Beyond Male and Female: Gender Trouble, Biology Trouble |

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

- Galatians 3:28

In the context of religion, we are familiar with the quotation from Galatians, even if in the Catholic Church we are unwilling to take the words literally, and apply them to ordination. From the world of science though, it is becoming clear that there is a truth in the words that goes way beyond a theological concept, and is instead, a substantial measure of quite literal truth. It may well be that there really is “neither male nor female”, at least not in the absolute binary sense that modern Western culture assumes. This has major implications for Christian sexual and gender theology."

Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” was a seminal work in the early development of feminism and queer theory, and later of queer theology. Butler’s central achievement was to demonstrate the fluidity of gender, which she described as “performance”. The fluidity of gender however, also extends to biology. Far from a simple binary world composed of biological males and females, with perhaps a smattering of people with indeterminate gender (once described as hermaphrodites), modern science has shown that there are a far greater range of conditions that may be loosely described as “intersex” than previously realized – and that there are a surprising number of these people, some of whom will not even know of their true sex until they meet a need for some kind of medical testing (as with the case of the South African athlete Caster Semenya, who had no idea she was not fully female until she won a medal at the Beijing Olympics, competing as a woman). The same problems beset Sally Gross, who was raised as a male and ordained a Catholic priest, until the discovery that biologically she was in fact primarily female.

What is a Male?

To illustrate some of the complexities around biological sex, I want to share with you some extracts from two books that I have found helpful in extending my own understanding, Brian McNaught’s “Sex Camp”“, and Virginia Mollenkott’s Omnigender.

-read the full article at Queering the Church

The Genderqueer Trinity

A 2nd Century Hymn of Praise to the Trinity is so rich in genderqueer imagery, that it cries out for sharing again,  during Transgender Faith Action Week. When I first posted it in January last year, the whole concept was completely new to me. Since then, I have found some impressive modern, scholarly articles which confirm the fluidity of gender in conceptions of the Trinity. Today, I simply want to share once again these wonderful words - and come back to the scholarship another time.

The text is Ode 19,  of the  2nd century "Odes of Solomon":

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A cup of milk was offered to me, and I drank it in the sweetness of the Lord's kindness. The Son is the cup, and the father is he who was milked; and the Holy Spirit is she who milked him; Because his breasts were full, and it was undesirable that his milk should be released without purpose.

The Holy Spirit opened her bosom, and mixed the milk of the two breasts of the Father, ......

The womb of the Virgin took [it], and she received conception and gave birth.

Read the full, text, and other Odes translated by James Chattlesworth, here.