordered use of our intellects, and even the scientific data to make claims that are irrational, unreasonable, and untrue. The word “gender” as it is used today is a misbegotten notion. That we are either male or female determines what we ought and ought not to do based on our God-given natures measured against the objective moral standard. We are not at liberty to invent what we are concerning our natures or “gender.” As Catholics we must convey the truth in charity God made us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him (cf. St. Augustine, Confessions 1.1). Male and female he created us. We must conform to this truth, not try to make the truth conform to us.
32 thoughts on “Gender Theory and Sexual Confusion”
I find it fascinating that so many self-proclaimed “feminists”, who bristle at the slightest implied slur against women, fall totally silent at the massively offensive and gynephobic notion that if you castrate a man, inject silicone into his chest and inject him with lifelong regular massive doses of sex hormones, you have “created a woman” or even helped him “to become the woman that she [sic – meaning he] really is”.
Whenever you see the word “Gender” used (invariably MISused) on a form, cross it out and write “Sex”. It’s a little thing, but it helps to keep the truth out there.
Only words can have a gender. Human beings, higher animals, and some plants, do not have a “gender”, they have a sex.
The problem is people want to make and believe in their own reality, even if it isn’t real and worse, expect the rest of us to live in their delusion. If you think it stops with the delusion of “transgenders” think again. There are people out there who believe they are animals trapped in human bodies. It’s ridiculous and just goes to show when you leave that God sized hole vacant of God, the devils really do take up residence.
The pharisees were under the delusion that people would be married in heaven and Jesus put
that to rest. St Augustine was disillusioned when he declared unbaptized babies would never see
God. That makes your reality and mine extremely suspect as well.
No, it doesn’t. Plumbing is plumbing. The people deluded into thinking they are the opposite sex trapped in the wrong body are just that: deluded. They need psychiatric help to get them to see reality, not have their delusions catered to.
Perhaps before condemning people to the world of “delusion.” you should spend some time looking at the nature of psychiatric help and its goals and perceptions of transgendered people by professionals and researchers …. humanity and identity is more that simple plumbing. Cite me resources that that these people are deluded ….
http://www.apa.org/practice/guidelines/transgender.pdf
Does their DNA say they are male? Then that is what they are. Does their DNA say they are female? Then that is what they are.
Plumbing !!? Stick to welding as your scant knowledge of how the brain works puts you in the same league as the judges in Cotton Mather’s day who sent epileptics to the gallows because they were deemed witches.
Fine, you deny DNA.
Objectively, scientifically, Bruce Jenner is a man and always will be. Any mutilation to his body that he does will be just that: mutilation. He will always be a fake “woman”.
Just as objectively, scientifically anorexics are NOT fat. But since they truly believe they are, I guess you won’t mind them getting liposuction, right?
And the people who think they are cats, dogs, wolves, dragons trapped in human bodies… I guess they really must be those animals, right? Cuz they believe it.
DNA? A lesson in human biology is due….Normal males inherit an X and a Y chromosome while females have two X’s. A single Y chromosome is sufficient to produce maleness while its absence is necessary for femaleness. Female abnormalities are due to variations in the number of X chromosomes. Male abnormalities are the result of irregular numbers of either the X or the Y chromosome or both. Notice the emphasis on norm….
In the study of human genome….birth assigned sexuality is a deceptive phenomenon and certainly effected by DNA variations: All men are not 46XY chromosomes, and all women are not 46 XX, There are female genotypes XO, XXX, XXXX/XXXXX and males are not all XY, others are XXY, and XYY. Each genotype manifests differently and not always consgruent with that gender assigned at birth. Yes DNA is important, and how would you explain the research that 70% of gay men studied have identified the Xq28 marker on the X chromosome as associated with homosexuality. And I could go on….people born with “plumbing” of both sexes.
The simple fact is that gender, sex, identity is not a simple binary….there are large variance in the human genotype which contribute to birth assigned gender and congruence with identity. Also hormonal influences bear greatly on differentiation.
God, in His magnificent power and mystery, allows the human genome to develop in a non binary fashion..to his honor and glory. These people who did not choose their DNA structure with its additions and deletions are our brothers and sisters, not deluded miscreants. God made them in his mysterious fashion…not as binary expressions of sexuality, but as people worthy of dignity and love, not as creatures to be cured by the expressedly failed reparative therapies. Learn to love not to label our brothers and sisters as deluded.
It’s not kindness allowing someone to continue to believe something that is false. It’s not kindness to allow a deluded person to believe their delusion is real.
Unbelievable…you make statements without any, and I mean any proof reason. You refuse to acknowledge research and science and just make blank judgments while I have offered mountains of evidence to the contrary. That which can be asserted without proof can be readily rejected without proof. So, prove your point then we can have a dialogue. Probably stems from the fact that your have not ready the psychiatric journal I posted above nor do you have a deeper knowledge of the study of human genome….
Go ahead and continue to believe that God makes people in the wrong gender bodies so their solution is to mutilate themselves to be “normal”. And never mind the fact that the hospital that came up with sex reassignment surgery ended up completely abandoning it due to the fact that it did not solve these people’s problems but only made them worse and that in their medical opinion, these people would be better served having their thinking realigned with their actual biological sex.
Adam, you are recklessly irresponsible with your words if you claim to be Catholic. You are ignorant if you claim to be a philosopher. You are deaf and blind if you think you are a theologian. If you claim to be secular humanist and are in possession of the scientifically reduced pseudo-education doled out by the government, then you are spot on. But it is no use speaking to Catholics of your myopic “evidence” because we don’t self-reference- we use our reason to discover the truths expressed by divine revelation- We know that the human person is a composite of body and soul, not a compound- this is Aristotelian and Aquinas would tell you the same. We deduce truth from the first principles of philosophy starting with the fist principle of reality known as The Principle of Non-contradiction. What you have said is silly concerning the human person. You are very fashionable, but very wrong. You seem to be immune to common sense but cling to a personal interpretation of rather meaningless data- It surprises me that you persist in this folly that contradicts immutable Church Teaching and the perennial philosophy concerning physics, metaphysics, and ontology. The DSM and the APA are in constant flux because they build their house on sand many generations ago.
Ad Hominem attacks are really unkind and not based upon rationality or science. I do not call you names, you dismiss science, research, psychiatry, etc. but offer NO proofs verifying your assertions. You attempt to drive people away from the search by making unwarranted assumptions about their faith and belief. Science and faith cannot contradict. Please limit yourself to respectful dialogue …. there really is no need to cast stones especially when you live in a glass house yourself. Who are you, sir, to judge? Your response is truly nasty and quite unChristian.
So you say Aquinas- my comments to you are uncharitable if they are not true- if they are true, then you are wrong- Faith and reason do not contradict, but your positions contradict the Faith- I am judging and I am qualified to judge, the implications of your claims, and if I tell you that they don’t square with Catholic teaching either I am right or I am wrong. If I am wrong then I am a poor thinker, if I am right, then it is an act of charity to tell you the truth, not “unkind” or “nasty” as you claim, and not even “unchristian.” You don’t find it a little ironic that you ask me “who are you to judge” while making similar comments about what I say? Do you have a double standard Adam?
I simply present facts, data which arise from scientific inquiry.which are at variance with your “Truth”…arrogance disguised as charity is still arrogance and you have no right nor privilege to judge me nor anyone …you are not Jesus and remember Matt 7:1 1″Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2″For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.…
The Christian faith is not a kumbaya club, it is a place to appreciate the diversity and the mystery of the continuing manifestation of God. So farewell, I will indeed pray for you….. I do not disrespect you, I simply disagree with the binary view of humanity.
So Adam, you have judged that my words are arrogant, not charitable- and yet you refute them with cries of insult and the ad-hominem- and here you refute them with clear evidence of what I said- it was your job, not to whine about what was said to you, but to refute it- you say here that you “present facts, data which arise from scientific inquiry…” This typifies how I characterized your words as pseudo-scientific and materially reduced- this must be true because you yourself confirm them. I also said your conclusions are not philosophically sound, because they are not. Also, your positions contradict Church teaching which means if you claim knowledge of Theology, you are blind and deaf to it, and clearly you are- So let me summarize, your words indicate that you have no grasp of logic or philosophy or theology and that you stand by scientific reductionism, the problem you really face here is that whether I am charitable or arrogant, but whether or not the assertions I made about your words are true and now you can’t refute them because you already corroborated them- This a public forum, I challenged your assertions and complain rather than reply.
I don’t have a “truth” of my own, I am a son of the Church and the Church’s positions are my positions. And what is this “binary view of humanity” you have superimposed on my words?
P.S.
Why don’t you refute something in the article? With coherent logic and a demonstration of a view of humanity that is not binary? Or is this too mean a request for a soul such as yours?
The circa one in a million people who have such defects in their sex chromosomes are not relevant to this discussion. As far as I know no such person with such an unfortunate defect has ever supported the nonsensical new “gender theory” referred to here. Bruce Jenner and his ilk are normal men with a normal pair of X and Y chromosomes.
” The plain and simple truth concerning “sex” and “gender” is that we are either male or female.”
And if we overlay the 30+ sexual disorders listed in the DSM-6 that occur in the male and female brain
it is easier to think in color than black and white.
Hi James!
Of course it is easier to think in colors, especially if we reduce everything to the appearances of materialism and our emotions drive our conclusions instead of reason and truth. The DSM 6 is no arbiter of truth, it is an evolving tome that will be different when the DSM 7 comes out. Yet still we have a choice- to respond appropriately to revealed truth and to use rightly ordered reason to moderate the passions and realize the “male and female He created them” or we can go with the DSM 6, and by the appearances in the cave make our own pronouncements grounded not in truth, but in the pathology of the modern age- G.K. Chesterton said “He who marries the spirit of the times will soon be a widower.”
“He who marries the spirit of the times will soon be a widower.”
Of course, the DSM-6 could have been used in the iron age too with the same diagnostic
acumen and all the way back to Cain and the chemical changes that impelled him to kill his brother. Then again after 25 years in the field of mental health I could reference an hermaphrodite client to underscore a point that gender is diffuse and the hypothalamus
that houses the motivational drives evolved without sin.
James, what is the percentage of hermaphrodites to the total population? Using an extreme example to prove your point is not logical. Anomalies do exist in nature, but they are still anomalies. I would also suggest that arguing that mental illness overrides the truth that “Male and female He created them” is also not helping your point.
Another term for anomaly is exception and the best example is the 2nd condition
for sin in which a person must KNOW that it is wrong. You miss mass and it’s a
mortal sin, for someone who does not truly believe that is so it is not. If God gave even one person two sets of genitalia the whole basis for divining sexual natures into black and white does not follow.
Except that there is no known example in the whole of human history of “true” hermaphroditism, wherein a single individual possesses both male and female reproductive systems that fully function.
But the individuals do get to choose which one works the best and therein lies
the lesson. In the end, sex is an erotic function of the brain and identity dictates how the body responds – compatible genitalia or not
Dear James, Catholic Stand is a Catholic site- you must remember this, we are not neo-pagans worshiping at the altar of the sexual revolution. By the way, even the old pagans would never have stood for such nonsense as “sex is an erotic function of the brain and identity dictates…….” To believe this one must be in the psych business for many decades I imagine.
Dear Steven, only very dysfunctional persons ‘worship” sex. Most respect it and
over time understand that it is a sacred function that involves both love and a
developed conscience. However, the psyche business is the best place to delve
into how and why this extremely complicated drive works at all.
James, it is glaringly obvious that most do not respect sex- as in the use of contraception does not respect the telos of sex, so that alone is absolutely untrue- but the psych business has a conception of man that is very different than the Catholic Church- the psych business is godless, the Catholic Church recognizes God as the Creator- so if God exists and we are made in his image and likeness, the psych business is a terrible place to delve into it because the entire conversation is grounded in falsity. We believe the very best place, and the truest is the Catholic Church, summed up by St. Pope John Paul II in his lectures on Theology and the Body and Love and Responsibility. Sex is not just a drive, and the sex drive itself is not complicated, but the nature of addiction certainly seems to be- but the psych business in general does not help people to overcome their addictions, it tries to normalize them that they might feel good here and now and this is a great crime against the human person. The Catholic Church tries to help human persons overcome their addictions that they might be ready for Heaven.
Well, friend once again we find ourselves on different sides of the Cross and
peddling our own moot points. Have a good day.
It is shocking how differently we see things James, and it is helpful to know that you are in the field of psychology. In any event, I hope peace finds you where you are friend. Have a great day James, I will see you here in one month!
When you come back I hope you turn the spotlight on yourself and many others
who are much more subject to the 6th and 9th commandments. Jesus focused
much more on adultery and its identical twin (coveting) quite succinctly and since sex starts in the brain – coming in thru the eye – which is then passed off to Mind for consideration it would be interesting to delve into how you drawn the line (or cross it) between temptation and fall. Have a good month. ps was in the field
but retired these last 5 years