Letters

Theology of the Body and “Ontological Gender”

By Rachel Meyer | May 14, 2015

In his article The Absurdity of Non-Transgenderism: A Critique of a Critique, Christopher Damian raises the question of how to define the gender of a transgender person. For this individual, can we definitively say whether he or she is “ontologically” male or female? I would like to offer some reflections on this question from the perspective of Theology of the Body (TOB).

First, John Paul II says nothing in the entire Theology of the Body about transgenderism. Answering this question is a tricky matter of applying what he says about normative sexuality to a very specific, difficult, and confusing situation of non-normative sexuality.

Here are some potentially relevant ideas from TOB.

Being male is a different way of being human than being female, in physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual aspects. Sex is not purely physical. “His sex is not only decisive for man’s somatic [bodily] individuality, but at the same time it defines his personal identity and concreteness” (TOB 20.5).

Masculinity and femininity have two major dimensions: the objective dimension of the body as a sign of a gift and the personal experience of that body as a gift. (This is the spousal meaning of the body.) They are “two reciprocally completing ways of ‘being a body’ and at the same time of being human … two complementary ways of being conscious of the meaning of the body” (TOB 10.1). John Paul II was a phenomenologist—he considers personal experience of something essential to what that thing really is. Someone who had the objective male body, but lacked a proper male experience of his body, would not have the fullness of masculinity or male sex/gender. By the same logic, given that it were possible to have female experience without an objectively female body, true femininity and the female sex/gender would not be present.

A person cannot be known apart from his body. We know each other only through the medium of the body. “Nakedness [without shame, of Genesis] corresponds to that fullness of consciousness of the meaning of the body that comes from the typical perception of the senses” (TOB 12.3).

It is precisely in his concrete personal details, including the sexual, that a person is real and therefore knowable. For a person with a male body and significant female psychological characteristics, both are a part of his individual existence, and he cannot be fully known as a person while disregarding either.

Returning to the question of “ontological gender,” a physically male person can never be said in any meaningful sense to be female, as the female body is essential to being female. On the other hand, saying that such a person is unequivocally and entirely male, full stop, no qualification, is inaccurate because the experience of masculinity is essential to being male.

Given that for other incomplete instances of a general idea, like a house without a roof or a man without sexual organs, we still assign the label of “house” or “man,” it would seem reasonable to call a physical male without a complete male experience a man/male, albeit a broken one. On the other hand, as this may be a case not only of lacking an element but of actually having an element of something else—if he is not only a man without some male experience but a man with some female experience added on—then the answer may be more ambiguous. Would we say that a dog with significant cat anatomy is still a dog, and at what point? Just the heart?

If a transgender person were truly not simply an individual of one sex lacking something but somehow an amalgamation of two sexes, then the question of ontology becomes very complicated. How much of a male or what parts of a male can be female before he becomes female, or simply neither/both?

Note finally that we have been discussing this at an “ontological” level, which is different from the practical or pastoral one; denying philosophically that a person is female does not necessarily mean that calling him a woman in other contexts would not be the most charitable thing to do. I claim here neither that it is nor that it isn’t; I merely note that, while practical and philosophical answers about transgender persons should mutually inform one another, the solutions themselves need not be identical.

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  • Jim Russell

    This is, unfortunately, a real misuse and misinterpretation of St. John Paul II and his TOB corpus. JPII was *not* merely a “phenomenologist”-he was a *Thomistic* personalist-in fact, he developed *Thomistic* personalism. It’s the “Thomistic” part that Meyer is missing here, seems to me. JPII *never* abandoned the metaphysics of Aquinas in favor of mere subjective experience-indeed, it was his course correction *of* phenomenology, tempered with Thomism, that gave him a groundbreaking framework for the Theology of the Body.

    JPII *never* conflated sex and gender and never suggested that any “fluidity” from male to female was possible precisely *because* he consistently anchored the maleness or femaleness of the human person to his or her *somatic* sex. He would never conclude that subjective “experience” could trump the reality of male or female bodiliness, nor could it “contribute” so to speak any *actual* “maleness” to a woman or “femaleness” to a man, as Meyer seems to claim might be possible.

    For the record, just as “gender” is a made-up construct, so too is the construct of “ontological gender”-there is no such thing as “ontological gender” apart from the spousal meaning of the body. JPII invariably used the term “sex” for being male or female, not “gender.” Masculinity and femininity become meaningless terms whenever they are untethered from the somatic maleness or femaleness of the human person. .

  • Rachel Meyer

    I am quite familiar with Thomism and consider myself a Thomist. I would be interested to know how, specifically, I have misconstrued TOB by insufficient Thomism.

    Mostly, I think you’re arguing against things that I did not state or imply and don’t even agree with. I certainly did not conclude that experience trumps bodiliness - if anything, rather the opposite. I did not suggest possible sexual “fluidity,” whatever that means, or attribute such a suggestion to JPII. I left open the question of whether experience alone can be an actual element of the opposite sex because I didn’t feel I could argue for an answer either way in this piece; I certainly did not claim that JPII said that it could. As a philosophical question, I considered what the conclusion would be if it did and if it did not and left it at that.

    I’m really not sure what your issue is with my use of the word “gender.” I think that it is impossible to have a discussion of sexuality in America today without referencing gender - carrying on using the word “sex” only without ever using “gender” would actually obscure the meaning for many readers who think in terms of “gender,” I believe. JPII did not have this problem as “gender” wasn’t so much a part of popular thought then as it is now, and he was writing scholastically, not for the common person. Do you think that there is no correct usage of the word “gender”? I think that many people read “sex” as specifically physical, and read “gender” as specifically non-physical, and so I try to use “sex/gender” together to clarify that they are the same thing. Do you think there is a better way to do it?

    Obviously I used the phrase “ontological gender” because this was supposed to be in response to Christopher Damian’s article. I defined it (though not explicitly) as the spousal meaning of the body - what’s the problem?

  • Jim Russell

    *****I would be interested to know how, specifically, I have misconstrued TOB by insufficient Thomism.*****

    You have untethered the fullness of being male from its somatic source by claiming that it would be “inaccurate” to claim that one is
    “fully” male if their feelings or experience of *masculinity* are somehow diminished or absent. This contradicts both JPII and Thomas, seems to me.

    You say “the experience of masculinity is essential to being male” and it is not. The state of “being-male” is *prior* to a person’s
    conscious experience and awareness of being. The experience of masculinity is
    supposed to *arise* from the prior state of being-male as males become aware of
    themselves. The male’s bodiliness is already revealing/expressing the *person* in his objective reality *as* male from the first moment of his existence. And the person is male—fully male—at all times, ontologically, regardless of the nature of subjective experience.

  • Rachel Meyer

    I believe that the following quotation from TOB 31.5-6 will actually affirm what both of us are saying.

    “When we speak about the meaning of the body, we refer above all to the full consciousness of the human being, but we also include every effective experience of the body in its masculinity and femininity, and in any case, the constant predisposition to such an experience. The ‘meaning’ of the body is not something merely conceptual…it is the way of living the body. It is the measure that the heart applies to the human body with regard to its masculinity or femininity.

    “That ‘meaning’ does not modify the reality in itself, that which the human body is and does not cease to be in the sexuality that belongs to it, independently of the states of our consciousness and our experiences. Yet, apart from the system of real, concrete relations between man and woman, the purely objective meaning of the body and of sex is in some sense a-historical.”

    So, you are right in that the body (note the use of body, not person, regarding reality) itself remains fully male regardless of experience, and in that masculinity, it has an objective meaning. However, if this meaning is not lived and experienced by actual people, it is, you might say, meaningless.

    If the male’s body is expressing the person as male, to whom is it revealing and expressing? A revelation must be to someone. Compare this to the explanation of original solitude - man is different from the rest of creation, is a person, a subject, precisely because of his consciousness. Similarly, the sexuality of man and woman is different from the sexuality of the animals because we are conscious of it.

  • Jim Russell

    In TOB 31, though, JPII is speaking in the context of concupiscence being a limitation of the spousal meaning of the body arising at the root of the history of sin and salvation.The “meaning” of the body in its “historical” context is a meaning inseparable from concupiscence. In contrast, the “unlimited” spousal meaning of the body in the state of original innocence can be viewed as “ahistorical” because it’s beyond the “historical” experience of man and woman. The historical “meaning” does not alter the truth of our bodies and God’s original non-concupiscent plan for us.

    Having said all that, however, I stil cannot see how this passage will in any way support the notion that some persons ought to be viewed as not-fully-male or not-fully-female just because there is a dissonance between the objective body and the person’s self-perception or experience. Rather, this passage makes it clear that we *all* experience a “limited” meaning of the body as a result of concupiscence. Yet this “limiting” experience does *not* change our objective existence as male or female, nor does it change God’s the goodness of being made male or female in the image of God. I see nothing here to suggest that JPII concludes such a limitation can reduces the “ahistorical” spousal meaning of the body to “meaninglessness” just because it remains beyond the horizon of historical man.

    I just can’t see how this helps support a claim of “non-fullness” of being male or female.

  • Kathleen Worthington

    I like the charity of this answer. At least, I heard charity in this. The suggestion of a third gender will not satisfy some people, I fear. I do not want to share a public restroom with a person who once had or still has a penis. If we can find a Catholic way to talk about the transgendered, an accepting one, perhaps we can head off a public policy that diminishes everyone.

  • Rachel Meyer

    Sorry for the delayed response. Been busy!

    1. Experience is essential to the spousal meaning of the body, as shown above.
    2. The spousal meaning of the body is essential to masculinity and femininity.
    3. A thing is not fully realized without all of its essential elements.
    C: Masculinity and femininity are not fully realized without experience.

  • Jim Russell

    Thanks for the reply-it’s rare to have an in-depth discussion of this kind of TOB content.

    1. Does a baby, just prior to birth, possess the “spousal meaning of the body,” or not?

  • Rachel Meyer

    Good question. According to the above quote… He doesn’t have the “full consciousness” of anything, so maybe not. But he should have the “constant predisposition,” right? A baby boy is definitely male. But is he fully masculine? Is it enough that his masculinity exists, to some degree, “in potentia”? His body doesn’t have the fullness of the male sex, either. And is this analogous or not to a transgender person? The baby can be presumed to have the experience (and the anatomy) someday.

  • Jim Russell

    I think the fact that JPII says that the “spousal meaning of the body” is something that is *discovered* indicates its *objective* existence and meaning prior to and apart from *experience*. In his original solitude, Adam did not “lack” the spousal meaning of *his* body-he possessed it. The objective meaning of the body existed from the first moment of his existence, created in the image and likeness of God.

    Yet, he didn’t *discover* this meaning until he saw Eve.

    Ergo, “experience” is *not* essential to the spousal meaning of the body. That meaning exists objectively, apart from experience….

  • Rachel Meyer

    The spousal meaning of the body is “the measure that the human heart applies.” The body does have an objective meaning, all by itself; it is a sign of a gift. But JPII uses “spousal meaning of the body” to mean man’s subjective experience of the body as a gift. He does not discuss the spousal meaning in the context of original solitude, only in the context of the original unity of Adam and Eve, naked without shame. He discusses the “corruption” of the spousal meaning of the body, though it is never completely destroyed by sin.

  • Jim Russell

    You’re glossing over TOB 14:5, which makes VERY clear that the “spousal meaning of the body” is something *discovered*.

    ***This beatifying “beginning” of man’s being and existing as male and female is connected with the revelation and the discovery of the meaning of the body that is rightly called “spousal.”****

    I reiterate-the “spousal meaning of the body” is not dependent upon experience. You are incorrect in claiming that JPII uses this term *only* in the realm of subjective experience. He doesn’t, as even this quote demonstrates.

  • Jim Russell

    The important point in this is that the *reality* of Adam’s *person* (including the spousal meaning of the body) is not *altered* by the initial presence of Eve. He is still the same Adam. Rather, what changes is that Adam’s person is finally “communicable” to another creature. This reciprocity and communion allows the already-existing “language” (spousal meaning) of the body to be communicated to another human person….

  • Rachel Meyer

    I agree with you that the body has an objective meaning prior to experience and apart from it. The body is objectively male, regardless of experience. But that doesn’t change the fact that experience is clearly an important part of the spousal meaning of the body and, therefore, of masculinity and femininity. I think we may just have to agree to disagree on this point as we’re both just repeating ourselves.