Source:- timesofmalta.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I usually assume that a Vatican document must have something right if\n it manages to send its conservative right wing into apoplexy, its left \nwing into handwringing concern, and the secular left into scandalised \nhead-shaking. So it was with sunny optimism that I began to read the \nrecent document on \u2018gender theory\u2019 in education, issued by the \nCongregation for Catholic Education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alas, I soon realised that the document was disliked by everyone \nbecause it\u2019s so confused and woolly that it could mean many things. \nGiven that it\u2019s always prudent to suspect anything coming out of the \nVatican, everyone went with their worst suspicions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The social conservatives got stuck on the appeal to dialogue with \n\u2018gender theory\u2019, seeing it as a sop to \u2018neo-pagan\u2019 socialists. The left \nwas aggrieved by the insistence that gender identity (roughly, the \ngender you subjectively identify with) is intrinsically linked to \nbiological sexual identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Science still classifies sexual identity in terms of male and female,\n with anything in between being defined in terms of the two poles. So to\n assert that gender identity has to be based on sexual identity could \nseem like an argument that any other claimed gender is based on wishful \nthinking, not reality, and that sex\/gender education policies, based on \nwishful thinking, are therefore likely to be harmful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can see why LGBTQ groups would be hostile to this suggestion. And\n you can see why claiming to wish to dialogue about this would appear, \nto social conservatives, to want to negotiate something that needs no \nnegotiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reason why the document is all over the place is that it tries to\n do several things at once, without distinguishing between them. It \ndiscusses both human nature in the abstract and how human nature can be \ndistorted and frustrated in specific societies. It talks at once about \ndescriptions of what actually takes place with what ought to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s never clear whether it\u2019s talking about how gender identity \nactually is formed \u2013 a subject of interest to academic specialists \u2013 or \nwhat a Catholic curriculum ought to teach. Clearly, specialists can \ndiscuss things which are of no interest to teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Specialists can be interested in debating whether a transsexual (pre- or post-operation) remains biologically of the sex at birth. They might even debate whether the opera\u00adtion should strictly speaking be called sex- or gender-reassignment surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teachers, however, are interested in how children in their care \nshould be treated. Does it help their personal and moral deve\u00adlopment to\n be treated as belonging to one gender or another, or a third, \nirrespective of whether it\u2019s a social fiction or not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Vatican document, in short, jumbles up those aspects of gender \ntheory which are descriptions of actual cases, explanations of those \ncases, theories of what human gender actually is, and political \nphilosophy based on these theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where the document expresses doubt about claims, by some gender \ntheorists, that human liberation calls for the dissolution of all gender\n differences, there are two ways to react. If you\u2019re reading it with an \neye on philosophy, you could raise your eyebrows and say \u2013 you \ndisapprove of that? When you\u2019re preaching the New Testament that says \nthere\u2019s no marriage in heaven and no male and female in Christ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or you could simply read it with the eye of a teacher, or catechist, \nand shrug, wondering what it all has to do with the price of eggs and \nhelping your wards come to terms with the fact that one of their friends\n has two fathers, and another two mothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Strange to say, the reason that the document confuses so many \ndifferent things is that it oversimplifies what \u2018gender theory\u2019 is. It \ntreats it as a single doctrine, with some versions more radical than \nothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gender theory is a field of study, with rival ideas and arguments. \nSome are close to the Vatican congregation\u2019s position that gender has \nsome anchoring in sexual identity. At the other extreme end are theories\n that say our gender identity depends en\u00adtirely on our subjective \nfeelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is common to all of them is the unexceptional idea that our \ngender identity doesn\u2019t depend entirely on ourselves. It\u2019s formed in our\n relation to others. In fact, gender is often assigned to consumer items\n (some cars are designed to look femi\u00adnine, others masculine), food \n(meat and potatoes are masculine, rucola salad is not), and spaces \n(which is why a men\u2019s club shower has a different texture and colours to\n that of a women\u2019s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s quite clear that if gender also de\u00adpends on a culture\u2019s symbolic\n structure, then some aspects of gender identity will have connotations \nthat have nothing to do with sexual identity per se. They might even \nhave the kinds of connotations of class and status that are based on \nexploitation \u2013 or, as the Church might call them, the structures of sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The document is a call for dialogue and further thinking on how a \nproper Catholic education might start off its wards onto the path of \ndiscovery \u2013 themselves and their friends. Let\u2019s hope that the muddled \nbeginning will lead to clearer ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not the clarity of the bigots, platitude merchants who oversimplify \nhuman nature. Nor the clarity of the social radi\u00adcals, attitude \nmerchants who oversimplify our ability to become what we are. But the \nclarity of those who understand that sexual and gender education is like\n learning a language, a lifelong experience based on recognising \nconstraints as well as overcoming limitations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Source:- timesofmalta.com I usually assume that a Vatican document must have something right if it manages to send its conservative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[394,395,397,396,166,398],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sex-reassignment","tag-gender","tag-gender-theory","tag-gender-reassignment","tag-neo-pagan","tag-surgery","tag-transsexual"],"yoast_head":"\n