Women Are Not Potato Heads
don't be gaslighted into believing otherwise
I can’t get onboard with the trans movement. I’m a little afraid to say what I’m about to say because there’s nothing that can incite the ire of ideologues like someone just being honest. The truth is that I’ve wished that I could accept the trans account of the world, not as an intellectual matter, but as a love-matter. I only have love and compassion for an individual whose body doesn’t feel like home. That compassion always leads me to doubt my intellect. I’m haunted by the idea that I’m actually wrong about all of this. And it doesn’t help when it’s now routinely suggested that to disagree with someone (especially about human sexuality) is to hate that person. Which we all know isn’t true.
I confess my own turmoil about trans issues as a pastoral matter. I know that I’m not the only one that feels this way. Churches are filled with people who, with all integrity and authenticity, just want to show the love of Jesus to every person no matter what.
For those who find themselves in similar shoes to mine, I want to recommend the work of Abigail Favale. I recently read her The Genesis of Gender, and was moved, sobered, equipped, and empowered for engaging anew all matters related to human sexuality. Favale packs her book with academic rigor and accessible prose. She’s winsome and gracious. You won’t regret reading it cover to cover.
The trump card of trans apologists is that some people are born intersex. The implication seems to be that because some people are born without fully-developed genitalia, some people born with fully developed genitalia are trans. Read that again, and you’ll realize that the conclusion doesn’t at all follow from the premise. It’s like saying that because some people are born with one kidney, some people born with two kidneys are only supposed to have one. It’d be hard to convince anyone of that even with the reality that most humans can survive with only one kidney.
Favale engages the questions of malformed genitalia at length, and she makes what I think is an extremely a helpful distinction, one that doesn’t deny the reality that some people are born with under-developed or ambiguous genitalia without at the same time saying that one’s bodily reality creates norms for everyone else. Her distinction is between potentiality and actuality.
What is a woman? Favale says that she is “a kind of human being whose body is organized around the potential to gestate new life”(emphasis mine).1 That potentiality is always there even if in actuality she isn’t able to gestate new life because of “age or disease.”2 Favale admits that this definition risks the impression that the gender binary is reduced to reproductive function, which might sound dehumanizing. But that’s only the case if you reduce the human being to the body. As Christians, we believe humans are bodies and souls. So whatever we say about an individual human being, both in terms of what they are and who they are, must remain “rooted in the body, but not reduced to the body.”3
Favale is helpful on two fronts.
First, she highlights that (as my friend Matt Burdette has been saying about every moral issue in Western society) what we think about what it means to be a human being will determine how we think about gender. In other words, questions about transsexuality are philosophical and theological before they are biological. The belief that the body is a mere meat-suit for the soul or that the soul is a mere metaphor to describe a strictly material reality both end up implying that bodies have no reality of their own and can be manipulated to fit our whatever fantasy we invent. Again: Christians believe that to be human is to be body and soul. We are not ourselves without either (which is why our eschatology is resurrection—the reunification of the body and soul that death tore apart).
Second, she points out that the trans account of what it means to be human is the actual “dehumanizing, function-based approach” to the question of gender.4 “Linguistic somersaults” like “people with a cervix, chest-feeders, [or] birthing parents” are all function-based monikers invented to avoid the term that evokes “an integrated, personal entity—‘woman’.”5 So we are left with “fragmentation,” not integration. As Favale puts it, every woman is treated like a “Potato Head Doll: a hallow, neuter shell that comes with an assortment of rearrangeable parts.”6
Christians are routinely accused of dehumanizing gender non-conforming persons. If Favale is right, that accusation is nothing short of gaslighting. We need to call it what it is because there’s little that’s more disorienting than being accused of doing the exact opposite of what you’re in fact doing, especially when human dignity is at stake.
Favale, 120
Favale, 121
Favale, 121
Favale, 122
Favale, 122
Favale, 122
One interesting aspect of this discussion is that there are so many non-binary people born female, who don’t feel comfortable with the word ‘woman’ to describe them. That’s honestly where the words like chest feeder and people with cervixes come from- a desire for institutions, writers, etc— to be sensitive to the growing number of (usually young, not always) women who don’t claim the term ‘woman’.
So I’m not sure the potato head analogy resonates- although I haven’t read the book. There is some deep pain these women are dealing with, and likely some societal/male repentance needed, I’m inclined to believe. . .to reflect on why so many young women don’t even feel that ‘woman’ is the right word for them.
Your compassion and thoughtfulness come across clearly in your essay. One thing that came to mind about your topic was "love the sinner but hate the sin."
I thought of St. Augustine's “Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum,” as well as "I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me" (1 Corinthians 4: 3-5). More recently, Pope Francis has used the phrase several times in relation to of abortion, contraception, homosexuality and same sex marriage. Using the word "sinner" already indicates that there is no love for them in the first place. I do not know if Jesus ever said, "love the sinner but hate the sin," but I doubt it.
I followed your advice and explored Favale's "The Genesis of Gender" via video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkas5PkJzMs). I also read a review of the book by lay pastor Scott Corbin at Trinity River Baptist Church in Fort Worth, TX. (https://cbmw.org/2024/06/18/review-of-abigail-favale-the-genesis-of-gender/). Favale converted to Catholicism fairly recently, I believe. She specialized in gender studies and feminist literary criticism, and now writes and teaches on topics related to women and gender from a Catholic perspective. I admit she left me cold. Naturally, he ideas about gender and, in particular, transgender people are not as insane as those of the strident Camille Paglia, a lesbian feminist. Paglia argues that the growing prevalence of transgender people is a sign that Western civilization is on the brink of collapse.
I understand your turmoil about transgender issues. I also know you show the love of Jesus in your writings and in how you relate to people who are different. That would be me.