Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Cultural Conflict Regarding Sexuality: Philosophical Roots of Our Current Debates


Cultural Conflict Regarding Sexuality:
Philosophical Roots of Our Current Debates
Richard Klaus
February 27, 2018
Glendale Community College’s “Critical Dialogues”
Gender and Sexuality: Current Controversies and the Common Good

1.    Introduction

a.    “Thank you’s”

                                              i.     Glendale Community College for sponsoring this event

                                            ii.     Professor Peter Lupu, my friend for inviting me to be part of this panel

                                          iii.     Drs. Saint-Amour and Ventrella for their participation and interaction

b.    Importance of “Critical Dialogues”

                                              i.     Differing perspectives are brought into conversation publicly in a civil and, hopefully, rational manner

                                            ii.     Views expressed today—not the only views available

·      Hope to start a conversation today that will continue


2.    Let me begin by saying…

·      As a Christian I am a follower of Jesus.

·      As such I am committed to his view of truth

·      In a particularly well-known lecture Jesus gave (“Sermon on the Mount”) he used a striking metaphor at the end of this teaching

·      “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock.  And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against the house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock.  And everyone who hears these words of mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand.  And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall.”   --Matthew 7.24-27

·      Jesus is, of course, making a profound claim about his teaching and its centrality to one’s life but notice also the view of truth…

a.    Truth exists and can be known

b.    Truth has consequences…

                                              i.     To live in accord with truth brings human flourishing

                                            ii.     To live against the grain of truth and reality is destructive

3.    I want to remember those points as I probe into the issue of Transgenderism as it affects people and policies.

4.    Our culture is awash with controversy in regards to transgender issues…

a.    Every day seems to bring another fault-line of division… Consider the following from the within the last two weeks:

b.    A proposal in Delaware to let children as young as 5 years-old choose their race and gender identity—without informing parents of the decision.[1]

c.     “On February 16, 2018, Ohio Judge Sylvia Sieve Hendon handed down a decision in Hamilton County Juvenile Court that removed a gender dysphoric child from the custody of her biological parents and awarded custody to the child’s grandparents. The decision was made on the grounds that the grandparents are affirming of the seventeen-year-old’s desire to undergo “transition” through hormone therapy, while the parents question the child’s judgment and object to the transition on religious grounds.”[2]

5.    Underlying these cultural controversies are differing worldview presuppositions

a.    Elements of a WV: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics

b.    Issues of sexuality involve differing conceptions of the human person

6.    My goal: examine some of the philosophical underpinnings of those who promote transgender ideology

7.    NOTE: Crucial distinction between…

a.    Transgender individuals—those who experience gender dysphoria

b.    Transgender ideology—my focus today

8.    At the heart of ideologies are ideas—two points about ideas…

a.    Ideas never stand alone—always based on WV commitments and a philosophical substructure

b.    Ideas never stand still—implications and applications in the social, cultural, political, medical realms

9.    Ideas never stand alone

a.    Ideas of transgender thought…

                                              i.     The brain can be at war with your body (Pearcey, 194)
1.    Usually we consider this a disorder to be treated with psychological counseling and therapy

a.    Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD)—harbors the erroneous conviction that she is ugly

b.    Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID)—identifies as a disabled person and feels trapped in a fully functional body

c.     Anorexia Nervosa—a persistent mistaken belief that one is obese

2.    But in the case of Gender Dysphoria—transgender ideologues…

a.    Do NOT seek to change the person’s feelings of gender identity to match the body…

b.    But, rather, engage in a process of changing the body through hormones and surgery to match the feelings

                                            ii.     Rests upon two convictions…

1.    There is a de-coupling of sexual identity from the body

2.    An act of the will seemingly creates gender reality.

                                          iii.     Indicative of a “postmodern view of psychosexual identity” (Pearcey, 201)

·      “pomosexual” view (Pearcey, 201)

b.    Transgender ideology (TI) rests upon key philosophical concepts: postmodern, antirealist assumptions

                                              i.     Gender is fluid

                                            ii.     Transgender activist Judith Butler argues in her book Gender Trouble

When “gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine, might just as easily signify a female body as a male one and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.”[3]

                                          iii.     “At the heart of the transgender movement are radical ideas about the human person—in particular, that people are what they claim to be, regardless of contrary evidence.  A transgender boy is a boy, not merely a girl who identifies as a boy.  It is understandable why activists make these claims.  An argument about transgender identities will be much more persuasive if it concerns who someone is, not merely how someone identifies. And so the rhetoric of the transgender movement drips with ontological assertions: people are the gender they prefer to be.  That’s the claim.”[4]

                                           iv.     “At the core of the ideology is the radical claim that feelings determine reality.”[5]

                                             v.     Philosopher Elliot Crozat argues that…

“These claims appear to rest on the postmodern antirealist assumption that what one takes as reality is a mere subjective or sociocultural construct.”[6]

                                           vi.     Professor Crozat goes on to give the implications of such a view…

“Hence, there are no objective natures, no human nature, no male nature, no female nature, and no such thing as human flourishing that results from the proper functioning of the essential properties and capacities of a human nature.”[7]


c.     It this notion of postmodern truth that underlies the transgender ideology that must be noted. 

d.    The cultural conflicts remind us that Ideas never stand alone.

10.                  Ideas never stand still—there are always implications and applications in culture, science, law, and medicine

·      Ideas have trajectory—they go somewhere

·      “[T]ransgender policies follow from transgender ontology.”[8]

o   Can be conceptualized: when you see a debate about transgender issues watch for the underlying philosophical issues!

11.                  Some negative implications flowing from transgender ideology…

a.    Hurts and undercuts women’s rights

                                              i.     “To protect women’s rights, we must be able to say what a woman is.  If postmodernism is correct—that the body itself is a social construct—then it becomes impossible to argue for rights based on the sheer fact of being female.  We cannot legally protect a category of people if we cannot identify that category.”[9]

                                            ii.     Not just a philosophical abstraction

                                          iii.     Ashley McGuire—Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female—“the unintended consequences for women”[10]

                                           iv.     Example: Kimberly v. Vancouver Rape Relief Society

1.    Fight to keep a biological man out of a woman’s rape crisis center

2.    Kathleen Sloan—prominent liberal feminist and pro-choice activist

“The threat that the gender identity movement poses to women is that ‘gender’ is detached from the biological differences between males and females (present in all mammalian species) and consequently male supremacy and the oppression of women is obscured and ultimately erased… Without being able to name humans male or female, women have no hope of being able to protect ourselves from the violence men commit against us, much less overturn the patriarchal misogyny that has oppressed and terrorized us for millennia.”[11]

3.    “The gender identity movement, she [Sloan] said, is just and abstraction of Descartes (in)famous line, ‘I think, therefore I am.’  Today, she argued, it’s become, ‘I think, therefore I demand that society recognize who I say I am based on my subjective interpretation.’”[12]

b.    Undercuts human rights

                                              i.     Remember Professor Elliot Crozat’s contention about the postmodern, antirealist conceptions of transgender ideology…

“Hence, there are no objective natures, no human nature, no male nature, no female nature, and no such thing as human flourishing that results from the proper functioning of the essential properties and capacities of a human nature.”

                                            ii.     But this postmodernist view is at odds with the concept of rights in general.

“If the concept of natural human rights is sensible, then reality is not a mere construct; there must be something objectively real and valuable to serve as the basis of these rights.

“Objective rights do not exist on the postmodernists worldview, regardless of how vigorously one believes in them.  For a postmodernist to believe in objective rights is like believing in centaurs (the character of Greek myth that are half-man and half-horse).  One can believe in them, but doing so makes no significant difference in the world.  Consequently, the supporter of transgenderism cannot deny human natures and rights but at the same time assert the right to define himself or to use a preferred restroom.  Nor can he legitimately claim that his rights are violated by gender dichotomist policies.  To do this is intellectually inconsistent, and perhaps an example of a performative contradiction.”[13]

                                          iii.     Deep internal contradiction between transgender philosophical presuppositions and the quest for rationally grounded human rights.[14]

c.     Redefines the nature of family relationships.  Nancy Pearcey states:

o   “When gender is de-naturalized, parenthood will also be de-naturalized.”[15]

o   “Until now, the family was seen as natural and pre-political, with natural rights.  That means it existed prior to the state, and the state merely recognized its rights.  But if the law no longer recognizes natural sex, then it no longer recognizes natural families or natural parents, only legal parents.  You, as a mother or father, have only the rights the state chooses to grant you.”[16]

d.    “Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity”—SOGI laws—lead to an increased interference by the government into public philosophy and law

                                              i.     “By sheer logic, SOGI laws must deny the importance of biology.”[17]

                                            ii.     “These legal changes do not affect only homosexual or transgender people.  In the eyes of the law, no one has a natural or biological sex now; all citizens are defined not by their bodies but by their inner states and feelings… Your basic identity as male or female, husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter, sister or brother no longer follows metaphysically from your biology but must be determined by an act of will.

“But whose will?  Ultimately, it will come down to who has the most power—which means the state.”[18]

                                          iii.     SOGI laws—presented as opening up rights to a discriminated class

1.    But, in truth, SOGI laws serve to impose certain philosophical assumptions upon all…

2.    Under threat of punishment and civil sanction.

                                           iv.     “Every social practice is the expression of fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human.  When a society accepts, endorses, and approves the practice, it implicitly commits itself to the accompanying worldview.  And all the more so if those practices are enshrined in law.  The law functions as a teacher, educating people on what society considers to be morally acceptable.”[19]

e.    Harms children by legitimizing unhealthy medical procedures and penalizing alternatives that recognize the reality of gender desistance

                                              i.     Washington Post (2012) article “Transgendered at Five”

                                            ii.     Transgender activists plan of action: (Anderson, 120-121)

* Form of treatment…

1.    Social transition—new clothes, name, pronouns
2.    Puberty blockers
3.    Around 16—cross-sex hormones (the rest of their lives)
4.    Age 18—sex reassignment surgery

                                          iii.     NOTES…

1.    Age for each phase is getting lower

·      July 2016 Guardian reported that “a doctor in Wales is prescribing cross-sex hormones to children as young as 12…” (Anderson, 121)

2.    “There are no laws in the United States prohibiting the use of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for children, or regulating the age at which they may be administered.”[20]

                                           iv.     These medical practices are not driven by science but by a postmodernist ideology.

§  “That postmodern view is filtering down to even younger ages.  The mother of a twelve-year old told reporters, ‘Some days Annie is a girl, some days Annie is a boy, and some days she’s both.’  When the pair went shopping for Annie’s graduation outfit, they purchased both a dress and a suit because they were not sure which gender the child would align with for the evening.  The article helpfully explains, ‘Annie believes gender is more of a mental trait rather than physical.’  Gender has become a purely mental trait with no grounding in physical reality.”[21]

                                             v.     Dr. Michelle Cretella—board certified pediatrician and president of the American College of Pediatricians writes in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons in 2016:

“To be clear, this ‘alternate perspective’ of an innate gender fluidity arising from prenatally ‘feminized’ or ‘masculinized’ brains trapped in the wrong body is an ideological belief that has no basis in rigorous science.”[22]

                                           vi.     What is known?  What does the evidence show?

                                         vii.     The fact of gender desistance among children as they move into late adolescence.

§  “Experts on both sides of the pubertal suppression debate agree that within this context, 80 percent to 95 percent of children with GD [Gender Dysphoria] accepted their biological sex and achieved emotional well-being by late adolescence.”[23]

§  Dr. Kenneth Zucker—psychologist who ran the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto along with its Gender Identity Clinic for 30 years—described by Ryan Anderson…

§  “He is perhaps the most frequently cited name in research on gender identity and the editor of the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.  Zucker has been at the forefront of developing treatments for people with gender dysphoria, and he headed the group that wrote the entry on gender dysphoria for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official handbook of the American Psychiatric Association.”[24]

§  In an interview with NPR, Dr. Zucker noted…

“But the follow-up studies I’ve done, and others too, show [that] a substantial majority of kids seen for GID Gender Identity Disorder] in childhood show desistance—that is, when they’re older they don’t want to be the other sex.  We just published a study of 25 girls we first saw in childhood and found that only 12 percent seem to have persistent gender dysphoria when they’re older.  We find similar rates of persistence in boys.”[25]

                                       viii.     The fact of the side-effects of puberty-blocking hormone therapies… some known and some unknown

                                           ix.     The fact of the “self-fulfilling nature” of transgender activists’ protocols for puberty suppression

·      “In a follow-up study of their first 70 eligible candidates to receive puberty suppression, de Vries and colleagues documented that all subjects went on to embrace a transgender identity and request cross-sex hormones.  This is cause for concern.  There is an obvious self-fulfilling nature to encouraging a young man with GD [Gender Dysphoria] to socially impersonate a girl and then institute pubertal suppression.  Given the well-established phenomenon of neuroplasticity, the repeated behavior of impersonating a girl alters the structure and function of the boy’s brain in some way—potentially in a way that will make identity alignment with his biologic sex less likely.  This, together with the suppression of puberty that further endogenous masculinization of his brain, causes him to remain a gender non-conforming prepubertal body disguised as a prepubertal girl.  Since his peers develop into young men and young women, he is left psychosocially isolated.  He will be less able to identify with being male and more likely to identify as ‘non-male.’  A protocol of impersonation and pubertal suppression that sets into motion a single inevitable outcome (transgender identification) that requires a life-long use of synthetic hormones, resulting in infertility, is neither fully reversible nor harmless.”[26]

                                             x.     Transgender ideology subjects children to experimentation with life-long consequences

“The treatment of GD [Gender Dysphoria] in childhood with hormones effectively amounts to mass experimentation on, and sterilization of, youth who are cognitively incapable of providing informed consent.  There is a serious ethical problem with allowing irreversible, life-changing procedures to be performed on minors who are too young to give valid consent themselves.”[27]

                                           xi.     Surely, even among those of us who differ about adult transgender issues we could come to a common cause and agreement about the dangers of transgender ideology for children!

12.                  Conclusion—What I’ve attempted to argue…

a.    Debates we see in the media in the realms of cultural and law have deeper philosophical issues undergirding them

b.    Ideas never stand alone & Ideas never stand still

c.     In particular, transgender activists pursuing the implementation of their ideology are working with a postmodernist view of reality and the human person.

                                              i.     An act of the will determines reality

                                            ii.     There are not a essential human nature; rather we create ourselves and our gender

d.    This philosophical commitment has serious and negative implications for…

                                              i.     Women’s rights

                                            ii.     Human rights

                                          iii.     Family rights

                                           iv.     Laws about gender that will punish those who do not embrace the underlying postmodernist conception of the human person

                                             v.     Children’s medical and psychological well-being and care

e.    My talk—a prod to think more deeply about our cultural conflicts in the area of sexuality and gender

                                              i.     Wrestle with the underlying philosophical issues

                                            ii.     Don’t treat the cultural conflicts as issues to be decided by mere feeling

                                          iii.     Think about the implications and applications of these philosophical ideas

                                           iv.     De-humanizing philosophies will lead to de-humanizing practices in education, law, medicine and cultural at large.[28]

                                             v.     To circle back to where I began… Jesus taught…

1.    Truth exists and can be known

2.    Truth has consequences…

a.    To live in accord with truth brings human flourishing

b.    To live against the grain of truth and reality is destructive

3.    I would urge us all to listen to him!  Thank you.



     [2] Andrew T. Walker, “Parental Rights: A Causality of the Transgender Revolution” Public Discourse (February 26, 2018).  Online: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/02/21122/?utm_source=The+Witherspoon+Institute&utm_campaign=bb4409bc42-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15ce6af37b-bb4409bc42-84153673.
     [3] Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 202.
     [4] Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New York: Encounter Books, 2018), 29.
     [5] Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New York: Encounter Books, 2018), 48.
     [6] Elliot R. Crozat, “Reasoning About Gender” Evangelical Philosophical Society Website (2016), 3.  Online: http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/art-Crozat%20(Reasoning%20about%20Gender-final).pdf.
     [7] Elliot R. Crozat, “Reasoning About Gender” Evangelical Philosophical Society Website (2016), 3.
     [8] Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New York: Encounter Books, 2018), 39.
     [9] Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 211.
     [10] Ashley McGuire, Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female (New Jersey, Regnery, 2017), 166.
     [11] Ashley McGuire, Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female (New Jersey, Regnery, 2017), 168.
     [12] Ashley McGuire, Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female (New Jersey, Regnery, 2017), 168.
     [13] Elliot R. Crozat, “Reasoning About Gender” Evangelical Philosophical Society Website (2016), 5.
     [14] For more on the general issue of grounding human rights see John Warwick Montgomery, Human Rights and Human Dignity (Dallas,Texas: Probe Books, 1986 and Paul Copan, “Grounding Human Rights: Naturalism’s Failure and Biblical Theism’s Success” in Legitimizing Human Rights: Secular and Religious Perspectives (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013)—Online: http://www.paulcopan.com/articles/pdf/Paul_Copan-Grounding_Human_Rights_in_Menuge_2013.pdf.
     [15] Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 213.
     [16] Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 213.
     [17] Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 214.
     [18] Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 214.
     [19] Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 214-215.
     [20] Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New York: Encounter Books, 2018), 121.
     [21] Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 203.
     [22] Michelle A. Cretella, “Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons vol. 21, no. 2 (Summer 2016), 51.  Online: http://www.jpands.org/vol21no2/cretella.pdf.
     [23] Michelle A. Cretella, “Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons vol. 21, no. 2 (Summer 2016), 51. 
     [24] Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New York: Encounter Books, 2018), 22.
     [25] Alix Spiegel, “Q & A: Therapists on Gender Identity Issues in Kids” NPR (May 8, 2008).  Online: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90229789.
     [26] Michelle A. Cretella, “Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons vol. 21, no. 2 (Summer 2016), 53.
     [27] Michelle A. Cretella, “Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons vol. 21, no. 2 (Summer 2016), 53.
     [28] For a full scale study of this both in terms of history and contemporary examples see Richard Weikart’s The Death of Humanity and the Case for Life (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Faith, 2016).