Introduction - University of Manchester
“No Longer Male and Female”: The Challenge of Intersex Conditions for Theology
Submitted by Susannah Marguerita Cornwall to the University of Exeter as a Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology, August 2007
This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement.
I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University.
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Abstract
The thesis explores the theological implications of intersex conditions (those involving the congenital development of ambiguous genitalia, a congenital disjunction of the internal and external sex anatomy, sex chromosome anomalies, or variations in gonadal development) and their medical treatment. Christian theology has valued the integrity of the body and the goodness of God reflected in creation, but has also set much store by the “complementarity” of “normal” male and female physiology (and gender as mapped onto these). It has been threatened by liminality, shifts in sexed and gendered identity, and non-marital sexual activity. However, a deconstruction or querying of male and female as essential or all-embracing human categories changes conceptions of legitimate bodiliness and of what it means for human sex to reflect God. Theologies based too unmovingly in sex or gender complementarity are dubious in light of intersex, and fail to resist imperialism, hegemony and heteronormativity. Theologies which value incarnation and bodiliness must speak with stigmatized or marginal bodies too: the Body of Christ is comprised of human members, and each member changes the Body’s definition of itself as well as being defined by it. Accepting the non-pathology of intersexed and otherwise atypical bodies necessitates a re-examination of discourses about sex, marriage, sexuality, perfection, healing and the resurrection body. Informed by existing theologies from three marginal areas (transsexualism, disability and queer theology), this beginning of a theology from intersex demonstrates the necessity of resisting erotic domination in defining bodies. Theology is always self-queering, since it contains tools for hermeneutical suspicion, for overturning religious and cultural practices which do not meet the demands of love and justice. Although intersexed people do not always align themselves with the politically queer, intersex is, unavoidably, theologically queer. The ongoing erasure of intersexed bodies and experiences demands theological responses motivated not by fear but by a desire to expand the ways in which human lives and bodies tell stories. Until theologians, medics and others accept that the male-and-female world is not the only “real” world, and that the normalizing procedures of surgery and signification which bolster it are themselves grounded in something partial and arbitrary, the silencing and devaluing of otherness in human bodies will go on. This cannot be justified.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone who has read, discussed and commented on parts of this thesis and the ideas contained within it, suggested ideas for further reading or exploration, or stepped in when my curiosity has outrun my proficiency in Hebrew and many other areas; in particular, Frances Clemson, Dom Coad, Jenny Cornwall, Brutus Green, Mike Higton, Emily Holden, Ingrid Holme, David Horrell, John Hughes, Cherryl Hunt, Renato Lings, Stuart Macwilliam, Fran Moulds, Donald Murray, Andy Robertson, Christopher Southgate, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Samuel Tongue, Andrew Worthley, Rebecca Worthley, and Mark Wynn; and more generally, all the participants in the University of Exeter Department of Theology’s graduate research seminars, and the postgraduate conferences of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Any mistaken notions contained here are mine, not theirs.
To everyone in the Department of Theology; those named above, and Tim Gorringe, David Grumett, Louise Lawrence, Alastair Logan, Morwenna Ludlow, and Mary Macneill: thank you for your open doors and encouraging words – and for all the coffee.
I am particularly grateful to my supervisors, Rachel Muers and Adrian Thatcher, who have both remained supportive of my work throughout, have always been interested and available, have helped me make new links and connections within my own ideas, and have given invaluable guidance and advice.
This PhD study was funded by a scholarship given by the States of Jersey Department of Education, Sport and Culture.
Finally, to Jon Morgan, who has been a (relatively) tireless interlocutor, and whose theological insights, and input on topics ranging from the academic to the absurd, have been matched only by his patience in tidying up after me: thank you for everything.
Contents
Abstract 2
Acknowledgements 3
Contents 4
Introduction 6
0.1 Introducing Intersex 7
0.2 Existing Theological Work on Intersex 9
0.3 Theological Themes: Justice, Speakability and Dubious “Goods” 11
0.4 Vocabulary and Terminology 16
0.5 Methodology 21
1: Reflecting and Reproducing: The History of Intersex 26
1.1 Inadequate Models? 27
1.2 The Pre-Modern Period: Anatomy, Appearance and A Priori Beliefs 29
1.3 The 16th to 19th Centuries: Regulation, Classification, Taxonomy 33
1.4 The 20th Century: Money, Money, Money… and the Early Surgery Paradigm 36
1.5 The 1990s Onwards: Politics, Protest and Calls for Change 40
1.5.1 The Rise of Support Groups 40
1.5.2 “Good Enough” Genitals: The Use of Moral Language for Intersex 41
1.5.3 “Why All the Unsolicited Attention?”: Corrective Surgery as Stigmatizing 44
1.5.4 Outing the Outcomes: Follow-Up Studies and Access to Information 47
1.5.5 Reconstructing Perfection: The “Restitution Narrative” 49
1.6 Some Conclusions 52
2: Relinquishing and Relating: Intersex and Marginal Bodies
in the Body of Christ 54
2.1 The Hidden God Mediated Through Flesh-Taking: Bodies Human and Divine 55
2.1.1 To Be Human Is To Be Embodied 55
2.1.2 The End of Male-and-Female: Galatians 3:26-28 56
2.1.3 Weak? Dishonourable? The Problem of Defining “Inferior” Bodies 61
2.2 Barth, Body and the Significance of Sex 61
2.2.1 Standing Before God as Either/Or: Order and Procession in Human Sex 62
2.2.2 Like The Other Animals? Barth’s Conflation of Sex and Gender 67
2.2.3 Psychologically Narcissistic, Theologically Idolatrous? Barth’s Elision of
Difference 69
2.3 Implications for Human Bodies in the Body of Christ 75
2.3.1 The Hegemony of the Binary Body 75
2.3.2 Jesus Uncut? Christ’s Uncertain Body 77
2.3.3 Bodily Différance: Uniqueness and Ubique-ity 79
2.3.4 Inside-Out: The Ecstatic Eucharistic Body 82
2.3.5 Bodily Particularity: “Individually We Are Members One of Another” 87
2.4 Hagiography and Narrative 90
2.4.1 Inscribed with Texts: Bodies as Palimpsests 90
2.4.2 Emptying Self of Self: Bodies and the Kenosis of Signification 93
2.4.3 Giving-Up and Giving-Over: Disrupting the Binaries 99
2.5 Bodies Qua Bodies: Some (Provisional) Conclusions 101
3: Reassigning and Redefining: Intersex and
Theologies from Transsexualism 105
3.1 Gender Transition: Doing Less Violence to Bodies 106
3.2 “Men’s Sweat Only Attracts Other Men”: The Heterosexual as Homosocial 108
3.3 Transsexualism and Scripture 113
3.3.1 Transvestism 114
3.3.2 Eunicism 116
3.4 Changing Sex: The “Real” and the Phantom 120
3.5 Pathology and (Psychological) Integrity: O’Donovan’s Theological Treatment of
Transsexualism 125
3.6 Other Theological Treatments of Transsexualism 132
3.6.1 David Horton 132
3.6.2 Fraser Watts 133
3.6.3 Rodney Holder 134
3.6.4 The Evangelical Alliance 137
3.6.5 Some Issues in Human Sexuality 138
3.7 Male All Along? The Historicity of Individuals 140
3.8 Transsexualism as Essentialism 143
3.9 Transsexualism as Performativity 145
3.10 Some Conclusions 153
4: Remembering and Re-Membering: Intersex and
Theologies from Disability 155
4.1 Intersex and Disability: Provisional Unities? 156
4.2 “Perfect-ability”: The Problem of Perfection in Ability and in Sex 159
4.3 Exacerbated Disability and Stigmatization: “You Shall Not Revile the Deaf or Put
a Stumbling-Block Before the Blind” 161
4.4 Disability in Scripture 165
4.4.1 Blemish, Curse, Confusion or Blessing? 165
4.4.2 Hull’s “Real Worlds” and the Ideology of Dominance 170
4.5 Perichoresis, Particularity and Pain 172
4.6 “Sown in Weakness, Raised in Power?” The Hope of Healing 176
4.7 The Resurrection Body in Paul and the Patristics 179
4.7.1 Paul and the Body Imperishable 179
4.7.2 Augustine and the Fathers 182
4.8 Rejecting Erotic Domination in the New Creation 188
4.9 Some Conclusions 191
5: Resisting and Reappropriating: Intersex and Queer Theologies 195
5.1 Problematizing Terms: Queer and Heteronormativity 196
5.2 Positionality, Not Positivity: The Problems of Defining Queer 199
5.3 Provisional, Multiple, Eschatological: Is Intersex Queer? 202
5.4 Queer Theologies 209
5.4.1 Ethnicity, Ecology, Economics: The Queer as Bi/Sexual 209
5.4.2 Christophobia, Violence, and Birthing the Divine 215
5.4.3 “O Tell Me The Truth About Love”: Truth-Telling and Queer Theologies 219
5.4.4 Enslaved by Love: Counter-Cultural Embodiment and Transgressive Sex 223
5.4.5 “Lazarus, Come Out!”: Friendly Strands 227
5.4.6 Autobiography and Incarnation: More Affinities Between Intersex and
Queer Theologies 230
5.5 Some Conclusions 239
6: Realizing and Remaking: Conclusion 242
Glossary: A Summary of Some Intersex Conditions
and Related Terminology 248
G.1 Intersex Conditions 248
G.1.1 Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome 248
G.1.2 Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia 249
G.1.3 5-Alpha Reductase Syndrome 250
G.1.4 Genetic Mosaics and Chimeras 251
G.1.5 Ovotestes 252
G.2 Debated Conditions 252
G.2.1 Klinefelter’s Syndrome 253
G.2.2 Turner’s Syndrome 253
G.3 Related Non-Intersex Conditions 254
G.3.1 Hypospadias 254
G.3.2 Micropenis 255
G.3.3 Vaginal Agenesis 255
Works cited 256
Introduction
“I am a creature of God, and… I’m created, and intersexed people are created, no less than anyone else, in the image and likeness of God. And I think it’s a matter… of a kind of a gift. This is the way that we are, and… what we’ve got here is not a walking, talking pathology, but a human being… who has a body which may be atypical in some respects in a given context” (Sally Gross, speaking in van Huyssteen 2003).
This thesis aims to explore the broad theological issues stemming from the existence and treatment of biological intersex conditions. It provides, to the best of my knowledge, the first full-length theological study of intersex, and raises questions for further consideration. The thesis uses existing theologies in three broad areas (transsexualism, disability and queer theologies) and sets out to explore the extent to which these are useful in formulating theologies from intersex.[1] One objective of this is to consider how theologies from intersex should influence theological reflection done by non-intersexed people, given that intersex is figured throughout the thesis as a non-pathological variation of human sex. The thesis draws on feminist and queer theologies, as well as sociological treatments of intersex, and although being explicitly theological in focus thereby provides material for further cross-disciplinary work.
Traditionally, Christian theology has valued the integrity of the body and the goodness of God reflected in creation, but has also set much store by the apparent complementarity embedded in male and female physiology. It has sometimes been threatened by liminality, shifts in sexed and gendered identity, and non-marital sexuality (including homosexuality, premarital sexual activity, and non-monogamy). Its unyielding norms of sexual morality have sometimes led to the unnecessary exclusion and alienation of individuals from the community of faith. Theology has both shaped and been shaped by a culture which has tended to shun ambiguity and liminality in favour of clearly demarcated categories of sex and gender. Humans have all but divinized male-and-female sex in asserting that it is all-encompassing – and, concomitantly, have been suspicious of “transgressive” sexual identities. Prompted by intersex and other marginal or contested sex-gender identities, a deconstruction or querying of male and female as essential, necessary or all-embracing human categories might also change conceptions of what it means for the sex of humans to be part of what reflects the image of God. The sexed differences of humans may reflect the difference and dynamism present in the interconnected relations of the Trinity, but to accept that a simple male/female binary does not tell the whole story is not to negate this difference. Human bodies and human beings are different by virtue of more than sex. In this thesis I show that theology should reflect an image of God and of humanity more complex and diverse than an all-encompassing male-female binary allows. Since ethics and praxis should be rooted in theology, these, too, must reflect the diverse and non-binary character of human sex.
In this introductory chapter I outline the nature of intersex conditions and introduce the broad theological and ethical issues addressed in the following chapters. I also set out my methodology and explain the vocabulary and terminology I have chosen to use.[2]
0.1 Introducing Intersex
Human sex is more complex than a simple male-female binary where every individual is solely and unambiguously male or female. However, the common notion of the “hermaphrodite” as an individual with a full set of both male and female organs is also inaccurate and misleading. Estimates suggest that around 1 in 2,500 children in Europe and North America is born with an intersex condition – roughly the same prevalence as Down’s syndrome or cystic fibrosis (Preves 2003: 2-3). All human foetuses start off with genital regions which appear identical, and typically, beginning at around seven weeks’ gestation, the region gradually diverges along broadly male-related or broadly female-related lines (Preves 2003: 24-6). The raphe, or line down the middle of the scrotum, is the last vestige of the original genital opening (covered by a membrane) common to all foetuses. The clitoris and penis both begin as identical glanses. Because the difference between typically male-related and typically female-related genitals is actually a continuum rather than a binary, therefore, it is possible for some genitals to appear “in between”, with a glans between the typical sizes for a clitoris or penis, or a genital opening which is only partially fused.[3] Some intersex conditions manifest themselves in this way, in what are sometimes referred to as “ambiguous” genitalia, so that the child cannot be readily identified male or female at birth. Other conditions only become apparent later, perhaps at puberty when, for example, a girl does not begin to menstruate as expected. Across the various conditions, the external genitalia can appear typically male, typically female, in between, or mostly absent; internal genitalia and reproductive organs can include testes, ovaries, one testis and one ovary, or an ovotestis. Chromosomes can be XX, XY, XXY, XX/XY or a range of variations.
Doctors caring for genitally-ambiguous newborns have often advised parents to sidestep questions about the baby’s sex from friends and relatives until further tests and karyotyping[4] have been carried out and the child has been found to be (or has been assigned as) male or female. It is significant that this delay in waiting to be (or to make) certain has been deemed preferable to admitting that the sex is, for a time, unknown (Kessler 1998: 22; Preves 2003: 55). The eventual gender assignment has, in many cases, been reinforced by surgery on the genitals. Surgery on an XX child with fused labia and a large clitoris might include clitoral reduction or recession, and surgery to open the vagina (though vaginoplasty may also be delayed until later childhood). Children with XY chromosomes and testes, but whose external genitalia are very small or underdeveloped, may have the penis and testes removed altogether and a rudimentary vaginal opening constructed in their place. It has not been uncommon for doctors to fail to explain to parents exactly why such operations are being done, what is involved, or the fact that the child will often need a series of further procedures and/or hormone therapy throughout its life (Arana 2005). Although this approach might be claimed to stem from good motives, it also mitigates the capacity for informed consent on behalf of the parents and their ability to communicate with the child later about the medical condition. In the recent past it was common in Britain and North America for such surgeries to be performed neonatally, but pressure from intersex groups has now led to an increase in delayed or non-surgical treatment. Where early genital surgeries have been carried out in the past, it has generally been advised that corrected children should never be informed about any erstwhile ambiguity of sex.
Although many people who received genital surgery as children have protested about their treatment (as I discuss in Chapter 1), it must be noted that not every individual who has had surgical intervention is unhappy with the outcome, and that numerous people whose gender assignment was changed via surgery in childhood have grown up as contented and fulfilled individuals in their new gender. The Intersex Society of North America stresses in its guidance notes for parents of intersexed children that not many children do change from their early gender assignment, and that non-intersexed children might be as likely as intersexed ones to transition genders as they get older.[5] However, it is also possible that recurrent genital surgery “may be associated with long term dissatisfaction with sexual function and an altered perception of body image, and it is possible that this may, itself, lead to a change in gender identity from female to male or vice versa” (Ahmed, Morrison and Hughes 2004: 848).
0.2 Existing Theological Work on Intersex
Although excellent in-depth sociological studies of intersex exist (especially Kessler 1998 and Preves 2003), and considerations of why the treatment of intersex is ethically problematic exist (such as the essays in Dreger 1999), full-length and in-depth theological explorations of the topic have not occurred. Where theological engagement with intersex does exist, it has almost always invariably been done as an adjunct to reflection on transsexualism or homosexuality rather than in its own right. Two papers by Looy (2002) and Looy and Bouma (2005) do provide a useful overview of some of the theological and ethical issues raised by intersex, but are based in psychology rather than theology and therefore do not provide a close theological engagement. They also suffer from other significant limitations: for example, I take particular issue with some of the premises and conclusions in Looy and Bouma’s paper.[6] It is encouraging to see an increasing theological engagement with intersex and its impact on other issues, as demonstrated in John Hare’s essay on intersex in a recent volume of theological reflection on homosexuality (Hare 2007). Hare, a priest who has also worked as a gynaecologist and obstetrician, uses the existence of intersex to open a space of questioning around homosexuality for those whose default position is that it is possible to define and recognize everyone unproblematically as male or female and that their gender and sexuality should supervene on this (Hare 2007: 98-9). However, appropriately for the context of his piece, Hare’s main focus is still homosexuality rather than intersex.[7] Sally Gross’ 1999 paper “Intersexuality and Scripture” is the most important attempt so far to explore intersex in light of the Bible, and provides a perspicacious response to two texts which are, according to Gross, sometimes used as “proof-texts” for rejecting the legitimacy of intersex: Genesis 1:27 and Numbers 5:3 (Gross 1999: 69).[8] In considering Genesis 1:27 and other biblical verses I use the New Revised Standard Version except where otherwise specified.
Gross’ essay, discussed in detail later, marks probably the most valuable jumping-off point for the sort of broader and more in-depth theological engagement with intersex itself that is presented in this thesis. In attempting to expand on and enrich that which has previously been written, I examine theological responses to, and expressions stemming from, transsexualism, disabled bodies, and so-called queer identities. I ask whether any of these theologies helps to plug the gaps left by the Church’s failure to address intersex, consciously keeping intersex at the centre as a specific issue. Before I consider each of the three broad areas in turn, I consider questions surrounding the nature of bodies per se, and what they might signify in themselves and in community. I explore conceptions of the resurrection body, and ask whether the notion of perfection and an absence of pain in the new creation necessarily means an eradication of bodies and conditions deemed fallen or imperfect by human standards. Theologies stemming from other configurations of contested and excluded bodies help to render intersex theologically meaningful, and to provide models for how intersex might affect theologies in the future, as I show throughout the thesis. I attempt to draw together aspects of what has already been done and to show how these strands should inform not only theologies of intersex, but also any theologies done in solidarity with a marginal or non-dominant group.
0.3 Theological Themes: Justice, Speakability and Dubious “Goods”
In Christian theology, God, unlike humans, is “officially” not gendered; masculine and feminine human genders are both held to echo aspects of God. However, I argue that, within much mainstream Christian thought, to be made in the image of this God is to be made either male or female, for it is male-and-female – as a group description, not an individual description – which has come to be the all-encompassing conceptual arena in which social meaning is inscribed. We can just about think God beyond maleness, but, by and large, we cannot think ourselves beyond male and female. However, as the historian and scholar of intersex Alice Dreger asserts,
“The discovery of a ‘hermaphroditic’ body raises doubts not just about the particular body in question, but about all bodies. The questioned body forces us to ask exactly what it is – if anything – that makes the rest of us unquestionable” (Dreger 1998: 6).
Similarly, in Judith Butler’s model (a valuable resource when considering the “real” versus “constructed” nature of bodies and bodily identities),
“It is the exception, the strange, that gives us the clue as to how the mundane and taken-for-granted world of sexual meanings is constituted. Only from a self-consciously denaturalized position can we see how the appearance of naturalness is itself constituted” (Butler 1990: 110).
As self-evident as a binary biological model of sex might appear, it is in fact already influenced by cultural assumptions about bodies, sexes and genders – as I explore in more detail in Chapter 1. To hold dear the way in which male and female are believed to represent the relationship between God and humanity, or between the persons of the Trinity, might be appropriate at one time where male and female are all but universally held to “mean” certain things; however, when the meanings attached to maleness and femaleness (or masculinity and femininity) shift, their implications as metaphor for the cosmic order shift too.
This does not mean that particular theological themes and traditions should necessarily be abandoned; however, it does mean continually re-examining them in light both of other disciplines and of the central strands of love and justice against which all theological norms must be gauged. Revelation comes from both within the theological tradition and beyond it, and is ongoing. In her discussion of the prophetic-liberating tradition (which calls for justice for the oppressed, and equal worth to be given to all people whatever their sex), Rosemary Radford Ruether notes that it cannot be made into a static set of ideas, and says:
“Rather it is a plumb line of truth and untruth, justice and injustice that has to be constantly adapted to changing social contexts and circumstances. Simply saying the same words will not mean the same thing in a different context” (Ruether 1983: 23).
I follow Ruether in believing that the “plumb-line” of justice at the heart of theology must not be allowed to calcify to the extent that it can no longer be flexible or adaptable according to other tenets of human knowledge. To maintain that each and every human being is exactly and ineluctably male or female and that this entails a specific path of gendered and sexual orientation, and that any human being who cannot or will not follow this trajectory is more sinful, flawed or fallen than any other human, is unjustifiable. However, the movements and allegiances which have led predominantly heterosexual, clearly-sexed and appropriately-gendered individuals to positions of authority and leadership in the Church have also made it less likely that non-heterosexual, transgendered or otherwise marginal people will also be endowed with similar status or legitimacy. Ruether notes,
“When… religious spokespersons see themselves primarily as stabilizing the existing social order and justifying its power structure, then prophetic language becomes deformed in the interests of the status quo. It becomes a language to sacralize dominant authorities” (Ruether 1983: 24).
Where settled, blood-related, normally male-led households are considered the ideal for stable, flourishing societies, and where the leaders of such households are likely to find it easier to climb the ladders of other social and cultural movements – including churches – it is far more difficult for the less privileged members of such societies to publicly question the incontrovertibility of the “goods” of wealth, heterosexuality and so on which come under the innocuous heading “family values”.
This is particularly significant when considering intersex, since some of the “goods” outlined above are already what is at stake when corrective surgery on genitally-ambiguous intersexed children is carried out. However, such surgery may be no more justifiable than prescriptive heteronormativity in other areas of discourse, either ethically or ideologically. For example, the paradigm of early surgical intervention for intersex conditions, often beginning neonatally, has been criticized for making medically non-pathological bodies into social “emergencies”. A paediatric urologist writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 1992 made a startling claim:
“After stillbirth, genital anomaly is the most serious problem with a baby, as it threatens the whole fabric of the personality and life of the person” (Hutson 1992, cited at ).
As Amy Bloom comments, such an assertion implies that it is “only slightly worse to be dead than intersexed” (Bloom 2002: 102). Genital anomaly is portrayed here as more serious and, significantly, more threatening, than any other medical condition which might present itself at birth: more serious than severe brain damage, than heart or lung defects, than the intestines protruding outside the abdomen, than a damaged spinal cord. But what exactly is it about the body which cannot easily be fitted into the expected male or female categories which is so threatening that such young children should have to undergo the trauma of surgery? Most intersex conditions do not actually require genital surgery for any physiological reason; the vast majority of surgeries carried out on atypical genitals are elective, non-essential ones. Most surgery could be delayed until at least the years immediately before puberty, when, whilst still a minor, the child would be old enough to know about their condition, and to understand the reasons for the specific proposed procedure, as well as to express their own sex and/or gender identity; some surgery could occur even later, when the individual is ready to become sexually active. What is more, all of these issues are sharply brought into focus by the fact that the psychological problems attached to intersex seem to stem as much, or more so, from corrective surgeries as from the conditions themselves (Alderson, Madill and Balen 2004: 83, Kessler 1998: 97, and see Chapter 1 of this thesis).
It is possible that what is really hidden within pressures to perform early surgery is a desire that intersexed bodies not be visibly ambiguous for long enough to draw attention to the arbitrary nature of the apparently self-evident male/female binary. Sally Gross asserts that, through intersex, “What is being threatened is not the infant’s health, but the infant’s culture” (speaking in van Huyssteen 2003): a culture where either/or male and female sex and gender are “just so”. In short, argues Morgan Holmes,
“Interventions made on the bodies of intersexed infants and children are proxy treatments of parental anxiety, and as they cannot be said to restore any clear function that is a universal and expected human trait, then such procedures cannot properly be considered ‘treatments’. Neither can they be considered ‘enhancements’, as the procedures can cause significant damage to the organic function of the body tissues, and expose the children to all the attendant risks of surgery without demonstrating a clear benefit to the child” (Holmes 2002: 165).
Part of what Judith Butler does in Gender Trouble is to explore what happens to the notion of the feminine within what she terms phallogocentric discourse; that is, discourse where the masculine (and specifically the phallus) is the primary or only referent. For Butler, where femininity is viewed not simply as the inverse but actually as the absence of something, it cannot be described in its own right; it becomes unrepresentable, a “sex that cannot be thought, a linguistic absence and opacity” (Butler 1990: 9). This notion of unrepresentability is, I contend, even more compelling when applied to people who are intersexed. Intersexed bodies as a category discrete from explicitly male bodies and explicitly female bodies have rarely been allowed to persist, at least in Western culture – conceptually as a “third” category, or physiologically since corrective surgery became prevalent. This may be because the intersexed body is not a simple “opposite” of the male body or of the female body (as the male and female body are often figured, perhaps naïvely, in relation to each other). In this thesis I set out to render intersex representable and speakable within a theological framework, without homogenizing or stereotyping it, and thereby to query the strands within Christian theology which privilege clearly-sexed, heteronormative configurations of sexes, sexualities and genders to the exclusion of people whose bodies or identities do not “fit”.
A consideration of the phenomenon of operating on intersexed children in order to “correct” their disparate genitalia, therefore, must also be a catalyst for a broader consideration of the nature of hegemony and exclusion. Doctors have the power to “disappear” genitals deemed unacceptable, rendering intersexed anatomies as unremarkable as possible. The position of doctors is one of privilege, with a concomitant authority to pronounce what bodies should and should not look like, and which bodies do or do not meet the accepted standards (in this case, by checking the external genitalia of a child at birth to ensure it can readily be identified as boy or girl). [9] Similarly, theology has also found itself in a position of privilege, and has asserted its authority over bodies and their sexes, as, for instance, pronouncing which bodies may and may not undertake certain roles within the Church, or delimiting which bodies may and may not be joined in marriage. It is for this reason that, although intersex and homosexuality are quite different, some of the work done by homosexual and queer theologians in questioning sexual norms is also of importance in considering intersex. A comprehensive examination of the ongoing hermeneutical debates surrounding homosexuality in theology and biblical studies is beyond the scope of this thesis. However, I work from the premises that same-sex erotic activity and relationships are no more inherently sinful or “fallen” than their heterosexual counterparts; that the biblical texts discussing homosexuality are not necessarily prohibiting the same-sex relationships possible in our own culture; and that there are questions to be asked surrounding whether biblical mandates about sexual activity, as with other moral injunctions, must or should be taken as normative for today.
Alice Dreger, in undertaking an historical study into hermaphroditism and its figuring in the context of broader categories of sex, was shocked to discover the ongoing problems and culture of shame still facing some of those who had undergone surgery for intersex. In an epilogue to the main body of her book, she describes the continued physical and psychological pain of some intersexed people, and says, “Ethical behavior means recognizing and respecting the imperatives embedded in stories of suffering” (Dreger 1998: 170). Just as it cannot be ethically justifiable to say that women’s rights are a sideline or a secondary issue in Christianity, because millions of women and girl children continue to be killed and injured specifically because they are female (Soskice 1996: 24-5), so it cannot be ethically justifiable to endorse, tacitly or otherwise, the violation of intersexed bodies simply because they are intersexed. Rosemary Radford Ruether argued in the 1980s that “whatever diminishes or denies the full humanity of women must be presumed not to reflect the divine or an authentic relation to the divine… or to be the message or work of an authentic redeemer or a community of redemption” (Ruether 1983: 15). I contend that the same goes for people with intersex conditions and non-binary gender identities too. If our theologies of sex and embodiment are to be rooted in praxis, the stories recounted by intersexed people demand our critical and compassionate ethical responses too. The Church, however, has been conspicuously silent on intersex conditions.
0.4 Vocabulary and Terminology
There is a certain irony attached to continuing to use terms for specific intersex conditions based on the names of the doctors who first categorized them: Klinefelter’s syndrome, Turner’s syndrome and so forth. The irony stems from the fact that some people with these conditions have argued that it is the medicalization and pathologization of their conditions (rather than the condition itself) which has stigmatized them, as well as the perceived erosion of their autonomy by medical professionals. Where I use such name-based terms, I do so simply to facilitate further study, as they are often the most familiar terms (and the ones used by support groups themselves). However, there is always space for a different name to become prevalent, as happened with AIS (formerly more usually called Testicular Feminization).
In terms of general vocabulary for intersex, I follow the convention of Alice Dreger and Suzanne Kessler in referring to “intersex conditions”, describing those who have them as “intersexed”, and using “intersex” to refer to the issue in general.[10] Although the term “conditions” may be seen as having pejorative associations (see, for example, Preves 2003: 44), it is preferable to some other terminology which has been used in the past, particularly in medical literature, such as “disease”, “disorder” or being “sexually unfinished” (Money and Ehrhardt 1972: 5). Whilst imperfect, “conditions” significantly communicates that this is an umbrella term for various kinds of physiologies and karyotypes, and that intersex is not inherently pathological. “Intersexuality” and “intersexualism”, terms used by some other writers, are problematic because they sound so much like “homosexuality”, “bisexuality” and “transsexualism” that it is tempting to consider all of these in the same breath, whereas some intersexed people are keen to distance themselves from the LGBT movement.[11] “Intersexinity” as a term analogous to “masculinity” and “femininity” has been mooted by Looy and Bouma (Looy and Bouma 2005: 167) – but since many intersexed people argue that intersex in itself does not compromise the ability to express a masculine or feminine gender identity, and the Intersex Society of North America in fact asserts that labelling intersexed children with a discrete intersex gender category would be labelling them with “a gender category that in essence doesn’t exist” (), the necessity for such a term is debatable.
Since 2005, the Intersex Society of North America, one of the largest and most influential intersex support and advocacy groups, has used the term “DSD”, for Disorders of Sex Development / Differentiation, in place of “intersex” and “intersex conditions”, in communication and discourse surrounding medical reform. It was felt that DSD was a less emotionally charged term than intersex and would be better received by the doctors – and some parents – whom ISNA aimed to educate:
“As we were working with adults, parents, and doctors to create documents that provide a detailed explanation of patient-centered care, we came to the conclusion that a medical term would be the easiest way to communicate about medical care, and we began to use the term ‘DSD’” ().
Emi Koyama of Intersex Initiative, who supports the use of “DSD”, argues that the term “intersex” was “wrong from the beginning”, since, she says, most intersexed people do not consider their bodies to be between male and female bodies: they simply consider themselves as male or female with a specific birth condition (Koyama 2006).[12] Koyama says that early intersex activists, such as the members of ISNA who campaigned under the name Hermaphrodites With Attitude in the mid-1990s, were drawn to the political reclaiming of the term “hermaphrodite” as influenced by outspoken queer identity politics;[13] but that
“Intersex activists quickly discovered that the intersex movement could not succeed under this model. For one thing, there were far fewer intersex people compared to the large and visible presence of LGBT people in most urban centers. For another, activists soon realized that most intersex individuals were not interested in building intersex communities or culture; what they sought [was] professional psychological support to live ordinary lives as ordinary men and women and not the adoption of new, misleading identity” (Koyama 2006).
Koyama acknowledges that the “disorder” element of DSD has negative connotations, but believes that the term still has the potential to be embraced by individuals with these conditions and their families. She is keen to draw links between the intersex / DSD movement’s methodologies and those of the radical disability rights movement, whereby “disability is not simply a characteristic of one’s body, but the product of social institutions that divide human bodies into normal and abnormal, privileging certain bodies over others” (Koyama 2006) (I explore this in Chapter 4). She also recognizes,
“Two legitimate challenges can be raised against my decision to endorse the move [from ‘intersex’ to ‘DSD’]. First, whereas [the] intersex movement of the past has critiqued the medical model, the new intersex (or DSD) movement is now dropping this struggle and embracing its former enemy. Second, whereas [the] intersex movement of the past has pushed the envelope of our gender and sexual discourses, the new intersex movement is now retreating from these frontlines… I’d like to think of the shift not as the embracement of the medical model, but a commitment to the political strategy that seeks to radically redefine and re-read it. I’d like to think of the medical label not as the source of stigma, but a link to the rich analyses and history of accomplishments of the radical disability rights movement and Disability Studies… For intersex people to truly achieve acceptance, it makes no sense to retreat from the conversations about gender and sexuality; it’s not one or the other, but both at the same time” (Koyama 2006).
The DSD terminology also sidesteps the problem – as perceived by some intersexed people – that the media has come to link “intersex” specifically and ineluctably with “having been assigned to the wrong gender”, to the exclusion of broader issues (). Moreover, it is hoped that the use of “DSD” will help to mitigate some of the controversy over whether certain conditions should or should not be classed as intersex conditions (Groveman Morris 2006). My own decision to continue to use “intersex” rather than “DSD” throughout this thesis, is not to ignore Koyama’s warning about the limitations of intersex terminology. However, I have chosen to use “intersex” rather than “DSD” because it continues to be the more widespread term both among intersex groups and in other discourses; because I discuss intersex not just in medical arenas, but also in its broader context; and because the language of “disorder” still seems to me to fail to disrupt adequately medical and social paradigms of normalized sex and gender.[14]
Later in the thesis, in discussing impairment and disability, I use the terminology of “people with disabilities” (or impairments) rather than “disabled people” (since the latter identifies people by their disabilities first and foremost), or “the disabled” or “the handicapped” (which both reify and falsely homogenize people). Frances Young points out that even terms now considered abusive, such as “mongoloid” and “retarded”, were not originally derogatory, and that simple re-labelling will not stop every new term eventually becoming twisted (Young 1990: 176).[15] However, it is crucial that terminology used at a given time is not deemed offensive or patronizing by the persons to whom it is applied. It is possible that the language of “impairment” and “disability” will also come to be considered inappropriate and anachronistic in the future. Ideally, however, the description of an individual should tally with the self-identification of the individual concerned at a given time. Some people with impairments do choose to use terms such as “cripple” (having reclaimed them from those who would use them as an insult), but the majority do not.
In general parlance, “male” and “female” tend to be used as shorthand for “masculine” and “feminine”. That is, if I refer to someone as “male”, it is unlikely that I know his actual configuration of chromosomes, gametes and gonads. As I show in Chapter 1, however, definitions of what actually renders someone male or female have changed over time. Currently, by Roughgarden’s account,
“By definition, the smaller of the two gametes is called a sperm, and the larger an egg. Beyond gamete size, biologists don’t recognize any other universal difference between male and female… Indirect markers of gamete size may exist in some species. In mammals, males usually have a Y chromosome. But whether an individual is male or not comes down to making sperm” (Roughgarden 2004: 23-4).
In the course of everyday life, however, we have no way of knowing whether this definition of maleness applies to a given individual. Assumptions based on secondary signals are concretized into beliefs about individuals’ “cultural genitals” (Herdt 1994b, Morland 2001a: 528); that is, the genitals they are presumed to have although it is not considered generally polite to look inside their underwear to find out. Some intersexed people who live in, for example, a masculine gender role will not be male: some will be female, and some will be neither male nor female.
In this thesis, therefore, I endeavour to use the terms “male” and “female” only in reference to sex, rather than as shorthand for “man” and “woman” (which I use as cultural gendered terms, rather than sexed ones). On this account, a woman may or may not be female. I am aware that the very act of distinguishing sex and gender has been effectively questioned – in, for instance, Butler 1990: 23-33. The whole structure of gender relies upon an appearance of internal coherence between sex, gender and sexuality, but in fact the labels are never finished and are being continually redefined – it is society itself which sustains the myth of the finished norms. However, I maintain a clear distinction between sexed and gendered terms because this helps draw attention to the many instances where sex is assumed and often then taken up and made compulsory, despite the fact that an individual’s sex (according to the definition of whether they produce large or small gametes) may not “match” what is supposed.
I avoid, however, the term “biological sex”, since it tends to elide the multiplicity of factors which have, variously, gone toward defining sex, and to fail to flag up the extent to which “biological” has “become synonymous for ‘unchangeable’ and ‘natural’” (Kessler and McKenna 1978: 42). AIS girls can never actually be made female (that is, made to produce large gametes) through surgery to remove their testes or alter ambiguous genitalia. The extent to which surgery which claims to “normalize” can be said to produce changes of sex should therefore be questioned. This in itself should promote a questioning of the extent to which variation in other linguistic and physiological contexts is legitimized: infertile “males” are allowed to pass as males, because they can (generally) take part in the sexual behaviour normally aligned with maleness. However, such behaviour does not make them male by the gamete definition. This highlights the whole notion of gender as performance (Butler 1990: 137). In Butler’s terms, there is no “original” of gender; it is all constructed. Yet doctors, parents and others still want to make intersexed children’s genitals “look right”, despite the fact that there is no such thing as explicitly male or explicitly female genital physiology.
Gendered personal pronouns for individuals who have changed gender or who consider themselves members of a liminal or third gender can be problematic, but alternatives such as ze/hir tend to be distracting in usage. I simply use the pronouns that the individual in question would recognize as most applying to them: for instance, “her” for a transgendered woman (someone brought up as a boy who now has a feminine gender identity), whether or not she has undergone surgery or taken female-related hormones. Gendered personal pronouns are not, however, used in reference to God. Although this risks both depersonalizing God (as with the use of “it” for the Holy Spirit) and divorcing God from the Judaeo-Christian history which has known God as “he”, it also has the advantage of reminding us that God is not as we are and can portray Godself in a multiplicity of ways simultaneously. Althaus-Reid suggests that God is omnisexual (Althaus-Reid 2003a: 52), and although it is refreshing to hear God referred to as “she” rather than “he” on occasion, the associations of these pronouns with human gender still seems to me to reinforce a binary model of sex and gender rather than one where current models are shown not to have ultimate “reality”.
0.5 Methodology
The thesis is grounded in library-based research. My two main sources of literature were non-theological works on intersex from sociology and history, and theological works on the topics of transsexualism, disability and queer theology. This use of existing material was conscious and necessary; given the scope of the project, carrying out empirical work and interviews would have left too little time for analysis. Although I did not conduct interviews, I did make contact with intersexed people, largely through internet forums and discussion boards. After placing a notice on the website of Bodies Like Ours expressing a desire to get in touch with intersexed people who had, in particular, experienced being members of church congregations and who had been open about their intersex conditions, I was contacted by several people. Louis Talley was especially helpful in putting me in touch with intersexed pastors in the USA. In some cases I directly approached people who had made their contact details public. This initial contact was followed up by an exchange of personal e-mails. Several intersex groups did not wish to pass on my details to their members, since the purpose of the group was for peer support rather than research, and they were understandably wary of allowing non-intersexed people to participate. I have thus made extensive use of previously-published intersex testimonies (such as those in Dreger 1999), and of television interviews with, and documentaries about, Max Beck, Ilizane Broks, Sally Gross, Nombulelo Soldaat, Louise Thompson, Steph Tonner and others. I am, however, acutely aware of the problems associated with drawing on previously-published interviews and statements: not least, the issue of self-selection, of the fact that the intersexed individuals who have made their stories public, particularly those unhappy with current or recent protocols, are not necessarily representative of a majority of intersexed people. Where interviews are presented as part of television films or newspaper articles, there is always the risk that a particular spin has been put on the words of the interviewees.[16] First-hand statements or self-publications, such as the weblogs posted on the website of ISNA, might appear to cut out the inter-agent to an extent, but an element of self-censorship (or tempering one’s words to make them suitable for a particular perceived audience or context) is inevitable. The testimonies of those intersexed people cited herein must therefore not be viewed as overarching or characteristic of all intersexed people.
Representing intersexed individuals, and working toward a uniquely intersexed theology, is problematic if done, as here, by a non-intersexed person. However, this does not mean that thinking with intersex as a non-intersexed person is entirely inappropriate; whilst it might be dangerous to colonize the standpoint of an intersexed person as my own, it is crucial that those who are not intersexed consider and participate in discourse about it along with those who are. To say that only someone from a particular group can speak about or reflect on that group risks ghettoizing particular issues, so that intersex – for example – is always pushed to the edges, left as a minority concern rather than one which conceivably impacts upon and implicates everyone. This point is made convincingly by Alice Dreger, an activist for intersex issues, who has written of her opposition to the notion that identity politics can only be done by individuals who claim the specific, given identity.[17] Not everyone working on issues of disability necessarily has an impairment, but this need not make any less legitimate their own reflection on it, as long as it is acknowledged that this will not be identical with that of people with disabilities and should not take precedence over that of people with disabilities. It is crucial, as far as possible, to reflect on intersexed people’s own reflections and testimonies concerning their lives and experiences, in order to minimize the possibility of misrepresenting people; but my own reflection on intersex also necessitates a self-critical evaluation of my assumptions and the ways in which my background affects the manner in which I view intersex. The existence of intersexed people can help to query the perceived norms of physiology and gender which seem to undergird much mainstream theology (not just that concerned with “sex” issues), but I should be asking them on my own behalf. They should prompt me to re-examine my own assumptions and situation as a non-intersexed person. In her study of Christian feminism among black and white women, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite remarks,
“Gustavo Gutiérrez once said that he is suspicious of anyone who is not in the liberation struggle for themselves. I am not in this exploration of the difference race makes for black women; nor am I in it on behalf of black women. I want to know for myself what is being hidden and carried along unexamined in the class and race solidarity of white women” (Thistlethwaite 1990: 46).
Latin American theologian Otto Maduro comments that it is in failing to examine one’s own motivations for “doing theology in the service of the underprivileged” (Maduro 2006: 25) that one risks using them, and “doing theology in the image and likeness of our own… cravings, fears and frustrations” (Maduro 2006: 25). Retaining a proactive awareness that orthodoxy has always been mediated by particular groups or recorders is essential. My non-intersexed experiences are mine to own in a way that those of intersexed people are not mine.[18] Gatherings around a particular identity should be what Butler terms “provisional unities” (Butler 1990: 15), emerging organically and temporarily in the course of events, rather than “[setting] up an exclusionary norm of solidarity at the level of identity that rules out the possibility of a set of actions which disrupt the very borders of identity concepts” (Butler 1990: 15).[19] Thus intersexed people can, if they wish to, build on political moves made by LGBT groups, without having to become fully assimilated to, or even sympathetic with, their entire project. Nor can theologies “borrowed” from a particular context be simply exported and replicated in another.[20]
I follow Marcella Althaus-Reid in believing that mainstream Western theology largely rests upon “a heterosexual construction of reality, which organizes not only categories of approved social and divine interactions but of economic ones too” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 2). Althaus-Reid’s “theology from the poor” is illuminating of those disenfranchised in every sphere of life, and it is necessary to employ a hermeneutic of suspicion (Althaus-Reid 2000: 4) in order to explore which voices have been marginalized and what they have been trying to say. As such, I am keen to embrace Althaus-Reid’s rejection of “androcentric” methodology (Althaus-Reid 2000: 5), being aware that although it is impossible ever to fully step outside established discourse, to remain unquestioningly within it will always involve distortion of a breadth of experience. This entails an acceptance that subjective testimony and personal experiences – including sexual experiences – are legitimate sources for theological reflection. It is sometimes necessary to make theology “indecent” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 5) in order to reveal what is naturalized hegemony (since, as Tim Gorringe notes, the power of hegemony lies in what it silences – Gorringe 2004: 131). This is a highly political project, argues Ched Myers; he claims, “We Christians have confused our Stories with the narrative of empire, thus allowing scripture to be expropriated into the service of oppression” (Myers 1994: xxi). The imperialism of the male-and-female binary is the rule of a false universality, and its sovereignty must be resisted too.
Disrupting, indecenting and denaturalizing our theological norms is always already a project of reclaiming and reframing language and metaphor too; Sallie McFague writes, “The rich and diverse metaphors and concepts of the Bible [are] models or exemplars of theology, rather than dictums for theology” (McFague 1987: 30). No metaphor can be ultimately sacred or authoritative (McFague 1987: 36), and it has long been deemed appropriate to re-examine masculinist, power-based images such as God being a Father, Lord or King, and to consider others. The subversive nature of the use of titles such as “Lord” for Jesus has sometimes been lost, and it is important to re-examine and critique metaphors which have become too comfortable. Even Barth, amid all his suspicion of natural theology, has space for parables of the Kingdom, whereby “stories and images… speak words and show signs that resonate with the depths of scripture and the devotion of the saints, and yet challenge their familiar appropriations” (Loughlin 2004: xiv).[21] I therefore seek (in Chapter 2) to re-examine the image of the body as used by Paul in 1 Corinthians in light of intersex, since an awareness that human bodies are not only male or female disrupts some of the outworkings pegged to this metaphor.
Despite the problems associated with classic Liberation Theologies, particularly that of Enrique Dussel, as explored by Althaus-Reid and others (in Althaus-Reid 2006a),[22] I retain throughout the thesis Dussel’s suspicion of Totality, of all-encompassing ontologies which leave no space for otherness beyond their internal system (Dussel 1978: 20). Dussel comments,
“Just as dead as totalized flesh is divinized totality because it believes itself to be God; it is the idol. It is that Totality that Otherness breaks into” (Dussel 1978: 29).
Although Dussel himself would not necessarily have recognized it as such, I assert that a heteronormative, male-and-female binary sex system is indeed a divinized totality held to be all-encompassing; as such, it must be exposed as the golden calf that it is. Totalities are divinized, closed and absolutized through a process of fetishization (Dussel 1985: 95). Either/or male-and-female sex has itself been fetishized. Humans have called “natural” what is really cultural, and have believed that to describe human beings as male and female made in the image of God means that only recognized patterns of male and female are made in the image of God. As David F. Ford comments,
“Above all, [theology’s] alliance with ontology conspires against doing justice to an ethics which resists the assimilation of the other person to oneself and one’s overview” (Ford 1999: 50).
In the following chapter I begin the thesis with an overview of how intersex has been treated and understood at different points in history, in order better to understand its relationship to socio-cultural norms of sex and gender, and to begin to see how theological attitudes to sex and gender have both influenced and been influenced by these.
Chapter 1 Reflecting and Reproducing: The History of Intersex
“Since [models] provide an intermediary between world and theory, they are neither world nor theory. However, the theory indicates what sorts of things can count as models of it. The presupposition that there are two sexes is a theoretical presupposition and the models must be constructed so as to fulfil that theoretical claim. We might think of models more clearly as tools with which to think about the world. We need such tools for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the world has too much going on in it and we need to make choices about which particular features we should be looking at. Just that recognition alone, however, gives a different slant to what it is that science does. So the theory is describing the model, not the world” (Crasnow 2001: 143).
It is beyond the scope of this thesis to give a detailed historical examination of attitudes to unusually-sexed bodies; but a very brief overview of some notable conceptions of sex, gender, and what was generally called hermaphroditism in the past, is valuable before returning to – and helping to contextualize – contemporary, binarized understandings of sex which so often seem self-evident. Human sex has not always been understood (and still is not understood in every human culture)[23] as an obvious and immovable binary. In this chapter I reflect on some of the different ways in which intersex has been figured in the context of broader contemporaneous beliefs about sex and gender, and touch on recent shifts in attitudes toward and treatments for intersex. I show that the either/or two-sex model of human sex in which the early corrective surgery paradigm is grounded is a strikingly recent one, and suggest that early and secretive surgery has been done as much to bolster (or reproduce) the model as to promote the well-being of the individuals who undergo it. I suggest that the “goodness” of maintaining the model has become confused with the “goodness” or otherwise of unambiguous genitals themselves. I argue that ideas of goodness and perfection in social and theological hegemony have concretized themselves too unproblematically in attitudes to unusual or recalcitrant bodies, and that theology is responsible for engaging with and critiquing the ethically problematic consequences of the recent and ongoing medical and social treatment of intersex.
1.1 Inadequate Models?
The model of two human sexes, male and female, with no overlap or exception, is a clear and useful way of making sense of a world which, as Sharon L. Crasnow asserts, often seems to have too much going on in it. However, the existence of intersex, and of people who are transgendered or who otherwise do not appear to fit every aspect of this model, suggests that it is of limited vintage. Any model is only ever a line of best fit, stretched by unusual cases. It might be tempting to suspect that the more visible and prevalent intersex is, the more convincingly it might subvert concretized male-and-female-only gender binaries: Professor of Biology and Gender Studies Anne Fausto-Sterling has faced criticism for work in which, it is argued, she implied that intersex was statistically more common than it actually is (Sax 2002).[24] In a 2001 interview, Fausto-Sterling suggested that “We should lighten up on those who fall in between [male and female] because there are a lot of them” (Sax 2002, Dreifus 2001: 3) – which implies, deliberately or not, that frequency itself should be a motivation for taking intersex seriously. However, as Georgia Warnke says,
“The relevant question is not whether cases of ambiguous or unacceptable genitalia occur often enough to undermine the biological basis for dividing populations into two sexes. The relevant question is rather what genital surgery says about the categories of sex themselves: are they written into nature or are they insisted on by cultural and historical conceptions of gendered forms and practices?” (Warnke 2001: 129).
In her seminal work Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas says,
“Culture… mediates the experience of individuals. It provides in advance some basic categories, a positive pattern in which ideas and values are tidily ordered. And above all, it has authority, since each is induced to assent because of the assent of others. But its public character makes its categories more rigid… They cannot so easily be subject to revision. Yet they cannot neglect the challenge of aberrant forms. Any system of classification must give rise to anomalies, and any given culture must confront events which seem to deny its assumptions. It cannot ignore the anomalies which its scheme produces, except at risk of forfeiting confidence” (Douglas 1966: 38-9).
Douglas sets out five possible ways in which societies might deal with anomalous or ambiguous events, like the births of unusual-looking children. The first is by re-classifying them so that they are no longer anomalous (like the Nuer people who reckon that “monstrous” children are really baby hippopotamuses accidentally born into human families, and so “return” them to the river); the second by eradicating anomalous forms (by killing or abandoning atypical children or animals); the third by avoiding contact with anomalous things wherever possible; the fourth by categorizing them as “dangerous” rather than “anxiety-provoking”, in order to buttress the “normal” and keep it above contradiction; and the fifth by incorporating them into myth and story as windows onto other, usually inaccessible, levels of existence (Douglas 1966: 39-40). There is evidence that intersex has been treated in each of these ways at various points, but the early surgery paradigm seems rooted particularly in the first, the second and to some extent the fourth approaches. Asserting that a child is “really” one gender or another but is “unfinished” smacks of the first strategy, and carrying out early genital surgery to conceal or remove genital atypicality of the second. Either way, the fact that medicine responds at all to intersex demonstrates a confrontation of events which seem to deny its assumptions: in this case, the assumption that there are only two legitimate human physical sex configurations. A brief glance over attitudes to intersex at different points in history reveals instances of the other strategies too.
Butler comments that a poststructuralist reading of Douglas might “understand the limits of the body as the boundaries of the socially hegemonic” (Butler 1990: 131). This is important in beginning to contextualize some of the ways in which intersex has been equated with “transgressive” identities and activities such as homosexuality, one significant reason why it has incited suspicion in some Christians. I will now consider intersex in light of broader categories of sex, and of some cultural and moral messages inscribed into sex. I give space to the testimonies of intersexed people who have undergone corrective surgery, in order to keep these at the forefront of considering intersex even as they stand in distinction from my own position in this history of sexed “meaning”.
1.2 The Pre-Modern Period: Anatomy, Appearance and A Priori Beliefs
Throughout history there has been a fine line between the consideration of “hermaphroditic” bodies – usually those with visibly atypical external genitalia – as miracle (roughly, Douglas’ fifth approach to anomaly) and as monstrosity. Importantly, as Thomas Laqueur contends in Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, the ways in which even male-female sex difference has been figured at given times in history have been “largely unconstrained by what was actually known about this or that bit of anatomy, this or that physiological process”, and “derive instead from the rhetorical exigencies of the moment” (Laqueur 1990: 243). He says,
“The history of the representation of the anatomical differences between man and woman is… extraordinarily independent of the actual structures of these organs or of what was known about them. Ideology, not accuracy of observation, determined how they were seen and which differences would matter” (Laqueur 1990: 88).
In other words, beliefs about anatomical difference reflect existing beliefs about the cosmic and social order, and are part of what reproduces them. Although we might now like to suppose that our knowledge of sex and gender relies solely on rigorous scientific observation, actually, as Crasnow implies, what is observed is always affected by what one is looking for in the first place. The “evident” differences between male and female bodies which make them mutually exclusive and discrete are only so evident because of particular meanings attached to specific characteristics a priori. A tall, broad, muscular man may be characterized as particularly masculine and a small, slim woman as particularly feminine; but there are also tall, broad, muscular women and small, slim men. There are men with fatty breast tissue and women without it. As Warnke argues, arguing that most characteristics are always and ineluctably “sexed” (that is, in this case, linked to one particular sex) makes as little sense as deeming certain characteristics irreducibly and incontrovertibly “raced” (Warnke 2001)[25]. Something like this is going on when individuals with higher levels of testosterone are labelled “aggressive”, and when “aggression” is – circularly – said to be a “male” attribute. This does not mean there may not be a clustering of particular characteristics – individuals who produce more oestrogen and progesterone are likely to have a broadly different distribution of body fat from those who produce androgens – but it does mean acknowledging the self-reinforcing quality of such clusterings (if slimness is considered a “feminine” quality, this is likely to prompt more women to keep their bodies slim, which then buttresses slimness as “characteristic” of women).
Part of what has continued to inform particular binary models of human sex has been the belief – reinforced by some strands of Christian theology – that human sex must coincide with human gender, where masculine and feminine characteristics are deemed to complement and complete each other. However, the idea that there are two (and only two) different sexes is a strikingly recent one. Laqueur argues that, throughout the Graeco-Roman era, for example, beliefs about gender meant that it made sense for male bodies and female bodies to be figured as sharing in a single sex – though to different degrees. In the Hippocratic model, sex was figured as a continuum with (unequivocal) male and female at either end and hermaphrodites in between. Aristotle viewed the two sexes as more distinct, and the hermaphrodite as an individual who was authentically one sex but who also possessed “extra” material of the other sex, perhaps from an abortive twin (Dreger 1998: 30). Removing this “surplus” matter, Aristotle believed, would reveal a perfect individual of one sex or the other. Laqueur believes that the Hippocratic and Aristotelian representations are both instances of a “one sex” model, viewing male and female as, respectively, more and less perfect reflections of a single larger human state, where females are merely incomplete males. Later theorists amplified this “one sex” view, figuring female reproductive organs as inverse or inferior versions of male organs; Galen believed women must produce sperm, for they had “testes” and sexual urges, as men did (Laqueur 1990: 40). Female gonads were figured as male-gonads-but-less-so (Laqueur 1990: 40); females could not have a sex or sexuality actively, specifically or distinctly their own, but only a pale imitation of males’. Laqueur expands,
“Claims that the vagina was an internal penis or that the womb was a female scrotum should… be understood as images in the flesh of truths far better secured elsewhere. They are another way of saying, with Aristotle, that woman is to man as a wooden triangle is to a brazen one or that woman is to man as the imperfect eyes of the mole are to the more perfect eyes of other creatures. Anatomy in the context of sexual difference was a representational strategy that illuminated a more stable extracorporeal reality” (Laqueur 1990: 35).
Right up until the 17th century, in fact, argues Laqueur, sex remained a sociological rather than an ontological category (Laqueur 1990: 8).[26] He holds that the major conceptual divide occurred in the 18th century, when “a biology of cosmic hierarchy gave way to a biology of incommensurability, anchored in the body, in which the relationship of men to women… was not given as one of equality or inequality but rather of difference” (Laqueur 1990: 207).
For Laqueur, then, cultural discourses shape how individual and social experience is understood. In the Graeco-Roman period, biological maleness and femaleness were mapped onto already-socially-sanctioned “gender” significations (though it is, of course, anachronistic to project backwards modern patterns and distinctions of gender and sex). The main focus was on the maintenance of status, as reinforced through correct gender functions; the genitals merely facilitated these. For instance, while for the Greeks it was not shameful in itself for two men to have sexual intercourse, it was shameful if the more powerful man was the one penetrated, as this conflicted with the given order of things, muddying hierarchies of status (Laqueur 1990: 52). The births of children who appeared as if they would be infertile in adulthood (because of ambiguous or missing genitalia) interfered with the way in which biological reproduction helped to perpetuate the reproduction of particular social norms. Aristotle thus attributed hermaphroditic births to a disruption in order rather than in nature – a traversing of the socially, as well as cosmically, desirable. It was believed that females could spontaneously reproduce without male influence – but that such births would be of monstrous, soulless children, since it was the male sperm which was held to provide the “spiritual”, rational matter. As hermaphroditic children were thought to be the result of parthenogenesis, they threatened gender boundaries twice: through the absence of the male element in their generation; and in and through their own unusual bodies. Table IV of the Duodecim Tabulae, believed to be the basis of Roman law, stated that an obviously deformed or “monstrous” child, or one different from other humans – which would include a child with ambiguous external genitalia – should be put to death (see Johnson, Coleman-Norton & Bourne 1961).
The one-sex model might also be read as having influenced, if indirectly, some much later theological sexual anthropologies, such as those of Aquinas (who could argue that, since women were lesser versions of men, women were also less perfect mirrors of the image of God) and of Karl Barth. Although Barth appears to stress the difference of men and women, as we will see in Chapter 2, and thus appears to have a strongly two-sex model, a shortcoming in his theological sexual anthropology is his failure to conceptualize women other than as a necessary concomitant of men. Women are not therefore truly “other” to men for Barth, but exist rather only in relation to men, the necessary facilitators and repositories of masculine “completeness”. Arguably, then, the supposed “otherness” of women in Barth’s model is nothing but men reflected back at themselves. Hangovers of the one-sex model might also be said to persist in what Irigaray terms “hom(m)osexual” culture. “Hom(m)osexual” implies that all human sex-activity is actually rooted in the “homme”, the male; “heterosexuality” is thereby actually always already about ties between hommes, men (as I discuss further in Chapter 2). Irigaray says,
“The exchanges upon which patriarchal societies are based take place exclusively among men. Women, signs, commodities, and currency always pass from one man to another… Thus all economic organization is hom(m)osexual… Woman exists only as an occasion for mediation, transaction, transition, transference, for man and his fellow man, indeed between man and himself” (Irigaray 1985b: 192-3).
This is important, because I propose that much fear or distaste at bodies which do not “fit” social norms – intersexed, transsexual, impaired and disfigured bodies – also stems from a failure to make space for otherness which is not simply self-reflective.
Sharon Preves notes that, in the 12th century, it was believed that the uterus had three separate chambers and that the sex of the child conceived would depend on the chamber in which it was implanted: one chamber for male children, one for females, and one for hermaphrodites (Preves 2003: 34). This belief meant that “hermaphroditism was conceptualized as a natural, if not expected, state” (Preves 2003: 34). Nature was not equated with a male-female either/or binary, despite the relative infrequency of births of children deemed hermaphroditic. During this period the Church thus allowed hermaphrodites to choose whether to live as men or women depending on which “organ” the individual felt to be more “active”. Crucially, however, once the decision had been made and the individual had attempted sexual activity in one role, they could not transition to the other lest the situation should invoke what the 12th-century cleric from Notre Dame, Peter the Chanter, called “any similarity to the role inversion of sodomy, which is detested by God” (quoted in Preves 2003: 36). This point is crucial, for it betrays the extent to which the concern was to eradicate the “unnatural” appearance of particular acts or lifestyles; even in cases of genital ambiguity, the party line was that once a role had been chosen it could not be altered, partly to avoid invocations of homosexuality and partly because of the social and economic roles also attached to identity within a particular gender. But it is essential to recognize that this was always a pragmatic and arbitrary demarcation, based on bolstering a priori beliefs about natural human activity, and foreshadowing Kessler’s assertion that “gender is marked by the obviousness of an organ and not its existence” (Kessler 1998: 99).
1.3 The 16th to 19th Centuries: Regulation, Classification, Taxonomy
During the early modern period, hermaphroditic bodies became potent symbols for the vulnerable, shaken body politic, and thus regained an almost mythic significance. Ruth Gilbert’s Early Modern Hermaphrodites analyses representations of hermaphrodites in predominantly British poetic, literary, popular and scientific texts of the 16th-18th centuries, and argues that the issues raised by the existence of hermaphroditic bodies highlighted questions about the very nature of order and knowledge hammered out during the era – “stories about the fears and desires of the early modern period” (Gilbert 2002: 1). Private conduct and private existence began to become public property, regulated by professionals, to an extent that they had not been before. This may have been motivated by a desire to maintain a cohesive national identity and order, perceived to have been threatened by the revolutionary era of Commonwealth rule. In the 16th century, says Gilbert, interest in hermaphroditic bodies shifted from their spiritual connotations – as harbingers of good or ill fortune, cosmic communications from the heavens – to the mere discernable facts of their physicality. Previously, hermaphrodites had been associated with the mythical image of the androgyne, a perfect unity of male and female in one being (Gilbert 2002: 10).
The 16th century also saw concerns about clarifying hermaphrodites’ status for economic reasons; because, for instance, of inheritance laws:
“If the hermaphrodite could inherit property s/he paradoxically entered into a social and economic system which could not recognize his/her existence” (Gilbert 2002: 42).[27]
There was a new importance ascribed to dress at this time, too, which Gilbert links with the rise of the market economy, where clothes signified identity and status, literally making the man (or woman) (Gilbert 2002: 79). This may have heightened suspicions about people who appeared to dress deceptively. Beliefs about bodies still map onto demarcations which will affect multiple aspects of individuals’ lives including their economic security; Marcella Althaus-Reid notes that transvestites in Argentina are at particular risk of economic vulnerability since they are often denied “respectable” jobs (see Chapter 3).
In the 18th century, the female-related genitalia acquired specific labels – ovaries were no longer simply called “gonads” or “female testes” – suggesting a shift to figuring femaleness as more than a washed-out version of maleness (though even the new specifically female-related names were given by men. Existing idiolectic names used by women themselves for their body parts were not elevated to medical acceptability). Alice Dreger, focusing on the medical treatments of hermaphrodites in England and France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, suggests that the explosion of interest in hermaphrodites as such in this period may have been due to new evidence that established gender/sex roles were not the only ones, and that there was not necessarily a single “type” of male and female. The rise of feminism and gradual move to more widespread acceptance of overt homosexuality, as well as ethnographic and anthropological studies of sexual patterns in other cultures, led to an atmosphere of exploration (Dreger 1998: 26) – even if there was a tendency to depict those from other cultures as “divine savages”, romantically portrayed as possessing simple, unrestricted attitudes to sexuality (Herdt 1994b: 36). Although hermaphrodites had been figured as “monstrous” at various points, the new medical interest in them in the taxonomic climate of the 19th century led to a situation where “the teratological was stripped of its wonder and made merely pathological” (Dreger 1998: 35). European doctors and scientists, claims Dreger, wanted to understand hermaphroditism so that they could work out how to eradicate it – to avoid the possibility of unwitting homosexual relationships, as well as to prevent conflicts between an individual’s “true” and “lived” sexes. However, there also seems to have been a conscious concern to promote the well-being of hermaphrodites themselves – brought into focus by the case in France of Alexina/Abel (alias Herculine) Barbin, recounted by Dreger and others[28], well-known via the popular media of the day.
19th- and 20th-century advances in endocrinology, and understandings of the divergence of male-related and female-related anatomy in the six-week foetus and beyond, eventually led to a solid naturalization of what Laqueur calls the “two-sex” model. He argues that it was changes in cultural assumptions about what “male” and “female” actually meant which led to a new spin being put on the significance of hormones and foetal divergence, rather than hormones and foetal divergence per se changing attitudes about sex (Laqueur 1990: 88, 243). “Advances” in knowledge of anatomy, in Laqueur’s account, could not of themselves have led to a paradigm shift in conceptions of sex and gender until discourse had shifted sufficiently. Scientific discoveries about physiology had always to be figured in the context of what was known, a priori, about men and women; to reduce men and women to actually being their physiology was a startlingly recent development. Thus unambiguous sex was also not “scientifically” self-evident.
The acceptance of the two-sex model led to the conclusion that if the sexes were fundamentally different, not just stages on the same road as in one-sex or continuum-type models, then everyone must belong to one or the other. In 1876, the German pathologist Theodor Klebs formulated a taxonomy which divided hermaphrodites into three categories based on gonads: “true hermaphrodites” (with one testis and one ovary), “male pseudohermaphrodites” (with testes),[29] and “female pseudohermaphrodites” (with ovaries) (Preves 2003: 27-9).[30] Klebs’ use of the “pseudo” prefix emphasized the idea that true sex was actually defined by gonads alone: the AIS girl “appeared” hermaphroditic but was “really” male. Klebs’ system of classification became the prevailing one, so that far fewer people were classed as hermaphrodites than before (Dreger 1998: 146). The rarity of “true hermaphrodites” in Klebs’ model reinforced the view that, almost without exception, everyone fitted into one or other of the two “true” sexes. This may have led to a heightened suspicion of hermaphrodites and an increased sense of their bodies as pathological rather than just natural but unusual. Klebs, sited well and truly in what Dreger terms the “age of gonads” (Dreger 1998: 30), bolstered its taxonomy. Dreger notes that doctors at this time got only as far as seeing hermaphrodites as exceptions to the male/female model, rather than asking whether the doubt “extended far beyond the individual case to the endeavour as a whole” (Dreger 1998: 83). William Blair Bell, in 1915, was the first doctor seriously to challenge the gonad-only model of sex, saying that secondary sexual characteristics should also be considered (Dreger 1998: 163-4). However, the language of “pseudo-hermaphroditism” persisted well into the late 20th century; the blanket term “male pseudo-hermaphroditism” for a range of conditions including AIS and 5-ARD, though, came to be rejected by most intersexed people both for its lack of specificity and because of its sense that intersexed people were really those of one unequivocal sex who were masquerading as something else, rather than those who genuinely represented something beyond male-and-female.
1.4 The 20th Century: Money, Money, Money… and the Early Surgery Paradigm
During the first part of the 20th century, particularly after transsexual surgery began to be performed, and in light of advances in urology and endocrinology (Preves 2003: 51), the emphasis shifted – in contrast with the attitudes evident during Dreger’s “age of gonads” – from discovery of sex to assignment of sex. Doctors accepted that individuals’ “true sex” could not be reduced simply and unequivocally to gonads, nor to chromosomes, genitalia, gender identity or sexual orientation, but was a mixture of all these. Surgery to “correct” non-standard genitalia began in around the 1920s, becoming far more common after 1950 as a result of the availability of cortisone treatment for the treatment of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. From the 1950s onwards, children who were given treatment for salt-wasting CAH sometimes received genital surgery as well, if they had any degree of genital ambiguity.[31] From here it was a small step to treating the unusual genitals themselves as the medical issue. Ambiguous genitals came to be called “diseased” or “disordered”, rendering the body itself somehow deviant, and the genitals a medical emergency. Much of the rationale behind early corrective surgery was in order that the children concerned should be able to grow up as “normally” as possible, and segue unremarkably into ordinary masculine and feminine (and, moreover, heterosexual) adult gender roles. However, as Iain Morland notes,
“With naturally intersexed genitalia, a body can pass urine, experience sexual pleasure, catch sexually-transmitted diseases, or simply be unaware of its own genitals – just like females and males” (Morland 2001b: 364).
The majority of corrective surgery before the 1950s was done on intersexed adults who had autonomously sought medical advice about their physiology, often as a result of discovering after embarking on sexual relationships that their anatomies did not “work” for conventional sexual intercourse (because, for example, of shallow or absent vaginas) or after investigative enquiries about a failure to menstruate. This was made possible by advances in sex-change surgery on adult transsexuals (see Chapter 3). During the 1950s the first paediatric endocrinology unit was founded at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and it became customary to do hormone and chromosomal analysis to work out intersexed children’s genetic make-up. The unit’s staff came to include John Money (1921-2006), the clinical psychologist now notorious in intersex circles for his involvement in the seminal “John/Joan” (David Reimer) study.[32]
Money and his colleagues asserted that gender identity was plastic before about 18 months of age, and that if “corrective” surgery on intersexed genitals was done before this time, and the child raised unambiguously in the new gender role, he or she would have no problem identifying with the sex of rearing throughout childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Money believed that, once the chromosomes had passed their “message” to the generic foetal gonads to develop as testes or ovaries, they had no further direct influence on subsequent sexual and psychosexual differentiation (Money and Ehrhardt 1972: 2). Juvenile gender identity, held Money, was based on a range of influences, including, most significantly, one’s “sex of rearing”: the gender signals given by parents and other carers through their treatment of one as a girl or boy. Pubertal hormones also had an influence, through influencing post-adolescent morphology and “eroticism” (Money and Ehrhardt 1972: 3), but adult gender identity, too, largely followed what had been “fixed” in infancy. Money has been criticized for apparent inconsistencies in his theory, for his strong privileging of the social followed by what appears to be “a quite crude recourse to the primacy of the biological body” (Hird and Germon 2001: 169). However, Money did not claim that genitals in themselves magically produced a particular gender identity and role; rather, he believed, they were markers prompting particular treatment by parents and other caregivers, which would, in turn, reinforce the child’s sense of its own gender (Money 1981: 382, 387). Money believed it was crucial for young children to receive unambiguous gender messages, particularly if (as with intersexed children) there was any doubt about their sex – and that surgery would reinforce this. He believed parents would be incapable of treating uncorrected children unambiguously,[33] claiming that intersexed children who did not receive surgery would be “handicapped by a sense of shame and mortification” (Money and Ehrhardt 1972: 15), swing between identifying as boy or girl, and suffer immense cognitive dissonance; for, he said, most human beings could not tolerate “such a biographical inconsistency” (Money and Ehrhardt 1972: 15).[34] Part of the justification for early surgery was also that, since genital surgery was so traumatic, the earlier it occurred the less chance there was of the child remembering it.[35]
By 1972, largely on the basis of the alleged success of the John/Joan case (Kipnis and Diamond 1998), early surgery had become so commonplace that Money and Ehrhardt were largely preaching to the converted when they chided,
“When physicians fail to schedule first-stage corrective genital surgery for a hermaphroditic infant, it usually means that they have covertly postponed a fixed commitment to the sex or rearing because they do not feel secure in committing themselves to one decision or the other. The experts’ uncertainty is rapidly conveyed to the parents whose own equivocation is then covertly transmitted to the child, as contagiously as though it were rubella” (Money and Ehrhardt 1972: 15).
Money’s insistence on cohesive genitals to promote consistent gender bolstered the notion that, for instance, a boy with no penis would be better off made to look like a girl, and that his feminine upbringing would overcome his XY chromosomal make-up. This led to some boy children, typical in every respect but for a small penis or extreme hypospadias,[36] having their testes and penis removed and a rudimentary vaginal opening created. Corrective surgery for intersex was not unheard-of before Money’s reassignment of the non-intersexed Reimer, but it was the alleged resounding triumph of the case which led to Money’s views on early surgery becoming accepted practice in the vast majority of units. The assumption that sex must be bolstered by the “appropriate” anatomy is interesting theologically, as we shall see, in light of theologies of disability and the possibility of non-procreative (and non-heterosexual) readings of human sexual activity.
Although the overwhelming majority of intersex conditions were in no way threatening to the physiological health of the children concerned,[37] surgery for most intersex conditions came to be done as soon as possible after birth. There was little regard for implications for sexual pleasure in adulthood, such as genital pain or insensitivity, and inability to orgasm (Kessler 1998: 56). Some genitals were called “satisfactory” even when the clitoris had been completely removed (Kessler 1998: 55). Dreger notes,
“A constructed ‘vagina’ does not have… to be self-lubricating or even to be at all sensitive to count as ‘functional’… Intersexuality doctors often talk about vaginas in intersex children as the absence of something, as a space, a place to put a penis” (Dreger 1998: 184).[38]
As very little follow-up work was done before the late 1990s, the procedures tended to be assessed on their aesthetic success by surgeons, such as the appearance of a clitoris or the ability of a vagina to be penetrated by a penis (Preves 2003: 56),[39] rather than their later sensual success by the patients themselves. Most children were assigned girls, as it was harder to build a penis than to hollow out a vagina (Preves 2003: 55). Those with large clitorises typically had them cut back or removed altogether. Any child whose genitals at birth did not fit the accepted medical measurements (under 0.9cm for a clitoris, over 2.4cm for a penis) (Preves 2003: 55)[40] was likely to be adjusted – without their consent, but also often without that of their parents. As we have seen, this was and is highly problematically ethically.
1.5 The 1990s Onwards: Politics, Protest and Calls for Change
1.5.1 The Rise of Support Groups
In the 1990s, the revelation that David Reimer’s sex reassignment as Brenda had, in fact, not been successful, and that John Money had continued to refer to it as such in books and papers despite being aware of this, led to Money’s discrediting (Colapinto 2001, 2004). Moreover, many people who had had genital surgery as children began to protest about their treatment. Support and advocacy groups run by and for intersexed people had also begun to be formed: Cheryl Chase founded the Intersex Society of North America in 1993, and it had a far more political and militant bent (Turner 1999: 457) than existing groups, such as the Turner’s Syndrome Society (Preves 2001: 542) and Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome Support Group. Preves comments that such support groups were crucial in allowing people to access information about their conditions which may not have been forthcoming from the medical profession, providing role-models of people with similar conditions, and being a site for new, positive outworkings of selfhood (Preves 2003: 126-133). Some individuals carried out political protest, such as the picketing of the American Academy of Paediatricians’ annual meeting in Boston by members of ISNA – going under the name Hermaphrodites With Attitude – in 1996 (Beck 1996). Such public, visible action, as well as the information and advice shared in support groups, led to more of a tendency for parents to insist on delaying surgery and hormone therapy until their children could express consent or understanding of their own conditions and gender identities.[41]
This was a crucial move, for many intersexed adults have claimed that it was the results of the surgery and other medical intervention they underwent as young children that left them literally and metaphorically scarred and marked out, rather than their original physical conditions which, if left unaltered until pre-pubescence or later, may not necessarily have stigmatized them to the same extent. Howard Devore, a clinical psychotherapist who has worked extensively with intersexed children and their families, and is opposed to early genital surgery after he himself was treated for extreme hypospadias (undergoing eighteen surgeries, the first at three months old, including at least one every year until he was 12 – Gale and Soomekh 2000, Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development 2006b: 109), says,
“The doctors insist that you can’t let a child go to school with ambiguous genitals, but the genitals they created were certainly strange-looking… There was no reason for some of the work that they did on me outside of arrogance or incompetence… If they had just left my urinary meatus… where it was, at the base of my penis right by the scrotum, I could have avoided at least 12 of those surgeries” (Devore 1999: 80-1).
1.5.2 “Good enough” Genitals: The Use of Moral Language for Intersex
If the ethical problems stemming from early corrective surgery are manifold, it is interesting that a fairly moralistic set of terminology is also attached to intersex and to genitals themselves. The maintenance of status still appears to be in large part what motivates intersex surgeries, but it is now the status attached to “normality” and the ability to pass as unremarkable which is most significant.[42] However, what is deemed normal is never an objective or a priori decision, but is shaped by what else is going on in a given society or culture. This is important, because sex in much theological discourse has come to be figured as somehow “prior” to gender. It is for this reason, for example, that many Christians deem sex reassignment surgery (SRS) for transsexuals to be illegitimate, because it is perceived to be putting more store by an individual’s gender identity than by their “irreducible”, “undeniable” “biological” sex. Sexual acts deemed undesirable may include those figured as “unnatural” because they do not lead to procreation (as in a natural law mindset), but, too, might be those which do not reinforce particular human social hierarchies (Moore 2001: 142-3). These vary from society to society, and are rarely openly acknowledged. “Self-evident” patterns of maleness and femaleness still largely reside in assumptions about the “goodness” of clear gender and access to particular gendered privileges. Likewise, it might be said that the human bodies deemed unnatural are also those which do not easily fit into gender norms – rather than, as might be initially thought, sex norms, which may be figured as more evident and less arbitrary. In the early modern period, says Gilbert,
“Reactions to sexual indeterminacy revealed anxieties about collective rather than individual well-being, about cultural rather than personal identity” (Gilbert 2002: 7).
Not much, it seems, has changed. The medical criteria used for “success” in surgery on intersexed children are still based – particularly where the kinds of reforms proposed by ISNA have not yet been implemented – on how the “finished” genitals will measure up. The genitals must “work” for heterosexual penetration. South African urologist Christie Steinmann is not alone in believing that it is usually best to “make it [the intersexed child] a girl if you can, because you don’t know if you are going to have good enough penile growth after puberty to have… [a] good enough penis to have sexual intercourse” (in van Huyssteen 2003).[43] Suzanne Kessler, in discussing surgical protocols surrounding micropenis, says, “In the case of the undersized phallus, what is ambiguous is not whether this is a penis but whether it is ‘good enough’ to remain one” (Kessler 1998: 19-20).
When slippage into lazy metaphor occurs and a “good” penis comes to mean something other than what it seems – not only one which can penetrate a vagina, or urinate from its tip, but one which thereby reinforces social mores in which men, to be marked out as men, must be able to penetrate vaginas and urinate through the tips of their penises – then “natural” and socially-determined goods are conflated. Despite the fact that, for many intersexed people who have undergone clitorectomy and vaginoplasty, to be penetrated by a penis is unlikely to bring about any pleasurable sensation, and fertility is usually not an option, this criterion of “goodness”, supervening on “normality”, has been well and truly hammered home. In the words of Louise Thompson, a woman in her mid-20s with ovotestes undergoing repeat vaginoplasty in the Secret Intersex documentary:
“It’ll make me feel whole as a person, but at the minute I don’t really know where I am, because there’s not a lot I can do… I mean, if I get married I basically can’t have sex at the minute, so I don’t really feel whole” (in Godwin 2004).
The extent to which Louise’s surgery has been “freely sought” is unclear, but it is evident that she feels that she is not free to be “whole” without it. Doctors in the United States have, it is said, sometimes refused vaginoplasty or other treatment to enhance sexual function to adult women who sought it themselves but were not “legally married or involved in a monogamous heterosexual relationship” (Preves 2003: 57). Although there are good grounds for delaying many genital surgeries until intersexed individuals are ready to be sexually active, decisions about when this time has come should not be limited by external views about only marital heterosexual intercourse being legitimate.
At the Johns Hopkins Division of Pediatric Endocrinology website, one object of female corrective surgery is still given as being that the genitalia should be made “correct for sexual function” (Migeon, Wisniewski and Gearhart 2001). Since orgasm and genital pleasure will not be heightened by surgery – scarring and stenosis can occur as a side-effect – it seems the assumption by the doctors at Johns Hopkins is still that “sexual function” refers to ability be penetrated. Butler (Butler 1990: 71) comments that to “become” or “literalize” a gender is to naturalize the assumptions of that gender surrounding – for instance – which parts of one’s body bring sexual pleasure; which pleasures are allowed and which are repressed. Literalization necessitates a compulsory “forgetfulness” of the old gender. For example, Butler states that (pre-operative) transsexuals sometimes imagine body parts which they do not possess, in order to try to participate in the particular pleasure thereof. This leads to their rejecting the eroticization of parts they do have; a pre-operative transwoman might take the sensations produced by having her testes touched and project them into labia instead.[44] What is interesting here is that, within intersex surgery too, the emphasis seems to be on the “right” kinds of orgasms, the “right” loci for pleasure. Robert A. Crouch, in a 1998 article, discusses the notion that a “good” clitoris and vagina must be small enough and large enough respectively; that a clitoris should be modest-looking and a vagina should be able to admit a penis. Crouch says,
“Looming in the background of all this is a moralistic and gendered cultural script that views women as passive recipients during sex… and not themselves agents of sexual desire and feeling” (Crouch 1998: 374).
A surgeon can argue that a clitoris is less essential to a CAH girl if he believes that she “should” orgasm vaginally. Here, literalization is a negation of extra-binary pleasures, whose acceptance would undermine the binary altogether. A theologically broadened conception of desirable or legitimate eroticisms could benefit not only intersexed and transsexual people but also others whose particular erogenous treasures are deemed illegitimate within a narrow conception of appropriate sexual expression and enjoyment.
Although Church statements on intersex itself, particularly in light of the ethical problems posed by the early surgery paradigm, have been all but non-existent, reports on transsexualism have usually betrayed a conservative attitude to human sex and gender and have suggested that variations from these are disorders requiring psychological treatment. (This is explored in more detail in Chapter 3.) Some churches in the USA seem particularly loath to embrace intersex, given a somewhat blanket association of intersex with homosexuality and (thus) immorality. ISNA’s handbook for parents of intersexed children contains a section entitled “What to tell people who may think DSDs are sinful” (Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development 2006b: 42-3). One influential authority figure who has (briefly) addressed the issue is Charles “Chuck” Colson, whose daily commentary on Christian living is aired on over 1,000 radio stations across the United States. Colson’s view, according to his 1996 radio commentary entitled “Blurred Biology” – written in response to Fausto-Sterling’s work on intersex – is that
“The Bible teaches that the Fall into sin affected biology itself -- that nature is now marred and distorted from its original perfection. This truth gives us a basis for fighting evil, for working to alleviate disease and deformity -- including helping those unfortunate children born with genital deformities… For the Christian, nature is not our basis for determining normality. Scripture tells us how God created us before the Fall, and how He intended us to live: as males and females, reflecting His own image. We take our standards and identity from His revelation of our original nature” (Colson 1996).
As I show in the following chapters, however, even a “Bible-based” theological anthropology is already more complicated than this.
1.5.3 “Why All The Unsolicited Attention?”: Corrective Surgery and Stigmatization
As we have seen, part of the rationale behind early corrective surgery is to avoid trauma for the child who might otherwise be bullied or suffer depression because they are different. However, it has been argued by some intersexed people that, in its zeal to eliminate anything which does not fit into the normal male-female categories, corrective surgery has often actually drawn more attention to intersexed people’s inconsistency than the anatomy itself has (Morris 2004: 27). Surgery to make children “fit in”, it is said, screams that they are something freakish, which, in itself, alienates them further. It suggests that some human bodies, and specifically some human sexes, are more valid than others, and that “fixing” those perceived as less valid is an appropriate human project. However, among Preves’ intersexed subjects, feelings of shame about their bodies were strongest among those who had had repeated surgical corrections or medical examination of their genitals (Preves 2003: 63). Repeated touching, scrutinizing or manipulating of their genitals was construed by some individuals as abuse. Fausto-Sterling says,
“One method of measuring penile growth and function in intersex boys involved the doctor masturbating the boy to achieve erection. Young girls who receive vaginal surgery suffer similarly invasive practices… Medicine’s focus on creating the proper genitals, meant to prevent psychological suffering, clearly contributes to it” (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 86).
One woman with AIS reports that, during an examination at the age of nine,
“I was lying on the table, spread-legged, with my feet in stirrups. The nurse came over to me and insisted upon holding my hand… This was a nice gesture but I… thought it unnecessary – unnecessary until the moment arrived when Dr. Jones broke my hymen, that is. The pain shot through my body like a bullet searing my flesh. I was utterly shocked. No one had warned me of what was about to happen” (Fran at ).
The erasure of difference raises its own problems. However, more immediately pressing are the ongoing consequences faced by those who have undergone corrective surgery. Although many intersexed people are happy to have had surgery, others have spoken out against their treatment. Some individuals who began to speak publicly about intersex in the late 1990s felt the gender assigned in infancy did not fit with what they now knew of themselves – that they either felt like members of the “opposite” sex, or had a liminal, “third”-sex identity. Others resented the fact that their capacity for orgasm or any kind of pleasurable sexual activity had been removed for the sake of making their genitals look less unusual (Morris 2004: 26), or to allow vaginal penetration (Kessler 1998: 56). Perhaps most problematically, such surgery almost invariably took place without the patients’ consent, either because they were very young at the time or because (in later or repeat operations as older children and adolescents) they had simply not been asked:
“At the age of 13, I was scheduled for surgery. I was not allowed to accept myself; I was told what is normal and how I should be. I was never told that I was viable; or that who I was is all I had to be… My body was altered to meet social values, but my values were never discussed. My puberty was focused on vaginal function before I had a chance to care” (Morris 2004: 25).
“They didn’t mention the part where they were going to slice off my clitoris. All of it. I guess the doctors assumed I was as horrified by my outsized clit as they were, and there was no need to discuss it with me” (Moreno 1999: 138).
“Part of my left upper arm was pressed into genital duty here [to make a vagina as part of corrective surgery at the age of 14], which bothered me greatly when I came out of surgery. I wish I’d been consulted or at least informed. Of course, why would I need to be informed? The objective was to make the hermaphrodite fuckable” (Triea 1999: 143)
Some were traumatized by having childhoods where a series of curious doctors and medical students poked and prodded at their genitals, conducted painful and often unsuccessful follow-up surgeries, and added to their belief that, if all this was necessary, they must have been hideous and monstrous as they were (Preves 2003: 74):
“The amount of medical resources that were brought to bear against a 14-year-old intersexed kid are pretty amazing, considering that life-saving surgery and treatments are routinely denied people… Why all the unsolicited attention?” (Triea 1999: 141).
Others felt that the realization (in later childhood or adulthood) that they had not been told the truth about themselves – and that their parents had been co-opted into “collaborating in a web of white lies, ellipses and mystifications” (Kessler 1998: 22) – was far more damaging than simply having unusual genitalia would have been:
“It is… disorienting when you have always considered yourself loved and cared for to discover that your parents and doctors have lied and left you to your own devices to discover [the] truth… Learning the truth about being intersexed can be temporarily traumatic. But not knowing the truth culminates in experiences that are almost universally tragic” (Groveman 1998: 358).
“Women… with… AIS report being more preoccupied with… their memories of having been lied to and put on display… than with what they call ‘nonissues’ such as XY chromosomes, testes and infertility, the features of their condition focused on by medicine and psychology” (Kessler 1998: 97).
The encouragement to keep their intersex conditions secret further exacerbated intersexed individuals’ sense of isolation (Preves 2003: 77). Intersexed people have also spoken out against being made objects of research first and persons second – being objectified in medical photographs with blacked-out faces (Preves 2003: 67):
“The most humiliating part, I think, were the photographs… I was nine years old when I had to have medical photos taken at [Johns Hopkins]. My mother tried to joke with me that I was posing for Playboy. I failed to see the humor. I had to stand naked in front of a white wall with height markings etched on it… Then I had to lie down on a table while the photographer zoomed in on my spread legs and exposed genitalia. My mother had to assist in spreading apart the lips of my vagina so they could get an even more graphic view. I was so embarrassed. I was so ashamed” (Fran at ).
“The worst thing is being put in a prone position, half-naked, [and] told to spread your legs while five or six other people look in your crotch and probe. That definitely had a direct effect on my sexuality. It is embarrassing. It is shameful. It’s painful” (Gaby, in Preves 2003: 67).
Since corrective surgery in infancy usually necessitates further surgery at puberty, the justification that carrying it out early will get it “over and done with” is a somewhat misleading one. Although openness about a genital condition will not necessarily preclude embarrassment on the part of the pubescent child or teenager, some embarrassment is preferable to irreversible surgery about which the patient knows nothing until it is over.
1.5.4 Outing the Outcomes: Follow-Up Studies and Access to Information
A major problem since intersex surgeries became common in the 1960s was a lack of follow-up reports about patients’ ongoing physiological and psychological outcomes. In Kessler’s 1998 study Lessons from the Intersexed she claimed that many doctors still acknowledged that their attitudes to intersex were largely dictated by Money and Ehrhardt’s 1972 book (Kessler 1998: 13ff). This stemmed, in part, from the wide prevalence of early surgeries and the comparative dearth of non-corrected intersexed adults with whom outcome comparisons could be made (Creighton and Liao 2004: 659). Other perceived problems included the bias introduced by the self-selecting nature of intersexed adults who might volunteer for more ad hoc follow-up studies (Creighton and Liao 2004: 659). A lack of access to information about their medical histories was felt by some intersexed people to disempower them further, and to erode their capacity to take ownership of their past experiences. Thanks in large part to pressure from intersex groups, since the mid-1990s there has been accelerated coverage of intersex outcomes in clinical and psychological journals, with a few names being particularly influential in their claims that intersex treatment needs thorough review and excellent follow-up, and that many surgeries should at least be deferred (Journal of Clinical Ethics 9.4 [Winter 1998]; Creighton and Liao 2004; Creighton and Minto 2001; Creighton, Minto and Steele 2001; Liao and Boyle 2004). Johns Hopkins University also embarked on a series of follow-up studies on adults with such conditions as CAIS, CAH and micropenis who had been through the Gender Identity Clinic as children since the 1940s, comparing outcomes for those who had and had not had surgery. These studies began to appear in 2000. Intersex activists have stressed that research and follow-up must major on counselling, support and education for intersexed people and their families, not just on funding more and “better” surgical techniques. Cheryl Chase is particularly opposed to claims by surgeons that advances in surgery alone will eventually solve all the problems surrounding intersex.[45]
Since many intersexed people have had trouble accessing their medical records or being given accurate information about their conditions, this has added to the sense of secrecy and shame surrounding their diagnoses. Preves suggests that if intersexed children were given age-appropriate information about their conditions from as soon as they could understand it, this would avoid a dramatic and potentially distressing moment of revelation later on (Preves 2003: 108). It would also reduce the feeling of powerlessness in some children to own or describe their bodies: Morgan Holmes, for example, reports that, after her own genital surgery at the age of seven, she could not articulate what had happened to her because she had no vocabulary for the name or function of the tissue that had been removed (Holmes 1998: 223). There continues to be debate within the medical profession about the extent to which full disclosure during intersex treatment might help or hinder the psychological well-being of the intersexed person (Alderson, Madill and Balen 2004: 82-3), and about whether failing to carry out surgery is really any less harmful overall than carrying it out. However, as Chase stresses, ISNA’s suggested programme of treatment for intersexed people “includes diagnosis, sex assignment, peer and professional counseling, and offers cosmetic surgery to patients who are mature enough to make an informed decision… [It] cannot be characterized as ‘do nothing’” (Chase 2003: 240).
At the website of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, the online guide for parents of children with “abnormal sex differentiation” still counsels early surgery for most conditions but also stresses the importance of counselling for parents and children, and advises that children be told as much as possible about their conditions. The latter points were among some of those stressed most strongly in the 1998 Journal of Clinical Ethics articles (Howe 1998, Harmon-Smith 1998,[46] Chase 1998a). Intersexed people, and the parents of intersexed infants, by no means always spurn medical intervention, but one of the largest changes since the mid-1990s is that they are now more likely to demand autonomy and full disclosure in medical treatment, and “have realized that… they need not be treated as fundamentally unacceptable or flawed” (Dreger 1998: 173). Many intersexed people do not wish to be associated with politicized campaigning, but are slowly becoming more likely to meet openness and disclosure from doctors when they do seek information or advice about intersex, or access to their own medical records. Although Justine Marut Schober, a doctor who has been involved with intersex surgeries, claims that “surgeons have always given parents of minors the right to accept or refuse medical advice on behalf of their children” (Schober 1998: 394), testimonials suggest that, in fact, parents have often not known exactly what they were agreeing to (Colapinto 2001: 50). The Johns Hopkins website now says,
“It is extremely important for parents and patients to have a good understanding of both the condition of sex differentiation that affects them, as well as possible ways for dealing with the condition. With this approach, patients will be better able to lead a fulfilled life, and to look forward to an education, career, marriage, and parenthood” (Migeon, Wisniewski and Gearhart: 2001).
Although the assumption still seems to be that a “fulfilled life” could not take place without some intervention, the advice acknowledges that surgery is only one option and that information and education are crucial.
1.5.5 Reconstructing Perfection: The “Restitution Narrative”
Despite the negative testimonies of some intersexed people, it should be borne in mind that surgery to alter unusual genitals has occurred out of good motives as well as what might appear to be dubious ones. Medicine’s and surgery’s propensity to tidy away the atypical has usually stemmed from an endeavour to improve lives, not consciously to enforce a repressive and damaging quasi-normality. This stems in part from what Alice Dreger calls the “restitution narrative” (Dreger 2004, 1998: 185), whereby doctors and families work together to bring about what they genuinely feel is in the child’s best interests (to give the child the “good” of “passing” unremarkably in a given gender) and to buff up what they already believe to be a near-perfect specimen. Dreger, whose 1998 book Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex aimed to “expose” the morally reprehensible nature of non-disclosure and unwarranted early surgical intervention in the treatment of intersexed children, explores in a 2004 article why the “concealment-centred” model of intersex treatment did not begin to crumble immediately on exposure. She concludes that the medical treatment of intersexed people has not changed more, and more quickly, because it is not, after all, so distant from other medical treatments, so its “revelation” is not as shocking as might have been expected. She has come to believe that it is, in fact, fairly commonplace for doctors treating paediatric conditions (other than intersex) to withhold information from children and their parents or guardians “under the guise of bearing the burden of knowledge for them” (Dreger 2004). Moreover, she has realized that the unwillingness of the medical profession to move away from early surgeries for intersex is based, in the 21st century, in a genuine belief that early intervention is a way to show forth the perfection of an already near-perfect child, not to “fix” a monstrous abomination:
“Whereas I used to think that [the] push to ‘normalization’ signaled a rejection of the ‘abnormal’ child, I am now more inclined to think that the push is better seen as a paradoxical loving acceptance of the child. The parent (and pediatric surgeon) sees the child as essentially perfect, and wants the often-cloddish and boorish world to see the same, so she ‘reconstructs’[47] the child to normality or perfection… I think I failed to understand how much parents and surgeons believed in the restitution narrative they spoke. They really think they are restoring the child to the perfection they’ve come to see within that child… In 1998 I thought doctors treating intersex had put themselves in a contradictory position – wanting to help patients while unintentionally hurting them. Now I realize what I am calling them to is a much more contradictory position. How could they put down their tools of ‘correction’ when in their minds that would signal abandoning the child, rather than accepting her?” (Dreger 2004).
Sally Gross concurs that surgeons do not perform intersex surgeries “with malice aforethought” (speaking in van Huyssteen 2003). Doctors are generally not malevolently trying to wield power by imposing particular treatments or outcomes on intersexed people (Kessler 1998: 36). Doctors are taught to improve their patients’ lives (Preves 2001: 545), and the vast majority endeavour to do so.[48] It is not as simple as a medical profession which conspires to wield power over unwitting victims; as Iain Morland notes, discourses about surgical intervention and its critique always happen from multiple narrative sites (see Chapter 2). However, doctors, too, stand in the prevailing culture of ideas not easily shifted (Kessler 1998: 36). When they consider early genital surgery self-evidently restorative (Holmes 2002: 162), doctors are already investing heavily in what appears to be a societal consensus.[49] But as Holmes asks, “If some parents are resistant [to genital surgery on their intersexed children], does this not suggest that there may be less rigidity in the supposed demand for ‘acceptable appearance’ than clinicians think?” (Holmes 2002: 163). The good motives of doctors thus require redirection rather than subsuming.
It will be salient to keep in mind links between this kind of restitution narrative and those of theologies which endeavour to draw outsiders into the fold of salvation from an authentic belief that they will be happier, safer and more fulfilled as a result. Whilst the theological “journey” might be painted as a necessary one from sin (in the Augustinian model) or inadequacy (in the Irenaean model) through grace to redemption for everyone, the medical one is more likely to paint the “fallenness” as limited solely to those whose bodies do not concord with norms deemed already essentially perfect. In light of this, language such as “incomplete” or “unfinished” for intersexed genitals begins to sound less sinister: it stems from a genuine conviction, so Dreger has come to believe, that the intersexed individual’s journey to fulfilment and signification has been unavoidably truncated by a failure to achieve full sexual differentiation, but that medicine can help the individual concerned to “get there”. Of course, however, the issue is that notions of perfection and legitimacy are always already muddied even in the good motives of those who want to polish up intersexed persons’ perfection. And as we have seen throughout this chapter, the notion that the “goodness” of a two-sex, two-gender world is self-evident (and always has been) is misleading at best.
1.6 Some Conclusions
Some intersexed people argue that doctors have done harm by intervening to operate on ambiguous genitals, but some doctors give the rejoinder that at least as much harm, though not necessarily identical harm, might have been done by not operating. For example, they say, children may suffer changing-room bullying, or find it difficult to formulate an unequivocal sex identity. It is ironic, though, that one of the reasons doctors give for resisting changing their approach to intersex surgeries is that it would be irresponsible to embark on an experimental, unproven course of action like not carrying out early surgeries (Creighton and Liao 2004: 663), when actually, early surgery itself has carried many of the same risks. Creighton and Liao comment,
“Sex assignment by genital surgery also represents an experiment involving invasive, risky and irreversible intervention. We are unsure how the absence of rigorous evaluation of the intended outcome could ever have been justified in interventions with such grave consequences, but overconfidence in the past has left the current generation of clinicians and patients floundering with uncertainties” (Creighton and Liao 2004: 663).
It should also be borne in mind that, in cases of intersex, any harm-of-non-intervention will almost invariably be a social or psychological harm rather than a strictly physiological one; this does not render it any less significant, but it does mean that doctors are always already taking on the bolstering of broader goods than simply physical ones. They are part of reflecting and reproducing social norms about what constitutes correct or appropriate bodiliness. Ethically, then, what is at stake in assessing the legitimacy of early versus late (or no) elective surgical intervention is the awkward question of which goods “trump” other goods, and which goods deserve to be sacrificed or compromised. The ethical problems attached to performing irreversible surgery in sexually sensitive areas without the fully informed consent of the patient are obviously manifold; the ethical problems attached to not doing this surgery must also not be downplayed, but the point is that whilst surgery left undone can always be done (at least in the eight or nine years between infancy and early puberty, after which therapy for some conditions may become more complex because of hormonal changes), surgery once done cannot be undone.
Theological concerns surrounding protection and care for those considered vulnerable, such as those with particular impairments, are also relevant in considering intersex. To erase all impairment would mean cancelling out much diversity and multiplicity as well as much pain and discomfort; erasing all intersex, even if it were possible, would carry the same double-edged consequence. Theologies based in a desire to protect the vulnerable and query limiting heteronormative ideologies have important tools for addressing some of the injustices done to bodies and identities through secretive corrective surgery. However, this is, of course, complicated by the perpetuation in some theological strands of male-and-female, clearly-sexed, heterosexual norms. Keeping in mind Ruether’s notion of the “plumb-line” of love and justice to which the prophetic-liberative tradition attests, it is exactly where people’s bodily and gender configurations do not easily chime with theologically-sanctioned “ideals” that theology most needs to engage in dialogue and reflection. For this reason, in the following chapters I turn to theologies from three areas often considered peripheral or marginal in order to find theological resources for speaking with intersex. One central question surrounds the extent to which surgeries (and other interventions such as hormone therapy) may be said to promote or compromise the integrity of the human body. In light of Dreger’s “restitution narrative”, this question begins – along with considerations surrounding perfection and the legitimacy of human technologies as therapeutic for a range of bodily conditions – to be explored in more detail in Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 Relinquishing and Relating: Intersex and Marginal Bodies in the Body of Christ
“The resurrection of Christ’s body is a generative event for the Spirit’s incarnation in the church. These two events are inseparable, and the connection between them is the human body – Christ’s incarnation, his resurrected body, and the body of Christ, the church. The body is the necessary link because humans do not merely have bodies. Rather…, it is more appropriate to say that humanity is ‘bodiliness’ and therefore that the body is the only suitable vessel for humanity’s reconciliation with God” (McCarthy Matzko 1996: 102-3).
Just as hermaphroditic bodies in 17th-century England were sometimes used to symbolize the country’s uncertain political future in the aftermath of the Civil War (Gilbert 2002: 53-5), so in the theological tradition bodies have often been made repositories of signification for a community’s overall integrity or wellness. Bodies deemed weak or deviant have thereby threatened not only their own status, but that of every group and community with which they are associated. This also means that the actions, activities and conditions of given bodies are always already figured in relation to communities. A suspicion of untameable, recalcitrant fleshliness in some strands of the Christian tradition, particularly after Augustine, associated physicality – and specific carnal urges like that for food or sex – with fallenness and animality, rather than the rationality and dispassionate reason which humans supposedly shared with God. Some of the most irreducibly bodily things about bodies, and particularly anything which seemed uncontrollable or irrational, were thereby quashed and demonized.
In this chapter I consider the status of intersexed human bodies as bodies, in their similarity with and difference from other human bodies, and particularly their status as held within the Body of Christ. I reflect on bodies and their interweaving with narratives, considering how they come to “relate” particular stories even as they relate to other bodies. I conclude that part of relating to other bodies may involve relinquishing particular patterns of sexed status and normality. The context for the whole chapter is Paul’s figuring of the Church as Christ’s Body with its many parts:
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ… As it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as God chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body… God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:12, 18-20, 24-27).[50]
2.1 The Hidden God Mediated Through Flesh-Taking: [51] Bodies Human and Divine
2.1.1 To Be Human Is To Be Embodied
“The biological is never left behind by transcendence. The body is not the antithesis of the spiritual but its organ. We should not contrast the spiritual with the material, nor should we regard the spiritual and the biological as being on altogether different levels. Rather, we should speak of transfiguration: the material infused with the spiritual, the body becoming the form of inter-subjectivity” (Hull 2003: 23).
Why do bodies matter so much? The cosmos-shattering event of Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection in a human body, and the existence of stories such as the healing of the woman with a flow of blood in Mark 5, demonstrate that having a body and encountering other bodies is crucial to how God interacts with humans. Through his dealings with the haemorrhaging woman, says Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, Jesus “experiences the truth about himself and his body, which is a human body, but full of divine powers, of life-giving energies which he can communicate to others… God is there in bodies and their energies, alive and active” (Moltmann-Wendel 1994: x). Moreover, every single piece of speech and thought and assertion that humans have ever had or made about God has been mediated by humans’ location in finite, physical bodies. Everything we know as humans, we know as bodies. Jürgen Moltmann remarks that “hope for ‘the resurrection of the body’ permits no disdain and debasement of bodily life and sensory experiences; it affirms them profoundly” (Moltmann 1996: 66). Bodies have limits, and thus serve as reminders about particularity and specificity (Rogers 1999: 238). They are crucial to human interactions with God, and to human interactions with other humans, which always already is interaction with God; Tim Gorringe notes that “the hidden God is mediated only through flesh taking and through encounter with the Other” (Gorringe 2004: 127).
Intersexed bodies might be held to be imperfect, damaged, or in some respects incomplete (they have this in common with impaired bodies, as I argue in Chapter 4). Sally Gross reports being told by Christian acquaintances that her baptism was not valid since, as she did not fall into either of the categories “determinately male” or “determinately female”, she also did not fall into the category “human”, and was therefore also not “the kind of thing which could have been baptized validly” (Gross 1999: 70). If intersexed bodies are held to be imperfect or “fallen”, it might also be expected that they will be “healed” in the new creation: that ambiguous genitals will differentiate, that overgrown clitorises will be rendered neat and small. However, such assumptions already make huge leaps of faith about the nature of bodily resurrection, and the nature of the continuity between present and future configurations of human bodies. Morever, they already presume that some configurations of human bodiliness are more perfect than others, but for reasons which are somewhat arbitrary if the “givenness” of heteronormativity and procreativity are queried.
This chapter considers specifically what individual, given human bodies might “mean” in the context of wider Christian body-communities, where the individual and the community both participate in constructing each other; what it might mean for the Body of Christ to be comprised by members who remain impaired, unusually sexed, weak, ugly, or grotesque, even in the blossoming of the new creation; and how pain and imperfection might be figured so that there can be a continuity between bodies as they are now and bodies in the age to come. These questions are addressed in more detail in Chapters 3, 4 and 5, but I argue in this chapter that bodies are both signifiers and signifieds, signifying the other bodies around them (as part of a community) and signified by them (since community attitudes affect how bodies are socially constructed and construed), as well as remaining profoundly particular in their material substance. By participation in a wider body (both social and ecclesial), they figure a broader entity too. Bodies signify their own future and that of the church body, and this is considered through the image of Eucharist. I argue that, through communion (elemental and general), humans take the wider body into their own bodies and thereby become what is signified.
2.1.2 The End of Male-and-Female: Galatians 3:26-28
Most relevantly to our particular concerns surrounding intersex, beliefs surrounding the cosmic significance of the human body have been influential in the formation and ardent maintenance of a male-and-female binary within much theological anthropology. Galatians 3:28’s assertion that in Christ there is no longer male and female is seldom taken to be literally true, because of all the apparently overwhelming evidence to the contrary; God made humans male and female, and in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27), two clauses sometimes taken to lead to one and the same conclusion.[52] However, Sally Gross argues that “there is a rabbinical gloss on Gen. 1.27 which suggests that ‘Adam’, at least, most certainly did not have a clear and unequivocal gender identity, and indeed that Adam was a hermaphrodite” (Gross 1999: 70). This is based on a grammatical shift in the Hebrew in the Genesis verse which, says Gross, “suggests that to use the verse in support of a razor-sharp division of humankind between male and female is perhaps misguided” (Gross 1999: 71). The suggestion that Adam’s androgynous nature predated Adam’s sinful nature is important, holds Gross, for it may imply that sexual differentiation, not hermaphroditism, is “fallen” (Gross 1999: 74). As I explore below, in relation to the work of Iain Morland, it may be that clear sex-gender differentiation is what will be erased in the new humanity, rather than ambiguity.
The most usual interpretation of Galatians 3:28 – based not just in Genesis 1:27, but in everyday experience of human intercourse which usually seems unremarkably two-sexed – is that its meaning for the Christian community is a sociological rather than a biological one. For example, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza says,
“Gal. 3:28c does not assert that there are no longer men and women in Christ, but that patriarchal marriage – and sexual relationships between male and female – is no longer constitutive of the new community in Christ. Irrespective of their procreative capacities and of the social roles connected with them, persons will be full members of the Christian movement in and through baptism” (Schüssler Fiorenza 1995: 211).
Galatians 3:28, she concludes, is “best understood as a communal Christian self-definition rather than a statement about the baptized individual” (Schüssler Fiorenza 1995: 213). Wayne Meeks says,
“The symbolization of a reunified mankind was not just pious talk in early Christianity, but a quite important way of conceptualizing and dramatizing the Christians’ awareness of their peculiar relationship to the larger societies around them. At least some of the early Christian groups thought of themselves as a new genus of mankind, or as the restored original mankind” (Meeks 1974: 166).
Meeks views much of the Gnostic tradition, and extracanonical texts such as the Gospel of Thomas, as attempts to restore the original androgynous unity (Meeks 1974: 191-7). In Thomas (Saying 22:4-5, 7) Jesus says,
“When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make the male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female… then you will enter [the Father’s domain]” (in Valantasis 1997: 95).
Richard Valantasis suggests that the “new person” of Thomas 22 is a totally-integrated, third-gender person who simultaneously negates gender, and that “this new self also demands the recreation of the physical body and its theological signification” (Valantasis 1997: 96). However, this apparently positive appeal to androgyny (and its realization) does not carry through the rest of the gospel; in Saying 114:2-3 Jesus says of Mary, “I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of heaven” (in Valantasis 1997: 194). Valantasis argues that since this “living spirit” only resembles the males, rather than being male, the Saying “does not seem to manifest a degree of misogyny, but makes the stated goal specifically for women as well” (Valantasis 1997: 195). However, as Marvin Meyer notes, the Gnostic association of the female with the earthly, perishable and passive, and the male with the heavenly, imperishable and active, which renders Saying 114 an attempt at a statement of liberation from the body, is “shocking to modern sensitivities” (Meyer 1992: 109). In the later epistles of the Pauline school, the strongly realized eschatology flavouring Corinthians and Galatians (and Thomas 22) has been watered down to a lesson about morality – specifically, the moral distinctiveness of the Christian life – rather than literal recreated unity (Meeks 1974: 204-5).[53] It is this sense which has tended to persist in the Church. Where there have been attempts to “transcend” human sex, these have usually ended in negating bodiliness altogether, or in continuing to privilege some types of bodiliness (usually male bodiliness) over others. Even using language such as “he” for everyone, or supposing that women, men and others can unproblematically find an exemplar in the male figure of Jesus, privileges maleness.
Those who promote clearly-differentiated gender roles, and particularly the submission of women to men, often assert that the apparent eradication of male and female exhorted in Galatians (and Thomas) is future-eschatological, not for now, as do eschatological feminists who view the subordination of women as undesirable but unchangeable within history (Ruether 1983: 86). A realized, temporal world where there is no male and female – or where biological maleness and femaleness are not the only available options – has seemed too unrealistic or utopian for most theologians to take seriously. This persists despite the work, of Meeks and others, in tracing links back from the new human of Galatians 3:28 – restored, according to Colossians 3:10, to the image of the creator (Meeks 1974: 185) – to beliefs about the “bisexual” or androgynous original human ancestor common across many cultures.
I am not proposing that intersexed individuals are harbingers of the Galatians 3:28-order, liminal or united firstfruits of the coming age. But even if it would be naïve to read Galatians 3:28 as a simple prophecy of sexual androgyny in this present realm, it must be read as questioning something about the way in which females and males relate to one another in God’s economy. The Galatians text does seem to imply that there is something about participation in Christ, about perichoresis between Christ and the church and between humans, which means that even such apparently self-evident concepts as sexed nature are not to be taken as read in the new order (which is already beginning). F. Gerald Downing comments,
“To insist that Galatians 3:28 is not ‘a prescription for the organization of a Christian society’… is implicitly at least to adopt the Aristotelian social implications and the disjunctions which entail them, rather than adopt the Pauline refusal of them” (Downing 2005: 183).
My own reading of Galatians 3:26-28 is that it is the compound nature of the phrase “male and female” which is most interesting, in contrast with the dualism of “Jew or Greek” and “slave or free”. This linguistic variation opens up space for dwelling on the possibility of an erasure of the binarism. The assertion that there is no male and female in Christ does not necessarily mean that there is no male or female; biological reproduction in its present form is therefore still possible. However, what no longer exists in Christ is the all-encompassing cipher “male-and-female” for humanity. Humanity does not exist in Christ only as male-and-female as they relate to each other. Human interaction and perichoresis exists on the grounds of far more than sex alone. The end of male-and-female is the end of an exclusive, heteronormative system wherein humans are completed as humans only by so-called sexual complementarity. The male-and-female formula in Galatians 3:28 obviously echoes the creation narrative at Genesis 1:27, but to be made male and female and to be made in God’s image are not necessarily identical. As Phyllis Bird holds (below), the Genesis text may be more to do with animal biology than with social status; it may, also, simply be an assertion about binary sex no longer justifiable in light of our present understandings about the science of sexual differentiation. It seems to me that the placing of the clause “male and female” in Galatians after two clauses based very evidently in social meaning (particularly since the whole point of Galatians 3 is that “Jew” is a religious and not just an ethnic category, open to gentile converts through Christ) suggests that it is male-and-female as a socially-limiting construct, not male and female as gamete possibilities (among a range of other sex possibilities), which pass away in Christ.
This is particularly interesting in thinking through visions of a society where sex and gender do not work as a binary but rather as a continuum or a multiplicity, and where anatomy (particularly genital anatomy) is not unproblematically used as a cipher for identity. If male-and-female is passing away, then it need not stand for or encompass everyone; human bodies need not be altered to “fit” it, particularly before those who live in them (like intersexed neonates) can express an opinion. Importantly, I do not believe “male and female” in Galatians 3:28 is quite a synonym for what we would now call “masculine and feminine”, that is, social gender characteristics rather than biological sex ones; it is not just the limiting character of binary gender constructs which is to pass away (though expanded conceptions of what it means to be masculine, feminine or both will certainly be part of the new, just order). Rather, the sense is that, first, biology is not to be the primary or most defining thing about members of the new community (although reproductive capacity will, at least for some people, continue to be an important aspect of their identity); and second, that biology is not to be considered an a priori or incontrovertible “fact” about a given body. Biological sex is inscribed onto bodies as well as being read off them; “male” and “female” are not unproblematic, monolithic configurations, and should not be built up as such.
The “no more male-and-female in Christ”, then, means no more taxonomies of goodness or perfection attached to the success or otherwise of how a given body meets current criteria for maleness or femaleness. The Body of Christ made up of human bodies prefigures and begins to constitute the Body of Christ as it will be; “perfected” not in terms of homogenization or assimilation but of reciprocity, embrasure and grace. The end – the cessation – of male-and-female is the end – the telos – for humanity. This is the crux of reading Galatians 3:28 in a more than eschatological sense, for a realized eschatology is rooted in the already, the possibility for the redemption of this present realm. 1 Corinthians 12:24 is potentially subversive of contemporaneous norms of honour and shame, for God has already disrupted expected systems surrounding who is deserving of glorification – but to superimpose unwavering models of honour and dishonour, weakness and strength, risks concretizing patterns of authority (in terms of who does and does not have legitimacy to speak and to act) which already coincide with the status quo. Questions of what comprises “legitimate” bodiliness – which can stand in its own conceptual right without having to be cured, tidied or redeemed away – cannot be unproblematically figured by the able over against the impaired, the sexed over against the intersexed, the central over against the marginal. Varying human bodies are deemed to fall into these categories somewhat arbitrarily depending on culture and context, and may move categories over time without changing greatly as bodies.
2.1.3 Weak? Dishonourable? The Problem of Defining “Inferior” Bodies
To return to Paul’s discussion of the Body in 1 Corinthians 12, then: it is necessary to ask difficult questions about which members actually are deemed inferior, and whether by being figured thus they are actually being kept in dishonour, objectification, or less-than-full conceptual status as legitimate bodies. But if those bodies deemed “inferior” are, according to Paul, to be given the most honour as parts of Christ's Body, is this not overwhelmingly positive? David Matzko McCarthy says,
“The social body is constituted as a reciprocity of members in the economy of Christ’s body, where the lowly are lifted up, and all are made new through sharing the life of God’s Spirit” (Matzko McCarthy 2004: 192).
Other theologians, too, have emphasized the positive, perichoretic, caring nature of this picture of the Christian community. If the Body of Christ is explicitly supposed to give particular honour and care to its more vulnerable members, however, it may be necessary to expand conceptions of the Body of Christ as an earthly and cosmic community beyond those composed and disseminated mainly by members who are already privileged, or already deemed to be at the speaking centre of signification. In other words, it may be necessary to rethink and redefine assumptions about who the weaker or inferior members actually are; about what actually entails weakness or inferiority. Readers of a passage like this one from 1 Corinthians 12 (or, indeed, 1 Corinthians 8:7-13 where Paul discusses how to avoid becoming a stumbling-block to the weak) are often sure they know exactly who the inferior or weaker members of the present-day Body are: those, perhaps, in thrall to addictions, those caught up in sinful lifestyles, those figured as needy generally, like the impoverished or impaired. The able, heterosexual, and unambiguously-sexed are often perceived as those “doing” ethical behaviour to the inferior, needy or “other”; John M. Hull argues, “The normal world regards the disabled person as banished, excluded, deprived, as it were, of citizenship rights, and as therefore to be pitied and helped” (Hull 2003: 24). As I explore in Chapter 4, however, even a prior assumption that particular groups of people “are” the weak or vulnerable, requiring particular special treatment as compensation for their evident disadvantage, risks homogenizing and objectifying them.
2.2 Barth, Body and the Significance of Sex
I would now like to explore one aspect of Karl Barth’s theology of sexual difference in the Church Dogmatics (especially III/1 and III/4). This has been of particular importance because of its extensive identification of male-and-female complementarity and response with the supposedly correlative relationship between God and humanity – which have reinforced patterns of binary sex, and assumed that ambiguous sex does not adequately reflect God’s pattern for humanity. Barth argues that the human is the only creature essentially differentiated by sex alone, rather than race, species or type as other animals are. This indivisibility, except on the grounds of sex, is part of what mirrors God’s image in human beings. Beliefs about humans’ sexed status are central to Barth, and he holds that the structure of procession of humans as male and female mirrors the structure of authority from God to Christ to the Church. However, in this, as I argue below, he fails to resist a particular human-centred model of sex and gender – ironically, given his thoroughgoing suspicion of ideology and hegemony (as discussed briefly in Gorringe 2004: 119, and in detail in Gorringe 1999). He attempts to be true to the Genesis text, yet fails to allow the scriptural witness to stand “over against” a human model of sex in his insistence that humans are, without exception, either male or female (that is, male-and-female). As such, they must also be “appropriately” masculine and feminine, and so (at least in CD III/4) Barth rejects “the malady called homosexuality” too, calling it “the physical, psychological and social sickness, the phenomenon of perversion, decadence and decay” (Barth 1961: 166). Homosexuality, for Barth, disrupts the order in humanity which reflects the order between God and humans, and betrays a rejection of the law of God revealed in Scripture. Several writers have critiqued Barth’s anthropology on the grounds that it is sexist, homophobic or that it rests on an apparent biological essentialism despite his claims to the contrary; for discussions of some of these tensions see Sonderegger 2000, Fiddes 1990, Blevins 2005 and Muers 1999. What I intend to do here is to demonstrate that Barth’s anthropology is unsuccessful not only on these grounds, but also because it does not make sense in light of the existence of intersex.
2.2.1 Standing Before God as Either/Or: Order and Procession in Human Sex
In CD III/1 Barth argues,
“As God is One, and He alone is God, so man as man is one and alone, and two only in the duality of his kind, i.e., in the duality of man and woman. In this way he is a copy and imitation of God. In this way he repeats in his confrontation of God and himself the confrontation in God” (Barth 1958: 186).
If it is essential that man is “one and alone”, however, why is it also so crucial to Barth that man and woman should exist as a duality? For Barth, one human gender without the other is not fully human. He states in CD III/1,
“Man can and will always be man before God and among his fellows only as he is man in relationship to woman and woman in relationship to man. And as he is one or the other he is man” (Barth 1958: 186). [54]
For Barth men and women require each other in order to be complete, in order to be fully human. Barth insists,
“The command of God comes to man and woman in the relationship and order in which God created them together as His image, as the likeness of His covenant of grace, in the male and female existence which they gain in His eyes within their character as the likeness and image” (Barth 1961: 153).
Order is not incidental here, for it is in the processional relationships between the participants that, for Barth, male and female human relationships also most profoundly echo both intra-Trinitarian and divine-human ones. Barth avows in CD III/4 that “man in his divinely created sexuality is a similitude of the covenant, which rests upon the fact that God Himself does not will to be alone but with man and for him” (Barth 1961: 117).
I am not denying that humans require interaction with one another in order to allow their humanity to blossom; through living in community, humans echo the perichoretic interactions in God. However, what is less persuasive in Barth is the assertion that such interaction and mutual need in humans – such being directed to the fellow-human (Barth 1961: 116) – is most basically expressed through the relation of man and woman. In CD III/4 he says,
“We remember that the ‘male or female’ is immediately to be completed by the ‘male and female’. Rightly understood, the ‘and’ is already contained in the ‘or’… For how is it possible to characterize man except in his distinctive relation to woman[?]… In obedience to God, man will be male or female” (Barth 1961: 149).
This is particular interesting in terms of thinking about intersex and of “transgressive” sexed identities such as transsexualism, for Barth says,
“Since man has been created by God as male or female, and stands before God in this Either-Or, everything that God wills and requires of him is contained by implication in this situation, and the question of good and evil in his conduct is measured by it. God… requires that he should be genuinely and fully the one or the other, male or female, that he should acknowledge his sex instead of trying in some way to deny it, …that he should stick to its limits rather than seek in some way to transcend them” (Barth 1961: 149).
Barth reads male-and-female (an either/or, with an excluded middle) as defining the whole of humanity on the grounds of Genesis 1:27. Crucially, however, this conclusion is not the only one which either the Genesis text or the scriptural witness in its entirety allows us to reach. Moreover, Barth’s insistence that the Mensch (the human) is only completed by the male’s and the female’s presence for each other, risks reducing the Other to being only the completer of the self, the other of the same (as I discuss below, and as Rachel Muers demonstrates in Muers 1999: 268) – a distinctly hom(m)osexual state of affairs.
Geoffrey Rees[55] argues that conscious differentiations between, and separations of men and women, as in Barth’s writings and in US political rhetoric surrounding same-sex partnerships, is actually “a function of the norm it purports to undergird” (Rees 2002: 22). In other words, sexual difference in binary terms is regarded as normative only because of prior heteronormative constraints. It is beliefs about gender, and societal structures based in gender, which affect how sexed bodies are read, not exclusively the other way round. It is important to break the impasse,[56] however, by acknowledging that a significant part of what is actually at stake in getting beyond a concretized binary model of gender is power, and a whole range of assumptions about who has access to power – which includes access to God (Rees 2002: 27, 30). Power is certainly the issue, argues Rees, in a theological anthropology of complementarity such as Barth’s.
Of course, Barth’s strong distinction between male and female can be read positively: women are not simply “deficient men”, but have a humanity uniquely their own (Rees 2002: 32). Both men and women are directed to each other and proceed from each other; each should be for the other “a centre and source” (Barth 1961: 163). They have “a mutual responsibility” (Barth 1961: 168) to “answer” each other. This sounds positive and egalitarian: an attempt to give men and women equal responsibility for helping to fulfil humanity whilst not eliding the real differences between men and women which some individuals find such important loci for their identity. However, what is still problematic in Barth is the inevitability of the “order” in which this ostensible mutuality must occur. Barth says:
“[Man and woman] are not to be equated, nor their relationship reversed. They stand in a sequence. It is in this that man has his allotted place and woman hers… If order does not prevail in the being and fellowship of man and woman… the only alternative is disorder… Order means succession. It means preceding and following. It means super- and sub-ordination” (Barth 1961: 169).
For Barth, it is woman’s very vocation to be submissive (Fiddes 1990: 141). Woman must follow the initiative which man must take (Barth 1961: 171). Man and woman are A and B, not A and a second A (Barth 1961: 169, 170-1). Although, Barth argues, this means that they must stand or fall together, that they are free or unfree together, what is central for him is that “when it is a question of the true order which God the Creator has established, succession, and therefore precedence and following, super- and sub-ordination, does not mean any inner inequality between those who stand in this succession and are subject to this order” (Barth 1961: 170). However, it is not as easy as all that to get around the inherent inequity built into order and procession, particularly when (says Rees), “Barth explains [in CD III/4, Barth 1961: 163]… that Jesus himself was all ‘A’, all Man, that to imagine anything otherwise about Jesus is to dishonour God” (Rees 2002: 38). Therefore, claims Rees,
“The ‘climax’ of sexual encounter between man and woman turns out to be a decidedly male homosocial encounter… Even as the man successfully reaches climax – he encounters an ‘impregnable place’… that immediately and conclusively puts him in his place: ‘master’ …of the woman… he now finds his will tested (measured) against the will of God… The result is an intensely sexualized male-homosocial figuration of God-intoxication, as the man ‘who is tested and must test himself’… discovers that compared to God’s phallus, his own is as no phallus” (Rees 2002: 35-6) (original emphasis).
Even heterosexual intercourse, then, in Rees’ reading of Barth, although it is ostensibly about relationships between men and women, is actually primarily about working out hierarchies and relationships between human males and a God called “he” – who is given the attributes of human husbands and fathers. This is highly problematic, not least because the use of the male-female relationship as synecdoche of the God-humanity relationship is so appealing that the inequalities outworked in it are sometimes hidden under layers of piety. As Ward comments, however, “The attraction of opposite sexes maps too easily onto the logic of those who have and want more and those who lack and are dependant” (Ward 1998: 70).
Of course, even Rees owns that Jesus-as-A is already a complicated picture; it means men must become “as women” in relation to Jesus (Rees 2002: 37). Moreover, Jesus himself becomes submissive and responsive to God, who might be figured as some kind of super-A. Fiddes comments that, since man’s superordination and woman’s subordination both echo aspects of Christ for Barth, each deserves equal honour (Fiddes 1990: 143). Moreover, Rees admits that Barth’s model of initiation-and-response (God then man, man then woman) depends less on any actual, particular instance of heterosexual encounter than on the concomitant stability of appropriately “masculine” identities for men and “feminine” identities for women. It is not necessary for Barth that every individual marry in order that the “good” of marriage be maintained; human marriage points and witnesses to the relationship between Christ and his “bride” paradigmatically, but male-female complementarity exists beyond marriage itself (Barth 1961: 124-5). It might therefore be said that Barth’s anthropology is not necessarily or ineluctably a reinforcing of heterosexual ideology.
In spite of all this potential disruption, however, to Barth the project of male-female marriage must not be destabilized, as when individuals claim “illegitimate” or “degenerate” gender roles, for this undermines a specific model of God-humanity imagery by threatening male homosocial norms. Thus, for Barth, argues Rees,
“Women… don’t so much need men to encounter God, as they need to continually make themselves present to men, as conduits of male encounter with God” (Rees 2002: 39).
In this model, women are for men, finding their own fulfilment, even their own meaningfulness, in what they are to men – entering signification by the back door, under men’s skirts, just as they will be saved by childbearing (so the author of 1 Timothy claims[57]). Men, conversely, in this model, “need” to be in a position of precedence over women – as outworked in their roles as heads of the household and the initiators and “tops” of sexual encounter – in order to understand their own relationship to God. In their obedient ceding to male initiation, women characterize the humility in relation to men which men should also show in relation to Christ (Barth 1961: 175); they become exemplary, but can only do so after they have already accepted their subordination to men. They gain their status as exemplars for men, as humans co-subject, with men, to Christ, only after they have demonstrated how unlike men they are. Men can thereby keep humility at arm’s length: it can be held as a “good” without actually defining who and what men are. It is highly ironic that this ideal of humility must be prompted by an enforced power-relationship, for humility is not really humility unless it is voluntary. In similar vein to Rees, and in an attempt to deconstruct theological objections to homosexual activity, Graham Ward claims,
“[Barth] wants sexual difference to be paradigmatic… But he reads this sexual difference from the male perspective… His other is not really another at all. It is the other of the same” (Ward 1998: 66-7).
This is problematic, for, as Ward notes, “the desire in operation, in Irigaray’s terms, is hom(m)osexual, narcissistic” (Ward 1998: 67).
2.2.2 Like The Other Animals? Barth’s Conflation of Sex and Gender
We now return to Barth’s assertion that it is in their distinction as male and female that humans reflect God more perfectly than the other animals, since they are fundamentally distinguished only on this basis. Phyllis Bird criticizes Barth’s handling of Genesis 1:26-28 (see Barth 1958: 183ff) in particular on slightly different grounds. She argues,
“[Barth’s] own interpretation of the passage is as problematic as any that he criticizes – and for the same reason. Despite close reference to the biblical text as his primary source, he has failed to discern its anthropology – and theology – and has advanced only a novel and arresting variation of the classical trinitarian interpretation, an interpretation characterized by the distinctly modern concept of an ‘I-Thou’ relationship, which is foreign to the ancient writer’s thought and intention at all three points of its application (God in the relationship within the Godhead, humanity in the relationship between the sexes, and God and humanity in relationship to each other). At its most fundamental level Barth’s exegesis fails to understand the grammar of the sentences he so ingeniously manipulates” (Bird 1981: 132).
Humans’ sexual differentiation is mentioned here in Genesis 1, says Bird, because the Priestly writer wants to emphasize the way in which humans are like the other animals, not unlike them as Barth holds (Bird 1981: 148). The Hebrew terms used for male and female in Genesis 1:26-28 are biological ones, not social ones as in Genesis 2:22-24, she says, and are simply used to clarify that humans, like other animals, are made able to reproduce (Bird 1981: 148, 155). Humans are made like God, resembling God, but it is in their status as creatures that they are male and female (Bird 1981: 149). She concludes,
“There is no message of shared dominion here, no word about the distribution of roles, responsibility, and authority between the sexes, no word of sexual equality. What is described is a task for the species… and the position of the species in relation to the other orders of creatures” (Bird 1981: 151).
Miroslav Volf concurs, “Men and women share maleness and femaleness not with God but with animals. They image God in their common humanity” (Volf 2004: 161). Barth’s exposition of the passage, in drawing from it conclusions about sex roles, the sexes’ status relative to each other, and marriage, is thus, holds Bird, illegitimate in terms of the text (Bird 1981: 155). For Bird, the description of male and female in Genesis 1:26-28 is a purely biological one.
This does not necessarily render the text any less problematic from the perspective of intersex (Bird stresses that the plural term in verse 27 “works against any notion of androgyny” – Bird 1981: 159), since it still seems to suggest the creation by God of a dually-sexed, everyone-as-either-male-or-female humanity. However, it does mean Barth’s particular outworking of the text stands on shaky ground: Genesis 1:26-28 may be about the possibility of biological reproduction, but what is ambiguous (or unaddressed) in Barth’s writings is precisely the nature of the “biological” reality to which the appropriate genderedness of men and women is pinned. Ward comments that, in this treatment of male and female, Barth “defines their ethical and social vocation in terms of their biology alone. It is as if he returns to a natural theology his whole theological system is set up to refute” (Ward 2000: 197). As Blevins notes, this renders Barth’s ethics unfaithful to his theology (Blevins 2005: 73).
Although it is gender that Barth discusses, and it appears to be gender roles that he believes to echo divine-human relationships, this is projected back into sex, because Barth does not acknowledge that sex and gender do not always supervene. Barth owns that different times and cultures have had different expectations about what constitutes “man” and “woman” (Barth 1961: 154) – but he really seems to mean what constitutes masculinity and femininity rather than maleness and femaleness (for male-female complementarity is, first and foremost, about companionship, not reproduction). He takes the latter as read – but we cannot, if we take intersex seriously. An individual producing no gametes is, strictly speaking, neither male nor female,[58] but Barth’s model of gender seems to rest in an ideal, assumed sex rather than an actual one. This is ironic, since Barth’s primary emphasis is on Trinitarian relationship, and human sex/gender is only secondary to (though all but co-eternal with) it.[59] Although Barth says that no human male and no human female could be complete without the other (Barth 1961: 163), what he really wants to stress is that no human could be complete without (relationship with) another human, full stop. It is human desire for relationship that matters; despite what he says, the fact that it is “ideally” in male-female relationship that humans’ need for one another is exemplified is actually rather incidental to Barth’s argument.
2.2.3 Psychologically Narcissistic, Theologically Idolatrous?[60] Barth’s Elision of Difference
Although humans indeed need to exist in relationship in order to fill out their humanity, this relationship is not fulfilling only or specifically as it connects men and women (or males and females). However, a Barthian-type view has come to be repeated in Church statements such as Issues in Human Sexuality: “In heterosexual love... personal bonding and mutual self-giving happen between two people who, because they are of different gender, are not merely physically differentiated but also diverse in their emotional, mental and spiritual lives” (Church of England 1991: 37) (my emphasis). In fact, whilst gender is important as a repository for identity through which difference and diversity are expressed, it is not the most fundamental thing about being human, nor the only thing in which difference inheres. As Volf and Graham Ward both note, it is ironic that Barth, who proclaims so vehemently that there can be no natural basis for theology, should slip into mistaking the apparent indicative of sex for an imperative. For instance, Volf says of Barth,
“The characteristics and roles of God, one could argue, correspond more to those of fathers and men than to those of mothers and women. Notice, however, that this is not an argument from God’s fatherhood and God’s maleness – from above; it is an argument from below, from characteristics of human fathers and human males. The argument must go something like this: God, as portrayed in the Scriptures, is more like what we know fathers and men to be than what we know mothers and women to be… It is illicit to turn around and argue that since God is thus and thus (more like males as we know them), human beings as fathers or as men should be thus and thus” (Volf 2004: 159-60).
As Gorringe holds, however, Barth has been too close to the pressures of a patriarchal society, and so his argument is “disabled” (Gorringe 2004: 120). It is not that it is wrong to own that human conceptions of God might stem in part from human relationships and desires writ large, nor even that it is inevitable that they should do so; what is wrong is not to acknowledge that this is the case.
So what, cosmically, is actually being superimposed onto human sex in Barth’s model? Barth’s Jesus, as the fulfilment of the original Adam, is complete not merely through membership of a race which includes both male and female, but specifically in and through his “wife”, Israel (Barth 1958: 203). Barth wants to argue that it is in desire for the other (opposite-sexed) human that human desire for God is reflected. But, according to Ward, “The economy of desire, linked to eros, is an economy based upon (male) lack and need. It is an economy of privation” (Ward 2000: 190). Barth’s whole system of male-and-female cosmic interaction, mirroring God-and-humanity interaction, is based on a desire which possesses and incorporates, which eliminates difference. It fetishizes stereotyped “difference” based on concretized maleness and femaleness, but disallows any move beyond this paradigm, and thus eradicates any kind of otherness which is not entirely predictable. This is problematic: reciprocity works as mutually fulfilling only when it allows the other the genuine possibility of not reciprocating, not responding. There is no space for this in Barth’s economy where the female is present only on the male’s terms (or, arguably, God’s terms – but male interests and God’s interests convene in this model); necessary only on the male’s behalf. Ward attributes this circularity partially to Barth’s failure to hold in tension both eros and agape as facets of Trinitarian love, leaving little space for authentic otherness or possibility (Ward 2000: 198-9). Agape leaves room for non-reciprocity, for non-conditionality, even as eros incites it – but, says Ward, in Barth “the erotic becomes an economy to restore mutual lack” (Ward 1998: 68). In fact, argues Ward, Barth’s man and woman are not a couple at all, for “[woman] does not stand with man, or before man as other, she stands for man” (Ward 2000: 198). Blevins claims, “Psychologically, the system is narcissistic; theologically it is idolatrous” (Blevins 2005: 75). Barth’s attempt to establish sexual difference does not succeed. Similarly, Rachel Muers notes that Barth’s attempt to conceive of woman as being the answer for man in her silence rests on woman’s silence being freely chosen. However, it can only be freely chosen if woman also has a real choice not to be silent. Muers comments,
“Barth’s interpretation of the silence of the woman in Genesis relies on her being paradoxically both free and unfree. She must be free, because she must signal by her silence her acceptance of her election. She must be unfree, because her silence is decreed from the beginning and by her nature; her creation out of man means she has no choice. Man, in the story as Barth tells it, has a choice: to speak or keep silent; woman is required to be silent in order to symbolize, for man, what his silence might mean” (Muers 2003: 113-4).
It is positive that otherness is always already assumed in Barth; it gives at least the beginnings of an opportunity for woman to have her own identity, distinct if not independent from man – but the possibility of difference should not inhere only in sex. Even if, as Katherine Sonderegger maintains, the ranking where woman-follows-man is “purely formal or structural” (Sonderegger 2000: 268), it has become, for Barth, the only option – and thus no option at all. Like Ward, Paul Fiddes argues that Barth is misguided in attempting to dole out Christ’s characteristics of leadership and submission to men and women respectively; in fact, says Fiddes, Barth himself shows that, in the relationship between Christ and the church, it is Christ – the symbolic male in the relationship – who shows perfect submission. The distinction between submission and leadership, then, “has been swallowed up in the glory and the humility of the cross” (Fiddes 1990: 147).[61] Jesus’ body is already a complicated, even an ambiguous one, because of the differences and distinctions held in tension within it; for this reason, comments Sally Gross, Jesus became for her an icon of suffering, as her own pain and confusion surrounding bodiliness and issues of gender seemed to be in his body too (Gross speaking in van Huyssteen 2003). Hierarchical structures of gender have also begun to be eroded in the body of Jesus. Similarly, in his discussion on von Balthasar’s reading of human sex as mirroring Trinitarian relationship, Gerard Loughlin stresses that creation must be seen as echoing the Trinity and not vice versa. We must not allow conceptions of the Trinity to become concretized or narrowed by conceptions of relationships between human fathers and sons, but must remember the figurative status of such metaphor. Rather, says Loughlin,
“We can see that creation is properly a parody of the Trinity, a non-identical repetition in the order of created being of the trinitarian relations, which are now seen to be determinative of human bodies, but not of human sexes” (Loughlin 2004: 156) (my emphasis).
To resist ideology, as Barth counsels but does not quite succeed in doing in his theological anthropology, is also to resist idolatry; as I argued from the Galatians text, “male-and-female” is a golden calf, and so is a God back-projected from a “male-and-female” model of humanity.
Bodies are bodies, and are sexed, but are not condemned by their sexed natures to act in particular ways (except in very specific circumstances such as pregnancy).[62] This goes beyond Barth’s reading whereby “[the] self is not known other than in our response to the call of God to become what we are already” (Loughlin 2004: 186) – “appropriately” male or female as in relation to our “completing” opposite. Barth would be the first to insist that he perceives intrahuman relationships as mirroring divine-human relationships and not the other way around; yet, because intrahuman relationships are right there in front of us, a handy object-lesson, inevitably they colour the ways in which human-divine relationships (even supposedly in distinction from any kind of natural theology or anthropomorphization) are described. So Barth’s theological anthropology is problematic on this level too, and a thorough disruption of “ranked” gender as metaphor for the relationship to God of Christ and of humanity is entirely warranted. This is essential in beginning to consider the ways in which intersex itself disrupts gender based in sex and hierarchy based in gender – not only because Barth places so much emphasis on apparent sex-difference, but also because this has already been so widely recognized and discussed as a problem in his work but not specifically through the lens of intersex (which adds a new dimension to disruptions of Barth’s logic).
Ward rightly argues that homosexual relationships in particular can help highlight the fact that it need not always be the case that man acts and woman responds, saying,
“Same-sex relationships displace… heterosexist symbolics, revealing a love which exceeds biological reproduction” (Ward 2000: 200).
Ward also highlights the necessity of analogy in noting the differences in divine and human agency, and “to move beyond the impasses of univocity and equivocity” (Ward 2000: 276). Human agency is not wholly like or unlike God’s, but corresponds to it. It is not difficult to see why Barth might have feared that a uniform and blanket “sameness” of man and woman plastered across the board – if this were what equality necessitated – would have been too static, not encouraging movement or growth. Where there is no difference, there can be no desire (Ward 1998: 53). This is Barth’s own motivation when he says that a relationship between God and a humanity made in God’s image and likeness “can never lead to a neutral It, nor found a purely external, incidental and transient sexuality, but rather an inward, essential and lasting order of being as He and She” (Barth 1961: 158). But this is problematic on at least three counts: identicality and equality do not exactly supervene; the “order” designed to avoid stasis actually leads to stasis of a different kind;[63] and Barth pins difference solely and ineluctably on sex. Loughlin comments,
“Most obviously, the rigid polarity of male and female precludes homosexuality as a possible condition of masculine and feminine existence” (Loughlin 2004: 187).
Moreover, it renders intersex literally nonsensical. Barth “allows for variability and new possibilities in the meaning of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’” (Loughlin 2004: 187), but will not shift on the compulsory heterosexuality and mutual completion of those sexed male and female, lest this undermine their difference – which might, in turn, undermine the analogous difference between God and humanity.
As Gorringe notes, what happens in CD III/4 is that
“Barth takes texts which are themselves influenced by patriarchal ideology, reads them in the context of his own general ideology, which is patriarchal, and concludes to a certain subordination of women” (Gorringe 2004: 119).
Gorringe holds that “We can accept his fundamental theological principles without his unacceptable conclusions” (Gorringe 1999: 207), noting for example the reframing of Barth’s account of man and woman as perichoresis in the work of Paul Fiddes (Gorringe 1999: 206-7).[64] However, such a failure to resist a given human ideology (complicated by the fact that Barth believes it to be a more-than-human ideology), I believe, compromises not only this part of Barth’s argument, but the strength of his injunction to employ suspicion of ideology generally.[65] It thus seems extremely difficult to “save” Barth for a theology of intersex on his own terms. This is unfortunate, since his ostensible rejection of hegemony is crucial and incisive, and his suspicion of the “natural” in determining truth chimes more than he might have acknowledged with subsequent feminist and queer deconstructions of biological essentialism.
Barth’s insistence on a specific, unwavering covenantal significance attached to human gender may render him an unfairly obvious target for criticism; of course, he is by no means the only person to have held that masculine and feminine gender provide complementarity and completion of each other. However, it is expedient to consider some further assumptions underneath such all-encompassing sex/gender models. At least a part of Barth’s fear of “non-difference” between male and female, for example, may stem from a fear which Iain Morland claims is present in much non-intersexed discourse: that bodies which seem to cite “normal” bodies, without themselves being “normal” or typical, threaten the distinction between bodies perceived as normal and those perceived as pathological. Impaired and intersexed bodies, for example, can usually perform many or most of the functions that non-impaired and non-intersexed bodies can. This shakes the societal structures which rest upon particular manifestations of gender (and other characteristics) as being normative, and their exceptions as being unproblematically “other”. Morland’s assertion is clearly rooted in the claims of Mary Douglas (1966), and those influenced by her, that it is anomalous or ambiguous phenomena which are usually singled out for particular ritual treatment because it is these which are deemed to threaten the clear boundaries of bodies and systems. Crucially, however, these anomalous phenomena must still be enough like the things which they are unlike in order to be recognized as anomalous things of a certain type. An anomalous dog must be quite a lot like other, non-anomalous dogs – in fact, rather more like them than it is unlike them – in order to be recognized as an anomalous dog rather than a horse, tree or river. Picking up only on the anomalies is therefore somewhat arbitrary – so why does it happen? Referencing the story of ISNA founder Cheryl Chase, considered a boy at birth but reassigned a girl whilst a toddler,[66] Morland says,
“Chase’s penis/clitoris ‘quoted’ maleness and femaleness without actually being either of them. It performed some of the functions of male and female genitals (such as sensitivity and capacity for erection), but it resisted classification as female or male… It is [considered] unacceptable for intersexuals to have tissue that ‘quotes’ the tissues of females and males. This is because… such acts of quotation open up a space of questioning” (Morland 2001b: 364).
The questioning goes beyond the actual physiological tissue of the body and asks what is at stake when non-males or non-females “usurp” the privileges of these states. If something (be it tissue or something else) which “belongs” to males, which is the sole preserve of males, is annexed by non-males; or if the perimeters of what constitutes access to a given category are blurred; then questions are raised about whether it is the actuality of the body which has socio-cosmic significance, or merely the passing appearance. Could Barth’s archetypal man-who-acts be an XY individual with ovotestes and extreme hypospadias who has been assigned to live as a girl and woman? Or is it gender behaviour rather than chromosomes which matter? If it is the appearance of being a man, of living as a man and taking initiative as a man that counts, then why is an XX transsexual man less of a man than an XY male-from-birth? It might be countered that intersexed and (perhaps) transsexual people are “special cases”, who stand outside Barth’s cosmic paradigm of sex without thereby entirely deconstructing its reach for the majority of humans. However, the point is that Barth’s model leaves no room for exception – because there can be no exception, either, in the initiating activity of God in relation to humanity; because Barth’s narrative structure consists of a particular kind of beginning-middle-end, “mutually constitutive, mutually demanded” (Muers 1999: 267) – so any exception necessarily begins to abrogate the entire project. If it is at its margins that any structure of ideas is most vulnerable (Douglas 1966: 121), then where these structures must take account of bodily configurations and processes themselves deemed to cross boundaries – processes to do with bodily fluids or the detritus of shed skin (Douglas 1966: 121), or configurations deemed liminal or anomalous – it makes sense that this vulnerability will be heightened. I discuss this further in Chapter 3, with reference to transsexualism and sex reassignment surgery.
2.3 Implications for Human Bodies in the Body of Christ
2.3.1 The Hegemony of the Binary Body
Human bodies are multiple, so it is important to consider how human bodies are conceptually able to relate to God in more than simplistically-sexed ways. What does this mean for the notion “Body of Christ” as encompasser and/or site of identity for multiplicitous human bodies, bodies variously sexed and able which do not necessarily easily fall into human taxonomies of male/female, healthy/unhealthy, clean/unclean, repentant/unrepentant and so on? Part of considering the Body of Christ as a body has usually been an underlying assumption that it is a body as human bodies are bodies. If human bodies are generally unambiguously-sexed bodies, then, the expectation might be that the Body of Christ is also unambiguously sexed. (This does not mean that it is overweeningly and unexceptionally considered as a male body: in Ephesians 5:22-24, for example, it seems to be figured as the body of a wife whose husband is her “head”.) Actually, however, the Body of Christ already behaves in ways unlike those of most human bodies: Christ’s human body is not generated through the usual sexual route but via what might be termed divine inspiration. Lacking a human male biological component in his parthogenetic conception, Jesus might well have been a male with two X chromosomes (a highly unusual state). Remarkably, though not uniquely, Jesus’ body walks on water; is raised from the dead; is taken up into heaven.
Moving away from this binary perspective about sex and signification, however, is not necessarily as simple as just deciding to do so: Paul Tillich argues that the creation of symbols is always a communal act, and that it is not possible for people simply to “decide” to change the meaning of a symbol, for it has an innate power. Thus,
“If something becomes a symbol for [the individual], it is always so in relation to the community which in turn can recognize itself in it” (Tillich 1966: 16).
The fact that the model perpetuated in western (Abrahamic) societies, of a male-and-female binary anthropology, continues to occur through identification with a religious ideology, gives the model more power and slows the process of its disintegration as a “given”, since there are multiple layers of motivations for maintaining it. Sociologists Vannini and Waskul explain,
“Whenever vertical structures of differentiation become so habitual that they effectively reach a relatively enduring static hegemony people temporarily lose their capacity for novel and creative sensation… This is what happens when we aspire to have and to be the body prescribed by ideologies of gendered beauty” (Vannini and Waskul 2006: 197) (original emphasis).
The binary sex-gender model has become just such a habitual, static hegemony, and feeds back into ever-narrowing conceptions of goodness and legitimacy. It is also always complicated by the patterns of power and prestige inculcated in it, which disincentivise those it privileges from leaving it behind. This explains the particular and ongoing focus on appropriate gender roles in certain strands of Christianity, which has privileged behaviour deemed modest, sexually continent and, often, specifically heterosexual. But just as Barth cannot pretend that his model of God and humanity is somehow prior to his own human embodiedness, so “Theology… needs to understand… how what it assumes it knows needs to be critically assessed. It needs to understand also the kinds of bodies its own discourse has been implicated in producing” (Ward 2004: 74).
The “ideal” bodies produced by theologies of perfectibility, omnipotence and will-to-power are not identical with the human and cosmic body of Christ the God, in whose image all humans are supposedly created; yet theology has still wanted to retain a power of legitimization over bodies which do not “fit” – having supposed that particular bodily ideals are, in fact, self-evident and universalizable. However, suggests Holly E. Hearon, it may be appropriate for people keen to resist hegemonies of oppressive sex/gender discourse to question what the use of particular imagery in the theological tradition actually implies:
“Resisting readers… may be suspicious of the image of the body. This suspicion may arise in part because of our propensity to envision bodies in gendered terms. Just what does this body look like? Must we conform to a particular image of the body in order to be a part of the body? Would it make any difference if this were a transgendered or intersexed body?” (Hearon 2006: 611).
Whilst the image of the body per se may still be valuable and interesting, then, the particular baggage associated with it as an image may render it too problematic to be useful for a time. Or, perhaps, it may be necessary to refigure what it is about bodies that we want to say in talking about the Church as the Body of Christ, as I explore later in this chapter.
2.3.2 Jesus Uncut? Christ’s Uncertain Body
Through having to have a body which is still a binary body – which is certain things and is not other things, as human bodies are generally assumed to be certain things and not other things – God has been rendered sexually respectable, and sexually unremarkable except in God’s professed maximization of the perfection to which all humans are supposed to aspire. Jesus’ human body is tortured, wounded and killed, but also resurrected, and the coming kingdom is held to be a place where other humans’ bodily imperfections will be eradicated. But Ward notes, too, that the human body of Christ as represented in art and text has varied according to the cultural expediencies of time and situation. For example, he notes that, in many paintings of the 14th-16th centuries, Jesus’ penis is depicted uncircumcised, despite a contemporaneous focus on Jesus’ humanity and vulnerability (which might have been expected to lead to emphasis of his historicity, his concomitant Jewishness). Ward attributes this apparent counter-intuition to circumcision’s contemporaneously negative associations with Judaism, Islam and slavery. A 15th-century Jesus whose penis was cut would have been a Jesus socially and aesthetically inferior to those meant to venerate him (Ward 2004: 79-82). Rather than reflecting the likely historical fact of Jesus’ circumcision, then, the paintings “are accounts of the body of Christ that are grounded upon certain cultural a priori about embodiment” (Ward 2004: 82). Humans continually construct and reconstruct even a body deemed historical, for there is no cadaver-of-Christ to exhume and carbon-date. The story of Jesus’ life and body cannot remain uncut – unedited – any more than his Jewish foreskin can. A desire to retain a scriptural image like that of the body for the Church necessitates a re-reading and re-examination of the image in light of contemporary and shifting conceptions of bodies. This does not mean “pretending” that Christ’s earthly body was a female one, but it allows an attitude of exploration, of asking how notions of Christ’s body (the body with multiple human members) do change if it is figured in unusual or unexpected ways.
Robert E. Goss, for example, is one of many scholars who have traced a certain note of “queerness” about the body of Jesus, arguing that, in John’s gospel,
“Jesus exhibits the feminine traits of the Sophia Wisdom model of God, but his maleness complicates the feminine aspects of Wisdom… He takes on a submissive role as a slave or a woman to wash the feet of his male disciples; he is penetrated by the patriarchal Roman system, nailed to the cross. His flesh is penetrated by the phallic system of patriarchal conquest and rule” (Goss 2006b: 550).
Goss also argues that “Christology realizes its ultimate queer potential in a transgendered Christ – full of fluid identities” (Goss 2006c: 637).[67] This kind of imaginative catalyst allows us to explore what happens to Christ’s body if its incontrovertibility (as heterosexual, even as male) is liberated – and how that might affect possible reactions to the individual human bodies said to comprise it as the Church. Ward counsels,
“When we are talking about redemption we are talking about bodies and redemption through bodies. And bodies have no stable or autonomous identity. Bodies are not self-grounded and self-defining. A person’s physical body, the ‘one flesh’ of the nuptial body, the church’s ecclesial body, the eucharistic body and Christ’s eschatological body map upon one another” (Ward 1998: 63).
Although intersexed bodies are not unproblematically ciphers of androgygy or more all-inclusive than other bodies, then, there is a sense in which, as “atypical” bodies, they already map onto the mixed-up, much-inscribed Body of Christ; their particular, specific existences can thereby speak to what all bodies mean in relation to one another.
2.3.3 Bodily Différance: Uniqueness and Ubique-ity
The question of what bodies signify in themselves and in relation to other bodies can, it seems to me, be usefully explored in analogy with what words signify in relation to other words. An extended semiological-linguistic study is not possible or appropriate here, but a brief reflection on one particular concept in the work of Jacques Derrida is worthwhile.
Like words, as well as not being entirely self-defining, bodies are also inevitably deferrals (because their meaning is given by and in relation to other bodies just as the meaning of words is always in relation to other words, other pointers), containing a trace of what is signified; always penultimate. The Derridean notion of différance, explored by Ward in relation to Barth’s theology (Ward 1995),[68] carries with it this sense of deferment as well as differentiation: words, as signs, can only ever be partial, because they always defer to other words, other signs, never finally arriving at the thing signified. Derrida says,
“An origin whose structure can be expressed as ‘signifier of the signifier’ conceals and erases itself in its own production. There the signified always already functions as a signifier… There is not a single signified that escapes, even if recaptured, the play of signifying references that constitute language” (Derrida 1976: 7).
For Derrida, a word cannot stand without calling upon a “trace” of its opposite. The hint of this opposite constantly destabilizes the authority of the original concept. Light is only meaningful as light because it is known to be the opposite of darkness, and its existence cannot help but highlight the absence of darkness; but this in turn threatens the status of light, since it always carries a sense that light is not ubiquitous. As Ward notes, Derrida thereby questions the tendency in language for “signifieds” (deemed ultimate) to be privileged over “signifiers” (deemed penultimate or provisional) (Ward 1995: 216); even in signifieds’ erasure,[69] their absence is highlighted (Ward 1995: 219). Meanings are not unambiguously present within word-signs, for words signify only in relation to other words. Language gives the impression of being repeatable; the impression that, when one uses a word, one can summon forth exactly the same concept as one did last time one used that word. However, identical repetition is impossible. “The word différance… is suspended between differing and deferring”, says Moore (Moore 1994: 21); ostensibly-repeated words both differ from themselves (because the meaning communicated on two separate occasions is never identical) and defer a fixity of meaning (because the “final” or “ultimate” meaning can never be reached, since all concepts are mediated by more words).
What happens if this Derridean reading is used to explore one particular aspect of how bodies have been figured theologically? Importantly, to begin with, bodies can never be solely conceptual; they can never be entirely swallowed up in signs, since there is something irreducible about them as flesh and blood. However, as I show through the work of Edith Wyschogrod (below), bodies can be given into a multiplicity of stories and thereby come to signify multiply too. This “giving into” raises difficult questions surrounding autonomy, choice and self-possession, as we began to see in Chapter 1. The giving-over of bodies to be figured and described by others has sometimes clashed with the desire of intersexed people and others to direct their own bodies, to pull back the power to self-describe erased through narratives of excision. There is thus always a tension between bodies in and of themselves and bodies as constructed communally.
This also goes for the Body of Christ, which means that this Body provides a way into thinking about other bodies. It might be said that Barth’s conception of woman as the “B” to man’s “A”, which is always already assumed in man’s “A”, is figuring woman as the Derridean “trace” highlighted even in its erasure. The “otherness in the same, non-presence within presence” (Ward 1995: 216) in Derrida’s chain of postponed significations is, argues Ward, also present in Barth’s anthropology whereby “otherness” from the point of view of the male is itself, in fact, the “other of the same” (Ward 1998: 67). But keeping in mind the concept of différance, it is also possible to argue that the “body of Christ” is really whoever participates in remembering it in a given moment, as well as being really a distinct body given over in order to allow the Church to be. Human participants differ from one another and from the historical person of Christ; the ceremonial celebration of Eucharist is always part of what defers an arrival at the “actual” body of Christ, for the Body is being changed even in the moment of participation.[70] Just as it is not possible to tell aurally whether it is différance or plain difference which is being discussed – for it is always already both, since différance is itself always already both differing and deferring – it is also impossible to divide Christ-in-response-and-communion-with-humanity from Christ-self-possessed. Celebration of and memorial to the Body of Christ is an institution (a genesis) as well as a commemoration. A religious symbol such as the sacrament of Eucharist, the consumption and dissemination of the body of Christ in order to nourish and perpetuate the Body of Christ, re-presents an event without itself becoming the sole instance of that event; to do the latter would be to negate the uniqueness and specificity of the original event – as well as of every Eucharist-event which follows. This finds echoes in Barth, too; in CD I/2 he says,
“A sacrament asserts clearly, and with relatively greater eloquence than the word in the narrower sense can ever do, that the iustificatio or sanctificatio hominis, which is the meaning of all divine sign-giving, does not rest upon an idea but upon reality, upon an event” (Barth 1956a: 230).
Eucharist, though, is not merely a memorial of an event, but more literally a re-collection, a re-membering (just as the resurrection bodies of humans must surely re-collect and re-member their earthly configurations). John Bell of the Iona community breaks bread during the Eucharistic liturgy and then, with the words, “Do this to re-member me”, fits the broken pieces back together – the implication being that it is in the act of sharing, the act of communion, that Jesus is raised and his followers walk in his way. Likewise, Myers et al (1996: 185) comment of the Markan Last Supper narrative that the author does not include therein the words “Do this in remembrance of me” with reference to the sharing of bread and cup as in 1 Corinthians 11 and Luke 22. They note,
“Instead of memorializing Jesus, Mark wants us to remember discipleship practice… The ‘memory’ of [Jesus’] kingly anointing ‘as for burial’ by the woman is invoked by the cup, Mark’s symbol for suffering at the hands of the powers… Mark’s eucharistic moment is about remembering – not the mystical past but the ongoing practice of discipleship” (Myers et al 1996: 185).
An analogy can be drawn with sexual encounter to explore this further. Like sexual encounter, Eucharist requires perichoresis, a genuine meeting and interpenetration of past and present events; both require a new light to be shed on old circumstances. In the sexual realm, pornography negates this possibility. When people look at pornographic photographs or films, they see an act of sex out of context. The material represents a unique, discrete moment that cannot be repeated. Of course, new meanings, contexts and themes are given to photographs and pictures all the time; a new context does not always limit or distort, but is sometimes a site of nascence[71]. Pornography, though, does something slightly different, in isolating a moment and then giving the viewer the belief that he or she may be present and involved in its replication. But every act of sex has a onceness, by which it is unique, even as it stands in a series of other acts of sex and gains its true context from belonging to all of them, by which it is ubique.[72] As David Matzko McCarthy says,
“No sexual act represents a total self or full relationship. Rather, what we do today gains its meaning in relation to yesterday and what we will do tomorrow” (Matzko McCarthy 2004: 43-44).
The new context of a photograph or other reproduction of a moment can add to or change its meaning; this is not always a negative thing, but should not be mistaken for the original meaning. Similarly, whilst every act of Eucharist necessarily references an original event, as with a pornographic picture it should not be deemed exactly reproducible, as this is to isolate it from its context of being one in a series of acts. Two individuals could have sex on three separate occasions, follow the same pattern, use the same techniques; yet the three encounters could still be very different from one another because of what the actors bring to each occasion (worry, indigestion, a post-menstrual surge in libido); broadly, the sexual encounters’ context within the actors’ wider lives. Likewise, each time the Body of Christ is re-membered in Eucharist it is remade in a new way, differing from itself and deferring a closed notion of itself, ever incomplete as bodies are incomplete without one another. As Ward comments, “Différance, examined theologically, becomes the play between the presence and the impossibility of God” (Ward 1995: 232).
2.3.4 Inside-Out: The Ecstatic Eucharistic Body
No single body can define alone what it is to be a body; no body can be taken as a perfect specimen unless the criteria of perfection are drawn solely and ineluctably from that one body and its substance on one specific occasion. (Something like this is going on when Aquinas asserts that all bodies in the resurrection will be aged 33, the age at which Christ died and rose to glory.) Rather, the definition of what constitutes a body can only come from taking into consideration all bodies. However, it is crucial to acknowledge the tension between the self-constituting and the constituted-by-others nature of bodies, as Vannini and Waskul explore in their proposal that a more useful formulation of the body than the dualistic one found throughout much psychology and sociology[73] would be an ecstatic one:
“An ecstatic formulation of the body emphasizes the active, interactive, and transactive state of ekstasis – being at once both inside and outside one’s self, body, and society and in virtue of doing so annihilating those boundaries” (Vannini and Waskul 2006: 189).
This is “a departure from the spatial limits of one’s body by way of expressing fusion with the divine or with other bodies” (Vannini and Waskul 2006: 190). Theologically, the ecstatic body might also be the perichoretic Eucharistic body. The ecstatic body holds together its old habits and its movement beyond itself into new habits, and, significantly, “emerges by becoming committed to its future projects” (Vannini and Waskul 2006: 191). Analogously, the perichoretic Eucharistic body emerges (and becomes an abundant body) in and through commitment to itself as an individual body (its uniqueness) and its being-held in all other bodies (its ubique-ity) too.[74]
Barth might oppose the “newness” inherent in this re-membering and emergence by countering that all human history and activity is already taking place within the context of God’s history; that no act of Eucharist is new but rather points to a particular moment at which human history changed through the work of Christ. However, if sex symbolizes the (transcendent?) state of the relationship between its actors (“repeating” the status within its functional history), it also builds that relationship. It points to something prior, because (at least with the exception of stranger-rape or otherwise completely anonymous sex) it always occurs in the context of an existing relationship between the actors. But sexual encounters can also become part of what deepens or broadens the relationship and thereby set the scene for further sexual encounters. In this way, they do make the transcendent immanent (as Tillich says religious symbols do – Tillich 1966: 17), because the “transcendent” relationship is changed or added to by them. Similarly, then, the history of God as expressed in the history of the Body of Christ is always a fluid history because of the simultaneous “newness” and “oldness” – uniqueness and ubique-ity – of the co-actors of that history.
The particular human body, by its actions, changes the particular human body in its history. This also affects the wider Body-community, present and cosmic. It is the believers who make manifest God’s image by enacting God’s healing and saving works; discussing the centrality of the body and sensory experience in Syriac Christianity, Susan A. Harvey remarks,
“Just as Christ defeated Satan in and by his body, so, too, must the victory be rendered in the whole body of Christ: the body of the believer, the body of the church. Thus, what one does with the body, how one lives in the body, what one knows with the body are all matters vital to the process of salvation… The body is the place in which salvation happens and the instrument by which it is done… Bodily acts express the believer’s interior condition even as they display the living image of the body, individual and collective, redeemed” (Harvey 2002: 9-10).
If the communion in the celebration of Eucharist is a communion with Christ in his (cosmic) body, as well as an expression of solidarity between the members of the earthly body, then Christ must also be changed, or true communion has not taken place. Any relationship changes its participants if communi(cati)on has taken place, for they have responded to each other. God is truly present in the body of Christ, and God, in Christ, is changed by the presence of each individual human body which makes up Christ’s Body. To say that God changes does not mean that God is made something other than God by interaction with humans; God already was a sociable, perichoretic deity, or a doctrine of triunity is meaningless. Through Christ, however, God and humans are no longer forever epistemically divided from each other; and so, at least post-Resurrection, God and humans are no longer as different as they once were. Humans are still creatures, but different kinds of creatures, creatures who are also co-creators with a responsibility for and toward what they create.
The arbitrary divisions between human tropes also begin to be dissolved in Eucharistic interaction, then; difference persists, but difference based on essentialist types will not necessarily be permanent. Gerard Loughlin argues that there is always an element (what might be described as a Derridean trace) of connection between what humans think of as most encompassing us – our own bodies – and what is perceived as most different from us – bodies which are alien. Loughlin says,
“The alien is necessary for its opposite, the self-same, which is thereby never really opposite, never really its own, self-possessed reality, just as the alien is never wholly other. For the alien is just the other side of our skin; the inside of our outside. While it appears most distant, it is most close, our most inward but unacceptable being. It is thus all too often abjected, disavowed and destroyed. Yet its unutterable proximity holds open the possibility of its embrace, of connecting across the divide, without denying the difference of one side and the other. This is the possibility of the membrane, of the tissue that separates and connects… It is the difference that unites; the cut that connects” (Loughlin 2004: x-xi).
This seems to me to echo Irigaray’s claim that when individuals cannot acknowledge the extent to which they already exist in their Others, they always already repress themselves, risk their selves, because this unawareness of when, where and how the Other might appear limits their capacity to embrace change and expansion in themselves (Irigaray 1985a: 135). The fear of intersexed and otherwise atypical bodies becomes the fear of all bodies and what they might become or do; the fear of bodies’ uncontrollability. Alienated bodies, then, those which are discomfiting, are not, in fact, necessarily very far removed from the bodies of those who are discomfited. Actually, says Loughlin, no “alien” is as alien to us as we can be to ourselves (Loughlin 2004: 125-6). Intersexed bodies are still often felt to be “alien”, to be “other” from the bodies which speak and act and formulate policy. However, within Loughlin’s account, although they might be pushed out of signification by unyielding binaries, they exist in trace even as they are erased.
How does this reflection on différance, uniqueness and ubique-ity inform a broader exploration of the Church as the Body of Christ? In CD I/2, Barth asserts,
“Even the Church after the manifestation of Christ is in the world and consists of men who as such continue to require sign-giving. The Church is not Christ. The Church does not possess His incomparable authority, that of the eternal Word itself. Neither has it authority to do His deeds… The whole existence and history of the Christian Church, so far as it actually has an existence and history of its own, belong to [the] sign-world of the New Testament. But as such they must submit to continual measurement by the original sign-giving at the calling, commissioning and sending forth of the twelve apostles, and they must be justified at that tribunal” (Barth 1956a: 226-7).
The Church is not identical with the historical body of Christ, but must continue to refer back to the historical body of Christ and the apostolic events surrounding it in order to keep in check the authenticity of its promulgation of the legacy. Although it is continually renewed, continually re-membered, it must also “cite” or “quote” historical events, for its newness is grounded by the tradition in which it stands – just as each act of sexual intercourse is new but stands in the context of the pre-existing relationship (and, in some cases, the context of a marriage, which might be figured – as by Barth – as the authorizing and founding event in the sexual relationship). It is only through these specific (sacramental) manifestations of God’s revelation that the Church links with the reality to which the signs attest. What is important is that each new generation or manifestation of the Church brings new meaning to the signs and stories of the tradition through its own understandings of the rest of the world even as it exists always in reference to and conversation with the tradition.
Readings and identities build and complement one another within a loose economy of the divine, then, without the limitation of knowing beforehand exactly what they will look like. Scripture attests to some of the ways in which humans have tried to work out what it means to live alongside this God, but it cannot tell the whole story, for the narrative is still unfolding through new actors all the time. Thus our identities are never solely our own, but are bound-up in our relationships with others. The Christian worshipper’s character is created by his or her Judaeo-Christian tradition and narrative community; but worship practices here and now also serve to retell and reframe the past (Ford 1999: 100). David F. Ford thus calls for a worship of God constantly alert to its own need for self-critique and suspicion (Ford 1999: 99). The worshipper stands in the tradition, beliefs and practices cemented in the past: but the beliefs and practices are also imbued with meaning partly by their contemporaneous hearers and readers. This does not negate the importance of contextual reading, or of trying to discover what might have prompted the original writer or community in their rituals and story-making; conversely, it reinforces the conception that we are linked in our own physical bodies to these earlier, spiritually ancestral bodies by our embodied experiences of exploring their embodied experiences, as well as in a cosmic sense. Discussing how best to approach reading and interpreting “texts of terror” such as those which appear to sanction the oppression of women, then, Myers et al comment that each community should engage with the texts in the context of the whole of scripture and the rest of the reading history of the tradition. In this way, even abusive texts are allowed to “enhance our faithfulness, offering glimpses of where our forebears’ quest to be faithful ran aground on their own pain, fears, and needs to protect identity, security, or privilege” (Myers et al 1996: 169). Crucially, however, distorted or untenable readings can also be recognized as such. For Barth, the signs of God are defined by God’s actual existence expressed in actual historical occurrences:
“Since [God’s] sign-giving stands in the closest possible connexion with objective revelation, like that revelation it must be regarded as a divine act… The given-ness of these signs does not mean that God manifest has Himself as it were become a bit of the world. It does not mean that He has passed into the hands or been put at the disposal of men gathered together to form the Church. On the contrary, what it does mean is that in Christ the world and man have fallen into the hands of God. It means the setting-up of God’s lordship, not of a sacral human lordship” (Barth 1956a: 227).
This has the advantage of removing God from any ideology or hegemony which might claim to be the sole and unique official mouthpiece of the deity – from a “sacral human lordship” – leaving God’s freedom always unmarred by the limitations of the fallibility of human amanuenses (as Barth also stresses in The Epistle to the Romans). As Myers et al insist, honest engagement with the scriptures means never having arrived at the ultimate answer (Myers et al 1996: 169).
Barth, too, appeals to “the seeing eyes and hearing ears of ever new men” which allow “an ever new recognition and understanding in the Church with every succeeding generation” (Barth 1956a: 228). However, the problem is that in Barth’s reading of the situation, there is never really any chance for things to be anything other than exactly what they have been. Barth says,
“Never even in part can the Church believe that it has mastered [the recognition of God’s signs], that it has learned what Christ really wants of us in the message of the apostles, what preaching and sacrament ought really to be in our midst” (Barth 1956a: 228).
This rests on a humility grounded by the recognition that “as there is no new revelation, there are likewise no new signs… There is no way in which we could have any knowledge of them” (Barth 1956a: 228). For Barth this is beneficial: the absence of new signs, “new” pointers to God – the absence of change altogether in the relationship between God and humanity – keeps salvation history firmly rooted in (past) historical events without the risk of being sullied by anything from humanity rather than from God. This makes perfect sense in the context of the Third Reich; yet it is also counter-intuitive, short-circuiting the possibility that the Church could ever become a more authentic reflection of its God, or that humans could actually be improvisers in the play that is their own liberation and that of the planet they inhabit. Barth’s account condemns humans to play out hammy, hackneyed roles such as “man” and “woman” which are always essentially the same, rather than acknowledging that even such apparently primal identities may be distortions of a broader truth about human beings.[75] Actually, it is crucial for our moral development that we as humans do not know how the story ends, or we remain as oblivious children and ethics has no virtue. Otherwise the Church must acknowledge, on the one hand, that its understanding of God is as yet imperfect, that “never even in part can the Church believe that… it has learned what Christ really wants of us in the message of the apostles, what preaching and sacrament ought really to be in our midst” (Barth 1956a: 228); yet it cannot strive to be anything other than the imperfect machine it is, for it can only ever reference itself in its existing historically-located genesis. Each act of Eucharist, then, is historically-located amongst people whose self-analysis is imperfect but always shifting, and inevitably this must influence their understandings of an historical event. History is never simply “what happened”, for it is always interpreted in the recording and in the recollection. This is true even within a text held as more sacred than other texts[76].
2.3.5 Bodily Particularity: “Individually We Are Members One of Another” [77]
The symbolism of the body of Christ as a body is never self-evident (and thus nor is its sexed nature or sundry other attributes that might be ascribed to it). Barth may be correct to assert in CD IV/1 that the redemptive energy brought about in Christ’s death is
“a completed fact, to which nothing can be added by us in time or in eternity… It is something that we have to see and read like an opened page which we have no power to turn, like a word which we cannot go beyond dialectically, making it equal with some other word, and thus depriving it of all its force” (Barth 1956b: 296).
However, crucially, human understanding of the event can ebb and flow and become fuller with time. Webster notes that the visibility of Church history for Barth is always ambiguous; it happens “in, with and under the history of sinful world occurrence” (Webster 2004: 26). But the fact that human beings are not always cognizant of their status is a matter for potential rather than despair. In order to maintain hope we must be aware of what we can do as well as what we cannot; what we, in perichoresis with Christ and with one another, in Christ’s body which is our body, could do and be. To negate the importance of human perspective, of the nuances given in light of our own experience of atonement as well as what may or may not be the one unchanging “historical” event in which it rests, is, ironically, to circumvent the particularity which Barth himself sees as so crucial when he emphasises the necessity of the uniqueness of the Christ-event. Moreover, the particularity is also a particularity from the perspective of God:
“For God it is foreseeable that this outcome, the eschaton, will be good, but because there are ethically neutral events there is more than one best possibility. Furthermore, in the last judgement, the evil acts of human beings and perhaps also their good acts will be judged, that is, transformed into ethically neutral acts. Nevertheless, they will contribute something to the eschatological identity of both the individual personal creatures and the whole shape of the eschaton as the one realized outcome of those different – yet ethically equivalent – possibilities” (Mühling-Schlapkohl 2004: 192).
God has truly placed the future in the hands of human actors and contingent events, and thus God, too, does not foresee which future will be actualized (Mühling-Schlapkohl 2004: 192, Sherwood 2000). The individual actions of humans build the particular future which will be; and their particular bodies affect, and are affected by, this process.
As we have seen, then, the particularity of each act of Eucharist as testament to the building of the body, is just as crucial as the particularity of each act of sex as negated by pornography. It must not repudiate the specificity and historicity of Jesus’ earthly body, but neither must it simply subsume all bodies into an amorphous mass. Christ’s (historical) body was not every body[78], never mind everyman. The particularity of his body is echoed by the particularity of each of our bodies as they interconnect with one another. To suppose that participation in the mythic body of Christ should cancel out each body’s uniqueness would be a gross irony – for, as Paul writes, “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Romans 12:5) (emphasis mine). This begins to pave a way for a Body model where even apparently incompatible entities may be held together, and without judgements as to pathology or echelons of perfection. Eucharist re-members Christ, but this never happens in distinction from those who participate. Even a mysterious event beyond human control, such as transubstantiation, then impacts – and is impacted by – individual human bodies: the bread and wine I consume literally help to build my body, but I in turn help build the body that the bread and wine represent. Here is where signification turns in upon itself: human bodies are signifiers of a broader wholeness in God, but also become what is signified. According to the Church of England’s Common Worship liturgy, the bread and wine (the body and blood of Christ) are the work of human hands, what human hands have made (Central Board of Finance of the Church of England 2000). Human and non-human bodies already are the new creation, even as they help to build it, but human bodies also have the faculty for envisaging a radically different future. So justice, hope and the anticipation of shalom are not pipe-dreams but real possibilities. Every individual body, then, is a sign of itself, a sign of all bodies (for this body shows something of the category “bodies”), and also what is always being signified. The Eucharistic body must always include “oneself for others”, as Edith Wyschogrod’s writings imply (below). The body of Christ distributed in bread and wine builds the Body of Christ which distributes the bread and wine.
It is not simply a case – as for Barth – of an ordered correspondence, an ordered initiation and response, between God and humanity (Webster 2004: 27-8); in the sense that God is reactive and moved by human history, God is really changed by human history, and so is God’s body. This means that the understandings of sex, of the implications of sexed bodies, within Christ’s Body – within the Church – must be changeable in response to the sexed self-identification and sexed corporeality of the bodies within the Body.[79] What, then, can be said of the individual bodies which the Body of Christ incorporates, which give and are given meaning politically and cosmically, and which all go toward defining “body” in its differing, deferring différance? If the cosmic, resurrected Body of Christ is a glorified body, a body beyond death, to what extent can it encompass, without rushing to “perfect”, bodies and identities which (in terms of not easily fitting human categorization) are intractable?
2.4 Hagiography and Narrative
2.4.1 Inscribed with Texts: Bodies as Palimpsests
The biographies of many intersexed individuals serve to illustrate the manner in which the meaning assigned to particular anatomy changes in light of the surrounding context given to it. Consider Cheryl Chase. Although the “re-born” child “Charlie”’s anatomy had to be adjusted to fit the back-story of “Cheryl”,[80] in actuality, the resulting smooth, shiny pubic area would no more have resembled the genitals of a “normal” girl than did the excised glans. However, the meaning given by doctors to Charlie’s phallus could not stretch to encompass something else called “Cheryl’s phallus”, despite the fact that these would have been physiologically identical entities – and despite the “gap” still left between Cheryl’s remodelled anatomy and that of other girls. If the meaning assigned to “Body of Christ” can stretch to encompass bodies which queer or subvert what bodies are held to mean in a heterosexual, male-and-female theological anthropology, can the meanings of binary human sex as invested by mainstream theology also be stretched to encompass different truths about humanity?
Using the category of hagiographic texts, Edith Wyschogrod in Saints and Postmodernism suggests that saints themselves become “texts” because their bodies become inscribed by meanings given them by their biographers and those exposed to (and who come to have faith in) their stories. However, she adds, although texts about saints are context-specific, they can also “impinge on what is integral to time-bound social and political praxes and, in fact, may serve to undermine them” (Wyschogrod 1990: 5). Saints (usually) had historically-located, flesh-and-blood bodies and existences before they had hagiographic biographies, but the crux of the meaning of hagiographic literature exists in the overlaps or joins between its various chronological layers: the time of the event, the time of the writing-down of the event, and the time of the hearing of the writing-down of the event (Wyschogrod 1990: 6). Different “voices”, heteroglossia, clamour to be heard, not only as a result of the chronology but also of the contemporaneous dissonance between, for instance, the claims of the saint and of his/her institutional or authoritative context – often shifting in predominance at different points in the narrative. David McCarthy Matzko holds that the cults surrounding saints “have shaped their identities far beyond the character of their own lives on earth” (McCarthy Matzko 1996: 110). The inevitable distance between “signifier” (stories, legends and devotions surrounding the incarnate life of the saint) and “signified” (the saint’s “actual” body), then, is always in tension with a simultaneous and inextricable connection between the two; Wyschogrod argues that, just as the supposedly “all-seeing” subject is actually limited by location, so the saint’s sainthood cannot be separated from his or her lived bodily experience. (This, again, echoes Vannini and Waskul’s ecstatic body.) The saint’s bodily self-giving informs the entire saintly experience. The “truth” of a hagiographic text still lies, to an extent, in its perceived historical veracity, although the meanings read into that historically-located individual’s life might be multiple – just as Eucharist must still be rooted in its historical tradition and its citing of historical events whilst being a new act, a new institution each time.
Wyschogrod’s work inspires reflection on where “truths” about bodies actually lie: do they arise from something inherent to the flesh and blood, from “transcendent” beliefs stemming from but not identical with the flesh and blood, or somewhere in between? Where embodied lives are read as exemplary – as in hagiography – does this “fix” the “meaning” of a body somewhere outside or beyond itself (thus, arguably, eroding its subjectivity)? In fact, it is conceivable that trying to find a single, synthesized reading (trying to find the “original” of a word or a body; trying to get behind its différance) might actually detract from the polyphony of truths about bodies which appear where readings jostle for pre-eminence. This raises questions about who has the right to invoke particular readings of a body, or to decide whether some readings attached to intersexed bodies in particular are more legitimate or “ethical” than others. For Iain Morland, for example, readings of the narratives of intersex must always be multiple, even as they focus on actual lived experience. To those who claim that the reform of the treatment of intersex is a matter of a simple paradigm shift from “bad” early surgery to “good” non-intervention, Morland counters that, in fact, both surgical intervention and its critique are veritable sites of ethical reflection on intersex (Morland 2005a). Any proposed “reform” of the treatment of intersex should, in fact, be seen “as a way of reading the plurality of narratives about intersex, the ethical outcome of which cannot be determined in advance” (Morland 2005a: 240). In this instance, Morland is implying that trying to find the “original” narrative would be as elusive as trying to find the “original” body, the body behind all the signifiers about what a body is and means.
As David McCarthy Matzko notes, “Most saints would probably not live up to the sanctity which their legends promulgate” (McCarthy Matzko 1996: 110). However, he says, it is exactly in their imperfection that the lives of saints become sites of redemption, for they are rehearsals of God’s activity in the world (McCarthy Matzko 1996: 114). McCarthy Matzko asserts that it is when this rehearsal and yearning becomes normative in our own lives that “we gain access to the landscape of God’s way with the world” (McCarthy Matzko 1996: 114). Importantly, then, “Particular individuals are often set apart as saints only because their lives become access for the church to name its embodiment on this landscape” (McCarthy Matzko 1996: 115). Likewise, it seems to me, just as particular individuals can be set apart as exemplary in terms of sanctification, so particular individuals can literally come to embody a community’s understanding of its own bodiliness. The “good” of this is ambiguous, for whilst the Church (for example) has often paralleled its own felt weakness or lack with real bodies such as those of people who are blind or deaf, in doing so it has normalized the perception of blindness or deafness as weakness or lack. Similarly, whilst there is potential in noting a possible disruption of heterosexual, homosocial norms in unusually gendered or unusually sexed bodies – in making intersexed people’s bodies prophetic harbingers of a new order, for instance – there is also a risk therein of objectification and misuse. Just as saints have often come to be given import beyond that incited in their lifetimes, so intersexed and other individuals have sometimes been made to bear the weight of unsought connotation: from the mythic associations afforded the androgyne throughout history , through having the “falseness” of their bodies changed to a “true sex” via surgery, even through being figured as a “third” or politically significant liminal figure by activists when all they want is a quiet, unremarkable life (Preves 2003: 39). Iain Morland claims that, in some respects, intersex activists such as the more politically vocal members of ISNA are as paternalistic as the doctors whose unquestioned authority they wish to overturn. In fact, says Morland, many patients are keen to submit themselves to the hands of medical experts; even, in the case of intersexed persons, to “pass” as “normal” rather than allowing their bodies to become public political battle-grounds (Morland 2005a: 218,220). As a result,
“Advice dispensed didactically by intersex activists remains, despite its progressive agenda, paternalistic by the activists’ own definition, for arguably it hampers the patient authority and autonomy that activists wish to foster” (Morland 2005a: 222).
Crucially, he insists,
“One’s identity can be described – in terms of attitudes, behaviours and judgements – but when one claims that identity, one is offering to others not a description of the identity, but rather making a particular commitment that in turn places a demand upon others” (Morland 2005a: 112).
In other words, to claim or “own” an intersexed identity is often presumed to be to claim a particular political or social allegiance, whereas, in fact, not every intersexed person necessarily shares the agenda of groups such as ISNA. Preves warns that individuals who politically oppose surgery for intersexed people must be wary of making intersex itself an essentialist identity wherein particular experiences and narratives of trauma are also essentialized (Preves 2003: 148). This is one reason why some intersexed people and groups have moved away from talking about “intersex” – because of hysterical media connotations around universal gender-blurring and universal distress – and prefer the (debatably) less emotive language of “DSD”.
2.4.2 Emptying Self of Self: Bodies and the Kenosis of Signification
Making a person “mean” concepts with which they may not wish to be associated – as when a transsexual or intersexed individual is held up as “necessarily” queering heterosexual gender-mapping even if they themselves would not wish to be aligned with such a project – risks distorting and misrepresenting them. This might be interpreted as doing violence to their personhood. Interestingly, however, for Wyschogrod, the saints’ self-giving in their bodies can also be read as a kenosis of self-signification (Wyschogrod 1990: 33) as well as more concrete self-determination. Wyschogrod’s saints give up their bodies to be used by and for others, but, concomitantly, this means that their bodies also come to be figured (linked to something signified) by others. Their stories and representations are transmitted by others. Since a significant period of time has usually elapsed between the saint’s lifetime and the moment of the retelling, direct access to the saint’s physical, living body is no longer possible, which may distance the stories from the saint’s “real” body. The survival of relics may give the impression of spanning the ontological distance between saint and venerator, but, in fact, the metaphysical space left by the absence of the dead saint is filled (and more than filled) by stories and beliefs retold and augmented by the faithful – as well as enough fragments of clothing and shards of bone to rebuild an entire calendar of saints. Wyschogrod says,
“The saint forgoes self-interest claims, or, in Christian hagiographic language, the soul empties self of self. For theistic hagiography, the ‘interior space’ that is thus hollowed is filled by a transcendent Other. But human others, the recipients of saintly benevolence, may also come to occupy this void” (Wyschogrod 1990: 33).
Saints do not ask to be saints per se, but they do exhibit comparatively freely-chosen kenotic behaviour, albeit sometimes in response to a divinely-commanded “call” or vocation (the mystic element is downplayed in Wyschogrod’s reading). In this way they come to be figured as exemplars or cosmic indicators, but in a manner unsought and possibly undesired. Because “human others… come to occupy this void”, however, the uncertainty of the saint’s history usually risks pious concretization by “the recipients of saintly benevolence”. Saints give up their own self-determination.
Ecstatic bodies, however, direct themselves as well as being directed. It is thus possible to “grow” one’s identity in a (partially) chosen direction. This is particularly important in light of the objections to the concept of kenosis as an appropriate ideal for individuals who have already found themselves marginalized and denied the capacity to self-direct – as raised by Daphne Hampson (Hampson 1990: 155). The last thing intersexed people need, Hampson might say, is even more ceding of their continence as subject-selves; kenosis might be a suitable project for the privileged, but for those who are already conceptually threatened it risks becoming a theologically-sanctioned form of masochism.[81] Ethically “good” identities, for Morland, should promote the recognition of other identities which, in turn, promote the recognition of yet other identities. This includes sexed identities (Morland 2005a: 129). The “character” of any body, then, rests both on its conscious self-projection and on its reaction from, and constitution by, others. Just as the sacrament of Eucharist must really commemorate a particular event and really institute a unique event too, so too a “body” made up of other bodies must really comprise the truths borne in each body as well as really transforming them through their new context in and with one another. One’s social body is one’s community too, and one changes this broader “body” by virtue of one’s individual somatic body existing within it.
Formidably, then, it may be that those whose bodies are considered unremarkable in terms of a sex-gender harmony must be prepared to relinquish the (unsolicited) power and status which currently comes with such a state of affairs. This might be what is meant by giving more honour to weaker members: if one member is felt to be less “characteristic” of the body than another, if one member lacks what is felt to be a particular (arbitrary) good, it might be said that what matters is to bring that member into line with everyone else, to somehow give them what it is that they lack. But the implication drawn from Morland’s point might be that, in the Body of Christ, rather than making the weaker (or less honoured) members conform to the Body, rather, the Body conforms to them. If it is considered “weak” to lack a particular sexed status, then, rather than making those who lack binary sexed status the exception and compensating for them on these grounds, why not make it that everyone else cedes the “honour” attached to sexed status? As F. Gerald Downing comments, the “weak” elsewhere in Paul’s writings are those bound to convention, as with the controversies over meat-eating in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 and Romans 14 (Downing 2005: 181). It might be argued that the extent to which binary sex-gender categories are used to demarcate humans in our society is no more than a deep-rooted convention, and one which must not be held in greater regard than the demands of justice. Morland goes so far as to say,
“The sex identities ‘male’ and ‘female’ are indefensible because they do not endorse the recognition of sexual diversity. Quite the opposite: such binary sex identities constitute a commitment to a system that erases intersexuality… Non-intersexed people who seek justice for the intersexed should refuse the identities ‘male’ or ‘female’” (Morland 2005a: 129, 131).
A commitment to “male” and “female” as labels entails, argues Morland, a commitment to sexual descriptivism. In similar vein, Preves argues that, ideally, all gender labels, including “intersex”, would be eradicated, and that society should endeavour to respond less to any kind of gender variance (Preves 2003: 154). Kessler, too, argues that a truly radical intersex agenda “would make intersex identities moot” (Kessler 1998: 90): women with large clitorises would be just that, with no further political or clinical significance attached. She avows that “once genitals were no longer recognized as being of two distinct forms, ‘female’ and ‘male’ as dichotomous categories would likewise become difficult to see” (Kessler 1998: 90).
It might be countered that, in fact, Morland’s, Kessler’s and Preves’ post-identity positions do not leave space for those in whose male or female sexed identity they find their fullest expression; that, to truly acknowledge difference, it is necessary to live with the problematic nature of personal identities which apparently cannot be reconciled – rather than pretending that the dissonance no longer exists. In order to have a cognitive world which does not negate intersex, it might be asked, is it really necessary to have one which is entirely post-identity, which cannot suffer any identities including “maleness” and “femaleness”?
Morland seems to suggest that “male” and “female” are inevitably damaging, and that their maintenance has become too costly. Extreme as this may seem, it deserves further consideration. Wyschogrod, discussing the possibility of sainthood leading to a self-effaced neuter state where body, time, memory and so on have all been handed over to be used by and for others, argues that what is to be given over might include unequivocal gender too. In this way, it might be said that it is the non-intersexed saints who are called to cede their binary identity, rather than those considered weak or marginal in their sexed or gendered identity who are “saved” by assimilation into expected categories. Wyschogrod uses the story of the saint Marina/Marinus to explore the manner in which this individual’s uncertain, shifting gender identity highlights the questions otherwise often naturalized in narrative, about the “who” or the “self” to whom things happen.[82] There are already gender-bending aspects to the story, such as Marinus being left to care alone for the child whom “he” has supposedly sired. Wyschogrod reads the story from a Lacanian standpoint, citing the specular identity that Marina/Marinus has failed to settle on because of a lack of parental figures (a dead mother and cloistered father). The “signifier” of gender has been buried. The erasure of the girl Marina, through her father disguising her as a boy, also affects the identity formation of the “masculine” Marinus. Marina/Marinus is neither male nor female because s/he has been made to be both:
“The Father’s law, attested through speech, must be recognized by the mother or the child will remain forever bound to the mother. Marina/us is doubly exiled, bound to the absent mother and cast out of the discursive symbolics of culture” (Wyschogrod 1990: 118).
This leads to a collapse of meaning for Marina/Marinus as an individual; her “desire” is made unspeakable, existing outside cultural meaning and accepted binary structures. However, this also means that Marina/Marinus’ body becomes very much and very evidently “for the other”, reinforcing the manner in which it (and its genderedness at given moments) is used for the good of others throughout Marina/Marinus’ life. Thus Wyschogrod concludes,
“Because of the doubly gendered body of Marina/us, her/his desire at first oscillates wildly between genders but, as the narrative unfolds, becomes what it always already was, desire for the Other, disinterested desire” (Wyschogrod 1990: 121).
Here, then, is a model of not clinging to gender or sex identities which leave no conceptual space for sex “outsiders” – as Morland urges (above). For Marina/Marinus it was a largely destructive experience as part of a whole narrative of loss and secrecy. But the relinquishing of sexed identities, even those held dear, could be a more constructive, enriching and humanizing part of that ethical action done “for the other” by the non-intersexed saints – the souls and bodies given as living sacrifices for the Body of Christ which is the human bodies all around. We feed into it even as it feeds us. Wyschogrod says,
“The saintly body accommodates all sexual identities… and none. The disinterested love of the Other requires the totality of the body of the one who loves as an ever shifting point of reference” (Wyschogrod 1990: 116).
This could entail a handing-over of identification to those beyond the narrative categories within binary sex signification, and thereby speak of a solidarity, a “standing with” those who cannot be represented adequately within existing systems. Rosemary Radford Ruether says,
“Jesus as the Christ, the representative of liberated humanity and the liberating World of God, manifests the kenosis of patriarchy, the announcement of the new humanity through a lifestyle that discards hierarchical class privilege and speaks on behalf of the lowly” (Ruether 1983: 115-6).
The earthly body of Jesus was understood to have privilege attached to its perceived sex, and thus Jesus lived in a context of the various subversion of embrace of particular aspects of this status. However, the maleness itself of his body does not have inherent significance, but simply how that maleness is understood and reacted to. Coakley has questioned whether the kenosis described by Paul is really a kenosis of masculinism, as Hampson seems to suggest (and which would render kenotic activity problematic for those already disempowered, since it is for Hampson an expression of guilt or compensation) (Coakley 2002: 11-14, 19; Hampson 1990: 155). In fact, then, it is more than a kenosis of patriarchy that is needed in the new world; Coakley suggests that a contemplative form of kenosis “may take us beyond… existing gender stereotypes, up-ending them in its gradual undermining of all previous certainties and dogmatisms” (Coakley 2002: 37). The result if not necessarily the process is positive: what is implied is, I believe, a kenosis of any signification attached to sex/gender unnecessarily – or where an insistence that a particular model of sex and gender (or able-bodiedness, or race, for example) is the only valid one excludes people who do not tick that model’s boxes. One’s body is neither only one’s own nor only part of the world and not one’s own; rather, “it is the primary place of their union in differentiation” (Ford 1999: 95). The body always has an availability for meaningfulness (as given by others), but is also always irreducible to being just what it is as defined by others. Inside and outside are reversed in the new creation; moreover, inside and outside are no longer discrete categories, for, as in Morland’s argument, they collapse into each other.[83] This collapse might be called profoundly queer, and I explore the advantages and disadvantages of such a mingling of categories in more detail in Chapter 5.
So although part of what Wyschogrod describes as possible saintly behaviour – which is commemorated in hagiography – is the ceding of certainty in sexed and gendered identity, it is not necessarily the case that it is intersexed people who are called to be saintly or exemplary in this respect. The existence of an intersexed (or a disabled) body should oblige one to reappraise one’s views about the meaning of one’s own body in one’s own community – particularly when one’s body is not deemed intersexed, disabled or otherwise unusual – before it leads one to presume to investigate any “inherent” import in what has been designated an “other” body, even a saintly or exemplary one. Thus it is only from one’s own body, in oneself, that one can apply the lessons learned from other bodies. This is not to promote unreflective individualism, but rather to acknowledge that communities are always comprised of persons with at least partially unique viewpoints and interpretations of available sensory information.
To assume that it is always and inevitably those with atypical patterns of sex, gender or bodiliness whose configurations are problematic is to further exclude them from signification. Clinging to a particular model of human gender because it is thought to be central to human status as being in the image of God is not only unhelpful – as Morland implies – but also idolatrous. For humans to cling solely to what they already believe to be true of God can only limit a fuller understanding of what it is actually possible to know of God. Only accepting as veritable what is already indubitable means some epistemological sites will be deemed irrelevant, or too dark for the light of God to reach.[84] The “kenotic hymn” of Philippians 2:5-11 counsels that humans are to emulate Jesus, who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped; but to exploit, cling, or grasp at equality with God is exactly what happens when humans decide that a single present or historical reading of gender tells the whole story of God. To claim God as a figurehead for a particular human project – to purport to know exactly what the “perfected” Body of Christ will look like, and which identities can and cannot exist legitimately within its prototype – is to attempt to stand beyond contradiction.
An authentic giving-over of oneself to be figured by God and the other human will necessarily have uncertain, unpredictable consequences. Ford suggests,
“The self is posited by God in community without that necessarily being a dominating heteronomy. Likewise there is no ‘shattered cogito’ in fragmentation, but there can be a complex gathering of self in diverse relationships (including forms of self-dispossession that require a letting go of control and mastery, often an existential equivalent of shattering) before a God who is trusted as the gatherer of selves in blessing” (Ford 1999: 99).
The self-emptying described in the Philippians text involves humans emptying themselves of what they think they know about themselves, and of what they think they know about what it is to be in the image of God – of which gender constructs might be a part. The patience of Job was tested by the fact that Job could not align his pre-existent notions of what God was like with the things that God appeared to be doing. It was necessary to look beyond the solidification of the tradition to allow God true freedom. Likewise, not holding onto any fallen-short image of God must be central to Philippians’ kenotic exhortations. Thus, again, the tables are turned back on those who are – willingly or not – reinforcing a patriarchal and heterosexualist paradigm via actions and attitudes (which might, according to Morland, include maintaining “male-and-female” sex identities).
2.4.3 Giving-Up and Giving-Over: Disrupting the Binaries
For Wyschogrod, saints’ bodies are given over into a multiplicity of stories which they cannot control. This has also happened with the ways in which intersexed bodies have been treated and represented. However, if people whose capacity to self-direct is threatened continue to give themselves over to be figured by others, this may promote a perpetuation of their disempowerment. A giving-up and giving-over should not be done unproblematically by those who already find themselves at the margins of signification. Those painted as the stronger and the weaker members respectively, as those who act and those who are acted upon, give up and give over for one another, but there are ways in which this giving-over might be more evident and more painful for those who have more privilege and status to lose. In this way, bodies continue to construct and inscribe one another. Bodies which speak about intersex, bodies which carry out surgery for intersex and bodies which undergo it are all, as Morland holds, involved in its ethical narration. “Narrating the self” never takes place in isolation from the other narrations going on all the time. In fact, says Morland,
“The narrative quality of surgery, whereby the results of surgery can be continually re-read and re-appraised, is precisely what enables the critique of traditional treatment to occur at all” (Morland 2005a: 10).
It is not that intersex activists are “ethical” and surgeons are not, says Morland; it is simply that most activists reject infant surgery as a viable ethical choice (Morland 2005a: 237). As in Wyschogrod’s model, the “truth” for Morland arises in and through the uncertainty, the overlaps and joins between stories and descriptions always themselves penultimate. Although it is positive that intersex voices formerly ignored or quieted are now being valued, says Morland, even this is still “effected by pre-existing power relations” (Morland 2005a: 148).[85]
If Christ’s Body is its human members as well as a cosmic entity, it is important that participants in “filling out” and “co-creating” Christ in his Body retain their difference, otherness and uniqueness too. Because of its constituents, Christ’s Body is always multiple and diverse, grounded in Christ’s real physical body and other real physical bodies too. Gavin D’Costa, in Sexing the Trinity, contends that it is highly significant that Christ’s physical body is always already reliant upon, as well as co-sustaining, that of his mother Mary. Thus Mary should be viewed as “co-redeemer”. Working from Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis, D’Costa expands,
“The unilateral dependence of the church on Christ is now turned around: the church is a filling out and complement to the redeemer… To fill out and complement Christ is to point to a lack, to refuse a closure on the incarnation, such that both women and men might now be co-redeemers... The description of who Christ is, in his human perfection, is always necessarily a description of the women and men… that are being brought into holiness through the Holy Spirit. Hence, the description of the humanity of Christ is never complete” (D’Costa 2000: 196, 198) (my emphasis).
By giving up his right to equality with God, Christ allows himself to be built and fulfilled by his human neighbours. They make Christ’s humanity. D’Costa has missed a trick here, however, for he can still only say that the filling-out of Christ – and thus the representation of the Trinity – must be both male and female (still based in a binary paradigm, grounded in lack-and-completion) rather than beyond male and female. This is unfortunate, for D’Costa himself argues, “If the church turns its signs into fixed essences, an ahistorical idolatry follows… Signs… have no essence or fixed stability” (D’Costa 2000: 202). To suppose that (human) sex attributes tell the whole truth of God is to settle for a God made in our image without adequately examining why our self-identification is as it is in the first place.
2.5 Bodies Qua Bodies: Some (Provisional) Conclusions
The image of the body as symbolizing wholeness, completion and co-operation in Christianity is not an unproblematic one, but it is a valuable reminder of the grounded, carnal locus of our encounter with God. Bodies are both signifiers and signified, relating and relating to other bodies, always perfectly themselves as well as “pointers” to the ontology of every body. As such, all bodies are constituted by their wider body – political, social, religious – and constitute that body, just as the nourishment that comes with Eucharist gives energy for each human body to go forth and build the Body too. Since each individual body is synecdoche of the wider Body, any perceived imperfections must be construed as either symptomatic of the real ongoing struggles of a Body at war with itself, or as evincing questions about whether perfection and imperfection, interior and exterior, imposed identity and self-identity, are categories which cannot be maintained as opposites. All these are held within each other and cannot be excised without smothering the truth of the skirmishes of community. By analogy, then, individual bodies which seem not to fit some of the metaphors the Body has held about itself – particularly, in the current situation, bodies which do not neatly fit a Barthian economy of invitation and response, male-and-female binary complementarity, such as bodies which are intersexed, transgender or homosexual – raise questions about the fitness of those metaphors to become imperative rather than merely indicative of a particular self-understanding. The particularity of Christ’s body promotes celebration and valuing of every particular body. It might be said that this could have been the logical conclusion of Barth’s own underscoring of the centrality of Christ’s life, death and resurrection as historically-located events in an historical body – yet Barth’s male-and-female imagery (designed for each other; repeating the otherness between God and humanity; completing, by woman, the part that man did not even realize he was missing) only allows him certain norms, an instance where typical is rendered obligatory.
This raises further hard questions about the limitations of body and Body imagery for the Church, in light not just of intersex but of other real – and not just stereotypical – bodies. Perhaps a metaphor with more fluid boundaries is desirable, or perhaps the attributes of real bodies need to be re-examined for their potential as adding to the image (skin is semi-permeable yet does a remarkable job at keeping organ and sinew contained. It contains where appropriate and lets fluids pass where appropriate. Likewise, the “skin” of the Body of Christ is itself flexible and semi-permeable, holding together what is within without entirely or eternally excluding what is without. Impermeable skin would lead to death, with sweat unable to escape and cool the body. Similarly, the skin of the Body is pathological when it only separates and divides).[86] Ward suggests that it is crucial that the body of Christ being constructed now is malleable, ambiguous, porous, hybrid, even queer (Ward 2004: 85). But this must not be subsumed simply to a project of what is fashionable culturally; in order to avoid becoming sidetracked it is necessary continually to “return to the wounded and violated body of Christ: the body as always in some sense circumcised and requiring circumcision” (Ward 2004: 85). Artistic images of Christ in glory with still-evident wounds[87] echo the suggestion in Augustine that “scars” may be present even in the “perfected” body (see Chapter 4). This suggests that the notion of perfection as flawless “wholeness” is itself flawed, or at least inadequate. If the metaphor is to be retained, there are certain other qualities which must be borne with it: a truly Eucharistic body, as Wyschogrod has implied, must be a truly saintly body, a body given over to be figured by others just as Christ has relinquished his body to be figured by those who now consume it at altar rails and in living rooms across the world. Ward exhorts,
“We are called to make meaning in God – this is the particular commission of Christian poeisis. That is, Christian theologians have to render visible the operation of the Word, the body of Christ” (Ward 2004: 83).
It must also be, as Loughlin describes, “a multi-membraned body, layered with many meanings and types of flesh, being the body of the theologian, the body of the church that informs his or her ecclesio-cultural experience, and the body of Christ, whose body is the church, in all its diverse embodiments” (Loughlin 2004: xx).
Human bodies are signs of the regeneration and interaction in God, indicating both what they are and what they are not. The human body more broadly shows the Body which it has already helped to build and the Body which is still under construction, still growing, still regenerating. The questions of meaning raised in and by intersexed bodies are raised in and by all bodies, with every body as a symbol peculiarly of itself and universally of bodies as a genus. Gerard Loughlin says,
“If we think of human bodies as both sexed and beyond sex… then the church may even now begin to allow our future bodies to inform present practice… For the vision of what we will be shows us what we are already, but cannot see clearly with our fallen eyes. Therefore the church is right to insist on sexual difference, and to mark, enhance, and celebrate this difference, while resisting those tendencies in modernity which would deny sexual difference in the name of a neuter or egalitarian sex, which is always finally a male sex… The church must begin to see and show heavenly bodies, no matter how alien they now seem to us” (Loughlin 2004: 124).
Whilst Loughlin’s account is a good one in a binary mindset, the work of going beyond the binaries and discovering that sexual difference need not always mean only two, an either/or, theologically and culturally, is still in embryo. What is vital is that the body of Christ now represents every other body just as every other body represents, re-presents, Christ. As Loughlin himself acknowledges,
“Jesus is transfigured, but not just as Moses or Elijah. He has become the flesh of every foreign body, the touch of every stranger; the glory of an alien encounter. If Jesus’ body is deterritorialized, and so no longer located in any one place, then every other body is set free, since Christ has become for us a common humanity, the difference in the same” (Loughlin 2004: 264).
What all this means is that the human bodies held in the Body no longer have to be either the same as one another or stereotypically (as along binary sexed and gendered lines) different from one another. The dead-and-resurrected nature of Christ’s Body means that human bodies are already partially their transformed selves, yet they are also, necessarily, exactly their same, scarred selves. Questions of sexed identity and sexual behaviour, of what it is legitimate to do to bodies and to be in bodies, must be governed by notions beyond those inhering in narrow, constrictive theological conceptions of corporeality. The Body of Christ is intersexed, because its members (or constituents) include intersexed bodies – and because, even for Barth, Jesus comes to be represented as “nonsexual or supra-sexual, transcending the differentiation”, so it might be possible to “locate the nonsexed, ‘abstractly human’ in the soul or the ‘inner life’, of Jesus and thus of every person” (Muers 1999: 270). Intersex is therefore a legitimate conceptual “place” from which to think theologically. As we have seen, appropriate kenotic behaviour for those with bodies not deemed unusual or marginal may be to cede their legitimacy, to give up the status that comes from a bodily sex deemed normal or clear. Although bodies constitute one another mutually, however, they must also retain their bodily integrity, which is why kenosis is less of an unambiguous good for those who may already have had their capacity as authors and actors eroded. Intersex is at once marginal and non-marginal, and deserves theological reflection exactly because it is both marginal and non-marginal. Where people are marginalized, excluded or swept from signification altogether, this is exactly where ethical praxis demands that theology should speak with and have solidarity with them. Kenosis for non-intersexed people necessitates thinking ourselves into the margins – not in order to colonize experience which is not ours, but because intersex disturbs binary constructs of sex and gender in their entirety. It is in this sense that intersex cannot remain marginal but must be considered in its status as disruptive and subversive of a whole swathe of socially- and theologically-sanctioned norms which are really hegemonies. It has implications across the whole of theology.
In order to consider further the ways in which the existence of intersex and its treatment might subvert some naturalized norms of theological anthropology, I now turn to an examination of some existing theologies attached to the first of three specific areas: transsexualism and sex reassignment surgery.
Chapter 3 Reassigning and Redefining: Intersex and Theologies from Transsexualism
As I argued in Chapter 2, justice and appropriately kenotic behaviour from clearly-sexed, non-intersexed people involves thinking ourselves into the margins. In this chapter I consider what happens when mainstream, privileged theologies and their associated hegemonies fail to think themselves into the margins; when, by contrast, they speak from an unreflectively sexed, privileged centre and disregard or devalue sexed and gendered configurations which seem atypical or abnormal. I suggest that theological responses to transsexualism and to intersex have been inconsistent, and that in their attempts to resist a body-soul dualism they have actually reinscribed one, privileging “irreducible” bodily sex over complex gender identity despite the fact that human sex is already more complex than a male-and-female overlay suggests. I show that it is a prior decision that transsexualism is abnormal or pathological which leads to transsexuals’ decisions about their bodies being read in this way by opponents to sex reassignment surgery, and suggest that such a priori conclusions lead to the exclusion of intersexed bodies too.
In her 1966 volume Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas comments,
“The body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious… All margins are dangerous. If they are pulled this way or that the shape of fundamental experience is altered. Any structure of ideas is vulnerable at its margins” (Douglas 1966: 115, 121).
Douglas’ comment is particularly salient in terms of figuring the place of atypical bodies and gender identities within the church. Their challenging of the margins is part of the reason why transgendered and intersexed people have not always been treated with love and compassion by Christians. I begin this chapter by reflecting on the experiences of one particular intersexed individual, and how her story chimes with similar issues faced by transsexual people. I then move into a consideration of some of the particular ways in which intersex and transsexualism might be felt to threaten social or theologically-sanctioned norms, and how theology has responded thus far to the challenges posed by these particular bodies.
3.1 Gender Transition: Doing Less Violence to Bodies
In the film The 3rd Sex, made for the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Sally Gross describes the vast change in attitude toward her when she realized in her forties that the masculine gender identity in which she had been brought up and had lived all her adult life did not do justice to her full personal identity. Gross, at the time a Roman Catholic priest, was keen to take a “life audit” in preparation for possible appointment to priorships within the Dominican Order, and realized in the process that her sex of rearing did not tell the whole truth about her (in van Huyssteen 2003). Gross says,
“This was at the time when, in the Church of England, there was fierce debate about the ordination of women, and there was a lot of publicity about this, and [the head of the Order] was fearful. If the news about my own situation came out, it would be claimed that here was a Roman Catholic woman priest. In his mind, also, it was quite clear that he connected it with other issues: the issue of paedophilia… sexual abuse and all the rest of that… He was almost determined to see this as a perverse moral choice… And maybe… a part of the story was that… with the issue of intersexuality, well, here was a monster; we don’t want to be perceived as a framework which has such things in it” (Gross speaking in van Huyssteen 2003).
Although Gross never underwent any surgery, there was still the sense in this response to her that her choice to move gender also implied a cosmically-significant and illegitimate change. Gross consulted the head of the Order in England and was honest about her intersex condition, but says she was perceived as “dangerous” despite the fact that all she wished to do was take a temporary leave of absence to explore personal identity issues, surrounding her Jewish heritage as well as sex and gender. When Gross did decide to live full-time in a feminine gender identity, she says she faced opposition, despite the fact that, physically and emotionally, she was the same person she had always been; that she underwent no surgery; that the fabric of her body remained the same; that she remained celibate. Gross was not allowed to return to the priestly life. In 1994 she was told by the head of the Dominicans that Pope John Paul II had issued a rescript annulling her vows (van Huyssteen 2003). As well as no longer being able to perform priestly duties, she was no longer even allowed to receive communion. Gross comments,
“I felt utterly bereft… It was a question of the roots of that faith being excised, being cut out,… being denied the nourishment it needed… to survive, which is communion, fellowship… The loss of that faith was something which was forced. It was a faith which was smothered, and it was smothered because I am intersexed” (Gross speaking in van Huyssteen 2003).
Although Gross had not “become intersexed” in terms of a physical change, she had transitioned in terms of her gender expression, just as many pre-operative transgendered people do. Her desire to live an identity which she felt did less violence to her body (van Huyssteen 2003) meant that she was perceived to be moving away from an “unambiguous” masculine life. This was despite the fact that Gross remained celibate and her body was as it had always been. Neither gender was “false”: each represented as best as possible at the time, though still provisionally, what Gross perceived her gender to be. Gross’ particular physical state makes it especially difficult to maintain that only one of those genders would have been “true” throughout her life.[88] The significance of Gross’ body was only made to bear weight once she had made it public. It demanded attention just as a late-onset impairment might become more noticeable to the community of the person with the impairment. The body’s political significance became more apparent, and was redefined, although its physiology had not altered. Because of the male-only catchment of the Roman Catholic priesthood, it was made to seem that Gross had been masquerading as something she was not, when in fact she merely sought to be honest about what she was.
What happened when Gross transitioned to life as a woman is reminiscent of what happens each time a transgendered person asserts that the gender in which they have been living until that time now does violence to their person. It is not a case of taking on a “false” gender, any more than it was “false” for Gross to transition to a feminine expression of her own identity. However, just as some intersexed people have described not being “trusted” as agents or decision-makers by their doctors (Preves 2003: 62); and just as Gross could not be allowed to decide what was an authentic outward expression of her body and psychology without, apparently, compromising her vocation and putting herself beyond speakability and conceptual legitimacy; so, too, transgendered people must first obtain outside sanction, confirmation or “approval” for what they consider to be their state – in this case, from the medical profession – in order to gain access to sex reassignment surgery (SRS). In terms commonly used in medical ethics, this might be seen as compromising their autonomy and personhood, their capacity as authors and actors to shape and direct their own lives. Jay Prosser says,
“Even though, in presenting as transsexual, subjects originally author their transsexuality, to access hormones and surgery transsexuals must receive the clinician’s all-important reading – must be authorized as authors” (Prosser 1998: 106).
However, it is always already complicated by the fact that transsexual (and intersexed) people, like others, have their notions of sex and gender shaped at least in part by a society largely hostile to atypicality and with basically essentialist assumptions about what constitutes masculinity and femininity, man and woman, boy and girl.
There are good reasons for advising a period (usually at least a year) of living publicly in the new gender before surgery takes place. SRS is serious, invasive surgery, and is not easily reversible. However, the fact that transsexuals are expected to “test” their new gender highlights the oddness of the fact that non-transsexuals are not expected similarly to “try out” their gender roles before they are “confirmed” as transsexuals are. For most people, the gender in which they are brought up from infancy is assigned solely on the basis of their genitals, and any subsequent deviation from this is deemed exceptional. This is grounded in a largely heteronormative model, one where bodies unproblematically “tell” truths about individuals.
This kind of essentialist heteronormativity has also coloured theological responses to transsexualism. Transsexualism has tended to be viewed with suspicion within the Church, both because of fears that it will lead to homosexual relationships and the undermining of marriage, and because of reservations about the propriety of carrying out SRS in the first place (reservations not usually extended to surgery on intersexed children, as we will see). In a system where marriage and procreation are so highly valued, it has sometimes been deemed illegitimate to render oneself infertile when this compromises the good of being able to procreate, and to bring this element to sexual intercourse with one’s partner.[89] However, reconsidering and redefining what actually inheres in “truths” about heterosexual sex and procreation helps to deconstruct this objection to the reassignment of transsexuals.
3.2 “Men’s Sweat Only Attracts Other Men”: The Heterosexual as Homosocial
Part of the reason why transsexualism has often been figured as threatening is because it seems to allow bodies to cross the gulf between male and female physiology, and thus to undermine the either/or binary on which so much social fabric is built and to allow an annexation of the privileges and functions of state to which given individuals do not have “legitimate” access. For Barth, as we saw in the previous chapter, any human who is not a properly masculine male or feminine female is not fulfilling their humanity, and must be figured (negatively) as “a neutral It” (Barth 1961: 158). As has been mooted, however, what might appear to be incontrovertible demarcations of sex/gender are bulwarked by discourses already sited in a heteronormative mindset where male is only male and female is only female and each is exclusive of the other. Many Christian attitudes to homosexuality are based on this premise, as homosexuality is held to negate something profound about what it is to be a human being in (sexual) distinction from another human being. However, the existence of intersexed bodies – and the various masculine, feminine, and other gender identities of those who live in them – shows that sexed nature is already more complicated and shifting than binary, prescriptive systems might allow. In considering Christian perspectives on and objections to transsexualism, and particularly SRS, it will first be helpful to ask what is actually at stake in insisting on dually-distinct sexed and gendered identities and heterosexuality for men and women, and what might be eroded by a move beyond them.
Lever Fabergé’s 2003 television advertisement for the Lynx deodorant range depicted groups of men in a range of physically close (and clammy) circumstances: hugging after a football victory, reclining in a sauna, dancing wildly together in a crowded nightclub. The tagline cautioned, “Men’s sweat only attracts other men”. It is, of course, in a deodorant company’s interest to profess that women (and it is, in this world, women whom any self-respecting man would want to attract) prefer a less ripe, more sanitized odour where synthetic pheromones mask the aromas of men’s perspiration. However, the kinds of male-bonding settings portrayed by the commercial are also, it could be argued, exactly those which also help to reinforce the “homosocial” structures underlying the less sweaty norms of society: the man-on-man action which can never quite be called homoerotic but which provides the social glue for the business and social dealings which men still, largely, in many contexts, control.
This conceptual scenario echoes a Lacanian model whereby “phallic exchange” must be mediated by a symbolic repository of meaning and power: a woman, a child, capital. To circumvent this through male-on-male sexual (phallic) activity, to depart from heterosexual (and homosocial) norms of commodity-exchange, would be, argues Geoffrey Rees, to “[undermine] the possibility of male receptivity of phallic dominance – transacted through women – from God to men” (Rees 2002: 36). Rees contends,
“When Barth and his multiple followers characterize same-sex sexual desire as a species of narcissism, what they are actually describing is the narcissism of their own male homosocial desire in its tendency to demonize sexual relations, in its need to obsessively define manhood and male homosocial bonds as a function of sexual relations between men and women” (Rees 2002: 42).
Men’s sweat only attracts other men; the “sweat” which bonds them is complex social ritual which defines themselves (by identification) and their others (by distinction). It is this, not homosexuality, which is homogenizing and narcissistic. In the homosocial account, men who do not behave as men should behave open a space for others to transgress their rightful spheres too.[90] Rees says,
“When discrimination between men and women deteriorates, the current structure of the male homosocial continuum becomes unstable, so that men become liable to suffering some of the indignities – and pleasures – associated with women” (Rees 2002: 26).
This, it might be argued, is part of the real reason for theologies which insist on clear distinctions between the spheres appropriate for men and women – not simply because (it is believed) this will allow fullness of being for each gender, but because a deconstruction of sex-gender norms would lead, too, to a deconstruction of who has power over whom and in what this is actually based. To diminish some of the artificially-imposed “gaps” between men and women might also lead to a questioning of what it is about males which “necessitates” their being fulfilled and completed only in a position of leadership over and above females. Rees concludes that it is, therefore, misguided to view (heterosexual) marriage as a necessary or inevitable occasion for God’s self-revelation (Rees 2002: 45). Arguably, male-female marriage as an institution has been about male-on-male pre-eminence just as much as it has been about providing a repository for sexual morality. God must be able to reveal Godself beyond the range of socially normalized, socially legitimized male-and-female relationships, or God is only ever exactly as the dominant group supposes. It is thus unnecessary, too, to “defend” the institution of marriage from the homosexual danger (which is important in considering Christian objections to transsexualism from the perspective of the undermining of marriage).[91] Importantly, then, it is also unnecessary, in terms of revelation, for each and every body to fit a heteronormative system: the intersexed, transgendered or otherwise unusual body need no longer carry the weight of making God via the status and power-exchange sometimes reinforced in acts of heterosexual commerce.
A disruption of the cohesion of bodies and gender identities leads to uncertainty; it is this uncertainty in terms of “legitimate” sexual relationship (ostensibly about sexual morality) with which Christianity has tended to be uncomfortable. Intersex and transsexualism correspond in their capacity to unnerve, to undermine the unreflective certainty that one knows the appropriate way to respond to given individuals because of their secondary characteristics. This also supervenes, as discussed, on issues of the status of humanity more generally, and the extent to which human sexed and gendered interactions reflect relationships with the divine. A major Christian objection to transsexual surgery has been that, if homosexual acts are wrong, then acts between a post-operative transsexual and someone of their original sex are also wrong, since SRS cannot really change something as basic as one’s sexed nature. Some Christians therefore oppose transsexual surgery, or people living permanently in a transgendered identity role, because this will lead to homosexual relationships; but this argument against transsexualism from homosexuality is extremely shaky. It is sometimes claimed (as Rees notes) that homosexual relationships are inevitably narcissistic, because same-sex partners delight in another who is essentially like them rather than one who is unlike them. But, holds Ward, a relationship between a man and woman can be just as narcissistic as that between two men or two women, since sex and gender are by no means the only or ineluctable markers of affinity or inconsonance. Ward thus redefines “heterosexual” as shorthand for any relationship, regardless of the biological status of the partners, where otherness is genuinely respected – for, he says, male and female figures can be “condensation points or metaphors for a density of signification above and beyond their anatomical specifications” (Ward 1998: 69). He concludes,
“There is no desire without difference. But exactly what is ‘other’ in a relationship between two ‘women’ or two ‘men’ becomes indefinable… There can be self-designated ‘heterosexual relationships’ whose structure of desire is homosexual, and so-called homosexual relationships whose structure of desire is heterosexual. True desire, that is, God-ordained desire can only be heterosexual” (Ward 1998: 70-1).
The language here is still unfortunately inadequate, for “heterosexual” still equals “good” –but Ward’s point is incisive. As we saw in Chapter 2, it is Barth’s “complementarity” that is narcissistic (Ward 1998: 67; Blevins 2005: 75), since it relies on ostensible difference which turns out to be sameness. True difference, prompting Godly desire, is not inherently more present in man-woman than man-man or woman-woman relationships.
Rees and Ward show that homosexual acts – amongst which are sometimes included intercourse between a post-operative transsexual and a person from their pre-operative sex – are read as deplorable not just because they are believed to jeopardize some kind of cosmic order (often the conscious rationale for opposing them). They are also deemed to refute structures of dominion, based on power, submission and subjection – a far more hidden and insidious agenda, deeply naturalized and become almost unconscious.[92] If it is accepted that there is more going on in masculine-feminine gender relationships than meets the eye, however, and that hierarchical structures are usually about controlling access to power, then they will be deeply shaken by models of God – like that of Marcella Althaus-Reid – where God relinquishes status, ceding power and supremacy, in solidarity with those at the margins. Top-down structures of power, and their associated social norms based on repressive hegemonies, are thus theologically indefensible. For both Ward and Rees, the proverbially “hetero”-sexual, that which is by definition grounded in an acknowledgement of otherness, can actually be oppressively homogenous. The moral and the economic are entirely indivisible: there is always the danger that so-called sexual morality in a patriarchal context will conveniently bolster patriarchy itself. Where male power and prestige is viewed as a legitimate mirroring of divine ascendancy, male-to-female transsexualism (and voluntary eunicism) becomes decidedly blasphemous.
Might Christian opposition to transsexualism from homosexuality carry over into responses to intersex? If it is argued that transsexuality leads to (abhorrent) homosexual acts when a post-operative transsexual engages in a “straight” sexual relationship because a male-to-female transsexual is “still a male on the inside” – or that a transsexual cannot really marry because a marriage must take place between a male and a female, and so any sexual activity for transsexuals with a member of their pre-operative sex will inevitably be extra-marital – then it makes little sense to maintain that sex between a “normal” XY man and an XY woman with AIS is any more legitimate. Strictly speaking, an AIS woman whose testes have been removed is as “male on the inside” as is a post-operative male-to-female transsexual: not, in fact, male at all, because no gametes are produced, but with some male-related anatomy and XY chromosomes despite a (probable) feminine gender identity. However, doctors tend to maintain – and theologians such as Oliver O’Donovan have followed, as I discuss below – that the real sex of the intersexed person, and thus the sexed role in which they should engage in intercourse, is the one to which they have been socially (and possibly surgically) assigned, because this bolsters the appearance of the authenticity of the sex. Even if homosexual acts are held as acts to be avoided, then – and even if the acts outlawed in the “texts of terror” such as Leviticus 18 and 20 and Romans 1 are held to be in the same order of “homosexual” acts as those which take place today[93] – this in itself is not a good enough rationale for outlawing all acts of sex between individuals with matching chromosomes for as long as sex between individuals with matching chromosomes (like an XY AIS woman and an XY man) is actively promoted to fulfil a social purpose.
3.3 Transsexualism and Scripture
There is so little biblical material which could be interpreted as speaking specifically about transgender issues that it is dangerous to try to build a Christian theological-ethical response purely on the basis of it. However, the few instances where cross-dressing and eunicism are mentioned have sometimes been used in trying to formulate responses to transsexualism, and I now consider them briefly.
Victoria Kolakowski argues that the lack of biblical condemnation of eunuchs – even those who have “made themselves eunuchs” as in Matthew 19:12 – and the premise that “compassion is superior to the Law” (Kolakowski 1997: 22) open the way for a non-condemnatory Christian ethical response to transsexualism too.[94] The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, for instance, is baptized into the community with no special mention made of, or significance attached to, his genitals (Kolakowski 1997: 24). If it assumed that at least some eunuchs have undergone surgery which has altered their genitals, this implies that, even on purely scriptural grounds, it is not possible to reject genital surgery out of hand as a legitimate path for some individuals. However, says Deryn Guest,
“While tracing a transsexual or transgender ancestry to ancient times might understandably be popular and have strategic advantages, the very different constructions of gender and sexuality in different places and times seriously undermine such ventures. Certainly, the application of [Deuteronomy 22:5] to (post)modern transsexual transition would not have been envisaged by any ancient author” (Guest 2006: 134).
Guest and Horton are right to urge moderation in trying to build a castle on a pebble; indeed, it is extremely problematic to apply verses out of context to a substantially different situation. Simply picking out a verse like Deuteronomy 22:5 (discussed below) and applying it to transsexualism is neither exegetically nor hermeneutically sound. The same might be said about the tactic employed by male-to-female transsexual Malinda in the documentary series Sex Change Hospital, who uses Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:30 and Mark 9:43 to claim that since her male genitalia do, indeed, “offend” her, they should, indeed, be cut off (in McKim 2007) – although this could also be interpreted as an exercise in “textual poaching” or exploring “friendly strands” (discussed further in Chapter 5).
I am aware of the similar limitations of trying to “find” intersex in the biblical texts. I acknowledge Guest’s caution, but still consider it expedient to reflect on biblical attitudes to eunicism – not because it is necessarily synonymous with transgender, but because it provides one instance whereby a condition “missing” from the scriptural narratives might be read analogously into it. This strategy might also then be expanded into considering intersex, a similarly “missing” state, and theological responses to it. Before discussing eunicism, however, I briefly consider transvestism, since it is a biblical verse about a practice approximating transvestism rather than one more specifically approximating transsexualism which has often been used as a peg on which to hang theological responses to transgender.
3.3.1 Transvestism
In terms of appeal to biblical ratification for the impropriety of transsexualism, beyond the general round of texts outlawing “homosexual” acts and exhorting the good of male-female creation (as in the Evangelical Alliance’s 2000 report, Transsexuality), Deuteronomy 22:5 is the verse of choice:
“A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.”
However, this total conflation of transvestism (changing clothes) and transsexualism (changing the body), is problematic, even if the verse is accepted as normative teaching for today. Deuteronomy 22:5 uses dress as shorthand for appropriate, non-transgressive (gendered) behaviour. There is no suggestion that, by wearing a woman’s garment, a man becomes a woman; the issue is that he could be mistaken for a woman, which matters very much in a context where women and men operate in clearly-defined and segregated spheres. In one sense, of course, any notion of cross-dressing is entirely arbitrary, since it depends on what is deemed “gendered” clothing to begin with; women who wear trousers in most Western societies are not deemed to be wearing “masculine” clothing, yet, in another time or culture, this would be exactly what they are doing. The act of cross-dressing itself, then, cannot be said to transgress any universal law, but is contingent on the practices of a given community. The verse thus seems in much the same vein as Deuteronomy 22:11 (“You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together”): it is to do with not “mixing” (or mixing-up) things which should remain distinct. Those who have rationalized to themselves that the latter verse need no longer be followed might, by the same logic, be able to question the former, for cross-dressing’s disruption of the “natural” order is far less thunderous if the “natural” order (in this case, what can and cannot legitimately be mixed-up or mixed together) is itself already acknowledged as being culturally constructed.
Some transgendered people and other commentators have welcomed verses such as Deuteronomy 22:5, and the appearance of eunuchs who play central roles in some biblical narratives,[95] for at least appearing to acknowledge the existence of cross-dressers and transgendered or unusually-gendered individuals in the Hebrew Bible. However, many transsexuals stress the distinction between actual gender dysphoria and mere cross-dressing. Jan Morris, for instance, says,
“The transvestite gains his gratification specifically from wearing the clothes of the opposite sex, and would sacrifice his pleasures by joining that sex… Trans-sexualism is something different in kind. It is not a sexual mode or preference. It is not an act of sex at all” (Morris 2002: 5-6).
The identification of transvestism with sexual fetishism is also propounded by some transsexuals, and is figured as substantively different from transsexualism. (This link with a specifically sexual practice may be another reason why the whole area is regarded with unease by a Christian church where non-kinky sex is the ideal.)
If transvestism is necessarily to be considered in distinction from transsexualism, then, it may seem rather peripheral to this particular overview of some theological responses to it. However, Marcella Althaus-Reid discusses the manner in which transvestism is potentially subversive of a hegemonic sexual theology. She claims that, in Latin America, cross-dressing is symbolic of the rejection of a particular cosmic, sexual and economic order disseminated by the conquistadors. Transvestism, in this account, might in fact be a political act. By spurning accepted narratives of appropriate sex and gender roles, it is possible that the (economically or spiritually) poor may also spurn the narratives which have helped to keep them poor: a continual drip-feeding of suggestions that they are helpless, sinful and so on. Argentinian carnival parades feature saints in drag, hermaphroditic Magdalenes; Althaus-Reid asks,
“Why do the poor, on the only annual occasion where anyone can represent herself as she pleases, present shows with transvestite Jesuses? … Because political identities are sexual identities. Gender and sexual confusion are chaotic in intention: it is not, however, the chaos of the flesh, but the chaos of sexual premises in our trusted ideologies which we should be scared of” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 199).
Cross-dressing, then, might stand for a far broader rejection of repressive ideologies. These might also include the assumption that transsexual transition is never “about” sexual pleasure. Many transsexuals are less willing than Morris to say that transition is completely unrelated to sex, and some have wished to dissociate themselves from publicly asexual, or at least “vanilla”, trans figures such as Christine Jorgensen (Meyerowitz 2002: 196). On the other hand, Althaus-Reid does point to the ambiguity of “transvestite” religious icons such as Santa Librada (Althaus-Reid 2000: 79-83) as transcending sex too:
“A transvestite has a clear gender location, but not a sexual one. Transvestites can be heterosexual married men, ‘lesbians trapped in male bodies’, or any intersection between two different things, sexual attraction and gender construction” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 81).
The sexuality of transvestites and transsexuals, then, cannot be taken as read. Some post-operative transsexuals do wish their own sexuality to be taken as read, to pass as a “real” man or woman. However, it is not possible to know for certain the sex or sexuality even of those who appear clearly gendered, without asking them or (for sex) carrying out medical analysis; it is a chain of assumption, conjecture and probability. A conflation of (sexual) transvestism and (either sexual or non-sexual) surgical transition must be treated with suspicion, because it is treated with suspicion by many transsexuals weary of being disenfranchised and misunderstood; but it would be equally limiting to claim that transsexualism never impacts or is impacted by the sexualities of those who transition. A similar tension can be traced between those intersexed people who consider that intersex affects sexual orientation either inherently or circumstantially (that is, either that people with an intersex condition are always already predisposed to be attracted to someone of the same gender, or that the experiences and socialization attached to having an intersex condition make people with an intersex condition more likely to be attracted to someone of the same gender), and those who argue that intersex is irrelevant to sexuality or sexual orientation.
3.3.2 Eunicism
Victoria Kolakowski notes that Deuteronomy 23:1 and Leviticus 22:24-5, which prohibit admitting to the assembly of the Lord anyone whose testes have been crushed or penis torn off, and offering for sacrifice animals whose testes have been bruised, crushed or torn off, have been used to oppose SRS (Kolakowski 1997:18).[96] Even if eunicism and transsexualism are not to be equated, then, there is certainly a precedent for utilizing eunicism as a tool by which to think theologically about transsexualism. As Kolakowski says of the Leviticus passage, however, chiming with Guest’s warning, “It is clear that this must be an extrapolation from and not a literal interpretation of the verse” (Kolakowski 1997: 18). Both these passages are clear that the problem is that the body has become “blemished” by the removal or crushing of the testes, and that it cannot participate in procreation or ritual circumcision – not simply, seemingly, because this implies an intended shift in sex. David Tabb Stewart concurs that it is at least unclear “whether stigma develops from the ‘feminization’ of a man’s body or whether from a kind of handicapism – or at least ableism” (Stewart 2006: 93). (I reflect further on the problem of “blemishment” and its links with exclusion in Chapter 4.)
J. David Hester notes that ritual castration within early Christianity was not uncommon, and, far from being viewed as reprehensible self-mutilation (as often occurs with transsexualism), was considered admirably ascetic. Valentinus, Basilides, Origen and many others all castrated themselves, and, says Hester, were not condemned for doing so until far later (Hester 2005:33). By the time of the Council of Nicaea, however, castration was being outlawed as heretical, so those who were opposed to the practice had had to come up with a “spiritualized” reading of Matthew 19:12 (Hester 2005: 32-4). Hester believes such a spiritualized reading of the verse is mistaken; that Jesus was familiar with physical eunicism and does not appear to outlaw it in the Gospel accounts. By standing outside the context of male-female procreative complementarity, Hester argues, eunuchs draw attention to the oddness of the binary sex paradigm and concomitant heterosexist assumptions (Hester 2005: 38). Significantly, he says,
“Jesus heals the blind, the paralyzed, the possessed, the fevered, the leprous, the haemorrhaging, even the dead, in every case restoring them to full societal membership. In the case of the eunuch, however, there is no implication whatsoever of ‘illness’ or social ‘deformity’ in need of restoration. Instead, the eunuch is held up as the model to follow” (Hester 2005: 38).
Keeping in mind the risky, loose, and analogous nature of such an application, it is possible that eunicism might be used as a metaphor for other forms of chosen or unchosen transgression of clearly-sexed, heterosexual norms. Thomas Bohache and others have suggested that “eunuch” could be glossed so that, in Matthew 19:12, Jesus is “referring to a broad category of people who, from their birth, have not ‘fitted’ the predominant expectations of gender and sexuality” (Bohache 2006: 510). The verses about eunicism might be applied to transsexualism in other ways too: just as eunuchs have often been “desexed” in contemporary parlance to make them less threatening (where “eunuch” has come to be a synonym for “neuter”), so theologies which insist on celibacy or asexuality for transsexuals might be ignoring the possible subversive quality of the sexualities of these individuals.
Hester argues that although, particularly in light of biblical references such as Matthew 19:12, eunuchs have often been figured as asexual and unthreatening, in fact the later “celibate” reading of eunicism results from masculinist assumptions where penetration is everything and sexual activity without penetration is not deemed legitimate sexual activity at all (Hester 2005: 17). In fact, says Hester, because eunuchs in the early centuries of the common era were not considered a threat by their male masters, they were allowed far more freedom to interact with women. However,
“Eunuchs were not celibate. Indeed, they were not even viewed as chaste. In fact, eunuchs were universally characterized by the frequency, ease and adeptness with which they performed sexual acts with both men and women” (Hester 2005: 18).
Thus eunuchs threatened phallocentric patriarchy not only by being reminders to non-castrated men of the phallic power so vulnerable to excision (Hester 2005: 19), but by living out the fact that sex itself was not all about top and bottom, penetration and power. It is said that eunuchs were notoriously good at oral and anal sex (Hester 2005: 22), and were popular sexual partners for women because they posed no risk of impregnation (Hester 2005: 24). This removed sexual pleasure from its purely economic context where top and bottom mapped incontrovertibly onto social status, where women incubated child-commodities. Thus, says Hester, eunicism came to be condemned as much for its embodiment of a loss of male prestige (Hester 2005: 28) as anything; it is in this sense that it is “unnatural” (Hester 2005: 29). Similarly, part of what male-to-female transsexualism might be held to threaten is the incontrovertible prestige of masculinity: it embodies the conscious and voluntary abdication of the phallus, leaving (uncastrated) men’s sweat to attract only other men whilst “eunuchs”, those who spurn narratives of phallic power, engage with non-patriarchal society too.
This makes it even more significant that the Jesus of Matthew 19:11-12 seems actually to view eunicism as a gift. The disciples, in response to Jesus’ firm teaching against divorce, venture that perhaps it is better not to marry in the first place. Jesus retorts,
“Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
As I note below, the Church of England’s 1991 statement Issues in Human Sexuality is heteronormative in the extreme, and it follows the Revised English Bible’s translation of these verses: “For while some are incapable of marriage because they were born so... others have renounced marriage for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” (my emphasis) (in Church of England 1991: 25). Although the sidestepping of marriage is a possible reading from the text, the REB’s dynamic-equivalent translation ties it too unequivocally to this one exposition, eroding the broader nature of eunuchs as sexual, potent individuals. Possible readings of the passage are, in fact, various: Jesus may be acknowledging the Graeco-Roman belief that “the most virile man was the man who had kept most of his vital spirit – that is, who lost little or no seed… Far from crumbling into a presexual formlessness, as was the case with those castrated when young, the full-grown man who made himself a eunuch, by carefully tying his testicles, became an asporos, a man who wasted no vital fire on others” (Brown 1988: 19) – thereby subverting Jewish norms which equated fecundity and virility with status. Jesus could be counselling that eunuchs are better fit to renounce sexual temptation (despite the fact that eunuchs were known to be popular lovers) and not be tied down by a wife and children, thus having more time to dedicate to the work of the kingdom – as Paul also implies, “in view of the impending crisis”, in 1 Corinthians 7. Jesus might be speaking subversively (Hester 2005: 29), acknowledging that male-female marriage could be unjust and repressive to all concerned, but particularly the disenfranchised women, children and slaves of the household[97] – thereby profoundly shaking his (male) disciples’ beliefs about their own rights and privileges as married men, and prompting them “to choose to operate under a new definition of being male” (Talbott 2006: 40). Or the eunuch could be read here as a marginal or rejected figure with whom one can be in solidarity even if one has not been born or forced into it – much as wealthy individuals might choose to live on the minimum wage and give the excess to those in need, or as some heterosexual couples in the USA have chosen not to marry until homosexual couples are also afforded the legal protections and privileges of marriage. These multiple interpretations may prompt theological endorsement of “transgressive”, “indecent” or queer lifestyle and sex-gender configurations.
Although the situation of the biblical eunuch and the present-day transsexual is, as we have recognized, by no means identical, the phenomenon of transsexualism also provides fertile ground from which to question more general assumptions about bodies and embodiment, particularly in terms of autonomy and self-determination, as well as the fixity of the mapping of gender upon sex or vice versa. However, quite apart from the objection that it is inappropriate to extrapolate positions on the contemporary phenomena of transvestism and transsexualism from the biblical texts, it is also advisable to be extremely wary of seizing as “indicators” upon persons who may not perceive themselves as such – particularly when so many transsexuals have expressed dismay at being denied autonomy and subjectivity by doctors. Clare Hemmings suggests,
“In asking questions that do not presume that subversion and normativity map inevitably onto queer or bisexual/transsexual experiences, or indeed that subversion/normativity is a valid paradigm to measure all sexual or gendered contexts and subject formations, the specificities of transsexual and bisexual constrained experiences may better be analysed” (Hemmings 2003: 127).
Just as it is naïve to assume that no male-female relationship can be narcissistically “homosexual”, as Ward says, so it is naïve to suppose that every transsexual relationship escapes oppressive power-plays and exemplifies an ideal, fulfilled situation. However, this does not mean that reflection on transsexual individuals, and on non-trans heterosexuals’ attitudes to transsexual individuals, cannot enlighten the further deconstruction of heteronormative assumptions.
I now consider the question of what constitutes an individual’s “real” sex, and reflect on how this affects transsexualism and intersex respectively.
3.4 Changing Sex: The “Real” and the Phantom
The oft-cited and oft-proclaimed transsexual yearning to make body match psyche, to reclaim the efficacy of the “outer” layer in telegraphing and (literally) embodying what one believes oneself to be, is arresting in terms of the notion that integrity of self supervenes upon integrity or wholeness of body. The argument runs that, if transgendered persons cannot accept their outer appearance as “really them”, then it must be changed in order to promote their psychosomatic unity. This is condemned by Oliver O’Donovan (below) as falling back into a kind of dualism where the existing body is seen merely as dough for the “self” to mould as it sees fit, rather than inextricably being the self that simply is. Theologies from disability demonstrate that the Christian tradition, too, has invested in images of completeness representing the whole (or able) person (see Chapter 4) – but the extent to which this “self” must necessarily include the physical body is unclear.
The notion that body and identity must match, as propounded by many transsexuals and by surgeons who perform corrections on intersexed children, contrasts with the position of ISNA and some intersex activists: the latter suggest that gender and genitals need not, in fact, correspond for emotional wellbeing to be promoted.[98] This is an area in which the testimonies of transsexuals and the vision, as of Kessler and McKenna (1978: vii) of a world of sex-gender haziness conflict.[99] The positive experiences of some boys with micro- or absent penises who have grown up without medical intervention suggest that it is not always necessary to “have” the right body parts in order to “have” sexual identity. Diamond and Sigmundson (1997a) report that many boys with absent penises who were reassigned as girls in infancy later transitioned back, living successfully as men. Although this might be seen as suggesting that transsexual surgery is unnecessary (for transgendered people, too, should be able to inhabit their new identities without having the “bits” to “prove” it), it also, conversely, bolsters the “authenticity” of the phantom-type body-parts which many transpeople already experience. Prosser uses Oliver Sacks’ work on proprioception (Sacks 1985: 42) and phantom limbs (Sacks 1985: 63-6) to explore transsexuals’ feeling that body parts which are absent are actually present and belong to them, just as people who have lost a limb often experience an apparent awareness that it is still there – the belief of ownership having more strength than visual evidence that the body part is lacking. Prosser suggests that transgendered persons’ desired sex could be described as their “phantom sex”; in this model, all that surgery does is to concretize what the individual already knows and experiences to be present:
“The phantomization of sex would appear as the concomitant of the not-knowing (the agnosia) of the real… Sex reassignment surgery may then be grasped as healing and changing the transsexual subject in that it serves as the antidote to both of these body image distortions” (Prosser 1998: 85).
This pivots on redefining certain characteristics of body and identity. Just as an intersexed individual – for instance, a person with testes and XY chromosomes but with little or nothing by way of external genitalia – does not need to have a penis to be a real man (if he feels he is a man, if his body and identity largely tells him he is a man), so a transman who was born female does not need a penis to be a real man if he feels he is a man, if his body and identity largely tells him he is a man. If we can accept that the latter individual, who might have ovaries and a vaginal opening and a high voice register, is really already a man (without being really male), then the question of whether or not that individual then goes on to have constructive surgery to attach a penile appendage or to lengthen the existing clitoris becomes rather moot.
“But”, it might be countered, “if that person has ovaries and a vaginal opening and a high voice register and so on, then in what way is s/he really a man?” Myra J. Hird says,
“To effect the incorporation of an intersexual surgically assigned as ‘female’ involves a determination as to the constitution of femaleness. Any definition of ‘woman’ that retains any corporeality must be able to define that corporeality, and this is exactly where the problem begins in definition based on ‘sex’… An intersexual [woman] will have any combination of partially or totally surgically created vagina, labia and breasts… If being female does not entail the possession of particular anatomical parts, then the artificial creation of these body parts is inconsequential. But our current assumptions about the constitution of ‘sex’ struggle with such a reality” (Hird 2000: 353).
The range of meanings attached to masculinity and “manhood” across cultural contexts means that the answer to the question “What makes a man?” is far trickier to pin down than the one “What makes a male?” – which is why there can be intersexed men, and why there can (conceptually) be transsexual men. For this reason, incidentally, the very terminology of transgendered and transsexual might be viewed as problematic, implying as it does “a crossing from one possible term to the only other available term”, causing these states to be figured not as actual possibilities in themselves but only as “temporary stopping points along an axis of pathology” (Holmes 2004). To accept that to be a (cultural) man need have very little to do with physiology is not only vital if one acknowledges any element of social constructionism in gender, but is also all but self-evident given the enormous range of bodily appearances of those considered men. Georgia Warnke, noting that identifying and classifying bodily sex from a particular, limited set of properties is as arbitrary as assigning race in the same way, argues,
“The merit of recognizing sex as an interpretation is that we can consider its point or validity in the same way that we consider the point or validity of any interpretation: according to its internal coherence, its compatibility with other interpretations we take seriously, and its ability to illuminate a subject-matter for us” (Warnke 2001: 133).
There seem to be two apparently contradictory positions here, then: one, that surgery to provide appropriate body-parts is not, in fact, necessary to bolster gender identity; and two, that surgery to provide appropriate body-parts is both therapeutic and legitimate. However, these can in fact be held in a reasonable tension: the body can express and authentically be the identity of an individual even if its gender and genitals do not supervene in a typical way, but, simultaneously, valuing and respecting the integrity of this body does not necessarily mean outlawing any surgical work, including genital surgical work, done on it. The healing miracles of the Gospels and Acts suggest that bodies are more than repositories for transcendent souls; Christian notions of bodily resurrection, in fact, give space for the body to be more than earthbound protoplasm, and for human souls to be more than “condemned” to the earthly sphere. The transsexual movement has happened to err on the side of a “unity” where body must be made to fit soul, not vice versa. Perhaps transsexuals place so much regard in bodily, sexed parts exactly because society in general has found it difficult to conceive of men and women who are not also obviously masculine or feminine. One argument suggests that there should be more emphasis in the counselling undergone by pre-operative transgendered people that there is validity in “feeling” differently sexed without having to undergo surgery. This would sit well with the intersex movement’s project to re-educate doctors and parents that genitals and gender need not “match” for psychological well-being to survive. Whittle notes that some “transgenderists” already choose not to have surgery but do take hormones; and, partially as a result, “consider themselves a third sex, neither male nor female but combining characteristics of both (also called an epicene or ‘third’)” (Whittle 2000: 65-66). These liminal bodies represent a partial crossing, the departure from one “unambiguous” sex without fully arriving in the other. It is unclear, however, to what extent this option is considered second-best, even by those who take it; non-surgical transgenderism often arises from resignation to the fact that surgery will probably lead to urinary problems and reduced sexual sensation, or from a lack of money with which to fund the operations, rather than from a conviction that the psychological results of surgery will, in themselves, be undesirable.
The question of the reality of sex has influenced another significant aspect of Christianity’s suspicion of transsexuals: a reluctance to own that it is within the legitimate remit of humans to “change” something as fundamental (or as “real”) as sexed identity. This is not exactly the same as the issue about compromising the overall integrity of the body; it is more about holding that sex and gender in particular are fundamental goods and givens which contribute to the person as God intended them to be. SRS in particular has been figured as “playing God”; of course, any medical or surgical intervention can be (and often has been) labelled in the same manner, but some types of procedures become more accepted and “naturalized” than others. Human capacity to formulate technologies, to realize the unreal, is sometimes cited as part of how creation reflects its creator; so perhaps the attempts by transsexuals and their doctors to bring about bodies which have not spontaneously occurred – by “improving” on those which have – could be read as legitimate steps on the road to utilizing God-reflecting technology and reason, to becoming divine. (Similar issues have arisen around the rights and wrongs of biotechnology.) “Playing God”, then, might be seen not as sinister usurping of something which humans should not have, but rather as rehearsing the co-creative and co-redemptive state which a lived eschatology already suggests is nascent. If it is accepted that SRS can be therapeutic then it is only as controversial as other therapeutic surgeries.
But whereas something like surgery to remove cataracts might be seen as actually enhancing the wholeness of the person by restoring or enabling sight, SRS is rarely considered in this way by its opponents. Transsexual surgery has usually been figured as invasive, not therapeutic. Jay Prosser (1998) comments that many members of the general public view transsexual surgery as “unnatural” simply because it is not curative of an evident (to the observer) ill: ostensibly, there was nothing “wrong” with the body in question to begin with, so there is nothing to fix. As with cosmetic surgery such as rhinoplasty (the proverbial “nose job”) and breast enlargement, transsexual surgery is sometimes viewed as unnecessary and superficial – a matter of putting oneself through the dangers of anaesthesia and surgical invasion for the sake of vanity, and leaching medical resources which could be better used elsewhere for more “serious” problems.
However, what others might see as mutilation, transsexuals often perceive as restoration, making the body more as it “should have been” in relation to the psyche (Prosser 1998: 81-82). Jenny Kirk, who underwent SRS in 2006, says,
“After the operation I felt that a huge weight had been lifted off my mind. It was like being reborn. I remember being in hospital thinking, ‘Gosh, this is what people who aren’t transsexuals must feel like’” (Kirk 2007: 57).
Some pre-operative MTFs cannot even recognize their penises as belonging to them; psychologically, they argue, they already are women, and women do not usually have penises. Rather than having bodies which manage authentically to communicate their “core selves”, many transsexuals believe their bodies’ expression of their identities is erroneous (Rubin 2003: 150). This kind of thinking has sometimes been dismissed as mere self-delusion, psychotic disturbance akin to that of the anorectic who looks in the mirror and sees rolls of fat despite weighing only six stone. However, Rubin argues that, from the perspective of conscious agnosia (the inability to recognize parts of one’s own body as belonging to one’s own body),
“[Transsexuals] merely ignore the features of their bodies that do not conform to their body image. Agnosic transsexuals resist the binary terms of sickness and health, absence and presence, and real and unreal. This wilful ignorance/knowledge is the assertion of the I committed to remaining active in the world and to working on a life project” (Rubin 2003: 29-30).
Just as phantom limbs can be invaluable in acceptance of prostheses, then, so firmly-rooted beliefs in one’s sexed “destiny” seem to overcome the evident lack of particular body-parts. This reinforces the view that sexual organs are central to sexual identity – which ISNA refutes – but is unproblematic for many transsexuals. Henry Rubin appeals to Merleau-Ponty’s notions of body image as “more than a map of the corporeal body as it is, but a psychical representation of the body as it is for the subject. The body image need not correspond directly with the physical body” (Rubin 2003: 28). Rubin’s findings from his study of female-to-male transsexuals suggest that the actual surgery they had undergone, particularly that to create a penis, was much less significant in terms of selfhood than was receiving supplements of testosterone, which was “valued because it alters the most important features used in the sex attribution process” (Rubin 2003: 153): secondary characteristics such as voice pitch, facial hair and broad build. Several of Rubin’s subjects claimed that taking testosterone had not altered their (self-perceived) identities, but merely their bodies and certain aspects of their behaviour (Rubin 2003: 153). Interestingly, says Rubin,
“Testosterone has little effect on who they [FTMs] are inside. From their point of view, they are becoming the men they always already were. They do not claim that testosterone transforms them from women into men… A few men report that transition changed them, but they deny that testosterone has anything to do with these changes” (Rubin 2003: 153-4).
The changes in identity for Rubin’s interviewees, then, have come about as a by-product of the whole transition process, not simply and ineluctably because of testosterone itself. This is not to deny that part of feeling different, feeling embodied as a man, might indeed be to do with cultural attitudes from others who accept one more easily as a man once the noticeable effects of hormone therapy have begun (Rubin 2003: 156); however, since many FTMs who begin to take testosterone already largely “pass” as and are responded to as men, this is not the whole picture. It is, of course, also possible that part of the shift in perception from within the individual resides in coming to recognize in oneself characteristics which one already (culturally) associates with “being a man” – and this is complicated by the subject’s particular background and cultural context.
The question of the reality of sex is considered further below, in relation to O’Donovan’s theological response to transsexualism. First, however, I turn to the broader issues of physical and psychological integrity, the extent to which these might be said to be compromised or enhanced by SRS, and why this matters theologically.
3.5 Pathology and (Psychological) Integrity: O’Donovan’s Theological Treatment of Transsexualism
Transsexuals’ agnosia about body parts related to their pre-operative sex have prompted another reservation surrounding SRS from the Church: if people believe that they have been born into the wrong body, does this not in itself suggest they have a deep-seated psychological disturbance, and might not SRS therefore compromise the already-fragile mental health of transgendered patients through what might be considered a “collaboration with psychosis” (Billings and Urban 1982: 274)? This fear was expressed by some doctors in the 1950s and 60s in the early days of SRS[100] – though overwhelmingly positive post-surgery follow-up reports did not appear to corroborate their suspicions (Meyerowitz 2002: 124). Of course, it is possible that “post-operative patients could ill afford to be critical of such a profound alteration as genital amputation” (Billings and Urban 1982: 273); but, although counselling and extensive discussion are crucial precursors to SRS, the a priori assumption that gender dysphoria itself always means that it is the mind which must be altered and not the body will colour the manner in which transgendered people are responded to by healthcare professionals. Holding as pre-existent “known fact” that all transgendered people are mentally ill or delusional will affect the extent to which they are apportioned legitimacy as authors and actors of their own identities. Sandy Stone, a transsexual woman,[101] holds that, particularly in the early 1960s when transsexual surgery was still fairly uncommon, few studies were conducted on “ordinary” people seeking reassignment, namely those not already deemed psychologically disturbed. Data collected on those desiring SRS was not done in specialist gender clinics, but in clinics dealing with a wide range of psychological disorders. It is therefore unsurprising that most transgendered people presented high levels of depressive and bipolar-type symptoms (Stone 1991: 340), since these had probably led to their original referral to the clinics. In the 1960s it had already become broadly believed as a result of only a few clinical studies that transgendered people were highly likely to be emotionally and psychologically disturbed, a legacy which still persists.[102] (The unproblematic linking of transsexualism with psychological disturbance and sin is evident in documents such as Issues in Human Sexuality – Church of England 1991: 7, 26.)
However, Christians and others might still insist that the apparently superfluous, extravagant nature of the removal of healthy, non-pathological tissue is counter-intuitive, eroding rather than promoting bodily integrity, and threatening the overall well-being of the individual. In his 1982 essay, Transsexualism and Christian Marriage, Oliver O’Donovan argues,
“The body of a living animal is susceptible to moulding only at the cost of its systemic integrity… Respect for natural forms… must mean more than the exploitation of plastic possibilities… The traditional canon of medical practice… ruled against surgical intervention into a living human body except to protect the functional integrity of that body when it was endangered by disease or injury. The use of craft to manipulate matter had to be ruled by the inherent structural integrity of that matter” (O’Donovan 1982: 15).
However, as Meyerowitz comments, ironically, many of the same doctors who shared reservations about transsexual surgery in the 1950s and 60s were often more than happy to remove healthy tissue from intersexed children “without apparent qualms” (Meyerowitz 2002: 121). J. David Hester cites an example of a US medical insurance plan which covered surgery done on an intersexed infant but not sex-change treatment for a transperson, as the former was deemed “medically necessary” and the latter was not (Hester 2004: 216)[103] – despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of intersex conditions do not constitute medical emergencies, and certainly not in infancy. This case illustrates the way in which the genital tissue of intersexed children is already figured as pathological by interventionist urologists and endocrinologists. There are other examples of strictly non-pathological matter, such as a large, bent nose, or sticking-out ears, becoming figured as pathological because of detrimental effects on the mental or emotional well-being of its owner – or, in the case of women who have part of their very large breasts removed to banish backache, despite the fact that the breast tissue is of itself perfectly healthy, a blurring of physical and psychological effects. The genital matter of prospective transsexuals falls in the latter camp, whereby tissue which is medically healthy and would be unproblematic of itself in another context is simply inappropriate for the context of this particular body.[104]
O’Donovan also implies that, as well as threatening the broad integrity of the person, SRS transgresses the givenness of the particular body as it is, so that to redefine the body sculpturally is to take the cult of autonomy to extremes (Meyerowitz notes that it is not unusual for transsexuals to be painted as “self-indulgent technophiles” – Meyerowitz 2002: 11). O’Donovan asserts,
“To know oneself as body is to know that there are only certain things that one can do and be, because one’s freedom must be responsible to a given form, which is the form of one’s own experience in the material world” (O’Donovan 1982: 15).
He insists that SRS goes beyond the pale of the limits appropriate for human bodies. However, O’Donovan’s argument seems to rest in an assumption that the body itself, the flesh and blood, is the extent of the entity whose functional integrity could be compromised. By contrast, for many transgendered people, the pre-operative flesh is in itself part of what threatens the unity and integrity of the whole person (psychological and somatic). Yet O’Donovan himself states,
“Self-transcendence, in which the spirit may view the body as an object for thought, has not led, as it ought, to the recognition of the body as self and the acknowledgement of self as obligated to the body’s form; it has led to the reduction of the body to undifferentiated matter, on which the spirit proposes to exercise unlimited freedom. In this way we confront the possibility of self-manipulation which is self-falsification; and we discover it to be based on precisely that abolition of complementarity between the body and the soul which was being recommended to us in the interests of a unified conceptual field” (O’Donovan 1982: 15-16).
O’Donovan is anxious to avoid a body-soul duality, and there is a positive move toward a suspicion of surgery which is not absolutely necessary to the promotion of the integrity of the person – though O’Donovan is loath to admit that such could ever be the case with transsexual surgery. He also seems to view transsexual surgery as inherently cosmetic (and thus superfluous) rather than therapeutic.
Interestingly, however, O’Donovan’s views on transsexualism are not fully transposed into his brief consideration of hermaphroditism.[105] Like the doctors cited by Meyerowitz, O’Donovan seems happy to concede that
“surgery… is appropriate to resolve the ambiguities of the hermaphrodite… The resulting sex… is the real sex of the hermaphrodite. That is to say, it is the sex to which, in view of the ambiguity, it is sensible to assign him” (O’Donovan 1982: 13).
Centrally, O’Donovan argues – contra the Money school[106] – that transsexualism and intersex are not two stops along the same road, and that it is therefore not as legitimate to accept the altered sex of the transsexual as their “real sex” (despite the chromosomal anomaly) as it would be with a surgically-altered intersexed person (O’Donovan 1982: 13). O’Donovan owns,
“There are, of course, rare syndromes in which one might confess doubt as to the patient’s original relation to the XX/XY alternative… But such a doubt cannot obscure the primary fact that human sexuality at the biological level is dimorphic in intent, and that the only way to understand biological ambiguity, even at the chromosomal level, is as a malfunction in the dimorphic programme” (O’Donovan 1982: 7).
Intersex, then, for O’Donovan, can only ever be a failure in a self-evident project of differentiation. However, this fails to take into account the extent to which science is always already influenced by broader social concerns. Moreover, to question the incontrovertibility of “the primary fact that human sexuality at the biological level is dimorphic in intent”, or at least the manner in which that sentiment becomes mapped onto liminal or unusual structures, allows a querying of O’Donovan’s subsequent argument that to direct a change from one physical state to another is not an appropriate human project – particularly since O’Donovan is unwilling to follow his own treatise to its logical conclusion. In attempting to resist body-soul dualism he reinscribes it, privileging “irreducible” bodily sex over complex gender identity. On the one hand, he argues that humans are either male or female as made so by God, and cannot choose to change this by subsuming their “true” sex; yet, on the other, he insists that transsexuals can and must choose to subsume their “true” sex. Essentially, he is saying that transsexuals can change their sex but non-transsexuals cannot; that transsexuals cannot know their own gender as accurately or incisively as outsiders can. There is an insistence in O’Donovan, as in the 2000 Evangelical Alliance report, and in Some Issues in Human Sexuality, that “sex is God-given” (The Archbishops’ Council 2003: 233), but not enough reflection on how sex might actually be defined if it is considered in distinction from heteronormative views of complementarity and marriage and in light of all the instances in which “males” and “females” are not males and females at all.
O’Donovan wishes to refute the argument that individuals could ever find themselves “trapped in the wrong body”; rather, he holds, the body they have, sex and all, is an integral part of who they are. By this logic therapeutic surgery or intervention to remove any kind of congenital disability or deformity would also be wrong (the bodies we have been given are ourselves, even if they are not as we might have wished); yet O’Donovan legitimates surgery on intersexed bodies to “resolve” their “ambiguities”. There is an error of reasoning here. Hester comments,
“Apparently, not having an identifiable sex is an emergency and something worth correcting, but having the ‘wrong’ sex is not… This looks to be a serious inconsistency… when what is at stake in both cases is gender assignment” (Hester 2004: 216).
Another part of O’Donovan’s argument against transsexual surgery rests on the artificiality of the new body parts, and the implications for their cosmic significance during sexual intercourse – assuming that acts of heterosexual intercourse only, and conceivably penetrative heterosexual intercourse only, have significance beyond simple physical intimacy and exchange. This returns us to the question of reality. O’Donovan says that, although it is legitimate to use crutches for walking if the leg is deficient for this purpose,
“The point is simply that such assistance never becomes anything more than a substitute… Whatever the surgeon may be able to do, and whatever he may yet learn to do, he cannot make self out of not-self. He cannot turn an artefact into a human being’s body. The transsexual can never say with justice: ‘These organs are my bodily being, and their sex is my sex’” (O’Donovan 1982: 16) (my emphasis).
For the reasons outlined above, I do not believe the “homosexual” objection to transsexual sexual activity is an insurmountable one; nor can I engage here in debate as to the extent to which non-heterosexual covenantal relationships may properly be considered marriages. But O’Donovan’s objection in the above passage seems to be rooted in something prior to these, something about the extent to which prostheses are to be considered veritable parts of the recipients’ bodies. Similar arguments might be made about organ transplants from donors; but when the donor is oneself (as when skin from one’s own arm or thigh is used to make a vagina or penis) it is more difficult to maintain that the new organs are “artefacts” or “not-self”. Moreover, O’Donovan could not have anticipated the particular advances in medical science in the intervening decades which allow serious discussion of the possibility of growing a penis in a laboratory from a female-to-male transsexual’s own DNA and stem cells, as has been done already with skin and ears (Prosser 1998: 91-92; Liao and Boyle 2004: 461). If such an organ is cultivated from an individual’s own cells, it becomes even harder than with a donor organ to argue that the new organ is not authentically “them”. The stem cells of a female-to-male transsexual have not “naturally” (spontaneously) produced a penis, but with a little prompting, they can. Likewise, memory, muscle mass and bone density might all run to seed if left to their own devices, but, through intervening in their “natural” decline, can be maintained and even improved. There is a certain inconsistency in appealing to the good – and therefore sanctity – of nature when nature has produced something desirable, but intervening to alter it when it has produced something objectionable, as O’Donovan seems to do. There is technological intervention involved in stem-cell organ growth, but this is also true of every skin graft, hip replacement and pacemaker operation. Perhaps these new medical technologies muddy the waters rather than clarifying them; in any case, they open the gates for wholeness to go beyond happenstance.
Donna Haraway’s work on cyborgs has been widely discussed elsewhere, but it is interesting to note briefly Haraway’s claim that all of us are now cyborgs, “chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism” (Haraway 1991: 150) – not just those who are participants in the more obvious “couplings between organism and machine” (Haraway 1991: 150) of modern medicine which seem to be those whose legitimacy O’Donovan denies. This raises questions about whether SRS and transplants actually render individuals any more “not-selves” than anyone who has had their identity affected by participation in a technological, cultured society. Transplants and prostheses are add-ons to the body, but so are cultural readings of and suppositions about these and other body parts; all are part of building and reading the future of a particular body.[107] Nothing about any of our bodily techniques is “natural”. Even something as simple as the way in which one walks is influenced by cultural factors such as whether or not one is used to wearing shoes (Holmes 2000: 87). Thus the technologies involved in transsexual surgery may simply be extensions of cultural influences and adornments ranging from the wearing of kohl around the eyes, through tattooing and body piercing, pacemakers and colostomy bags, to more extreme customization such as castration. Of course, there is an argument that something like clitorectomy (or SRS) is different in kind, and not just in degree, from piercing one’s ears, because the results are permanent and all but irreversible. However, this does not render it inherently less legitimate. It is the element of election which is paramount: removing the penis of a 40-year-old who has undergone counselling and understands that it cannot easily be restored is very different from removing the penis of a one-year-old baby. The technological project, then, may be seen as more or less appropriate depending on who is being technologically sculpted, to what degree, by whom, and why.
3.6 Other Theological Treatments of Transsexualism
3.6.1 David Horton
Attempts to formulate a theology of transsexualism that is pastorally sensitive, theologically rigorous and grounded in engagement with excellent non-theological scholarship on transsexualism, have been few. One notable attempt to engage with transsexual people themselves has, however, been made, by David Horton in Changing Channels: A Christian Response to the Transvestite and Transsexual. Motivated by a desire to help transsexual and transvestite individuals who have faced rejection and alienation in church congregations, Horton has the honesty to acknowledge uncertain answers to the challenges such individuals pose within church settings hostile to or suspicious of them, and explores questions of reality, fantasy and selfishness (Horton 1994: 12-13). He warns against either seeking to “deliver” transgender people of their “conditions”, or accepting uncritically that their own assessment of their situations is complete (Horton 1994: 23). Since the publication of his 1994 booklet Horton has continued to minister to transvestite and transgendered people, having served as chaplain to the Gender Trust.
However, Horton’s use of terminology such as “a feminine mind” and “a masculine and aggressive job” (Horton 1994: 23) suggests at least a hint of an unwillingness to question binary-gendered construals. It might be said that this echoes the fairly binary mindset of some transsexuals themselves. However, it means that Horton’s ability to critique a more broadly oppressive social gender system is limited. Moreover, despite his willingness to acknowledge the implications for this life of the ongoing tensions and uncertainties posed by transsexualism, he ultimately falls back on the glorious anticipation of the life to come (Horton 1994: 19). He insists that Genesis 1:27 demonstrates that “any kind of intersex state: chromosomal or psychological” is “a result of the breakdown of harmony in creation, associated with the doctrine of the fall” (Horton 1994: 12). Horton’s hope is thus based in the next life, when bodies will be redeemed and knowledge will be completed – but this does not necessarily help to counsel the building of a new order here and now, which is ironic since Horton is so clearly motivated to provide just ethical responses to transgendered and transvestite people. Eschatology for atypical bodies must always respect their integrity as the bodies they already are, as I explore further in Chapter 4.
3.6.2 Fraser Watts
As we have seen, the perceived “good” of the body in which one finds oneself is not always self-evident. This accounts for the range even within the limited number of theological treatments of transsexualism, several of which have responded specifically to O’Donovan’s work. Fraser Watts says – in retort to O’Donovan’s Transsexualism and Christian Marriage, and to further communication with him –
“It is clear that not all aspects of our nature are a given that must simply be accepted. Most Christians would raise no objection to operations that corrected minor physical deformities… It is also clear that Christians do not accept their personalities as a given that they should simply accept” (Watts 2002: 75).
Watts simultaneously raises the desire for sex transition to the level of a physical condition[108] and legitimates a “correction” of physical conditions viewed as problematic. However, it is still possible to counter, using Watts’ own logic, that it is the desire for sex change which is the aspect of prospective transsexuals’ nature that could be altered. This does not seem to be his intention. Through trying to oppose O’Donovan and to legitimate surgery for transpeople,[109] Watts in fact reinforces the view that it is the atypical bodies which, through their alteration, can pacify society: a society which includes all those who do not live comfortably in their bodies.
Watts himself draws links between transsexualism and intersex, arguing that the very existence of “hermaphrodites” demonstrates that it is over-simplistic to say everyone is “clearly either male or female” (Watts 2002: 66). Watts holds that, just as intersexed people are “anomalous” in one respect, so might transsexual people be in another respect (Watts 2002: 66). He rejects Kessler and McKenna’s position that all gender is socially constructed (Kessler and McKenna 1978: vii), saying that most people are made either male or female as Genesis 1:12 and Mark 10:6 state; however, he holds that even if the distinction is a gift of God in creation and something to celebrate, this does not mean there are no exceptions to it (Watts 2002: 79). He argues that “drawing a less sharp boundary between male and female would allow people to operate much more easily in an in-between area”, so that “transsexualism as we know it would be rendered unnecessary” (Watts 2002: 70).
In contrast with the 2000 Evangelical Alliance policy report which he cites, Watts believes there is no good reason why transsexual people should not become clergy – although, he says, they would probably require time away from the ministry to readjust to their new state (Watts 2002: 81). He cites the case of Peter Stone, the first serving Church of England priest to undergo SRS, whose parish in Swindon was keen for him to return as priest after he had become Carol Stone (the PCC voted 17 to 1 in Stone’s favour – Jardine 2000). The Daily Telegraph quoted the Right Rev. Barry Rogerson, Bishop of Bristol, as saying at the time that there were “no ethical or ecclesiastical legal reasons why the Rev. Carol Stone should not continue in ministry in the Church of England” (O’Neill 2000). In an interview in June 2000 before her final surgery, Stone said,
“In January, I wrote to the Bishop, telling him my life story, my agonies… It was a letter that has been in my heart for the 22 years of my ministry. I’ve never known anything else but the call to serve God in Holy Orders and I’ve never known any deeper desire than to be a woman” (in Jardine 2000).
After the bishop had explained Stone’s situation to the congregation at St Philip’s church in Swindon, a member of the congregation said, “We loved him as Peter, and as Carol we will give him our full support” (Jardine 2000). Stone returned to resume ministry at St Philip’s in November 2000, and said, “It is time to live a normal life… I want to get back to the bread and butter work of the Church. I have a wonderful congregation… and they are full of love, encouragement and humour. I am very grateful” (in Combe 2000). Criticisms came, however, particularly from the Evangelical Alliance. Stone’s situation demonstrates that it is by no means impossible for a transsexual to continue in the priesthood, though it would have been far more difficult in a denomination which did not recognize women as priests. However, the fact that controversy surrounded the ordination in Herefordshire of transsexual Sarah Jones (as deacon in 2004 and priest in 2005) suggests that much education and debate are needed before transsexual priests will become as relatively accepted as female-born priests are. Watts argues that it would depend on the needs and reaction of the particular parish whether it would be appropriate for a transsexual priest to continue there (Watts 2002: 81); this, however, does not mean that bishops should pander to the prejudices of a vocal minority.
3.6.3 Rodney Holder
Watts’ exploration of a possible Christian ethic of transsexualism is more extensive than that of Rodney Holder, though it is the latter which largely (along with O’Donovan’s work from the early 1980s, and the 2003 Evangelical Alliance report) informs the chapter on transsexualism in Some Issues in Human Sexuality. Holder is keen to distinguish transsexualism from “other conditions of ambivalent sexuality” (Holder 1998a: 90), in which he seems to include “hermaphroditism”. Unfortunately, Holder is sweeping in his assertion that “hermaphroditism… is a congenital disorder in which both male and female gonads are present and the external genitalia are not clearly male or female” (Holder 1998a: 90). In fact, only a very few individuals, those called in the past “true hermaphrodites”, have both ovarian and testicular tissue; most intersexed people do not have both male and female gonads. Nor is it always true that the external genitalia are ambiguous, which is why conditions such as AIS and 5-ARD sometimes go undetected until puberty. Holder asserts that surgical reassignment for intersex is “uncontroversial”, and that “immediate post-natal surgical sex assignment seems to work in that individuals rarely suffer gender identity disturbance” (Holder 1998a: 90). This suggests only cursory engagement with intersexed people and their testimonies (although these had already begun to appear by 1998)[110].
Holder also cites traits such as “excessive femininity in boys or masculinity in girls” (Holder 1998a: 89) – covering dress, behaviour, and wanting to take part in activities appropriate to the other sex – to characterize gender dysphoria. This evidences pre-existing assumptions about the binary nature of gender, further bolstered by Holder’s observation that
“Reconstruction of genitalia of the reassigned sex is successful in the case of male-to-female but so far [1998] it has proved impossible to construct a functional penis in the female-to-male case – a fact which might well impinge on an ethical judgement as to the validity of marriage following the operation in this case” (Holder 1998a: 90).
This is telling, for Holder’s definitions of “function” and “success” are based in capacity for participation in penetrative penis-in-vagina sex alone[111]; what is at stake here is not whether same-sex relationships are marriages (as for O’Donovan) but whether unconsummated relationships are marriages. It is still, a decade after Holder, far more difficult to create a vagina functional in other ways (such as its capacity to self-lubricate, or be erotically sensitive) – but this broader functionality seems unproblematic to Holder as long as it can be penetrated. This feeds back into Holder’s readings of Genesis 1:26-8 and 2:18-25 as necessarily inferring heterosexual marriage (and procreation) as ideal and the only truly legitimate arena of sexual gratification for the Christian (Holder 1998a: 95-6, and 1998b: 132). Holder comments that although the purposes of marriage are not limited to procreation, neither is procreation the only purpose frustrated when one partner is transsexual. He says,
“Transsexualism clearly presents a problem… also for the relational purpose, because the latter normatively comes to fulfilment in consummation” (Holder 1998b: 130).
In this mindset, even when procreation is impossible, the only kind of sexual intercourse legitimated – the only kind deemed truly fulfilling – is the same kind that would be legitimate if procreation were possible. Consummation equals penetration. This is despite the fact that, as Holder himself notes, the Book of Common Prayer specifically allows for the marriage of people past child-bearing age, on the grounds that sex is unitive as well as procreative and helps avoid fornication (Holder 1998b: 130-1). The restriction on sexual activity to that which could, all things being equal, lead to the conception and birth of a child, even where the specifics of the participants’ individual or collective biology would not allow it, thus seems profoundly counter-intuitive. Acts of sex where one or more partners is transsexual will almost always be acts of sex where procreation is not biologically possible, either because the individual has had their capacity for producing gametes removed or suppressed, or because they may be having sex with someone producing the same gametes. But the non-procreative nature of these sex acts is only as significant and as insignificant as non-procreative acts where the partners are intersexed, male and female, or any combination. If contraception, sterilization, oral sex, sex for post-menopausal women, and sex for couples fully aware that one or both of them is infertile are legitimate, then sex for transsexuals cannot be rejected on the grounds of non-procreation alone.
Holder’s arguments seem, in short, based in unchallenged a prioris, in similar vein to 1991’s Issues in Human Sexuality. The latter is grossly heteronormative, presenting the monogamous, heterosexual married couple as the ideal (Church of England 1991: 9), drawing from Jesus’ support of marriage that “it is not unreasonable to infer that he regarded heterosexual love as the God-given pattern” (1991: 13), and claiming that even the homosexual, through becoming Christlike, can participate in – wait for it – “the final consummation of all things” (1991: 41). In this case the a priori given to which other factors must be subsumed is, apparently, complementarity:
“It is important for the mature development both of individual men and women and of society that each person should come to understand and to value… complementarity… The fact that heterosexual unions in the context of marriage and the family are of such importance for the fostering of true man-woman complementarity seems to us to confirm their essential place in God’s given order” (Church of England 1991: 37-8).
The statement implies that is for this reason specifically that homosexuality and transgender are problematic; for some people, for example, “their sexuality can be a barrier rather than a help toward full man-woman complementarity” (Church of England 1991: 39). However, the a prioris evident in Holder and in IIHS must both be tested and challenged in light of a questioning of the unequivocal nature of “goods” such as procreation, consummation and complementarity.
3.6.4 The Evangelical Alliance
The Evangelical Alliance’s 2006 document, Gender Recognition: A Guide for Churches to the Gender Recognition Act (UK), is an attempt briefly to update the lengthier report of a few years before, and to explain specifically how the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (which I discuss below) might impact legally on churches. The 2006 document specifically stresses the difference between transsexualism and intersex, accepting the latter as a legitimate (biological) medical condition, whereas the former is seen as an issue solely of psychology. In answer to the question “Is transsexuality a medical condition?”, the document states,
“Transsexuality is considered by objective medical opinion to be a psychological medical condition. However, if the term ‘medical condition’ is used to imply that transsexuality has an underlying biological cause, then the answer is ‘no’” (Evangelical Alliance 2006: 3).
The assumption that “psychological” conditions could not also have biological connections is already dangerous; besides which, some (debated) biological bases for transsexualism have in fact been proposed (as the booklet itself acknowledges – Evangelical Alliance 2006: 21-22). Although the document is positive in its acceptance of the “reality” of intersex conditions, its desire to distance them from transsexualism leads to some demarcations between the two being drawn where they do not necessarily exist. For instance:
“Intersex conditions result from a chromosomal disorder. Transgendered people by definition do not have a chromosomal disorder and therefore show no evidence of physical sexual ambiguity” (Evangelical Alliance 2006: 5).
Not all intersex conditions do, in fact, arise through chromosomal disorders; it is not only inaccurate for the report to claim they do, but also bizarre, given that the same document later cites a survey of medical literature which acknowledges that at least a portion of intersex conditions have “no discernable medical cause” (Evangelical Alliance 2006: 21). The EA seems keen to differentiate intersex and transsexualism, on the logic that something with a biological cause cannot be pathologized in the same way as something which has “only” a psychological cause or which is a conscious choice. However, this obsession with the “truth” of biology is nothing but a new essentialism, and does not adequately question what happens when essentialist readings of bodies are allowed to become prescriptive imperatives for how all bodies are to be.
The EA report also endows transsexualism with a sinister moral bent: because it assumes sex must always “match” gender, the EA’s unyielding insistence that gender must also always map onto chromosomes (Evangelical Alliance 2006: 4) leaves it using the language of “deceit” (2006: 25), “secrecy and deception” (2006: 9), and “dangerous legal fiction” which privileges “illusion over reality” (2006: 5), particularly with regard to new birth certificates. Since, for the EA, sex and gender must correspond, the fact that actual sex-change is not possible already rules out the possibility that gender identity could be authentically other than what typically “fits” one’s chromosomes – though the report seems to have no difficulty in accepting that this does not apply in the case of intersex. It counsels “the resolution of any gender confusion through acceptance of one’s God-given sex and gender identity” (2006: 4), without entertaining the possibility that one’s God-given sex and God-given gender may not cohere. The recommended support to enable resolution includes advice that
“The transgendered person should be encouraged not to hold onto links with former associates… The outcome is invariably counter-productive” (Evangelical Alliance 2006: 17).
Although the report in general appears motivated by a desire to promote the (perceived) good of transgendered people, it also warns, “Churches also need constantly to bear in mind the threat of legal action and media exposure” (Evangelical Alliance 2006: 16). The whole report hinges on the repeated assertions that God made all humans either male or female; that gender should map unproblematically onto sex; that any sexual relationship outside heterosexual marriage between two people of opposite birth sexes is wrong; and that this is reality and any attempt to say otherwise is fantasy. Its essentialist bent might partially be explained by an investment in much of the contemporary evangelical tradition in maintaining strong gender divisions when it comes to authority and leadership in the Church community and the biological family in particular.
3.6.5 Some Issues in Human Sexuality
Some Issues in Human Sexuality, the Church of England’s 2003 guide to the sexuality debate, itself focuses in some detail on transsexualism, mentioning intersex (“true hermaphroditism” or ovotestes) only briefly and, comments John Hare, “merely endorsing the breezy assertion made by an earlier rather superficial treatment of the issue” (Hare 2007: 104).[112] SIIHS touches on some interesting concepts surrounding transsexualism, but will only run so far with them. This may be because its strong emphasis on male and female being the human types created by God allows the transsexualism chapter to rest mainly on claims from “God-givenness” – that is, that individuals should not seek to change or escape from their sex-gender configuration as given by God (which, it is assumed, will be a non-transsexual configuration). For example, it cites an unpublished paper by Peter Forster, which suggests that transsexualism should not be viewed monolithically as a solely psychological disorder necessitating solely psychological treatment (as O’Donovan and Luke Gormally imply – The Archbishops’ Council 2003: 235), but does not pursue these ideas. Forster says that, through living in a fallen world, bodies and minds are sometimes out of alignment, and may exhibit “fault lines” such as the belief that one should be a different sex. It should not be assumed that the physical “evidence” about sex automatically overrides the self-perception of gender (in The Archbishops’ Council 2003: 238). It might, then, be appropriate to adjust transsexuals’ bodies, as long as it is accepted that this is still risky and provisional, within the uncertain nature of a dynamic and evolving world (The Archbishops’ Council 2003: 238, 239). Further reflection on Forster’s approach would have been valuable, although Forster does seem to imply that “ambiguous” or “dubious” phenomena can only be “set amid the essential beauty and goodness of creation, as life is set in the midst of death” (Forster in The Archbishops’ Council 2003: 238), rather than themselves being part of what is beautiful and good.
With reference to the suggestion in SIIHS that transsexualism is based in a Gnostic-style dualism which undervalues the somatic body, Christina Beardsley argues that
“The transition journey, in which the subject’s body is subtly or dramatically changed by hormones and surgery, is not the Gnostic rejection of the body, or a dismissal of its importance, but a quest for a fuller embodiment of the person. Indeed, after starting on hormones people frequently say, ‘It was as if my body had been longing for these and was at last being satisfied’” (Beardsley 2005: 343).
On this reading, to refuse SRS might be as dualistic as to allow it. Beardsley also makes other important critiques of the handling of transsexualism in SIIHS, where sex-change is read as negation of the “true” body.[113] Some of her other criticisms could just as easily be applied to the treatments of intersex by O’Donovan and the EA in particular.
In contrast with O’Donovan’s work, the other responses to transsexualism seem less inclined to be systematic. They do not seem to be formulating a “position” on transsexualism so much as reacting to circumstances and related issues as they arise. In this respect, they are somewhat ad hoc. However, this is not necessarily negative; although it is helpful for churches to have guidelines in place for best practice in their interactions with LGBT or intersexed individuals, a blanket policy must go hand-in-hand with an engagement with the specifics of a person’s particular situation. Not everyone who identifies as transgendered has had the same journey or experiences; to say “transgendered people feel this” or “transgendered people think that” negates their individuality and risks glossing over their specific needs.
Although some of the ways transsexualism has been responded to theologically have been based in its apparent similarities to homosexuality (particular focusing on the non-reproductive nature of these individuals’ sexual activity), there are particular instances in which transgendered biography may have themes more in common with that of intersexed people. It is useful to consider these specifically.
3.7 Male All Along? The Historicity of Individuals
Questions stemming from the issue of the historicity of individuals, and the extent to which the persistence of an integrated personhood might be said to be compromised by surgical intervention on the genitals, have affected Christian responses to transsexuals and may colour responses to intersex too.
For example, as well as the issue of whether post-operative transsexuals can authentically marry after SRS, concerns about the permanence and legitimacy of existing marriages where one partner is transgendered or has undergone SRS are, in large part, what have prompted Christians to ask questions about the legal and ecclesiastical recognition of transsexuals’ new states. The Corbett v. Corbett (April Ashley) case in 1970 led to Lord Justice Ormrod’s ruling that transsexual individuals in the UK could not legally change the sex that appeared on their birth or death certificates, or marry (Nataf 1996: 15). Since April 2005, in light of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, it has been possible in the UK for transsexuals to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate. This allows the acquisition of a new birth certificate with the new legal name and sex (). If the individual was married at the time of SRS, the document given will be an interim gender recognition certificate valid until the marriage has been dissolved, at which point a full certificate will be given. Proceedings to dissolve the marriage must start within six months of the interim certificate being given, which, interestingly, means that the individual cannot get a full Gender Recognition Certificate without dissolving the pre-existing marriage. This goes against the view of Kolakowski that there might be sound theological reasons for not dissolving the marital covenant, and that “outsiders should not attempt to separate what God has joined” (Kolakowski 1997:28). This suggests that Kolakowski recognizes a continuity of identity in the transsexual which is thereby carried over into the transsexual’s relationships. The record of the transsexual’s birth sex will not be totally excised from the register, but will not be publicly accessible; any published lists of births from the year in question will contain the new name and sex. Transsexuals may marry in their new sex, but Church of England and Church in Wales clergy are not obliged to marry people whom they believe to have changed sex. If transsexuals do not disclose their SRS to their proposed spouse, but the spouse discovers after the marriage that SRS took place, the spouse may seek to have the marriage annulled. Holder suggests that ideally, those with transsexual feelings before marriage would realize that that debarred them from the vocation of marriage; however, since this does not always occur, Holder believes that, if they subsequently have surgery, they should be celibate in their new sex out of respect for the former spouse and any children (Holder 1998b: 133).
The issue of whether transsexuals’ birth certificates should be legally changed after transition raises broader questions about the historicity of individuals. A person born and registered female who undergoes SRS aged 30 and acquires a birth certificate reading “M” is essentially seeking verification that they were “male all along”. This is, indeed, what many transsexuals do claim, saying that their external morphology has merely been adjusted to reflect the truth of what they always were (Rubin 2003: 143, 149-151). However, regardless of whether or not the individual’s self-identification is considered valid, changing the birth certificate seems to “disappear” the history of having been perceived as a particular sex for at least part of that time. This might be viewed as negative or anti-incarnational. One (non-theological) opposition to male-to-female transsexualism from some feminists is that men are hijacking women’s circles without having lived through the struggles of having women’s biographies; Janice Raymond, in The Transsexual Empire, argued that male-to-female transsexuals were “raping” women, invading their space, just as much as men who invaded women literally with their penises or fists.[114] Rosemary Auchmuty says,
“Transsexuals… don’t have a woman’s past. They weren’t brought up as women and because so much of the women’s movement was premised on personal experience and sharing that experience and theorizing out of that, feminists argued for [the] exclusion of transsexuals. The other reason is the practical experience of actually being in groups with transsexuals… It’s very difficult for people to lose the habits of their gender upbringing. Male-to-female transsexuals in women’s groups dominate, in my experience. In this society women have little enough space and time for their voices to be heard” (Auchmuty in Nataf 1996: 37-8).
In this reading, just as a leopard cannot change its spots, a man cannot lose his aplomb even if he loses his “manhood” – and this will always mark out male-to-female transsexuals from the ranks of “born” women.[115] Myra J. Hird, however, criticizes the biological essentialism inherent in some feminisms – like that betrayed in Auchmuty’s remark – in her exploration of the manner in which both intersex and transsexualism might radically challenge the sex-versus-gender binary (Hird 2000). Hird says, “My objective is not to highlight the difficulties of ‘including’ intersexuals and transsexuals as women, but rather to question how anyone claims this membership based on the current ‘sex’/‘gender’ binary” (Hird 2000: 350). This highlights the arbitrary nature of “unambiguous” identification as a given sex or gender in the first place, which should be questioned in a project of subverting repressive hegemonies and formulating just theological responses to differences in bodies and identities.
Although some transsexuals freely admit to their histories in a different sex, the apparent unwillingness of other transpeople to acknowledge their own gendered and sexed past might be viewed as a rejection of one’s body as it appeared for a significant proportion of one’s life when one was related to in that body, and – concomitantly – as a rejection of the good of that incarnation and portion of one’s history. However, where an experience of being embodied was profoundly alien and psychologically painful, the legal sex-change on the birth certificate can be a catalyst for healing. By ratifying the new status and hugely reducing the chances that transsexuals will face prejudice when applying for jobs or in other situations where it is necessary to show a birth certificate, the Gender Recognition Certificate symbolizes an investment in this new and what the transsexual believes to be more authentic incarnation. In fact, the Gender Recognition Act 2004 explicitly states,
“Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person's gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender… [This] does not affect things done, or events occurring, before the certificate is issued; but it does operate for the interpretation of enactments passed, and instruments and other documents made, before the certificate is issued (as well as those passed or made afterwards)” (Gender Recognition Act 2004, Section 9, subsections 1-2, online at ).
In other words, the granting of a certificate does not eliminate the history of the individual which took place beforehand; it may simply mean that access to information about the individual in their original sex is far more strictly limited. Transsexuals who prefer not to discuss their pre-operative pasts are not necessarily denying they ever happened – they might simply be protecting themselves from prejudice from those unaware of their transition, or focusing on the present rather than being negatively affected by bitterness about a time when they felt constantly divided from their own bodies.
Interestingly, as Alison Jasper notes (Jasper 2005: 44), the Gender Recognition Act also states that the Gender Recognition Certificate will be given only on condition that the awarding panel is satisfied the transitioning individual intends to continue to live in the new gender for the rest of their life. This endowing of permanence of gender as a “good” even after an acknowledgement, in the very granting of the certificate, that it can be changed, may be designed to make subsequent legal statuses and arrangements (such as marriage) less complicated than they might otherwise be. Arguably, however, being known as an historical individual by one’s community need not entail permanent gender; indeed, part of one’s historicity might include having been known and embraced by one’s community throughout one’s changes of gender (as with Carol Stone, above). ISNA counsels openness to the fact that one’s intersexed child might choose to change gender, and, moreover, that any child, intersexed or not, might change gender, since any gender assignment is only ever preliminary ().
There are sound theological precedents for accepting and supporting this kind of change; a broad and far-reaching example would be the nature of God’s changing yet faithful interactions with Israel (and, subsequently, the non-Jewish world) as attested to throughout Judaeo-Christian scripture. God remains faithful even as circumstances shift, and, claims the Psalmist, has known each day before it comes to be (Psalm 139:16). This might be interpreted as an assurance that no change in circumstance can go beyond the reach of God to exist in compassion with, to be alongside, those whose identities undergo large shifts.
3.8 Transsexualism as Essentialism
Some, including Sharon Preves in Intersex and Identity: The Contested Self, have argued that, far from being a subversive disrupting of binarized gender norms as is sometimes claimed, elective transsexual surgery in fact affirms, rather than challenges, the polarity (Preves 2003: 45-46), rendering SRS part of what makes society so inhospitable to non-binary bodies such as those of intersexed people. Generally, transsexuals speak in terms of “transition” from one (sexed) state to the “opposite” state. Arguing from liminality as a positive ideal, Preves suggests that transsexual transition supports the hegemony which insists that physical gender signifiers must “match” the lived gender in order for psychological well-being to persist (which, in turn, feeds back into the mindset that intersexed anatomies must be fixed or adjusted). Transsexuals, runs the argument, are bolstering the very fixity in which they themselves have been unable to fit. This negates the notion that true otherness resides in something beyond sex and/or gender, so that (as for Ward) “heterosexual” desire can exist even between two individuals whose sexes and/or genders are ostensibly the same. However, Joanne Meyerowitz, in her history of transsexual surgery in the USA, argues that whilst, in the 1950s and 60s, many prospective transsexuals unabashedly did wish to be assuredly either male or female, so did the vast majority of other individuals (Meyerowitz 2002: 12). In its context, the desire to be unambiguously sexed, and for sex and gender to match, was even less remarkable than in present-day British and North American society. Aspiring transsexuals were as likely as others to wish to avoid homosexuality (perhaps partly, but not entirely, through fear of reprisals – Meyerowitz 2002: 57-9), and even many lesbian and gay people believed that to abscond from accepted gender binaries was undesirable (Meyerowitz 2002: 178).[116] Even so, could it be argued that SRS is ethically inappropriate within a theological mindset which seeks to deconstruct binary notions of sex and gender, and to anticipate the kind of post-Galatians 3:28 world where sex-gender norms, overtly oppressive or not, are no longer to be bolstered?
Although many transsexuals feel unambiguously members of their new sex and gender and do not wish to be recognized as anything other than an unremarkable man or woman, there are others who wish to embrace what might be called the “queer” aspect of sex-change. Some transsexual bodies, like some intersexed bodies, appear unusual or ambiguous after surgery. This is particularly true of female-to-male transsexuals who have had surgery and/or hormone therapy to enlarge the penis, but also choose not to have the vagina sewn up. It is thus possible for them either to penetrate or to be vaginally penetrated, and to participate in a range of sexual roles and behaviours. This haziness, this refusal to close off possibilities, might be viewed as simply another aspect of psychological disturbance; an unwillingness to fully go along with an altered sex because that is not what one “really” is, and one knows it deep down even if one attempts to repress it – for, in a mindset where everyone must be unambiguously sexed, voluntary indeterminacy is pathological. However, there is also promise here for relationships neither demarcated nor delimited by the bulwarks of gender. If it is not possible to tell for certain the gender or sex of the person with whom one is in relationship, this will profoundly affect the nature of that relationship. Pragmatic matters of who can and cannot become pregnant will certainly be deserving of consideration; but the point is exactly that this conversation will be necessitated, rather than omitted through assumption. To engage in relationships where one is unsure of the partner’s sex will prompt a whole series of questions about the roles and responsibilities in those relationships. Rather than working backwards to deconstruct assumptions concretized in established sex-gender corollaries, perhaps ambiguous, trans-queer relationships can work forwards if the participants cannot immediately draw particular conclusions about their partner. Such potential, of course, need not be limited to queer relationships; but it is much more difficult for conventional partnerships to escape defaulting to traditional patterns. (I discuss queer relationships, and the problems of formulating queer “identities”, in more detail in Chapter 5.)
3.9 Transsexualism as Performativity
As we have seen, some Christians and others argue that transsexualism is not a “real” condition but a psychological disturbance, and should therefore not be “confirmed” through SRS. It has been claimed from other quarters, however, that transsexualism may be “unreal”, that is, fabricated, in a different way. Billings and Urban (1982) notoriously go so far as to claim,
“Transsexualism is a socially constructed reality which only exists in and through medical practice. The problem of transsexual patients does not lie ‘in their minds’… Transsexualism is a relational process sustained in medical practice and marketed in public testimony such as [John] Money’s… description of the ‘warm glow’ of sexual fulfilment available through surgery. The legitimation, rationalization, and commodification of sex-change operations have produced an identity category – transsexual – for a diverse group of sexual deviants and victims of severe gender role distress” (Billings and Urban 1982: 266).
Billings and Urban suggest that, rather than healing the body or the mind, doctors who carry out SRS “perform a moral function”, being “accorded moral authority to sponsor passage from one sexed state to another” (Billings and Urban 1982: 266). They conclude that SRS “privatizes and depoliticizes individual experiences of gender-role distress” (Billings and Urban 1982: 266). In this way, transsexualism can be said to be an artificial construction of the healthcare profession (a status which has also been proposed for intersex). Doctors have been part of what has shifted transgender from social deviantism to a legitimate “medical” issue, partly in response to patients and – it has been claimed – partly because the “new” phenomenon of transsexualism in the mid-20th century opened up new surgical and psychiatric arenas for research and, thereby, professional prestige (Billings and Urban 1982: 269).
Billings and Urban hold that, like other “negotiated illnesses”, transsexualism holds moral and social as well as medical meanings (Billings and Urban 1982: 276), but that its figuring as medical entity “pushes patients toward an alluring world of artificial vaginas and penises rather than toward self-understanding and sexual politics” (Billings and Urban 1982: 276). They claim,
“At the level of ideology, sex-change surgery… reflects and extends late-capitalist logics of reification and commodification… The fulfilment of human desires is less a matter of public discussion than a technical accomplishment of social administration” (Billings and Urban 1982: 277).
Making transsexualism a medical phenomenon legitimates medical (surgical) intervention, which actually “disappears” it, since “patients whose subjective histories are subsumed under the unifying rhetoric of transsexualism win operations but no language adequate to express [their] disparate and diverse desires” (Billings and Urban 1982: 276). The “pseudo-tolerant gender-identity clinics… are implicitly political and, indirectly, intolerant” (Billings and Urban 1982: 277). Thus, it might be glossed, medical intervention to cancel out gender dysphoria or different experiences of being a sexed/gendered body does not expand societal notions of what it is to be a sexed/gendered body in the first place.
Whilst it might be true that SRS sometimes reinforces a binary view of sex and gender, and that some transsexuals may “fail” adequately to “queer” sex-gender norms, the crucial point is that there is no reason why transgendered people should have to do this on behalf of everyone else. Transsexuals still have to survive in a largely binary society. The privileges which some transsexuals feel they gain from passing in a given gender are exactly the same as those which non-transsexuals would also gain; but questions about why this should be so apply to everyone. To suppose that only transsexualism is “constructed”, then, argues Jay Prosser, both denies the constructed nature of all gender identity (Kessler and McKenna 1978: vii) and undermines the transsexual's agency, eroding “the subject’s capacity not only to initiate and effect his/her own somatic transition but to inform and redefine the medical narrative of transsexuality” (Prosser 1998: 8).
Prosser remarks that many readers of Butler’s Gender Trouble seized upon it as yoking together transgender and homosexuality, as if the trans life were the only one which could authentically disrupt and queer gender. Prosser asks,
“My concern is the implication of this harnessing of transgender as queer for transsexuality: what are the points at which the transsexual as transgendered subject is not queer?” (Prosser 1998: 27).
Prosser argues that the over-emphasis given to Butler’s reading of gender as performative, a relatively minor element in Gender Trouble but often sedimented into a necessarily queer performativity, has frequently led to an assumption that transsexuality is always and exclusively subversive (Prosser 1998: 31). In fact, retorts Prosser, transgender is not always queer or subversive, but is no less legitimate as a result:
“There are transsexuals who seek very pointedly to be nonperformative, to be constantive, quite simply, to be. What gets dropped from transgender in its queer deployment to signify subversive gender performativity is the value of the matter that often most concerns the transsexual: the narrative of becoming a biological man or a biological woman (as opposed to the performative of effecting one) – in brief and simple the materiality of the sexed body” (Prosser 1998: 32).
Since Gender Trouble seems to imply that “sex” is always a result of performed gender, usually “typically” straight gender, Prosser says it “cannot account for a transsexual desire for sexed embodiment as telos” (Prosser 1998: 33). Sex, in this account, can never be a “natural” desire; it is always a distortion, or at least a false ceiling above which gender is concealed. Transsexuals must always be kidding themselves. Prosser, though, rejects this account as being representative for all transsexuals[117] (and Butler reframes the nature of performativity in Bodies That Matter and her later work). Prosser questions the tendency, in early Butler, to privilege surface over interiority, and says that, because Gender Trouble’s notion of gender is based on bodies-as-visual-surfaces,
“In its dependence on the visible… the theory of gender performativity does in fact work out of a definitively theatrical arena. Any claim to a sense of sexed interiority, any feeling of being sexed or gendered (whether “differently” or not), along with other ontological claims, is designated phantasmatic, symptomatic of heterosexual melancholia” (Prosser 1998: 43).
Transsexuals, in this account, are still figured, and figure, only and always within this “prior” heteronormal matrix, and are thus involuntarily implicated in the political project of critiquing it. For Prosser, the feeling of being “trapped” in the “wrong” body is common and central to almost all transsexual autobiography,[118] and yet it is exactly this for which Butler cannot allow space in Gender Trouble, for it would open the door to the possibility of “interior” heterosexual sex too, whereas Butler is so careful to demonstrate its constructed character.[119] Prosser prizes much which she perceives as non-negotiable and specific to transsexualism whilst not necessarily reconcilable with broader, more general “queer” concerns:
“The specificity of transsexual experience; the importance of the flesh to self; the difference between sex and gender identity; …perhaps above all… a particular experience of the body that can’t simply transcend (or transubstantiate) the literal” (Prosser 1998: 59).
This reading suggests that bodies are not incidental to transsexual identities, and genital surgery and hormone therapy not optional extras added on to an existing secure sexed identity aside from physiology. However, this must prompt questions about why bodies in general must be altered to be “readable” as sex-gender primers in unambiguous fashion.
For example, Sandy Stone notes that the accusation that transsexuals make stereotypical converts (ultra-feminine women and ultra-masculine men) who reinforce heteronormal hegemonies may not so much reflect a “truth” about transsexuals themselves, but is, rather, an overhang from the early practice of gender clinics only to accept for transsexual reassignment surgery those individuals already “gendered” appropriately (Stone 1991: 347). Thus it was in the interests of a prospective male-to-female to exaggerate his interest in clothes and make-up in order to come across as “more feminine”. Billings and Urban’s own observations from a gender clinic in the 1970s led them to conclude,
“More than anything else, physical appearance enables patients to control screening interviews; successful cross-dressing often truncates the screening process. When patients appear at a clinic convincingly cross-dressed, verbal slips or doubtful accounts are set right by covering accounts – or are simply glossed over because physical appearance confirms the gender claimed. On the other hand, discrepant appearances are taken as alarming signs” (Billings and Urban 1982: 275).
Billings and Urban add that interviewing doctors in the 1970s sometimes “prompted” or “coached” patients to offer expected, “ritualized expressions such as ‘I always played with dolls as a child’” (Billings and Urban 1982: 275) in order to be able to tick the right boxes. This suggests that it was not transsexuals so much as their surgeons who were keen to keep things polarized. Stone and others report that it became common for transpeople not to tell doctors the whole story of their sexual tastes in case this earmarked them as “unsuitable” for surgery. Prospective male-to-female transsexuals would not admit to obtaining sexual pleasure from their penises, probably because of a hangover among the medical establishment of Freud’s view that phallic (clitoral) pleasure in women was infantile and adult women should orgasm vaginally. Stone says,
“The prohibition continued postoperatively in interestingly transmuted form, and remained so absolute that no postoperative transsexual would admit to experiencing sexual pleasure through masturbation either. Full membership in the assigned gender was conferred by orgasm, real or faked, accomplished through heterosexual penetration” (Stone 1991: 348).[120]
Butler adds that, even now,
“It is for the most part the gender essentialist position that must be voiced for transsexual surgery to take place, and… someone who comes in with a sense of gender as changeable will have a more difficult time convincing psychiatrists and doctors to perform the surgery” (Butler 2001: 632).[121]
So it is not somehow transsexualism itself which must “necessarily subvert or affirm dominant forms of masculinity” (Rubin 2003: 145); rather, says Rubin,
“Transsexual men have the potential to generate either alternative or hegemonic forms of masculinity… [and] to resignify what it means to behave like a man. Transsexualism is neither essentially normative nor essentially counter-hegemonic” (Rubin 2003: 145).
To seize upon transsexuals as naïvely and single-handedly reinforcing oppressive gendered constructs is to fail to recognize that transsexualism both informs and is informed by wider societal beliefs about gender. It must thus be acknowledged that transsexual self-description and self-determination is both as valid and as muddied as that of individuals whose “born” sex and gender seem unremarkably to coinhere. As Butler warns, whilst self-description is to be honoured for it is in self-description that an individual gives the language through which he or she wishes to be understood, “On the other hand, we have a description of a self that takes place in a language that is already going on, that is already saturated with norms, that predisposes us as we seek to speak of ourselves” (Butler 2001: 630). It would thus be unfortunate to negate the desire of those who cannot persist in their “natural” bodies to undergo surgery or other intervention to live more comfortably. It is not always enough, it seems, to live “as a man” when one still has female genitalia[122] or when one has not yet undergone the secondary physical changes associated with testosterone injections such as increased body temperature and broadened shoulders (Rubin 2003: 155).
Transsexuals are therefore no more “inherently” subversive of binary sex and gender than anyone else. However, Prosser claims that there are some important ways in which trans bodies differ from non-trans ones. Rejecting Butler’s view in Gender Trouble that it is not possible to describe the process by which a body comes to be marked by sex, Prosser claims that transsexual narratives tell this very tale. Trans bodies must be consciously imbued with sexed meanings, new meanings; female-to-male transsexuals must come to call tissue taken from their arms or groins “my penis”. This is “a refiguring of the sexed body that takes place along corporeal, psychic, and symbolic axes. Gendered becoming… occurs for the transsexual at these points of intersection, complex crossings for sure but the investment of sex in the flesh is undeniable” (Prosser 1998: 67). Prosser draws an interesting metaphor from the Eucharist, commenting that, like transsexualism, transubstantiation both literalizes and deliteralizes, making the real elements metaphorical whilst the Godhead is concretised (Prosser 1998: 50) (compare my comments on Eucharist in Chapter 2). The “surface” of the body is not simply a covering, but the very locus of sexed identity.
This is not unproblematic, for the element of election is still central: transsexuals can imbue their forearms with sexual significance, because their desire to do so overwhelms the seeming illogicality of such assignment. But this must stem from actors themselves and not from elsewhere, or it will prove unsuccessful. This is striking when compared with intersex surgery; in the latter, as many negative consequences are held to stem from the unknown or unchosen character of the surgery as from the physical result of the surgery itself. It has also been argued that intersex is a medical, historical and cultural construction, not an “evidently” biological one. For example, Morgan Holmes suggests that, “if one of the diagnostic criteria for intersexuality is that a patient have genitals that ‘conflict’ with chromosomal sex then it seems, in fact, that genetic males with micropenises who are assigned female are actually made into intersexed persons” (Holmes 2002: 174). Given that classification as intersexed can depend on a difference of a few millimetres’ glans size, Holmes claims,
“In a sense, ‘intersexuality’ is nothing more than a perpetually shifting phantasm in the collective psyche of medicine and culture” (Holmes 2002: 175).
Of course, says Holmes, it is not that salt-wasting CAH and so on are not real medical concerns and should not be addressed; however, the health risks attached to some cases of intersex are not identical to the concerns about unusual-looking genitals, and the two should not be conflated (Holmes 2002: 175).
Despite the possible similarity with transsexualism, then, in its partially medically-constructed character, the important difference is that, in contrast with transsexuals, many intersexed people’s concern surrounds the autonomy not to have surgery. This is almost always retrospective since so much initial intervention takes place in childhood. As far as medicine is concerned, with rare exceptions, the body of the (physiologically) non-intersexed person (which might include transsexual individuals) already unambiguously describes its own sex and must not be compromised. Conversely, however, the body of the intersexed infant cannot be trusted, because it is “misleading” (as with clitoromegaly in CAH girls) or might become so if left unchecked (as when 5-ARD and AIS girls “masculinize” at puberty). “Of course Bianca would have to look like a little girl”, said Patrick Malone, consultant urologist at Southampton General Hospital where surgery was carried out to “hide” the clitoris of the baby with CAH in question,[123] “because she was a little girl” (in Godwin 2004). Arguably, Bianca’s visibly large clitoris would not have stopped her being a little girl; she would simply have been a little girl with a large clitoris. But this body could not be allowed to tell its own story unedited; Kessler comments that even the “facts” of intersexed bodies are edited, so that
“The adolescent is typically told that certain internal organs did not form because of an endocrinological defect, not because those organs could never have developed in someone with his or her sex chromosomes” (Kessler 1998: 30).
3.10 Some Conclusions
To declare transsexualism illegitimate is often to fail to examine the prior heteronormative constraints which render gender “transgressions” remarkable. The same is often true of intersex: theologies which claim an immovable model of male and female, masculine and feminine (which also happens to outlaw homosexuality), and which allow no conceptual space for exceptions, risk “protecting” and fetishizing a truth which does not exist in the first place, and thus shift allegiance from a God-reflecting pattern of creation to a human-concretized social hegemony. As Rees argues, this is largely to do with access to power. Although the existence of intersexed individuals is less well-known than that of transsexuals, intersexed people also – consciously and willingly or otherwise – expose the discomfort felt when those with socially (and, sometimes, scripturally) sanctioned authority find that the binary paradigm on which their own legitimacy is based is an arbitrary one. Issues around redefining and reassigning bodies show themselves to be about redefining socially-sanctioned “truths” too. The existence of intersex and transsexualism highlights the fact that “biological” theologies of complementarity such as that of Barth turn out to be based more in appearances and assumptions than in gametes, which raises questions about what it is that “makes” social sex to begin with and what it is that is really being “defended” in some quarters from erosion by homosexuality and women in leadership. The sexuality of transvestites and transsexuals cannot be taken as read, which may provoke discomfort for Christians who reject the legitimacy of homosexual relationships. The same is true of intersexed individuals. Both of these in turn come full circle and question why it is that non-transsexual, non-intersexed sex and gender are so “obvious”. Biblical injunctions to overturn human social standards which divide – as in the teaching about Jew and Greek, slave and free being one in Christ in Galatians 3:28 – should prompt a reconsideration of sex-gender norms too. The biblical verses about eunicism sometimes used in relation to transsexualism might also be used in the consideration of intersex, but – as we have seen – this necessitates a deliberate consciousness that this is to read into the text something which its original authors were not explicitly addressing.
Questions about the legitimacy of the performance of SRS are particularly interesting when considering theological responses to them, for intersex is often coming from the opposite extreme: whilst many trans people battle for surgery to alter their bodies, for the parents of intersexed children the battle is normally for them not to have surgery. However, issues of autonomy and self-determination apply to both intersexed and transgendered people. Theologically, whether or not SRS is considered legitimate seems to come down to whether or not it is deemed necessary, therapeutic surgery, although this has not always been extended to intersex surgery. Whereas the social “good” of having a gender identity and genitals which match is considered fundamental in the treatment of intersex – and is sanctioned as such by O’Donovan – the same is not true of transsexualism. Conversely, however, whilst the intersexed person is expected to be able to fully synthesize their altered anatomy into their sense of self, it is almost expected that the transsexual will be unable to, because they will “know” that their new anatomy is not really “theirs”. The theological application of O’Donovan’s assertion about the authenticity of body parts is brought to inconsistent conclusions.
Transsexualism is less to do with sexuality than with being in harmony with one’s body. However, this does not mean transsexuals should be asexualized. Both these things are also true for intersexed individuals. The Church has a duty to stand with those whose bodies are sources of discomfort or disturbance to them, and to support them in their own decisions in regulating their bodies, whether this involves surgical intervention or not. Crucially, however, this must include support for those individuals and their families who have decisions to make regarding surgery. It is vital that Christian communities welcome and embrace bodies as they are, particularly when they have been rejected elsewhere. This should be motivated not by a desire to colonize these bodies but to accept them; for, as Althaus-Reid argues, an embodied theology must embody the queer, the unknown, the stranger at the gate. It is in encountering strangers that “a different body theology occurs: a theology made with the different shapes that come from the encounter” (Althaus-Reid 2004a: 104). Individuals who undergo transition, whether or not this includes sex-change surgery, should be welcomed as full members of their worshipping communities and helped to settle into their identity-expressions.
Theologically, because intersex is so little known and because transsexualism is usually treated with suspicion and reservation, the existing theological resources used in relation to transsexualism are not always helpful in trying to formulate a theology of intersex. However, some significant links do emerge. The very fact that O’Donovan and others have to work so hard to differentiate intersex and transsexualism says some important things about attitudes to bodily necessity, “illness” versus “sin”, and so on. In the next chapter I consider whether theologies of disability and the impaired or “imperfect” body, as well as beliefs about what happens to bodily imperfections at the resurrection, are any more illuminating when used to reflect on intersex.
Chapter 4 Remembering and Re-Membering: Intersex and Theologies from Disability
“People with impairments… constitute a particular threat to the orderly functioning of society because they occupy an ambiguous position – not wholly ill, not wholly healthy – and because the boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is not only in flux but is constantly being transgressed by people we know (‘us’), who, outrageously, suddenly turn into ‘them’… The creation of a group of people called ‘the disabled’ is hermeneutics, not ontology” (Scully 1998: 21).
As we saw in Chapter 3, theological treatments of transsexualism have been affected by the status of the transsexual body as existing on conceptual boundaries, a position it shares with intersexed bodies despite the differences in how and why each body has been altered. In this chapter I demonstrate that impaired bodies transcend conceptual boundaries in a slightly different way – straddling the usually mutually-exclusive categories of health and pathology and thus challenging the theological or moral significances sometimes attached to each state – and explore whether intersexed bodies might also be said to exist on such a cusp.
Disabled bodies are or are considered to be at a disadvantage when compared with non-disabled bodies, because of a condition or bodily function significantly impaired in comparison with expected standards. Whilst some impairments inherently prevent certain physical activities possible for non-impaired bodies, more and other disabilities arise from the ways in which the concrete social environment is structured. Similarly, intersexed bodies are or are considered to be at a disadvantage compared with non-intersexed bodies. Whilst many intersexed bodies cannot do some things which many non-intersexed bodies can do – for example, women with AIS cannot menstruate or become pregnant as most other women can – there are also things about intersex only rendered problematic by societal assumptions (such as unusual genital appearance of non-altered ambiguous genitalia). In this chapter I argue that, just as disability need not necessarily be deemed pathological, either socially or theologically – in spite of the real inherent differences in ability arising from some impairments – likewise, intersex also need not necessarily be deemed pathological either socially or theologically. I explore issues of the real versus constructed nature of disability, and how this impinges on the autonomy and subjecthood of those deemed disabled. I consider some of the ways in which disability has been figured within theology, focusing particularly on questions about the eschatological body, and how notions of the resurrection body in Augustine might help to build a non-pathological picture of intersexed and otherwise “imperfect” bodies.
I work from the premise that intersex conditions are analogous to physical disabilities, not intellectual ones. People with developmental intellectual disabilities – who used to be called mentally handicapped – face exclusion from society in many ways, and raise their own extensive and significant set of questions which have been discussed in detail elsewhere (as by the contributors to the Journal of Religion, Disability and Health’s special edition on Hauerwas’ theology of disability – Swinton 2004 – and in Young 1990). Although it is artificial to separate physical and intellectual disabilities in this way – since many individuals have both, since many physical impairments result from various kinds and extents of brain damage, and since the brain is, after all, absolutely a part of the body – I do so in order to consider more precisely the nature of physical functional impairment without entering in detail into the enormous issues of personhood and autonomy for people with intellectual disabilities to which I cannot do justice here.
4.1 Intersex and Disability: Provisional Unities?
How might considering disability and intersex analogously begin to open the way for a fuller theological understanding of intersex? Some people with intersex conditions do not wish to be considered politically in the same breath as transsexual or homosexual individuals, because such alliances are felt to erode the particularity of the issues faced by intersexed people. However, it is conceivable that the “difference” of intersexed bodies might resonate with the “difference” of impaired bodies less problematically than with bodies deemed sexually other.[124] Emi Koyama, of intersex/DSD activism group Intersex Initiative, argues that approaching intersex issues from the perspective of the radical disability rights movement sidesteps some of the problems associated with alliances made with LGBT or queer groups (Koyama 2006). She notes that, as with many physical disabilities, the absence of a vagina can be figured as less problematic in itself than living in a society which insists, arbitrarily, that having a vagina is necessary.[125] She also draws links between the relationship of intersexed children to the medical professionals who deal with them, and that of people with disabilities to their own caregivers, claiming that children with impairments are encouraged from early on to conform to a particular “impaired role”:
“The primary feature of this role is that a disabled person must act as the passive mirror of other people’s affection and good will, so that non-disabled people can affirm their own goodness. The forced lifelong immersion in this role makes it extremely difficult to question or to challenge potentially self-serving or manipulative motives behind others’ presumably altruistic actions” (Koyama 2006).[126]
Nancy Eiesland, in her theological reflection on disability, also considers the impaired role, and the extent to which church communities have consciously or unconsciously encouraged complicity with it and thereby with the marginality of people with disabilities (Eiesland 1994: 20). Christopher Newell notes that the tendency to medicalize and mark out impairment has meant that it has been found “difficult to allow for more tentative and paradoxical conclusions as to who is disabled and who disables them” (Newell 2007: 325). This is particularly interesting in terms of considering the extent to which the rest of society suffers by the stigmatization of impaired and intersexed bodies, and of utilizing theological and critical tools to query established binary models of pathology and “health”.
Koyama traces parallels between medical responses to intersex and to other conditions.[127] She concludes,
“Medical categories can be useful if [they exist] solely to identify people's needs for medical services and technologies and to provide them. In the end, I hope to live in a society in which people with various so-called ‘disorders’, or specific needs for medical services and technologies, can live their lives to their fullest potential, without having to become ‘normal’” (Koyama 2006).
Koyama believes that the majority of intersexed people are not, in fact, motivated to join queer-identified activism groups – contrary to a vocal minority. This means that there is a lack of forums and methodologies through which the former group can explore their experiences. Mainstream media coverage of intersex, Koyama notes, usually homes in on individuals with particular gender identity struggles, or ongoing medical complications, rather than those leading ordinary, unremarkable lives (for, as she hints, this does not make good television)[128]. She claims,
“For the majority of intersex individuals who do not particularly feel the need to explain their gender status because they are not trans or genderqueer, or to re-live the horrors of childhood trauma by telling their stories in front of an audience… because they are not activists, there is nothing that motivates them to speak about their intersex experiences” (Koyama 2006).
Drawing on the experiences and political engagements of people with disabilities, rather than those with “sexual” issues centred on the queer-identifying community, then, might allow non-queer-identifying intersexed people to demand what they need.
Intersex is not specifically discussed in the scriptural canon, although some commentators have noted possible contiguities between intersexed people and eunuchs, as with transsexualism. There is, though, far more discussion of various types of physical impairment, and from this it is possible to draw out particular assumptions about bodies which help to describe why intersexed bodies have often been excised from signification or been painted as dangerous, deviant and in need of correction or cover-up.
Commentators on disability, including some theologians, have argued that some conditions figured as pathologies might be more usefully figured as variations. For example, blindness can be reckoned a different and specific life condition, without necessarily having to be considered a totally negative one. Sighted people often have difficulty with this concept, as John M. Hull has explored (below), but a theology from blindness like Hull’s opens the way for a full appreciation of the specific bodily state, without negating the real differences between people who do and do not see. It is possible to appreciate that there are certain activities made impossible or much more difficult for people who are blind without thereby pathologizing the entire condition. The theological tradition has often focused on what is problematic about particular impairments rather than on what might be advantageous or simply unremarkable about them – which has not encouraged speaking and acting from within these particular “problematic” bodies. However, influenced by feminist and other methodologies, there has been a move toward valuing marginal and polyphonic voices in theology. But although impairments have begun to be figured as legitimate sites for reflection, there has been far less impetus to move beyond similar pathological figurings of sexual variation such as intersex and transsexualism. An examination of the different ways in which it is possible to represent disability in and from the Christian theological tradition, however, opens the way to finding other ways to read physical sex variation beyond the male-female binary too.
4.2 “Perfect-ability”: The Problem of Perfection in Ability and in Sex
People with disabilities, it has been noted, are not, in many respects, particularly unlike “normal” people. As a result, they serve as reminders of what the able body could easily become. The able are forced to face the possibility that they themselves could (and probably will, in old age if not before) become the disabled; that they are, in fact, only “temporarily able”. Although it might seem that intersexed people are thereby far more “other” to non-intersexed people than people with disabilities are to able people – because people who are not intersexed cannot gradually or suddenly become intersexed in the way that able people can become disabled – in actual fact, the unshakeability of binary sex is far more precarious than it seems. If the able are only temporarily able, the unambiguously “sexed” are also only temporarily (and arbitrarily) sexed: the current criteria for defining maleness or femaleness will not necessarily remain so forever. Benchmarks for the size and appearance of the genitals, and the sexed import ascribed to particular physical characteristics, have changed across time and culture and may change again. Gender norms, too, undergo shifts: Ken Stone picks up on Butler’s argument that they “are continually haunted by their own inefficacy” (Stone 2005: 126; Butler 1993: 237), because “the embodiment or materialization of gender norms… frequently fails to live up to the ideals on which it is based” (Stone 2005: 127). Even “normal”, unremarkable men and women constantly do things which might be said to conflict with their gender identity.[129] Any insistence on binary gender, and bodies to match – as with early genital surgery for intersex – always already acknowledges (albeit implicitly rather than explicitly) that the binaries are at risk and must be reinforced.
Stone also comments, after Julia Kristeva,
“Much demonizing of the Other takes place because of basic insecurity occasioned by the presence of that Other. This insecurity arises in part because the Other is not quite so different from oneself as one might wish to believe. Hence, the Other challenges the security of the boundary of one’s self” (Stone 2005: 61-2).
Identities are constituted by that perceived to exist outside them, in distinction from them (Butler 1993: 8). This kind of reflection on abjection and “border anxiety” also informs Gerard Loughlin’s reflection on aliens, as well as much disability theory (as we will see below). Significantly, just as assumptions about sex tend to rest on particular beliefs about sex, on beliefs about the evidence taken as legitimately adding up to a clear sex, so assumptions about disability have been affected by beliefs about what a disabled body is and means.
The philosophical “perfections” assigned to God are, it might be held, nothing but human wish-fulfilment writ large, stemming from a desire to worship a maximized version of ourselves.[130] The notion of omnipotence is particularly problematic to the idea that human perfection must replicate God’s perfection, since humans are clearly not all-powerful, and impaired humans may in some respects be even less powerful than others. It might therefore be held that God’s image is more wholly reflected in humans who are more “perfect” – which might come to mean more powerful or able – than other humans. The problem with such a model is that it is a circular one: while it ostensibly starts with God as a model for humans, actually, it inevitably starts with humans as a model for God. It is contingent on humans having a right idea of what constitutes perfection in the first place. It is dangerous for the same reasons as Barth’s theological anthropology: in this account, God’s “perfection” inevitably reflects, and is a projection of, the ideals of a perfect human bodily existence, since it is in human lives and human bodies that the doctrine is constructed and understood.
4.3 Exacerbated Disability and Stigmatization: “You Shall Not Revile the Deaf or Put a Stumbling-Block Before the Blind” [131]
I will now reflect upon the exacerbated character of the exclusion which stems from impairment and from intersex. Both intersexed and disabled people are often portrayed and categorized as having limited choices about their own bodies and lives generally, and may have their authority as actors and decision-makers usurped by others. This has happened for many reasons; Stanley Hauerwas argues that one is the medicalization of disability. He says,
“The medical model is particularly destructive for the handicapped in that it puts them in a disastrous psychological and sociological situation: They must define themselves as permanently dependent if they are to receive the advantages of the sick role… This robs handicapped persons of their most effective means of doing something about their situation, namely, politics… They have been robbed unjustly of power that is rightfully theirs” (Hauerwas 2004b: 171).
Hauerwas follows Gliedman and Roth’s claim that societal assumptions about the limiting nature of disability mean that we already expect people with disabilities to be abnormal or unable to participate in mainstream life. In order to justify this we seize as identifiers predominantly on those characteristics which confirm impaired persons’ difference and atypicality. However, because we have convinced ourselves that the difference lies solely in biological or medical grounds, we absolve ourselves of any contribution to their exclusion (Hauerwas 2004b: 170). This is analogous to doctors seizing on the few things that some intersexed people cannot do – parading around changing-rooms naked without drawing attention to their different genitals, engaging in penetrative vaginal sex, birthing children and so on – and giving so much weight to these few things in insisting that they must be altered as far as possible, that all the ways in which intersexed people are damaged or marginalized by medical intervention itself are obscured. Preves argues, “The persistent focus on the abnormality of intersexed bodies further reifies the ‘normalcy’ of bodies that are not intersexed” (Preves 2003: 126). Rather, intersexed individuals can build a positive identity by “recasting” their difference and recognizing that “the genesis of the problem [is] external rather than internal” (Preves 2003: 87).[132] Georgia Warnke says,
“Assumptions and expectations about proper and distinct gender activities erect the interpretive frameworks through which certain features and combinations of features appear to be fundamental to bodies and to comprise their sex… The idea that we just are essentially male or female is thus less an idea about nature than it is an interpretation of natural properties, one that begins with the activities and presumptions of gender and works backward, as it were, toward the body” (Warnke 2001: 130).
It is a prior assumption that the difference of intersexed people is dangerous, monstrous or pathological which leads to reading their bodies in exactly this way. This is another aspect of erotic domination, where a good desire for order or cohesion in society degenerates into a power-crazed project of subsuming and eradicating the different and other. This does not mean readings of texts on impairment from throughout the Christian tradition cannot inform reflection in formulating theologies from intersex, but does mean continually re-examining them in light of new discourses and hermeneutics, against the elusive but imperative gauge of love and justice.
Disability activists often argue that physical “abnormalities” are only a disadvantage if society is structured so that, for instance, buildings are accessible solely by the physically “normal”. Similarly, it can be argued, the only reason why intersexed bodies are perceived as dangerous in their difference (and why they must therefore be altered) is because of imposed norms – which become moral imperatives – of how decent, clearly-sexed bodies should look and behave. Bodily states which are not actually life-threatening come to be made out as emergencies because they offend aesthetically (Kessler 1998: 37), and jeopardize the dual hegemonies which say that power, potency and ability – sexual or otherwise – are the goods to which every body must aspire, and that heterosexuality and procreation are self-evidently normal and desirable. People with impairments who refuse either to submit to a role as victim, or to erase their difference and particularity by denying their impairment altogether in order to seem as normal as possible, help to question what constitutes normality and acceptability in the first place. If an impaired body, or a body which does not fit into the sex binary, speaks up for itself and claims its share of audience and consequence, this subverts ableist and heteronormative assumptions. Just as Jesus disrupted assumptions about what a political messiah would be like (Myers et al 1996), so too each human created in God’s image can partake in resisting the powers which rise up from all around.
Part of this, for theologians, involves resisting particular notions of legitimacy and signification. Disability theologians have successfully done this by reframing assumptions about weakness, strength, power and perfection; theologians who reflect on intersex must do likewise. Consider Foucault’s exposition of bio-power in The History of Sexuality vol. 1 (Foucault 1990) – characterized as that which “brought life and its mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations and made knowledge-power an agent of transformation of human life” (Foucault 1990: 143). Although Foucault discusses bio-power with particular reference to the discourses of power surrounding and producing sexuality, the notion of bodies as machines to be regulated and made more useful which Foucault argues arose in the 18th century (Foucault 1990: 140) also informs possible readings of disability.[133] He says,
“Anatamo- and bio-politics, created in the eighteenth century as techniques of power… acted as factors of segregation and social hierarchization, exerting their influence on the respective forces of both these movements, guaranteeing relations of domination and effects of hegemony” (Foucault 1990: 141).
Biological events such as epidemics and famines had always affected historical-political processes, says Foucault (Foucault 1990: 142); however, through a series of complex economic and epistemological relations, politics came to inform biological discourse as much as biological discourse informed politics, for biology “passed into knowledge’s field of control and power’s sphere of intervention” (Foucault 1990: 142). Just as the management of sex becomes the management of life itself for Foucault, so the management of biological norms continues to influence and be influenced by external notions of what does and does not entail a good-enough body – which usually means an able and unambiguously-sexed body. Bio-power’s interest in normalizing lives and bodies and in providing “beneficial” conditions for the thriving of (particular kinds of) lives and bodies has meant that issues of access to the control of life and death have fallen into the hands of politics. Although Foucault identifies bio-power as concerning itself with and being disseminated through discourses of sex specifically (Foucault 1990: 146), it is also possible to trace the effects of bio-power streaming through attitudes to bodies which go beyond the solely sexual. The sexual, social and economic all supervene. Overt and naturalized power-battles about what is normal and natural have influenced attitudes to atypical bodies. Acknowledging this does not necessarily entail defeatism and a resignation to what seems an all-embracing reach of power; rather, because power arises from everywhere, there is always the possibility that it can be transformed and redeemed. Power can generate as well as repress.
These multiple loci of power mean that, as Althaus-Reid has noted, liberation can never be as simple as the “good” oppressed overthrowing a “bad” oppressor. What is needed is a continual re-examination of discourses of empowerment and emancipation in order to identify elements which are themselves becoming oppressive. This means that the political and social liberation of impaired individuals, with which theologians have attempted to think and speak, is itself under continual scrutiny because of the uncertainties and controversies arising in it. For example, within both the intersexed and the impaired communities there has been debate and dissent around the extent to which individuals should self-identify by their specific condition. Although some people have found it a positive locus for a cultural as well as physiological identity, it might be countered that those who invest most of their time and energy in a deaf (or otherwise impairment-focused) subculture rather than interacting with “mainstream” culture actually collude in their own exclusion.[134] Do people with disabilities who have reclaimed terms such as “cripple” successfully refuse the silencing or tidying-away of their different bodies, or do they in fact conspire with a society which still wishes to identify them exclusively and fundamentally by their condition, unwittingly promoting the overarching identification of people with disabilities solely by their disability rather than by their whole identity?[135] Within intersex activism, too, there has been debate over whether intersexed people should emphasize their difference by ascribing to categories such as “third”, or should rather embrace a more mainstream gender binary but without thereby condoning surgical intervention as necessary to authenticate belonging to one of these categories.
Similarly, Sharon Preves has commented that the use of “medical jargon” even by intersexed people when discussing their own intersex conditions “reflects the widespread acceptance of a medical paradigm, which makes it difficult for lay persons to question medical opinion and authority” (Preves 2001: 532). In this instance, the use of the terminology disseminated by the medical establishment is read as tacit evidence of the extent to which the medicalization paradigm exists across discourses. By contrast, self-identification and self-naming have been held to be important aspects of asserting a positive and emancipated personhood (it has been pressure from intersexed people themselves which has led to the terminology of “hermaphroditism” and “pseudo-hermaphroditism” largely having been dropped) but – as we have seen – these, too, can become sites of essentialism and stigmatization. As theologians who engage with these issues, it is important that we do not settle for fixed and monolithic answers; all kinds of power have the potential to desiccate into distortions of the good, and it is only in a letting-go into the multiplicity and dissemination in and with God that closed thought-prisons which generate further oppression can be escaped.
4.4 Disability in Scripture
4.4.1 Blemish, Curse, Confusion or Blessing?
The scriptural tradition throws up various instances of an equation of sickness with curse (Exodus 15:26), and, conversely, restored health as reward for obedience (Hosea 6:1). Wellness generally is thereby often taken as an indicator of righteousness (as by the friends of Job). This is not really surprising given – as Fontaine notes – the biblical context of “a medically naïve society, one based on agricultural production, [where] those who cannot participate fully are naturally seen as existing in a more precarious, and less desirable state” (Fontaine 1994: 110). Although this attitude sometimes prompts injunctions to take particular care of people with disabilities, Fontaine argues that the underlying sense is still that they are at risk – and that, if God intervenes to give special treatment to the lame or blind, “this emphasizes the remarkable compassion of the one doing the good deed, not the deserving nature or dignity of the recipient” (Fontaine 1994: 110).[136] Appreciating the likely social context in which these texts arose does not mean accepting their cosmology as positive or normative for today, but negative hangovers from scripture do persist. Partially as a result of this, Eiesland posits, Christianity has tended to see people with disabilities as either overly blessed or overly damned (Eiesland 1994: 70), with no middle way acknowledging the profound normality of lives lived in impaired or otherwise limited bodies (Eiesland 1994: 75) – especially given that many people who are not currently disabled are likely to become so through the general wear and tear of the body exacerbated by old age.
Marcella Althaus-Reid asserts,
“Impurity, in the scriptures, is a very corporeal category. That is the reason why it needs to be associated with body disfunctions, such as leprosy, blindness and, of course, menstruation.[137] Impurity is without doubt what exceeds the normativity of the body as religiously constructed and it is important to recognize that ‘impurity’ is not a given but rather is a legal category imposed upon a person” (Althaus-Reid 2006c: 521).
Althaus-Reid’s point seems to be that what is and is not deemed pure or impure – which includes some instances of impairment – is always already based on prior but constructed readings of purity. Another interpretation, famously given by Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger, is that what the Levitical law demands is completeness (Douglas 1966: 51), which can be compromised by ritual defilement such as the emission of bodily fluids (Douglas 1966: 51-2), having a physical blemish, or by being socially “incomplete” through failing to live up to what is expected of one (for example, fearlessness from warriors in battle) (Douglas 1966: 52). Impairment might certainly be figured as fitting into the last two of these three categories, undermining what is perceived to be a pure, whole and undefiled state. It might also be considered to be a confusion of different classes of things, the healthy and the pathological, whereas Douglas identifies that “holiness requires that individuals shall conform to the class to which they belong” (Douglas 1966: 53), and that holiness requires a keeping-distinct of different categories of creation. In this reading, confusion, contradiction and being a hybrid compromise holiness (Douglas 1966: 53, 56). The notion that to be perfect in this model one must be whole in oneself and whole as an instance of one’s kind is particularly interesting when extended to consideration of intersex, since one of the controversies about intersexed bodies has always been whether they are legitimate instances of their kind or illegitimate instances of male or female bodies.
Impairment may be figured as boundary-transcending, because the impaired person is neither wholly healthy nor wholly unhealthy, and cannot go through a period of ritual cleansing to remove what it is that is making them other than wholly healthy – thus blurring the boundary between definite sickness and definite health. It is in this way that, as Jackie Leach Scully comments in the opening quotation of this chapter, “the boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is not only in flux but is constantly being transgressed by people we know (‘us’)” (Scully 1998: 21). Such concern with clear and immovable boundaries is, however, arguably far less necessary, or legitimate, in light of the boundary-shattering bent of some New Testament narratives such as Peter’s vision of the sheet containing both clean and unclean animals in Acts 10, with the concomitant divine voiceover making clear that humans do not always know best what is unclean or profane.
The “purity” of staying within legitimate bounds in our own context is less commonly figured in moral terms. We are more likely to appeal to unusual or distasteful phenomena as “unnatural” than as “impure”, though there is certainly some overlap between these terms and the senses in which they are used. As we saw in Chapter 3, although it is what is “natural” which is often also sanctioned “normal” and thereby held as a good to be reinforced (so that some opponents to SRS argue that it is unnatural to remove healthy tissue, or to impede one’s ability to procreate), the very notion of reinforcing or protecting nature demonstrates that, like purity in the Hebrew Bible, it is always already at least in part a cultural construct.[138] The fact that some post-surgery reports describe circumcised penises as “more natural-looking” than their pre-circumcision versions (Kessler 1998: 39) demonstrates that this extents into readings of genitals too.[139] More pertinent than focusing on “nature”, though, would be to consider whether particular bodily states are states which are life-enhancing or life-negating, and to what extent any negation of life or flourishing comes about in societal response to the impairment rather than because of the impairment itself. As we have seen, with extremely rare exceptions, intersex conditions are not physically life-negating; far more life-negating are the narrow societal models of acceptability for bodies, and the genital surgeries done in response. There is very little about intersex itself which could be considered as life-negating: the main thing of medical interest about intersexed bodies is that they are often not fertile, but this is also true of many other bodies – which means that to deem it inherently pathological is not justifiable either medically or theologically. By contrast, the treatment of intersex (and impairment, and transsexualism, and other kinds of difference) often is life-negating, eroding what Gorringe terms “life chances” (Gorringe 2004: 149), and is therefore unjustifiable.
Part of the recent movement surrounding disability rights has lain in seeking to problematize the prevalence of a drive for physical perfection based not on the views of the individuals affected but of a society whose desire for perfection stems, in part, from its fear of difference. God does not see with literal eyes nor hear with literal ears (although humans sometimes talk as though God does so – as, for example, in Isaiah 37:17), so those humans who do see and do hear do not, by virtue of these abilities, more closely represent the image of God than do blind or deaf people. Even so, Christian traditions which have too unproblematically apotheosized “unblemished” bodies, after death if not in this life, influenced by the notion “that physical disability is a travesty of the divine image” (Eiesland 1994: 72) have thus fed into broader mores surrounding the eradication or concealment of the abnormal, thereby filtering what “normality” is in the first place. As I have argued, the image of God as aseitic, complete in Godself, all-powerful and able to act independently of human activity, has informed the notion that human dependence is something undesirable and less-than-perfect, and that humans who are more than usually dependent on others – that is, those with certain impairments – are thereby even more imperfect (Hull 2001: 72-3). Physical and philosophical perfections are obviously different from one another, but the drive for corporeal perfection has now annexed even medically “normal” bodies when they are deemed to be cosmetically imperfect – hence the rise of surgery to reduce the labia minora of non-intersexed XX women. Kessler points out that such surgery further reduces the range of what is considered acceptable and might thereby increase the likelihood of genital surgery for intersexed infants (Kessler 1998: 117) – making notions of normality and perfection into moral and ethical issues even if they were not to begin with.
Although impairment is not unequivocally linked with uncleanness, it is possible to trace links between impairment and moral impurity – as Eiesland has done – throughout the Bible; for example, in Leviticus 21, Luke 5 and John 5. In the daunting Leviticus 26:14-16, a jealous God threatens “consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away”. As well as making sickness and impairment a direct consequence of God’s anger, such passages, if read uncritically, can add to the figuring of people with disabilities as “other”. Impairment is made something to be feared – which leads to its being demonised – rather than a common occurrence in numerous ordinary lives, including those which have formerly been able. Eiesland says that exchanges such as that in Luke 5 where Jesus asks whether it is easier to forgive sins or to tell a person with paralysis to stand up and walk, and then heals the man unable to walk, “have frequently been cited as proof that disability is a sign of moral imperfection or divine retribution for sin” (Eiesland 1994: 71). This is, she notes, extremely problematic – but there is a possible subversion of the attitude by Jesus in John 9:
“His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:2-3).
Although this does not entirely erase a possible reading of God as capricious or inconsistent, using some individuals as object-lessons for the rest, it does question the concretized association between impairment and personal or ancestor sin which existed in the minds of the disciples and has reappeared at certain points since. Moreover, whilst there is a sense that God allowed the man to be born blind, there is no necessity to read the text as stating incontrovertibly that God deliberately made the man blind; impairment can thus be figured as simply part of a free universe (as Gorringe explores, below), rather than always and inevitably as a mark of judgement for sin.
Deborah Creamer’s use of what she terms the “Limitness” model in her theology of disability emphasizes the fact that no one individual or group can encompass the entire range of human experience. This is central to formulating non-stigmatizing theological understandings of impairment, intersex, and otherwise unusual bodies. None of us can access everything about what it is to be human per se or in relationship with God. Not just those with specific impairments or conditions, but each of us, is limited in different ways – Creamer notes that “these limits are accepted, rejected, accentuated, complicated, degraded, and lived in many different ways” (Creamer 2003: 65). Although it is (as Eiesland notes) treading on dangerous and somewhat assimilationist ground to hold that each of us is impaired,[140] it is certainly true that each of us is limited by our own position and perspective. Any attempt to propound a universalized, idealized redeemed version of the body as able, as sexed and so on, should therefore be subjected to a scrutiny which is critical at the very least. It might be “natural” (that is, desirable as a product of a particular cultural perspective) for a non-impaired person to assume that everyone else would be better off non-impaired, or for an unambiguously-sexed person to assume that everyone would be better off if they were not intersexed. However, this risks privileging and rationalizing the world as it is now, a world set up for life as unambiguously sexed, gendered, and able, to be easier all round. It is a little like saying that it is more difficult to be black than to be white and that we will therefore all be white in the resurrection – rather than accepting that it is white privilege and racial prejudice which will pass away. Allowing the voices of the conceptually poor and marginal to be heard and to influence the ongoing story of salvation history is central to doing a just theology.
4.4.2 Hull’s “Real Worlds” and the Ideology of Dominance
John M. Hull, who has lived life both as sighted and as blind, gives a fascinating reading of scriptural episodes from the point of view of blindness (Hull 2001, 2003).[141] Hull does not skim over those passages oppressive of blind people, but emphasizes that they were written from a sighted perspective which is not necessarily the only, right or “real” one.[142] The blind world, he insists, is very different from the sighted one but no less authentic and legitimate, since both are constructions from particular bodily positions. He says,
“It is unusual to find a sighted person who knows that he or she lives within a world which is a projection of the sighted body… Although sighted people know that they know through sight, they seldom realize the epistemic implications of vision” (Hull 2003: 26).
Until sighted people realize this, the blind will never be truly valued and accepted, because of the normalized hegemony of sightedness (Hull 2003: 30) which goes hand-in-hand with dichotomous discourses of sex, race and so on – for, he says, “uniformity goes with centrality, with authority, and with power” (2003: 30). The hegemony of sightedness, says Hull, is an ideology of dominance (2003: 31) which Christianity must resist. To come to understand that to be perfect as God is perfect need not mean to be perfect as other humans consider themselves perfect is a vital step both for those excluded from legitimacy and those who purport to speak on behalf of God. It is not just questions of ability and impairment that are at stake; Hull also insists,
“Once the hegemony of the single world in the relation between able and disabled people is broken, a challenge is mounted against all other human worlds that claim to be absolute” (Hull 2003: 26).[143]
In other words, the differences of the worlds experienced because of differing bodily states should not necessarily be synthesized or assimilated; there will continue to be tensions there. However, acknowledging the plurality of human worlds provides a way in to figuring disability as something other than deficiency or lack; impairment is not simply exclusion from the “big world” (Hull 2003: 21-2).
Hull’s appeal to theology as potentially subversive or resistant to such ideologies of dominance can apply to theologies of intersex too. For the normally-sexed male-and-female to truly take account of differently sexed bodies, it will be necessary to move to an understanding that the dichotomously-sexed world is not the “only” or “real” world. Clichéd metaphors based on disability as spiritual lack, fear and pride as paralysis, deafness as obliviousness to the call of God and so on, hurt not only those they misrepresent, but everyone whose horizons are kept narrow. A disruption of existing assumptions is crucial not only to include intersexed people and those with disabilities but also to expand and diversify imagery to the advantage of everyone (Hull 2003: 22). Impaired and unusually-sexed bodies are part of the Body of Christ and if they suffer further marginalization and conceptual erasure, the rest of the Body suffers too (as in 1 Corinthians 12:26) by perpetuating a false image of its own make-up. As I argued in Chapter 2, just as embracing disabled bodies will entail a conceptual shift so that “healing” need not mean “becoming able-bodied”,[144] so embracing the “weaker” or less honoured members of the sexual body might mean ceding perceived “goods” such as unambiguous sex. It is ironic that although, as Hull acknowledges, Paul’s imagery in 1 Corinthians 12 can be read as a commitment to “the plurality of bodily parts [as] preferable to the domination of the uniform” (Hull 2003: 30), concepts such as “weak” and “strong” have themselves become solidified by association rather than remaining fluid and non-specific.
4.5 Perichoresis, Particularity and Pain
Hull’s work demonstrates that scriptural attitudes to disability are ambiguous and capable of being read very differently if the “impaired perspective” is held to be the vantage-point, rather than something external or peripheral to how the text should be understood. It is also possible to acknowledge that biblical texts were written from a particular sexed perspective, but that neither the sexual norms of that age nor those of this age are the only “truth” about the world. Likewise, biblical texts which sanction particular models of sex, gender and family should be recognized as contingent on the contexts in which they were written, and not unproblematically to be transposed into our own society. Biblical texts surrounding disability and sex, then, are and remain problematic, and it may be necessary to formulate theologies in spite of them, drawing on other traditions and resources. For example, Tim Gorringe draws on evolutionary science when he asserts that the apparently chaotic nature of impairment is a necessary by-product of a world created with true freedom, “in which randomness and chance play a fundamental part” (Gorringe 2001: 36).[145]
Disability has by no means always been figured as curse or punishment in the Christian tradition. The converse argument also persists: disability is sometimes deemed a sign not that one is more sinful or less faithful than others, but that one is actually morally exemplary, gaining courage and fortitude from God in order dutifully to bear one’s burden and not decry the injustice of one’s situation – thus demonstrating how everyone else should respond to their smaller struggles.[146] However, to portray people with disabilities as exemplars of quiet endurance and patience who do not question their lot, or to hold the “thorn in the flesh” picture of disability as an unproblematic one, risks refusing to address what it is about the way human societies are ordered – and, conceivably, the way God encourages faithfulness and perseverance – that conspires to make the lives of certain individuals more of a burden than they need be. A central aspect of Eiesland’s argument is that the whole notion of “virtuous suffering” can encourage defeatist resignation to one’s state. She says,
“Similar to the practice of emphasizing self-sacrifice to women, the theology of virtuous suffering has encouraged persons with disabilities to acquiesce to social barriers as a sign of obedience to God and to internalise second-class status inside and outside the church” (Eiesland 1994: 73).
A stressing of moral goods such as patience and fortitude for people with disabilities has risked making impairment itself a moral issue, a proving-ground for goodness and piety, rather than simply another aspect of life experience. As we have seen, intersex has also been figured using oddly moral language (though not in the sense, as with impairment, that intersex is some kind of thorn in the flesh to be borne with bravery), and this is also problematic, since it contributes to the sense that intersex is itself something other than an unremarkable, non-moral variation of human existence.
As I noted in Chapter 1, Mary Douglas argues that one way in which societies may deal with anomaly is to figure the anomalous entity as a window onto another level of existence. I noted that this has sometimes happened with “hermaphrodites”, who have been held as mythic androgynes or as embodiments of an overarching human unity. When this occurs, when individuals are made to carry an unsought weight of signification, this erodes their personhood and may stigmatize them or limit the extent to which they are allowed to be fallible, finite or otherwise normally human. In Chapter 2 I explored, through the work of Wyschogrod and Morland, some of the tensions surrounding hagiography and multiple narratives, and what happens when an individual’s body is given over to be figured by others. We saw that it may be necessary for theology to reconsider which bodies and which identities need to be given over in this way. Discourses surrounding disability, too, however, have sometimes figured impaired bodies as existing somehow on behalf of the rest of society, as a projection of particular social perceptions. For example, there is a notion that not only might impairment provoke patience or fortitude in the individual, but that people with disabilities somehow exist to help others become better people – which is extremely problematic. Frances Young, who has written extensively about living with her severely brain-damaged and microcephalic son, Arthur (Young 1990), reflects on a comment made to her by a doctor that her son was not solely her own responsibility, but was that of society as a whole, for, said the doctor, “society needs handicap” (Young 1990: 109). Young expands,
“Handicapped people remind us that life is not all go-getting and individual achievement. There are more fundamental human values. Handicap demands mutual support, a sense of communal sharing. Handicap fosters compassion and helpfulness, care and concern. It challenges our selfishness and our ambition and sectional loyalties. Society needs handicap” (Young 1990: 109).
This comment is extremely interesting, and does appear to an extent to recognize (and reinscribe) the message that human life and intercourse is supposed to be build on values of mercy, interdependence and perichoresis. In terms of theodicy, however, it is not an adequate response. Why, it might be asked, must it take a disproportionate amount of pain and inconvenience for a minority (people in constant pain or indignity, and their carers) in order to “teach” the majority the “lesson” of compassion? People with disabilities are not public information films, to be marked and heeded by those unable to be compassionate without a pathetic object of reception. The existence of the suffering sometimes attached to disability may indeed (like a war, or a road accident) bring the best out of people, promoting selflessness and mutual concern – but this does not mean that these things could not come about any other way, or that wars and road accidents, like excessive pain, should not be figured as undesirable things. Disability is not the necessary or inevitable catalyst; society does not need handicap. This does not necessarily mean wishing away every unusual or different body, but it does mean a continual questioning of attitudes which border on figuring people with disabilities as object-lessons, or as sites of reception for everyone else’s activity. Young argues,
“Handicap is not straightforwardly a punishment for sin. But it is a kind of judgement, a krisis, because it has that effect. Society… is judged by the way it treats handicapped people… [Handicap] shows up people and their relationships and their values for what they are” (Young 1990: 143).
This reading of the “judgement”[147] of disability as being for the whole of society positively moves away from the notion that disability is punishment for personal or ancestor sin (as we saw Jesus do), but still somehow figures people with disabilities as being exemplary, as being for others. Seizing on people with disabilities as inherently disruptive of able, individualist, go-getting hegemonies is as problematic as expecting intersexed and transsexual people to single-handedly deconstruct all the injustices and assumptions of patriarchal and heteronormative sex-gender hierarchies. To acknowledge – as Young does – that interactions with people with disabilities may well change oneself is not necessarily problematic; but any mindset which figures people with disabilities as predominantly there to be treated with kindness by others will erode their own capacity to be actors, and render them passive, essentially to be ministered to. This actually removes them from a reciprocal relationship with the rest of society.
Accepting the normality of impaired bodies, however, does not mean burying the fact that people with disabilities do sometimes experience pain and indignity as a direct consequence of their impairment. This physical pain should not be downplayed. As well as the physiological discomfort of the acute or chronic pain attached to some impairments, people who were once able-bodied and have late-onset impairments have spoken of an element of regret for what they could once do and cannot do any more which is limited simply to physical ability. Although, importantly, intersexed people who have not undergone corrective surgery are unlikely to experience physical pain as a result of their intersex condition,[148] there might be lasting particularities attached to life as an intersexed person which leave them with a legacy of difference in certain respects; Morgan Holmes says,
“Procedures that intersexuals take for granted as part of their history are decisively unusual… Children diagnosed with a form of intersexuality are not just like everyone else because the methods through which they acquire a gender identity / sex assignment are outside the norm, even though these methods serve the same normative functions as less ‘obvious’ measures of acquiring gender and subjectivity” (Holmes 2002: 167).
Some individuals with AIS have expressed grief at the fact that they cannot become pregnant or bear children (Alderson, Madill and Balen 2004: 87). Hauerwas, reflecting on the power of individuals in difficult situations to “transform events into decisions” by naming the particular difficulty as integral to one’s identity, nevertheless counsels,
“I am not suggesting that every form of pain or suffering can or should be seen as some good or challenge. Extreme suffering can as easily destroy as enhance… Some forms of suffering can only be acknowledged, not transformed” (Hauerwas 2004a: 94).[149]
What is crucial is that the negative elements of some bodily conditions or configurations, like excessive pain, are not made the only thing there is to say about them. Impaired bodies, and intersexed bodies, are not exactly the same as other bodies (though they may be less unlike them than we realize); they have their specific challenges, but this does not negate the goodness of these bodies’ stories, and does not mean that any eschatological projection should unproblematically erase them.
4.6 “Sown in Weakness, Raised in Power”? [150] The Hope of Healing
Keeping in mind earlier discussions of the resurrection of the body, I now expand on what this doctrine implies for theologies from intersex.
If the new and coming Kingdom is one whose incoming has not as yet been completed – and if human bodies are sown perishable but will be raised imperishable, and are sown in weakness but will be raised in power (as Paul holds in 1 Corinthians 15) – does this mean that those sown impaired will be raised non-impaired, or that those sown intersexed will be raised non-intersexed? If so, will people with disabilities or people with intersex conditions be recognizable in their resurrected states? What does the idea mean for the persistence of identity and the value of lives lived in impaired, and intersexed, bodies now?
For some commentators, healing in itself is a problematic concept because “the relentless characterization of the disabled as objectified beneficiaries of divine healing robs them of their true status as courageous, coping, creative persons – persons who are valued just as they are” (Fontaine 1994: 112). However, as Fontaine also comments, the Christian notion of healing as linked with faith can also help to provide hope when the kind of healing available from medical science has been pronounced useless, or when an individual has been told they will never walk again – especially as some studies have suggested that the hope of those with a religious faith leads to higher rates of recovery or management of health problems than for those without a religious faith (Fontaine 1994: 113). Healing, then, is ambiguous, and attitudes toward it from people with disabilities are sometimes ambivalent. However, the hope that healing is possible is read by some theologians of disability as a positive symbol of the attainability of social as well as psychosomatic change. Fontaine says,
“While it is important to us to be seen, heard, included and valued as we are in our brokenness, we must not accept the narrowed choices and silence that society prefers for us. The Bible, in suggesting that our attitudes and expectations shape our experience and ability to receive healing, gives us back the power to imagine ourselves differently and to craft a reality that more accurately represents our talents as survivors” (Fontaine 1994: 114).
God does not, apparently, heal all those who are sick, suffering or disabled, either in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry or after present-day intercession. Healing, however, is far broader than a simple removal of whatever is challenging, particularly if it is only challenging by the narrow standards of an unimaginative society. Abraham Berinyuu says,
“Healing is an act, event, system, or structure that encourages or facilitates God’s empowering, renewing, reconciling, and liberating processes in order to reverse the negation of God’s intended good for God’s creation” (Berinyuu 2004: 210).
Healing is thus not the sole task of God. Eschatology affects lived attitudes here and now: a belief that bodies will be “fixed” after death sometimes makes it too easy to dismiss the struggles faced currently, but an attitude that human beings might be co-redeemers with Christ encourages doing everything possible to eradicate enforced discommodity and promote inclusion.
Questioning categories of “goodness” and perfection for bodies is extremely important, for if the resurrection is linked unproblematically and uncritically with a capacity to perfect bodies, it might be argued that the salvation and redemption of the body is “closer” for those who are already “able” than those who are not. Conversely, as we have seen in Pailin, Hull and others, it is necessary to query human standards of legitimacy and “goodness” of bodies. An unproblematized account of perfection as ability and clear sex also fails to question the hegemonic stories of those who already have the power, status and prestige that are attached to being able-bodied, being non-intersexed, or whatever the particular privileged state is. In this way, redemption as conventionally accepted is “closer” for the privileged and able because the definition of redemption is already coloured to their advantage. It is not that those who are “more other” cannot be redeemed, but that they will have further to go and will be more changed from their initial selves in the process. It is not self-evident, though, that what is a disadvantage in this realm will be a disadvantage in the new one – and therefore it is necessary to re-examine notions of redemption (if not salvation) to explore exactly why it is many people assume that a deaf person (for example) should have to be changed in their redeemed state any more than a hearing person should.
Marcella Althaus-Reid suggests,
“The church in itself may… well be an illusion or commodity produced for the exchange of the real necessities of human existence such as food and love, for a theological ‘good’ which explains why food and love are difficult to obtain… Salvation has often been a luxury article circulating among poor hands, the hands of the poor who pay dearly for this created spiritual need... Before colonization processes people did not need salvation as presented in Christianity, and the market sold them these needs in exchange for the domestication and submission of the colonized nations” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 110).
Althaus-Reid cites links between the importation of European Christianity and the economic project of the conquistadors, who found it expedient to be able to control the production, behaviour and discourse of those they purported to “save”. But if it is held that impaired and intersexed bodies are, in fact, neither less perfect or more in need of transformation than any other bodies, then the Church has no more right to make pronouncements over these bodies than over any other bodies – especially given the lack of strong assertion in the New Testament canon about what the actual physicality of the resurrection body will be like. There is a tantalizing vagueness and uncertainty surrounding what resurrected perfection will entail. It matters, however, because within Christian theology the notion of the resurrection body is used to describe something about the destinies of present human bodies and, therefore, something about what is important about those bodies and their place within cosmic order and signification. It is therefore worthwhile to reflect here on the treatment of the resurrection body by Paul and Augustine in particular, since both have been so influential on later ideas about the resurrection body.
4.7 The Resurrection Body in Paul and the Patristics
4.7.1 Paul and the Body Imperishable
Paul makes extensive use of the body as a metaphor for the Christian community, but when it comes to resurrection bodies he is less forthright about their constitution. The actual fleshliness of the resurrection body comes to be emphasized more overtly elsewhere in light of the Apostles’ Creed, as, for example, in 2 Clement 9:1-5:
“And let not any one of you say that this our flesh is not judged nor raised again. Consider this: in what were you saved, in what did you recover your sight, if not in this flesh? We ought, therefore, to guard our flesh as the temple of God; for in the same manner as you were called in the flesh, in the flesh also shall you come. There is one Christ, our Lord who saved us, who being at the first spirit, was made flesh, and thus called us. So also shall we in this flesh receive the reward.”
In his discussion of the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15,[151] by contrast, Paul is far less specific, stating rather enigmatically, “There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another” (verse 40). He goes on to expand,
“What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body… For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:44, 52-53).
However, it is not clear from this to what extent Paul believes that the essence of the body will be altered, and whether the “change” is one of kind or merely of persistence. John A.T. Robinson insists that “whereas man as σάρξ cannot inherit the kingdom of God…, man as σώμα can” (Robinson 1952: 31) and holds that the two descriptors which seem to be held in contrast merely refer to “the whole man differently regarded – man as wholly perishable, man as wholly destined for God” (Robinson 1952: 31-2) – but this does not address precisely what it is about the weakness and the “perishability” of the sarx which will ebb away, and what will be retained in the soma. As Pheme Perkins observes, Paul perceives some sort of bond between the “physical” and the “spiritual” in the resurrection body but even he “is hard put to describe the connection” (Perkins 1984: 319). It is thus not possible immediately or unequivocally to draw conclusions from the “imperishability” of this body about the pathological or otherwise status of impairment or other “blemishes”.
The character of resurrection as portrayed in Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians, comments Perkins, is not entirely consistent (unsurprisingly, given the possible multiple influences suggested for the doctrine), and it is debatable whether Romans 11:15 (for example) has a temporal implication pointing to a specific resurrection event which will “round off” salvation history, or whether “resurrection” is more symbolic, describing a shift in the present lives of the faithful (Perkins 1984: 295-6). The Corinthians passages demonstrate a particular tension around the human earthly body and its part in the resurrection body. Perkins says,
“Paul is not concerned about distinctions between spirit and body. He is interested in the distinction between spirit and soul, as 1 Cor 2:14 indicates... Paul presumes from the outset that the human, earthly body is a psychic one. It belongs to the realm of human life. What is gained in resurrection, then, is ‘spiritual body’… The Corinthians may well have interpreted the resurrection of Jesus in such a way that it had nothing to do with the fate of the body or of creation as a whole. Paul’s own preaching… makes the Spirit, the power of the resurrection, directly present to Christian life. But Paul thinks in bodily images… Paul frequently presupposes that one thinks of ‘spiritual body’ as the reality of resurrection. Thus, one may even wonder if he is able to consider seriously an alternate reading of human reality in terms of mind or soul as the central reality of the person” (Perkins 1984: 299-300).
Paul accepts that there must be radical discontinuity between the earthly body-soul and the part of the human that reflects the divine mind (Perkins 1984: 303), but believes that the fact that the earthly body appears profoundly different from the divine mind does not preclude God from being able to make a resurrection body that is resurrectable yet still essentially a body (Perkins 1984: 304). It is thus not a case of escaping the body, as the Corinthians thought (Perkins 1984: 308), but of accepting that it is through God’s power in creating a new kind of body that one “enters the realm of the immortal and incorruptible” (Perkins 1984: 308). Significantly, however, in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul strongly emphasizes that the heavenly body-dwelling is something to be “put on” rather than stripped off the present body. Perkins says,
“Paul admits that the corruptible earthly dwelling is destroyed or swallowed up in the process. But his awkward concern with putting on rather than being unclothed can only be seen as a direct rejection of the alternative view of the soul’s entry into heaven by shedding the body” (Perkins 1984: 309).
This suggests that, for Paul, there is something eternal already inhering in bodies, and that the persistence of bodies as bodies therefore matters, although there is also something still to come which is not yet realized. It is difficult to envisage how bodies without variety could still be bodies, since it is in our variety that we recognize and relate to one another; yet there is sometimes a fine line between where what is considered benign variety ends and what is considered pathology begins.
The eschatological context in Paul, as simultaneously already and not yet realized is crucial, for without it, resurrection risks either being divorced from the body altogether, or rendered solely a psychic event in the disciples and not also a universal event. Resurrection for Paul is something in which the believer already participates, being grounded in the historical resurrection of Christ; but it is also delayed, in part, until the culmination of all things (Perkins 1984: 318). This ambiguity echoes the general character of Paul’s assertions on the topic, which Perkins says are not particularly well-defined in their structure (Perkins 1984: 318). Holly E. Hearon suggests that Paul sees humanity as being at a turning point between two epochs, one foot rooted in what is passing away (and perishable bodies) and the other in the future reign of God but as a promise in Christ’s resurrection. She says,
“The fulfilment of that promise is, from Paul’s perspective, dependent on our remaining embedded (or embodied) in Christ in the present age…Flesh and blood belong to the perishable, that is, the present age; to the future belongs that which is incorruptible, the spiritual body that we receive through Christ… The Corinthians have… confounded the two by failing to recognize the fragility of their present existence and thereby jeopardizing their future” (Hearon 2006: 612).
This might explain Paul’s careful holding-apart of what is already and what is not yet realized in terms of resurrection – but Paul cannot describe, or perhaps does not feel the need to describe, the specificities of the actual bodiliness of the resurrection body. The “putting on” of the resurrection body is important even within this uncertainty, however, for reasons emphasized by Robinson:
“The new creation is not a fresh start, but the old made new… It is this very body of sin and death which, transformed, ‘must put on incorruption’… The building up of the Church is not the gathering of an elect group out of the body of history, which is itself signed simply for destruction. It is the resurrection body of history itself, the world as its redemption has so far been made effective… The mass of human existence, for all its sin, its destructiveness, its determinisms, is still σώμα: it is made for God” (Robinson 1952: 82-3).
There is, then, at least an uncertainty around the extent to which attributes of present human bodies might be carried over into resurrected human bodies. This is particularly important in considering whether physical functional impairments, and conditions such as intersex, will be eradicated in the “redeemed” bodies of humans – and hence in considering whether they pertain only to fallenness, to the old epoch in Paul's thought.
4.7.2 Augustine and the Fathers
Theologians after Paul found it equally difficult to define the nature of the resurrection bodies of humans. Caroline Walker Bynum’s The Resurrection of the Body (1995) considers at length the shifts in understanding of the nature of resurrection in the patristic and medieval periods. Bynum notes that bodily resurrection was a pervasive and persistent idea from the earliest times of Christianity, despite its somewhat counterintuitive nature: bodies are, after all, sites of pain as well as pleasure (Bynum 1995: 9).
While some of the early patristic writers are happy enough to claim that matter might be “resurrected” in another body,[152] others are adamant that one type of matter cannot “become” another.[153] Tertullian believes that it is the structure of the body which has to be resurrected to preserve its integrity (Bynum 1995: 36), and, for him, “Everything intrinsic to what we are must reappear in the resurrected body” (Bynum 1995: 37). This and other patristic assertions raise questions about which aspects of the pre-resurrection body are integral to the person, and which, by analogy, need not necessarily be “healed” or eradicated out of what are now deemed “imperfect” bodies. Although Tertullian claims that defects are healed and mutilations undone in the resurrection body (Bynum 1995: 36),[154] he also “even argues that if cosmetics and jewellery were essential to women they would rise from the dead” (Bynum 1995: 37). By Tertullian’s logic, then, it does not seem unreasonable to argue that any appurtenance which has become “integral” to the personal identity of an individual might be present in the resurrection body: a person born with a leg missing whose prosthetic leg has become central to their personal identity might find in the resurrected body a leg present where there was none before.[155] A female-to-male transsexual who has invested much in a “phantom” penis (see Chapter 3) might find a penis and other male-related organs present in the resurrected body, as more faithful to the integrity of the (psychosomatic) self. Bodies which have had different configurations during their time on earth provoke questions about which particular configuration, if any, will be reflected in the resurrected body. Both male and female bodies have already undergone enormous changes, particularly at puberty, before reaching adulthood. The bodies of women who have carried and borne children are also likely to appear different afterwards from their pre-maternal bodies: is it the pre- or post-motherhood body that is the more perfect and will be retained in the general resurrection? What body might we expect for an intersexed person shorn of an undersized penis and brought up as a girl, who has decided to make the best of a bad gender-assignment despite experiencing ambiguity about gender and wondering if transitioning to live in a male role might not have been better after all? Quite simply, it is neither possible nor desirable to specify what it is that all resurrection bodies have to be like; it is conceivable that the one thing they will all share in common will be a redeemed body story rather than an unproblematically “perfected” body. The link between embodiment and temporality is essential, and a feature of the creation, not of some kind of fall. It is possible that the pain and prejudice attached to a particular physical configuration will melt away without thereby erasing either the beauty of that specific configuration, or the testamental or genealogical importance of the fact that the life which has been lived in this body has been both a joyous and a wounded one.
Augustine is not the only one of the fathers who discusses the nature of the resurrection body in detail, but I focus on him here because he influenced later work to such a great extent; it was readings of Augustine in particular which “set the agenda for medieval discussion” (Bynum 1995: 97).[156] In The City of God Augustine discusses at length whether resurrected, physical eyes will be superfluous in perfected states where humans will always be able to see perfectly with “spiritual eyes” – for, he asserts, “When the body, freed from corruption, offers no hindrance to the soul, the saints will certainly need no bodily eyes to see what is there to be seen” (book 23; Augustine 1984: 1083). Augustine assumes a duality of soul and body, understanding souls to be “higher” than bodies. This is evident in his discussion of the seeming incongruity of earthly bodies being exalted to heaven, which Augustine argues is, indeed, miraculous, but no less possible than the “evident” joining of heavenly souls to earthly bodies.
Augustine claims that the kinds of questions raised about the resurrection body by “pagans” are absurd: will abortive infants have an adult body in the resurrection, although they never had such a body in mortal life? What about the flesh of those who have been eaten and excreted by animals and thus dispersed across a wide area? Augustine avows that God “promises that what was already there would not be lacking; but that does not deny that what was lacking will be supplied” (Augustine 1984: 1055).[157] This implies that, in Augustine’s logic, at least some earthly bodies are lacking. The dead infant, for instance, “has not attained the limit of its potential stature” (Augustine 1984: 1055). It is not that anyone directly says that people with an intersex condition such as 5-ARD, stemming from hereditary genetic mutations, or indeed anyone with any kind of congenital “defect”, have not reached the fullness of their potential stature on earth; have not become what, all things being equal in a perfect world, they could have been. However, the ways in which these bodies have often been treated suggests that there is something about them which has been considered “lacking”. The doctors and surgeons who perform surgery on intersexed children’s bodies are not consciously pre-empting or “helping along” the perfected resurrection body. However, the common attitude that a genitally-ambiguous body in particular cannot be left to stand simply as it is demonstrates that increasing perceived perfection is already an issue even in the context of other variant bodies.
Of course, having a “normal” body which has not grown up at all is not the same as having an “abnormal” body which has grown up, but stature might have a more than literal sense. In Augustine’s own argument regarding whether the “sharing in Christ’s stature” of Ephesians 4:13 means that everyone’s resurrection body will resemble (physiologically) that of Christ, he explores the possibility “that Christ’s ‘full stature’ is reached when, with Christ as the head, all the members of his body come to maturity, represented by the peoples who accept the Christian faith” (Augustine 1984: 1056). This sounds far more like a move toward saying that “stature” is analogous to status: perhaps something like “recognition of one’s personhood by others”; self-esteem promoted by the knowledge of one’s existence in community.
Augustine insists that “while all defects will be removed from [resurrection] bodies, their essential nature will be preserved” (Augustine 1984: 1057): he is arguing here that the muliebrity of women is not a defect but a part of their nature, and will therefore not be erased. The question is whether this can be extended to other characteristics beyond dichotomous sex; intersex conditions, for example. It is doubtful whether Augustine himself would accept this extension: he can reclaim the female body because of its allegorical power, for the unity of man and woman foreshadows that of Christ and the church, but this leaves him saying that “he who established the two sexes will restore them both” (Augustine 1984: 1058) (my emphasis). Women are still inferior to men, just not defective in their inferiority (Bynum 1995: 100).
What might Augustine have made, then, of intersexed bodies? Augustine was not unaware of the existence of hermaphrodites, and indeed believed that although they were “monstrous” they must have been descended from Noah, thus made by God, thus redeemable (Augustine 1984: 663); but within the medical paradigm of his time he would have deemed them “truly” one sex with extra material from the other added on. In other words, it was believed, the extraneous matter could be removed from the hermaphrodite without affecting the “real” nature (and sex) of the individual. As can now be appreciated, certain intersex conditions, particularly those involving genetic mosaicism or the possession of ovotestes, are, potentially, far more problematic to the Augustinian notion of “refinement” if human sexed nature must supervene on sexual biology. Augustine says,
“[I do not] think that anything will perish which is present in any body as belonging to the essential nature of that body; but… anything in that nature that is deformed… will be restored in such a way as to remove the deformity while preserving the substance intact” (Augustine 1984: 1060).
It would not, however, be possible to remove what Augustine would have viewed as the “deformity” of the person with mosaicism (the “extraneous” material of the minority chromosomes) without compromising the substance. It is difficult to imagine how God could “restore” the substance of a deaf person without removing the deafness, or indeed the substance of a genetic mosaic without removing the mosaicism. As we have seen, for many people, the persistence of personal identity is closely bound-up with the persistence of particular aspects of their bodiliness (such as deafness). Moreover, argues David Pailin,
“If post-mortem existence were to involve transformations which result in the elimination of differences, what once were distinct individuals would become indistinguishable items. In that case the result would not be the perfecting of persons, whatever that may imply. It would be their destruction” (Pailin 1992: 164-5).
Rather, says Moltmann,
“Everything that is bound up with a person’s name… is ‘preserved’ in the resurrection and transformed… What is meant here is not the soul, a ‘kernel’ of the person’s existence, or some inward point of identity, but the whole configuration of the person’s life, the whole life history, and all the conditions that are meant by his or her name” (Moltmann 1996: 75).
Of course, it might be held in response, it may be that the elimination of only some, undesirable differences, would alter but not entirely threaten the uniqueness and particularity of individuals. However, this still leaves the difficulty of which characteristics are and are not deemed desirable and why. Interestingly, for example, Augustine comments that the scars of the martyrs will not be considered “deformities” in heaven, but will be proofs of the valour of those who have suffered for Christ (Augustine 1984: 1062). Perhaps there is hope, then, for those with CAH or micropenis shorn of their bodily parts; perhaps they too will be restored, as part of their redemption – although this might depend on which bodily configuration it is which has most fully expressed their selfhood. Augustine muses,
“What imperishable body could be more fitting for their joy than the body in which, when it was perishable, they endured their sorrow?” (Augustine 1984: 1079).
Some people “corrected” of intersexed anatomy in late childhood or adolescence have spoken of mourning their stolen anatomy and the pleasure (sexual and otherwise) it brought before removal. Bynum notes that, in the revering of martyrs’ relics in the 13th century, it was the body parts significant to the martyrdom that were believed to remain incorrupt, for God marked with the most glory those parts which had “earned” them (Bynum 1995: 222-3). Conceivably, then, the body parts which have proven most troublesome in the present realm either in themselves or because of the negative attention they have solicited will also be the body parts most celebrated; because they are the parts which have been treated and responded to as weaker or less honourable, even if such assignment is arbitrary, they might also be the members which deserve more glory.
Where a particular impairment does not compromise fundamental human goods, it becomes far more difficult to draw a line between variety and pathology: is dark skin in itself a good thing because it is less prone to sun damage? If so, should pale-skinned people be genetically engineered out of the human race? If dark skin and pale skin are both human goods, what about blindness and sight? A large penis and a micropenis? Those who perform corrective surgery on intersexed children do not treat every variation as a perfect instance of itself, but as pathological where the “goods” of appropriate size, ability to penetrate or be penetrated and so on are compromised. Just like “purity” and “nature”, however, “goods” are socially constructed. This is not problematic in itself, but if it is not recognized that these things are defined by mutual consent, then they can become fetishized, apotheosized and rendered all but incontrovertible.
It is possible to make a more positive re-reading of Augustine through the lens of intersex. Importantly, Augustine is also keen to emphasize the fact that, in the new creation,
“a time will come when we shall enjoy one another’s beauty for itself alone, without any lust” (Augustine 1984: 1074).
Augustine assumes a perfected will associated with perfected control, but this is surely based on the maximization of a particular idea that humans are the maximization of a particular image of God as judge, ruler, commander and inspector. More than the libidinal lust to which Augustine refers, the lust which will not affect appreciation of one another’s beauty in the new creation might include the masculinist-capitalist lust to perfect, correct, regulate, manage, dominate and homogenize. Augustine supposes that capacity to will is an ideal which must necessarily persist beyond death; but this seems overweeningly pervasive, and to erode the bodiliness of the body.[158] Bodies point to the processes of the universe which cannot be subsumed within the will of humankind. In the new creation, body and will shall be loosed from the meanings which our conscious strivings assign to them. We shall also be freed from the apparently insatiable lust to know definitively what it is that constitutes a good body, what it is that our bodies are “supposed” to be like – and freed to embrace the fact that bodies are a testament to all the processes which have happened in and through them, just as many people’s scars and stretch marks testify to their pregnancies, injuries, and fluctuations in weight. These stories are tales of changes of state, rather than of unproblematic loss or gain. Despite always carrying this history, then, body parts shall also be freed in the resurrection from the constraint of particular functions (Augustine 1984: 1087): this includes the so-called “genitals” from genitive function, which helps to make a case for the restoration of non-fertile sexed parts such as those of intersexed and transsexual people. Bynum notes that Bonaventure echoes the Augustinian view that genitals will be part of resurrected bodies because femaleness is not inherently unnatural (Bynum 1995: 255) – but this does not necessarily mean that the genitals’ new functions will be identical to their present ones. Just as impairments will not necessarily be impairing in the new creation, so atypically sexed bodies will not be at a disadvantage. If there is to be no marriage in heaven, and no procreation either, there is no need for gametes to mean what they have meant in this realm, or for particular gender roles to reinscribe procreative sexed norms. Importantly, this does not mean that sexuality itself will be erased; it is just that sexuality will no longer be tied to the economic complications of biological procreation (Goss 2006a: 539).
This is the separation from concupiscence which Augustine envisages, but far more so than he could have known, for it is a separation from and letting-go of false bases of reason and legitimacy, not just from sexual lusts but from all lusts to control, to concretize, to oppress. The “erotic domination” of men over women in Latin America, which Dussel paints as a distortion brought by the conquistadors which could be overcome even whilst retaining heterosexual norms, but which Althaus-Reid sees as far more deeply ingrained in patterns of heteronormativity (Althaus-Reid 2000: 197), is always already more than merely sexual. The eros of erotic domination is about more than solely sexual desire: it is a site of desires which bubble up and boil over, with a yearning for fulfilment. A yearning for fulfilment, however, can become a longing for possession, which then becomes a desire to control. Erotic domination, caught up in structures of access to wealth, education, healthcare, personal safety, and religious and conceptual legitimacy, will not pass away until binaries are blurred and each referent is freed into a future truly different and truly transformed.[159]
4.8 Rejecting Erotic Domination in the New Creation
Erotic domination limits the dissemination of some types of knowledge; this has been very evident in medical attitudes toward intersex and the level of information patients and the guardians of minors should be given. Parents have been given misleading or incomplete information,[160] have been coerced into agreeing to surgical intervention (Arana 2005: 19), and have been denied the authority to decide what is best for their infant child where any surgery could be deferred without medical risk to the child. Older intersexed individuals have not always been allowed full access to their own medical records or histories (Arana 2005: 24), or have had their specific diagnoses concealed from them (Arana 2005: 19, Morris 2003). Susan Wendell claims,
“The cognitive and social authority of medicine is strong enough to foist wildly improbable theories upon the public and to question the sanity and cognitive integrity of large numbers of people, who… lost all their credibility as soon as they became patients” (Wendell 1996: 127-128).
But if disabled, intersexed and other bodies cannot partake in their own redemption; if this redemption cannot begin here and now; if those in these dead structures of erotic domination are not raised: then not even Christ is raised; and if Christ is not raised, our faith is worthless. If, however, our transformation out of our slavery to erotic domination is already beginning and has already begun, then we do have hope; and, in and through this hope, it is imperative that – as Pailin has suggested – bodies are understood as already showing forth the glory of their creator and co-creators, those who exist in and as them. Augustine muses,
“Perhaps God will be known to us and visible to us in the sense that he will be spiritually perceived by each one of us in each one of us, perceived in one another, perceived by each in himself; he will be seen in the new heaven and the new earth, in the whole creation as it then will be; he will be seen in every body by means of bodies” (Augustine 1984: 1087) (my emphasis).
It is not possible for humans to know for certain the nature of the bodily resurrection, then, but it is possible to realize that the existence of bodies that still suffer and die prompts seeking their redemption as far as possible here on earth, an earth where the buds of the new creation have begun to open in the early sunshine of the eschaton. Impaired bodies, like other bodies, have prosaic, bodily needs; their redemption entails improvements in accessibility, pain control, and the provision of good-quality care, as well as the grander projects of changing assumptions about which bodies are considered full members of general and ecclesiastical society (see Anderson 2003, Nichols 2002, Eiesland 1994, Mairs 1996). Providing for even the prosaic needs of people with disabilities, and allowing these needs to be made visible in the fabric of public buildings and facilities, is the way in which society openly acknowledges the reality of the impaired world. Moreover, the resurrection of human bodies is always profoundly linked with the resurrection of the rest of the creation too; Moltmann comments that the expression “the resurrection of the flesh”, as it echoes formulae about “all flesh” in the Hebrew Bible, encompasses animals’ flesh too (Moltmann 1996: 69-70). The new creation is thereby for the whole cosmos (Moltmann 1996: 70), not only for humans in their relationships with one another and their statuses in Christ, but in relation to ecosystems local and universal.
Georgia Warnke comments,
“Suppose we imagine a life beyond sex… We will be able to enjoy particular activities… without these signifying facts about gender. Similarly, we will be able to feel desires towards certain body types without these signifying facts about homosexuality or heterosexuality. Instead, identity will be constituted in ways that fit more easily with other conceptions and ideals we take seriously – for example, those of justice, equality, and self-determination” (Warnke 2001: 135).
The transformation of excluded bodies in the new creation need not preclude their retaining some of the characteristics which have seemed the most problematic in their present circumstances, but these characteristics will be interpreted differently, just as – for Warnke and others – signals of gender and sexuality need not forever be tied to their present meanings. The woundedness of Christ even after his own resurrection has come to figure significantly in the recent disability theology of Nancy Eiesland. Eiesland depicts Jesus as a disabled God “who embodied both impaired hands and feet and pierced side and the imago Dei” (Eiesland 1994: 99). She says,
“Paradoxically, in the very act commonly understood as the transcendence of physical life, God is revealed as tangible, bearing the representation of the body reshaped by injustice and sin into the fullness of the Godhead… Jesus, the resurrected Savior, calls for his frightened companions to recognize in the marks of impairment their own connection with God, their own salvation” (Eiesland 1994: 99-100).
If Christ himself has a wounded body even after his resurrection, it is conceivable that other instances of physical impairment, and physical atypicality, will also persist in the human bodies of the general resurrection. If God has come to inhabit this, Jesus’ unexpected, non-dominant body, the way is opened for other unexpected, non-dominant bodies to reflect and live God too. The resurrected Jesus, with impaired hands and feet, is God’s revelation of a new humanity – “underscoring the reality that full personhood is fully compatible with the experience of disability” (Eiesland 1994: 100). The impaired Jesus’ wounds are not to be vilified, nor to be pitied; they are marks of life experience, and signposts to a new kind of life too. This imagery of God as disabled sets up a disjunction with the complete, powerful, independent God as espoused in the traditional philosophical perfections. It is not therefore possible to suppose that God’s perfection and wholeness is like human perfection and wholeness (or what humans consider to be perfection and wholeness) but more so. God’s ability, God’s ableness, is not human ableness writ large. It is in God’s limitedness as human that we encounter God, in the specific and limited body of Jesus. It is in and through other specific, limited bodies that we go on encountering God. Intersexed and impaired bodies exist on a conceptual cusp, and mean that notions of health, illness, goodness, legitimacy, pathology and perfection must continue to be problematized and reframed. For Eiesland, then, Jesus’ post-resurrection wounds render impaired bodies far less “other” than they are often perceived to be by those who are currently able; it is extremely significant, she suggests, that the risen Jesus invites people to touch his wounds, for this speaks of helping people to overcome their fear of coming into contact with “distorted” bodies lest they should somehow “catch” the impairment, or be tainted by association with someone who lacks conventional status (Eiesland 1994: 101). Other impaired bodies, too, “announce the presence of the disabled God for us and call the church to become a communion of struggle” (Eiesland 1994: 115).
Moreover, Jesus resists, throughout his ministry (as in Luke 4:1-13 and Luke 23:35-39) the temptation to interpret his calling as Son of God in a monarchical or power-hungry fashion, or to allow the people to fall back into the kind of ideological slavery they suffered in Egypt. Rather, he endorses the prophetic tradition whereby God is the only one to whom humans should be “subject” (in contrast with the Israelites themselves who demand a more conventional king like all the other nations, even after Samuel has outlined the all but inevitable consequences – in 1 Samuel 8:4-22) and where even this relationship is disrupted by the imagery of kingship and subjecthood in the new order. Jesus wishes to lure people to God not through signs and wonders (Mark 1:44, 5:43) or through enforced subjection to a sovereign, but through encouraging mutual love and interaction. Human interpretations of what it is to be a king or leader are continually turned on their heads by Jesus, a notion which must continually inform attempts to resist distortions of a truly just society. If physical ability and unambiguous sex both bring a certain privileged status, this in itself should provoke questions about their place, and the extent to which they should be sought, in the new and coming Kingdom where status and privilege are overturned. Since the new creation is already beginning, this means it is necessary to consider the extent to which both ambiguous sex and physical impairment are rendered more difficult specifically because of societal treatment of them.
4.9 Some Conclusions
The structures which have oppressed and excluded impaired and intersexed bodies are not unique, although impaired and intersexed people might have experienced and interpreted them uniquely because of their own particular social and historical circumstances. Importantly, as noted by Koyama (2006) and Dreger (2004), the types of medical paternalism criticized by intersex activists and by some people with disabilities are not limited to these particular conditions or situations. However, argues Eiesland,
“People with disabilities have been encouraged to see our needs as unique and extraordinary, rather than as society-wide issues of inclusion and exclusion” (Eiesland 1994: 28).
This kind of attitude has led to the further alienation and “othering” of people with disabilities from the rest of society. In fact, however, the limiting attitudes which objectify and alienate people with disabilities and those with intersex conditions, are the same as those which alienate humans from one another and from the rest of creation more broadly. The desire to “disappear” disabled and intersexed bodies – by surgical intervention, by not creating material or conceptual space for them to take part in public life, public worship and policy making, by rendering intersex and disability minority interests – is part of a quasi-communitarian ethic actually based on individualism and socio-economic independence. An attitude toward disability which implies that people with disabilities are not quite full members of the speaking, acting community but require something to be done to or for them by the community is evident in some church settings. The Church’s history of almsgiving and an acknowledgement of its duty to provide for marginalized people have come from good motives but, says Eiesland, have sometimes led to further segregation rather than to inclusion, because they have failed to emphasize the need of people with disabilities for political engagement, and have not encouraged people to full social and religious participation even in their “nonconventional bodies” (Eiesland 1994: 74). Charity can and sometimes has emphasized the sense that the disabled person or group is there to be the grateful, passive recipient of a good, kind or generous act, rather than part of a whole community which reciprocally gives and receives good, kind and generous acts. This contrasts with the mutual concern between the members of the Body of Christ emphasized in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 (Horne 1998: 96).
Eiesland maintains,
“Many religious bodies have continued to think of and act as if access for people with disabilities is a matter of benevolence and goodwill, rather than a prerequisite for equality and the foundation on which the church as model of justice must rest” (Eiesland 1994: 67).
Promoting the welfare of those marginalized for any reason is thereby seen by some church bodies as an optional extra, ethically supererogatory to the “real business” of saving souls. Inclusion of people with disabilities, and other excluded groups, is understood as “kindness” rather than righteousness. This may stem from a failure to see people with disabilities or other “differences” (intersex conditions, homosexual orientations, and so on) as “really” the church or the speaking group. These implicit ecclesiologies are insidious, further affecting who is and is not figured as part of the legitimate, conceivable mainstream.[161] As we saw in Chapter 2, however, each human inhabits a single, unique body, but is also figured by participation in the Body and co-figures the Body too. Barbara Patterson thereby insists,
“If embodied symbols of Christian redemption are to be authentically inclusive, they must contain those other/silenced/hidden exemplars whose bodystories have been excluded. We must correct traditional misunderstandings of what kinds of bodies are appropriate sites for God’s redeeming work” (Patterson 1998: 137).
This includes intersexed bodies and their excluded stories, not generally discussed or even acknowledged despite the relative frequency of intersex conditions. To fail to engage with these stories and testimonies is to fail to engage with the stories and testimonies of a significant segment of our human community. Theologies which are theologies only of the privileged and those considered (overtly or otherwise) decent or legitimate cannot tell the whole tale of how humans have related and continue to relate to God. Deborah Creamer argues that the voices of people with disabilities should be brought to the centre of theological discourse for two reasons: as an issue of justice, because they have been marginalized and excluded; and because “theological reflection on experiences of disability is beneficial for the community of faith. Such reflection has the ability to both critique existing theological models and also to enhance our theological understandings as a whole” (Creamer 2003: 66). Likewise, to repeat, disseminate and legitimate only the theological stories of those who have found a heterosexual binary model of sex and gender adequately represents them is to construct a theology made solely in our own image, rather than also in that of a God who is multiple, discomfiting and pluriform. Creamer says,
“Theological reflection about disability opens us to questions that cannot be solved through universals but rather through a process of creativity and relationality” (Creamer 2003: 67).
Such a pluriform, discomfiting, resisting stance has been part of what has characterized much queer theology; it is this to which I turn in the next chapter, in order to explore to what extent the shifting, provisional methodologies and conclusions attached to queer might chime with the specific challenges of thinking with intersexed people and formulating theologies from intersex.
Chapter 5 Resisting and Reappropriating: Intersex and Queer Theologies
“‘To queer’ means to make strange – and Queer Interpretation is precisely a practise of making strange that which has been assumed to be familiar. [It] challenges domesticated constructions and interpretations… and wonders about who such constructions and interpretations have closeted. As a strategy of liberation, Queer Interpretation seeks to expose and to challenge the violence that such constructions and interpretations have done to people’s identities, experiences and bodies” (Goss and Krause 2006: 684).
In this chapter I show that many of the tensions acknowledged thus far in different readings of bodies and the concerns of different groups are repeated in the multiplicity, provisionality and open-endedness of queer theologies themselves. It is these very tensions, however, which make queer theologies important resources for thinking theologically about intersex – since intersexed bodies are themselves loci of a plethora of simultaneous real and perceived oppositions (including male/female, sexual/nonsexual, healthy/pathological, normal/abnormal, natural/unnatural, powerless/powerful, and so on). Queer theologies have the potential to be simultaneously “about” more than one thing. As such, they may provide an important site of positionality for those people who find that their very bodies or sexed identities cannot easily be categorized or demarcated. Importantly, too, queer theologies are often categorized by their resisting attitudes to prescriptively or proscriptively oppressive or abusive socio-political norms. Resisting is, as Goss and Krause note, a project of “making strange that which has been assumed to be familiar”. This might be usefully transposed into theologies from intersex seeking to resist the male-and-female picture of human sex which does not tell the full story of human experience, and – specifically – might entail resisting theologies based in uncritical, unproblematized notions of gender complementarity.
First, however, I ground queer theologies in their genealogies from queer theory, and show how differences and variations across queer theologies and queer theories create both problems and potential for using queer methodologies in considering intersex.
5.1 Problematizing Terms: Queer and Heteronormativity
Queer theory, the conceptual background out of which queer theologies have begun to rise, is a vast and diverse field not easily summarized. Useful overviews exist elsewhere, as in Morland and Willox 2005b, Hall 2003 and Jagose 1996; I will not repeat them here, but rather acknowledge the ways in which the wider themes of queer theory have fed into queer theologies, and explore the ways in which they might inform theologies from intersex.
Broadly, queer theory has been characterized in large part by a desire to challenge and contest sexual boundaries and essentialist portrayals of sex, and to stand in contrast to heteronormativity.[162] Heteronormativity denotes a hegemony based in the overarching assumption that all humans are either male or female, that males who are sexually or erotically active should only be sexually or erotically active with females and vice versa, and that non-heterosexual activities and eroticisms are illegitimate or even pathological. A privileging of heterosexuality in society means that non-heterosexual relationships and activities have often come to be figured as “unnatural”.[163] The privileging of heterosexuality within Christianity specifically, particularly in the Protestant denominations, has been and continues to be well-examined elsewhere, even as the issue of whether practising homosexuals should serve as clergy continues to be one of the Anglican Communion’s most public concerns. However, argues David M. Halperin,
“The heterosexual / homosexual binarism is itself a homophobic production, just as the man / woman binarism is a sexist production. Each consists of two terms, the first of which is unmarked and unproblematized – it designates ‘the category to which everyone is assumed to belong’… --whereas the second term is marked and problematized: it designates a category of persons whom something differentiates from normal, unmarked people. The marked (or queer) term… functions not as a means of denominating a real or determinate class of persons but as a means of delimiting and defining – by negation and opposition – the unmarked term” (Halperin 1995: 44).
Heteronormativity assumes that heterosexuality is the natural, a priori default to which everyone should adhere; but, ironically, as Halperin notes,
“Heterosexuality defines itself implicitly by constituting itself as the negation of homosexuality…[164] Heterosexuality… depends on homosexuality to lend it substance – and to enable it to acquire by default its status as a default, as a lack of difference or an absence of abnormality” (Halperin 1995: 44).[165]
Halperin argues that, because within a heteronormative context, heterosexuality perceives itself as unremarkable and the norm, it is continually figured as a locus from which to study “other” or “different” modes of socio-sexual behaviour – and that this deflects attention from heterosexuality’s own incoherence (Halperin 1995: 47). We can already identify a possible affinity with intersex here, given that intersexed bodies, and particularly those with ambiguous genitalia, continue to be seized upon in their “difference” from the “norms” they have failed to meet.
Heteronormativity also causes certain body parts – and only those body parts – to be ascribed with meaning thick enough to “show” and to “tell” a particular, immovable story of sex.[166] This is particularly important when beginning to think through Christian theological responses to intersex. Much heteronormative discourse relies on body parts being imbued with particular meanings which are then fixed as meanings so they can come to mean nothing else – which, in turn, results in particular configurations of body parts being taken as evidence for “truths” about an individual, especially about the individual’s legitimate gender and what that should mean for their upbringing and for appropriate expressions of their personality and identity.[167] This echoes a rationalist assumption that it is possible to access a single, incontrovertible, evidence-based “meaning” for a given thing (also an assumption behind some theologies and attitudes toward biblical authority and interpretation).[168] Heteronormativity, then, never impinges only on the socio-sexual realm; assumptions about normality, about appropriate behaviour as sexed and as gendered, exist always alongside assumptions about the legitimacy of other kinds of variation and other kinds of bodies. Those marginalized on the grounds of their sexuality have sometimes come to experience economic isolation too; heteronormativity is the thin end of a vast, insidious wedge which shuts a plethora of marginal lives and bodies out of signification.
Like heteronormative ideologies, mainstream Christian theologies, too, have tended to essentialize body parts, making claims that genitals, gonads and chromosomes unproblematically add up to a picture of sex on which gender and sexuality must also rest (as we saw in some of the reactions to transsexualism discussed in Chapter 3). This insistence on a conceptual either/or binary is belied and disrupted, however, by liminal or “crossing” phenomena, whose implications are often read through the lens of methodologies, as in the social sciences, which quite deliberately “do not rely on comparing polarised categories” (Kitzinger 2004: 454). Queer’s propensity to disrupt binaries in this way can be clearly traced back to Foucault’s and Derrida’s work in the conceptual deconstruction of binary tropes such as oppressor/oppressed. Moreover, Christian theology itself has important resources for challenging exclusion and alienation, and for the uncritical acceptance of would-be overarching metanarratives like those of compulsory heterosexuality. “Green” theologies and those influenced by ecofeminism have questioned separations between humans and the non-human creation. Some queer theologies have also sought to draw out these kinds of strands rather than those based in an uncritical biblical literalism used to justify the condemnation of homosexual activity in particular, or in an attitude that any queer or sexually subversive strands in the Hebrew Bible are simply part of “the lineages of sin that Christ ultimately overcomes” (Schneider 2001: 211-2). Queer theologies’ particular acceptance of their own liminality and diglotic nature place them well to be in solidarity with bodies and entities existing on conceptual boundaries, and to reflect on such questions as what happens when some intersexed people, and some others, reject the notion that one can only be either a man or a woman, rather than neither, or both. Binary categories of sex and gender will not necessarily stand in God’s new order; they are constructed in a context of dominance and exclusion, and, says Stuart, “grate against the sign of baptism” (Stuart 2003: 108). She says,
“The Church as the community of the redeemed must play out gender and sexuality in such a way as to reveal their lack of eschatological significance” (Stuart 2003: 114).
This acknowledgement of the provisionality of human sex and gender must be a central conceit of any theology done in solidarity with intersex and other unusual sexual or physical configurations. It stands in sharp contradistinction to theological anthropologies said to foreshadow the redeemed and perfected nature of humanity in relation to its God, and in which heterosexuality in particular is endowed with almost soteriological significance. As evidence for the mainstream fetishization of heteronormativity, Stuart cites “conservative Christian resistance to inclusive language and gender-neutral imagery for God”, for, she says, this opposition “is based upon awareness that if God is not male then the social construction of gender, the heterosexual family, and gender theology cannot stand” (Stuart 2003: 93). Like opposition to SRS and gender transition, then, resistance to non-patriarchal reframings of scriptural and liturgical language may imply fear of an annexation of authority by those deemed stubbornly sinful, broken, or inherently reactors rather than actors.
5.2 Positionality, Not Positivity: The Problems of Defining Queer
Before examining in more detail some characteristics of queer theologies and how these might inform theologies from intersex, I will touch on problems with defining queer, which may impact on whether intersex can be considered in these terms at all.
Queer, as marginalized by heteronormativity, is figured by Halperin as
“by definition, whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers… ‘Queer’… demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative – a positionality that is not restricted to lesbians and gay men” (Halperin 1995: 62).
Queer, in these terms, is less about certainty and more about possibility – not about making clear demarcations or delimiting assertions, but about exploring opportunities beyond those afforded within a heteronormative hegemony. Although this might make it very attractive as a locus of identity for those who have felt themselves excluded from restrictive forms and structures of social acceptance, such liminality or looseness of boundary also raises problems. As Halperin says, it is exactly queer’s lack of specificity, which he identifies as its major advantage, which “has also become its most serious drawback” (Halperin 1995: 64).[169] This affects queer theologies too; Robert E. Goss, responding to criticisms that queer theology, like queer theory in general, risks eliding the “hard fought differences” (Goss 1999: 52) rooted in maleness or femaleness, gayness or lesbianism, admits that “queer does muddy the distinctions” (Goss 1999: 52).[170] This might also be a concern for intersex uses of queer methodologies. Queer’s liminal nature and the possibility that it will be used as a kind of catch-all term have provoked resistance from people who predict that it may be misused or used in ways unhelpful to those who originally identified as queer: Halperin, for example, fears that the pluriform nature of queer means that there will rise up self-styled ‘queer’ gender outlaws who think queer is chic and crave a hip identity but “without having to do anything icky with their bodies in order to earn it” (Halperin 1995: 65). Guest claims that queer is a “safe option” when compared to radical lesbian and gay theory, being actually less threatening to heterosexual norms, and that it might come to be “applied by trendy straight-identified academics to bring a new dimension to their modules” (Guest 2005: 236) without necessarily having to address any of the more controversial or recalcitrant elements of lesbian and gay politics. It is therefore imperative consciously to reflect on how the existence of these discourses shapes and affects my own position as someone whose identity has not been shaped by direct belonging to any of them, with particular reference to how this colours my response to intersexed bodies, testimonies and voices as a non-intersexed person.
Queer has come to signify more than a simple synonym for homosexual, but for many people its rootedness in LGBT history is crucial, and this in particular, they argue, must not be erased or forgotten through a broadening-out of definitions surrounding queer. It is worth remembering that homosexual activity is still illegal in over 80 countries, in some of which it is punishable by death (Baird 2004: 7, 36). Boone says,
“Envisioning future frontiers depends… on recognizing the pioneering efforts of lesbian feminist and gay pioneers working on the front lines and at the outposts of early gay activism, since the future frontiers envisioned by current queer theory and practice depend on knowing how we got to where we are… today” (Boone 2000b: 10).
Hall identifies as particularly significant the fact that the term “queer” was reclaimed by lesbians and gays in the early 1980s as a response to what he terms the “governmentally sanctioned homophobia” (Hall 2003: 54) arising from the AIDS epidemic. For Hall, then, queer only makes conceptual sense in a post-AIDS climate,[171] one only latterly associated with non-homosexuals.[172] This, particularly in light of Halperin’s and Guest’s claims above, means that theologians, especially heterosexual theologians, who claim to be (politically) queer without having adequately understood the social and historical framework in which they work, might be in for some trouble. However, this does not necessarily mean they cannot speak with those who more centrally inhabit a queer political locus. Just as non-intersexed people can speak and have spoken with and on behalf of those who are intersexed – and just as non-impaired people can speak with those who are impaired and who have often been silenced or ignored – so non-queer theologians, or those who might not be recognized as politically queer by others, can speak with those who are queer. This need not erase the particularity of given struggles, but rather recognizes that part of the common human struggle lies in resisting alienation from one another, and the demarcations which separate unnecessarily. To fail to comment on something which is not directly one’s own experience is to fail to recognise the implication of the whole of society in the experiences of one part of society – and thereby to fail to appreciate the perichoretic aspects of metaphors such as Body of Christ, which, as we saw in Chapter 2, can be fatal.
Iain Morland and Annabelle Willox, like Hall, hold that it was HIV-AIDS which catalyzed queer into being a political strategy rather than an identity, through demonstrating that other socially- and biologically-based identities were no barrier to contracting HIV.[173] In a sense, then, to speak of a “queer identity” is counter-intuitive, for by Morland and Willox’s logic, queer is actually about sidestepping the artificial boundaries of identity whose arbitrary demarcations HIV-AIDS did not respect. They say, “Queerness calls… for a celebration of a diversity of identities, but also for a cultural diversity that surpasses the notion of identity” (Morland and Willox 2005b: 3).[174] Deryn Guest concurs,
“The idea of ‘being queer’ is something of a misnomer given that queer theory problematizes identity categories and labels. Thus one ‘is’ queer only insofar as one contests the confining labels that have been applied” (Guest 1995: 45).
Queer is thus is the discomfiting position of questioning categories of identity per se whilst simultaneously building on the political will and experiences of people for whom asserting the right to have a publicly visible and legal identity as lesbian or gay (for example) has been a long struggle.
Discussing possible definitions and understandings of queer in relation to formulating queer commentaries on the Bible, however, Ken Stone concludes that a broader use of queer than a lesbian or gay approach is expedient and that even the non-lesbian and non-gay contributors to his 2001 edited volume provide queer commentary “inasmuch as they challenge conventional ways of bringing sexuality and the Bible into relation with one another” (Stone 2001b: 28). I concur with Stone’s argument that it is not possible to make a clear delineation between queer and non-queer readings or readers (Stone 2001b: 32-3);[175] in light of Marcella Althaus-Reid’s bi/sexual model (below), to do so may not even be desirable.
5.3 Provisional, Multiple, Eschatological: Is Intersex Queer?
To what extent might there already exist affinities between a queer political outlook and the assertions of intersexed people? ISNA founder Cheryl Chase argues,
“The value of the word ‘queer’ is that it talks about difference that’s stigmatized or transgressive without defining exactly what that difference is… When intersexed people say ‘my body is OK like this’ and ‘my identity is OK like this’, those are queer things to do and to think” (Hegarty and Chase 2005: 79).
Whereas gay/lesbian, homo/hetero and similar either/or terms are rooted in binary sex-gender expressions, intersex shakes up the terminology through being less prescriptive (Hegarty and Chase 2005: 80). It thus resonates with a concept of queer deliberately transcendent of exclusively homosexual concerns, and with the non-binary “bi/sexual” (below), which holds together apparent opposites as well as their interim shades of grey. Queer can encompass differing sexualities, sexes, genders and bodies without reducing any of them to sameness or enforced amorphousness with the others. Some intersexed people have found it politically expedient to align themselves with LGBT groups:
“I recently graduated from U[niversity] of Mississippi, where I was on the campus Gay-Straight Alliance… I was able to support diversity issues all across the board, and… to educate others in intersex issues. I know some do not agree with intersex being included in Gay and Lesbian issues; however, being in Mississippi, intersex does not have a strong backing alone (I would have essentially been the only person)” (Amy, at ).
Other intersexed individuals do not identify at all with homosexual and LGBT groups or with the queer label, even as a temporary or preliminary step. In some cases this is because they fear a lack of focus specifically on issues faced by intersexed people. Also, as we saw in Chapter 4, Emi Koyama suggests that queer is of limited use for intersexed/DSD people, for it assumes a particular political agenda which all intersexed people do not necessarily share. Koyama is suspicious of queer-identified or transgendered people who have colonized intersex groups (Koyama 2006).
Another problem for tracing affinities between intersex and queer is that – like transsexualism – intersex has sometimes been figured as necessarily queer, which risks homogenizing and misrepresenting intersexed people who do not identify in this way. J. David Hester argues that intersex effectively continues the queer project even better than queer itself can:
“The bodies of intersexed people expose the limits of the sex-gender dichotomy in ways not anticipated by gender constructionists and queer theorists” (Hester 2004: 217).
Hester asserts that the very existence of intersexed bodies demonstrates that there are not one or two sexes, but hundreds (Hester 2004: 219-220). He argues that much gender and queer theorizing is still based in the notion of two stable, immovable sexes, negating the particularity of “other” bodies (Hester 2004: 220) (as opposed to “other” expressions of gender). He concludes that “multiple, pluriform, abundant sexes… are the end of gender” (Hester 2004: 221), and comes to figure intersexed bodies as “postgender” (Hester 2004: 223). This “postgender” state might be considered, positively or negatively, as queering all gender. But ISNA, for example, would oppose Hester’s assertion that “intersexed bodies… raise a threat to gender altogether” (Hester 2004: 223). ISNA insists that claiming an intersexed identity does not necessarily entail situating oneself within a liminal or third gender,[176] although some intersexed people do identify as androgynous or “pansexual” (Kaldera 1998: 228). What Hester’s argument actually implies is that intersexed bodies are postsex, not postgender. ISNA’s point is that it is possible to have a clear gender (which is not necessarily the same as a permanent gender) without having an “unambiguous” binary sex. Just as it is not the sole “job” or purpose of transsexuals to subvert non-transsexual, binary categories of sex and gender, and not all transsexuals consider themselves queer pioneers – and just as people with disabilities cannot alone stand for and subvert norms of ability and health across society – so intersexed individuals in and of themselves cannot stand for the “end” of gender for all other persons. To appropriate and misrepresent the identities of others as a means of doing ostensibly liberatory work is ironic and undesirable indeed.
Deliberate suspicion of categories of identity, then, has sometimes made it difficult to determine who is and is not “really” queer – which might, ironically, be called just another back-door binarism. Certain identities are sometimes held to be “authentically” queer whilst others are not; for example, whereas transgenderism (without surgery) is often figured as “legitimately”, transgressively queer, SRS itself appears to reinforce strong sex-gender binaries (Morland and Willox 2005b: 4) and narrow projections of the body, and is thus rejected by some who claim a queer political allegiance.
Some intersexed or transgendered individuals, then, as well as some who identify as heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual, do not identify as queer precisely because of its potential to blur borders (Stone 2001b: 28). Just as for many lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans individuals, there has been a suspicion amongst some intersexed people that sympathy for a queer political project might entail assimilation into a homogenous conglomerate which cannot fully acknowledge the distinct concerns faced by its various sub-groups.[177] Many intersexed individuals have expressed a desire to pass as an unremarkable man or woman rather than entering into the overt and political deconstructions of gender binaries often associated with queer (Koyama 2006).[178] Sharon Preves found in 2003 that many of her subjects, despite their membership of intersex support groups, did not even identify as (politically) intersexed, let alone queer (Preves 2003: 7). This suggests that intersex and queer may not have such a natural affinity as might be supposed.
However, Morgan Holmes suggests that one aspect of the value of queer for intersex is that it might help to articulate the difference of intersexed bodies and experiences from those of others despite the fact that there may not be any very obvious difference between intersexed and non-intersexed anatomy to a lay onlooker – and despite the fact that some intersexed individuals may not perceive a very great difference between their own bodily histories and those of other (non-intersexed, non-queer) people. Holmes says, “It is my hope that in a future perfect world, queers will not question the validity of calling oneself ‘queer’ even if no-one can see their difference” (Holmes 1998: 225). Holmes’ comment draws upon the hope, again, that queer can be a positionality – the outside to heteronormativity’s inside? – rather than a descriptor.
As queer ideals and methodologies tend to be transgressive of what are perceived to be unexamined heteropatriarchal norms, it is less common for heterosexual individuals to identify as queer, probably because they are less likely to have faced resistance to their lifestyles and may also be less likely to consider heterosexual norms problematic. For this reason, intersexed people, “corrected” or not, who have not experienced problems in forming and expressing a clear and positive gender identity, and who have found that their gender identity supports a traditional heterosexual sexuality (so that their sexuality accords with their gender identity even if it does not accord, for example, with their gonads), may be less inclined to identify as queer than those who have felt awkward and excluded in heterosexual relationships. However, insists Goss,
“Queer signifies not only those attracted to the same gender or both genders but also anyone who defies the dominant structures of normative sexual templates or even the normative templates of the gender system” (Goss 1999: 51).[179]
It is not necessarily heterosexuality in itself, then, which is problematic (Althaus-Reid argues that heterosexuality per se is “a respectable sexual option”); it is unquestioned heterosexual ideology – or heteronormativity – which is problematic (Althaus-Reid 2004a: 106).[180] Even Halperin acknowledges that it is not just homosexuals who can be marginalized by their sexual practices, and that queer might also embrace some heterosexual (if not entirely heteronormative) married couples, with or without children (Halperin 1995: 62). Stone notes that some individuals involved in sexual practices which are not non-heterosexual per se but which are unconventional in other ways – like polyamory and S/M – have also claimed the terminology of queer for themselves (Stone 2001b: 27-8). Guest concurs that “queer readings of scripture are potentially open to any persons who would apply the insights of queer theory and have relevant knowledge… or anyone who perceives that their marginalized or non-normative status could be usefully examined via the filter of queer theory” (Guest 1995: 45).[181] Even if they do not feel an initial affinity with queer political activity, then, straight, heterosexual intersexed people might also find it beneficial to reflect on queer’s potential for querying the norms of sexuality – not because they are intersexed, but because queer questions and critiques all structures of relation and sex-gender construction.
Butler asserts in Bodies That Matter that although the terminology of queer has been “used in ways that enforce a set of overlapping distinctions” (Butler 1993: 228) – having been essentialized variously as white, as lesbian, as “a false unity of male and female” (Butler 1993: 228) – nonetheless, critiquing and thereby expanding the term might “open up new possibilities for coalitional alliances that do not presume that these constituencies are radically distinct from one another” (Butler 1993: 229). Butler warns,
“If identity is a necessary error, then the assertion of ‘queer’ will be necessary as a term of affiliation, but it will not fully describe those it purports to represent. As a result, it will be necessary to affirm the contingency of the term: to let it be vanquished by those who are excluded by the term but who justifiably expect representation by it” (Butler 1993: 230).
In other words, if queer does not adequately represent intersexed interests, this is a good and inevitable thing. As soon as it were possible to pin down and homogenize queer, it would already be limiting and useless. Rather, argues Butler, those who seek to reclaim “queer” (particularly as a linguistic reaction to an initially shaming, accusatory term) exist always already in this oppositional context.[182] Crucially, says Butler, “queer” must be recognized as a profoundly contingent term, which must be allowed to take on meanings beyond those anticipated by people for whom it carries specific and limited political meaning. She says,
“That it can become such a discursive site whose uses are not fully constrained in advance ought to be safeguarded not only for the purposes of continuing to democratize queer politics, but also to expose, affirm, and rework the specific historicity of the term” (Butler 1993: 230).
The expansion of queer (particularly within queer theologies) in the last decade to include models and sites of subversion not specifically located in lesbian and gay discourse, then, is already the revision mooted by Butler; not a false homogenization which negates the particularity of different groups’ struggles, but a blossoming of polyphony with the aims of justice and full personhood in common. As such, queer must be continually reframed and reworked. It is profoundly eschatological: ongoing, self-constituting (Hall 2003: 67), transformative and transforming, provisional, its meaning always being made and remade, done and undone. It is the “already and the not yet” – though it is conceivable that queer might also be “already, not yet and not ever”, for any sense of an ultimate finality goes against its grain somewhat. It might be that queer’s “finality” will simply be its eventual existence as part of a world where even subversion and resistance to oppressive hegemonies and narratives have become commonplace; where successful hermeneutics no longer need to be extraordinarily suspicious, because the transformation of renewed human minds means that every hermeneutic strategy incorporates (literally) an awareness of its own story and backstory.
Even if queer is not currently or apparently a comfortable locus of identity for straight intersexed people, then, this does not mean that it never could be; it is just that its remaking and redefining will always be relative to its present as well as its past historical location, just as each act of Eucharist must be really grounded in past events as well as really being done anew, in a new Body, each and every time. Queer theologies might be sites for multiplicity and for diversities held in tension, rather than for solely homosexual-and-bisexual opposition to heterosexual normativities.[183] Queer might allow exploration of what intersexed people have in common with non-intersexed people in their mutual closetedness, marginalization and transcendence of heteronormative ideals. Just as no real penis can ever live up to the mythic phallus, so no individual “normal” body can meet every ideal. By their very nature, bodies are abnormal. Queer’s promise, then, lies in its capacity to demonstrate the a priori transgressive nature of bodies – crucial in refiguring and re-examining metaphors of perfection and completion as morally good.
Several of the contributors to The Queer Bible Commentary have explicitly begun to consider how queer readings of the biblical narratives might open conceptual space for the consideration of intersexed bodies as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered ones. In his entry on Genesis, Michael Carden uses Sally Gross’ work on intersex and scripture (Gross 1999) in his discussion of the “primal androgynous unity” (Carden 2006: 25) traceable in the creation stories, and comments that “the hermaphrodite inhabits the intermediate world of the ancient gender hierarchy” (Carden 2006: 28).[184] This is why, claims Carden, “to become one flesh, a man must give up his gender privilege and with his wife descend to the intermediate level, neither male nor female” (Carden 2006:28). This might set a precedent for reading the socially-radical Galatians 3:28 as of greater ethical magnitude – and thus to be granted more import in a contemporary setting – than the more conservative congregational and household codes found in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles. David Tabb Stewart also claims a more-than-binary stream elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, saying that
“what appears to be a binary gender system in the D-source (Deut. 22.5) and P-source (Gen. 1.27), male and female, looks like a three-gender system in the J-source (Gen. 2.20-1): male, female and androgyne or ha-‘adam, ‘the human’” (Stewart 2006: 92).
Laurel C. Schneider expressed the fear in 2001 that queer portrayals of divine and human desire, with particular reference to the Hebrew Bible, would still end up being predominantly masculine ones, which might be problematic for women; though she then acknowledged “a certain irony in my concern for ‘male’ vs ‘female’ queerings of the divine” (Schneider 2001: 217). Schneider’s specific fear of a male-centred queerness coming out of biblical commentary seems to have been avoided in 2006’s The Queer Bible Commentary; a clear interest in androgyny and liminality comes through in many of the essays. However, for the reason identified by Schneider, it is important to consider how intersex might continue to inform queer theologies – and queer explorations in biblical studies – as well as how queer theologies can inform intersex. As Schneider says,
“The question of sexual difference is not resolved in queer theory and should remain alive and unresolved in our queer engagements with biblical tales” (Schneider 2001: 218).
In the remainder of this chapter, then, I explore whether notions drawn from queer theologies might be salutary in formulating a theology of intersex. I argue that queer-identified configurations and alignments need not necessarily homogenize difference, and that there is potential to draw on their aptitude for subversion without negating specificities of selfhood. This might be particularly important for intersex, given Morgan Holmes’ claim that “even communities that rail against their own expropriation into ‘queer chic’ have no problem writing us [intersexed people] into their own fantasies” (Holmes 2000: 105).[185]
5.4 Queer Theologies
5.4.1 Ethnicity, Ecology, Economics: The Queer as Bi/Sexual
Many theologians writing out of a queer socio-political setting have largely used “queer” as a synonym for lesbian, gay and bisexual. Examples of this kind of usage can be found in Mona West’s essay “Reading the Bible as Queer Americans” (West 1999) and Ken Stone’s “Safer Text: Reading Biblical Laments in the Age of AIDS” (Stone 1999). I wish to focus in particular on Marcella Althaus-Reid’s “indecent” liberating-queer theology, as it employs a broader sense of queer not just rooted in LGBT. However, it is interesting to note some of the points brought out in the other scholars’ work in order to trace a trajectory through these fairly gay-centric queer theologies into wider socio-economic concerns, which Althaus-Reid and others have amplified.[186] I am particularly concerned to draw out the strands which are not solely “sexual” ones; Tat-siong Benny Liew has commented that “queer theory, despite its emphasis on queering more than just the norm of heterosexuality, tends to inherit from lesbian and gay studies the centrality of sex and sexuality” (Liew 2001: 186). Liew fears other issues, such as race and ethnicity, have been pushed aside by queer theory in favour of an overemphasis on sex and sexuality (Liew 2001: 187), and wishes to see queer biblical criticism taking a more multifocal path (Liew 2001: 188). Some scholars, such as Grace M. Jantzen and the ethicist Daniel T. Spencer, have explicitly expressed a desire to employ queer approaches which address ecological and political liberationist concerns too (Jantzen 2003, Spencer 2001: 196-7).[187] Ken Stone’s study on food, sex and the Bible in queer perspective (Stone 2005) demonstrates that it is neither possible nor desirable to think queerly about sex in distinction from thinking queerly about all kinds of other things. To ensure that queer theologies do not become tied into the sexual concern alone is especially important when considering the application of queer theological methods and concerns to intersex, given the way in which intersex has in the past sometimes been reduced to an adjunct to reflection on homosexuality rather than examined in its own right as an issue which affects far more than just sexuality.
We begin to see how some theologies have picked up on the concerns of a cross-disciplinary queer theory in the work of Elizabeth Stuart, who endorses the necessity for a disruption of heterosexuality (and its often concomitant procreativity). If Christianity perpetuates itself through making converts as well as having children born into the faith, argues Stuart, then it is not fundamental for every Christian sexual relationship to be a reproductive one (Stuart 2003: 97). Just as the Trinity is not strictly procreative, in that the Spirit is not the “child” of the Father and Son despite “proceeding” from them both (at least in Western orthodoxy), so not every human relationship need be biologically procreative (Stuart 2003: 97). Actually, reproduction and dissemination in this new order is about hospitality to strangers, those outside the biological kinship group, rather than care only for biological children and “insiders” (Stuart 2003: 95).[188] This goes some way to legitimating homosexual relationships, as well as those involving one or more transsexual or non-fertile intersexed partners, or those where presumably fertile heterosexual couples choose to be childless, if the reason for opposing them is that they cannot result in children who are the biological offspring of both partners.[189] So queer theologies (unlike the rest of contemporary Western culture, including mainstream Christianity, avers Stuart) already possess the conceptual tools to refuse the idolization of the family and heterosexual, procreative relations (Stuart 2003: 91), which should stand them in good stead to explore other non-heteronormative structures of family and relationship.[190]
The objection that non-heterosexual or otherwise non-normative relationships are “unnatural” – often invoked in opposition to non penis-in-vagina or at least non-reproductive sexual activity – is also subverted in some strands of the Christian tradition, says Stuart, for even God is portrayed (in Romans 11:24) as transcending what is “natural” by admitting non-Jews into salvation history (Stuart 2003: 96). Christians, too, “are called to imitate their God in acting para phusin, in excess of nature” (Stuart 2003: 106). Whether or not an action or event is “natural” thus cannot be appealed to as the be-all and end-all of whether it is legitimate, for nature itself is disrupted as a category. For this reason, demarcations of righteousness and unrighteousness are also disturbed: Thomas Bohache comments that Matthew’s gospel says Joseph was a righteous man, but that actually, if Mary had become pregnant as the result of an affair (which, if she and Joseph had not had premarital sexual intercourse, would likely have been Joseph’s initial assumption), the strictly “righteous” thing according to the Law would have been to put her and her child to death (Bohache 2006: 495). Joseph thus does what is technically unrighteous in marrying her, but this act of unrighteousness prompts Matthew to call him righteous. Bohache says,
“In this way Joseph subverts heteropatriarchal expectation; he spoils the spoiled system of sexual double-standard that would demand a woman’s life. As a result of his queer act, Mary and Jesus are neither ostracized nor put to death, but allowed to live and prosper: God’s Messiah is born because of a man who acts outside of his heteronormative role” (Bohache 2006: 496).
Queer theologies, then, if reflecting what Halperin traces as the necessary quality for queer politics, namely that they be “anchored in the perilous and shifting sands of non-identity, positionality, discursive reversibility, and collective self-invention” (Halperin 1995: 122), might have the potential to overcome some of the binaries entrenched in mainstream theology and in Western heteronormative discourse in general.[191] This is entirely possible, particularly given Tim Gorringe’s claim that “what allows us to speak of ‘revelation’ with regard to the Christian Scriptures is their continuing capacity to challenge our taken for granted pieties” (Gorringe 2004: 172). Importantly, queer theologies might be said to have something of the “bisexual” about them – not bisexual in the sense of sexual attraction to more than one sex, but rather in the sense that they are (to borrow Marcella Althaus-Reid’s construction) bi/sexual: that is, that they are simultaneously sexual/non-sexual, homosexual/heterosexual, clearly sexed/liminally sexed, and so on. Tat-siong Benny Liew notes that the characteristics of “queer” biblical commentary as expressed in Stone’s 2001-edited volume overcome some of the binaries inherent not only in the separation of homosexuality/heterosexuality, but also in the use of both canonical/non-canonical sources, both academic/non-academic textual forms and both suspicious/reparative readings of the Hebrew Bible (Liew 2001: 183). This reinforces some of the affinities queer has with liminality, a liminality familiar to many intersexed individuals who feel physically and emotionally both masculine and feminine or neither masculine and feminine – or, like transsexuals, unproblematically masculine or feminine but with unusual anatomy.
This liminality is important in exploring queer theologies in their broader sense, located not just in lesbian and gay discourse but in a broader project of subverting sexual and social norms. For Althaus-Reid, such a queering of the norms in which theology has been located and which it has bolstered is vital because it disrupts “heterosexual ideology… as a central discourse of authority” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 143). It “liberates the assumed reference of theology and therefore liberates [God] from assumptions and ideological justifications” (2004b: 143). She says, “The Queer God is the God who went into exile with God’s people and remained there in exile with them” (2004b: 146). Queer theologies thus have the potential to interrupt not only obviously sexual understandings of God and humanity but also those, for example, which emphasize the epistemic distance between God and humanity and insist that God cannot suffer or change. Althaus-Reid stresses repeatedly that queer theologies must comprise theological reflection that does not negate or gloss over the sexuality and sexual activity of those who formulate it (Althaus-Reid 2000: 28), for to compartmentalize sex out of the rest of one’s lives is to remain closeted, and risks “duplicity between the realms of a public and a private theology” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 88). Queer readings and traditions are not exclusively sexual – it is simply that they do not negate the sexual. Althaus-Reid points out,
“It is not ‘poor vs. rich’, but poor and rich immersed in the same structure of oppression although with different results… The Heterosexual Christ, or the Gay Christ or the Lesbian Christ, the Transgendered Christ and so on, do not need to be exclusive but located in the space/time of a community’s experience” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 116).
The “Bi/Christ” of her conception, then, is a Christ who is also at once sexual and non-sexual. To insist on demarcations between the sexual sphere and the non-sexual sphere is yet another binarization, yet another either/or which excludes. Likewise, Martín Hugo Córdova Quero reminds us that the “erotic” is not identical with the merely “genital” (Córdova Quero 2004: 33). It need not be a case of an artificial distinction between eros and other kinds of love; discussing Aelred of Rievaulx’s writings about his close friend Simon, Córdova Quero notes that Aelred’s emotions appear predominantly brotherly, but that “because his vocabulary is so related to the Song of Songs, eroticism comes into scene through his writing” (Córdova Quero 2004: 32). In a bi/sexual queer mindset, it is not necessary officiously to strive to eradicate such crossover/ambiguity between the overtly sexual and the ostensibly non-sexual. To conflate utterly the erotic with the erogenous and the erogenous with the genital is to fetishize certain body parts and to limit their raisons d’êtres. Sexual activity which always and exclusively centres on the clitoris or penis both negates the non-erotic qualities of these areas and tends to exclude other areas as “sexual”. It is this kind of attitude which further excludes individuals whose sexual activity is atypical through either necessity (for example, as a result of a particular impairment) or inclination.
The phenomenon of the bi/sexual (that is, the holding together of binaries, the being at once sexual and non-sexual) can also be seen in aspects of Stuart’s work, although she herself would not necessarily figure it thus. Stuart gives a particular interesting queer reading of scripture in her entry on Proverbs in The Queer Bible Commentary (Stuart 2006). She argues that the fairly banal, unremarkably patriarchal, workaday set of guidelines in this book is suddenly broken into by the irruption of the figure of Wisdom (also called Sophia or Hochma) in Proverbs 8 (Stuart 2006: 328). Stuart says,
“Hochma is wisdom in drag. She is the excessive performance of the wisdom outlined in the main body of the text, and so excessive is the performance that previous understandings of wisdom are blown apart” (Stuart 2006: 328).
This aspect of the divine is
“at the heart of human activity. She has built her house among the people and prepared a feast to which she invites all (9.1-6). She is the expression of the divine delight in humanity (8.31). This is a God who is… at the heart of human experience, the most difficult and dangerous God of all, who becomes tangled (sometimes hopelessly) in our own hopes and desires” (Stuart 2006: 328).
Hochma is thus “a subversive performance of divinity, a God of the streets” (Stuart 2006: 328). Whereas Hochma or Wisdom has traditionally been held up in contrast to the “strange woman” (often translated, tenuously, “loose woman”) or “Dame Folly” who seduces young men with her wiles (as in Proverbs 7:6-7), in fact, proposes Stuart, the “strange woman” could simply be Hochma perceived from a radically different angle (Stuart 2006: 330). They have striking similarities, she argues: perhaps Hochma is actually “acting up”, parodying the representation of herself as a prostitute. The “strange woman” seduces a young man; Hochma seductively “offers the divine, and she offers it to all and at the heart of human life” (Stuart 2006: 330-1). Both figures are “loud, bold, challenging and demanding” (Stuart 2006: 329). Actually, then, Hochma “undoes” God, disrupting God’s assumed gender (Stuart 2006: 327), making God immanent to human experience but not thereby “any less easy to grasp or any less mysterious” (Stuart 2006: 328). Stuart concludes,
“We sense that Hochma will confront us with Otherness and foreignness and with ideas that will challenge and undo our own… We fear that Hochma will cause all kinds of trouble for us. And this is how it must be. We need to hold together Hochma and the Strange Woman… In the figure of Hochma (and the Strange Woman) God refuses to be easily named or understood and therefore ultimately avoids manipulation and control… There is a greater point than social transformation for queerness and an ultimate target for it and that is the divine life. The divine is queer and summons us all into queerness” (Stuart 2006: 336-7).
God is at once Hochma and the Strange Woman, seductress and Spirit, immanent to human concerns such as sex and beyond them: bi/sexual. This reading queers Proverbs to the extent that it is not – if it ever was – only or necessarily a socially-conservative collection of bons mots for quashing laziness, unrest and disobedience to the paterfamilias. It has become a way for God to turn around and break into the social norms and constructions[192] which have been so carefully built up and which God is often invoked to endorse and maintain without due consideration for God’s own potential role in disturbing them. Binary constructions of sex have also been used to oppress and distort, but it is not difficult to see how a God who is as queer as Stuart’s Hochma is could inhabit theologies of intersex where difference cannot be homogenized or erased and where God by definition breaks out of human models.
5.4.2 Christophobia, Violence, and Birthing the Divine
Peter Sweasey, in From Queer to Eternity, draws on interviews with a range of lesbian, gay and bisexual people who identify as religious (including Christians, Jews, Pagans, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs) or spiritual, and (broadly) queer. Although the interviewees’ beliefs and attitudes toward religion are diverse, it is possible to trace some tendencies which seem to crop up repeatedly. For example, Sweasey believes that many queer people have tended to reject all religion as oppressive, or “not for queers”, simply because their experience of some aspects of religion has been negative. Having battled not to allow one crucial aspect of their identity – their sexuality – to be negated, it would be ironic, says Sweasey, if queer people have subsequently colluded with their “oppressors” in keeping spirituality hidden, leading to the subsuming of another, equally momentous aspect of identity (Sweasey 1997: 24). Rather, suggests Sweasey,
“If the ranks of religious believers include not only homophobes but also queers, we steal their trump card. Instead of saying we don’t want to play your stupid game, we’re saying, we’re already playing, and what makes you think you can set the rules here?” (Sweasey 1997: 79).
This is echoed in a later essay, by Thomas Bohache, who attempts specifically to trace a queer Christology – which will, he says, “also suggest a queer anthropology…, soteriology…, and ecclesiology” (Bohache 2003: 11). Bohache is prompted by the issue noted by Sweasey: that, for many queer individuals, a conflation of negative religion with all religion has led them to close this off as a possible area of exploration.[193] Bohache says,
“There is… [a] deep-seated feeling among many gays and lesbians that Jesus Christ is not an option for them, that he, as the embodied representative of God, hates them, and that they have no place in either Christ’s church or the Kingdom of God he announced during his earthly ministry. This is a mindset that I call ‘christophobia’. It is as factually bankrupt as homophobia and just as pernicious, for it separates many spiritually focused and religiously gifted individuals from a path that could bring them the fulfilment they have sought and been unable to find elsewhere… I am in no way suggesting that Christ is ‘the only way’ for everyone… My point is that there are many in the queer community who yearn to be followers of Christ but believe that this is impossible” (Bohache 2003: 12-13).
Of course, the persecution of queers by the established church has not been the whole story; Patrick S. Cheng notes that some queer people have also persecuted Christian communities, feeling unable to integrate their two identities (Cheng 2006: 625). Cheng asserts that queer individuals need to recognize their own complicity with violence and oppressive power-structures before they can hold in tension the queer and Christian aspects of their identities, grow spiritually and move on (Cheng 2006: 625). Jesus’ warning that “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52) suggests that violence breeds violence, that violence in itself, whether pre-emptive or supposedly redemptive, will never bring about an end to more general conflict. Walter Wink says,
“Violence simply is not radical enough, since it generally changes only the rulers but not the rules. What use is a revolution that fails to address the fundamental problem: the existence of domination in all its forms, and the myth of redemptive violence that perpetuates it?” (Wink 2003: 72-3).
Where either overt violence or a naturalized, concretized desire to control has been rendered morally neutral and even morally positive, questions of what it really means to become “empowered” deserve re-examination. (For this reason, some of Wink’s language about resisting power with “counter-force”, as in Wink 2003: 78, is problematic.) If “empowerment” means emancipation to access a worldview or paradigm questionable to begin with, what it might really mean is that the discourse of power becomes less a hegemony continually in question[194] and more a homogenous limited good of which everyone is trying to grab their piece. For traditionally marginal or repressed groups to attempt to annex and outwork in social and sexual interaction some of what has been inaccessible to them, without adequately deconstructing why the desire for control is so alluring in the first place, might actually be to limit and erase difference and to lose the oppositional stance which contrasts with overweening hierarchies of subjugation. This in turn abrogates alterity and the possibility for things to be other than they are, which means that discourses of control (for example) become the only means by which to have significance; literally, speakability. This becomes maximized for individuals whose only influences are rooted in the homogeneity of control.
The Christophobia of the queer community and the homophobia of the non-gay Christian community must thus both be overcome, says Bohache, in order that Jesus is no longer colonized by one group to the exclusion of others. What Bohache emphasizes is that Jesus is “for” queers as much as he is “for” anyone else. He insists,
“All Christology is interpretation… Christology goes beyond the mere retrieval of historical information in order to impose a ‘meaning’ on that data that transcends time and space and any historical or social categories” (Bohache 2003: 17-18).
He compares the development of a queer image of Christ with that of portrayals of Jesus which transcend historical maleness and historical race, so that abused women might find affinity with a Christa[195] or Chinese people with an ethnically Chinese Christ. Moreover, he states,
“A queer Christology will… seek… to determine what [Jesus’] Christ-ness says to marginalized peoples of all generations… The queer consciousness… seeks to critique heteronormativity and heteropatriarchal patterns of domination. This is where a queer Christology intersects with biblical studies, for we can discern from Jesus’ recorded words and deeds how he felt about power relations” (Bohache 2003: 19).
Since, says Bohache, the “Christ-presence” dwells in all people (Bohache 2003: 21), it is not limited to one historical figure, and therefore is not exclusively epitomized by that one historical figure. He argues that if every human is created in God’s image, then God is every race, age, ability, sex and sexuality – and yet is also more than these, for God still continues to create (Bohache 2003: 22). As we saw in Chapter 2, then, intersexed bodies already are the Body of Christ, just as much as non-intersexed ones; queer theologies may be able to unpack and endorse this more successfully than those more invested in heteronormativity.
Bohache’s queer Christology also resonates with D’Costa’s view that, as Mary carried Christ in her body, so all humans can be co-sustainers of the divine.[196] Bohache says,
“God calls us to do great things. For Mary, that great thing is conceiving the Christ in her body. For queers, that great thing can consist of allowing Christ to take Christ’s place within us: It means conceiving of our self-worth, our creativity, and our birthright as children of God… who can give birth to the Christ. This is good news for every oppressed person, but especially for queers, who are often led to believe that we cannot and should not give birth to anything” (Bohache 2003: 26).
Birthing is important symbolically as one gateway through which new ideologies and social structures are brought about; it is not coincidental that much panic and secrecy around intersexed bodies takes place soon after birth, since the inability of parents and doctors to identify sex easily in the case of genital ambiguity is really a case of an inability to initiate the child seamlessly into a particular social and ideological story. Control of birthing is control of what is and is not allowed to move through into membership of the legitimate conceptual community, but the separation of “birthing” from procreation in Bohache’s narrative means that “birthing” is no longer limited to those who can or will have fertile, contraception-free penis-in-vagina sex. The privileges afforded nuclear families and their leadership, so often a foot in the door of leadership in churches and in wider society (despite what might charitably be called an ambivalence toward biological family in Jesus and Paul, and Christianity’s strong tradition of monastic and non-kinship communities), are not, in this account, the domain of heterosexuals alone – and thus not the domain of clearly-sexed people alone either. This should resonate strongly with a Christian tradition whose children have been gained through adoption as well as birth, who are often born again when already old, whose founder himself sometimes appeared transgressive of biological kinship loyalties.[197] Clear sex and biologically fertile relationships are less necessary in this new kind of economy, which renders intersex far less problematic on both these counts.
5.4.3 “O Tell Me The Truth About Love”: Truth-Telling and Queer Theologies
A general queer wariness of religion might be seen to stem also from a second broad “characteristic” of queer identity identified by Sweasey, namely a significant conceptual investment in “truth-telling”. “Coming out” in terms of sexuality is imperative, Sweasey argues, if a fulfilling emotional life is to be promoted (Sweasey 1997: 35). This has led to a suspicion of forms of religion which will not allow adherents to “tell the whole truth” about themselves – significantly, though not exclusively, in terms of sexuality.[198] Ken Stone appeals to queer’s tendency to break down divisions between what have been traditionally considered public and private modes of discourse and “realms of intimacy” (Stone 2005: 69-70) – just as it is invested in breaking down other binary divisions – so that matters of sex and sexuality need not be hushed up in queer discourse, or kept out of the public sphere. This has also been drawn out in other gay/queer theological scholarship: Robert Hamilton Simpson warns that cognitive dissonance “between theological reflection and lived sexual experience” leads to “flawed pastoral practice” (Simpson 2005: 99), fatal if the church is to care for the whole person. James Alison goes so far as to say,
“The experience of many gay[199] people is that the Church in some way or other kills us… Typically our inclusion within the structures of Church life comes at a very high price: that of agreeing not to speak honestly, of disguising our experience with a series of euphemisms, of having to maintain, through a coded language shared with other ‘insiders’ within the system, a double life” (Alison 2002: 400).
The “don’t ask, don’t tell” protocol for homosexual ordinands, clergy and others is not good enough. Of course, people deemed “straight” or otherwise unremarkable can also find it expedient to keep quiet about certain beliefs or practices in church settings; Alison holds, however, that gay people in particular tend to be demonized as a group solely on the basis of this one aspect of their identities, their “tendency to commit acts considered to be gravely objectively disordered” (Alison 2002: 400).
This resonates with the experiences of some intersexed people in church settings; one Southern Baptist ex-pastor in the US reports losing his pastorate of five years because people did not understand his chromosomal make-up as a genetic chimera, and because of opposition to his web-based ministry to intersexed and transgendered individuals. This man was also told by his Director of Missions that he needed counselling to rid himself of his “female side”, and that he would not recommend him to any other Southern Baptist churches who were seeking new ministers. Other pastors, whom he had considered friends, cancelled his preaching engagements at their own churches (Curry 2006). Sally Gross reports that her superior in the Dominican order while she was a Roman Catholic priest seemed to connect her intersex condition with paedophilia and sexual abuse, and “was almost determined to see this as a perverse moral choice” (speaking in van Huyssteen 2003). Although it is important to recognize that intersex conditions are, for many people, first and foremost medical conditions rather than sexual identity conditions; and that some church communities may be more likely to accept individuals whose difference stems from a biological condition like Klinefelter’s syndrome than from what appears to be a “chosen” or otherwise non-biologically-caused state; this distinction is not in fact a particularly helpful one. It is not that intersexed people must be welcomed as full members because their condition is biological and unchosen; it is more that a disruption is needed of the binarization of what biological/non-biological, chosen/unchosen, and normal/pathological are and imply in the first place. To figure intersex as non-ethically-reprehensible because it is biological does not aid a subversion of the norms which render other disruptive states such as transsexualism pathological or ethically perverse. Moreover, other unchosen physical states such as impairment have not, as we have seen, entirely escaped being figured as having an underlying moral implication, so to call something ethically non-problematic simply on the grounds that it is biological does not necessarily go far enough.
The phenomenon of truth-telling in queer has been interpreted differently by other writers. For Elizabeth Stuart, part of the “truth” of queer theology in particular is that it is a theology and stands in a theological tradition. It is imperative, for Stuart, that any queer “disruption” of Christianity is constructive and draws on existing tradition, rather than simply tearing down, or this would be to deny the truth of its own genealogy. It must thus stand in the context of the history of the Church, even where this has been exclusive or inhospitable in the past (Stuart 2003: 103-5; cf. Soskice 1996: 28-30). Non-theological queer theory successfully questions the prevailing order; but, argues Stuart, because it tends so easily to utter nihilism, queer still needs God (Stuart 2003: 105-6). Malcolm Edwards concurs that queer theology must not “erase” or “ignore” God, noting,
“When we read queer theology, perhaps one of the most striking features is the absence of talk about God… And indeed there are other tasks which seem more urgent than talking about God – such as securing a safe environment in which we may talk openly about God as gay people… But… we must recognize that talk about God is also about how we live together” (Edwards 1997: 74-5).
If theology itself pushes out God, then it has become ideology (and idolatry) (Gorringe 2004: 121). The preparation of the “kingdom”, then, is to be played out in queer but still Christian ways. Parodying sex and gender by refusing to conform to generally accepted norms where these do not authentically “fit” is part of what allows the exposure of “the other world breaking through” (Stuart 2003: 108) – which is crucial, for “the Church… must play out gender and sexuality in such a way as to reveal their lack of eschatological significance” (Stuart 2003: 114). Crucially for Stuart, the end (finishing) of sex and gender is not an end (telos) in itself; rather, it points to and is part of something in God. Stuart says,
“All our cultural identities are placed under eschatological erasure. Heterosexuality and homosexuality and maleness and femaleness are not of absolute importance, they are not determinative in God’s eyes and in so far as any of us have behaved as if they are we are guilty of the grave sin of idolatry” (Stuart 2003: 107).
Queer in itself cannot be the goal; instead, queer talk about God is itself part of what will build a community where queer ideals and methodologies continually occur and blossom without being crystallized to the point of stagnation.
This notion of truth-telling also clearly resonates with the ethical problems surrounding the secrecy or deception often attached to surgery for intersex, particularly in young children. As we saw in the testimonies of people who had undergone surgery for intersex, being lied to and kept in the dark was often felt to be more harmful than knowing more fully about an intersex condition. In this way, too, the truth-telling bent of queer theories and queer theologies might inform future models of best practice for responding to intersex.
Althaus-Reid is less inclined than Stuart to insist that queer theology is necessarily rooted in the traditions of the Church, seeing a more deep-rooted legacy of what might broadly be termed sexual abuse and implying that queer theology’s truth-telling lies more in exposing and resisting this. Althaus-Reid says,
“What we need is to remake our past, challenging the notion of established links between past and present, or between origins and identity. For queer, indecent theologies are theologies of disruption which do not look for legitimization in the past or for a memory of a harmonious trajectory” (Althaus-Reid 2004a: 109).
This is certainly discomfiting, for it raises questions about whether queer theology stands in the tradition of Christian theology at all or whether it is something entirely distinct. In one sense it utterly draws upon theological history, looking to the traditions of broad characteristics of God which have often been “disappeared” – weakness, brokenness, concern for and solidarity with the outsider – and figuring itself over against strands of Christianity seen as distortions of justice. In another sense, however, it sometimes (as in Althaus-Reid’s statement above) consciously states a wish not to be identified in light of mainstream theological history or biases. It is sometimes criticized for being too obscure, for being based in theory more than in activism (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid refute this and other criticisms in 2004: 9-15). Queer theory in general, and some queer readings of Scripture in particular, have similarly been criticized for failing to provide enough ground for clear political engagement, as, for example, in Guest 2005: 48-9. In fact, however, following from Halperin’s concern that queer should be emptied “of its referentiality or positivity”, that queerness should be preserved “as a resistant relation rather than as an oppositional substance” (Halperin 1995: 113), it may be crucial that queer theology is not more prescriptive or “practical”, lest this lead to the kinds of concretizing or taming of queer about which Halperin and others have expressed suspicion. Nonetheless, there is potential for queer theology to critique and challenge mainstream theology from its position of inside-outside: being utterly familiar with the ground, but also cognizant of a different vantage-point which takes in marginal bodies and identities; voices, issues and notions of (moral and political) right and good. This is important, for
“Theology… needs to understand how time-conditioned is its language and thought; how what it assumes it knows needs to be critically assessed. It needs to understand also the kinds of bodies its own discourse has been implicated in producing” (Ward 2004: 74).
Moreover, argues Althaus-Reid, what is necessarily given up in a queer re-examination of Christianity will never be what is truly good or truly God. She suggests that in asking a question like “can Christianity survive a disentangling of ideology and Christology?”, or “would Christ survive a non-redemptive theology?”, the answer will only be “no” if theology clings to cultural and economic metaphors “of limited value” rather than being willing to expand its images of Christ and of God (Althaus-Reid 2007: 300). Christ will always remain present in queer theology, because queer theology is concerned with the lives of those whom Christ loves (2007: 300). “It is a sense of discontinuity which brings revelation”, she holds, “not un-revised traditions” (2007: 300). It might be retorted that queer theology is no more bound to tell the “truth” about God than are the traditions it critiques; however, what is crucial about the kind of queer theology exhorted by Althaus-Reid and others is that it stands in the liberating-prophetic tradition, with its “plumb-line” of justice, explicitly focusing on issues of marginality and poverty, not only difference. This is what it really means to tell the truth about love.
5.4.4 Enslaved by Love: Counter-Cultural Embodiment and Transgressive Sex
As we have seen, it has sometimes been argued that existence as man or as woman is the only authentic expression of human existence, and that any other configuration should not be embraced. However, as we have also seen, such assertion may belong more to heterosexual norms than to more inherent truths about humanity. Embracing the reality of one’s body as it is – as intersexed or as impaired, for example – might be an important aspect of building a positive identity not devalued by social norms which negate unusual bodies and sexed configurations. Truth-telling is important for both intersex and for queer, and the truth of embracing a body which does not bolster heteronormative standards is profoundly counter-cultural and even prophetic. In contrast to suspicions that religion can negate truth-telling, some of Sweasey’s interviewees also suggest that people who identify as queer might actually find it easier to embrace religion and lead alternative, activist, counter-cultural lives than do non-queer people, for they are less likely to be tied into the pattern of children-mortgage-steady job, and concomitantly have more freedom to stand outside the economic structures of society. Some argue that queer relationships are based more on quality of friendship, rather than institutional or hierarchical patterns (see Stuart 1995), though this varies hugely across queer subcultures; but those queer relationships which consciously seek to be based in equality and reciprocity rather than domination and manipulation (and, likewise, similar “heterosexual” relationships, which, it might be argued, are always already queer because they refuse hegemonies of oppression; Bohache, too, counts the “supportively heterosexual” as queer – Bohache 2003: 9) might help to lead to conceptions of relationships between God and humanity which are similarly mutually affirmative and stimulating of growth.
Queer people are also, argues Sweasey, likely to be more comfortable embracing the changing or uncertain aspects of religion (as opposed to static, “fundamentalist” conceptions, in Sweasey’s language) because they may have found that such liminality chimes with other aspects of their lives (Sweasey 1997: 45). A questioning of the heterosexual matrix disrupts the very God imaginatively constructed within this matrix (Schneider 2001: 213-4) and of God’s existence in distinction from humans.[200] Adherents to queer theologies might, then, be more willing to explore (and might have more invested in) religious diversity and plurality than those for whom overarching, monolithic metanarratives have not proven so problematic.[201]
Another possible advantage of coming to religion out of a queer positionality, suggests Sweasey, is that many queer people claim to have what might be considered an unusually strong sense of being embodied, and a lack of shame about bodies and sexual encounter which contrasts, they assert, with that found in society at large (Sweasey 1997: 101). Holly E. Hearon concurs that “GLBTI[202] communities revel in bodies. They know, in a way that heterosexuals can often ignore, that you cannot really know who you are until you come to grips with who you are in your body” (Hearon 2006: 612). This is not to say that only or all queer people have had positive experiences of embodiment. The sense, rather, is that, through their heightened appreciation of corporeality, some queer individuals might enable others (queer and non-queer) to remember and retrace aspects of the tradition (such as positive attitudes toward incarnation and the real processes of real bodies) which have been lost in less body-affirming strands of Protestantism in particular. Theologies which endorse and celebrate even bodies which have been problematic in other contexts (such as socio-medical constructions of sickness and health) might provide a welcoming home for people who feel ambivalent about their own bodies – including many people with intersexed and impaired bodies. Intersexed people who have not undergone surgical intervention and who do not like their bodies in their natural states might be encouraged that their bodies need not be typical in order to be beautiful or celebrated; those who feel alienated from their bodies as a direct result of surgery or other medical intervention might be encouraged to mourn or grieve the loss of their erstwhile bodies as an ongoing process even as they come to inhabit their present ones more peacefully.
In general, suspects Sweasey, queer people may be less likely than others to “close off” possible areas of experience, or of belief, before having explored them. The embrasure by queer people of unusual sexual lifestyles and activities can either be perceived as nihilistic decadence lacking benchmarks for what is desirable, respectable (or, indeed, moral) activity, or, more positively, as a refusal to be limited by many of the arguably arbitrary inhibitions which quash non-queer people. Mike Fox, a Christian involved with S/M practices, was, reports Sweasey, initially repulsed when he found himself aroused by images of Jesus’ crucifixion; later, however, Fox said,
“God has given me my sexuality and it’s as much part of me as my belief in God. There is absolutely nothing which God cannot accept of me… God knows all of me, including my desires, and loves them as part of me. So, no matter how sadistic or masochistic they are, they can still be beautiful, wholesome, pure, positive, life-affirming and valuable, because as a part of who I am they are being worked upon by God” (in Sweasey 1997: 91).
Although Fox was keen to assure Sweasey that, for him, S/M was not about punishment per se but about the pleasure attached to the physical sensation of pain (Sweasey 1997: 91), his statement above is interesting as an instance of someone no longer willing to deny his sexual identity also being unwilling to deny that God can be intimately involved with such identities. There might still, and always, be aspects of some behaviours held to be incompatible with certain tenets of Christianity: it would be difficult to argue that any kind of non-consensual sex, such as rape, could be deemed just or pleasurable for everyone concerned.[203] However, in the questioning of heterosexual norms there is potential for at least considering the possible spiritual and theological merits of non-“vanilla” sexual activity. For example, Kathy Rudy holds that communal sexual activity, as in some gay settings, need not be demonized as impersonal, non-relational or entirely alien to Christian ideals, but can in fact speak deeply of hospitality and welcome in ways that marriage-centred families (often deemed the only legitimate arena for sexual activity) do not always manage (Rudy 1996). Robert Goss makes a particularly interesting reading of the gender codes in Ephesians 5 in light of polyamory:
“The model of Christ as bridegroom is limited as long as we accept the notion of church as bride without comprehending the collectivity of the church. When the church is understood as a collective of countless men and women, married and unmarried, with a variety of sexual orientations and gender expressions, then Christ becomes the multi-partnered bridegroom to countless Christian men and women… Christ is polyamorous in countless couplings and other erotic configurations… The lover is a sexual outlaw, not a bridegroom as the sanitized Jewish and Christians read the text” (Goss 2004: 61).
Of course, the erotic need not (and should not) be inevitably conflated with the genital; it is possible to envisage sexual and erotic loves for multiple persons without necessarily engaging in genito-sexual activity with all these persons.[204] A reading like Goss’s, though, at least exposes the oddness of the one-body-many-parts imagery for the Church, and what its logical extension might imply for the bridegroom/bride imagery too (as I touched on earlier). Moreover, not only does Christ love these multiple bodies sexually, but the multiple bodies are, at once, his own body, which he also loves sexually (Robinson 1952: 52) – freeing masturbation once and for all from its furtive associations with the condemnation of Onan?
Other queer readings of Scripture, particularly of the “texts of terror” in Leviticus which appear incontrovertibly to outlaw homosexual activity, have also begun to open the way for exploring unusual and even apparently transgressive sexual activity; see, for example, David Tabb Stewart’s entry on Leviticus (Stewart 2006) in The Queer Bible Commentary and Michael Carden’s entry on Genesis (Carden 2006). Carden points out that when, in Genesis 19, Lot’s daughters get him drunk and have sex with him, believing there are no other men on earth, the resulting children, Moab and Ammon, become the fathers of the Moabites and Ammonites. Ruth, a Moabite, and Naamah, an Ammonite, both appear in Jesus’ genealogy.[205] So it is in apparently reprehensible sexual behaviour, which is both non-consensual and incestuous, that
“not only do the daughters act to save the human race but they also initiate the line of the Messiah. They can act this way because the deity’s intervention has destroyed the interlocking systems of power and privilege under which they were subjected” (Carden 2006: 39).
This does not unproblematically sanction all non-consensual or incestuous sex, but it does complicate the seemingly self-evident rationales outlawing this kind of sexual activity. Patrick S. Cheng’s commentary on Galatians in the same volume reads the insistence by some Christian fundamentalists that queer people must renounce their sexualities in order to be legitimate members of the Christian community as “akin to the false teachers in Galatia who insisted on circumcision under Jewish law as a requirement for following Jesus Christ” (Cheng 2006: 625). Actually, the entire gist of Galatians 3, says Cheng, is that God recognized and respected the faith of Abra(ha)m even before the Law was revealed on Sinai. In a sense, Jesus is the end of the Law; so the Law, even if it does outlaw male-on-male sexual activity, is not necessarily normative for individuals post-Christ.[206] This might be particularly relevant for Christian attitudes toward “legitimate” sexual activity for those with atypical genitalia as well as those who use their “typical” genitalia in atypical ways. Questions like “Is it less wrong to allow someone to penetrate your anus if you are an XX individual with an absent or very small vagina than it is if you are an XX individual with a vagina, or an XY individual?” may seem unnecessarily specific, but a Christian sexual model which rules out – or at least advocates minimizing – non penis-in-vagina sexual activity already begins to negate the possible sexual activity of many intersexed individuals, as well as of those who choose non penis-in-vagina sex for other reasons. The new order, says Cheng, is not about total license; rather, it is about being enslaved in a different way, not by fear to the Law (including the law of sexual legalism), but by love to one another (Cheng 2006: 627). This should go for the kinds of sexual-bodily activity given theological sanction too.
5.4.5 “Lazarus, Come Out!”: Friendly Strands
Such readings as those which appear in The Queer Bible Commentary (Guest, Goss, West and Bohache 2006) flesh out another tendency identified by Sweasey – that is, the working by queer individuals to draw out “friendly” strands from a largely unfriendly tradition, sometimes reclaiming phrases, pronouncements, poems or stories which resonate with their own particular experiences (Sweasey 1997: 32, Simpson 2005: 103, Althaus-Reid 2000: 114, West 1999: 33-34). Queer readings of whole biblical books had been attempted even before The Queer Bible Commentary.[207] However, the exercise of tracing queer-friendly strands in scripture is also, often, about a simple acknowledgement that they are not there; Timothy R. Koch stresses that his homoerotic approach to reading scripture does not mean insisting that “The Bible likes us, it really likes us!” (Koch 2001: 11). Robin Hawley Gorsline, in his commentary on 1 and 2 Peter (Gorsline 2006) comments,
“What queers may not do is take this text [1 Peter] as a sourcebook for strategy and tactics to achieve liberation. Instead, we may read it with profit if our goal is to learn what not to do, how not to be in alliance or solidarity with the oppressed… Queers recognize the author of 1 Peter as one of the ‘don’t rock the boat’ types, but thanks to the author’s address to others in his community we also recognize our fellow boat-rockers” (Gorsline 2006: 732).
Michael Carden concurs that to depatriarchalize or homosexualize a text like Genesis would be to negate the extent to which it simply is ancient, alien, and strange to modern sensibilities (Carden 2006: 25). Similarly, says Laurel C. Schneider, queer female exegetes might
“…have to face the very real possibility that the Bible is simply not a source for imagining female homoeroticism in the divine-human relationship except through extrapolation by example from the male tales read queerly here. There is little here to offer queer female sexualities or even straight female sexualities as they are actually experienced in the world, and no little danger in further eliding them altogether” (Schneider 2001: 220).
Despite the identification of some with eunuchs, the fact remains that intersexed and transsexual individuals are not explicitly mentioned in the Bible. However, this does not necessarily negate the value of using such a “queer” methodology – of reading into a biblical text more than is strictly there as well as reading out of it. Even the former kind of reading, though it transcends the text itself, might “yield [fruit] for our contemporary thoughts about a divine being whose founding tales could include such a deed” (Schneider 2001: 215). Moreover, whilst it might be argued that some queer (subversive, disruptive, possibly sexualized) readings of certain traditions are inappropriate or anachronistic, it is also important to be mindful of the fact that the normalized, possibly heterosexist readings which tend to be disseminated are often not necessarily any more faithful to the spirit of the text. Córdova Quero argues that the process of queering the past via historical texts “is a double process that implies the opening up of the space of the historical event to new discourses as well as the opening up of the methods and procedures of the sciences attempting to analyse that case” (Córdova Quero 2004: 27). He argues,
“To queer the past is not to transplant gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transsexuals into the past, but to disrupt monolithic discourses that oppress historical periods” (Córdova Quero 2004: 28).
So it is possible that David and Jonathan were lovers, as is sometimes claimed on the basis of passages such as 1 Samuel 18:1-5 [208] and all that ensues;[209] it is also possible that their ardent, passionate friendship was just that, with no specifically sexual or “romantic” element.[210] Ken Stone concludes that, whilst it is not possible to arrive at any definitive answer about the exact nature of David and Jonathan’s relationship, the very fact that it has multiple interpretations can be read as “queer” (K. Stone 2006: 208). Even if it would be entirely anachronistic to dub them “gay” per se[211] (for this reason, Córdova Quero prefers the terminology of “homoeroticism” rather than “gayness” when dealing with pre-19th century figures – Córdova Quero 2004: 31), the story of their relationship can still help us to explore why same-sex friendships, physically sexual or otherwise, often contain a fierce loyalty and depth of fervour and equality that heterosexual relationships can lack.[212]
More than taking on the biblical narratives wholesale, then, it may be useful when formulating queer and intersexed theologies to employ what Althaus-Reid terms “textual poaching” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 112). She notes, for example, that “one element which people at the margins usually ‘poach’ is that elusive fluidity of Jesus, that fluidity which… presents round edges and becomes ambiguous” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 112). Rather than expecting the Bible specifically to address particular issues, then, says Althaus-Reid, especially when acknowledging that biblical texts are only one part of the devotional “toolkit” of the marginalized, it is better to “let life circulate and only hang on to the radical principles in the Bible which subsume the rest: justice, peace and love/solidarity” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 130). This also chimes with Timothy R. Koch’s suggestion that “cruising” the Scriptures might be more instructive or realistic for queers than some of the other apologetic methodologies which have tended to be employed.[213] It is possible that intersexed people might also be able to draw on some of these strands, not necessarily in identical ways to LGBT people (which might erase the specificity of all their particular situations) but in ways appropriate to themselves – as, for example, Gross has begun to do in her discussion of intersex and Scripture (Gross 1999).
5.4.6 Autobiography and Incarnation: Further Affinities Between Intersex and Queer Theologies
Liminality is important, but, as we have seen, the erasure of difference as sited in gender and sexuality seems to be one of the biggest stumbling-blocks to unity in the Churches, both for those who cannot accept that homosexual individuals are not stubbornly sinful or distorted, and for those who have worked hard to rebuild a positive identity and self-esteem in the face of social and ecclesiastical prejudice and are loath to relinquish it now. However, counters Robert E. Goss, blurring the boundaries is not necessarily negative, for
“Bisexual theologies will certainly undermine gay/lesbian and heterosexual theological discourse. Both gay/lesbian and heterosexual theologies subscribe to the politics of otherness with an either/or paradigm while bisexual theologies represent a subversive alternative to either/or thinking” (Goss 1999: 52).
What Goss terms “bisexual theologies” – using the word in a similar sense to Althaus-Reid’s “bi/sexual” – could encompass intersex, masculine and feminine identities, homosexuality, bisexuality and so on, for they refer not necessarily specifically to discourses based in sexual interaction with more than one sex, but rather in all non-binary attitudes. Where better is the paradox of differentiation in unity demonstrated than in Trinitarian conceptions of a God in relationship who can be profoundly changed through interaction with the creation whilst still remaining profoundly God (and where the three Persons retain their own identities whilst all sharing in the nature of God)? In fact, predicts Goss,
“Queer theologies… will not ever abandon identity and gender as categories of knowledge or liberative practice but will render them open and contestable to various cultural meanings that promote coalitional politics” (Goss 1999: 53).
It is possible that difference might be actually retained more authentically the fewer artificial demarcations or arbitrary groupings are put in place, for this might sidestep clustering around only some or overweening characteristics. An often-downplayed, but no less important issue is the need to acknowledge what happens when a category like “queerness” comes to have so much invested in it that those who wish to claim the positive aspects of affirming the category sometimes negate other aspects of their identities which do not appear to chime easily with it. For example, Patrick S. Cheng, who describes himself as a queer of Asian descent, writes of the temptation to reject one’s own culture or ethnicity, and other individuals who share one’s culture or ethnicity, because of the heavy investment in standards of young, white, masculine beauty often considered the ideal in gay-queer culture (Cheng 2006: 629). In his queer reading of Galatians, however, noting the book’s fairly antinomian thrust, Cheng says,
“Galatians… frees us from the yoke of slavery to the implicit codes of conduct that are imposed by the dominant white queer community” (Cheng 2006: 629).
This issue of the acknowledgement of ethnicity and other categories of identity which may not easily be embraced by gay-queer ideals is one reason why, for Isherwood and Althaus-Reid, queer theology must be profoundly autobiographical, drawing on and giving import to “experiences which traditionally have been silenced in theology” (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 6). These might include sexual experiences, particularly those from outside the heteronormative stable, but an appreciation of multiple sexual experiences is also a way into an appreciation of multiple human locations and experiences generally (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 6). As we have seen, autobiographical writings are also particularly important in considering the experiences of intersexed people, especially given that under the early surgery paradigm intersexed voices have often been negated or undervalued. The work of Iain Morland is an important reminder that the voices narrating intersex are always multiple, that there is no such thing as monolithic intersexed experience any more than there is monolithic female or black experience. Engaging with polyphonic narratives means engaging with this tension, the “queerness” of what may appear to be a lack of cohesion or consensus in intersex history, which will also feed into intersexed theologies. This tension also chimes with the “both-ness” or “at-once-ness” which Isherwood, Althaus-Reid and others have traced in queer theologies, which question sexual norms and power structures and expose their place in theology, without either erasing sexual desire itself or reducing everything to sex.
Isherwood and Althaus-Reid say,
“[Queer theology] identifies moments of sexual resistance in church traditions, or even alternative church traditions; it exposes the profound homophobia of theology and the sexual assumptions in doctrines; and finds neglected areas of attention in theological discussions. More than anything else, queer theology is an incarnated, body theology” (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 6).
Incarnation is crucial to this theology, they argue, because in the incarnation of Christ is held the tension between human and divine which opens the way to transcend other seemingly gaping chasms of signification and difference too. This occurred and occurs in a bodily body, one made of flesh, one born messily and bloodily (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 7) – which means that other messy, bloody, fleshly, libidinous and rejected bodies can also be part of this human-divine story. The claim that “male theologians have preferred to distance themselves from these all too earthy moments” (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 7) is not quite a fair one, but their point stands that, wherever theology tends unproblematically to elevate the spiritual over the carnal, it also tends to displace real bodies with their real needs and desires (including sexual needs and desires) (Althaus-Reid 2004a: 99). Isherwood and Althaus-Reid say,
“Queer theory has facilitated the irruption of the ultimate marginalized in Christianity… Different ways of amatory knowing express themselves in different ways of befriending, imagining God and compassion and creating different structures of relationships” (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 5).
We have seen that notions of incarnation, and engagements with bodiliness which may be simultaneously positive and problematic, are also central to theologies from impairment and transsexualism. Intersex, too, can be a site for embodied theologies which refuse to downplay the real and recalcitrant qualities of bodies – bodies which may be deemed problematic either by individuals or by communities, but which are also loci for God’s solidarity and interaction in and with human beings.
The embrasure of uncertainty and provisionality in queer and marginal theologies, particularly their acceptance of multiple genders and sexualities, is often uncomfortable for a Church which has tended to thrive on givenness, singularity and grand metanarratives (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 5). But the most dearly-held doctrines of theology have taken decades and centuries to be thrashed out, although the Church may behave today as if the Nicene Creed had been found neatly written out and folded inside the grave-clothes in the empty tomb. Isherwood and Althaus-Reid argue that incarnation is messy and uncertain – that the enigma of Jesus’ humanity-cum-divinity is embodied in his blurred, precarious birth to a child-mother (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 7) – and that queer theology acknowledges this where other traditions have often shied away from the inconclusiveness:
“Queer theology does not operate in easy answers and tidy doctrine: truly honouring our incarnation does not allow for such neat packaging and comfort. Incarnation and queer theory are splendid, passionate and risk-compelling companions – they promise nothing and they offer everything” (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 8).
Such “messiness” should not be cleaned-up, sanitized or bowdlerized, for to do so is to make neat and safe what is actually recalcitrant and profoundly risky and to limit the spheres “appropriate” for human encounter with the divine. Like queer theologies, theologies from intersex might be considered very dangerous, threatening heteronormative structures and economies based on exclusion and lack. But this is a good danger, for it is a danger which comes in admitting the contingency and limitedness of human constructs which oppress and kill, and of giving ourselves over into a new order where ideologies of fear will no longer stand.
Part of embracing the “danger” in queer theologies, then, must also always acknowledge that even dearly-held productions of God, Jesus and the Virgin rest in particular (usually heteronormative) sexual narratives (Althaus-Reid 2000: 96); giving up “beloved” sexual/theological ideologies which one has come to realize are based in injustice might be as painful and complicated as leaving an abusive lover (Isherwood and Althaus-Reid 2004: 3). But even formulations of the Godhead must be “indecented”, for even God has been “genderized” through prayers and proclamations – as have Christians, particularly poor Christians, who have been made to pray using liturgy which “fulfils the role of gender repetition and re-linking of sexual stereotypes with divine categories” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 127). An example might be the notion that “good” Christian women – particularly in Latin America, whence Althaus-Reid’s theology is inspired – must be meek, subservient women. Rather, “to contradict and to present new sexual models is… a prophetic task” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 193), for it may be transvestites, homosexuals, “unfeminine” woman or “unmasculine” men who bring new insights into naturalized assumptions in theology. Sexual presuppositions must be doubted and questioned (Althaus-Reid 2000: 69), for to denaturalize sexual norms will be to question economic and political hegemonies too.
For example, the queer elements of popular faith in Latin America have been explored at length by Marcella Althaus-Reid, but her examples invariably address economic and political as well as sexual exclusion. In one instance, she discusses revered figures such as San La Muerte (St Death), based on the story of a poor, sick, starving and very thin man to whom Jesus gave the gift of healing others (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 158-9). Those who revere San La Muerte must do so secretly, for “his image should not be seen by anybody, except worshippers” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 159), and they often insert a small carved bone featuring an image of the saint under their skin. The “permanence” of the carrying-around of the saint’s image in the worshipper’s body thus stands in contrast to the often insecure economic position of the worshipper in the world. This disjunction is picked up by Althaus-Reid as one element of the “provisionality, inversions, diglosia and different binary allocations” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 159) which sometimes mark out such popular worship. In fact, she says,
“In the worship of San La Muerte, it seems that the familiarity of the poor with death in the midst of everyday life… identifies the provisionality of life as the only constant experience… The worship of San La Muerte is a theological reflection on inversion by rejection: the rejection of the administrative procedures of an organized political life which is meaningless for the poor” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 161-2).
Such worship is queer because it rejects the overarching narratives of economy and sexual morality imposed from outside, by authorities which do not appreciate or address the real needs and desires of the people. It does not accept the monolingual metanarrative of the established Church. (It is for this reason, too, that much queer theology might be characterized stylistically as more irreverent, and more prone to irony and to camp, than other theologies – Althaus-Reid 2007: 290). This means re-examining, and possibly rejecting, other oppressive aspects of the theological canon; for example, as Althaus-Reid explores in a recent essay, the doctrine of redemption as an economic metaphor for salvation based in spiritual debt (Althaus-Reid 2007).[214]
There have, as Althaus-Reid owns, already been multiple theological reflections and enquiries surrounding the femininity of Christ and God (Althaus-Reid 2004a:104), which might be said to have exposed and undermined the “masculinist” bent of much classical theology. However, importantly, argues Althaus-Reid, these various enquiries have not successfully destabilized the category of sex itself (Althaus-Reid 2004a: 106). She says,
“To say that theology is and always has been a reflection rooted in sexual practices means that there is an epistemology which sacralizes sexual exchanges and regulations by a circle of a permanent reconfiguration of the sacred, based on heterosexuality’s symbolic structures and value system… Not only is there an important theological contribution to the formation of heterosexual ideologies in the history of the churches, but that… sexual ideological formation is constitutive of the theological praxis itself” (Althaus-Reid 2004a: 106).
In fact, it is possible (and necessary) to go beyond Althaus-Reid, and to say that theology has been part of formulating not only heterosexual ideology but the ideology of any fixed and prescriptive categories in sex. These are rooted in heteronormativity, but have extended to encompass norms which extend beyond heterosexual acts and social structures in themselves. To be clearly sexed has come to be part of the theological definition of perfection; male and female bodies are the grounds for masculine and feminine cosmically-echoing identities in Barth, and in Augustine post-resurrection bodies still have at least their secondary sexual markers. As we have seen, however, this prescriptivism has impinged upon elements of human life and discourse that are more than sexual. Queer theology, for Althaus-Reid, is thus also always an economic project, because the limitations of neo-liberal capitalism are the limitations of cerebral individualism and monoculture (agricultural and otherwise). Queer stands against “idealism and the theological commercial values of profiting by not identifying multiplicity” (Althaus-Reid 2003a: 110). Economically-limiting sexual presuppositions might include saying that everyone is either male or female, that it is desirable for everyone to be either male or female, that psychological well-being rests upon being either male or female, that males are always masculine and gynephilic, and so on. Althaus-Reid also argues that theology has been colonial, only allowing certain approved “paths” or routes to be taken. It is necessary to travel outside these, to form alliances beyond those sanctioned by the colonizers; to seek God in unfamiliar places, in order not to take on all the colonial assumptions and forced agreements of theological imperialism (Althaus-Reid 2003a: 31-2). Part of this, for queer theology, is acknowledging the “shadow-side” of God. Unless God is allowed to “come out” of the closets of human construction, God’s otherness will always be negated (Althaus-Reid 2003a: 37).
To learn to think in different, other, indecent ways, then, is to allow people “to develop their own identities outside the closure and boundaries of theo/social systems” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 175). The “decentralizing” effect of acknowledging multiple narratives will also help to challenge the more broadly homogenizing effects of globalization (Althaus-Reid 2000: 192), where community traditions and practices are often subsumed to systematization. Indecent theology requires “perversion”, or the taking of different “roads” from those which have been taken before, in order to examine the true nature of that which has become so entrenched as to be invisible. Brazilian theologian Claudio Carvalhaes appeals to “limping” or “a/theological” thought which “tries to slip away from the ontotheological structures of theological discourse” (Carvalhaes 2006: 52); which is prepared to down the tools of power and certainty and to be improper, provisional, to see in a glass darkly and realize reality is opaque (Carvalhaes 2006: 58-9). The notion of “limping” is taken from the results of wrestling a mysterious God, as we are told Jacob did at Peniel (Carvalhaes 2006: 53). Carvalhaes says,
“We long for a presence that never was, but a presence nonetheless. Its presence is revealed by its absence, a sort of déjà vu. I limp because of this encounter, an encounter that disfigured me even though I have never met this angel” (Carvalhaes 2006: 59).
A borrowing from Althaus-Reid’s exploration of rejunte theology is another instance of the way in which the experiences of intersexed people might inform contemporary theology, just as this queer theology does. Rejunte is the name given to the forms of “family” which occur in the slum dwellings of Buenos Aires, where children, parents, step-parents, ex-partners and sundry unconnected individuals are forced to share cramped, vulnerable accommodation. Althaus-Reid says that indigenous rural peoples, who are already marginalized from affluent society, become further excluded when they migrate to urban zones to seek work (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 147). Having lost contact with the traditional networks of family and community support in rural areas, the rejunte slip further and further into monetary poverty. Living under bridges, or in houses made of rags and detritus, there is a continual geographical nomadism, where people regularly return “home” to discover that their dwellings have been bulldozed (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 149-150). In such jeopardous circumstances, where promiscuity and incest are common, privacy scarce, and “personal space” unknown, familial relationships are also always shifting (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 151). Althaus-Reid says,
“Exclusion makes families disperse under the weight of the struggle but the rejunte allows people to come back to the family or move on to another… People may be forgiven for old deeds or partners in disgrace may return not as partners, but as people who are in need of support” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 151).
Although mainstream liberation theology has targeted these people, it has done so by pushing them into sanctioned heterosexual marriages – without acknowledging, says Althaus-Reid, that the idealized heterosexual family is part of the prevalent socio-economic structure that has repressed them (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 152). Now, conventional ideals of privacy, wealth and so on are not only all but unattainable for the rejunte people; it is questionable whether they are even desirable. Althaus-Reid notes that some individuals who have lived in both rejunte and mainstream society prefer the former, for in the slums people are more willing and able to share themselves and their values with others (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 154). Nomadic bodies, suggests Althaus-Reid, are not quieted or settled in the same way as those of people who have permanent homes and infrastructures. Rather, they are bodies in exile, carrying with them various fragments from the journey (Althaus-Reid 2003a: 49). A theology which deals only in certainties where there are no certainties in the homes or interpersonal relationships of the people, then, risks being either an unequivocally untruthful one, or else one invested so strongly in a future-eschatological hope that things will be better and more equitable after death that it utterly fails to address present injustices. Rejunte people have “a bricolage theology which corresponds to their own lives, a mixture of encounters with different understandings… and with the aim of surviving” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 152). In short, says Althaus-Reid,
“The Rejunte Theology unveils the diglotic dialectic of the life of the excluded, exposed to an ecclesial theology and a state discourse which are untranslatable into their lives… Christianity is re-ordered as a different liturgy of open and private spaces” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 162).
Such theology is characterized by its search for authentically liberatory paradigms, and its common themes including love, money, sickness and disgrace (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 153).[215] Althaus-Reid maintains,
“A spiritual bricolage made of a web of fragmented, de-centralized forms of affection and a different understanding of the presence of God among people brings a Queer sense of holiness to the discourse of the spirituality of the poor. A holiness that goes beyond exclusion, nurtured from the solidarity of a God identified as an excluded among excluded” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 157).
This theology acknowledges that not everyone currently has access to the “goods” of society, but also questions the extent to which these “goods” are expedient in the first place. Such attitudes are not defeatist, nor do they suggest that society would not be more just if its goods were shared out more equitably; they simply resist the assumption that everything about affluence trumps everything about poverty (just as it is possible simultaneously to wish one’s child did not have to face the struggles of Down’s syndrome and yet still to find joy in their affection and openness). Moreover, says Althaus-Reid,
“The best and most compassionate efforts in theology should not try to adapt and reformulate institutions such as the family, when the economic agreements surrounding the family no longer exist. New economic and affective ways develop and therefore new ways of loving people and understanding God are unveiled” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 8).
In other words, it is not always appropriate artificially to bulwark institutions or ways of being which are “threatened”, or to suppose that all “goods” are identical in every setting. Similarly, a theology from intersex raises questions about the “goods” of “unambiguous” sex and gender as disseminated in our society. Some intersex activists (and scholars) claim that binary gender is basically an oppressive construction based on a false conception of binary sex (Kessler 1998: 7-9), and that gender signals and categories should be disrupted and eradicated because such binary conceptions limit everyone, not just those who obviously do not fit the paradigm (Kessler 1998: 132). Others maintain that whilst gender might be unambiguous, or positive; while there are (at least in North American and European societies) clear advantages to a two-gender system; there is no need to alter bodies in order to reinforce gender identities. Gender, runs the argument, whilst it should not be done away with altogether, need not necessarily map exactly onto particular patterns of bodies; it is possible to be gendered as feminine without having to have one’s large clitoris or phallus removed (just as transsexuals are already gendered in their new identity even before SRS). At this point there might be a certain tension between theologies of intersex which seek to maintain a liminal or uncertain attitude to sexed identities, and queer theologies which, whilst endorsing the queer suspicion of “identity” itself, are still heavily invested in (for example) identity as a homosexual. This is a similar kind of tension noted in Chapter 4 on disability: is it possible to cluster around, celebrate and invest in a given identity while at the same time opposing societal attitudes which marginalize one on the grounds of that identity?
Such a “bricolage” theology might seem arbitrary or groundless, but actually it is crucial that Christianity recognizes its nomadic, shifting history. Tim Gorringe points out that the Bible itself is made up of a variety of different kinds of literature representing different periods and cultural concerns, and thus “represents a palimpsest of ideologies… This means that this text is not in a position to tout for any one particular ideology” (Gorringe 2004: 117). Does the text’s “mish-mash” status mean it cannot be called the Word of God? No, says Gorringe, for – as Barth held – it is the Bible’s very mixed-up nature which renders it “the possibility of dissonance with and resistance to… general ideology” (Gorringe 2004: 118). Crucially,
“To call a collection of texts ‘the Word of God’ is to say that such a possibility of dissonance is permanent and thorough going, that these texts resist every attempt at colonization and all forms of hegemony” (Gorringe 2004: 118) (original appears in italics).
The Bible is still constantly pushed and pulled by the proponents of particular ideologies to suit their agenda, but the silence also evident in the texts mean that it resists being appropriated in this way. This silence is complex and multi-faceted, for it is the silence sought by Jesus in the desert, the silencing pushed on him by his enemies, and the apparent silence of God in Gethsemane; it is itself dissonant and multiple, but its existence in scripture means that the scriptural witness is always Other than “the deafening clamours of conflicting ideologies” (Gorringe 2004: 120), and thus testifies to the fact that God also cannot be subsumed to any one human ideology (Gorringe 2004: 120). Gorringe does not say so, but it is in this way that even a flawed, compromised tradition can be queered, and in this way that flashes of God can be found in it. The tension, difference and conspicuous silences remain, but it is in and through these that God is found (at least momentarily).
5.5 Some Conclusions
Ken Stone comments that “feminist projects and queer projects, while not reducible to one another, are likely to remain intertwined due to the fact that both sets of projects have a stake in exploring, and contesting, hegemonic notions of proper gendered behaviour” (Stone 2005: 112). Similarly, it seems to me, queer projects and intersex projects, particularly theological ones, are also likely to remain intertwined. Although they, and the concerns of individuals who gather around these, will never be reducible to the same thing, there are areas of commonality and affinity by which these might continue mutually to inform each other, and where there might be individuals who identify with some or all parts of each “identity” (acknowledging that the very category of identity has been questioned and disrupted). One of the strengths of queer political activism has lain in its insistence that it not be fobbed-off, that people who have been excluded from signification on various grounds deserve to be heard. This is important in considering intersex, too, for exclusion on the grounds of bodily configuration or an identity rooted in being intersexed is just as problematic as exclusion on the grounds of sexuality.
Resisting and reappropriating for intersex will necessitate ongoing engagements with work from related disciplines such as sociology and gender studies, but it is important that specifically theological resistance and reappropriation also occurs. Resisting means exposing and challenging violent cultural-ecclesial constructions and interpretations; reappropriating means looking back to the strands of love and justice which run through the tradition alongside those which are abusive. Theology is always already self-queering, since it contains within itself tools for hermeneutical suspicion, for overturning religious and cultural practices which do not meet the demands of love, justice and shalom (a “wholeness” about far more than “completeness”). Importantly, too, theology also already contains within its tradition flashes of acknowledgement that male-and-female is not the whole story of humanity; that there is something irreducible and profoundly holy about bodies since they are the mediators of all our encounters with the divine; that perfection and integrity in God’s order does not always coincide with that deemed perfect and whole in human definition; that God does not always appear or behave as humans might expect or desire.
Although intersexed people do not always or necessarily align themselves with the politically queer, there is, then, a sense in which intersex is, unavoidably, theologically queer. Even alongside the oppressive, sexist aspects of its legacy, there are throughout the Christian tradition instances of the problematizing of unproblematized norms. This begins with the Bible itself: as well as the disruption of social, racial and sex binaries as in Galatians 3:28, there is broader evidence of God’s new order transgressing expectations (as in the Markan portrayal of Jesus as a Messiah who failed to be quite the Messiah expected by many), and of God Godself behaving contrary to anticipation (as in Job). A continued disturbance of human categories and binaries can be promoted by the scriptural narratives, even if it also contains elements of exclusivity and distortion. A clear strand of concern for justice and the marginalized also survives in the tradition: heteronormativity and the exclusion of homosexual, queer, transsexual, intersexed and impaired people always have repercussions for economic and social well-being, and thus cannot persist in a just order. The voices of Cheryl Chase and other pioneers of intersex rights are prophetic ones, and these prophets have had the distinction of beginning to be recognized in their own times. However, as we have seen, intersex and queer theologies are also eschatological, so along with the progress that has already been made in reforming surgical and related practices, there is also still an awareness of how much is still to be done. The voices of theologians who work in solidarity with those who are intersexed, and, it is to be hoped, of those who are intersexed themselves, must continue to query and critique the social and religious norms which curb the multiplicity and possibility of the sexed bodies which make up the Body of Christ.
Realizing and Remaking: Conclusions
“I really have a place in the world. I really am a human being, a very valid human being. It’s just wonderful. I am very proud to come out as an [intersex] person. The world has tried to make us feel like freaks… I felt like a freak most of my life, but look at me. I’m just a human being like everybody else” (Barbara, in Preves 2003: 133).
Barbara, interviewed by Sharon Preves for the latter’s sociological study into intersex and identity, speaks of finding her place in a world from which she had felt excluded. Barbara’s eventual discovery of her “place” was sited in a realization that she was “a human being like everybody else”, despite her difference from non-intersexed people. It might be said that to be a human like everybody else is simultaneously to be a human unlike everybody else: unique, distinct, matchless. To be rendered freakish is to be rendered meaningless – to be excluded from the signification which “normal” people share, because one’s difference is deemed to have deeper or more threatening import than that of others. Intersex itself has been stigmatized in this way, as an aspect of variation excluded from signification to the extent that intersexed bodies’ configurations have had to be altered in order to render them (acceptably) meaningful. Throughout this thesis I have sought to render intersex, specifically, theologically meaningful, and to query the strands within theology which have privileged heteronormativity and unambiguous sex. A lack of knowledge about intersex has contributed to the hegemonic nature of heteronormativity in churches, affecting not just sexual moralities but Church teaching about gender, marriage, the family, economics and much more. These have fed back into the norms of societies which cannot recognize intersex as anything but aberration, somehow a failure to make sense. However, things are already more complicated than a male-and-female picture allows, and I hope this thesis will be the beginning of an ongoing conversation between theology and intersex, and will prompt a re-examination of unreflective binary sex-gender normativities.
A project of education on and engagement with issues of intersex and otherwise atypical physicality or sex-gender configuration in the Church would enable far more appropriate pastoral care and non-hysterical debate. This is crucial, given the ongoing ethical and pastoral consequences of treatments of intersex up until now. Statistically, intersexed people are in a minority, but intersex must be more than a minority issue for theology, since an appreciation of the complexity and diversity of human embodiment, biology and sex identity has implications for male-and-female heterosexual norms deeply naturalized across theological discourse. The frequency or commonality of a given bodily state should not necessarily correspond with the amount of consideration given it: it is not that the more intersexed people there are, the more their stories and voices deserve to be heard. Rather, it should be possible for theology to accept that intersex is statistically far less common than XX-female and XY-male births (though not as uncommon as it may at first appear), but to retain conceptual and pastoral tools for engaging with it nonetheless.
This is important both for the sake of intersexed individuals in themselves, and because of the implications intersex has for theology more broadly. In short, intersex disturbs all human sex. Reflection on the existence of intersexed bodies which differ from the expected physiological norms may break down theology’s investment in the cult of all-encompassing male-and-female in a way that homosexuality and transsexualism – sometimes explained away as “chosen” identities which can be further marginalized as “sinful” or “perverse” – have not. Intersexed bodies have been and continue to be sites of tension about autonomy and self-direction, contested goods, and the nature of sex itself. Some of the ostensible “truths” about bodies in which theology has had particular ideological investment – such as the “truth” that every human body is solely and ineluctably either male or female – are on shaky ground in light of both the existence of intersex, and of theology’s fundamental responsibility to resist or queer systems and structures of injustice and exclusion. The binary sex-gender model is hegemonic, feeding narrow constructs of goodness and legitimacy and failing to acknowledge those whose body-stories it disallows. Theologies which claim an immovable male-and-female model, with no conceptual or pastoral space for exceptions, likewise protect and fetishize a non-existent truth, shifting allegiance from God to human ideology. However, theology has helped to construct discourse around goodness and legitimacy for bodies, and can help to change it too. Part of theology’s resistance of ideology must involve accepting the provisionality of human sex, and of human systems generally, whilst at the same time acknowledging that since humans really partake in building and constituting the new creation, what we do in, to and through bodies profoundly matters.
Sex itself is bolstered by the customs and standards of society, which are provisional human standards despite having been co-opted to back-up “overarching” theological models. Since biological reproduction is necessary for the continuation of the species, some sexed characteristics do persist: it is male-and-female as a socially-limiting construct, not male and female as gamete possibilities (among a range of other possibilities), which pass away in Christ. However, if male-and-female is passing away, then it need not stand for or encompass everyone; human bodies need not be altered to “fit” it. If there is to be no marriage or procreation in heaven, there is no need for gametes or gender roles to universally reinscribe procreative sexed norms. Anticipating this state of affairs through the transforming love of God will enable a ceding of the desires to control, to concretize, to oppress – and, for theology, to speak over, sanction and discipline various kinds of bodies. The Church must speak with those whose bodies and souls are written out of legitimacy, rather than propounding models of sex and sexuality which only favour decent, heteronormative bodies and lives. This is a real and realizable prospect: getting beyond male-and-female as a system of privilege is possible in the new order, the eschatology-come-to-fruit which is humanity’s telos. The end of male-and-female, “no more male-and-female in Christ”, means the end of exclusivity, heteronormativity, and a model of complementarity which erodes difference even as it endorses it. This also means no more taxonomies of goodness or perfection attached to how a body meets heteronormative criteria for maleness or femaleness, and no more annexations of intersexed bodies by misplaced moralistic pronouncements about how a small, decent clitoris or a large, decent penis should look.
As I showed in Chapter 2, the connotations of human bodies are made and emblazoned by socio-cultural narratives, and in turn constitute, propagate, appraise and contest such narratives. Bodies which are both socially-constructed and self-directing were identified as ecstatic bodies, bodies of différance which belied any finality or fixity of meaning for themselves. We saw that this created tensions around autonomy and the extent to which bodies may “legitimately” direct and identify themselves, as with debates over the legitimacy of technological intervention for transsexualism. I argued that this is of particular ethical acuteness when considering intersex, since intersexed people have found their agency, responsibility and subjectivity unusually eroded by social responses to their bodily states. I suggested that the ecstatic body is also the Eucharistic body, the Body of Christ which, through the participation of multiple bodies, is remade in a new way each time it is re-membered (put back together) in Eucharist. As such, Eucharist might be a particularly important site of solidarity for stigmatized bodies, with its connotations of disrupted and critiqued political power and a breaking-in of a new cosmic order. Since human bodies are already part of the new creation, and also have the capacity to shape and direct it, the bodies which call themselves the Church have an especial responsibility to model this new order by looking beyond even apparently self-evident patterns of human being and intercourse. This must be done even where, and especially where, it will entail a shake-up and re-examination of its own foundational assumptions. For example, I argued (after Iain Morland) that it may be those whose bodies are considered unremarkable in terms of a sex-gender harmony who must be prepared to relinquish the (unsolicited) power and status currently attached to this state. Kenosis for non-intersexed people thereby necessitates thinking ourselves beyond male-and-female, and reflecting this both in our theory and in ecclesiological praxis.
Norms about sex and gender, procreation, consummation and complementarity, which have become theological a prioris, must be tested against whether they promote love, justice and fullness of being. Queer theologies in particular have the capacity to refigure and re-examine metaphors of perfection and completion as morally good, and might be valuable in formulating theologies from intersex even where intersexed people do not identify politically as queer. Liberative theologies from intersex will be incarnational theologies which refuse to quash the obstinate and intractable bodiliness of bodies. These theologies, like queer theologies, will inform mainstream theological tradition and critique it from their liminal bi/sexual perspective. They will be multiple, not single; heterogeneous, not systematic. I hope that future theological scholarship on homosexuality and transsexualism will be more informed by work on intersex, not because they are the “same thing” but because fear of the intersexed body seems actually to be about fear of the body in general. If we do not talk about bodies as they really are, including bodies in their variation and transgression from demarcation as male or female, then we are not really talking about bodies at all. Embodiment is about concentric circles of similarity and difference; about the limitedness of being a unique organism, and the capacity, through perichoretic relationship, to change the definition of “body” per se. The message that the image of God is not reflected more perfectly in some (able, clearly-sexed, unremarkably-gendered) human bodies than in other (impaired, intersexed, atypical or queer) human bodies is a crucial one.
An acknowledgement that intersexed bodies are not unproblematically bodies which have “gone wrong” helps break into the solid triangle of sex-sexuality-gender which all supervene. Realizing that sex is more complex than male-and-female, and that this is not inherently pathological or “fallen”, provides a way into exploring the more-than-binary character of human gender and sexuality too. Although it is problematic to use intersex as a “tool” or “weapon” to wield against phenomena which I, a non-intersexed theologian, find distasteful, it is true – as John Hare (2007) has begun to consider – that a wider knowledge and understanding of intersex may also help provide a way forward in the rapidly-stultifying impasse surrounding homosexuality, particularly within the Anglican Communion. Formulating theologies openly informed by “controversial” sexual identities has not always been easy because of Church hierarchies which have devalued and demonized non-heterosexuality, but the existence of biological intersex may enable some people to recognize that the universality of male-and-female is an illusion. Rendering something “legitimate” because it is “biological” is in itself far too simplistic and would not, in any case, go far enough in breaking down the prejudices and fears surrounding homosexuality in the Church; calling for an acceptance of homosexuality on the grounds that it is a “mental” form of intersex would be misleading and would rather miss the point. However, intersex does at least open up discussion of difference and variation, and may, precisely because it is a medical issue and not just a “sexual” one, be a less threatening way into exposing the hegemony of heteronormativity for what it is than discussion of homosexuality would be.
It is possible that some people might not engage with critical theory about the constructed nature of gender (and even sex), because they assume that their theological beliefs about male and female (and thus male-and-female) as being made in God’s image are prior to or more authoritative than such readings. Resistance to the twin idols of male-and-female and heteronormativity therefore necessitates a heightened awareness and engagement with issues stemming from atypical bodies in local church settings as well as throughout Church hierarchies. Critical Bible reading which will acknowledge the alien cultural setting in which texts were produced, disseminated and redacted, and show that even the biblical picture of humanity is already more complicated than the male-and-female picture which it is has been convenient for much theology to perpetuate, is therefore also fundamental. Reader-response criticism can be an anti-ideological tool, recognizing systems of subordination and oppression (like heteronormativity) within the texts but resisting complicity with them. Reflection on intersex can sharpen the focus on those strands of the Judaeo-Christian tradition which are already anti-imperial, anti-idolatrous and anti-monolithic. The implications of intersex thus profoundly impact other aspects of theology than the specific area of ethics: hermeneutic strategies, eschatologies, anthropologies, ecclesiologies, Christologies. There is definitely scope for more empirical work to be done here from a sociological-theological perspective, such as considering the experiences of intersexed people in church settings and what they feel Christian teaching about bodies, gender roles, sex, sexuality and the resurrection body means for them.
It would also be exciting to see more work from those who can speak from both a theological and intersexed perspective. As I have shown, this is not to say that only people who are intersexed can reflect on theologies from intersex. Non-intersexed theologians must give due consideration to the ethically problematic treatment of intersexed people and the specific struggles faced by intersexed people, and should not be motivated solely by threats to their own conceptual categories; nonetheless, intersex can never be simply a concern of people who are intersexed. Intersex can provide a lens through which to examine the more-than-heteronormative status of human sex, and to re-evaluate the non-genital eroticism and sensuality sometimes lost where heterosexual intercourse and patriarchal social and familial structures are apotheosized.
However, intersex is more than a lens: it is also a kaleidoscope, a tube of mirrors reflecting society’s broader assumptions about the nature of sex and gender back at itself and showing them up as the artifices they are. Consideration of intersex must always turn the viewer back to consideration of non-intersex norms which appear self-evident but which are actually shifting and impermanent like the kaleidoscope’s coloured shapes. Although theology contains important resources for engaging with the elusive and unexpected shape of God, and of what it means to be humans who also reflect God, it has often preferred to fall back on prescriptive (and proscriptive) “certainties” which privilege the status quo. The erasure of intersexed bodies and experiences demands a theological response motivated not by fear but by a desire to expand the ways in which human lives and bodies tell stories. Until theologians, medics and others accept that the male-and-female world is not the only “real” world, and that the normalizing procedures of surgery and signification which bolster it are themselves grounded in something partial and arbitrary, the silencing and devaluing of otherness in human bodies will go on. This cannot, and must not, be justified.
Glossary: A Summary of Some Intersex Conditions and Related Terminology
Intersex is an umbrella term encompassing a range of conditions, some of which cause ambiguous external genitalia. Estimates put the frequency of ambiguous genitalia at 0.1-0.2% of births (Preves 2003: 2), but the prevalence of hormonal and chromosomal variants is higher, possibly around 2% of births (Preves 2003: 2). Some intersex conditions are not diagnosed until much later, which may skew the figures. This renders intersex conditions about as frequent as Down’s syndrome or cystic fibrosis (Preves 2003: 3). Some of the more well-known intersex conditions are outlined below; a more complete list appears in Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development 2006a: 5-7.
G.1 Intersex Conditions
G.1.1 Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) (complete = AIS or CAIS; partial = PAIS).
Also known as: CAIS: Androgen Resistance Syndrome, Testicular Feminization Syndrome, Feminizing Testes Syndrome, Morris’s Syndrome, Goldberg-Maxwell Syndrome; PAIS: Reifenstein Syndrome, Gilbert-Dreyfus Syndrome, Rosewater Syndrome, Lubs Syndrome ().
Every foetus initially has both Wolffian ducts, which could develop into male-related organs and features, and Müllerian ducts, which could develop into female-related organs and features. Foetuses which will become male and those which will become female look identical until around six weeks’ gestation (Preves 2003: 23-5). Which structures develop largely depends on the ability of the foetus to respond to androgens, but each foetus has the nascent physiological – rather than endocrinological – capability to develop either way, or somewhere in between. Sometimes an XY foetus cannot respond to androgens produced by the gonads, largely due to a variant SRY gene on the Y chromosome (Roughgarden 2004: 291), so external genitalia develop along female-related lines. Internal organs develop along male-related lines, as Müllerian Inhibiting Factor from the testes atrophies the primitive female-related internal organs (Gard 1998: 134). In CAIS, external genitalia appear “normally” female, with a clitoris and labia, though the vagina itself may be shallow or absent. In PAIS, some ambiguity of the external genitalia may be present. Internally there are testes rather than ovaries, and no uterus. CAIS is usually not detected at birth because there is no external ambiguity. However, the undescended testes often result in hernias in infancy - which leads to about half of cases being diagnosed. Otherwise, CAIS is often not discovered until puberty when absent menstruation prompts medical investigation. Pubescent AIS girls develop breasts and hips (the testes produce oestrogen as well as testosterone, and AIS does not prevent response to oestrogen) but no pubic or underarm hair. The vast majority of individuals known to have AIS identify as girls, and report sexual attraction to men rather than women (Hines 2004: 457). It is not possible to know the extent to which this is a result of having been treated as girls from birth because of their external morphology.[216]
Frequency: CAIS 1 in 13,000 births (Roughgarden 2004: 291; faq/frequency/), 1 in 20,000 births (); PAIS possibly 1 in 130,000 births (Roughgarden 2004: 291).
Cause: Inherited from maternal carrier (66%). Spontaneous mutation in ovum (33%) ().
G.1.2 Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH)
Also known as: Adrenogenital Syndrome, 21-Hydroxylase Deficiency.
In CAH the body’s production of cortisol (essential to survival, regulating energy, blood sugar levels, blood pressure and response to injury) is low due to the absence of a gene called CYP21 which converts progesterone to cortisol (Roughgarden 2004: 289). As the body pushes the adrenal gland harder trying to correct the low cortisol level, more and more testosterone is also made. In XX foetuses with “classic” (prenatal-onset) CAH, the excess in testosterone can cause unusual genital development before birth – a large clitoris and, sometimes, fused labia. Increasing the levels of cortisol through substitute therapy means the body no longer needs to produce excessive amounts of testosterone. As many people with CAH also lack aldosterone (which helps maintain adequate salt levels in the body), if the hormone imbalance is not treated with steroids then life-threatening salt-wasting can occur. Not all individuals with CAH are also intersexed; the genital presentation of some XX infants is a side-effect of the condition. It is the surgery on XX CAH infants’ genitals that is the contentious issue, not the treatment of CAH itself. Salt-wasting CAH in girls and boys requires immediate intervention to replace salts and glucose in the blood, but this need not entail surgery to reduce the size of the clitoris in girls. Surgery to create a vaginal opening is sometimes necessary, and must occur before menstruation begins; but a pre-pubertal girl (under the age of 8 or 9) does not need a vaginal opening (although obviously does require urethral and anal openings). If it is suspected that a pregnant women may be carrying a child with CAH (because CAH already exists in the family), she may undergo steroid treatment to prevent “masculinization” of the child’s genitals if the child is a girl. However, to be effective, the steroid therapy must begin several weeks before it is possible to tell whether or not the child does actually have CAH (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 55). Both the steroid therapy and the pre-natal diagnostic tests for CAH can create undesirable side-effects for the mother and foetus, including miscarriage (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 55).
Frequency: 1 in 10,000 people () have CAH; ranging from 1 in 300 people among Yupik Native Alaskans to 1 in 40,000 in mainland USA (Roughgarden 2004: 290); intersex related to CAH affects 1 in 20,000-1 in 36,000 births overall ().
Cause: inheritance of the affected gene from both parents (those who inherit it from one parent only will become carriers themselves).
G.1.3 5-Alpha Reductase Syndrome (5-ARD)
People with 5-ARD have XY chromosomes but cannot, as infants, convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT) (which has more potent “masculinizing” effects), due to an absence of the enzyme 5-alpha-reductase, usually found in the cytoplasm (Gard 1998: 133). As a result, they develop externally along female-related lines. However, the uterus and fallopian tubes are absent because the body has still inhibited the growth of the Müllerian structures as in a “normal” male foetus. The testes, epididymis, vas deferens and seminal vesicles are present, though the testes may be hidden inside the body. Although people with 5-ARD lack the tissues which would convert testosterone to DHT, they are still responsive to testosterone itself (Gard 1998: 137), so when typical increased male-related levels of testosterone are produced at puberty, secondary male-related sexual characteristics still develop. These include enlarging of the penis, deepening of the voice, increased body hair (including facial hair) (Preves 2003: 29), increased height and muscle mass. If the condition is discovered before puberty and a feminine gender role is preferred, then oestrogen therapy will be recommended at puberty (the testes will be removed to prevent “masculinization”, but without replacement oestrogen, osteoporosis would be a risk later in life). However, it is becoming more common for the condition to be discovered early and for parents to be advised to raise the child as a boy, despite the feminine phenotype in childhood; the influence of androgens on the foetal brain is now being emphasized (as by Diamond and Sigmundson). 5-ARD was the condition experienced by Cal, protagonist of Jeffrey Eugenides’ “intersex novel” Middlesex (Eugenides 2002), which raised awareness of ISNA and intersex issues despite by criticized by some intersexed people.
Frequency: Unclear. Some neonates with 5-ARD are known to have been misdiagnosed as having AIS. 5-ARD has been found to be relatively frequent in some communities where consanguine reproduction is prevalent. Well-known examples are communities in Turkey, the Dominican Republic and Papua New Guinea.[217]
Cause: A deficiency of 5-alpha-reductase in the cytoplasm.
G.1.4 Genetic Mosaics and Chimeras
Mosaic bodies have a mixture of chromosomes in their cells: this could be a combination of, for example, XX and XY (Dreger 1998: 37) or XY and XO (with only one sex chromosome) (Beck 2001). Many people may be mosaics and never realize it because they experience no physical sex ambiguity. However, those with a relatively large minority of “different” cells may experience some extent of genital ambiguity. Technically, mosaics are any individuals who have “patches” of cells which differ from the majority of cells in their body, which could have arisen as the result of mutations within a single embryo; chimeras are those whose tissues originally belonged to two separate embryos. It should be noted that the term “chimera” may carry negative connotations of exoticism and monstrosity.
Frequency: unknown. However, an increase in IVF treatment may lead to a greater instance of chimerism because it is common to implant multiple foetuses in the uterus, and two foetuses may then fuse (Strain, Dean, Hamilton and Bonthron 1998).
Cause: XX/XY chimeras occur when two early embryos (fraternal twins) fuse to form one individual (Dreger 1998:37); mosaicism happens when an interruption to the cell division in the early embryo either prevents the expected number of chromosomes from dividing to each cell, or creates a mutation in a single gene. The earlier in cell division this occurs, the higher the number of cells which will eventually be affected.
G.1.5 Ovotestes (true hermaphroditism)
These individuals have both ovarian and testicular cells – either having both a complete or partial testis and a complete or partial ovary, or having all or part of one ovotestis or two ovotestes. The external genitalia may show a huge variation of ambiguity at birth. Testicular tissue in ovotestes is thought to be at increased risk of gonadal cancer, so the testicular portion may be removed (). “True hermaphroditism” was a term commonly used when it was also usual to speak of other conditions as male pseudo-hermaphroditism (for example, AIS) and female pseudo-hermaphroditism (for example, CAH), but this is now considered stigmatizing and ISNA are campaigning for terms with the root “hermaphrodite” to be dropped from medical parlance ().
Frequency: 1 in 85,000 people (Roughgarden 2004: 292); 1 in 83,000 births ().
Cause: Sometimes ovotestes may be the result of genetic chimerism; in many cases there is no known medical cause.
G.2 Debated Conditions
Some other conditions causing chromosomal variation are sometimes counted as intersex conditions. However, it has been questioned whether they are really intersex conditions. Leonard Sax (2002) is particularly keen to refute the figures on prevalence of intersex conditions put forward by Fausto-Sterling (1993, 1997, 2000). Sax argues that Fausto-Sterling is wrong to include within her statistics conditions other than those where either the phenotype is not classifiable as male or female, or the phenotype and karyotype do not match. He suspects that she does so in order to make intersex appear far more common than it actually is (Sax 2002: 177). These “controversial” conditions include those outlined below; ISNA’s Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development does count them as DSDs (Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development 2006a:2).
G.2.1 Klinefelter’s syndrome (KS)
In this condition, chromosomes can be 47-XXY (80%), 48-XXXY, 49-XXXXY, 48-XXYY or mosaic combinations (). Adult men with KS usually have a very small penis and testes (they do not increase in size at puberty, and puberty may be much delayed) and are often infertile due to very low or non-existent sperm production. Like Down’s syndrome, KS may be more common in children of older mothers (Godwin 2004), and the extra chromosome may be discovered if prenatal screening for Down’s syndrome takes place (). Otherwise, many people may have the condition their whole lives without knowing it. Some boys with KS begin to grow breasts (gynecomastia) and to lay down fat in a more “feminine” pattern at puberty (Godwin 2004) because of their low levels of testosterone. There is also a tendency for people with KS to be taller and to have longer limbs than average (Godwin 2004; ). When KS is discovered (or onsets) after the age at which puberty would typically take place in males (around 14), regular testosterone injections may be offered to help increase (or maintain) penis size and libido. Bone density scans are also recommended, as people with KS are at increased risk of osteoporosis.
Frequency: 1 in 1,000 males (); 1 in 500 males (Gard 1998: 141); the majority of cases probably go undiagnosed ().
Cause: May result from a variation during meiosis (the division of a parent's sex cells), when the parental chromosomes have not finished pairing up before fertilization is complete. The extra X chromosome or chromosomes may have come from either parent.
G.2.2 Turner’s syndrome (Turner syndrome, TS, XO, 45XO, 45X)
Females usually have XX chromosomes. Individuals with Turner’s syndrome are missing one sex chromosome and are sometimes described as XO. External genitalia appear unambiguously female, but gonads may be extremely underdeveloped or effectively absent. Where they are present, they may stop functioning early in life. However, the other internal female-related organs will be present. The missing genetic information from the X chromosome leads to several distinctive features and possible health complications: girls with TS may have very short stature (androgens may be given to stimulate growth); absent puberty (which can lead to bone problems such as osteoporosis if replacement oestrogen is not given); a narrow palate and crowded teeth; a receding lower jaw; widely-spaced, possibly inverted nipples; arms which turn out at the elbow; a funnel chest; a thick, short neck; prominent ears; or narrow fingernails and toenails that point upwards. Girls with TS may also be more prone to problems with spatial awareness and non-verbal reasoning. Cardiovascular and renal problems, sight and hearing complications, and obesity are also risks. Some individuals with TS may be mosaics, with XY/XO chromosomes, and may appear externally “male”, with some male-related internal organs such as testes. This is why TS is sometimes included as an intersex condition.
Frequency: 1 in 2,000 female births (). Roughly 50% of people with Turner’s syndrome have only one X chromosome (XO). 30% have two X chromosomes but one is incomplete. Others are genetic mosaics (. cfm?id=109).
Cause: Uncertain, but may result from an error during the division of a parent’s sex cells; the missing or incomplete chromosome could be the mother’s X or the father’s Y, as the complete X chromosome could have come from either parent.
G.3 Related non-intersex conditions
There are also other related conditions which are not intersex conditions in themselves but which sometimes occur in an intersexed individual. Their treatment in non-intersexed as well as intersexed individuals is seen as controversial by some intersex activists. These include:
G.3.1 Hypospadias: where the urinary meatus opens up somewhere along the underside of the penis rather than at the tip. Boys with hypospadias usually have to sit to urinate. First-degree hypospadias, where the meatus is located somewhere on the glans, is not usually corrected. However, where the opening is somewhere along the shaft, surgery is sometimes performed to move it up. Complications are fairly common and include infection, hair growth inside the penis (Kessler 1998: 70), stenosis (narrowing of the urethra), pain during sexual intercourse, and difficulty with ejaculation. Hypospadias is a fairly common aspect of the anatomy of people with 5-ARD and extreme CAH.
G.3.2 Micropenis: where the penis is considered to fall below the acceptable range of size at birth – that is, under 2.4cm (Preves 2003: 55). The pre-pubescent child can be treated with testosterone to increase penis size, but this means that no further growth will take place at puberty (Kessler 1998: 19). In the past it was sometimes felt that as it was far more difficult to construct an erectile penis than to hollow out a “vaginal” opening, boys with micropenis would be better off castrated and reassigned as girls. This occurred even when there was no specific intersex condition present.
G.3.3 Vaginal agenesis: also known as Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser Syndrome, MRKH, or Müllerian Agenesis. It comprises congenital absence of the vagina, fallopian tubes, cervix and uterus in an XX individual. Some individuals have uterine remnants. External genitalia are typically female. Some individuals undergo surgery to enlarge their vaginas; others use non-surgical methods such as the insertion of dilators. However, dilation can be painful and some people with MRKH resent the idea that a “functional” vagina is necessarily one which can receive an erect penis.
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[1] I take “theologies from intersex” to mean those which take into account the existence and reality of intersex and which assume intersexed bodies to be among sites of human encounter with God.
[2] A glossary with more detailed information about specific conditions can be found at the end of the thesis.
[3] A clear and helpful online animation showing the genital development of foetuses is available at .
[4] Karyotyping involves arranging the chromosomes from a single cell and arranging them so that each numbered “pair” of matching chromosomes is together. The chromosomes can thus be easily compared and examined for any unusual, extraneous or missing material. Photographs of the arrangements of chromosomes, called idiograms, are familiar from school science textbooks, where they are often used to illustrate, for example, the presence of an extra 21st chromosome in people with Down’s syndrome. Karyotyping includes identifying the sex chromosomes, which are typically XX or XY but can vary. Where the external genitalia of an infant are ambiguous or missing, karyotyping is often carried out to give an indication of the child’s sex – although, as we will see, basing sex on chromosomes alone can be problematic.
[5] “Choosing a gender—boy or girl—for your child is like choosing a gender for any child; you use what is known to make the gender assignment. Children with DSDs do not change their original gender assignments very often. If your child grows to act gender ‘atypical,’ that is not because you have done anything wrong, and it does not mean your child is diseased or that you necessarily picked the wrong gender assignment; it just means your child is different from the statistical average, and the best thing you can do for him or her is to provide love and support for the child’s individuality” (Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development 2006b: 49).
[6] Looy and Bouma have briefly raised some of the ethical issues, but their work is not sited within a specifically theological context and does not adequately question certain assumptions about gender more generally. For instance, they say, “A person who is intersexed, whose brain has been organized to produce predispositions and preferences that do not nicely fit either of the available gender categories, is forced to fit a Procrustean bed that is either too long or too short; neither produces a good fit, but there is no bed of the right size available” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 174). Although it seems niggling to quibble over punctuation, in fact the use of the first comma in this quotation gives a very different sense than an “and” would have done. The presence of the comma implies that it is all people who are intersexed whose brains’ predispositions and preferences do not “fit” gender categories, and who thus feel uncomfortable. In fact, as Koyama (2006) and others stress, there are plenty of intersexed individuals who feel unremarkably male or female in their “brains”, even if their genitals appear unusual. Some of these individuals happily undergo surgery to alter their genitals, and others prefer to leave it alone, but both groups would tend to identify as, for example, a woman with a particular condition, rather than someone who is not happy to be called either man or woman. Not all intersexed people feel they are being stretched or confined to conform to Procrustean gender “measurements” – and many non-intersexed people do. By insisting that the dichotomous gender system is “a reasonably functional one”, in which “the vast majority of us are generally comfortable” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 174), Looy and Bouma also fail to acknowledge that stereotypes about who is or is not oppressed by arbitrary standards of conformity in gender and sex are also unhelpful. This is ironic, for they do acknowledge that by focusing excessively on the differences between categories, people “effectively ignore or even deny the existence within. This sets up such narrow definitions of what it is to be female or male that virtually all of us fall short of the ‘ideal’ or the prototype” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 174). Looy and Bouma also betray a somewhat unreflective attitude to issues of disability. Examples given of questions they expect their readers to ask include, “What is wrong with viewing persons who are intersexed or transgendered as abnormal, in the same way that we view the deaf, the blind and the lame as suffering the effects of a broken creation?” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 174). Their implied answer is that, “at a very general level” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 174), there is nothing wrong with the latter part of this view. Whilst the authors are keen to take into account intersexed and transgendered people’s own stories in order to better understand how these individuals are not necessarily to be perceived as “abnormal”, they seem to miss the fact that describing all disability as fallen or abnormal might also be unsagacious. Whilst attempting to engage with scripture, the authors again fail to be particularly critical of the passages they cite. For example, they refer to the passages on eunuchs to claim that “Scripture… acknowledges, without any condemnation or concern, the existence of individuals who do not fit the gender dichotomy” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 174), but then move straight to saying, “Eunuchs had social roles in the early Middle Eastern context, and there is absolutely no indication that the gospel calls us to erase such roles in bringing in the kingdom of Christ” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 175). However, there is good evidence that the gospel authors do question other “accepted” social roles, through their portrayal of Jesus’ interactions with women and with social undesirables such as lepers and the possessed. The implication of the eunuch passages is, rather, that just as eunuchs are “beyond” the societal strictures which mean that men and women cannot be alone together but eunuchs and women can be, perhaps the crux of there being no male and female in Christ is that, in Christ, men and woman can also be alone together, for the meaning of their social bodies has changed. Looy and Bouma also comment, “The mere observation that a phenomenon exists in nature does not by definition mean that it is part of God’s intended good creation order. It may well reflect the consequences of the fall into sin” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 175). To their credit, they include cultural beliefs about gender among the potentially “fallen” aspects of creation – as well as the intersex and transgender conditions they examine. Evidence that the non-human creation experienced pain and suffering long before humans came on the scene, however, suggests that what might be perceived as “imperfection” is not solely to be pinned on human activity. Just as the existence of pain in creation does not automatically render creation “fallen”, then, neither does the existence of non-binary sex and gender. Looy and Bouma also insist, “Science tells us that intersexed and transgendered conditions are often (but not always) abnormal in the sense that they interfere with procreation” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 175). “Science” covers a multitude of sins; besides which, the assumption that procreation must be “normal” and must be a “good” for everyone (as opposed to a general good for a species which wishes to continue propagating itself) is highly questionable. In fact, Looy and Bouma do conclude, “It is difficult to imagine that the diversity of gender and gendered behaviors across species, and the diversity of traits within genders among humans, are all consequences of sin, that God’s creational intent was monolithic females and males” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 175). They can go so far but no further – raising questions, from intersex and transgender, about assumptions and naturalizations surrounding gender, but not critiquing some of the underlying issues about the existence of such “abnormalities” in the world in the first place. They explicitly say, “We believe that sin has distorted both physical experiences and cultural expressions of gender. We believe that intersexed and transgendered persons exist in, and create for all of us, a tension between healthy diversity and the distortions of sin” (Looy and Bouma 2005: 176). This credo raises further questions about where the “line” might come between diversities which are “healthy” and those which result from sin (and are thereby, presumably, pathological), as well as how sin might have caused (and continue to cause) distortions not factored into the original creation. It does not seem that Looy and Bouma wish to say directly that physical and psychological intersex and transgender conditions arise via sin (in the earlier paper, Looy suggests, “Rather than instinctively and unreflectively labeling intersexuality as either sinful action, or an example of a broken creation, we should at least ask whether intersexuality could be part of God’s good creation” – Looy 2002: 16), but neither are they explicitly ruling it out. To say that intersexed and transgendered people “create for all of us a tension” might imply that, were it not for the stubborn existence of these recalcitrant bodies, we would be none the wiser as to the tension between diversity and pathology – which seems naïve.
[7] Hare summarises, “The existence of intersexuality confounds the tidy categories that some Christian ethicists and church leaders work with and challenges us all to think more deeply about the God-given nature of our sexuality… The condition of intersexuality is an interesting one to ‘think with’ in the context of the contemporary debate about the ethics of homosexuality. In particular, it draws our attention to the complexity and diversity involved in the development of human sexuality… It also provides a salutary reminder that in the process of ethical discernment, close attention must be paid to the scientific and medical evidence – where it is available. Finally, a consideration of intersexuality draws us into the dilemmas and difficulties that face both doctors and individual patients in handling an individual’s sexual identity and choices” (Hare 2007: 99). Hare identifies the four main questions he wishes to consider as: 1. Can a rigid division of humans into male and female be upheld? 2. If the Church invests in only certain gender behaviours as morally desirable, how are genders to be determined in ambiguous cases? 3. In cases of what Hare terms “ambiguous gender” (he does not appear consistently to differentiate “sex” and “gender”), should individuals be allowed to choose their own gender, or to “remain ambiguous”? 4. Of what relevance are these issues to debates on homosexuality? (Hare 2007: 105).
[8] Gross reports that both verses have been used by people in conversation with her to argue, first, that God created each person either male or female with nothing in between, and second, that intersexed people do not therefore satisfy the biblical criterion of humanity (Gross 1999: 70). Such deeply hurtful remarks are, however, unjustifiable, both ethically and – says Gross – textually, as I discuss below.
[9] It might be countered that doctors do not decide which bodies are acceptable, but simply respond to the taxonomies already concretized in society. However, as Suzanne Kessler notes, although culture does demand gender, the whole process is a circularity: “If culture demands gender, physicians will produce it, and… when physicians produce it, the fact that gender is ‘demanded’ will be hidden from everyone” (Kessler 1998: 75).
[10] Intersexed people themselves use a range of terminology: “intersex variations” or “intersex” (Morris 2004); “intersexuality” and being “intersexed” (Gross 1999, Beck 2001); “intersexualism” (Curry 2006); “intersex condition” (Sims 2005); simply “IS” (Talley 2005).
[11] The website of the AIS Support Group UK states, “We are not happy with the recent tendency of certain trans groups/people to promote transgender as a term to encompass, for example, transsexuality, transvestitism and intersex. We object to other organisations/individuals putting us in categories without consulting us, especially categories that imply that intersexed people, of necessity, have gender identity issues” ().
[12] An individual with complete AIS is likely to view herself as “female with a birth condition”, but in fact will be strictly – by the gamete definition – male (if her testes have not been removed), or neither male nor female (if they have). Koyama’s point highlights the fact that self-identification for some intersexed people goes beyond a merely gendered identity: it is still important that a feminine person can pin her femininity on being female, even if she does not (for example) have female gametes. This is also the case for many transsexual people: to be simply transgendered without any surgery on the body is not felt to be enough, for the gendered identity must be pinned (physiologically) somewhere rather than nowhere. There are also those individuals, intersexed and transgendered, for whom surgery is not necessary to ground a secure gendered identity; the continued existence of the debate illustrates the fact that the gamete-only definition of sex is not in itself an adequate basis for assigning sex/gender identity, any more than the gonad-only or chromosome-only basis would be.
[13] Early editions of the ISNA newsletter also went under the title Hermaphrodites With Attitude(s).
[14] The 2006 publications from the Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development (2006a, 2006b) both contain acknowledgements that some of the intersexed people interviewed for the DSD Guidelines project do not support the term “Disorders of Sex Development” (Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development 2006b: ii).
[15] She says, “It is no solution to pretend there is no problem. There is this intractable ‘crookedness’ in humanity, and you cannot make it straight simply by re-definition” (Young 1990: 176).
[16] As Judith Butler, in a piece discussing David Reimer, says, “I must be careful in presenting [his] words. For these words can only give you something of the person I am trying to understand, some part of that person’s verbal instance. Since I cannot truly understand this person, since I do not know this person, and have no access to this person, I am left to be a reader of a selected number of words, words that I did not fully select, ones that were selected for me, recorded from interviews and then chosen by those who decided to write their articles on this person… So we might say I am given fragments of the person, linguistic fragments of something called a person; what might it mean to do justice to someone under these circumstances? Can we?” (Butler 2004: 68).
[17] Dreger says, “I don’t really care if people mistakenly think I am intersex, or lesbian, or was born conjoined (except that then they are attributing experiences to me that I don’t have). What I mind is the p.c. attitude that no one but those who have an identity should study, speak, or care about that identity. This kind of attitude has led to an annoying situation where people who don’t have the identity think they shouldn’t care about it. It’s not their issue. Well, as I’ve been telling my students for years, maybe if they make it their issue, things will get better a lot quicker… I’m really not the first person in history to figure out that the people with the privilege might do the most good by working with and for the people without. Yet I know a whole bunch of liberals sitting around with energy-sapping, navel-gazing guilt, a guilt they think is all they’re entitled to, being white, able-bodied, straight, middle-class people. I haven’t got time for that silliness. There’s too much work to do” (Dreger 2006).
[18] Mairi MacDonald, web editor for the United Kingdom Intersex Association, says, “We are people whose very lives have been affected by outside interference and by others, especially the medical community, presuming to speak on our behalf. Therefore, in general, we are distrustful of those who wrongly presume that their experiences are similar to ours. We tend to view suggestions of alliances built on this basis as invasive and attempting to appropriate our experiences for agendas other than our own. And we are particularly suspicious of those who imagine that our various histories can be reduced to a matter of gender identity” (MacDonald 2000).
[19] I reflect further on the problematic aspects of the category of “identity” in Chapter 5.
[20] This is the kind of thing which, says Marcella Althaus-Reid, has happened with Liberation Theology. Theologians from North America and Europe have seized upon an idea – that of the poor yet faithful, hardworking, childlike, pure-minded peasant Christian (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 135); have supposed that this is the whole truth of Latin America; and have exported and reproduced this picture for use in their own environments without really understanding it. Liberation Theology thus becomes “theme park” theology: “[There] are interesting theological subthemes worthy of being visited, and people in the West are encouraged to visit them as if going to a botanical garden. Such a theme park conception thwarts pluralism. It may be the theology of the poor, but it still obeys the tradition of the thinking and logic of the centre, and, although in opposition, it perpetuates the centre’s discourse by default. It is the visitor to the theme park who carries meaning to the product… Liberation Theologies as theme parks function at the level of popular attractions and have done a lot for the book market of the western world” (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 129).
[21] To borrow a remark of Butler’s, “The task… is not to celebrate each and every new possibility qua possibility, but to redescribe those possibilities that already exist, but which exist within cultural domains designated as culturally unintelligible and impossible” (Butler 1990: 148).
[22] These include the suggestions by Althaus-Reid that classic Latin American theologies of liberation have failed fully to engage with issues of the sexuality of the poor as well as their specifically economic marginalization; that churches employing liberation theology in the 1970s and 1980s often found recalcitrant, non-monogamous, non-heterosexual sexualities too uncomfortable to address (because of a desire not to emphasize denominational differences surrounding sex and gender roles, and a lack of reflection on the extent to which the religious evangelization of Latin America was also a “sexual evangelization”, imposing western norms) (Althaus-Reid 2006b: 8); and also, somewhat ironically, that Dussel’s insistence on maintaining an authentic concept of the Other became concretized into a binary, stereotypical, theological anthropology of the complementarity of the sexes, which did not question the ideological formation of essentialist sex, gender and sexuality (Althaus-Reid 2006b: 10). Otto Maduro criticizes the patriarchalism of much liberation theology, and the manner in which the externally-legitimated religious élite in Latin America itself stereotypes – and further marginalizes from signification – the oppressed (Maduro 2006: 25-7). Ivan Petrella suggests that liberation theology has lost its power to question neo-liberal market capitalism, through failing to continue to attach political meanings to its theological terminologies. Petrella avers that recovering a critical attitude toward the fractured, constructed, ritualized nature of capitalism is inextricably bound-up with doing the same for sex and gender (Petrella 2006: 36-7). Nancy Cardoso Pereira argues that liberation theology must learn from feminist theologies, and calls for a theological treatise which would encompass desire without guilt, a revised account of work and ownership, a distributive ethic, and liberative reproductive relations (Pereira 2006: 77-80). For a fuller overview of this volume see Cornwall 2007.
[23] This project cannot explore in detail attitudes to intersex in non-European and North American societies, but work done by Serena Nanda, Gilbert Herdt and Will Roscoe is illuminating in the consideration of liminal or “third” gender roles for intersexed, transgendered or transvestite and homosexual people, such as the Native American berdaches and Indian hijras (Roscoe 1994, Nanda 2002). Herdt discusses societal attitudes toward people with 5-ARD in communities in the Dominican Republic and Papua New Guinea where it is comparatively common, and explores the extent to which intermediate sex is accommodated even within strictly bi-gendered societies (Herdt 1994a, 1994b, 1994c). However, as Anne Fausto-Sterling notes, Herdt has been criticized for projecting “assumptions that reflect his own culture” (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 18) and failing to reflect critically enough on Western models of sexuality and gender. Commenting on her own engagements with Roscoe’s work, Morgan Holmes adds that he, too, “continually focuses his attention specifically on anality and mode of dress as though those were the most salient and important features of the berdache when, in fact, it is likely that those features take on a central importance only in a history of Euro-American colonization” (Holmes 2004). Nanda, in her discussion of hijras (that is, castrated males who dress and behave as women) in Hinduism, notes that the concept of a third gender goes back to at least the 8th century BCE in India, but that members of the intermediate gender were traditionally considered at least partially “defective males, the core of their deficiency being the lack or nonexercise of procreative capacity” (Nanda 2002: 138). Holmes also comments, “Recognition of third sexes and third genders is not equal to valuing the presence of those who were neither male nor female, and often hinges on the explicit devaluation of women” (Holmes 2004).
[24] Sax’s criticism is based in the fact that Fausto-Sterling (2000) uses figures of about 1.7% of births being of “intersexed” children – rather than the more conservative estimate of 0.04% (or 1 in 2,500) births used by other scholars, such as Preves (Preves 2003: 2-3). Fausto-Sterling’s figures are higher because they include statistics for conditions which are not always classed as intersex conditions, such as Turner’s syndrome, hypospadias and MRKH. Intersex Society of North America’s own guidelines on what should count as a DSD include conditions involving the congenital development of ambiguous genitalia, a congenital disjunction of the internal and external sex anatomy, an incomplete development of sex anatomy, sex chromosome anomalies, or disorders of gonadal development (Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development 2006a:2). This would include contested conditions such as Turner’s syndrome, Klinefelter’s syndrome, MRKH and micropenis among DSDs. Including all these conditions is controversial not least because some have associations with other medical complications which are likely to compromise the physical health of the individual if not addressed, whereas the conditions more universally accepted as intersex conditions – with the exception of some cases of CAH – do not.
[25] Warnke says, “The concept of race does not hold up as a scientifically viable way of grouping human beings. It does not identify a cluster of genes at the biological level that could serve to sever human beings into neatly separable groups. It does not help identify discrete packages of color and morphology that could separate groups. It is muddled and asymmetrical in its groupings of individuals by ancestry. Finally, while genetic predispositions to certain diseases might provide a more useful way of grouping individuals, at least for medical purposes, such groupings deviate from ordinary uses of the term ‘race’ …[Intersex] surgery raises the question of what our categories of sex are meant to refer to: chromosomes or anatomy? Moreover, if they can refer to either depending on the decisions of teams of doctors, how different, really, are the categories of sex and race? Is assigning a female sex to an infant with one Y chromosome any more securely based in ‘nature’ than assigning a black race to a pinkish infant with one-sixteenth African-American heritage?” (Warnke 2001: 126, 128). This has also been explored in some detail by Alison Stone in Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference; Stone explores the charge of biological essentialism often levelled at Irigaray, and essentialism’s problematization by intersex (A. Stone 2006, especially 113-119).
[26] Laqueur says, “In… pre-Enlightenment texts, and even some later ones, sex, or the body, must be taken as the epiphenomenon, while gender, what we would take to be a cultural category, was primary or ‘real’… To be a man or a woman was to hold a social rank, a place in society, to assume a cultural role, not to be organically one or the other of two incommensurable sexes” (Laqueur 1990: 8).
[27] A further desire to classify hermaphrodites’ status resulted from increased queries about the fixity of gender rôles during the 16th century. Elizabeth I was often represented as an androgyne, sometimes positively but on occasion in the sense that she was literally less of a man than a male monarch would have been, and was denying the men of Britain the warlike stance they craved (Gilbert 2002: 64). This also raised questions about apposite gender rôles (how did an unmarried, allegedly virginal queen fit into a patriarchal economy? – only by having the heart and stomach of a king) and the extent to which a woman could legitimately rule at all (Gilbert 2002: 55). The hermaphrodite was also used as a metaphor for England’s political unity during the civil war and Reformation, and for what might be birthed in the upheaval: was the spawn of the conflict to be a monstrous, abortive child, or a beautiful androgyne encompassing formerly disparate elements? Gilbert comments, “Throughout this period, sex and gender were not necessarily contiguous terms. Gender was figured as a provisional construct: a process rather than an essence” (Gilbert 2002: 54). Activities such as climbing trees could, it was thought, actually cause a girl to masculinize. This was a step beyond locating sex in sex organs which bolstered gender, as in Aristotle and Hippocrates: sex was actually located in, and not simply reinforced by, behaviour. Compare Butler’s notion, especially in Gender Trouble, of gender as repetition, self-perpetuated signs all mixed in with the obliviousness of reinforcement by society; a girl who could grow a penis simply by climbing trees could obtain for herself something from which that patriarchal economy had excluded her: a phallus of her own, not endowed by father or husband. This could not be allowed to happen, or the whole system would be undermined. Far better to keep girls in so many layers of petticoat that they could not climb trees at all.
[28] The story was also published with an introduction by Foucault as Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite (Barbin 1980). Barbin had been brought up as a girl in all-girls’ schools, and experienced sexual attraction to her classmates. She also had a sexual relationship with a woman. Later, Barbin was forcibly reclassified as a man, and eventually committed suicide as a result of the consequent loneliness and alienation. Butler believes there is an inconsistency between Foucault’s views on the ability to exist outside juridico-legal structures of sex between Herculine Barbin and The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. In the latter, holds Butler, Foucault asserts that sexuality is always and inevitably situated within matrices of power (Butler 1990: 97), yet in his introduction to Herculine Barbin, he avers that Herculine existed in a pre-legal, unregulated world thanks to her hermaphroditism. Butler suspects that Foucault over-romanticizes Herculine’s story and portrays her as non-sexual rather than homosexual (Butler 1990: 99), and argues that, rather than “freely confusing” sex as Foucault claims, surely Herculine’s actions are not really free, still taking place as they do within a discourse of power (Butler 1990: 100).
[29] Klebs’ system was extended to cover chromosomes: those with an XY karyotype whose physical differences are either genetic or hormonal, as with AIS, were “male pseudohermaphrodites” (Preves 2003: 27-29).
[30] Chromosomally, it is conditions with an XX karyotype, and hormonally-caused physical differences, such as CAH, which fall into Klebs’ category of “female pseudohermaphrodite” (Preves 2003: 27-29).
[31] However, Joan Roughgarden argues, “One tail of the distribution of CAH people does… suffer from a genetic disease: salt-losing CAH is genetic, painful, life-threatening, deleterious under all circumstances, and arguably rare enough to represent a mutation-selection equilibrium in the gene pool. People at the other end of the tail of the distribution, however, are damned by association. Labeling people as CAH is stigmatizing. Nothing is wrong with a large clitoris. The nonpathologic side of CAH cannot qualify as a genetic defect because it’s too common – thousands of times more frequent than a condition maintained at a mutation-selection equilibrium – and it’s not deleterious under all conditions” (Roughgarden 2004: 290).
[32] For a full overview of Reimer’s case, see Colapinto 1997, 2001 and 2004. Reimer was born a boy called Bruce, with an identical twin brother, Brian, to young parents in Canada in the mid-1960s. The boys suffered from phimosis in infancy, and were scheduled for circumcision in 1966 when they were eight months old. Bruce’s circumcision with an electric cauterizing machine went wrong and his penis was badly burned and destroyed. Months later, his parents saw a television programme in which John Money was discussing the possibility of gender reassignment, and contacted him. Money believed that Bruce was still young enough to be reassigned as a girl, and arranged for his testes and the remains of his penis to be removed. The Reimers, on Money’s advice, renamed Bruce “Brenda” and brought him up as a girl. Each year the family travelled to Baltimore so the twins could be monitored by Money at Johns Hopkins; Brian provided a perfect “control” to test Money’s thesis that gender identity relied on upbringing as much as biological factors. Although the monitoring focused mainly on Brenda, Money also worked with Brian, trying to imprint appropriate sex/gender roles on each child. It is reported that this included making the twins act out sexual positions in order to learn “correct” sexual behaviours for males and for females. Money published a series of papers reporting that (the anonymized) Brenda was doing well in her new gender assignment, that she had feminine qualities and was very different from her brother Brian. The alleged success of the case was a catalyst for increased early surgery and gender reassignment on intersexed children, although Bruce/Brenda had not been intersexed. However, it later transpired that Brenda had never been happy as a girl, had disliked dresses and “feminine” activities, always stood to urinate despite the fact that her post-surgery anatomy made this all but impossible, and had always had a sense that there was something different about her although she had never been told about her reassignment. She had resisted Money’s injunctions to take female hormones and to have vaginoplasty, although at the age of 12 eventually did begin to take the hormones. Brenda hated the breasts that grew as a result. Eventually, in her teens, a psychiatrist advised Brenda’s parents to tell her the truth about her gender reassignment. Brenda immediately began wearing male clothing and living as a man, choosing to take the name David. David stopped taking female hormones, began taking testosterone, had his breasts removed, and underwent surgery to create a prosthetic penis and testes. Money never reported on this aspect of the case although he was aware that it had occurred. It was not until 1997 that Milton Diamond and Keith Sigmundson (who had been a consultant psychiatrist on the case for a number of years) published a paper reporting that the “successful” reassignment of Bruce as Brenda had been a resounding failure. David had met Diamond and been shocked to learn that so many intersexed children had been operated on and reassigned on the strength of his own case. David, who as an adult married a woman and adopted her children, subsequently went public with his story and John Colapinto published a book about the case, using David’s real name, in 2001. By this time, some intersexed adults who had had early surgery as a result of the paradigm bolstered by the “success” of the Reimer case had also begun to protest at what had happened to them. David suffered from depression throughout adulthood and made several attempts to take his own life. Sadly, in May 2004, David committed suicide; it is believed that he was having financial difficulties after having been made redundant. He was also said to have been affected by problems in his marriage, and by the death of his brother Brian, the result of a drug overdose. However, Colapinto has suggested that too little attention had been given to the lasting effects of the unusual circumstances of David’s childhood and adolescence (Colapinto 2004).
[33] Recent television footage suggests that this is still standard; Secret Intersex (2004), a documentary made for Channel 4, includes the story of a baby girl, Bianca, born with a large clitoris as a result of CAH. Bianca was taken to Southampton General Hospital for specialist treatment. Consultant urologist Patrick Malone, interviewed for the film, said, “We felt it would be almost impossible for her to be reared in a happy family environment if this surgery did not take place” (in Godwin 2004). Bianca’s mother, Lilia, said she was glad that the operation was happening so soon, because this way Bianca could grow up “normally”. Interviewed again nine months after the surgery, Lilia (whose first language is not English) said, “They’ve done the right thing by doing the surgery now… because now she… would get used to what she is. She wouldn’t know the difference” (in Godwin 2004). The film’s narration added that, despite this early surgery, Bianca would still have to take drugs for the rest of her life, and would probably need more surgery at puberty “to create a fully functioning vagina” (Godwin 2004).
[34] It is ironic that it was Money’s insistence on surgical intervention which became so influential and repeated, given that he also asserted, “In human beings it need scarcely be said that erotosexualism exists as much between the ears, in the cerebral cortex, as between the groins, in the genitalia. The brain is the organ where erotosexual imagery is learned and remembered, and from which it is retrieved and communicated behaviorally and in words” (Money 1981: 381).
[35] Doing the surgery before a child begins to form long-term memories does not necessarily preclude distress caused in early childhood, however; Elizabeth Weil says, “According to [Cheryl] Chase’s notes… her mother maintained that the clitoridectomy had not impacted her daughter’s life. ‘When you came home,’ Cathleen Sullivan told Chase about her return from hospital after surgery, ‘there seemed to be no effect at all. Oh, yes, wait a minute. Yes, there was one thing. You stopped speaking. I guess you didn’t speak for about six months. Then one day you started talking again. You had known quite a lot of words at 17 months, but you forgot them all’” (Weil 2006).
[36] Hypospadias is a condition where a boy’s urethral opening is somewhere along the underside of the penis rather than at its tip. See Glossary.
[37] Exceptions are salt-wasting CAH, and any condition where the child is unable to urinate or excrete faeces. There have also been links made with increased cancer risks in AIS girls’ testes if left in their bodies, but the risk of cancer is minimal before puberty (Roughgarden 2004: 301), and the removal of the testes means the child will need to take hormone replacement throughout her life, as the testes normally produce oestrogen as well as testosterone. Other intersex conditions do not compromise the physical health of the children concerned, though there have been links made between related non-intersex conditions, such as MRKH, and health complications.
[38] The word “vagina” itself comes from the Latin for sheath or scabbard.
[39] The San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s report on its investigation into the medical “normalizing” of intersexed people notes, “The definition of a ‘successful outcome’ differs greatly between medical providers and patients. Questions in follow-up studies tend to focus on heterosexual sexual behavior as being the standard for success, as opposed to fertility or pleasure. It is more common to ask a patient if she or he is married than to ask if that patient has a pleasing sexual life, is able to procreate, or has the ability to achieve orgasm” (Arana 2005: 19).
[40] Morgan Holmes comments, “When we appreciate that the difference between intersexed and not intersexed can be only millimetres it seems clear that no one is truly intersexed, but we are all, in our infinite differences from each other, intersexed” (Holmes 2002: 175).
[41] Part of the ongoing debate has highlighted the fact that not intervening to surgically alter genitals also has its disadvantages. However, ISNA stresses that a range of treatment including counselling is necessary and appropriate for intersexed individuals. Non-surgical intervention is very different from total non-intervention. The majority of doctors, though, still seem to follow the convention that surgery must be early, and that children whose bodies do not fit must be corrected (see, for example, Christie Steinmann in van Huyssteen 2003, and Pinsky, Erickson and Schimke 1999: 51).
[42] Surgery for intersex cannot “fix” intersex: it cannot make a person produce different gametes, or change their chromosomes. Surgery can only attempt to hide intersex; Morgan Holmes says, “By its own diagnostic standards… the medical procedures meant to fix intersex are actually only imperfect measures to render it invisible” (Holmes 2002: 174).
[43] Such an attitude appears to confirm Anne Fausto-Sterling’s suspicion that many intersex doctors work on the principle that “females are imperfect by nature, and if this child cannot be a perfect or near-perfect male, then being an imperfect female is the best choice” (Fausto-Sterling 1997: 221).
[44] Compare Sandy Stone’s remarks in Chapter 3: in the early days of transsexual reassignment, many male-to-female prospective transsexuals would not admit to obtaining sexual pleasure from the penis in case this marked them out as unsuitable for surgery. Stone notes, “The prohibition continued postoperatively in interestingly transmuted form, and remained so absolute that no postoperative transsexual would admit to experiencing sexual pleasure through masturbation either. Full membership in the assigned gender was conferred by orgasm, real or faked, accomplished through heterosexual penetration” (Stone 1991: 348).
[45] Chase says the attitude seems to be that, because surgical techniques are far more sophisticated than they used to be, this “relieves surgeons indefinitely of the responsibility of listening to any former patient” (Chase 1998a: 387) – as though any problems created by surgery and other treatment in the past were simply a result of inadequate surgery techniques, rather than a possible side-effect of the entire process. She criticizes some of the newer techniques for actually creating more problems than they solve. For instance, clitoroplasty or clitoral recession for cases of clitoromegaly, where the clitoris is reduced and/or “hidden” by repositioning ligaments, can actually affect sexual sensation more than the seemingly-harsh clitorectomy which used to be common. Chase claims that, because clitorectomy often left behind the sensitive shaft of the clitoris, not all nerve-endings were removed, whereas clitoroplasty often actually removes more tissue, replacing the “head” of the clitoris for cosmetic reasons, but not the root (Chase 1998a: 388). Subsequent studies have shown that even so-called “nerve-sparing” surgery on the clitoris can damage sensation and capacity for orgasm (Liao and Boyle 2004: 460). Although cosmetically “successful”, such surgery makes sexual pleasure (the retention of which might be used as a criterion of success by patients themselves) even more elusive. Surgeons have asserted that clitoral surgery does not damage sensation, and that since many “normal” (non-surgically-corrected, heterosexual) women find it difficult to orgasm, surgery cannot be to blame. However, Chase counters that, in general, lesbian women do orgasm during sexual activity, whereas surgically-corrected intersexed lesbians often have difficulty. This seems to suggest that genital surgery is a factor in sexual pleasure, and that the obstacle to orgasm for most (heterosexual) women is more than simply physiological.
[46] Harmon-Smith, the adoptive mother of an intersexed child (Lehrman 1999), advises practical actions such as allowing the newborn baby to stay on a children’s ward and receive visitors rather than being put in isolation; putting the family in touch with support groups; and encouraging the family to give the baby a nickname such as “Honey” or “Sweetie” if they do not wish to choose a conventional name until further tests for sex have been carried out. Harmon-Smith says, “DO NOT tell the family not to name ‘the child’! Doing so only isolates them, and makes them begin to see their baby as an ‘abnormality’… DO encourage the family to call their child by a nickname… or by a non-gender-specific name… DO NOT refer to the patient as ‘the child’. Doing so makes parents begin to see their child as an object, not a person… DO call the patient by the nickname/name chosen by the parents. It may be uncomfortable at first but will help the parents greatly. Example: ‘How is your little sweetie doing today?’” (Harmon-Smith 1998: 371). The prescriptive tone of these “commandments” is somewhat tongue in cheek, but betrays the fact that little advice for dealing sensitively with the families of intersexed infants had, before this time, been given out.
[47] Kessler points out that the terminology used by physicians who do surgery on intersexed children is generally that of “reconstruction” rather than “construction” – the implication being that they “reconstitute” what “should” have been there all along rather than beginning from scratch (Kessler 1998: 23).
[48] Dreger has come to believe that it is not just intersex treatment, but all medical treatment (particularly of young children) which needs to be re-examined to see whether or not it promotes patient autonomy and integrity. She expresses a desire to work toward “a radical medicine that recognizes and actively confronts the oppressive nature of social anatomical norms and questions the use of medicine to uphold, and even advance, particularly oppressive norms. In this vision, we would not ban or abandon all ‘normalizing’ procedures. But doctors and nurses and social workers who work with these families would begin engaging in a conscious dialogue of the meaning of anatomy and the implications of ‘normalizing’ procedures” (Dreger 2004).
[49] This is particularly important given the continual development of prenatal hormone therapy for CAH, and the development of gene therapies to reverse AIS in the womb, along with the ability to diagnose these conditions in pregnancy so that the parents can choose whether to continue with the gestation of the intersexed foetus (Holmes 2002: 176-7), which mean that certain intersex conditions may come to be all but eradicated. As with certain disabilities which can be diagnosed in utero, however, the choice to abort intersexed foetuses may be seen by some as ethically reprehensible, leading to a two-tier society where those already born who have these conditions come to be even more marginalized and undervalued. Joanna Jepson, the curate who spoke out in 2002 against the case of the late abortion of a seven-month foetus with a cleft lip and palate, arguing that such a treatable condition did not constitute a serious enough ground for terminating so late a foetus (Jepson 2005), highlighted the difficult blurring between disabilities which might “warrant” terminating a pregnancy and those which definitely do not. Given the medical benignity of most intersex conditions, especially in childhood, terminating intersexed foetuses is even less justifiable than terminating those with clefts or with other conditions such as Down’s syndrome. Discussing prenatal tests and postnatal therapy for intersex, Holmes says, “Their shared weakness is the twin assumption that our children are ours to make of what we will, and that we ought to will what is least complicated” (Holmes 2002: 177). Whilst life with a cleft might well be more complicated, and might require several surgeries in order to enable feeding and orthodontic work in order to avoid pain later, just as life with an intersex condition may also be more complicated in some respects than life without, this does not mean either life is less valuable or legitimate than a “normal” life. Some rulings about intersex genital surgery, like two which took place in Colombia in 1999, have invoked the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, making intersex surgery a human rights issue (Baird 2004: 56).
[50] Paul, or a member of his school, later uses the body imagery slightly differently, in Colossians and Ephesians where he contrasts the Church, the Body, with Christ who is its Head.
[51] Gorringe 2004: 127.
[52] Fascinatingly, Judith M. Gundry-Volf appeals to Colossians 3:10-11 as demonstrating that the real issue in Galatians 3:26-28 is sin, not the eradication of difference – and uses this to claim that it seems unlikely that Paul actually means to erase sexed difference (Gundry-Volf 2004: 35) – though male and female are not even mentioned in the Colossians passage.
[53] Meeks concludes that, in the later letters, “The baptismal reunification formula’s ‘no more male and female’ has not produced any radical reassessment of the social roles of men and women in the congregation. The traditional paranesis has redirected the notion of reunification to refer entirely to the relation of the whole community to Christ, while the author of Ephesians uses it only to reinforce the conventional definitions of the masculine and feminine roles in marriage” (Meeks 1974: 206).
[54] Reading Barth only in translation sometimes obscures the fact that he himself uses two different German words, Mann and Mensch, which are both rendered “man” in English, as here in Thomson’s translation. Mann equates more closely to “male”, and Mensch to “human”, but the fact that “man” in English can be used to mean both “male” and “mankind” (that is, all humans) obfuscates Barth’s distinction between these terms. Rachel Muers notes that this adds to the ambiguity around what it is that Barth means in his discussion of order and procession in the male-female and divine-human relationships. She says, “Barth’s account of the ‘Ordnung’ in sexual difference relies on the ambiguity of the word ‘Folge’, as suggesting either temporal succession or a synchronic hierarchy. The temporal sequence of the creation of male and female (itself based on the unargued elision of ’adam and ’ish, der Mensch and der Mann) is transposed into a synchronic ‘succession’: ‘first and second’ becomes ‘higher and lower’. The model of ‘the woman as answer’ itself contains this ambiguity; a question precedes its answer temporally, but, as Barth describes it, the question also determines its answer and thus acquires a priority which is more than temporal” (Muers 1999: 269).
[55] The title of Rees’ essay echoes that of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s 1985 book, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire
[56] Even Butler admits this by the time of Bodies That Matter, where the heterosexual matrix of Gender Trouble has become a heterosexual hegemony – potent but not all-encompassing, and, crucially, still redeemable.
[57] “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty” (1 Timothy 2:13-15).
[58] Medics now largely accept that sex cannot be reduced to gonads, chromosomes, gametes or any other single marker, but in a strictly biological sense, sex relies on gametes. Whether one could be argued only to become truly male or female when one “used” one’s gametes – when ovum and sperm fused to become zygote – is a moot point. It may or may not be coincidence that the popular term for sexual intercourse is “having sex”, with the implication that one has sex, or – arguably – has a sex, only when one is acting out a specific gendered role.
[59] Gorringe criticizes Barth’s conflation of the intra-Trinitarian and God-humanity relationships; he says, “Barth was led to the problem of subordination because Christ was the analogue in his understanding of the relation of God to Godself, of humans to each other, and of God to humanity. In understanding the relations of men and women Barth ran the first and the last together. What he should have seen, and what his logic leads him to see, is that it is the first analogy which obtains between men and women: as the Son is distinct from the Father but still God the adult male and female are different and distinct, but still equal” (Gorringe 1999: 207). Gorringe’s conclusion is important in giving weight to the female as legitimate and not inferior to the male.
[60] Blevins 2005: 75.
[61] Submission is, of course, itself a problematic category, particularly when used (for example) to counsel women to remain in abusive relationships to be a witness of God’s love to their abusers.
[62] The point is that although maleness and femaleness seems most irreducible exactly in the process of reproduction, this does not entail extending reproductive “signification” inexorably through all identification of an individual. Georgia Warnke argues, “Even under contemporary conditions, the idea of eliminating our categories of sex seems to shipwreck on the needs of reproduction. We need to interpret and divide human beings according to sex because doing so serves the requirements of reproduction. Yet how often do we want to reproduce? Given the limited number of times individuals in postindustrial societies do so, it seems odd to define human beings in terms of this capacity. More importantly, obviously not all those categorized as female actually have the capacity to reproduce; they are too young, too old, or infertile. Finally, with the present and future birth technologies of sperm banks, artificial insemination, artificial wombs, and cloning, and with the availability of these to ‘men’ as well as ‘women,’ our current identities as male or female, as well as heterosexual or homosexual, seem at the very least unnecessary. Still, does a division according to sex not encourage specialized research into nutritional needs, susceptibility to certain diseases, pregnancy, lactation, and menopause? …We might simply concentrate on the illnesses to which different people, unspecified with regard to a sex, might be susceptible because of their specific heritage, lifestyle, medical history (including pregnancy), and such features as breast size or kidney function. Just as one can be interested in medical research into the causes and risks of being left-handed without one’s left-handedness being more than a fact about one, one can be interested in the diseases associated with ovaries or testicles without possession of any of these organs being more than a fact about one… We can begin to question our sexed identities by appealing to other elements of who we are, to commitments to equality that may be incompatible with sex, and to notions of self-determination that do not allow us to extend the sexed identities we currently possess unthinkingly into the future” (Warnke 2001: 134-5). In other words, whilst it might be appropriate to recognize the sexed differences present in those who become pregnant and those who do not, this should not necessarily feed into other assumptions about differences between these groups. Kessler, from a strongly constructionist perspective, argues that people learn to see the dichotomy of gender by first learning to see the dimorphism of genitals – which, she says, suggests that a gender dichotomy is not an inevitable feature of human discourse (Kessler 1998: 80).
[63] Rachel Muers says, “Barth’s hierarchical ‘order’ is not stasis but a form of active existence; however, one of its effects is to prevent the intrusion of freedom or novelty on the part of the creature into the schema of the divinely-fulfilled covenant” (Muers 1999: 269).
[64] I would still wish to stress that the difference between humans inheres in more than sex and gender; humans are equal even where they are not as clearly distinct on sexed grounds as the labels “male” and “female” might imply.
[65] Gorringe goes on to stress that it is also problematic either to say – as some feminists do – that the Bible is so compromised by patriarchal ideology that it is also incapable of critiquing patriarchal ideology, or to appeal to “progressive revelation” for “testing” the veracity of scripture, since this may lead to a position where any reading is deemed as valuable as any other reading and it may become impossible to apply value-judgements to given strands in the text at all (Gorringe 2004: 119).
[66] Until recently Cheryl Chase chose to use pseudonymous names to describe her own infancy – “Charlie” for the time before her large clitoris was removed and “Cheryl” thereafter, when she had been reassigned as a girl (see, for example, Chase 1998b: 205-6). Most retellings of her story use “Charlie” and “Cheryl”: Martha Coventry says, “Chase had been born in 1956 and named Charlie. He was a little boy with a little penis. Eighteen months later, doctors found that Charlie had a uterus and ovaries and that each ovary had a small corner of testicular tissue. But because the ovaries were found to be functional, the decision was made to change his sex of rearing. Charlie became Cheryl. What doctors had considered a ‘tiny’ penis was now seen as a grossly large clitoris. In order to feminize the toddler, the surgeon incised deeply to obliterate any trace of a clitoris, removing the shaft along with the glans. Chase was left with a smooth, Barbie-doll look and a thin layer of scar tissue with no erotic sensation” (Coventry 2000). See also Lehrman 1999 and Dreger 1998: 177. Chase recently made her original birth and childhood names public, and they are cited by Elizabeth Weil in The New York Times: “When Brian Sullivan – the baby who would before age 2 become Bonnie Sullivan and 36 years later become Cheryl Chase – was born in New Jersey on Aug. 14, 1956, doctors kept his mother… sedated for three days until they could decide what to tell her… Sullivan lived as a boy for 18 months, until doctors… found a uterus and ovotestes… and told the Sullivans they’d made a mistake: Brian… was actually a girl. Brian was renamed Bonnie, her ‘nubbin’… was entirely removed and doctors counselled the family to throw away all pictures of Brian, move to a new town and get on with their lives… [In 1993] Sullivan wrote a letter that was published in [The Sciences]… calling for people with intersex conditions to get in touch with her, and she signed it Cheryl Chase, the Intersex Society of North America, though neither a person named Cheryl Chase nor an organization called the Intersex Society of North America yet existed” (Weil 2006).
[67] This assertion comes in the context of Goss’ argument that what appears to be a very socially-conservative text, Ephesians 5:21-30, is transformed through a queer reading which fully acknowledges the oddness of women participating in Christ and the believers participating in one another through baptism. Goss says, “What we have is a text that can be used to justify same-sex and transgendered marriages. Women are expected to act as Christ through the rite of baptism, for they identify as grooms and husbands and love their wives. Men are to act as Christ and love female-to-male transgendered husbands/grooms. The solidity of Christian gender identities is liquefied first through the sacramental rite of baptism where the believer reflects and lives Christ. The parody of a queer reading actually brings out the full intent of the text of Ephesians 5.21-30” (Goss 2006c: 637). For further reflection on queer readings of biblical texts see Chapter 5.
[68] Stephen D. Moore, who also engages in an examination of Derrida, explains effectively why apophatic or negative theology (the notion that it is only possible to know what God is not, rather than what God is) is not identical with différance in the thought of Derrida; see Moore 1994, and especially pages 21-25.
[69] Typographically, this is symbolized by writing a word and crossing it out but letting both the word and the scoring-out remain legible: erasure. The strikethrough actually draws attention to the “missing” word.
[70] Gerard Loughlin, for example, comments, “In the liturgical celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the Church participates in that creative work in which we are shown what the world could be like, what it will be like, and so, in some sense, is already, in the creation of Christ’s bodily communion” (Loughlin 2003: 24).
[71] In his discussion of the reproduction of works of art, John Berger comments, “Adults and children sometimes have boards in their bedrooms or living-rooms on which they pin pieces of paper: letters, snapshots, reproductions of paintings, newspaper cuttings, original drawings, postcards. On each board all the images belong to the same language and all are more or less equal within it” (Berger 1972: 30).
[72] That is, everywhere; the Latin ubique is the root of the English “ubiquity”.
[73] Vannini and Waskul write from within the symbolic interactionist school of sociology, which broadly assumes that humans are active, creative agents who help to shape the human world as well as being shaped by it; and that “subjectivity, meaning and consciousness do not exist prior to experience, but are emergent in action and interaction” (Waskul and Vannini 2006b: 3). Symbolic interactionists have been criticized for a lack of emphasis on the extent to which bodily actions are already limited by external structures such as gender hegemonies (M. Atkinson 2006: 249); Vannini and Waskul attempt to synthesize a more reciprocal transaction, in body-ekstasis, between self-determining and externally-determined behaviour.
[74] It is important for Vannini and Waskul that ekstasis does not simply supersede stasis (old habit, or the old way of being a body), for this would be to institute yet another dualism like that of culture/nature, individual/community, body/mind; rather, “body-stasis and body-ekstasis juxtapose one another… as a relationship that is actively mediated by liminality… Both the aesthetic potential of one’s body and others’ may be re-evaluated in a context of loosened temporal, physical, and normative constraints” (Vannini and Waskul 2006: 198).
[75] By contrast, in his discussion of Luther’s concept of Allwirksamkeit (the all-embracing activity of God), Markus Mühling-Schlapkohl uses the metaphor of God as a Renaissance painter who designs the themes of a painting but leaves the details and the execution to his assistants, knowing that, nevertheless, the result will be good. He says, “Similarly, God elects human beings and real contingency as co-operators, knowing that the whole process of the world will be – eschatologically – nothing but good” (Mühling-Schlapkohl 2004: 188) (original appears in italics). In this reading, God can allow for undetermined events, be they a result of human proactivity or natural processes, but they still fall within God’s broader activity because God’s “activity remains a necessary cause for the event to become actual” (Mühling-Schlapkohl 2004: 189). This might be interpreted as meaning that humans can only act because God created humans to be actors.
[76] Ched Myers says, “In the long run, the methods change and the text remains the same; as the old Bible school saying goes, the scripture is the anvil upon which all our tools are shaped. But in the short run, in the midst of the political struggles of each interpreter’s own time, the text remains vulnerable to misreadings that mute its power to animate us to discipleship… I recognize keenly the need to ‘overthrow and practically refute an interpretation already in place’… We must ‘begin to listen to symbols’, for indeed in our time we have ‘not finished doing away with idols’” (Myers 1988: 38).
[77] Romans 12:5.
[78] It is through this kind of logic that Tina Beattie refutes the accusation that a male saviour cannot save women; she says that to say this is to ignore the particular male body of the event. According to D’Costa, “[Beattie] shows that if a focus is placed on male gender without considering the actual particular male that is being redescribed, and the significations that are generated by that particular body, then to argue that only a man can save men amounts to redemption via anatomical identification – …a narcissistically projected divine” (D’Costa 2000: 59) (original emphasis).
[79] Positively, Barth’s reading of the Epistles does illuminate another sense of bodiliness: the implication that the Church as the body of Christ is also a dead body, a corpse; dead, that is, to sin (Barth 1956b: 662-664). It is at this point, however, that Barth seems – as McFarland (2005) attests – to posit a body and Head which are at war. Barth insists that Christ’s historical, mystical and sacramental bodies are not three but one (Barth 1956b: 666), yet this seems naïvely to ignore the possibility that what is “known” contemporaneously of Christ’s historical body has been distorted deliberately or unconsciously in the telling and in the passing-down. The “form” and the “mystery” of the Church (Barth 1956b: 669) may, in fact, not be identical with each other. It is ironic that this naïveté persists in Barth’s reading, for he seems aware of the possibility that certain historical understandings will be better understood in light of future occurrences: “It is not only the living who speak and act, but their predecessors, their words and works, their history, which does not end on their departure, but on their departure often only enters its decisive stage among their successors, standing in an indissoluble relationship with the history of the present… We to-day, therefore, exist only as confronted not only with the persons and problems of to-day, but (whether we are aware of it or not) with the persons and problems of all Church history” (Barth 1956b: 669).
[80] The entire history of Chase’s babyhood was also rewritten; Chase says, “The story of my childhood is a lie. I know now that after the clitorectomy my parents followed the physicians’ advice and discarded every scrap of evidence that Charlie had ever existed. They replaced all of the blue baby clothing with pink and discarded photos and birthday cards… One day Charlie ceased to exist in my family, and Cheryl was there in his place” (Chase 1998b: 206). Chase’s family moved away and settled in a new town before she started school. See also Coventry 2000 and Weil 2006.
[81] Hampson (1990: 155; 1996c: 129-30) writes in response to Ruether 1983: 115-6 (see my comments below, in this chapter). Hampson says that the paradigm of the ideal self being sacrificial and broken for others too easily feeds into a downtrodden “martyr-complex” already present in some women (Hampson 1996c: 130). Conversely, what is virtuous for the powerless is the courage to claim power (Hampson 1996c: 131). Sarah Coakley has countered that the kenosis critiqued by Hampson is not identical with the kenosis described by Paul (Coakley 2002: 9), and that the latter can be an important element of holding vulnerability and personal empowerment together, “precisely by creating the ‘space’ in which non-coercive divine power manifests itself” (Coakley 2002: 5). Coakley reasonably suspects that Hampson is too essentialist in her demarcations of all males as powerful and all females as powerless (Coakley 2002: 22), that Hampson too unproblematically considers power a “good” (Coakley 2002: 32), and that Foucault’s comment that all of us wields power in some respect might also disrupt Hampson’s claim (Coakley 2002: 34). Some of these discussions are expanded by Hampson, Coakley and others in Hampson 1996a.
[82] The story goes that Marina’s widowed father enters a monastery, and later disguises Marina as a boy, Marinus, so she can live there with him. Later, as a young man still living in the monastery, Marinus is accused of having fathered a child, and does not deny it. Marinus is forced to leave the monastery, and the baby’s mother later leaves it with Marinus. Marinus looks after the child and, as a reward, is allowed to re-enter the monastery five years later. Marina/Marinus’ true sex is not discovered until death (Wyschogrod 1990: 115-6).
[83] The “distance” between the present and future realms may also be collapsed; compare Michael Nausner’s study of Gregory of Nyssa’s transgendering as part of his transformative eschatology (Nausner 2002), whereby it is seen as a prefiguring of full unity in Christ. Nausner argues that, in Gregory’s commentary on the Song of Songs, there is a sense of ecstasy which transcends order, of becoming drunk with wine and milk, so that “One wonders whether the orderly gender hierarchy can stay intact in all this going out of orderliness… As the imagery gets more conflated, the clear distinction into male and female becomes less convincing” (Nausner 2002: 64). There is a sense in Gregory of an oscillation between gender roles, as in Gregory’s descriptions of his sister Macrina (Nausner 2002: 61). Nausner also asserts, “Gregory, in spite of his repeated recurrence to gender stereotypes, aims at a community that transforms lives in resistance to communal life that is structured in accordance to fixed gender identities and erotic roles” (Nausner 2002: 58). Nausner appeals to a “transformative eschatology”, but one which should be “a playful and mutual transgendering rather than transcendence of gender” (Nausner 2002: 56).
[84] The work of Marcella Althaus-Reid and others on theological echoes in S/M practices and the writings of the Marquis de Sade is thus notable despite, or even because of, its capacity to disturb; see, for instance, Althaus-Reid and Isherwood 2005.
[85] For this reason, Morland argues that it is naïve to suppose that even the narrative told by an intersexed individual, which reveals something of the interior life, is actually identical with that interior life. Ironically, then, “Even while activists seek to distinguish their patient-centred care from the concealment-centred model of conventional medicine, patient-centred care is nonetheless organized around the private ‘centre’ of the patient’s personhood… It is the breakdown of the interior/exterior division, rather than the division’s unassailable physical, psychological, or moral strength, which explicates the discrepancy between what activists want and what patients want… The invasion of the one by the other indicates that their opposition does not hold” (Morland 2005a: 230-1).
[86] Herman C. Waetjen comments, “In the new creation all pollution systems, which separated human beings from each other and discriminated against those categorized as unclean and therefore sinful, are invalid. Consequently, if all binary oppositions have been transcended, especially the binary realities of male and female… the actuality of many individuated selves of human beings, regardless of their sexual or intersexual physiology, regardless of their homo- or heterosexuality, can be united as one body to constitute the New Humanity of Christ Jesus. This is the vision… which the church of today can begin to actualize and thereby fulfil its destiny as the pioneer of a new moral order” (Waetjen 1996: 114).
[87] See, for instance, Rubens’ Christ Risen (1616) and Grünewald’s The Resurrection of Christ (the Isenheimer Altarpiece) (1510-15).
[88] Gross says that she has extremely ambiguous genitalia, but has not undergone karyotyping and does not know which particular intersex condition she has (in van Huyssteen 2003).
[89] It is interesting that the very word “testis” is derived from the Latin word for “witness”; the testes “testify” to the virility of the individual (Hoad 1986: 488). It might therefore be argued that excision of the testes muddies this testimony – although it is also possible to have non-functioning testes.
[90]Of course, men are also vulnerable to the domination of the phallus (even Butler owns as much – see for instance Butler 2001: 634), and it would be inadequate to conflate maleness with oppression per se; James B. Nelson has argued that the fullness of masculine sexuality and identity goes far beyond “bigness” or “hardness”. Nelson argues that, not only are men capable of having a soft penis as well as a turgid phallus, but in fact the penis is soft for far more of the time than it is hard. However, he maintains, this is still a uniquely masculine experience: it is a masculine softness, of male-related anatomy, not a feminine one (Nelson 1992: 100). Maleness need not entail constant hardness, either literal or symbolic.
[91] However, as Mark D. Jordan comments, “Queer relationships, so far as they are presumed to be ‘open’, do destroy Christian marriage in this sense, that they destroy cherished fictions about what it has accomplished. The chief theological accomplishment of Christian marriage is supposed to be that it settles the ancient enmity between eros and agape by granting a restricted title for eros within the universal field of agape… To increase the minimum number throws the truce into doubt” (Jordan 2005: 166).
[92] Of course, same-sex relationships may also involve hierarchy, within and beyond themselves; homosexual men are, in fact, sometimes accused of being amongst the most misogynistic.
[93] There have been many successful and convincing expositions of the acts referred to in these and other biblical texts as offending in other, non-specifically-homosexual ways. For example, David Tabb Stewart argues that the Leviticus texts may outlaw male-male incest specifically, rather than all male-male sexual activity (Stewart 2006: 97-99); Thomas Hanks holds that the “unnatural acts” of women referred to in Romans 1:26 may be anal intercourse carried out specifically to avoid pregnancy (Hanks 2006: 600). In the latter case, then, for example, the real offence would be deemed to be the deliberate avoidance of conception, not the act of anal intercourse itself. However, many expositions of the passage, which may already have a heteronormative bias – and in light of the second clause in Romans 1:27 whereby men give up natural intercourse “in the same way” – assume that the “unnatural” intercourse of verse 26 must be sex between women.
[94] There is, admits Kolakowski, a suspicion, in the Hebrew Bible in particular, of the cosmic imperfection that might be attached to castration (Kolakowski 1997: 18-19).
[95] For example, Mona West comments, “Eunuchs appear in half the chapters of the book of Esther as servants or agents of the Persian king. Many are mentioned by name, and their ability to cross social and gender boundaries allows them to play key roles in the plot of the story” (West 2006: 280).
[96] David Tabb Stewart notes that the attitudes toward eunicism in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy are not identical, and that “H”, probable author of the Holiness Code material, “permits the eunuch a continuing, disabled status” (Stewart 2006: 94). He continues, “It is the Deuteronomic writer that is wont to assign masculine and feminine on a putative male and female binary, condemning men who take up the symbolic equipage of femininity… and women who take up the symbols of masculinity… It is Deuteronomy that refuses entrance into the Israelite congregation (not just the priesthood) of males with crushed testes or whose members are cut off… Readers should resist the temptation to harmonize Deuteronomy and Leviticus, or let Deuteronomy’s laws trump Leviticus… Leviticus speaks with a different voice – and that voice, though giving little to transgendered persons to celebrate, is marginally less transphobic than Deuteronomy” (Stewart 2006: 94).
[97] This view echoes that of Countryman, who says, “The eunuch… was one of the few ‘individuals’ in the ancient world – a man with no intrinsic relation to a family. Jesus was acknowledging, then, that his prohibition of divorce effectively dissolved the family and made eunuchs of all men, for it deprived them of the authority requisite to maintain their patriarchal position and keep their households in subjection to themselves as the unique representatives of their families. What may appear to be a pronouncement about details of sexual ethics… actually spelled the end of the entire hierarchical institution called family” (Countryman 1989: 176).
[98] ISNA’s current protocol (as at August 2007) runs, “Why shouldn’t children with intersex be raised in a ‘third gender’? We advocate assigning a boy or girl gender because intersex is not, and will never be, a discrete biological category any more than male or female is, and because assigning an ‘intersex’ gender would unnecessarily traumatize the child. In cases of intersex, doctors and parents need to recognize, however, that gender assignment of infants with intersex conditions as boy or girl, as with assignment of any infant, is preliminary. Any child—intersex or not—may decide later in life that she or he was given the wrong gender assignment” ().
[99] “To take the sexes for granted, to treat the existence of two sexes as an irreducible fact, obscures each individual’s responsibility for creating the world in which she/he lives… Our theoretical position is that gender is a social construction, that a world of two ‘sexes’ is a result of the socially shared, taken-for-granted methods which members use to construct reality” (Kessler and McKenna 1978: vii). In her later book on intersex, Kessler insists, “One argument for reducing the number of intersex surgeries hinges on changing the meaning of variant genitals, such that a large clitoris does not necessarily mean ‘offence’, a small penis does not necessarily mean ‘not a real man’, and an absent vagina does not necessarily mean ‘not a real woman’” (Kessler 1998: 9). For Kessler, it is necessary to change our ideas of what variability signifies, so that not all variation is figured as pathological by default, rather than eradicating the variation itself. Kessler also wishes for a move from pinning male “adequacy” entirely on penis size, as has tended to happen in intersex surgery, to more focus on interpersonal and communication skills (Kessler 1998: 38).
[100] See Billings and Urban 1982: 269-70 for a variety of citations from medical literature of the 1960s portraying people seeking SRS as psychotic, paranoid schizophrenic or neurotic.
[101] Henry Rubin points out that “the term ‘transsexual man’ is commonly misunderstood; it refers to a female-to-male transsexual who is living as a man” (Rubin 2003: 19). In this thesis, where the terms “transsexual man”, “transsexual woman”, “transman” or “transwoman” are used, they refer to the later gender identity, that is the one in which the individual was most recently known to be living and, crucially, the one in which the individual self-identifies. This contrasts with terminology often used by the medical profession, where a “transsexual woman” is a (biological) woman who has transitioned to be a man (that is, a female-to-male transsexual) (Rubin 2003: 20).
[102] This also chimes with Foucault’s exposition of scientia sexualis, whereby part of the way in which sex became science was through its interpretation by “expert witnesses”. Part of the interpretation laid over the discourse of sex during the 19th century was, says Foucault, the notion that one was not a “good enough” or reliable enough speaker of one’s own story. Rather, the story required intervention and completion by a doctor or other expert. As a result, says Foucault, “The one who listened was… the master of truth” (Foucault 1990: 67). By maintaining that there was a single “truth” to sex which could be discovered, says Foucault, 19th-century society actually rendered sex a secret which could not be allowed to tell its own truth incidentally – so that its “truthfulness” is always mediated by what we as observers make of it (Foucault 1990: 69). This is, of course, always in tension and always being altered through shifting power-relations.
[103] Morgan Holmes says that a similar rationale governs funding for genital surgeries in Canada; procedures done on intersexed children are publicly insured, whilst the same procedures, when done on transsexuals, are not (Holmes 2002: 161).
[104] Moreover, the Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as some predominantly non-Jewish and non-Muslim societies such as in the USA, regularly and routinely remove healthy tissue from normal, unambiguously-sexed children, in the circumcision of young boys. It is sometimes claimed that this pre-empts possible later problems such as phimosis; but it might as well be said that all children should have their tonsils or appendixes removed at birth. It seems in some respects arbitrary that surgery to remove the foreskin (healthy, non-pathological, functional tissue) is deemed acceptable (and deemed, in the Hebrew Bible tradition, to enhance the perfection of the male body rather than compromising it) while other surgery on “healthy” genital tissue – at least in non-intersexed individuals – is not. It is true that male circumcision does not impede procreation, whilst some other genital or gonadal surgery might do; but such conflation of intercourse with procreation, whilst making sense within the Hebrew Bible’s economy, is less evident (and less desirable) today. There has been a backlash from some men circumcised as infants who feel that such an unsolicited procedure was invasive and damaging. They claim that circumcision has led to the constantly-exposed glans becoming sore or – eventually – desensitized, and thus sexual intercourse being less enjoyable for them than for uncircumcised men. However, it is possible to gradually re-grow the foreskin by stretching it over a period of several years, and this has led to the invention of a variety of contraptions worn on the penis to encourage restoration, as well as support groups for men who are angered by their early circumcisions, such as the National Organization of Restoring Men – see e.g. Johnson 2005.
[105] O’Donovan does also use the terminology of intersex, but insists that “the term ‘hermaphrodite’, offensive as it may be, is conceptually truer, suggesting that the condition is one of both-and, arising from a malfunction in the process of differentiation” (O’Donovan 1982: 7) (my emphasis). This rests on the assumption that “male” and “female” pre-exist any intermediate state; that each embryo begins not with dual potential but dual actuality. O’Donovan’s statement implies that the embryo begins as both male and female and then loses one half of itself. Ironically, this is far closer to the ancient Greek belief – in the context of which the story of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis arose – that each individual is searching for their lost other half, and that each original whole was comprised of either male and female, female and female, or male and male. However, it does not fit with what is currently known of human sex differentiation. Intersex is emphatically not a case of “both-and”, which is one reason why the terminology of hermaphroditism has been dropped.
[106] And contra Harry Benjamin, one of the early pioneers in the medical study and reassignment of transsexuals; Benjamin claimed, “In many respects, transsexualism in the anatomic male might be regarded as an incomplete expression of this testicular feminization syndrome [that is, AIS] with the defect affecting only sex-specific areas of the hypothalamus” (Benjamin and Ihlenfeld 1973: 457). Benjamin also proposed possible social catalysts for male-to-female transsexualism, such as an absent or hostile father figure and a mother who encourages quiet, non-aggressive play to the exclusion of “boyish” activities (Benjamin and Ihlenfeld 1973: 458). Part of the pre-surgical treatment noted by Benjamin in a gender identity programme at UCLA School of Medicine was therapy with transgendered pre-adolescent boys to “strengthen the image of the father as a more acceptable figure for identification” (Benjamin and Ihlenfeld 1973: 460).
[107] Theologically, Haraway’s work has other striking implications, such as the messianicism of cyborg-humans given that, she claims, “The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history” (Haraway 1991: 150). Some of these issues are explored by Tatman (2003) who explores the theological language and metaphor which Haraway’s work employs.
[108] Watts owns that he is concerned less with the matter of whether transsexualism is based in essentialism or constructionism, and more on why it is pathologized (Watts 2002: 69-70).
[109] “Human cooperation can be enlisted with God’s redemptive purposes for the physical as well as the psychological and spiritual, and that cooperation need not preclude surgery” (Watts 2002: 80)
[110] Holder does note in the second part of the piece that sex assignment for “hermaphrodites” can be somewhat arbitrary (Holder 1998b: 129).
[111] This is evidenced by his comments in Part 2 of his piece on transsexualism (Holder 1998b: 131).
[112] Oddly, Hare himself comments that the report “does not touch on the issue of intersexuality, let alone the management options. It does however briefly mention true hermaphroditism” (Hare 2007: 104). It is not made clear why Hare distinguishes “hermaphroditism” and “intersexuality” in this way; the structuring of his essay makes it clear he does count ovotestes as an intersex condition (along with AIS, CAH – which he terms adrenogenital syndrome – and, interestingly, Klinefelter’s syndrome) (Hare 2007: 103-4).
[113] Beardsley argues that SIIHS falls short in relying too much on Scripture and tradition which has not taken into account pastoral care changes which should have occurred in light of medical and psychological work done on transsexualism (Beardsley 2005: 338-9), including not acknowledging any work suggesting a biological basis for transsexualism (2005: 342); in making unsubstantiated assertions as, for instance, claiming that to bless same-sex couples would undermine heterosexual marriage without adequately explaining why (2005: 340); in not using transsexual individuals’ own experiences (2005: 342-3); in employing a “circularity” of method, whereby the Genesis 1:26-7 reference to “male” and “female” “is assumed to denote self-evident concepts that support the authors’ preconceived ideas about marriage and gender” (2005: 343) (this attitude is also evident in Issues in Human Sexuality: “In the Creation stories humankind is by God's decision both male and female... In Genesis 2 the man, as a royal figure, has authority over the woman” [Church of England 1991: 7]); in arguing that it is appropriate to refer to transsexuals with the pronouns of their birth gender rather than the gender they have adopted (Beardsley 2005: 343); in a failure to discuss, or at least acknowledge, the existence of third-sex and third-gender categories in other cultures (2005: 345); and in a failure to engage with the specific problem of social exclusion faced by many transsexuals (2005: 345). As Vanessa Baird notes, violence against transsexuals has sometimes targeted their particular physiological states in extremely specific ways, and this has affected their economic security too. Baird reports a spate of attacks on transsexuals in Buenos Aires in the late 1990s where male-to-female transsexuals were “beaten on their cheekbones or breast to burst their implants, sometimes causing the release of toxic substances with severe health consequences” (Baird 2004: 107). Because of prejudice or humiliation, many transsexuals also find it difficult to access adequate health care, which is particularly dangerous for those involved in sex work (Baird 2004: 108). Beardsley’s criticisms of SIIHS are important, particularly that of the lack of consultation of transpeople.
[114] Stephen Whittle claims, “The repercussions of Raymond’s book are still being felt…, with many Rape Crisis Centres refusing to help transsexual women, and transsexual women being excluded from women’s courses, women’s centres and other women’s spaces” (Whittle 2000: 51).
[115] By contrast, male-to-female Kate Bornstein describes a willing transition and, moreover, a conscious ceding of male privilege: “I’m nowhere near as territorial or possessive as I used to be. I’m not as frantic to get or hold onto something as I once was… I use force infrequently now… The shortcomings are obvious: lower pay, less security, more fear on the streets, less opportunity in the job market. All those drawbacks made me look at the value of what I’d lost. Do I really want to take part in a culture that places a higher value on greed and acquisition than on peace and shared growth?” (Bornstein in Nataf 1996: 23).
[116] However, what might have been the case for the early US transsexuals such as Christine Jorgensen did not necessarily remain so for those who followed later. Christine (né/e George) Jorgensen was the first high-profile transsexual in the USA (though her surgery in 1952 followed that of Lili Elbe and others in Europe in the 1930s – Meyerowitz 2002: 20-21, 30-34). Jorgensen was notoriously attractive and “feminine” in appearance and behaviour, presenting herself as extremely innocent and demure. However, the late 1960s and beyond saw a rise in the number of transsexuals who explicitly eroticized themselves (taking part in nightclub drag acts and so on), some of whom were also flamboyantly transgressive of established gender binaries.
[117] Crucially, it seems it is also highly dubious for some intersexed individuals and others – such as David Reimer, whose sex was entirely sublimated to a gender cardinally and univocally imposed (see Colapinto 2001, 2004).
[118] Jan Morris’ entire history and biography is set in light of this assertion: “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl… It is the earliest memory of my life” (Morris 2002: 1). Julia Reischel’s 2006 piece in The Village Voice focuses on the family of a five-year-old male child who has insisted on wearing dresses and being called a girl since the age of two. The child says, “I have a girl brain in a boy body” (Reischel 2006).
[119] By the late 1990s, Butler more explicitly acknowledges some of the more unchosen elements of the performance of gender. She says, “Even… family relations recapitulate, individualize, and specify preexisting cultural relations; they are rarely, if ever, radically original. The act that one does, the act that one performs, is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one arrived on the scene” (Butler 1997: 409). This is not to say that bodies are merely inscribed; rather, “The gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space and enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives” (Butler 1997: 410). The actor is still an actor and not a puppet, even if the action takes place within certain bounds. Butler concludes that it will come to be in the very insignificance of gendered acts that it will be possible to critique politically gender “realities”: “The redescription needs to expose the reifications that tacitly serve as substantial gender cores or identities, and to elucidate both the act and the strategy of disavowal which at once constitute and conceal gender as we live it. The prescription is invariably more difficult, if only because we need to think a world in which acts, gestures, the visual body, the clothed body, the various physical attributes usually associated with gender, express nothing… The prescription… consists in an imperative to acknowledge the existing complexity of gender which our vocabulary invariably disguises and to bring that complexity into a dramatic cultural interplay without punitive consequences” (Butler 1997: 414). This assertion builds on Butler’s argument in Bodies That Matter (1993), an attempt to re-examine the category of “sex” after criticisms that Gender Trouble was too quick to throw out materiality altogether. Butler claims in Bodies That Matter that to seize on the performative nature of gender does not necessarily entail negating the way in which, for example, some bodies can become pregnant and others cannot. However, she says, it is still essential to ask questions about why some bodies are figured as legitimate subjects and others are not (Butler 1993: 3), and to accept that materiality is an ongoing process that gives the effect of boundary or fixity, rather than an actual static site or surface (Butler 1993: 9).
[120] Meyerowitz adds that would-be transsexuals came to realize they had to tailor their accounts in order to access surgical reassignment. Transgendered people thus coached one another in what to say (Meyerowitz 2002: 158-9). By the late 1960s, doctors had become savvy to the fabricated nature of some transgendered people’s histories, leading to an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse with each side attempting to stay one step ahead of the other. Note the somewhat disapproving undertone to the observation that “Many patients were as familiar with the medical literature as physicians were” (Billings and Urban 1982: 274). An awareness that transpeople sometimes changed their stories (Billings and Urban 1982: 274) exacerbated, it is said, the doctors’ mistrust of them as reliable advocates, which itself led to even more dislike of doctors by patients (Meyerowitz 2002: 162).
[121] In this 2001 article, Butler also comes to consider intersexed and transsexual accounts of selfhood, and self-description, specifically in light of the David Reimer case. It is valuable to see Butler herself examining the implications of intersex for her work, but unfortunately she seems at this point to have a slightly loose grasp on all the material she cites. It seems that Butler has misunderstood or misrepresented the thrust of Diamond’s argument around the extent to which chromosomes rather than environment determine gender identity: she says, “Diamond argued… that intersexed infants… generally have a Y chromosome, and that possession of the Y is an adequate basis for concluding that they ought to be raised as boys” (Butler 2001: 625); and, later, asks “Why is the Y chromosome considered the primary determinant of maleness, exercising preemptive rights over any and all other factors?” (Butler 2001: 628). However, this is not quite what Diamond says; even Natalie Angier, one of Butler’s sources for the 2001 article, glosses Diamond and Sigmundson’s 1997 findings thus: “The scientists propose that many of these constructed females may be unhappy with their enforced identity, particularly if they have a Y chromosome - the most overt mark of a male - and were likely to have been exposed to male hormones in the womb. In these infants, the scientists write, ‘the psychosexual bias’ from prenatal events may bias them strongly in a masculine direction, and they would be better off being reared as boys” (Angier 1997) (my emphasis). The “prenatal events” in question are the bathing of the foetal brain in androgens, including testosterone, high levels of which appear to have some correlation with adult gender identity and libido. However, it is not as simple, as Butler claims, as saying that Diamond sees the Y chromosome in itself as a basis for raising a child as a boy; rather, identification of a Y chromosome in karyotyping usually (though not always) means that increased androgen levels have already been experienced in utero. To say that Diamond claims that it is simply the Y chromosome that “cannot be constructed away” (Butler 2001: 626) or “does not need to ‘appear’ in order to operate as the key feature of gender identity” (Butler 2001: 626) is to oversimplify Diamond’s argument. This weakens Butler’s own rhetorical tack of pitting Diamond against Money (Butler 2001: 626) in an impasse where each is as essentialist as the other despite starting from opposite corners. Whilst it is true that Diamond and Sigmundson say, “The evidence seems overwhelming that normal humans are not psychosexually neutral at birth but are, in keeping with their mammalian heritage, predisposed and biased to interact with the environment, familial and social forces, in a male or female mode” (Diamond and Sigmundson 1997a), it is unhelpful to caricature and thus oversimplify their reasoning. They say, “We believe that any 46-chromosome, XY individual born with a normal nervous system, in keeping with the psychosexual bias thus prenatally imposed, should be raised up as a male” (Diamond and Sigmundson 1997a) (my emphasis). It is the consequences of the hormones produced by a typical XY-related nervous system that are significant, not the possession of XY chromosomes in themselves. In fact, Diamond and Sigmundson explicitly state, “An individual's sexual profile is comprised of at least five levels: gender Patterns, Reproduction, sexual Identity, Mechanisms and sexual Orientation (PRIMO)” (Diamond and Sigmundson 1997a). However, the overall thrust of Butler’s 2001 article is to say that Reimer’s story serves to falsify both Diamond’s hypothesis and Money’s; she claims, “There may be another way to read this story, one that neither confirms nor denies the theory of social construction, one that neither affirms nor denies gender essentialism… What I hope to underscore here is the disciplinary framework in which Joan/John develops a discourse of self-reporting and self-understanding, since it constitutes the grid of intelligibility by which his own humanness is both questioned and asserted” (Butler 2001: 629). By pushing Diamond’s position to this extreme, Butler has eroded her own project of forging a “third way”, for she is arguing against a stand which Diamond does not actually take. Her attempts to read the “discourse of self-reporting and self-understanding” are useful in terms of considering the extent to which the sexed self-determination of transsexual and intersexed people (and others such as Reimer) is always already tempered by their background and by the positive and negative gender messages that have been received from earliest infancy and which affect the reading of their own “innate” impulses. There is, however, no need to base this on caricatured versions of Diamond’s or Money’s positions. “John” and “Joan” were the pseudonyms used by Diamond and Sigmundson in their 1997 follow-up reports, before the publication of Colapinto’s As Nature Made Him (2001) in which David Reimer decided to use his real name. In Butler’s 2004 book Undoing Gender she includes a reworking of the 2001 paper, in which she uses Reimer’s real name. The reworked article is otherwise not significantly different from the 2001 GLQ version, except for one paragraph influenced by Cheryl Chase’s assertion that “although a child should be given a sex assignment for the purposes of establishing a stable social identity, it does not follow that society should engage in coercive surgery to remake the body in the social image of that gender” (Butler 2004: 63); rather, any surgery or hormone treatment should occur only when the (older) child has requested it. The earlier version stated, “There is no reason to make a sex assignment at all; society should make room for the intersexed as they are” (Butler 2001: 626).
[122] Henry Rubin explores the testimonies of transsexual men from the perspective of genealogies; some of Rubin’s female-to-male transsexual subjects spent time as lesbians, and specifically as “butch”, “boy” lesbians before transitioning to a categorically masculine expression of gender, and stress the differences between (butch) lesbian and transsexual male (Rubin 2003: 24-5): “Where butches manage to stay in their bodies, FTMs cannot” (Rubin 2003: 25). The overwhelming desire to change one’s body, not simply one’s clothed projection of gender, is common to many non-intersexed transgendered persons. The desire to undergo surgery may, in some cases, be largely connected with a fear of violent recrimination from those whom one has “fooled” into believing that one’s lived gender reflects one’s sex. Brandon Teena (alias Teena Brandon), whose story became well-known through its dramatized film version, Boys Don’t Cry (Peirce 1999), was raped and murdered at the age of 21 when acquaintances of his girlfriend Lana Tisdel discovered that he was morphologically female.
[123] Bianca was also given surgery to open her vagina, as her labia were fused; but, in a positive move, her clitoris was concealed rather than reduced, so that she could later choose for herself whether to undergo this further procedure (Godwin 2004).
[124] One example of how consideration of disability might helpfully inform consideration of intersex is in the case of deafness. Like intersex, deafness is not universally accepted as a tragic or disabling condition – although it is often figured in this way by non-deaf medical professionals. There are some deaf parents for whom having deaf children is actually a cause for celebration, since the deaf child will be able to participate fully in its parents’ particular deaf culture. One couple, Paula Garfield and Tomato Lichy, celebrated when they discovered that their baby daughter, Molly, was deaf, despite the strident view from medics that deafness was pathological and problematic (R. Atkinson 2006). Garfield and Lichy, who were both made to wear hearing aids as young children, decided not to force Molly to wear them until she was old enough to make her own decision. Far from deafness impeding her development, as medical professionals have argued, Garfield claimed that Molly’s vocabulary in English and BSL (British Sign Language) was equivalent with that of hearing children of the same age. Crucially, said her parents, hearing aids or cochlear implants at this age (14 months at the time the article was published) might in themselves limit or damage Molly – just as surgical intervention for intersex can create undesirable side-effects which are more traumatic than the condition itself. Lichy said, “It’s an important time for Molly to learn about her body in its natural state… How to use her hands and her vision. To give her hundreds of decibels straight into her ear with an amplifying device, when she can’t control the volume herself or say if it’s painful, is just wrong… How can she learn to play, to focus, to concentrate with noises like that [up to 120dB] blasting into her ear? We refuse to do it to our baby” (in R. Atkinson 2006). In fact, Lichy claimed his own memory, concentration and vision actually improved after he stopped wearing his hearing aids. However, Garfield and Lichy also have hearing friends and family as well as their deaf community, and have ensured Molly is learning speech as well as BSL. The claims made by doctors that not having hearing aids in infancy is unfair to Molly, and will isolate and disadvantage her, are akin to those made by surgeons putting pressure on the parents of intersexed infants to have them surgically corrected. Arguably, however, rather than following the early surgery paradigm and trying to ensure reassigned intersexed children will never have to know about their original sex, intersexed children, too, should be able to get to know their body in its original state before later making the decision about whether to have surgery. Garfield states, “These doctors, and many other people generally, know so little about the deaf community, culture and language, yet they assume they know what is right for us. They have a perception that deafness is a physical failing that needs to be corrected. For us, it’s just a different and equally valid way of being” (in R. Atkinson 2006). Just as hearing people find it difficult to understand how an absence of hearing does not equate to a lack, so unambiguously-sexed people generally perceive unambiguous sex as advantageous and (thus) necessary. Esther Morris says, “I was labelled with ‘sexual dysfunction’ because I couldn’t have intercourse… But I had discovered my own sexuality so I was very confused… My doctors recommended vaginal reconstruction so I could have a normal sex life with my husband when I got married. I never had a chance to want a vagina; I simply had to have one” (Morris 2003). For Morris, as for the parents of Molly, her physiology was simply “a different and equally valid way of being”.
[125] Similarly, Esther Morris comments, “The standard of normal that we aim for is imaginary… I feel different because of my surgeries, not because of my vaginal dimple. Being born without a vagina was not my problem. Having to get one was the real problem” (Morris 2003).
[126] The difference, which Koyama does not note, is that, whilst non-disabled people (according to the model above) affirm and identify themselves in opposition to disabilities, because people with disabilities allow them to play a benevolent role, with intersex, people who are unambiguously-sexed seem less happy to identify themselves in distinction from intersexed individuals. Rather, it is intersexed people who must be changed, and made as similar to non-intersexed people as possible.
[127] It is not simply early surgical intervention for intersexed children that must be questioned: why, Koyama asks, do some doctors also “over-diagnose” ADHD and hand out drugs such as Ritalin to so many children “in lieu of educational and welfare initiatives” (Koyama 2006)? Why are there “limb-lengthening surgeries that prioritize ‘normal’ appearance over function” (Koyama 2006)? Koyama admits that some “normalizing” treatments do make many people’s lives more bearable, but advocates continual working to eradicate the social aspects of disability which limit people more than their impairment alone renders inevitable.
[128] A notable exception is Channel 4’s 2004 documentary Secret Intersex, which included the story of two half-sisters, Ilizane and Xenia (aged 16 and 6 at the time), who were being brought up in a climate of complete openness about their AIS, and whose parents encouraged them to view themselves as “inters” rather than girls or boys. This non-hysterical approach was carried on by the programme makers – although the Sunday Telegraph, which ran a piece on the family before the programme was shown (Craig 2004), chose the more sensational strapline “Half Boys, Half Girls: Inside the World of the Hermaphrodite Siblings”.
[129] It is interesting that worries about appropriately-gendered behaviour are expressed by parents of intersexed children, who may be hyper-aware of potential gender identity problems for their children, but are not necessarily expected or anticipated to the same extent by the parents of non-intersexed children. ISNA’s Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development handbook for parents of intersexed children comments, “Many parents of children with DSDs have a whole set of worries that a lot of other parents do not have, and they have them right from the moment the DSD is noticed. They worry that the child has been assigned the ‘wrong’ gender or that the child may turn out to be gay. Parents of children with DSDs tell us that they spend a lot of energy watching their children play and interact with others, trying to notice whether the child’s behavior is ‘girlish’ or ‘boyish.’ When they see their children acting like the ‘opposite’ gender, or they see their children acting ‘gay,’ they often wonder if the DSD (or a ‘wrong’ gender assignment) is the cause of what they are seeing. Sometimes seeing their children behave ‘different’ in this way will bring up strong emotions for parents, including sometimes a sense of guilt, fear, shame, or anger” (Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development 2006b: 15).
[130] John M. Hull argues that the Bible more often than not portrays God as “super-abled”, with sensory and other powers beyond those of humans – like us, but more so. He says, “The result is a humanity of convergence, where the signs of redemption are to be found in the recall of the peripheries to the centre… The convergence is rooted in the domination of the majority and returns in eschatological visions toward the singularity of the average” (Hull 2003: 28). This is extremely problematic in light of queer theologians’ reminders that God is not at the centre. If God is in empathy and solidarity with those at the margins of human society and signification, it may be necessary to problematize and read resistantly the notion of God’s “drawing all things unto Godself”. If God is disseminated, marginal, even multiple, then to draw all things to God is not identical with drawing all things to the centre of legitimacy, signification or social decency. God’s existence with the poor and disenfranchised thus stands in distinction from the hegemonic projects of those who purport to represent God as a kind of cosmic black hole sucking everything into a singularity. In fact, says Hull, human worlds are plural because the bodies in which they are experienced are plural. However, unfortunately this is not corroborated, he says, by the biblical strand whereby “a single ideal humanity… fell away into various kinds of alleged imperfection and abnormality… Jesus, who according to this world history is perfect humanity, is hailed as the messianic agent for the restoration of perfect and uniform humanity” (Hull 2003: 22).
[131] Leviticus 19:14.
[132] Preves writes from a strong social constructionist perspective, maintaining, “Intersex… is not in itself pathological. Rather, the pathology lies in the social system and its strict adherence to gender binarism” (Preves 2003: 89). She rejects Goffman’s claim that an individual marked out as different will then inevitably perpetuate their own exclusion without any further stigmatization by outsiders, for she believes that people do not simply react to their labelling or figuring by others, and can overcome negative assignations (Preves 2003: 99). She sees education as key to overcoming stigmatization (Preves 2003: 102).
[133] As Shelley Tremain notes – Tremain 2005: 3.
[134] Frances Young has commented that for some people with intellectual and learning disabilities, it can be far more “freeing” to live within a safe, semi-closed community of people with disabilities and carers, than to be forced (by such initiatives as “care in the community”) to integrate into a society which is unsympathetic, cruel and physically dangerous to those who are not capable of living independently (in Young 1990).
[135] Feminist philosopher of disability Susan Wendell asks, “How can people fight collectively an oppression based on a category without using that category, without organizing around it? But then, if they do use it, do they not build a collective interest in maintaining it?” (Wendell 1996: 76).
[136] Of course, it might be countered that God’s merciful treatment of Israel throughout the Hebrew Bible is based on compassion rather than desert – but Israel’s faithfulness is characterized by a capacity to obey and respond to God, so that it might be considered necessary to be able to participate in the worshipping life of the community in order to be in full relationship with God. This would not always have been possible for people with disabilities given – as Fontaine also notes – links in the Hebrew Bible between disability and shame, so that people with “leprosy” (probably a range of skin conditions) could not associate with others, and would be considered perpetually ritually unclean. In the Levitical code, various kinds of bodily “blemish” (whether congenital or accidental) entirely preclude, for example, entry to the priesthood (below, and Fontaine 1994: 111); although norms for priests might be considered more stringent than those for the general populace, they betray particular attitudes about the manner in which impairment compromises physical integrity or perfection.
[137] Although it has been argued that menstrual “taboos” might in fact mark menstruation out as holy, or allow women a mechanism by which to refuse men’s sexual demands at least for a time (Greenberg 1985: 133, Raphael 1996: 167); that it was women themselves who extended niddah, the time during which sex at and after menstruation must be avoided, from seven days to twelve days (Greenberg 1985: 122); and that the Orthodox Jewish mikvah or ritual bath after niddah is not inherently unfeminist or simplistically to do with cleanness/uncleanness (Greenberg 1985: 123, 125), Melissa Raphael holds, “There seems little doubt that the biblical traditions have and continue to find menstrual blood repellent to the holy. It is quite outside or profane to the mechanisms of atonement and salvation which are lubricated by male sacrificial blood” (Raphael 1996: 171).
[138] Whether or not something is deemed natural often depends on whether it allows or facilitates certain perceived goods; a baby born with a cleft palate and/or lip will probably have some difficulty feeding, so surgery is done to promote the “natural” good of feeding, as well as to bring about a more “natural” appearance to the face – yet, already, the two instances of the word “natural” appear to carry slightly different connotations. The “good” of being able to suckle easily is generally accepted as an inherent good, because feeding is necessary for survival and feeding by mouth is usually less invasive and more comforting for the child than being fed via a drip or tube. More problematically, though, a child whose genitals do not obviously fit standardized male-related or female-related appearances may also be surgically altered to appear more “natural”. Here, the questions of the goods which are being promoted are less candid and more dubious. Certainly it is a good that a child should be able to urinate and excrete effectively – but assuming that the intersex condition does not compromise these abilities, it is less obvious precisely which goods are being promoted by surgery. The good of being able to reproduce sexually is rarely an option in intersexed individuals, regardless of surgery; the goods actually promoted here are those of being able to reproduce sexually, of appearing “normal”, and of being able to participate in other culturally gendered activities, such as engaging later in penis-in-vagina sex, or (for boys) standing to urinate. However, in contrast with surgery for a cleft palate or lip, the result of which is that the child will really be able to suck more effectively, surgery on intersexed children’s genitals only leads to an appearance of being able to reproduce sexually. To hold this in itself as a good would be akin to surgeons saying that it is a good for cleft lip/palate children to appear to be able to suckle, even if in fact the surgery to cosmetically alter their faces did not have this consequence. (Actually, even surgically-altered genitals often bear only a cursory likeness to their inborn counterparts.) Of course, it might be retorted that even appearing as genitally-typical as possible, so as not to arouse any particular attention, is in fact as inherent a good as being able to feed successfully. Concomitantly, having genitals which can be used in heterosexual penetrative sex (usually figured as typical behaviour and thus fundamentally propitious) even where procreation will not be possible has also often been deemed “obviously” good, and has been brought about artificially where it is not inborn. Questions of whether it is, in fact, a good to have a body which is – allegedly – unremarkable in appearance, even where other goods are compromised, are paramount. The goods compromised by corrective surgery on intersexed infants might include the absence of non-medically-necessary pain and discomfort, not being exposed to the risk of death or infection which comes with any surgery (Arana 2005: 20), the ability to have a childhood unhampered by repeat hospital visits, the capacity for a physically pleasurable sexual relationship in adulthood, and so on. The report from the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s investigation into intersex surgery lists in more detail the known side-effects from a range of surgical procedures carried out on intersexed infants and children. For example: “Vaginoplasty can have negative outcomes: it can cause infertility; vaginal dilation is often painful and humiliating; the constructed vagina can smell like bowel; it can necessitate constant use of sanitary napkins; it frequently requires repeated surgical revisions; …there is no medical need for a preadolescent girl to have a vagina” (Arana 2005: 21). Where so many “goods” are subsumed to a few dubious ones, questions are raised about what is really at stake when intersexed bodies go unaltered.
[139] Routine circumcision of the majority of baby boys has, in recent decades, been far more common in the USA than in Britain.
[140] Arguments that all bodies are impaired by their interactions with a fallen or at least imperfect creation risks appropriating the experiences of people with disabilities and downplaying their own specificity. Eiesland criticizes the way in which some churches’ statements on disability, such as those issued by the American Lutheran Church, say that all bodies on earth are “disabled” by the Fall into sin. She argues, “By spiritualising disability to argue that all Christians are disabled by sin and are, therefore, ‘dis-enabled’, the [ALC] document obscures the concrete reality of the exclusion of people with disabilities from participation in the Christian community. While all people do experience sin, not all people face architectural segregation and discrimination on the basis of disability” (Eiesland 1994: 85). Colonizing disability in this way further erodes disabled persons’ autonomy and authority as speakers, for non-disabled persons are taking it upon themselves to proclaim what disability “really” signifies. Moreover, once again it conflates disability with shortcoming or suffering from which we will one day be liberated, rather than recognizing it as – for some people – an important constituent element of identity.
[141] See also “Sight To The Inly Blind”, Hull’s overview of disability metaphors in hymns (Hull 2002). A particularly notorious offender is Charles Wesley in “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing”, who counsels, “Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb, / Your loosened tongues employ; / Ye blind, behold your Saviour come; / And leap, ye lame, for joy”. Interestingly, a later verse including the assurance that Christ will “wash the Æthiop white” is excised from modern hymn books; the racist undertone, even if unintentional, is no longer acceptable, but the metaphors of disability persist.
[142] Although there is imagery of Christ as blinded, immobilized and marginalized in the New Testament (Hull 2003: 29), Hull claims that “Jesus the miracle worker, the one who did not have disabled people among his disciples, is the Jesus who has lived on most powerfully in the church” (Hull 2003: 29). Hull cites Mark 14:65, 15:24, and Luke 22:64; these verses might help to reinscribe the idea that much disability is enforced. Jesus is rendered “blind” and “immobile” because he is blindfolded and bound.
[143] In similar vein, Fontaine suggests that reading the voices of the marginal in Scripture as central rather than peripheral will reframe the texts and bring a new and sometimes surprising sense, resisting readings which only make sense to and for the non-disabled. For example, she says, since many people with disabilities have an important sense that they are more than the bodies which cause them so much pain, the injunction to “cast off an offending member to achieve a greater good” is not a particularly problematic one; rather, she says, “these are the kind of compromises that make up our daily struggle” (Fontaine 1994: 113). In this sense, people with disabilities are in a stronger position for understanding this particular text than those without. (Compare the use of the verse by transsexual Malinda in Chapter 3).
[144] Wenig tells the story of a teacher in a religious school class who told a deaf pupil, “‘In the world to come, you will be able to hear’. ‘No’, protested the child, ‘in the world to come, God will sign’” (Wenig 1994: 133).
[145] Gorringe argues that if congenital disability is part and parcel of the random mutations which have led to the rise of all life – if God did not specifically intend disability, but disability is a result of the way in which God’s world functions freely – then disability is not unproblematically a tragedy and people with disabilities are not unproblematically to be pitied. For God to eradicate all sickness and suffering would compromise the free nature of the universe in a way that would preclude free will – so God could not eradicate all mutation with erasing that which works for good as well as ill. To extend Gorringe’s argument, an ecosystem which did not feed off the deaths of countless millions of its tiniest organisms would be an ecosystem profoundly unlike the one we currently inhabit, so much so that proto-Isaiah’s visions of a world beyond predation (as in Isaiah 11:6-8) speak of a disjunction between the two worlds which far exceeds lions learning to be vegetarians. Moreover, holds Gorringe, God’s people become Godlike through struggle and journey – so that the very pilgrimage of becoming Godlike involves being healers and redeemers of what is painful. In fact, says Gorringe, some disabled people have described being perceived as less threatening or judgemental because of their impairment, which enables them to have smoother relationships with others. Gorringe likens this to the image of the “wounded healer” (Gorringe 2001: 48), and thereby figures impairment as part of the very structure of redemption. Nancy Eiesland’s image of Jesus as a disabled God works along similar lines, and I dwell on it in more detail below.
[146] Some writers with disabilities have candidly argued that disability has promoted their spiritual growth; Nancy Mairs avows, “Those of us with degenerative diseases must learn to accommodate uncertainty equably… and to make our plans for the future as leaps of faith rather than sure bets” (Mairs 1996: 104). Impairment, in this reading, can actually help to strip away false pride and hauteur, and to promote a focus on what one can do rather than on what one cannot. Nonetheless, this does not mean that people with disabilities should be figured as martyrs. Suffering is not an end in itself, not something virtuous, but part of the warp and weft of life, another thing to be lived; Mairs says, “An arduous life, well lived, may involve some suffering, but suffering is never its point” (Mairs 1996: 113).
[147] Young notes that the meaning of the Greek ºÁ¹Ã¹Â encompasses discκρισις encompasses discrimination, separating out or deciding between, as well as (condemnatory) judgement (Young 1990: 148).
[148] Some individuals with a very narrow or shallow vaginal opening may experience pain if they attempt penetration by a penis, or object, which is too large. Importantly, however, this pain does not result from the condition itself. However, many people who have undergone genital surgery do experience genital pain or discomfort for a long time afterwards, and not only when engaging in sexual activity.
[149] Moltmann’s theology of disability, for instance, therefore appears slightly inadequate, for he suggests that the only reason why people with disabilities can feel sad or despondent about their situations is because other people make them feel “lame” or unworthy. Moltmann’s assertion that “every human life has its limitations, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses. We are born needy, and we die helpless. So in truth there is no such thing as a life without disabilities” (Moltmann 1998: 110) appears to diminish the disadvantages faced by, for instance, a child from a poor family with multiple physical impairments and learning difficulties as over against the able-bodied, independently-educated child of a millionaire businesswoman. This is not to refute Moltmann’s whole argument but merely to venture a note of caution. On the one hand he emphasizes the necessity of oppressed people with disabilities protesting against their imposed disabilities, of not giving up on themselves, of reclaiming their self-love by speaking up as adults; yet on the other hand appears to leave very little room for anger directed by the individual at the impairment itself. He, too, comes perilously close to saying that people with disabilities are necessarily moral exemplars (rather than merely ordinary people living out one sort of ordinary life) when he says, “It is precisely the unsettled non-disabled persons who must discover true love of self in order to be liberated from their egoism and their fear-filled self-hate. Persons with disabilities alone can help us do this” (Moltmann 1998: 114). Moltmann also emphasizes that participation in God comes about by virtue of being a human being made in God’s image. As such, he says, every human is good and beautiful, regardless of how they fit in with the norms of beauty of their own society. The brokenness of human nature is “healed” because Christ has taken it upon himself. Noting the Gospels’ often unremarking acknowledgement of sickness and pain as part of human lives, Moltmann says, “Jesus sees the internal and external disabilities of the people. Jesus comprehends us, not from our sunny sides where we are strong and capable, but from our shadow sides, where our weaknesses lie” (Moltmann 1998: 115). However, as we have seen, colonizing and spiritualizing disability in this way so that all human shortcoming comes to be figured as either “internal” or “external” disability raises its own problems.
[150] 1 Corinthians 15.
[151] Holly E. Hearon notes that the reflection on the resurrection body comes several chapters after the first study of the body (with reference to the death of Christ) in 1 Corinthians 11-12, whereas in Romans and Philippians Paul does not divide Christ’s death and resurrection in this way. Why, then, does he do so in 1 Corinthians? Hearon suggests, “In his mind, [the Corinthians] have moved too quickly from death to resurrection; he wants them to understand death and resurrection as two distinct, if interrelated, events: one tied to the past with lasting consequences (the death of Christ), and the other inextricably tied to the future (the resurrection)” (Hearon 2006: 612).
[152] Clement of Rome, for instance, who may or may not be the author of 2 Clement, uses the analogy of the death and rebirth of the phoenix; although, as Bynum notes, this is problematic not least because there seem to be two birds here, rather than a resurrection of the one identical bird (Bynum 1995: 25-6).
[153] This is partly influenced by the problem of chain consumption: “If meat and drink do not merely pass through us but become us, there will be too much matter for God to reassemble; on the other hand, if people really eat other people, even God may have trouble sorting out the particles” (Bynum 1995: 33).
[154] Tertullian also stresses that resurrection bodies will have genitals both because some of their earthly functions (such as cleansing the body through urination) are good, and because of their beauty (that is to say, their aesthetic necessity in the context of the body), despite the fact that they will not be needed for reproduction (Bynum 1995: 37).
[155] Contrast Oliver O’Donovan’s assertion that “Whatever the surgeon may be able to do, and whatever he may yet learn to do, he cannot make self out of not-self. He cannot turn an artefact into a human being’s body” (O’Donovan 1982: 16). See my comments in Chapter 3.
[156] It should also be noted, however, that those influenced by Augustine, such as Bonaventure, did not take him on board wholesale (Bynum 1995: 241). Bonaventure went beyond the idea of the resurrection body as simply reassembled pieces of the old body, seeming to acknowledge that identity transcended mere matter (Bynum 1995: 241), and has resonances with Origen’s ideas perhaps more than Augustine’s (Bynum 1995: 241). For example, unlike Augustine, Origen already seemed aware of the problems of the concept of flux: “Even if the bits of flesh present at the moment of death could survive, why would God arbitrarily decide to reanimate those bits as opposed to all the others that have flowed through the body between childhood and old age?” (Bynum 1995: 65).
[157] Bynum suggests that Augustine’s especial emphasis on the need for every single fragment of the old body to be in the new, “reforged” statue might stem from his witness to the apparent miracle-working nature of the relics of St Stephen which had been brought to Hippo and in whose power Augustine had begun to believe despite his earlier scepticism about the potency of relics (Bynum 1995: 105). Bynum says, “If a mere fragment of Stephen cured the sick and raised the dead, it could not be less than the whole martyr. And if this tiny bit was already whole in Hippo, how can we think that any piece will be missing when the trumpet sounds?” (Bynum 1995: 106).
[158] It is, in fact, important that the body has its secret processes, its private business not controlled by a conscious “will”. If the brain could not (privately) dream and sort out, process and file information gathered during the waking hours – information which has been observed almost incidentally – rest and recovery would be all but impossible. The capacity to send platelets to gum up the site of a wound in the skin has little to do with conscious thought, or the will of the subject-self, yet the body usually manages it very well. It is well-documented that depression or a lack of desire to recover from illness can prolong the period of convalescence; but bodies generally are efficient at mending and healing even injuries which individuals may be unaware they have sustained.
[159] Althaus-Reid comments that Dussel’s inability to envisage liberation beyond re-hashed heterosexual structures, a “liberationist oppressor/oppressed dialectic” which echoes binary sexual-economic structures, results in an impasse which is “the cul-de-sac of Liberation Theology” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 197).
[160] For example, the parents of Betsy Driver, born with CAH in the 1960s, were told that if she did not have her large clitoris removed she would “grow up with gender problems, become a lesbian or commit suicide” (Arana 2005: 31). Parents whose children have vaginoplasty are not always told that they will have to undertake or oversee regular dilation of the vagina (Arana 2005: 22). More broadly, as Anne Fausto-Sterling notes, “Medical manuals and original research articles almost unanimously recommend that parents and children not receive a full explanation of an [intersexed] infant’s sexual status… Physicians are to allege that the intersex child is clearly either male or female, but that embryonic development has been incomplete… An intersexed child assigned to become a girl… should understand any surgery she has undergone not as an operation that turned her into a girl, but as a procedure that removed parts that didn’t belong to her as a girl” (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 64-5).
[161] Several writers have argued that an overemphasis on ability, strength and an embodied sexuality in feminist thought has actually tended to exclude women with physical impairments. The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10.2 (1994) featured a roundtable discussion on how women with disabilities pose a challenge to feminist theology. In the introductory piece, Elly Elshout claims, “The feminist movement is… not sufficiently conscious of its own ‘ableism’. The feminist movement enables, empowers, and strengthens women. Thus, many ‘fit women’ will not easily admit that women with disabilities embody all that they don’t want to be” (Elshout 1994: 100). Dorothee Wilhelm adds, “Feminists want to be fit, whole, independent, and in control of their bodies. These are aspects that are largely denied to differently abled women. Feminists wish to be what differently abled women are not. Thus, we not only bear the weight of their fears, but we also cannot be feminists given their definition” (Wilhelm 1994: 106). Most overtly, Valerie C. Stiteler asserts, “My presence at feminist gatherings has… often seemed to spark feelings of fear, anger, and guilt among many of my sisters. My requests for support in order to participate fully in groups set off chain reactions ranging from women assuming a caregiver role (resulting in my being infantilized) to open and hostile rejection. I left these gatherings confused and angry. I felt violated. I was treated with less respect than I am by purveyors of patriarchy. I could not understand why my sisters who value inclusion and believe in honouring every woman’s gifts would reject me so completely” (Stiteler 1994: 117-8). Unfortunately the women do not cite the specific events or scholars whom they feel purvey this attitude. However, it is true that, to claim a false unity between all women regardless of their specific situations which might include particular physical conditions or impairments, is to replace the “male neuter” of signification with a term which is hardly less exclusive and homogenizing (Wilhelm 1994: 105). Not all women share everything in common. Investing much in particular experiences which not all women can access – like motherhood (Fontaine 1994: 108) – and painting such experiences as central to authentically fulfilled womanhood, further marginalizes those who cannot or choose not to join this “club” (which might include a significant number of women with disabilities). In rejecting patriarchy’s view of womanhood as less-than-whole, claims Stiteler, feminism has encouraged some women with disabilities “to reject our disabilities as integral aspects of our embodiment” (Stiteler 1994: 119). Other areas where feminism and disability have clashed include the ability to enter and enjoy a fully embodied sexuality whilst one’s body is a site of pain or frustration (Elshout 1994: 100). Similarly, some intersexed people who identify as women may feel themselves to be excluded from feminist assertions which focus on particular physical experiences of being a woman; members of ISNA challenged Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues for including the story of a girl born without a vagina who visited a gynaecologist with her father when she was fourteen: “On the way home from the doctor, in a noble attempt to comfort her, he said, ‘Don’t worry, darlin’. This is all gonna be just fine. As a matter of fact, it’s gonna be great. We’re gonna get you the best home-made pussy in America. And when you meet your husband, he’s gonna know we had it made specially for him’. And they did get her a new pussy, and she was relaxed and happy and… the love between them melted me” (Ensler 2004: 99-100). ISNA claimed that this exchange celebrated vaginoplasty without acknowledging its possible complications, and that the play outlawed African female genital mutilation without drawing links between FGM and intersex surgery in the West. A pamphlet produced by ISNA in 2002 said, “In The Vagina Monologues… the audience is invited to laugh hysterically to the father’s exclamation. We feel that the play not only misrepresents our experiences as intersex people, but also trivializes our pain and confusion due to surgeries done to us. It also suggests that women’s bodies are made solely for their husbands, and that we should alter our bodies to match what is desired by them… Many intersex people and our friends found this ‘monologue’ – and the roomful of laughter following it – hurtful if not outright offensive… Many of us went home feeling upset, sick, angry or in tears, walking past the crowd of women telling each other how empowered they felt by the play. We did not feel empowered; we felt invalidated and silenced” (ISNA 2002: 1-2). Esther Morris, born without a vagina and not given her full diagnosis of MRKH until much later, wrote “The Missing Vagina Monologue”, published on the websites of ISNA, Intersex Initiative and (Morris 2003), which explores her feelings following her genital surgery at the age of 13 and the lack of information she was given about her condition. Although the story appears in the version of The Vagina Monologues published in book form it is no longer included in the script licensed for performance in February and March each year as part of the V-Day/Tender campaign (the script is updated, with new monologues, each year). Using the debate as a starting point, Kim Q. Hall’s essay “Queerness, Disability, and The Vagina Monologues” (Hall 2005) challenges the essentialist connection between female embodiment and the possession of a vagina in The Vagina Monologues in order to “consider the ways in which the text both challenges and reinscribes… systems of patriarchy, compulsory heterosexuality, and ableism” (Hall 2005: 100).
[162] The specific term began to be used in the early 1990s; Michael Warner, in a 1991 Social Text essay, writes of “a new style of ‘queer’ politics that… has begun to challenge the pervasive and often invisible heteronormativity of modern societies” (Warner 1991: 3).
[163] This has sometimes, but by no means always, been based on the fact that they are not procreative – which stems from an assumption that all sexual activity must be procreative, or at least potentially procreative were prophylactics or other contraceptive measures not being used, in order to be legitimate.
[164] Even the term “heterosexual” postdates the term “homosexual”; the word “heterosexual” was originally applied to persons who would now be called bisexual (Halperin 1995: 45). Interestingly, the word “intersexual” was originally used to mean “homosexual” (Dreger 1997: 64).
[165] An element of Derridean erasure and trace might be detected here.
[166] As Iain Morland comments, in certain discourses, the “meanings” of some body parts have been solidified to the extent that unusual manifestations such as ambiguous genitalia – and specifically “phalloclits” which fall between the normally-accepted range of sizes for a clitoris and for a penis – have become literally meaningless (Morland 2004: 449). Morland analyzes Freud’s account of the phallic stage of psychosexual development, where a young girl “notices the pendulous genital of a male contemporary, and is impressed by, and envious of, its size”, where “the girl notices the penis because it is visible, and its visibility is the only thing she notices. She infers that she has no genitals of her own, concluding, like boys, that ‘maleness exists, but not femaleness’” (Morland 2004: 448). Morland suggests that, in fact, psychoanalysis itself has overemphasized the centrality of the phallus, and has come to equate it always and inevitably with the penis (Morland 2004: 448), so that the penis is “the mismeasure of all genitalia” (Morland 2004: 448) and, crucially, of all signification. This matters because such “phallic thinking” (Morland 2004: 448) has also come to inform attitudes toward intersexed genitalia amongst medical practitioners. For instance, holds Morland, “In the phallic stage, it’s not the penis in toto that acquires importance, but only its attribute of size. This isn’t a question of having a penis; it’s a question of having a genital that means ‘penis’, and so is a penis, when judged by the phallic standard of size… Only through phallic reasoning could a clitoris ever be perceived as ill-sized: because it is too small to be male, too large to be female” (Morland 2004: 450). The mythic phallus thus draws a veil over all real penises and clitorises which cannot quite live up to it. There are echoes of Irigaray here, too; Irigaray holds that whatever cannot be easily defined is rendered invalid in phallocentric discourse, and that a perceived “absence” of genitalia as in women – which is really only the absence of a phallic-enough phallus – is a “nothing-to-see” which “has to be excluded, rejected, from such a scene of representation” (Irigaray 1985b: 26).
[167] As Morland says, however, it might be possible to envisage a future world where body parts are no longer such irreducible signals for gender; where intersex is not considered pathological either medically or culturally. In this world, says Morland, “There would be infants who had a penis and labia and a testicle and an ovary, for instance. But such characteristics would not denote maleness, femaleness or even intersexuality as we think of it today. They would simply be a series of conjoined features in the same way that I have a larynx and a tongue and teeth and gums. These body parts do not mean that I am anything in particular. They imply only that I have, precisely, a larynx, tongue and so forth” (Morland 2004: 449-450). What is significant here, of course, is that the body parts seized upon by Morland are those which are not generally taken as markers of sexed identity: he says that they do not imply he is anything (that is, one sex or another, as with the genitals), but, in actual fact, it is their existence in combination which means that he is taken to be legitimately human. In certain societies, at certain times, people “missing” bodily parts or functions, people with a range of disabilities, have, in fact, been figured as sub-human, and have been locked away or euthanized as a result.
[168] By contrast, says Tat-siong Benny Liew, “Since queer readings are reader-centered…, they… contest and force us to rethink the previously understood measure that biblical interpretation should result in the ‘coming-out’ of a single, definitive original or intended meaning. And since queer readings are interdisciplinary and function as one site of socio-political resistance, they lead to an expanded and… a somewhat eclectic notion of what constitutes biblical studies” (Liew 2001: 191).
[169] Halperin argues, “[Queer’s] lack of definitional content renders it all too readily available for appropriation by those who do not experience the unique political disabilities and forms of social disqualification from which lesbians and gay men routinely suffer in virtue of our sexuality” (Halperin 1995: 64-5). Similarly, Boone asks, “Is the queer claim to alliances across categories of difference an indiscriminate invitation to all takers, one that ignores the hard work of materialist coalition-building… in which consensus or identification is not assumed, but earned through labor?” (Boone 2000b: 12).
[170] Boone also notes controversy about whether the queer movement might risk losing the specificity of lesbian and feminist voices, given “the historical tendency of most movements for social change… to erase the presence and contributions of its female participants” (Boone 2000b: 11-12). Deryn Guest shares these concerns, as I note below; but a reluctance by some other lesbian and gay individuals to use “queer” is based more in the pejorative connotations of the word. Rebecca Alpert says, “For some of the wilderness generation, the term queer often has negative associations. They are not comfortable using a term in self-reference that has been used by those who have oppressed them… It is not easy to forget the problems of the past… The term queer resonates differently for people who lived through a time when everyone was hiding and when being labelled queer meant something much more threatening than the current generation could imagine” (Alpert 2006: 67).
[171] Despite the strikingly recent genesis for the specific concept of queer, however, some have attempted to trace a retrospective trajectory in both homosexual and non-homosexual history: “By aggressively ‘queering’ intellectual history… we… continue the queer project of suggesting broad alliances, as we find telling traces of the ‘abnormal’ even among ‘normal’ (canonical, heterosexual) philosophers and theorists” (Hall 2003: 56). For instance, it would be entirely anachronistic, says Hall, to call John Stuart Mill a queer theorist, but this does not mean he cannot be regarded as queer-theory-relevant (Hall 2003: 57).
[172] In the early 1980s when still largely a mystery condition and seemingly confined to the gay male community, AIDS more usually went by the name GRID (Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease).
[173] This, they say, led to “an awareness that identities were no indicator of vulnerability, and no shield from risk… Queer activism’s necessity and urgency lay in its challenge to the notion that identities could classify people, keep them safe, and keep them alive. It was a strategy, not an identity” (Morland and Willox 2005b: 2).
[174] Morland and Willox note that “queer” as an overarching group identity contains inherent paradoxes – and thus ongoing political tensions – because of the diverse identities held within it, and its hybrid origins (arising out of issues surrounding gay and lesbian civil rights, pornography and censorship, as well as HIV/AIDS – Morland and Willox 2005b: 2). Boone also notes other possible problems attached to queer theory. These include questions about which individuals might be excluded from access to the nomenclature of queer, or choose for other reasons not to align themselves with queer, and why; and what might this reveal about “the generational, national and class biases of queer theory’s practitioners” (Boone 2000b: 12). Boone also asks whether “queer”, when exported from its original context and background (assumed by Boone to be largely in North American gay gender politics, especially given the status of Los Angeles as a centre for much lesbian and gay activism), might “erase or subsume the sexual particularities of other [non-US] cultures” (Boone 2000b: 12).
[175] Stone expands, “‘Queer commentary’ on the Bible does not consist in the application of a single, ‘queer’ method to the biblical texts … Trends in contemporary queer theory make it difficult to define ‘queer commentary’ in a simplistic fashion as the production of readings by ‘queer readers’, at least so long as we understand the latter phrase to refer to some easily identified group of readers who can be firmly demarcated from other sorts of readers of the Bible… Absolute and essential differences between ‘queer readers’ and ‘non-queer readers’ would seem to founder on the deconstruction of such binary oppositions as those between ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’, ‘male’ and ‘female’, and so forth” (Stone 2001b: 32-3).
[176] “At ISNA, we’ve learned that many intersex people are perfectly comfortable adopting either a male or female gender identity and are not seeking a genderless society or to label themselves as a member of a third gender class. The idea of raising a child as a boy or girl isn’t what most adults with intersex conditions point to as their main problem. In fact, many of the people with intersex we know—both those subjected to early surgeries and those who escaped surgery—very happily accepted a gender assignment of male or female (either the one given them at birth or one they chose for themselves later in life). Instead, adults with intersex conditions who underwent genital surgeries at early ages most often cite those early genital surgeries and the lies and shame surrounding those procedures as their source of pain. Later in life, like many people with typical anatomies, intersex people take pleasure in what some gender scholars (like Judith Butler) might call doing their gender. Thus, intersex people don’t tell us that the very concept of gender is oppressive to them. Instead, it’s the childhood surgeries performed on them and the accompanying lies and shame that are problematic” (Herndon 2006).
[177] Preves notes, “Identity-based political movements, such as the intersex movement, are problematic in that they simplify social categories as unified and generalized phenomena” (Preves 2003: 147).
[178] Some intersexed people – both those who might be perceived to be involved in gay culture, and those living in apparently unremarkable “heterosexual” relationships – do identify as queer, and April Herndon of ISNA stresses, “There are, of course, some people with intersex conditions who identify as a third gender or gender queer... Our aim at ISNA isn’t to undermine these people’s goals, or to suggest that people who identify as a third gender don’t exist or don’t matter, or to suggest that everyone must adopt a gender” (Herndon 2006).
[179] Moreover, Goss stresses that the normativity resisted by queer must be not only heteronormativity, but also gay and lesbian normativities (Goss 1999: 45), for, he says, “gay identity can be as confining as ‘closetedness’ in its minoritization and elision of the socio-cultural differences of same-sex desire” (Goss 1999: 45). Goss himself says that he has been forced to re-examine his own identity as gay, having acknowledged that a certain gay “type” into which he fits – white, middle-class, male, privileged, middle-aged – cannot purport to be representative of all people who claim gay or queer identities. He says, “If I am to take ‘queer’ as a serious paradigm for theological discourse and practice, I need to engage not only bisexual and transgendered voices but also voices of men and women of colour who share homoerotic desires” (Goss 1999: 50). Noting that the Latin word transgredior means advancing, going beyond, and passing over – with an implication of crossing boundaries or borders (Goss 1999: 46) – Goss argues that it is the transgression of traditional boundaries (and traditional hermeneutics) both outside and within homosexuality which “allows alternative voices and alternative theologies to surface” (Goss 1999: 47). This is necessary, says Goss, for “Heteronormative theology excludes me except in its theology of abomination while gay normative theology excludes me in its apologetic attempts to assimilate into mainstream culture” (Goss 1999: 46). Each “side” is threatened by Goss’ perceived transgression, whereby heteronormative theology has no conceptual space for non-pathological homosexuality and “gay-normative” theology is invested in being seen to stand in opposition to the mainstream rather than pacifying it. Goss’ apparent liminality might be considered as threatening to the stability of the internal identity of each category. Queer, because it is not always invested in specificities of identity in the same way, might be less inclined to protect its own borders from people and concepts which appear to span categories. It is in this way that queer might provide a conceptual space which is less exclusive of “ambiguous” categories of sex and gender – such as intersex – than all-encompassing male-masculine-heterosexual and female-feminine-heterosexual vectors of identity.
[180] Of course, such respectability is always a double-edged sword for Althaus-Reid, who goes to great lengths to question and subvert the value of socially-sanctioned “respectability” and “decency”. There are many instances where the fact that heterosexuality is considered the only “respectable” state is emphatically not a good thing.
[181] Guest does also, though, seek to resist an overarching model of queer, fearing that to embrace it unproblematically might re-masculinize discourse and erase specifically lesbian or female hermeneutics and concerns (Guest 1995: 46). She would prefer a broadening of the meanings of the label “lesbian” rather than “a wholesale move to queer terminology” (Guest 2005: 48). Guest’s fears are understandable ones, but come across as somewhat partisan and defeatist in their pre-empting of an erasure of women’s voices in queer biblical criticism.
[182] She predicts, “The term will be revised, dispelled, rendered obsolete to the extent that it yields to the demands which resist the term precisely because of the exclusions by which it is mobilized” (Butler 1993: 229).
[183] The maintenance of this tension is important for Elizabeth Stuart, who comments that although the declaration by “pseudo-radicals” of equality between heterosexuality and homosexuality and insistence on welcoming lesbian and gay people into traditionally exclusive structures such as marriage, parenthood and the clergy is positive in one sense, “At exactly the same time they are affirming heterosexual normativity. For the prize that lesbian and gay people win is heterosexuality, incorporation into its already existing systems and they win this prize by behaving heterosexually, by mirroring heterosexual relations and aspiring to heterosexual dreams. Pseudo-radicals have no interest in non-monogamous, flamboyant, lesbian, gay and bisexual people” (Stuart 1997b: 187). It might therefore be important to continue questioning and querying the ostensibly positive project of inclusivism, lest it be that inclusivism is simply a cipher for assimilationism.
[184] Gross interestingly discusses a rabbinic tradition which suggests that Abraham and Sarah were both intersexed (Gross 1999: 71-73). Another rabbinic text suggests that Adam was originally two-sexed before the two halves were separated (Gross 1999: 73). These rabbinic traditions fall outside the scope of my own study, but it is fascinating to note that at least some rabbis “did not see intersex conditions as falling under the condemnation of the canon of Hebrew Scripture” (Gross 1999: 73).
[185] Holmes says, “I have lost count of how many times people who should know better have fetishized my body and the bodies of other hermaphrodites as ‘cool’. There is a cultural fascination with intersexuality which is derived from, and continues to promote, the intersexual as a mythological figure liberated from the bounds of gender and sex” (Holmes 2000: 105).
[186] As we have seen, the more recent work of Stone and others has also moved beyond a purely gay sense for queer.
[187] For Grace Jantzen, for example, queer theology is characterized by emphases on immanence, process, beauty and flourishing. This is in contrast to what Jantzen says have been the major themes of Christendom and of the secular West which is its legacy – namely, a divine which is outside, beyond and remote from humans, and a soteriology based in Jesus’ swooping down to rescue humanity without being intimately involved with or affected by humans. The sacramental natures of trees, rocks and other elements of the created world have been sacrificed in favour of a God who pronounces laws and unbending truths from outside it (Jantzen 2003: 353). However, like Stuart, Jantzen believes that queer theology must still be rooted in theological history – for, although the latter is flawed, it can also be redeemed. Jantzen comments, “Christendom has not only been the worst of my personal past but also the best of it; and the need to deal with the former requires a reappropriation and transformation of the latter. I will not become a more flourishing person by cutting off my roots” (Jantzen 2003: 345). Jantzen uses the image of the “lesbian rule”, a flexible piece of metal used by architects and builders to measure curved or irregularly-shaped forms, and suggests that such a philosophical device should be employed in queer processes of discourse. She explains, “Though flexible, [the lesbian rule] is still a device for measurement. Not just anything goes… Criteria are needed, even though not the straight criteria that set creed upon creed and consider any curves or queer angles an invitation for chipping away and bashing into conformity” (Jantzen 2003: 346). Truth, then, is still necessary for Jantzen, even in a queer theology; but the project of a queer theology must be to uncover whose truths have been negated or ignored by Christendom (Jantzen 2003: 349). She continues, “By deliberately adopting a lesbian rule, the mirror we hold up to our culture, religious and secular, is a mirror of curves and corners that reveals the multiple distortions of discursive and material reality” (Jantzen 2003: 351). Jantzen believes that this will help to prevent our becoming simply “flat mirrors of our contexts” (Jantzen 2003: 351), rather than drawing out the full possibility of our flourishing and becoming – becoming divine – from within. Jantzen’s reading is invaluable in formulating a broad queer theology which is holistic (yet still, always, unfinished) and in considering how heteronormativity has linked with other oppressive and violent modes of thought to do with humans’ relationships with other animals, with the environment and so on. This is crucial, for theologies must be systematic in this sense: that they do not suppose human moral activity can be commented upon or redeemed in distinction from the way in which it impacts the rest of creation. Sexual morality, and pronouncements about legitimate sexual behaviour and gender identity, should not be considered as distinct from economic, political and ecological justice.
[188] Compare Marianne Blickenstaff’s resistant reading of the Bridegroom imagery in Matthew’s gospel, and particularly in the Parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13 (Blickenstaff 2005). Blickenstaff suggests that the wedding feast from which the “foolish” virgins are excluded may represent not the Kingdom of Heaven, but the earthly structures which the Kingdom of Heaven will overthrow. The “oddness” of this wedding (where the bridegroom and virgins all behave badly through their tardiness, rudeness and somnolence; where the host has not even fulfilled the duty of hospitality by providing enough oil for everyone; where no bride features at all) symbolizes the separation and judgement of biological kinship structures; Blickenstaff argues that Matthew’s gospel is about not becoming embroiled in worldly concerns such as marriage and economic biological family ties. Blickenstaff draws links with the people in the days of Noah, who were “marrying and giving in marriage until the flood swept them away” (Blickenstaff 2005: 97). These things are likely to separate one from the true Kingdom, for one’s loyalties will be divided. Matthew’s Jesus has stressed that new marriages should not occur, for the end times are near; this may be why the women are portrayed as virgins, for this demonstrates that they themselves are not married (Blickenstaff 2005: 86). They can thus invest all their loyalty in Jesus’ fictive kinship group. Actually, holds Blickenstaff, “The five virgins’ exclusion from the wedding feast is not eternal damnation but a predictable casualty of the formation of the Matthean fictive family: traditional family ties enhanced by weddings are disrupted” (Blickenstaff 2005: 81).
[189] The slightly different Roman Catholic objection that choosing to be childless is selfish, limiting one’s self-giving, is less persuasive if true self-giving and true family are seen as transcending the biological.
[190] This also resonates strongly with Bohache’s reflections on queer “birthing”, as I show below.
[191] Córdova Quero uses the example of Mary Magdalene, who is invariably presented as either an indecent sinner (and probably a prostitute) or as a reformed saint. Why, he asks, has it not been possible to figure Mary as a saint who also remains a prostitute, who has escaped “the dynamics of fixed identities” (Córdova Quero 2006: 83)? Mainly, he says, because women’s sexuality and economic position has not been adequately addressed in Argentina; just as Mary can only be either a prostitute or a saint, so Argentinian women can only be either “indecent” prostitutes (at risk of pregnancy and infection; sometimes financially exploited, but sometimes with power over their own income and concomitant financial independence) or “decent” wives (in an ostensibly more secure position, but in thrall to husbands and fathers as to economic and other freedom; possibly in abusive relationships which they cannot leave). An embracing of the both-and nature of the prostitute-saint which says “Why can a prostitute not be a saint?” opens the way for questioning other dichotomies which have often been figured as mutually exclusive: Why can a woman not be a priest? Why can two homosexuals not enter a marriage?
[192] Stuart notes in another essay that even the cultural distinction between living and dead is blurred. She says, “A queer death is at the heart of the Christian gospel. The resurrection rolls in the end of death and the end of gender-based identities all in one. After the resurrection those incorporated into it by virtue of their baptism are simultaneously released from the bonds of death and the bonds of constructed identities. They have to die and they have to live out the scripts that are written on their bodies, but those scripts are overwritten by the baptismal identity given as sheer gift from God. So that when the baptized… live they should live subversively as people freed from the melancholia of gender, living in the laughter of the resurrection” (Stuart 2004: 69).
[193] It is telling that a whole chapter in Stuart’s Religion in a Queer Thing (Stuart 1997a), designed as a course book and discussion guide to the Christian faith to be used by LGBT people, is entitled “Why bother with Christianity anyway?”
[194] There has been debate over whether hegemony automatically implodes or whether it must be opposed and resisted actively, notes Gorringe, but what is universally accepted is that it “never goes unchallenged” (Gorringe 2004: 137); “because society is always changing, hegemony must be constantly renewed” (Gorringe 2004: 139).
[195] See Clague 2005a and 2005b, and Murphy 1990, for fascinating explorations of the problems and potential attached to representations of the female Christ.
[196] D’Costa emphasizes that to divinize only Mary on this account would simply mirror the divinity of Christ, and would not throw the floor open to multiple possibilities (D’Costa 2000: 36).
[197] “While [Jesus] was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, ‘Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’ But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’” (Matthew 12:46-50).
[198] Of course, this very notion is problematic in terms of the extent to which individuals autonomously form their identities and to what extent identity is always a community creation, as well as the issue of whether an individual can ever be authentically self-reflective and self-critical.
[199] Although the terms “gay” and “queer” are not necessarily synonymous, there is often overlap between them; Alison identifies as queer in this essay and elsewhere.
[200] “Theological limitations on divine embodiment are unsupportable in concert with theological claims for divine freedom… If God ‘bodies’ then God also ‘sexes’ in a polymorphic array. And if we can imagine divinity thus, we can also re-imagine the divine-world relationship in ways that finally may bring the richness and multiplicity of worldly and of divine experience together” (Schneider 2001: 225).
[201] Elizabeth Stuart, interviewed by Sweasey, adds, “In my experience being a lesbian has led me to cut through all the crap that keeps Christians and other faiths apart from one another… When some people will not break bread with you – or wouldn’t if they knew who you were – you become willing to eat bread with whoever will eat bread with you… One of the most important insights emerging from queer, feminist, black, Asian, disabled and Hispanic theologies is that diversity is not incompatible with truth, and that truth is multi-coloured and multi-dimensional” (in Sweasey 1997: 57).
[202] Hearon uses this acronym to acknowledge that some LGBT groups have, indeed, expanded to encompass the particular issues and interests of intersexed people. However, many intersexed people feel that their interests cannot be adequately represented in such a group.
[203] Intergenerational sex is more difficult to condemn outright; although sex between adults and children under 16 is grossly inappropriate in mainstream British society, there are cultures (such as Sambia society in Papua New Guinea) in which the fellating of adult men by young boys, for example, is considered an important rite of passage and does not appear of itself to give rise to trauma (see Herdt 1994b: 56). Herdt does note that intersexed kwolu-aatmwol children (that is, those with 5-ARD) who have not gone through this era of life due to not being identified as boys in childhood tend to be less aggressive and more caring than typical males (Herdt 1994c: 438-40), but this may be because boy children are removed from their families at the age of seven to grow up with a group of boys of the same age, rather than because of the sexual element of their upbringing.
[204] The moral reasons for this, however, might be pragmatic a posteriori ones stemming from the increased risk of contracting HIV or other sexually transmitted infections with multiple partners who themselves have multiple partners, rather than a priori ones to do with compulsory monogamy.
[205] Matthew 1:5 names Ruth, and although Naamah is not named as the mother of Rehoboam in Matthew 1:7, she is thus called three times, in 1 Kings 14:2 and 31 and 2 Chronicles 12:13.
[206] Cheng says, “According to Paul, the Mosaic law was merely designed to serve as a disciplinarian until Jesus Christ, who is Abraham’s ‘offspring’ (3.16), came to justify us by faith (3.24). Thus, all who are baptized in Christ Jesus… are heirs to the original promise made to Abraham and his offspring (3.29). This is particularly significant for queer Christians, who are freed from the Mosaic prohibitions against male-to-male anal intercourse in Leviticus 18.22 and 20.13” (Cheng 2006: 626).
[207] For example, Stephen D. Moore explores the “queerness” of the Song of Songs, and of the commentaries written on it by Origen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Denis the Carthusian, St. John of the Cross and others (Moore 2001: 22-27), saying, “For classical Jewish and Christian commentators, the Song simply could not have been what it seemed [that is, an erotic love poem]. That would have been unthinkable. Yet allegorizing it only had the effect of turning it into something yet more unthinkable… The austere expositor’s attempt to evade the perilous embrace of the Song’s female lover through allegory plunges him instead into the arms of another lover, a male lover, no less – God or Christ” (Moore 2001: 27-8). The mid-19th century, says Moore, saw a shift to non-allegorical, heterosexual readings of the book, whereby it became a poem of morality in marriage (Moore 2001: 79), possibly in direct reaction to the queer space left by allegory. But Moore argues that part of the “genderbending” evident in Origen’s commentary (whereby it is the Bridegroom who has breasts – Moore 2001: 40) may “have proceeded smoothly from the Song’s own propensity to blur gender boundaries” (Moore 2001: 41). He claims that within the Song itself, some of the imagery used for the female body is decidedly “masculine”, and vice versa (Moore 2001: 41) (though it might be countered that there is no good reason why “necks like towers” should be viewed as especially masculine, except where femininity or even femaleness is necessarily equated with smallness; nor why it should be particularly subversive for descriptions of a male body to be so sensual). Ken Stone notes, “The use of food and drink images by multiple speakers in the Song makes it difficult to differentiate the giver and the receiver of pleasure…When the oral stimulation of a partner is compared to the experience of eating sweet, succulent fruit, it is difficult to insist that pleasure is going only in one direction… The use of images of eating in the Song of Songs disrupts the phallocentric conceptualization of penile penetration, with its frequent demarcations of subjects and objects” (Stone 2005: 101). It is no coincidence that penetration is all about the boundary between in and out.
[208] “When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father’s house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armour, and even his sword and his bow and his belt. David went out and was successful wherever Saul sent him; as a result, Saul set him over the army. And all the people, even the servants of Saul, approved.”
[209] David and Jonathan’s friendship must continue in secret, for Saul is envious of David’s success (1 Samuel 18:7-9). Saul hopes that the Philistines will kill David so that he will not obstruct Saul’s dynasty. An evil spirit then overtakes Saul, and David’s wife Michal realizes David’s life is in danger. David escapes to hide with Samuel and the prophets at Naioth, before a clandestine meeting with Jonathan where “Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life” (1 Samuel 20:17). David does not return to Saul’s table, which angers Saul, who tells Jonathan, “‘You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?’” (1 Samuel 20:30). David and Jonathan meet again in secret, and part with tears and kisses (1 Samuel 20:41). They meet once more whilst David is hiding in the Wilderness of Ziph (1 Samuel 23:15-18). David and Saul eventually meet and talk, and Saul promises that David will, after all, become King (1 Samuel 24:20). However, various wranglings with Saul ensue whilst David is busy pillaging enemy towns. Jonathan is killed in battle with the Philistines; Saul is mortally wounded and (perhaps) falls on his own sword (1 Samuel 31:2-6). When David learns that Jonathan and Saul are dead, he kills the messenger, then laments them both, saying, “Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and in death they were not divided; they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions… Jonathan lies slain upon your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:23, 25-6). It is for Jonathan’s sake that David favours the former’s son Meribaal/Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 9:7), and, although David is later willing to hand over other members of Saul’s family to the Gibeonites, Meribaal/Mephibosheth is spared (2 Samuel 21:7). Subsequently, David finds the bones of Saul and Jonathan, which have been hidden, and re-buries them at Zela, in the land of Benjamin (2 Samuel 21:14).
[210] Stone remarks that it would be anachronistic to assume that, in the social world of the Hebrew Bible, the persons with whom one experienced the greatest closeness and intimacy were the same persons with whom one engaged in sexual activity. He says, “It is quite possible that David’s lament over Jonathan actually testifies to a world in which the lives of most people were characterized by, on the one hand, ongoing sexual relations with persons of the opposite sex; and, on the other hand, affectionate and emotionally intimate relations and companionship with persons of the same sex which, however, did not necessarily entail sexual intercourse” (K. Stone 2006: 208). However, he also notes that it is clear that the author of Samuel clearly does not assume all the sexual regulations of Leviticus, so that there was not necessary a blanket prohibition on male-male sexual activity (K. Stone 2006: 207). Stone comments that, although “love” in the ancient context could mean a political relationship, not just a sexual one, “the specific comparison that David makes between Jonathan’s ‘love’ and ‘the love of women’… is somewhat unusual even within the framework of those ancient Near Eastern political ‘love’ relations” (K. Stone 2006: 206). Thus “some readers of the Bible argue that a more intimate, and possibly even sexual, understanding of Jonathan’s love for David is less forced than the political meaning” (K. Stone 2006: 206).
[211] It is not as though David can’t get the girls; after Michal, he also marries Abigail and Ahinoam (1 Samuel 25:42-44), and many others, as well as having a number of concubines (1 Chronicles 14:3); his conquest of Bathsheba, at least, seems based on sexual desire (2 Samuel 11:2-4). Jonathan, too, fathers children. If David’s relationship with Jonathan were sexual, there is no evidence that they did not also enjoy sex with women. Even in his extreme old age, David’s human hot-water bottle, Abishag, happens to be a beautiful young virgin (1 Kings 1:1-4), although we are told that he does not have intimate relations with her. But David’s desire for women is unsurprising even if it is assumed his desire for Jonathan were romantic/sexual; for a man to engage in exclusively “homosexual” activity, or to be figured as “homosexual” because of it, is an overwhelmingly recent phenomenon. As Foucault notes, pinning the birth of “homosexuality” to the 1870s, “Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species” (Foucault 1990: 43) (compare K. Stone 2006: 207, Fausto-Sterling 2000: 14-15).
[212] Other examples of queer readings of theological texts include Martín Hugo Córdova Quero’s “Friendship with Benefits: A Queer Reading of Aelred of Rievaulx and his Theology of Friendship” (2004) and “The Prostitutes also go into the Kingdom of God: A Queer Reading of Mary of Magdala” (2006), as well as all the readings in The Queer Bible Commentary (Guest, Goss, West and Bohache [eds.] [2006]). There have also been deliberately queer readings of Christian iconography, particularly representations of Mary, mother of Christ – see, for example, Ribas 2006. Although she does not use the terminology of “queer” specifically, Marilyn McCord Adams has also attempted to trace possible grounds for making a theological case for same-sex relationships in Aelred of Rievaulx and Richard of St Victor, in order “to counterexample my opponents’ presumption that the theological tradition is homogeneous on this matter” (Adams 2002: 323). This is but one example of a reading which might be claimed as “queer-friendly”.
[213] Koch (2001) identifies three hermeneutical strategies which he says gay people employ in biblical interpretation, but which are all inadequate for various reasons. These are the “pissing contest” (Koch 2001: 12) (whereby pro- and anti-gay interpreters fight to define what the biblical texts about homosexuality really mean); “Jesus is my trump card” (Koch 2001: 13) (whereby the existence of Jesus’ love is used unproblematically to discard any troubling texts – which seems very appealing, except that, for Koch, the monolithic nature of Christianity is still problematic); and “I can fit the glass slipper, too!” (Koch 2001: 14) (whereby queers are identified as having “been there all along” in Scripture, in characters such as eunuchs). Koch argues that it is more productive to “cruise” the scriptures – trusting in one’s own erotic knowledge – for what may only be brief moments of encounter and identification with the characters and stories therein.
[214] She argues, “No economy of freedom and no alternative Basileia or Kingdom of God can happen while Christ continues to be associated with an economy of debt, as in the case of redemption, which has serious cultural and economic limitations… It seems difficult to conceive of a world where debts are not just abolished but where an alternative order of reciprocity, gift, expenditure without retribution is created, in sum, an economy of Grace in which debt does not exist. In fact, it is Grace which has been cancelled by a debt economy and not vice versa” (Althaus-Reid 2007: 298-9).
[215] Other characteristics include discussions of oral traditions stemming directly from the Bible and from collections of sayings attributed to Jesus; communal rituals, including those dismissed as superstition by mainstream Catholic theology; the “mixing” of characteristics and stories of old saints to create new ones, venerated alongside mainstream Catholic saints; an emphasis on Biblical “failures” such as Samson, rather than the heroic Moses and Abraham; and a tradition of depicting falsely-accused or “good” local bandits on crosses (Althaus-Reid 2004b: 155-7).
[216] The parents of Ilizane Broks and her younger half-sister Xenia, featured in Channel 4’s Secret Intersex film, have consciously told both children that they are “inters” (rather than girls) and have sought to follow the children’s own cues as to gender identity. At the time of the film, 16-year-old Ilizane said, “I see myself as more female than male”, and 6-year-old Xenia said “I’m half girl and half boy” (in Godwin 2004). Their mother commented, “It doesn’t matter to me if they see themselves as superwomen, or girls with AIS, or as intersexual beings. I’m happy to go along with whatever makes them feel comfortable about themselves” (in Godwin 2004). John Money, the psychologist whose work was so influential in bringing about the early-surgery paradigm for intersexed children, himself believed strongly in the role upbringing and parental reaction played in the formation of gender identity (Money and Ehrhardt 1972: 2). This has been questioned by Milton Diamond and others who believe that prenatal exposure to androgens has far more influence on eventual gender identity than does simple physiology, particularly genital appearance (Diamond and Sigmundson 1997a, 1997b).
[217] 5-ARD individuals in the Dominican Republic are known as guevedoche – “penis at 12” (Herdt 1994c: 425) – and among the Sambia people in Papua New Guinea as kwolu-aatmwol – “changing from a female thing into a male thing”. In fact, whilst kwolu-aatmwol share social characteristics of both boys and girls, their eventual social standing is identical neither with that of adult women nor of adult men. Herdt comments that, for instance, although kwolu-aatmwol are recognized as a third sex, there is still only space in Sambia society for two genders (Herdt 1994c: 420). However, there is not the same sense (as in our own society) that one’s sex need stay the same throughout one’s life (Herdt 1994c: 442), and there is a specific role for kwolu-aatmwol within the community.
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