In her keynote at the 2023 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, Christian philosopher Abigail Favale gave a penetrating analysis of the phenomenon of transgenderism. In the address, Favale covered various strains of twentieth-century social theory, mostly from feminist thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler. These historical streams of feminist thought have converged to provide a theoretical basis for the social and political movement of transgenderism.

The essential component of this theory is separating biological sex from socially constructed gender identities, but where the constructed identity is purported to be as real, or even more real, than the biological given. This move has generated an aggressive political campaign which demands new laws be tailored to accommodate these socially constructed identities over and against what is biological “fact.” This has caused incredible social and political stress to an already staggered western culture. This was evidenced by the 2024 reelection of President Donald Trump, where transgenderism was revealed to be one of the central issues facilitating Trump’s return to the Oval Office. Many political commentators on both sides suggested that America could not survive so radical an experiment as transgenderism and duly noted how it played a key role in the surprising electoral results. However, transgenderism is itself not a root problem. Rather, it is a symptom of more basic, philosophical errors that have long dominated the western, intellectual tradition. It is these errors that have antagonized the Christian revelation claim and the natural law that once established American jurisprudence, governance, and social morality.

As Favale pointed out at ETS 2023, transgender ideology is a shaky edifice. It is shaky, however, because it is built upon an unstable, philosophical foundation. This article first explicates Favale’s own views on the transgender phenomenon and then elucidates three philosophical errors upon which transgender ideology is built. Unless these errors are not only addressed but redressed in the West, we should not be surprised to see transgenderism continue or even more incoherent and destructive social behavior emerge alongside it, together with the various legal dilemmas they engender.

1. The Gender vs. Genesis Paradigms

In her 2023 ETS address, and subsequent article, “Gender Identity Theory and Christian Anthropology,”¹in JETS 67.1 (2024): 125–33. Abigail Favale argues there are significant, philosophical discrepancies between the social construct theory of gender and current gender activism. Considering this emerging paradox between gender constructivists on the one hand, and gender essentialists on the other, Favale then offers a Christian response as a means to resolve the internal tension: The Genesis Paradigm. The Gender Paradigm sides with gender essentialists on the given of maleness and femaleness, but offers a biblical interpretation of the meaning of that givenness, as well as the created purpose for males and females who possess said essences.

1.1. The Construction of “The Gender Paradigm”

Favale begins her analysis of the intellectual roots of gender ideology with Simone de Beauvoir’s maxim that “one is not born a woman, one becomes a woman.”²Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (London: Jonathan Cape, 1953), 273. For de Beauvoir, and later Judith Butler, what makes a member of the human species a “woman” is not a concrete, empirically verifiable, or immutable set of biological facts. What makes one a woman is the social contexts in which one lives and the norms, traditions, and roles associated with those contexts. De Beauvoir and Butler are, in this sense, radical nominalists—the first of the three philosophical errors. “Woman” is not a thing in the world for these feminist thinkers, it is a name we ascribe to a thing, i.e., to a body that acts or performs a certain way. According to Butler, however, even the biological stuff itself is a socially constructed “reality.” Favale notes this important distinction between de Beauvoir and Butler:

In the late 1980s, this neat sex/gender distinction [of de Beauvoir] began to unravel, thanks to the work of Judith Butler, the godmother of gender theory. Butler ups the ante of social constructionism, asserting that biological sex itself is a social fabrication:

[According to Butler,] “‘female’ no longer appears to be a stable notion; its meaning is as troubled and unfixed as ‘woman.’”

Butler leans into many of the ideas asserted by Simone de Beauvoir taking them to new extremes. Near the end of The Second Sex, de Beauvoir proclaims, “nothing is natural.” For Butler, that statement is a foundational premise. The idea that humankind is characterized by two sexes that are biologically complementary is a social fiction rather than a matter of fact.³Abigail Favale, “Gender Identity Theory and Christian Anthropology,” JETS 67 (2024): 126–27.

As such, the idea of essences or natures is not only philosophically antiquarian for these feminists; it is considered an artifact of oppression, an abomination to their sense of what it means, or what it can mean, to be human. The idea alone that there are natural kinds that relate to being or behavior, let alone human beings and their behavior, is anathema to the founding mothers of gender theory. For if there are such natural kinds—i.e., essences that exist as such—prior to any act of the mind or will, then these might legitimately constrain our agency and limit our autonomy.

Rather, for de Beauvoir and Butler, socially constructed “realities” should be seen as just that: mental constructs. And to be entirely authentic, and subsequently liberated, one must follow the deepest desires of the autonomous will doing the constructing. On this view, the mind may capture something as given to us, says Favale, but it then defines into existence the world it desires. In this case, it is not merely the individual but the corporate world of culture, of society, that creates “reality.” This act is what goes on to become known as “theory” in the world of neo-Marxist liberation thought. In a strange twist of etymological fate, “theory” no longer means what it does in the original Greek, “to look at or observe.” Instead, for de Beauvoir, Butler, and their successors, theory now means “to build or create.”

This idea goes back earlier to the putative father of critical theory, Max Horkheimer, who made a stark assertion about reality and the social world:

The world which is given to the individual and which he must accept and take into account is, in its present and continuing form, a product of the activity of society as a whole. The objects we perceive in our surroundings—cities, villages, fields, and woods—bear the mark of having been worked on by man. It is not only in clothing and appearance, in outward form and emotional make-up that men are the product of history. Even the way they see and hear is inseparable from the social life-process as it has evolved over the millennia.⁴Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Continuum, 1975), 200.

This conception of theory that Horkheimer and other Frankfurt School philosophers advocated is itself a modification of Hegel’s understanding of the temporal unfolding of rationality itself or, as Hegel called it, of Geist. Reality, or the real, is an evolving social process for the critical theorist. There is nothing that is fixed, universal, or unchanging that exists apart from our historically conditioned perceptions of “the world.” Reality as such cannot be reified; reality cannot be just one way. Thus, anything we call a “fact” of reality is not factual in the common-sense way we normally speak of facts:

The facts which our senses present to us are socially preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by human activity, and yet the individual perceives himself as receptive and passive in the act of perception.⁵Horkheimer, Critical Theory, 200.

Given this view of the world of “facts,” what matters is not some pre-social reality “out there” that we endeavor to discover truths about. The individual may feel—i.e., perceive themself as—“receptive” or “passive” in taking in “the world,” but they are not. What they perceive as reality has been acted upon, shaped, and interpreted by a historical-social process. Instead, what matters on this view is the degree of discrepancy between the individual’s conception of themself, themself having also been acted upon, and the broader culture’s perception of them. It is a discrepancy between one member of a socially constructed world and a larger set of members of a similar socially constructed world. This discrepancy may undercut individual autonomy if the larger set of members, the societal “mainstream,” exploits the difference between the two conceptions to its advantage.

What plays out then is a battle of socially conditioned and conditioning minds intent on creating a particular kind of social world. This battle over which minds get to define reality into existence is an inherently political one. As more and more minds choose to define into existence varying social realities, regardless of the apparent physical bodies they possess, or any so-called “givens” of nature, concrete changes to every facet of society must be made to accommodate each deviation from the prior social norm. In simple terms, this is a war of imaginations carried out in a world we have no real access to but find ourselves living in … together. In a democratic society, legislation must be made to fit each competing conception of reality. This basic idea was summed up by the late Justice Anthony Kennedy in his “mysterious” maxim, written in his decision on “Planned Parenthood vs. Casey”:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.⁶Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania et al. v. Casey, Governor of Pennsylvania et al., 505 U.S. 833 (1992), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/505/833/case.pdf (emphasis added).

Taken at face value, Kennedy’s maxim restates the crux of de Beauvoir and Butler’s theories, namely, that nature, or the world, itself has no authority over the autonomous human will to “define” it. Liberty is willfully defining what things are, to include ourselves. This is a conception of liberty antithetical to the classical tradition, in which freedom is understood as the liberty to pursue that which is objectively good or lawful or right. In other words, to align one’s will with that which is already real, be it an intelligently designed natural environment or an eternal moral law. In Christian thought, this is construed as the soul being freed to pursue piety and godliness out of love for God and on account of Christ’s sacrifice in our stead. Of course, the fundamental difference between these conceptions of freedom and that of de Beauvoir, Butler, or Kennedy, is deeply metaphysical.

Thus, this postmodern attempt at a corporate act of social construction is analogous to Kant’s understanding of the categories of the mind, yet with one important difference. Kant’s solution to Hume’s skepticism about empirical knowledge of the world was to suggest that the mind is integral in imposing structure onto a physical reality we otherwise cannot know. For Kant, the categories of mind related to the most basic features of our perceptions, features like time, space, quantity, and causation (roughly Aristotle’s ten categories of being, with some variation and addition). For Kant, however, the categories of mind are innate and universal. They are not willful or volitional acts of individual minds but properties shared by all minds. They are not under the control of the will; they come built in.

For de Beauvoir and Butler, however, these categories of mind are expanded beyond fundamental, empirical phenomena like space or number. Mental categories include features about human persons and societies. It is we who impose structure or form onto individuals, declaring rather than discovering what is a “woman” or a “man.” What, or if, there are such things as actual women or men is, at best, unknowable. However, even the notion that there may be an actual substrate that fixes such identities is for Butler and de Beauvoir minimally distasteful, if not revolting.

1.2. The Shift from Gender Constructivism to Essentialism

This view that socially constructed gender identity is entirely separate and distinct from any substrate which might fix identity leads feminists like Butler to reject the biological substrate which common sense would declare the most obvious grounds for treating gender as binary. This is regardless of what terms we use for the distinct biological entities we encounter (e.g., the terms, “male” and “female,” or “man” and “woman,” are not what matter but the biological organisms they refer to and which we experience directly).

Favale points out, however, a paradox that emerges when current transgender claims are presented in light of this social construct view of gender. Favale notes that recent claims by transgender activists do not fit well with the social construct theories espoused by de Beauvoir and Butler (and carried out in grotesque experiments by men like John Money). Instead, the contemporary claim of the transgender person is one that seems to assume an essentialist view of gender, i.e., that gender really is real. According to Favale:

The idea that gender is purely a social construct, something imposed upon us by society, is markedly different from the idea that gender is a real, innate, immutable identity that one accesses through self-perception. Those are two contradictory ideas. Of course, you could say that we internalize social constructs and they become innate identities, but that’s not what gender identity theory claims. No, the claim is that “gender identity” is a truth so profound that you can realize [it] at a very young age, and your body must be brought into alignment with this inner truth—and that this inner truth might actually be at odds with your socialization as a girl or a boy.⁷Favale, “Gender Identity Theory,” 127.

The transgender person today does not claim that their identity has been constructed by arbitrary social norms and values. Instead, he or she points to something deep within the self, something deeply male or female that they experience internally, but that for some reason fails to match up with the biological fact of their bodies. In other words, many transgender persons today do feel they are one or the other sex, either male or female, but they are a sex “trapped” in the wrong body. What this view suggests, unlike its predecessor, is that male and female identities are real things in the world. They are not just names given to things that are otherwise obscure. Favale explains this “essentialist” move by contemporary transgender activists:

Gender identity theory makes realist, or essentialist, claims about gender (e.g., “she is a girl trapped in a boy’s body”; “trans women are women”). There’s a reification turn happening here. To “reify” means to “make real.” The radical social constructionism of Butler dethroned the reality of sexual difference. This anti-realism cleared the way for a new “realism” based not on the objective, intelligible, sensible world, but on one’s subjective sense of self.

We’re seeing two moves in this unfolding conceptual revolution, deconstruction and reification: First, what is taken to be real—sex as immutable—is dismantled through Butler’s anti-realist gender theory. Then, in its place, a reconfigured understanding of reality is asserted.⁸Favale, “Gender Identity Theory,” 127–28.

For the transgender activist today, the problem is not necessarily with socially constructed identities but with their actual, sexed body. One’s body is not an ambiguous or unknowable organism that needs to be socially “re-constructed.” It is simply the wrong body. For these transgender activists there are two fixed realities: their given sexed body and the deep internal sense of their “real” sex. The problem is that these two fixed realities are not in alignment. To use the parlance of substance dualism, the sex of their soul does not match up with the sex of their given body. A switch must occur, and, given our present technology, this can be done. At least it can be done with regard to cosmetic presentation.

While there may be legitimate socially constructed norms, roles, or associations that surround gender—e.g., “pink” being for girls and “blue” for boys—de Beauvoir, Butler, and Money’s theories of gender as constructed “all the way down” are not really valid for today’s transgender movement. Nature and essences are reasserting themselves in our postmodern-ish culture. As will be pointed out below, this is a positive development. It is against this “Gender Paradox” that Favale offers a biblical alternative, the Genesis Paradigm, as a holistic answer to this profoundly disruptive phenomenon.

1.3. The Given of The Genesis Paradigm

Favale’s Genesis Paradigm grounds human identity in the Genesis narrative. The Genesis narrative answers the challenge of the Gender Paradox by supplying answers to fundamental anthropological questions: questions of origins, of nature, and of purpose. As to origins, Favale reminds us:

In Genesis 1, Creation unfolds as an integral, interconnected whole: a cosmos. Each stage of this unfolding, each nested layer, is pronounced by God as good, reaching an apex with the creation of human beings in the image of God. Moreover, Genesis recognizes the natural duality of humankind, male and female; this difference is part of the goodness of creation, and both sexes share fully in the divine image and the commission to tend the earth.⁹Favale, “Gender Identity Theory,” 128–29.

This account of creation emphasizes creation’s goodness. Creation, that which is given, is not an accident, nor is it something imposed on reality by our contingent, and historically conditioned minds. It is the articulated expression of a divine Mind who had mindful intent when he made it. Reality itself, according to Genesis, is a gift of the Creator.

But in Genesis, reality is a gift. There is a givenness to the world, to the nature of things, that is not created by us, but intrinsic to the way things are. Reality is not under our total control, but we have been entrusted with its care—not to recreate it in our own image, but to tend it, to attend to its givenness that is endowed by God.¹⁰Favale, “Gender Identity Theory,” 129.

On the Genesis view, the origin of matter really matters. It orients us properly to matter. Moreover, it tells us not only about the material stuff of which we are made but also the spiritual. Favale reminds us of what Thomists might call our hylomorphic duality:

We are physical creatures; our bodies are integral to who we are. Yet we are not merely matter, because God’s breath enlivens each of us with an animating spirit. This is one of the foundational principles of a Christian anthropology: every human being is a unity of body and spirit.¹¹Favale, “Gender Identity Theory,” 129.

Finally, knowing who made us, and understanding what he made, Genesis also reveals to us why we are made in this way. Favale points out two aspects of human sexual differentiation that tell us about our purpose as either men or women in the world:

What, then, is the sacred meaning of sexual difference? Clearly it holds profound temporal significance as the sole means by which human beings come into existence. But this earthly meaning points to a deeper spiritual meaning: sexual difference serves a sacramental purpose; it is an integral part of how we “image” God.¹²Favale, “Gender Identity Theory,” 130.

Sexual differentiation is the means for humanity to create more of its kind. But the kind of being created is significant, for with each new person, each novel body-soul composite, a new image bearer of God is called into existence. Sexual differentiation is the means by which God enables us to create more human beings in his image. This is profound or, per Favale, “sacramental.”

I want to make clear that this sacramental meaning of sexual difference is proclaimed by the body of every man and every woman. We are living icons of divine realities in the very structure of our nature, whether or not we become mothers or fathers, or brides and bridegrooms in the literal, temporal sense. We all participate in this higher, eternal meaning.¹³Favale, “Gender Identity Theory,” 131.

In summary, human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. Their bodies are intentionally diversified— two are made out of one—but without severing the commonality of the image or the shared likeness. Eve is still as much in God’s image as Adam, even if her physical construction is other than her husband’s. Finally, there is a teleological aspect to each of the given bodies; they are both meant for something, but it is a something that they must do together: procreation.

When placed neatly side by side, the Genesis Paradigm and the Gender Paradox clearly conflict. When compared to the social constructivist view of gender, what is said to be inherent to human beings according to Genesis—a metaphysical status which cannot be graded, altered, or changed, the Imago Dei—is labeled a mere fable by constructivists. Man’s most fundamental identity is, on the former view, a construction of men, not a given of God. When compared to the newer, essentialist view, there has been a mistake, an error, by God in giving the body one possesses. Thus, it falls to us to fix the problem between body and soul. What follows from either view, therefore, is that all other aspects of human persons become malleable, their constitution as well as their purpose, so long as the individual desires to go through the process of error correction and , as we shall see, practical arrangements can be made.

However, Favale’s biblical model is not really an answer to the Gender Paradox, not in the strict sense of the term “answer.” After all, it is not as if there is something unknown to gender identity theorists, some lack of knowledge or information gap that needed to be addressed or filled in. Rather, the Genesis Paradigm is the known that is simply rejected in favor of the Gender Paradox by those who dislike the Paradigm. The underlying assumption by gender theorists is a much graver one, namely, that the Genesis Paradigm, even if true, is still unacceptable. The reason for this is simple: that which is given cannot bring the happiness human beings seek (Gen 3:1–7).

The rejection of the Genesis Paradigm is not an intellectual one. It is, as are all rejections of the revealed nature of things, an issue of the will. In Romans 1:18–32, the apostle Paul makes it quite clear that when it comes to reality it is we who choose not to see. Of course, it only follows that if one exercises one’s will in opposition to that which is ultimate and necessarily real, namely, to God, it becomes that much easier to exercise one’s will against any subordinate part, subset, or successive layer of his creation. Conversely, the more we submit and align the will to God, the more we will understand how to interact with the givenness of his world.

2. Philosophical Assumptions of Gender Theory

There are more general intellectual and social considerations that need to be addressed if Favale’s Genesis Paradigm is going to reassert itself as the true way forward (or way back) for a culture that has lost its sense of reality. These considerations have to do with what are the overarching, or underlying, metaphysical and moral presuppositions made by gender theorists, and Westerners in general. It is these presuppositions that enable particularly bad ideas about things like human sexuality to emerge. I have already alluded to a few of these presuppositions above. The first, and most central to the issue at hand, is the metaphysical doctrine of nominalism. The second is the ethical theory that most naturally results from nominalism, utilitarianism, as well as another ethical theory that aligns best with both, pragmatism. A brief sketch of each and how they relate will help to understand why gender theory has only, or for the most part, emerged in the West. It is these philosophical assumptions that Christians in the West need to undermine if we are to break their intellectual hegemony and avoid further manifestations of “theory.”

2.1. Radical Nominalism and Constructivism

Philosopher R. Scott Smith opens his book on constructivism, the philosophical starting point for both de Beauvoir and Butler, this way:

Since at least William of Ockham’s rejection of universals in favor of nominalism, that ontological view of properties has remained powerful, if not dominant, in the West.¹⁴R. Scott Smith, Exposing the Roots of Constructivism: Nominalism and the Ontology of Knowledge (London: Lexington, 2023), 1.

Given the social, academic, and political power and pervasive scope of Critical Gender Theory, which relies on a radical form of nominalism to develop its assertions about constructed “realities,” it is reasonable to think either that nominalism is the dominant metaphysical view in the West or, perhaps, if it is not the dominant view with regard to numbers, that it is the dominant view held by the social, academic, and political elite who, being elite, have a disproportionate kind and degree of influence in western society. Likely, both are true. But what is nominalism, and why does Critical Gender Theory so naturally emerge from its shadows?

Nominalism, in layman’s terms, is the idea that there are no real essences or natures of things. This means that when we talk about things in the world (e.g., the “desk” in front of me, a “dog,” or “a woman”), we are doing nothing more than developing useful linguistic tools—i.e., making up names—which enable us to navigate our way through an otherwise unknown and unknowable environment. Another way of saying this is to say that when I talk about “dogs” I am not talking about a real thing in the world, “dogs”, but simply assigning a name, a made-up category, to a series of independent, individual, and particular creatures—a discrete set of sense perceptions that only appear similarly. On this view, Fido, Rover, Lassie, et al., may all exist, but what we call “dogs” does not. “Dog” is a stand-in for that particular, animated thing that runs around my leg, barks incessantly, and that I and others refer to as “Fido.” While Fido, Rover, and Lassie may share some resemblances which allow us to construct useful categories or classes, they otherwise have nothing in common, nothing universal or essential that applies to all of them and of which they are particular examples. In other words, they do not share in something we might be tempted to believe exists, something like “doggyness.” The same applies to any objects of our experience, to include human persons.

Smith traces nominalism back to Ockham, although one will certainly find it in seminal form amongst the Greeks, particular among the Sophists. Constructivism, the result of nominalism, is the idea that all names we give to things are nothing more than provisional, socially devised descriptions of otherwise concrete particular things. What these things are, on the other hand, is inscrutable. Thus, only the names we give them matter. Smith traces constructivism back as early as Hobbes (1588–1679), culminating in the enlightenment period with the empiricism of David Hume (1711–1776).¹⁵Smith, Exposing the Roots of Constructivism, 40–43.

The critical move in constructivism comes, however, between Kant and Nietzsche. Kant (1724–1804), as alluded to above, presupposed certain categories of mind that were universal and innate to all people but that impose, involuntarily and mechanically, a kind of unity onto an external world that, in itself, remains obscure. Nietzsche, however, takes the basic nominalist idea and turns it into acid, calling into question the reality of the categories themselves, which, according to Nietzsche, are also nothing more than constructed names. What Kant saw as fundamental constituents of the mental—causality, sequence, reciprocity, number, etc—are for Nietzsche empty terms. Smith explains:

Nietzsche (1844–1900) sharply criticized Kant and attempted to move constructionism to the conscious realm. Moreover, he denied that reality had any general character. Like Hume and (later) Derrida, Nietzsche continued down the nominalist path, for he denied the reality of any numerical identities. Rather, we construct things by taking them to be identical, but in reality, they are only similar. Thus, there cannot be any real universals; everything is particular…. Furthermore, things like ‘cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose’ are all notions we have devised. There are not even truths of reason, truths due to how the world actually is.¹⁶Smith, Exposing the Roots of Constructivism, 44.

Thus, Nietzsche reduces the entire quest for knowledge down to two basic things: the will and the word. And it is this radical nominalism, or constructivism, that is the seedbed for all theories of gender construction (or racial construction, or any identity construction). Twentieth-century forms of nominalism would be articulated by both analytic philosophers (e.g., Wittgenstein), and continental ones (e.g., Derrida). But the fundamental rejection of essences is the same in both, even if expressed in different linguistic registers.

Thus, the first and most central philosophical idea that needs to be recovered in the West and that must regain dominance if we are to survive (or at least survive and remain sane) is that of ontological realism, i.e., that there are real essences to things and, if real essences, real meaning to the words we use about them. Moreover, to reestablish our understanding of words as genuine referents to realities is to further reestablish an intellectual culture that predicates itself on truth, and genuine debate over truth, as opposed to one that treats all claims as merely power plays or tools of an ambiguous and obscure “oppressor” class. This is, in no small part, the first step toward the renovation of our universities and system of education.

Fortunately, a shift seems to be occurring. It is not just in the area of metaphysical realism but even in that of moral realism, among philosophers. Further, outside the West, both in academic communities and in common-sense ones, realism is still prevalent. Primarily because realism is our common sense, pre-theoretical understanding of the world. It is also why most normal people—most farmers, plumbers, lumberjacks, firefighters—in spite of the social and political indoctrination that continually presses down upon them, still know that a man dressed up as a woman is still a man, and, as such, should stay out of the girls’ locker room. There is something that all particular men share that all particular women do not share, even if it may be hard to articulate.

2.2. Utilitarian Ethics and The Pursuit of Happiness

What is interesting, however, is the apparent reemergence of “essentialist” thinking among transgenderists that Favale references. If anything, this apparent shift from a more constructivist view of gender to an essentialist one provides additional evidence that ontological realism is true and nominalism false or, at least, probably false. As we will see later, practical or pragmatic concerns related to a philosophical view, i.e., how something plays out in real life, can provide evidence for or against the truth of the view. Apparently, nominalism is hard to live by and, while this may not refute it, it certainly counts as a strike against it.

Returning to GIT, the contemporary transgenderist seems to be moving away from the radical nominalism of de Beauvoir and Butler. But, if that is the case, then why do we still have the problem of transgenderism? Is it not enough to recognize that there is something essential about “being a man” or “being a woman” or that we all possess a human “nature”? Is not the mere recognition that these essences are both real and meaningful sufficient to not only ground our language but also guide our behavior? Apparently not.

This brings into question the second philosophical assumption of the current transgender movement, namely, the assumption of a utilitarian ethic as the default moral system. Utilitarianism also goes back effectively to Hobbes, at least in the modern era, and possibly as far back as Epicurus. It finds its most elaborate articulation in the nineteenth century with John Stuart Mill, godson of Jeremy Bentham, who articulated a “principle of utility” after reading the political philosophy of Joseph Priestly.¹⁷See Fredrick Copleston, Utilitarianism to Early Analytic Philosophy, A History of Philosophy 8 (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), 5. Utilitarianism has only been revised since and has retained its hegemony in western society to the point of becoming part of what philosopher Charles Taylor has termed “the social imaginary.”

In short, utilitarian ethicists argue that what makes an act morally good, as opposed to morally bad, is the kind or degree of pleasure it brings to the greatest number of people in a given society. When we talk of any act being morally “good,” what we mean, therefore, is not that it is good in the sense of instancing some universal “goodness” in a particular moment or event but just that we call the act “good” because it results in pleasurable mental (physical) experiences.

Alongside any utilitarian ethic, then, is some form of hedonism, psychological or ethical. Psychological hedonism is the idea that all human beings do is follow their own self-interest. Ethical hedonism adds to that by making a positive value judgement about this unalterable mode of behavior, saying it is right and good to follow self-interest. Hedonism here means simply that pleasure, or happiness, is the only goal in life. The modern understanding of hedonism, however, must be distinguished from Aristotle’s understanding of eudaimonia, which, as Peter Kreeft points out, “was not just a subjective feeling but [an] objectively real human perfection, the actualizing of our human potentialities for completeness, like a complete work of art, which acts as the end or final cause of the process of creating that work of art.”¹⁸Peter Kreeft, Contemporary Philosophers, Socrates’ Children 4 (Elk Grove, IL: Word on Fire, 2023), 135. Again, given radical nominalism, it is fruitless to speak of human happiness in any objective sense. As Smith points out, “if qualities cannot be preserved on nominalism, then … moral principles and virtues will not have any qualitative content.”¹⁹Smith, Exposing the Roots of Constructivism, 83. Happiness, if taken as a moral principle (as utilitarians do), has no objective content to it. It can refer to anything that gives the individual a sense of pleasure or a feeling of happiness; and that means anything.

Given the nominalism that dominates our western, intellectual culture, the only ethical theory we can operate under is some form of utilitarianism, namely, top-down attempts to plot out what kinds of actions might lead to the greatest kind and degree of mental happiness for the greatest number of embodied minds. Of course, the problem of nominalism is even more corrosive than this, because, as Smith points out, by eliminating “intrinsic moral qualities” from the world, nominalism also calls into question the utilitarian claim about the goodness of pleasure or happiness being the proper goal of man. At most, on nominalism, we could say that while we seem to pursue pleasure, we have no real knowledge about it being good to do so. In fact, we are clueless.

Still, in practical, non-theoretical day-to-day living, it is a simple, utilitarian hedonism that our culture continues to embrace as the only real end of man. We hear it articulated by non-theists every time “human flourishing” is invoked as the fundamental moral principle, or when transgender activists claim their existence is threatened by laws that might curb or restrain what they do with their bodies.

Thus, if something like a reinvigorated Natural Law ethic—one which takes essences as real and that presupposes deeper meaning and purpose for natural objects, to include human subjects—cannot reassert itself as the basis of governance and jurisprudence, then we should expect to see more projects like that of transgenderism or ones even more extravagant, more aberrant, and more incoherent than it. After all, what limits are there on the human imagination and our ability to manipulate language if maximizing pleasure is our only end?

2.3. Pragmatism and Technological Solutions to Theological Problems

If it is hard to imagine what exactly the limits are on our imaginative faculties and the words, or images, we can employ to express them, it is also not easy to discern what would constrain our willfulness to impose such constructed images and neologisms onto the social world. There is one thing, however, that does seem to limit the external expression of our inner fantasies. That is physical reality itself or the basic laws of nature. This is where the final “philosophical foundation” of transgender ideology comes into play, namely, pragmatism.

Pragmatism in its simplest form states that whatever works is good, or true. Two American philosophers normally associated with pragmatism are William James and John Dewey. I will not explicate their entire doctrine here but just summarize the main points, focusing on Dewey.

According to Peter Kreeft, of these two most famous American pragmatists, while “James has had the most influence on American philosophers, Dewey has had more influence on non-philosophers, especially in education.”²⁰Kreeft, Contemporary Philosophers, 92. And it is in education and our educational institutions that I am most concerned with here. Kreeft summarizes Dewey’s “revised” utilitarianism, which became known as pragmatism:

Like the utilitarians, Dewey believes 1) that goodness is not an essence inherent in things, 2) that it is not the same for all individuals or generations, 3) that it must be discovered by trial and error, 4) that the methods of science are the best way of discovering it, and 5) that an act is good if it produces satisfactory consequences.²¹Kreeft, Contemporary Philosophers, 97.

Dewey is not quite a subjectivist, however, like Nietzsche. He still holds that values can be objective in that nature is a certain way and, as such, right actions will bring the subject in line with nature and its law-like processes. Science as the evaluator and interpreter of nature is the means to bridge the gap between subject and object. If anything, in Dewey’s pragmatism, there is only one thing: the objective; and, if anything, the subjective is illusory. Dewey’s basic worldview is naturalism, and he sees human life through a specifically Darwinian lens. As such, all thought for Dewey is “a highly developed form of the relation between stimulus and response on a purely biological level.”²²Copleston, Utilitarianism to Early Analytic Philosophy, 354.

Thought as biological response is therefore “stimulated by a problematic situation,” and its function is to “transform or reconstruct the set of antecedent conditions which gave rise to the problem or difficulty.”²³Copleston, Utilitarianism to Early Analytic Philosophy, 354. Thought is for Dewey in this sense purely instrumental. It is a biological adaptation of evolution, a means for the organism to fit more conducively within its ever-changing environment. Of course, alternatively, there can be thought responses that are irrational in that they do not facilitate a solution to an environmental problem but, instead, create more problems or exacerbate the problem at hand. For example, if I think of hitting my computer keyboard because it is on the fritz, this is not a “good” thought response in that it will not lend to the problem of the unreliable keyboard being resolved but only make the problem worse.

For Dewey, this kind of instrumentalism is not reserved just for daily activities; it is also the primary function of science. Given this view of science, the theoretical sciences collapse into applied science, or technology. Long processes of theoretical scientific inquiry using abstract symbols and the operations of math are still pragmatic, if they wind up solving practical problems of ordinary living.

The great influence of Deweyan instrumentalism can be seen throughout American education in the twentieth century in its marginalization of the humanities and its overemphasis on STEM and common core. Its main principle of problem-solving as the primary function of thought and, subsequently, education was eventually translated into the social sciences as well. As Frederick Copleston points out, when Dewey speaks about “change in the environment” he is not talking about using technology to change the actual physical constituents of nature but rather the cultural, or social, environment.²⁴Copleston, Utilitarianism to Early Analytic Philosophy, 355.

In other words, Dewey’s pragmatism made way for seeing gender theoretical concerns as mere technical problems which, given advances in the applied sciences, could eventually be overcome. If one feels like a woman but has a man’s body, it is not an issue of essences or natures, it is an issue of engineering. Or, even if it is an issue of essences and nature, it is still a problem of engineering. As such, once the medical technology is available, the “right” thing to do is to solve the problem. Once the problem is solved via instrumental thought and the corresponding external technologies, the organism can return to a state of “security” or equilibrium until the next problem arises. This cultural presumption of pragmatism is evidenced every time another report is produced that tries to show whether or not people who have transitioned feel more or less stable than they did prior to their medical treatments.

Dewey’s instrumentalism does not require nominalism per se. One can assume his view of moral and ethical problems as practical or technical ones and apply that to essentialist views of gender, that is, so long as utilitarian hedonism is also presupposed. As such, if Favale is right and the transgender discourse is moving away from constructivism and back toward essentialism, there is still no reason for the gender essentialist to not see the problem of being trapped in the wrong body as merely a technical issue, one that, if it can be fixed, is worthy of pursuing given the prior assumption of utilitarian hedonism.

3. Conclusion: Today’s Culture Wars and The War to Come

Given the analysis so far, one can make a general conclusion about the way our current system runs in America: American governance and jurisprudence operate mainly from a philosophical confluence of nominalism, utilitarian hedonism, and pragmatism. As such, our institutions function with an almost exclusive aim: to create and enforce laws tailored to maximize the amount of subjective happiness among individual members of society by solving technical problems associated with the attainment of that happiness. In a world without any eternal laws, truths, or purposes, this might be the best we could hope for.

While this all may sound quite abstruse, it is, in a very real sense, the essence of what today often goes under the term “culture wars.” For the opposing view of what our institutions should be is quite incompatible with this one. That view, alternatively, argues that our institutions of education, governance, and jurisprudence are meant to instruct members of the society in the pursuit of objective virtues (regardless of quantitative calculations of pleasure or pain) for the sake of creating laws that correspond to values that are eternal. They are eternal, and universal, because they are either necessary and uncreated in themselves or because they are the given of a necessary and eternal Creator.

There are, of course, dangers in both views. On the former (current) view, life reduces to pure action. It is a constant experimentation with little to no need for reflection, contemplation, or theory (in the classical sense). This is a world of pure politics. On the latter view, activity, concreteness, and embodiment can be sacrificed for a life of disengaged abstraction. This world is that of the cloistered and privileged “pure thinker.” The church must always be aware of this dichotomy, never abdicating too much of its life and message to one or the other. Until the tide turns in favor of the latter view, however, we should only expect more and more aberrant ideas about humans and their behavior to emerge, transgenderism being just one experiment among many possible experiments.

At the time of Favale’s 2023 ETS lecture, transgenderism was front and center in the dialogue on theological anthropology (the theme of the 2023 conference). More recently, however, the concern has shifted, and rightly so, to what seems to be the more overarching, and more egregious, threat to humanity. That threat is transhumanism. In fact, some, myself included, have begun to see transgenderism as little more than a moral and political stepping stone to this grander vision of, to use C. S. Lewis’s phrase, the abolition of man. But that technology is advancing to the point where an ungodly synthesis of man with “intelligent” machine is no longer a story for the fiction section of our online bookstores. Still, if we are to address this paradox, we will need to tackle the same philosophical foundations that have given rise to the Gender Paradox.

This work, of course, is not one of evangelism but pre-evangelism. It is the attempt to return culture back to rational conditions more congruent with the gospel and the givenness of God’s world. That said, we dare not discount the more direct route, which is the work of the Holy Spirit on the hearts and minds of men—the spiritual awakening to the given of the Genesis Paradigm. At the same time, we are also not called to be passive as the Spirit does his work in the world. God has always provided his church with intellectual resources to aid in the spiritual battle that rages, and it is because of the Divine Logos of God that we can properly reason as men.

---