I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.
With the legalization of same-sex “marriage” throughout our country, the forces of the ongoing sexual revolution have now made transgender acceptance the new goal. In the last year I have encountered more phrases like “gender fluid,” “cisgender,” “gender-confused,” “transphobic,” and the the like than I ever have before. For some, there is a passionate desire to show compassion and equality to those who identify as a different gender. For others, there is a great deal of confusion as to how something as basic as being male and female could be confusing. And there is even greater confusion regarding the Church’s teachings here.
This article will attempt to shed a little bit of light on this topic. What is written here will not be the end-all-be-all of the topic, especially considering that there is very little official teaching on this specific subject of transgenderism. Some may see this as tacit approval for the lifestyle: “If there’s no official teaching against it, it must be okay, right?” So the need to extrapolate the Church’s teaching is even more pressing so as to avoid this confusion. That isn’t to say that the conclusions that we draw are mere guesses. The underlying principles have been taught by Popes Benedict XVI and Francis (more on this later). But the specific issue of transgenderism per se has not been addressed head-on. We will examine what the Church teaches about our gender and apply these to this specific topic.
Before anything, we must explain the distinction between sex and gender. I know a number of people who use them interchangeably, but they are not exactly the same. “Sex” refers to the biological difference between men and women. Boys and girls are different, because all boys have something that no girl has: the Y-chromosome. If you were thinking of another part of male anatomy that makes us distinct, then the thinking is a bit backwards. The presence of male organs depends upon the presence of male chromosomes. And our chromosomes can be found in every cell of our bodies, not just the sex organs. The case of people born with a hermaphroditic disorder are a slightly different, and for brevity will not be addressed in this article. For the purposes of our discussion, we shall limit it to those who do not have chromosomal disorders.
“Gender” refers to all the differences between men and women that are not caused by biology. Women wearing dresses and men wearing neckties could be categorized under gender. These two examples are social difference between men and women that are not necessary results of our sex. Men can wear dresses. Women can play with action figures. There is nothing in our biology that would stop a woman from being the quarterback of a football team.
The great confusion has come because modern popular culture and popular social science has limited gender to ONLY these social differences. If that is the case, then gender is whatever society says it is. It is something completely changeable and moldable. And once you divorce sex from gender, your biological sex can be looked as an impediment to how you want to express your gender. Thus some parents give hormone injections to their boys so that they grow to be more like girls. (If you do not believe that last statement, then I suggest you spend a few minutes searching on youtube). Also, by dissociating sex from gender, it has become increasingly popular to recognize more than just two genders.
It is foolish to reduce all difference between men and women to the merely biological.
Human beings are not beasts. But it seems equally foolish to reduce those differences to social fads. We are more than what society says we are. There is more to our nature than biology and society.
There is also the soul.
You can read the entire article here.
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