God, sex, gender and politics

A redlight recently stopped my progress through snow falling heavily on the smalltown equivalent of Times Square. Gold letters across the courthouse façade proclaimed, “IN GOD WE TRUST.”

Trusting both God and my all-wheel-drive Subaru, I felt awe and excitement with the snow. Then, across the intersection, a giant electronic billboard transitioned from an ad about real estate to an announcement blaring: “God made them MALE and FEMALE.”

Ugh. My bliss was interrupted by the ear-piercing sound and blinding sparks of someone with an axe to grind. In our contemporary context, this message clearly aimed to comment on controversies about transgender issues — whether in sports, bathrooms or just the discomfort some folks feel when seeing someone whose attire doesn’t match traditional stereotypes. Someone felt compelled to pay good money attempting to reduce a complex issue to a bumper-sticker slogan.

In the meantime, Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teen, died of still-undetermined causes the day after a fight in an Oklahoma school bathroom. Such tragedies move bumper-sticker dogma from merely shallow to recklessly fueling a culture of hatred.

Biblical understanding

Now, hold on. No, I’m not saying Genesis 1:27 is just a bumper sticker. I’m saying it was written in a cultural context with much mystery preceding it and centuries of history and discovery in the meantime. Calling it bumper-sticker theology seems far less disrespectful than folks divorcing Scripture of its context and attempting to apply it simplistically — even if done with the profound good intentions to promote a righteous social order.

One of my Baptist-college religion professors was fond of saying, “I wish someone would open an inerrant Bible and read it.” If we’re going to use a literal reading of Genesis to address the contemporary issue on gender, let’s first read it, well, literally. When Genesis 5 echoes Genesis 1, it only says that Adam and (unnamed) Eve were created male and female. It literally doesn’t say anything about anyone else.

I mean, what race were Adam and Eve? Yes, the picture-Bible in the doctor’s office shows them as white Europeans who had access to excellent shampoo and conditioner for their Ken-and-Barbie hair. However, the Bible does not indicate the race of the first pair of humans. They had to be some race, yet we have all the variations of race today. If variations in race can emerge, why not in sex and gender?

The cultural and scientific debate

Some might be wondering: What’s the difference between sex and gender? That can be confusing, because the general population and even some academics use the terms interchangeably.

The complication has been heightened by the phenomenon of “gender-reveal parties” — a practice deeply regretted by the person who accidentally started the craze. Why are gender-reveal parties problematic? Technically and more accurately, sex refers to the designations male, female or intersex. By contrast, gender refers to the “behavioral, cultural and psychological traits typically associated with” our overarching sense and/or expression of masculinity and femininity.

The general population can’t be blamed for confusion when scientific opinion is so diverse even within the same researcher. In keeping with the adage “only fools never change their minds,” new information leads fair-minded scientists to modify their views. This and the lag between academic developments and their being translated to the broader public often lead to mistrust.

For instance, in 1993, Anne Fausto-Sterling, professor emerita of biology and gender at Brown University, ignited controversy with her article “Five Sexes.” But in 2000 she published “The Five Sexes Revisited” and said she was being tongue-in-cheek about the categories she proposed and there likely are more than five categories. In the 2000 article she said, “Male and female, masculine and feminine, cannot be parsed as some kind of continuum.” However, on her current website, she states, “I assert that human sexual development is not always dichotomous and that gender differences fall on a continuum, not into two separate buckets.”

It’s not surprising many in the general population feel confused. I hold a Ph.D. in human ecology and had to wrestle with that apparent contradiction before I realized the distinction between gender as a continuum versus there being no way to parse the interaction of sex and gender on a single-line continuum. As Fausto-Sterling stated in the The Five Sexes Revisted, “Sex and gender are best conceptualized as points in a multidimensional space.” Sadly, no layperson-friendly illustration of this was offered. I think this model might be understood by envisioning a cube-shaped space with X, Y and Z axes. Let’s say the X axis ranges from male-presenting on one end to female-presenting on the other; the Y axis ranges from masculine traits to feminine traits, and the Z axis goes from internal sense of self to public-facing behavior. This represents a complex model to reflect the complex phenomena of sex and gender.

However, there is a difference between an elegant description of a phenomenon and an effective prescription for applying it. If conservatives too often cling to simplistic dogma while legitimately concerned about social order, progressives often make life unduly complicated in trying to legitimately show compassion for all people.

Fausto-Sterling once recommended we do away with reporting gender on government documents like passports and driver licenses. However, for all the problems of discriminatory stereotypes, legitimate stereotypes do help us survive in the world: “That giant pit bull’s chain will reach this sidewalk. I will cross to the side with that tiny poodle.”

Now, imagine if a set of parents saw their child snatched into a car that sped away. The police officer asks, “Where in multidimensional space was the assailant’s sex/gender/public personae interaction?” If they were sure of the conventional appearance of the person, if asked for a description of a kidnapper, no parent who’d just seen their child kidnapped would say, “It was a person who was six feet tall.” No. They would say it was a man or a woman, because that generalization most facilitates the rescue of their child.

While the binary system does need to be expanded and applied compassionately and justly, our prescriptions need not throw out the baby of pragmatics with the dirty bathwater of discrimination.

Historical and contemporary context

Amending our binary system can be aided by seeing how we already treat gender as socially constructed. For instance, in Western societies, a garment that wraps around the waist is a “skirt,” usually designated as feminine. But in Scotland, the same style of garment is a kilt and is gender neutral.

“Search the internet for images of ‘tunic,’ and see how far you scroll before finding a male rather than a female.”

We certainly wouldn’t describe William Wallace and the warriors in Braveheart as feminine. However, a British reviewer of this essay pointed out the movie is anachronistic. Kilts did not come into use until the late 1600s to early 1700s, more than 300 years after Wallace’s lifetime. Prior to that, Scots likely wore tunics. Search the internet for images of “tunic,” and see how far you scroll before finding a male rather than a female. This demonstrates evolving social norms.

We need to be careful, though, about either hostilely opposing changes on one extreme or blindly accepting them on the other. Among many problems with the new phenomenon of “gender reveal parties” is that they mislabel what is being revealed. In the first place, we are attempting to reveal sex rather than gender. Even if we say we are revealing a fetus’ sex, there are things we just can’t know to make a certain conclusion. We can somewhat accurately tell if they have a penis or not, although even that’s not certain due to the possibility of intersex traits not visible in an ultrasound. However, even if we could know for sure, let’s face it, having a “sex reveal” party sounds sketchy.

Thus, one of our major problems is the ambiguous meaning of the word “sex.” We’ve all likely heard the joke of someone filling out a questionnaire and, responding to “Sex?” with “frequently.” The English language desperately needs a new word to distinguish sexual intercourse from male/female/intersex.  The word “sex” has caused problems long enough. For now, though, at the very least, Christians need to strive to be less freaked out and approach the issue with a gentler spirit, rooted not in static dogma but in living God. And, of course, people want to know whether to register for blue or pink clothes. If we must have these parties, maybe we could call them “itza parties” — as in “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl” or “It’s a child.”

“Christians need to strive to be less freaked out and approach the issue with a gentler spirit, rooted not in static dogma but in living God.”

While the distinction between male and female has variation based on secondary sex characteristics (some men have no beards; some women have thick beards), due to chromosomal pairings, sex does have spectrum categories that are more distinct than gender. Thus, some argue sex is more like a rainbow: a spectrum of light with distinctive divisions. Gender, however, takes place on a more gradual continuum.

Imagine you are at a paint store. You’re looking at a line of color-sample cards, and that line gradually goes from bright yellow to dark green. Let’s say yellow is feminine and dark green is masculine. Some people are very feminine. Some people are very masculine. However, where does yellow stop being yellow and become green? There’s no clear distinction. Furthermore, there are all those shades of people in the middle; some with gender that matches social stereotypes for their sex and some whose gender and sex don’t fit in the bell-shaped curve.

Take for example the biblical characters of Jacob and Esau. Esau was what many today might call a “manly man.” He was outdoorsy and swarthy. Little-brother Jacob was a male but was what some folks cruelly and unfairly call a “mama’s boy.” He wasn’t hairy and he liked cooking with his mother. Both the characters were male. One displayed, so to speak, a “jungle camo” color, while the other presented in more of a “toasted butter” hue.

Similarly, in a college class where I was having this discussion, I had a male student who looked very masculine but liked to crochet during class. Across the way, a female student with long blond hair and a pink camouflage cap loved to hunt wild turkey and deer and could field dress both. Another student had entered the classroom on day one, and I had no idea whether they were male or female. That student, who later reported having XX chromosomes, told the class, “I stopped going in the women’s restroom because it scared the women who would say, ‘What are you doing in here?!’ When I go into the men’s room, nobody gives me a hard time, and I don’t scare anyone.”

Some insist sex must be binary: either male or female. This ignores the known existence of intersex people like Emily Quinn. (Note: We don’t say people are maled or femaled, so we don’t say people are intersexed; we say: male, female, intersex.) In her TED Talk, Quinn — who was using feminine pronouns when I checked — says she has a vagina. However, no one would guess from her very feminine external appearance that she has internal testes where ovaries are usually located, and a DNA test would show her to have XY chromosomes — the male chromosomal pairing.

The problem with the “God created them MALE and FEMALE” billboard is that this dogmatic ideology makes Christians come off as ignorant at best and callously uncaring at worst. Quinn asserts the worldwide number of intersex people is roughly equivalent to the number of redheads — a number higher than the population of Russia. How would Jesus treat people in a statistical minority? When we dogmatically insist on binary sex, we create an atmosphere of hostility that is anything but Christlike. It also shows disengagement from science and history.

“This dogmatic ideology makes Christians come off as ignorant at best and callously uncaring at worst.”

Historical myths are stories that reflect cultural attempts to understand our world. In Greek mythology, the story of Hermaphroditus represents an attempt to describe and explain the presence of people who don’t fit a neat male/female binary. If nonbinary forms of sex don’t exist, why did ancient cultures attempt to explain their existence?

Leonard Sax, a physician, psychologist and conservative commentator on gender issues, offered a critique of Fausto-Sterling’s estimate of the number of intersex people in the U.S. Sax asserted Fausto-Sterling’s estimate was 100 times too high, and the actual number is closer to just 50,000 rather than 5,000,000. Crucial to addressing the assertion that God made only males and females, Sax does not deny the existence of these 50,000 Americans. Especially when it only takes one intersex person to dispel the notion that there are ONLY males and females in this world, 50,000 is a significant number. That’s roughly the number of American members of the high-IQ society Mensa and nearly the number of names on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C.

Some have observed that Jewish culture also has sought to address the presence of people who don’t fit into neat binary boxes. In 2023, the New York Times published an opinion piece titled “Ancient Judaism Recognized a Range of Genders. It’s Time We Did, Too.” (If you’re curious but get stuck behind a paywall, here is a similar free article.) A research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation reacted firmly and negatively. His argument can be summarized this way: The Bible says God created humans male and female. Thus, here we are again at an understanding of one verse of Scripture stirring up intense emotion despite the evidence of many people’s lived experiences. Furthermore, the Heritage Foundation researcher’s dogmatic argument is made without demonstrating the harm caused by some people expressing their gender in ways outside the statistical norm.

What now? R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Rules and laws are made to prevent harm. If we want to make rules against someone’s behavior, we must demonstrate the harm being caused by the behavior, and this must be actual harm, not merely emotional discomfort. We shouldn’t ban that billboard just because it merely irks people like me. Likewise, if we’re uncomfortable with the sight of someone with atypical appearance or behavior, we need to put on our big-boy, big-girl, or big-intersex … clothing … and go about our day, safe in the knowledge that we have just experienced freedom.

For more complex issues like blocking puberty: Yes, we must proceed with caution. However, for the purpose of civil law, that caution must be rooted in statistically significant medically measurable harm, not religious dogma.

“For the purpose of civil law, that caution must be rooted in statistically significant medically measurable harm, not religious dogma.”

I wonder if our insistence on a binary labeling of sex and gender limits us in ways in which even progressives become bogged down. Even asking the second of the two questions to follow will be offensive to some, but here it is in my mind, nagging.

First, which of the following words is most insulting in our culture: “tomboy” or “sissy”? Parents often encourage their daughters to be tomboys, proud of them sliding in the mud on the soccer pitch. But we rarely if ever see parents encouraging their young sons to be feminine. In Western culture, if not most cultures, when we call a male a sissy, it drips with disdain and lands in most ears with the sharpness of a dagger. We might wonder: For males who feel and want to present as feminine, is the social stigma they face so strong that it feels safer for a male to call himself a woman than to present as a feminine male — a status for which Western culture has no word that is not an insult?

By contrast, some cultures do have other words. The online encyclopedia Britannica identifies “six cultures that recognize more than two genders.” In India for instance, the hijra are either born male or intersex and present themselves in a feminine style. For at least 2,000 years they have served in religious roles in Hinduism — various forms of which view God as genderless or bigender.

India now has the world’s largest population, making up just more than 17% of the world population. (The United States makes up 4.23% of the world’s population.) As of 2014, there were approximately 3 million hijras in India. Yet, India became the most populous country in the world, debunking the notion that allowing people to express their sense of gender will lead to declining population. The fact India now has the largest population in the world flies in the face of Christians using fear of falling birth rate in arguments to limit the expression of gender.

“Christians and other faiths need not inhibit the conversation by dogmatically clinging to a binary system based solely on an interpretation of Scripture.”

The political extremes on gender issues continue a tug of war that tears society. When the Left wants to promote biological males competing with females because the person with XY chromosomes feels like a woman, it raises the hackles of conservatives nervous about progressive overreach. By contrast, when the Right wants to narrowly limit human experience based on inconsistent and dogmatic interpretation of Scripture, it raises the hackles of progressives.

A middle way offers a path to see Scriptures on gender as rooted in context. Because Scripture says Joshua stopped the sun in the sky, the church of the Middle Ages threatened Galileo with torture for teaching that the earth orbits a motionless sun. The official church tribunal declared heliocentrism to be a “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture.” Galileo recanted, avoiding torture, but spent the rest of his life under house arrest for teaching what we now know to be true.

Modern conservatives will do well not to get bogged down in Scripture divorced of context, offering simplistic dogma for complex issues. Likewise, modern progressives will do well to emphasize both fair wages for all sexes in the workplace and fair play for all sexes in sports arenas. Because regardless of our opinions on sex and gender, our communication certainly needs to transition from dogmatic to respectful and constructive.

To summarize: Scholars debate how to define the difference between sex and gender. For now, Christians and other faiths need not inhibit the conversation by dogmatically clinging to a binary system based solely on an interpretation of Scripture.

Yelling that God created all of humanity either male or female undermines healthy dialogue for at least two reasons. First, it doesn’t even conform to a literal reading of Scripture. Second, it treats Scripture as a final prescription for science rather than a description of the historical and ongoing development of faith lived out in a changing world.

Scientists often change their minds based on the data. Christians do not help the cause of faith by refusing to change their minds on scientific issues regardless of the data. It’s time to greenlight compassion and justice the way Jesus did for those outside the bell curve.

 

Brad Bull holds a master of divinity degree in pastoral counseling and a Ph.D. in human ecology. He completed a one-year residency in hospital chaplaincy before serving eight years at one church as associate pastor for youth and young adults. Later, as a university professor in psychology, counseling and interdisciplinary studies, he taught Intimate Relationship and Sexuality and Gender and Politics. One of the best days of his career was getting two messages — one from a lesbian female and one from a brawny conservative male; each thanked him for creating an atmosphere in which they felt respected and for prompting new considerations for how to treat others with respect.