Gender
The Christian God, or simply God to a Christian, is of a triune nature it is argued. There is nowhere in the Bible that the word triune or its Greek or Hebrew equivalent is written. This concept is derived from the description of God in the New Testament. There is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Three persons, one God. A trinity. Neither is more important than the other. They can exist apart from each other but each is dependent upon the other two to be whole. A paradox. They are like a perfect co-op, each with a vitally important job to do that is different from the jobs of the other two. The three form an eternal relationship that creates, defines, and emits the vital force that we call love.
It is said in Genesis that humans are made in God’s image, the Imago Dei. This doesn’t mean that we look like God, but rather it means that we have traits that are of God, traits that are given to us in the form of a soul perhaps. It seems that all other life forms are without the image of God, are without a soul. There may be soul-ish animals, ones that we can form emotional bonds with, such as dogs and cats, but humans are the only life forms with a soul. This makes us similar to God in that we are also triune creatures. We have a physical body made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, the stuff of the universe. We have a mind, which may be more or less defined as the output of our brain; ideas, thoughts, emotions. And, as said, we have a soul, or what is often called a spirit. Mind, body, and spirit. The human trinity.
When considering the physical human body, it is flesh and blood, RNA and DNA, proteins, sugars, fat. The stuff of the organic. It is created by the random mixing of our parents’ eggs and sperm. This determines our height, our skin color, our eye color, our hair color, our predilection for certain diseases maybe, our sex, every physical trait. Genetics. There is no choice here. We are what we are by chance.
The spirit, in contrast, is not a thing. Maybe we could think of it as a connection. It is the thing that exists in all humans that has the ability to connect us directly to God. If God is love then it is our soul that connects us to God that allows us to love. We don’t have a choice to have a soul, but we do have a choice to allow it, or not to allow it, to express love. For example, Hilter had a soul I suppose, but I see no evidence of love in his behavior, other than perhaps self-love, although I doubt that he felt that either. So there is limited choice here, whether to allow our soul to express itself or not, or perhaps it is a choice as to how we value our soul.
The mind is the last of this triune. The mind is the essence of us. The mind creates our thoughts, our dreams, our ideas, our emotions. It decides or controls how we feel about ourselves and how we feel about others. If love comes through the soul from God it is our mind that, through some process, determines who we love and how we love them. It is the portal through which God’s love is expressed from us to those around us in our little corner of existence.
This brings us to the topic of sex and gender. Sex, on the one hand, is the end result of the expression of the genetic code during embryonic development. We are either born with male sex organs or we are born with female sex organs, or, rarely, we are born with some combination of both (hermaphrodite or more properly pseudohermaphrodite). This is non-controversial. Gender, on the other hand, is defined as the norms, behaviors, and roles associated with being a male or female, as well as relationships with each other. Gender varies between cultures, as well as within a culture over the span of time. So sex and gender are not the same. As a side note, the next time you are invited to a gender-reveal party by your very pregnant friends you are really being invited to a sex-reveal party, but to put “Sex-Reveal” on an invitation might suggest other types of party favors and games to be played at the party, so gender-reveal it shall remain. I digress. The intersection of these two words, sex and gender, and how we define them is at the heart of a culture war that has always been, is still being, and will likely always continue to be waged across America and abroad.
There are some who assert that our sex determines our gender, meaning that our sex determines or at least should determine our behavior as it relates to our sex. For example, if one is born a genetic male with male sex organs his gender must also be male. Since gender has to do with norms, behavior, roles, and relationships, then the sex male in this example must behave as a gender male, in all of its meanings within that culture. Therefore, by this argument, since it is our DNA that determines our sex, it is our DNA that determines our gender. Following this logic, our gender is predetermined. Gender = sex. Sex = gender. What we are is what we were born to be.
The problem with this assertion is that pesky thing called the mind. The mind is not something that we can hold in our hand, but as stated above, it is the part of us that expresses us. It is the essence of our personality. Through a process that no one really fully understands it decides who we love and how we love them and who we want to spend time with. It is not like we decide this stuff. It just happens. Emotions. Feelings. Urges. Desires. Messy stuff for sure. Question then, if a person is born a sex male but grows to feel associated with female norms, behaviors, and roles, what is this person to do? By the above assertions that sex = gender this person must somehow ignore or deny these feelings or associations. Many around the world do just that perhaps because their culture, their family, or their church demands it. This person is not allowed to express his/her true self to the world. Mental health experts tell us that this forced denial increases the risk of anxiety, depression, and all of their potential sequelae including drug addiction, alcoholism, and suicide.
In the end, regardless of the rationale behind it, if we demand that sex = gender we are taking away one’s freedom to express one’s true self to the world and forcing people to be someone they simply may not be. We are saying that the random mixing of your parents’ genes trumps your own mind, your inner certainty as to who you are. Of course, this happens all over the world, usually for religious reasons, but that doesn’t make it healthy (For a greater discussion of the role that religion plays in this discussion read my article, Voices, The Dangers of isms). My interest here is not in religious dogma, but in mental health. For the sake of mental health, I believe that we must allow people to be able to express themselves as long as it doesn’t interfere with the freedoms of others. Are there limits? Of course there must be limits but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
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