Cocoron's Corner

Trans people and bad apologetics

I am writing this post in repsonse to an article defending the Roman Catholic Church's current position on trans people. The article was posted on that venerable and august instituion, Catholic Answers, writte by Tom Nash.

Please note that I am not a qualified theologian. As a trans woman I simply feel compelled to address some common theological arguments against acceptance of trans people, which I feel are poorly constructed. I am not attempting to construct my own theological framework here, I am simply concerned with assessing the strength of the arguments presented by Tom.

The first thing I want to address is Tom's use of the term "transgenderism." Tom starts off his article with "those who espouse 'transgenderism'..." This is a convenient way for Tom to skip around what he's actually talking about: trans people. There is also a subtle and rather sinister implication here that some people "espouse" an ideology, and others fall victim to the ideology. The next sentence then specifically builds on this narrative and focuses on trans women (and no one else), with the use of the term "biological men", again a common rhetorical device employed against trans people. It is much, much easier to dismiss and degrade trans people if they are seen as a group of big loud men in dresses, silencing or duping others with their authoritarian dictats on gender. The fact that Tom has only focused on one very specific kind of trans person, and one part of the broader community, suggests that he is not really serious in engaging with us in good faith.

Now let's get into the meat of his argument:

Bad science

The Church has a different take, one that is grounded in genuinely confirmed reality.

I may be nitpicking here but stating that your "take" is "grounded in genuinely confirmed reality," and presenting that in itself as persuasive force is circular logic. Likewise, starting an argument with "we're right" doesn't exactly wash. But let's move onto to the first proof for Tom's "genuinely confirmed reality."

One is born either or male or female, and this also applies to hermaphrodites who, though they manifest both male and female anatomical aspects at birth, are either biological boys or girls.

There are multiple serious problems with this thinking. The existence of intersex people is sometimes brought up as a point in arguments around sex and gender, especially on the question of what exactly constitutes male or female, and I am going to be generous here and assume that Tom is trying to pre-emptively address this matter. The first problem is the use of the term hermaphrodite. When talking about humans, it is a useless term that means nothing. To quote the Intersex Society of North America:

The mythological term “hermaphrodite” implies that a person is both fully male and fully female. This is a physiologic impossibility.

Let's be generous again and assume that Tom is simply using the word "hermaphordite" to refer to ambiguous external anatomy at birth. Tom states that, despite ambiguous anatomy, a person must still be either "biological boys or girls."

What does Tom mean by "biological" here? Anatomy is a part of a person's biological condition. There are, of course, a constellation of other factors that contribute to a person's biological sex: chromosomal configuration, genetic mutations and expressions, epigenetic conditions, the production of certain enzymes, the production of certain hormones, how well cells within the body respond to those hormones, mitosis and cellular development of the zygote or embryo, the development of gonads--the list goes on. Intersex people can vary in any of these and other factors.

I want to emphasise that chromosomal configuration, so often mislabelled as the sole and single determinant in biological sex, can vary wildly: Not everyone is born with either a simple XX or XY arrangement. It is also possible for some intersex people to reproduce unaided, and many more can do so with medical intervention. This includes people with atypical sex chromomal configurations.

Furthermore, a medical consensus is slowly forming that being intersex is not in itself a disease or disorder. To quote the Clevland Clinic:

In the past, being intersex was known as having a disorder of sex development (DSD), and you might see it referred to this way in some places. But being intersex isn’t a disorder, disease or condition. Being intersex doesn’t mean you need any special treatments or care.

There are configurations of intersexuality that can stand on their own without being seen as a simple deviation from the standard male or female.

The reason I a bring all of this up is because I want to make abundantly clear that Tom has no understanding of biological sex. Not all (intersex) people fit neatly into the category of "boy or girl" even when we disregard ambiguous external anatomy, and there is no nebulous, essential "biological sex" that stands beyond all else, cleanly giving us a singular, binary marker, if only we look for it.

Whatever Tom's "genuinely confirmed reality" might be, it's not based in facts established by modern science. Onto the next point.

Bad faith

Tom immediately follows up his questionable understanding of intersexuality with a quote from Genesis:

In this light, the Church recognizes that every human person is created in the image and likeness of God, male or female (Gen. 1:26-27). And so we should help people discover their true identities as children of God, not support them in the disordered attempt to reject their undeniable biological identity.

Tom is leading us to believe here that the science of sexual development is in accordance with the Roman Catholic Church's understanding of Genesis 1:26-27, an interpretation which draws up a simple binary of male/man and female/woman. Now that we have poked holes in that theory, let's look at the scriptural support.

There is something sneaky going on with Tom's quote from Genesis: the words "male or female." This is simply not what it says. The word or is not used. And is. No translation of the Bible that I know of uses or in place of and, and doing so would be a clear deviation from the original Hebrew, וּנְקֵבָה זָכָר zakar u-neqebah, with the letter ו, vav (pronounced here as u), meaning and and attached to נְקֵבָה, female; "male and female."

I suspect Tom has used or instead of and here to support his simple binary view of biological sex. But it is not an honest account of scripture. And what's worse for Tom is that male and female might even be less rigid than at first blush. Why?

There is strong evidence that the phrase "male and female" in Genesis 1:26 might be what is called a merism. A merism is rhetorical device that uses two opposing aspects to refer to a greater whole: "looking high and low," "people young and old", or "rich and poor." Merisms are a common device employed in Hebrew, and are also found being used by Jewish writers in the New Testament; think of "Jew and Greek/Gentile" being used to refer to all peoples, regardless of ethnicity or nation. Some more examples:

What could it mean if Genesis 1:27 is in fact a merism? That sex and gender do not fall within the fixed, all-encompassing binary that Tom believes they do. Do we have definitive proof that it actually one? No, it can only be speculation at best. But it's not baseless speculation, and it is no more speculative than the belief of Tom and the Roman Catholic Church that "male and female" is a comprehensive list. On the balance of probability, it seems that Genesis 1:27 can not be reasonably used to dismiss the reality of trans or intersex people, as Tom does, lest we admit that it can just as easily be used for the opposite end.

There are other possible criticisms here, like how some Jewish scholars believe that humans were both "male and female" before the creation of Eve and Adam, or how the physical characteristics of sex only seem to be a condition of Humanity after the fall. The point is that simply quoting Genesis 1:27 doesn't tidily win the debate.

Conclusion

In his article, Tom has employed two points to defend the Roman Catholic position on trans people. The first of these points is clearly based on misunderstanding and not science. The second point is based on a poorly developed interpretation of a single quote from Genesis that has very little meaning by itself. His argument is shallow and inconclusive. If this is the state of modern Roman Catholic apologetics then we should all be worried.

It is worth keeping in mind that the Roman Catholic Church has, in the face of overwhelming evidence, often changed its beliefs, including beliefs that it considered at one point to be foundational to the Catholic faith. It prosecuted Galileo Galilei for his suggestion that scientific evidence and the truth can sometimes contradict a literal interpretation of Bible (Genesis in particular). It excommunicated the historian Gregorio Chil y Naranjo for his defence of Darwin's theory that humans evolved from other animals. Even though the Church had largely moved past a strictly literal approach to Genesis by the time Darwin was writing, they considered the belief that humanity was made totally separate from other animals in every way to be such a fundamental doctrine that to believe anything else was to endanger the immortal soul. The Church is not so ancient and traditional as it often likes to paint itself. Perhaps in the future people will look back in this era of the Church's history in a similar light.