I want to continue my discussion of the Catholic perspective in the LGBTQ community by looking at transgenderism. As I stated before, this is a complex topic that deserves nuance and sensitivity. If I were to summarize my beliefs about the transgender community in a couple of sentences it would be this: “I would never even dare to imagine how terrifying it must be to experience gender dysphoria, but I think that gender transition surgery and other forms of gender affirming care are not the way to resolve the pain and fear that these individuals experience.” So how do we as Catholics, and Christians speaking more broadly, speak the truth in love to those who experience gender dysphoria? I think we need to have a few bases covered.
Body and Soul
From how I understand it, some transgender advocates claim that gender is merely a social construct, while sex relates to our biology. These two are two distinct things, that can and in some cases should be separated. They are partially right and partially wrong; here’s why. If one gender identification can have absolutely no relationship to their biological sex, then the only major difference between A cisgender woman and a transgender woman is a matter of self-perception; now look phrase transgender woman. Thinking about it grammatically, transgender is an adjective, and woman is the noun. This means that while the word transgender can describe a person, there still needs to be something that transgender women and cisgender women have in common. For the advocates of transgender is this would simply be a shared self-perception of femininity. The body doesn’t matter at all. However, if I were to walk up to and smack you in the face, you would rightly be upset. You might even say, “You hit me!” If a person’s body is not part of what makes them who they are, and their “true self” only resides in the mind, then I would rightly reply, “I didn’t hit you, I hit your body.” We know this isn’t true. The body is very much a part of oneself. When the body dies, we say the person is dead, even if as Christians we believe that the soul is immortal.
Feminine Boys and Masculine Girls
Now that I’ve established that the body is a crucial part of who I am, I can move on to discuss exactly what makes men and women different. Contrary to what some might think, it doesn’t boil down to just chromosomes and genitals. In Matt Walsh’s documentary, “What Is a Woman?”, he defined woman as an adult human female. I don’t necessarily think that this definition captures all of what it means to be a woman. To me, it relies so heavily on biology that the social aspects of womanhood are ignored. A woman is a human being who is naturally ordered to give birth to children. In that same way, a man is naturally ordered to produce sperm. Notice how I said “naturally ordered.” That means that even if a man has his genitals blown off during his time in the military, or if a woman is struggling with infertility issues, they still remain a man and a woman, by the very nature of what they are they have those roles in human reproduction, even if they cannot execute them.
Okay, but what about the societal aspect of transgenderism? Some men feel more drawn to traditionally female activities, and the same thing goes for some women. Therefore, they should be allowed to identify as the other gender because they feel more at home that way. I can understand that this line of thinking, but that argument is false based on the concepts of the body I discussed previously. Society can have men that aren’t interested in sports, cars, or drinking; I don’t. My disinterest in traditionally masculine things does not mean that I’m not a man. A woman’s interest in these things does not mean that she is a man. It simply goes to show that although there are societal expectations on how men and women should behave, that’s not always the case.
What Do We Do with All This?
At the end of the day, the proper Christian response to transgenderism is one of both active listening and compassion based in the truth that although gender dysphoria can be unsettling, people are either male or female, regardless of how they identify. Let’s love them like Jesus does. Let’s love them like our brothers and sisters, listening to their stories and empathizing with them where we can. They are in so much pain and confusion, and they are being lied to about how to fix it. What’s even worse, is that we are being told that if they are not accepted as who they claim to be, they will kill themselves or become depressed. My friends, there is no greater freedom than living in the joy of the truth. My heart breaks for those who suffer gender dysphoria, especially right now, as more and more legislation is being passed to allow so-called gender affirming care to younger and younger people. There is hope. We don’t need to whack these people over the head with the truth, but we do need to give to them somehow, because it just might save their lives.
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