The Genesis of Gender
Abigail Favale's The Genesis of Gender is essential reading for moms and dads, definitely for high school and college students, teachers and pastors for sure, and really for anyone who is trying to understand what's going on in the gender revolution, a world of top and bottom surgeries, puberty blockers and hormone treatments, a world of sorrow in which our young people are made to feel uncomfortable in their very own bodies.
Favale tells an insider's story of how as an evangelical she embraced feminism. Like many, she was entranced with the idea that there is no male or female in Christ (Gal. 3:28), and it wasn't long before she was confronted with the idea that St. Paul was himself a sexist product of patriarchal society. Favale went on to Oxford, where she was immersed in post-modernism and more radical thinking.
What we then have is a bit of a class on the various waves of feminism, beginning with the likes of Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth. Favale notes that there were real problems, including rampant alcoholism that was accompanied by a domestic abuse. Here we might take note of the modern Me Too movement, which addressed real problems.
Feminism became united with abortion advocacy, as seen in Margaret Sanger, who rebelled against patriarchy, the priesthood, and God Himself: "No gods! No masters!" Motherhood was portrayed as a burden, pregnancy as a disease. And so it is to this day, where it is supposedly "healthcare" not only to abort babies, but to take pills that disrupt the natural cycles and functions of the woman's body.
Especially helpful is Favale's description of thinkers like Simon de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex. Beauvoir denied the very idea of human nature and claimed that a human being is defined by "autonomous freedom." Do not our bodies tell us something? Reveal something? Beauvoir's freedom is really an untethering, woman from men, women from children, and, women even from their own bodies. Then comes Judith Butler, who drinks from the intellectual fountain of Foucault (the esteemed French philosopher who advocated for pedophilia). Butler sought to interrogate all taboos, including incest. In Undoing Gender, she held out the hope that technology would free human reproduction from heterosexual relationships. What's sought for is a strange, and I would argue, lonely freedom, that would separate us from ourselves and our dearest relationships, including motherhood and fatherhood, husband and wife, anything resembling the family. Perhaps, a class on the origins of life within the woman's body, might awaken the echoes of marvel.
But the problem with natural relationships is that they impinge on what's most important, the assertion of power. For this reason, a Margaret Sanger could see the beauty and wonder of pregnancy as a form of oppression. And apart from real relationships, man and wife, the baby-making business becomes nothing but utility, and others become nothing but the source of happiness, or a burden that must be removed, a baby with a beating heart that will be treated like a tumor. What's saddest of all, I suppose, is that women are left to think that maleness is essentially superior, precisely because men do not have to have babies.
Along the way, Favale exposes the contradictions in the gender construct. Sex is assigned at birth, and yet people are born this way. Gender is a construct, and yet it is somehow found in the brain. Gender is simply a societal category, and yet it is also somehow found in the brain. Gender cannot be linked to any kind of creation story, and yet people are said to have gendered souls that are at odds with their bodies.
All of this could be laughed at, if the consequences were not all around us. Feminism allied itself to an LGBT movement, with the result that no one, even a scholarly feminist, can answer the question, "What is a woman?" In such a world it should not surprise us that the gender madness has taken an especially heavy toll on young women, who are led to think that a double mastectomy will make them free. (Favale does not address the issue, but we see this affecting male/female relationships. How many married people think that children are in fact a burden to be avoided entirely or severely limited).
Favale's book may be especially helpful for young women who are made to feel uncomfortable in their own bodies, as if they do not match us to some mark of perfection. It is also good for men, who are tempted to objectify women, to think them simply as objects, useful for their desire.
It should be noted that Favale is a convert to Roman Catholicism, and like a new convert, she can be a bit partisan. But I do think she makes some good points here. We do well to the Genesis story (which she sadly does not equate with history), and to the wonder of men and women who are truly complimentary, making procreation possible only when the two become one. Creation is itself good, no accident. We are bodily creatures. We're more than bodies, but never less than bodily. To hug a body is to hug the person. (And no, we don't become angels when we die. You see, that's part of the problem.) This bodily aspect is heightened in the Sacrament, and here evangelicals may listen, by Christ's bodily presence in the Lord's Supper. The body matters, not as a machine by which we get things done, but because we are bodily creatures. And we are created with a purpose. The very creation of male and female bespeaks communion, the truth that it is not good for man to be alone. Children come from this union, and again this reality speaks to the communal nature of human life, that we are made for one another, and for God.
On a personal note, I picked up Favale's book twice and didn't get far, but the third time I got into it and finished it in a couple of days. It's academic and personal, and it has a convert's appeal, as one who has spent time in the murky mud, and now sees things much more clearly, and wishes the best for your daughters and sons. For the sake of your children and grandchildren, for the sake of the ties that bind us, for the sake of goodness, and the goodness of the God who created us, this book is a must.
The Rev. Dr. Peter Scaer is chairman and professor of Exegetical Theology and director of the M.A. program at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind.
Be Informed
Learn more about gray divorce with Katie Breckenridge of Them Before Us.
Be Equipped
Dr. Kevin Voss talks about the field of bioethics and how our Lutheran theology helps us navigate the nuanced world of reproductive technology.
Be Encouraged
“This living together of husband and wife—that they occupy the same home, that they care of the household, that together they produced and bring up children—is a kind of faint image and a remnant, as it were, of that blessed living together [in Eden].” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther ”
