A philosophical response to gender ideology

Editor’s note: This is the second in a four-part series that addresses the contemporary problem of gender ideology on theological, philosophical, scientific, and common-sense grounds.

The first column in this series offered a theological response to gender ideology by drawing upon Scripture and Tradition to show gender ideology’s false claims about human nature and human sexuality. This column will address gender ideology based upon philosophical reasoning, since reason alone can also assist us in understanding the full truth about the human person. As St. John Paul II famously wrote in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, “faith and reason are like two wings by which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” While theology begins with faith in divine revelation, philosophy uses reason alone to understand the fundamental nature, ultimate causes, and basic principles of reality.

By way of review, gender dysphoria refers to the distress some people experience due to the perception that their male or female body does not correspond to their inner sense of gender identity. Those suffering from gender dysphoria feel like they are trapped in the wrong body – a woman in a man’s body, or a man in a woman’s body. While many with gender dysphoria seek counseling to accept their born sexual nature, others influenced by gender ideology strive to appear outwardly as the sex that matches their internal sense of self. Gender ideology maintains that a person can be born in the wrong body, and therefore encourages those with gender dysphoria to transition to the sex corresponding to their internal sense of gender identity by presenting themselves as the opposite sex, taking puberty blockers, receiving cross sex hormones, and undergoing sex-change surgeries.

The Church insists that persons suffering from gender dysphoria must be treated with compassion, kindness, respect, and charity, and therefore opposes any form of hatred, violence, or unjust discrimination toward them. At the same time, the Church opposes gender ideology since it is based upon false premises about human nature and is wreaking havoc in the lives of those under its influence.

Gender ideology is based upon a false dualistic understanding of the relationship between the human person’s soul, mind, or inner self, and their body. Under body/soul dualism, the mind/soul/self is said to inhabit the body and make use of it like an instrument or a machine. The inner self and material body are considered two separate substances, and only the conscious self is identified with the person. The non-personal material body can therefore be manipulated to better represent the identity of the inner personal self.

Contrary to body/soul dualism, a well-developed philosophical tradition from the time of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle holds instead that the human person is not only a soul, mind, or conscious self, dwelling inside a body, but rather is a unitary being composed of both a rational soul and a material body. This philosophical doctrine is known as hylomorphism, derived from two Greek words at the heart of the doctrine, hulē (matter) and morphē (form). The Church has long recognized hylomorphism to be a true philosophical doctrine that coheres with its understanding of the relationship between the soul and the body (see Catechism of the Catholic Church Nos. 362, 365). According to this philosophical tradition, the human person’s rational soul is the substantial form of the material body, meaning that the soul is the organizing principle that animates and structures the matter as a human body. Like any substantial form, the rational soul is “that which makes the substance to be the kind of thing it is,” and the matter of the body is “that out of which the substance is made.” The soul and the body are not two separate and distinct substances or things, but rather two principles of one unified substance. The human person is not a soul or mind or conscious self inside a body, but rather an integrated body-soul unity from the start. Therefore, it makes no sense to speak of being a man trapped in a woman’s body or a woman trapped in a man’s body, since the human person is a unified being composed of a soul and a body.

Dualistic accounts of the body/soul relationship can easily be refuted by hylomorphism. Consider, for example what happens when the living soul departs the material body at death. The corpse at that moment begins to decompose because it no longer has its organizing, integrating, and life-giving principle. If the soul were a separate substance that merely inhabited the body, one would expect the body to remain intact. Instead, the human soul and the human body come and go together, entail each other, and together form one composite human being.

Closely related to the human person’s hylomorphic composition is the fact that human beings, like all other mammals, are dimorphic (“two forms”) sexual beings that are either male or female. While sexuality clearly involves the body in terms of sex chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, and external genitalia, it also necessarily involves the soul as the substantial form of the body that not only actualizes it as a human body, but also constitutes it as male or female. Human sexuality is therefore a matter of the whole person, male or female, through and through. Moreover, the natural sexual order and design of the male and of the female complement each other and together are directed toward reproduction. Being male or being female is grounded in these two natural sexual orders. No amount of masking, hormones, or surgery can alter this natural, deep-seated, complementary, and purpose-driven sexual order and design.

Many transgender activists reject the Christian faith, so theological arguments against gender ideology may be ineffective and unconvincing to them. Philosophical arguments like those supporting the body/soul unity of the human person are therefore also necessary for effectively countering the false claims of gender ideology today.