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38 results

Page 1 of 2

  • Gender Identity, Analogy and Virtue: A Response Newton and Watt

  • David Albert Jones
  • Journal:
    New Blackfriars / Volume 101 / Issue 1094 / July 2020
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 January 2024, pp. 478-489
    Print publication:
    July 2020
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  • William Newton and Helen Watt have both criticised the attempt to draw an analogy between gender recognition and adoption. Newton argues that recognition of adoptive fatherhood rests on an “analogy of proportion” whereas to use the word “woman” of someone whose natal sex is male is, at most, “a weak form of analogy”. However, the definition of woman provided by Newton excludes those who are infertile and neglects the cultural dimension of gender. The case of Casimir Pulaski shows that someone could participate in many of the cultural aspects of being male, as these were expressed in his society, irrespective of the facts of his internal anatomy. Watt thinks the analogy, if modified, shows that there is an onus against transitioning. She does not regard cross-dressing or taking cross-sex hormones or use of pronouns to express gender incongruence as being intrinsically wrong but argues that transitioning is potentially misleading and can have harmful consequences. Watt's practical arguments are weak as they do not include a broad range of considerations, especially considerations about inclusion and discrimination. On the other hand, Watt's concession is significant as it implies that, at least in some circumstances, transitioning could be virtuous.

  • Truth in transition? Gender identity and Catholic anthropology

  • David Albert Jones
  • Journal:
    New Blackfriars / Volume 99 / Issue 1084 / November 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 January 2024, pp. 756-774
    Print publication:
    November 2018
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  • There is no high level Magisterial teaching directly on gender dysphoria nor on gender non‐conformity in matters of dress. Nevertheless, the relationship of gender identity to biology raises profound theological questions. Transitioning between gender roles has been construed as an attempt “to alter what is unalterable” and “to establish a false identity in place of one's true identity”. However, the anthropological reality of incongruent gender identity is complex. It has something in common with body dysmorphia, something in common with the feminist criticism of gender roles, something in common with being a eunuch or with having a divergence of sexual development and something in common with homosexuality, but in each case with important differences. This paper sets out a further analogy, between legal gender recognition and legal adoption. Intellectual humility is required to help develop more adequate concepts in this area. At the same time, practical considerations require that one comes to a provisional judgement, at least, concerning this phenomenon. The analogies from divergences of sexual development and from adoption demonstrate that it is possible in principle to affirm the incongruent gender identity without being untruthful or contradicting a sound Catholic anthropology that is adequate to this complex human reality.

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