In the Speech & Reasoning class at the Living Faith Bible Institute, students are required to write an argumentative essay from a selection of philosophical topics. We’ve chosen a handful of these essays to share as blog posts and hope they serve as helpful resources in this modern age.
Sex. Gender. In today’s cultural milieu, these words have taken on different meanings than what would have been understood in the past. This change in language isn’t insignificant. It’s underpinned by a specific set of psychological, physiological, and spiritual presuppositions. The words we use not only communicate meaning, but also assume agreement in relation to what we are communicating about. As Christians who hold to a biblical worldview, we must understand how the perception of sex and gender has and will continue to change.
Judith Butler is an American philosopher and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a proponent of this shift in the definitions of sex and gender. Her research and writing has focused on a wide range of topics, including critical theory, comparative literature, Francocentric philosophy, as well as gender and sexuality studies.[1] Although she’s written several articles and books, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity is undoubtedly her most famous work. Gender Trouble was a foundational text to the formation of queer theory, an ideology which seeks to confront and dismantle the idea of heteronormativity, which, according to queer theorists, promotes heterosexuality as the normal and preferred sexual orientation and reinforces this viewpoint through restrictive societal hierarchies and institutions.[2] Her most famous assertion from Gender Trouble is the idea of gender as a “performative act”. Butler explores this notion with presuppositions that must first be outlined as a prerequisite to understanding, and later, critiquing her ideology from a biblical perspective.
Feminist theory, of which Butler is a proponent, makes a distinction between sex and gender. In this framework, sex is a label that is often assigned at birth by a doctor (though this is becoming frowned upon) and is based on medical factors such as chromosomes, hormones and/or genitalia. Gender is defined as a set of thoughts, behaviors, or actions that one is expected to have because of their biology and is dictated by cultural or societal standards related to that biology.[3] Assuming a distinction between sex and gender, it would follow that the way in which someone is born biologically may or may not align with the way in one wishes to express their gender (often referred to as gender identity). Butler’s theory of gender performativity builds upon this premise. In an essay published in the December 1988 volume of the academic journal, Theater Journal, Butler outlines the basic ideas of performative gender:
“This implicit and popular theory of acts and gestures as expressive of gender suggests that gender itself is something prior to the various acts, postures, and gestures by which it is dramatized and known; indeed, gender appears to the popular imagination as a substantial core which might well be understood as the spiritual or psychological correlate of biological sex. If gender attributes, however, are not expressive but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal.”[4]
In other words, gender is artificially created and sustained through the repetition of actions that both confer and perpetuate gender expectations. If a married heterosexual couple finds out that the wife is pregnant with a biological human female, then the act of painting their nursery walls pink serves to perpetuate a purely historical idea of what it means to be a “girl”. It follows then, that without such imposition on the parent's part, the biological human female wouldn’t naturally identify or act in any gendered way, “girl” or otherwise. On several occasions Butler has employed the words of Simone de Beauvior, a French existentialist philosopher whose work is a foundational precursor to Butler. Beauvoir writes, “One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one.”[5] Gender, then, must by nature be fluid, non-binary, infinitely malleable, and purely a result of societal construction.
The Bible declares a viewpoint that is antithetical to Butler’s philosophies. Whereas we previously discussed Butler’s presuppositions about sex and gender as a prerequisite to exploring her arguments, we must similarly explore Biblical presuppositions as a prerequisite to refuting Butler’s ideology. First, Genesis 1:1 assumes the existence of God when it states, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This is an unambiguous declaration that God’s actions alone are responsible for our universe. God’s authorship of the universe and all that are in it (ourselves included) implies that he has ownership of these same things. Scripture states as much in Psalm 21:1, saying, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof”. Second, God has revealed himself, both generally in creation (Romans 1:20) and specifically through scripture (2 Timothy 3:16-17). He has done this because of his desire to be known by His creation. As both author and owner of all that can be seen or observed, God alone possesses the right to define what is normative and what is abhorrent as it relates to anything or anyone at any time in perpetuity. By both general and specific revelation through nature and scripture respectively, God speaks with the intention that humanity would listen, understand, and obey.
The question then must be: has God spoken on the topics of biological sex and gender? Indeed, he has spoken and spoken clearly. In contrast to Butler’s philosophy, God has declared that there are two (and only two) distinct genders. Whereas Butler proclaims that “there is nothing about a binary gender system that is given,”[6] Genesis 1:27 states that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female created he them.” This binary, non-fluid definition of gender is maintained throughout scripture (Genesis 1:25, Acts 18:2, Ephesians 5:22; 25). Also, observe that these two unique genders are a result of the predetermined creative action of God, not an artificially sustained, socially constructed, performative act of men.
Again, in contrast to Butler, God declares that biological sex and gender are unified, not separate. This is to say that God’s original (and therefore normative) design is that those who are either biologically male or female are expected to act in some ways and not in other ways because of that biology. God has designed men and women in their natural and normative state, to be attracted to and (if they so choose) engage in lifelong, committed, marital relationships with those of the opposite sex, and only allows for the expression of themselves sexually within the structure of that relationship (Genesis 2:23-25). Feminists and queer theorists find this notion backwards and offensive. In a rebuttal of the Biblical parameters of humans sexuality, Butler states that “the association of a natural sex with a discrete gender and with an ostensibly natural ‘attraction’ to the opposing sex/gender is an unnatural conjunction of cultural constructs in the service of reproductive interests.”[7] Butler acknowledges that the propagation of our species can only come about through the sexual union of a man and woman, but divorces this biological imperative from any other meaning than that of her own making.
Biblically speaking, what is unnatural is Butler's view of performative gender and human sexuality. In chapter one of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he unambiguously declares that any sexual view or action that is against God’s created order is wrong.
Romans 1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Queer theorists who seek the destruction of heteronormativy as a just and righteous cause bring to mind Isaiah 5:20, where the prophet declares, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
The refutation of Butler’s views and those like it (or any that oppose biblical Christanity for that matter) must always start with the understanding that God and His Word are authoritative in every matter on which they speak. God’s original intent for humanity was to have eternal and personal fellowship with him. This desire has never changed. His love for us is made manifest throughout scripture. He was intimately active in our creation (Genesis 1:7) knows our struggles (Hebrews 4:15), and has given everything to reconcile himself and sinful man (John 3:16). In his infinite wisdom, in which the creative order and design for mankind could exist in any other combination, God chose this one: that men and women constitute the two concrete biological realities, that these are to be correlated with their identities, and that all of this is both right and good. Those who would oppose this Biblical paradigm for biology and human sexuality by seeking to redefine these parameters would do well to think on the Psalmist’s declaration: “Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves”.
Resources:
[1] “Judith Butler | Research UC Berkeley.” Berkeley Research, vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/judith-butler.
[2] “LibGuides: Queer Theory: Background.” The University of Illinois Library, guides.library.illinois.edu/queertheory/background.
[3] “Sex and Gender Identity.” Planned Parenthood, www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/sex-gender-identity.
[4] Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” Theatre Journal, Dec. 1988, pp. 528.
[5] De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex, trans E.M. Parshley. New York: Vintage, 1973, pp. 301
[6] Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” Theatre Journal, Dec. 1988, pp. 531.
[7] Ibid, pp. 524.
Van Sneed is a member of Living Faith Lee’s Summit in Lee’s Summit, MO.