Intersex people, CCSDs, and the sex binary

Transgenderism presents intersex people, that is, people with CCSDs (congenital conditions of sexual development), as evidence that there is no absolute male/female binary. If it’s really true that there is (or was) even a single human who does not fit the binary, then the absolute is shattered.

Abigale Favale’s book The Genesis of Gender does a good job of pointing out that research suggesting that 1.7% of people are intersex is disingenuous. However, even with a more medically precise definition, it’s true that some 0.02% of people have both male and female sexual characteristics, such that their sex is not easily assignable at birth. Even this 0.02% is more than enough to achieve transgenderism’s goal, because all they’re looking for is one individual.

But Favale goes deeper on pages 127-129 of her book:

In the remaining [0.02%] outlying cases, the reality of sex is still present but must be more carefully discerned—not for curiosity’s sake, but in order to support the person’s physical health. This is not because those individuals are neither male nor female, but rather because their developmental pathways of becoming male or female took some unexpected turns.

Discerning sex in these individuals entails looking at multiple factors taken together: karyotype (chromosomes); phenotype (genitalia); gonads (ovaries or testes); internal structures that support gamete production; and hormones… Sexual ambiguity occurs when the phenotype is not readily classifiable as male or female, or when the karyotype is not consistent with the phenotype. Overly broad use of the term “intersex” tends to privilege karyotype and phenotype , while overlooking gamete production and the structure of the body as a whole…[but] gamete production is the foundation of biological sex.

This reflects a common error: reducing biological sex to secondary sex characteristics—seeing sex as merely about genital appearance or breast development. The gender paradigm fundamentally misunderstands what sex is, confusing cause with effect. Secondary sex characteristics develop as a consequence of sex; they are the effect, rather than the cause.

…When faced with ambiguity at the level of phenotype and karyotype, the best response is not to shrug and embrace the spectrum, but to continue the discernment of sex by looking at the anatomical structures that support either large gamete production or small gamete production. Although the term “hermaphrodite” used to be applied to cases of sexual ambiguity, this is a dehumanizing misnomer. Hermaphrodites are species that do not have separate sexes, such as snails and slugs; instead, each member of the species has the ability to produce both large and small gametes and can thus take on either the “male” or “female” role in reproduction. For this kind of species, hermaphroditic reproduction is the norm. Human biology, on the other hand, does not support this model of reproduction. In the rarest CCSD, an individual can develop both ovarian and testicular tissue, but even in this case, he or she will produce one gamete or the other, not both. There have been only about five hundred documented cases of an ovotesticular CCSD in medical history, and there is no direct evidence in the literature of a hermaphroditic human being, someone able to produce both small and large gametes. [Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6737443/]

When all the dimensions of sex are taken into account, sex can be discerned in each human being. To conclude otherwise is to exclude some individuals from a reality in which we all participate.

Thus, Favale argues that a person’s sex must include consideration of whether they produce large gametes (eggs) or small gametes (sperm). This is crucial for her understanding of sexuality. She later defines men as people whose bodies are organized around the ability to be the reproductive donors, and women as people whose bodies are organized around the ability to be the reproductive hosts. A person’s maleness or femaleness involves the totality of biological factors related to one or the other of these reproductive roles (even if they are infertile).

With this definition, Favale is able to defend the male/female binary by claiming that “there is no direct evidence in the literature of a human being who is able to produce both small and large gametes”; even the 500 people (ever!) who have had both ovarian and testicular tissue will produce only one or the other. It remains either/or.

Every human is either male or female. No human is neither. No human is both. There is no third option.

As an addendum, I’d like to point out that it’s important to include “no human is both.” I know of a teacher who, being probably unaware of how Favale successfully defended the inner keep on this issue, has attempted to resolve the question of the 0.02% by denying “a third sex,” but offering instead that we are either “male, female, or both.” But if someone can be both sides of a binary, then it’s not a real binary—not an either/or, not a mutually exclusive dual categorization. If people can be both, then transgenderism still wins, because that premise can be extrapolated to almost all their other conclusions. If the circuit is on, or off, or both on and off, then we do not have something we can build a circuitboard with. If you are male, or female, or both male and female, then we do not have something we can build a Genesis view of sexuality with.

Contraception

Lately I have been forced to confront the outrageous claim of the Catholic Church that an act of contraception is a grave evil.

The Catholic Church teaches in the Catechism (§2366):

“Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is “on the side of life,” teaches that “it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life.” “This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.”

This stance is based on Pope John Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968). There, he further expounds:

Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. (14) Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary. (15)

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means. (16)

In other words, the Church teaching is that the marriage act (that is, sex) has two purposes or ends: (1) to unite the husband and wife, and (2) to bring forth children, and that, in the performance of each and every marriage act, it is immoral to act against, or direct the act away from, the attainment of either of these ends when it would otherwise occur; i.e. to have as the purpose of any deliberate action the avoidance of either of these ends.

This would exclude things like condoms, temporary or permanent sterilization, the Pill, and all other medical/chemical forms of contraception, even if they would not abort a fertilized egg, but merely prevent the fertilization of the egg. It would also exclude forms of sexual consummation that by their nature are not open to life, such as coitus interruptus (withdrawal method), mutual masturbation, and anal sex.

Notably, it does not exclude “natural family planning,” the avoiding of sex during fertile periods, which is an alternative widely practiced among Catholics. Neither would this exclude any act leading up to, or involved with, the marriage act that is not in itself endowed with the natural potential for procreation. What is prohibited is the performance of the act which is so endowed, and which is the end of sex (both teleologically and, more or less, chronologically), in such a way as to intentionally avoid the openness to life. I am speaking of the man’s climax, and that it must be…well, to borrow a word from the Catechism, “unitive.” My understanding is, it doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you don’t end anywhere else.

Nevertheless, this really puts a damper on the modern person’s sex life, doesn’t it? (Or should we say, takes a damper off?) It is a hard teaching. But here is the point: If the Catholic Church is wrong about the fact that openness to children is a purpose of every marriage act, or if it is wrong that to act so as to prevent that purpose is a moral evil, then their argument falls flat, and we are all off the hook.

But if they are right about both of those premises, then it follows quite unavoidably that contraception is a moral evil, and therefore that every Christian must flee from it, trusting in God to perfect their souls through obedience, and to teach them how to more fully love and embrace the good to which that evil is contrary.

Avoiding a Purpose

Now, it is clear that to act in obedience to a command in such a way that one avoids accomplishing the purpose for which the command was given, is not simply the absence of obedience in that particular act, but the presence of disobedience.

Consider Johnny, who is having a birthday party against his will. His mother tells him, “Johnny, go hang some balloons on the mailbox.” Johnny is no dummy and perceives that the balloons are intended to prevent people from missing the entrance to their house, which is wooded and hard to see from the road. However, Johnny doesn’t like parties and would prefer it if none of the guests arrived successfully. Therefore, Johnny takes some uninflated balloons and ties them to the mailbox. They are unnoticeable from the road. When Johnny’s mother discovers what he has done, will she regard him as having simply not obeyed her, or as having deliberately disobeyed her? For if he had done nothing, he still could have said, “I was about to do it.” But since he took definitive action, yet in such a way as to thwart his mother’s purpose, his action was in fact disobedient.

And indeed, when a husband and wife come together, they are obeying God’s divine purpose, for the love of a man and woman does not originate on its own, but “God brought Eve to the man.” Therefore, if a husband and wife have sex in such a way as to avoid his purposes, then they have positively disobeyed God. (This is the essential difference between natural family planning and contraception. Natural family planning simply “does not have sex,” but contraception has sex while thwarting its purpose.)

So, the question remains whether, indeed, the marriage act has this purpose from God, to create an instance of the potential for human life?

Each and Every?

No Christian will deny that one of God’s purposes for marriage as a whole (the sum of one’s marriage acts, if you will), is to be open to children. In Genesis 1-2, when God “made them male and female” and “brought Eve to the man” so that they “became one flesh,” their union was overshadowed by that great first commandment, to “be fruitful and increase in number.” Do not biology and common sense also affirm that sex was created for the producing of offspring?

But the tricky part is whether this openness to life applies only to a marriage as a whole (that is, to at least some marriage acts with that set), or to each and every marriage act with that set?

Let us discuss this is terms of a certain husband and wife. They know that God intends for the set of their marriage acts as a whole to be open to life. And they know that this means God may intend to create life through some particular instances of the marriage act. (After all, marriages do not create pregnancies. Sex does.) Therefore, on any given night when they approach each other, they do not know whether God might intend for that very marriage act to be one which results in a child (or, if they do an act of preemptive contraception or sterilization, whether he might have intended it otherwise).

Now I say that because they do not know how God’s general intention to create life through the set of their marriage acts applies to any particular instance (for God reserves the miracle for himself), their act against the possibility of life in any instance constitutes disobedience.

Consider a man who said to his wife, “I am going away, and I am going to come and stow something secretly in the house. I cannot tell you when I will come, except that it will be some night in December. Therefore, you must keep the doors of the house unlocked at night during the month of December.” If this wife, concerned for her safety or privacy, chooses to lock the doors even one night, then has she not violated the command of her husband as much as if she had kept the house locked the whole time? For who knows whether the messenger would come that very night?

But the reply will come, “God gives a married couple more agency, more right of determination in the conception of new life, than this woman in your analogy.” It is true, man and woman have been given an incredibly noble role in the way that they cooperate with God to create life. The analogy does little justice to that nobility.

But we must not forget who it is who really creates life. Do we view the marriage act as something where the human parents have been given the power and responsibility to create life of their own initiative and accord, and where God dutifully engenders life as an almost necessary consequence of their act? Or do we view the marriage act as something where God reserves the right to create life and gives to human parents the command to create the possibility for him to do so, not revealing when he will actualize that possibility?

The Christian must embrace the view which subjects man to God. As Humanae Vitae says,

But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source.

Only if humans have prime agency in the act of creating a new human life do they have the right to exclude certain sex acts from the possibility of doing so. But if it is God who creates life, and has ordained the marriage act as the instrument of possibility which he has commanded us to keep ready for his miracle, then to hamper the possibility is to usurp God.

Only by refraining from contraception in each and every marriage act can we retain the right spirit in our marriage, namely that God remains efficacious in our performance of the command he has given to us to “be fruitful and multiply.”

Priestesses in the Church? Yes, Mr. Lewis, and bishops too!

This essay entitled “Priestesses in the Church?” by C.S. Lewis really floored me when I first read it a few years ago, so much that, of the essays in God in the Docks, perhaps it was the most memorable. It is particularly relevant today. Libby Lane was ordained today as the first female bishop of the Church of England. I imagine that Lewis would be quite disappointed, although perhaps not surprised, that the ordination of priestesses which he called in his day “unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities” has not only been considered, but effected, and not only for priestesses, but now for bishops. This trend toward the ordination of women is pervasive in may denominations including the United Methodist, Episcopal, and (even prior to this date) greater Anglican traditions. In fact it is even encouraged among the Brethren in Christ, a brethren or holiness denomination based in Pennsylvania of which my wife’s family are committed members.

Googling the essay produces a very sad assortment of blog rebuttals of the essay which do not understand Lewis’ points and really make fools of themselves blabbering on at straw men. Therefore, although you should really just read the essay itself, I will try to do him some brief justice here. Lewis’ argument could be syllogized this way:

Major Premise: A key role of a priest is to represent God to man.
Minor Premise: God has revealed himself to mankind as masculine.
Conclusion: Therefore, a priest must represent God masculinely.
Second Major Premise: a person’s gender is part of their spirituality, it is a “living and semitive figure which God has painted on the canvas of our nature”.
Second Minor Premise: Men are masculine.
Conclusion: Therefore, a man must represent God to mankind.

I find that the only point that one can bail on this train of logic is at the very beginning–one must deny the mystical, representative nature of the sacerdotal office. Protestant denominations that do so, incidentally may have more of an excuse to allow women as “pastors” but this represents a deficiency in their whole Christian system. The fact that they may allow women to fulfill their version of the priestly office reveals that they have no priestly office at all. And I would submit that churches whose leaders merely educate and administrate and visit the sick are missing something of what Christianity truly is. But that is another issue. For churches who acknowledge the mystical role of the priest in the sacramental economy, and who hold the view that the Bible’s consistently masculine imagery for God was not an oversight on his part (R.I.P., TNIV translators), the ordination of female priests and bishops is a perversion of Christianity in the name of that great insidious god of our times, common sense.