In recent decades, the topic of gender identity has sparked significant debate and division, particularly within Christian communities in the Anglo-American world.
It’s hard to put. I think first of all to run after an idea of self by undergoing surgery ultimately is not helpful but can be quite harmful. I think that the problem is gender as we construe it has been too informed by advertising and unobtainable representations of it. This doesn’t mean though that our biological sex might not carry with it certain characteristics or imply certain relational dynamics. It’s just the way we frame identity now and gender and sexuality as prescribing identity which is so attached to an egoistic self image that makes it hard to identify what that is. We can’t help but frame our thoughts, at least at first, in a social context, thus when we release any expectations or roles from carrying intrinsic meaning we’re free floating and just trying to identify with something we like or find attractive to be me. I think the beginning of the answer is realizing how deceptive these ideas of self were attracted to are. Idk if that helps.
As for the icon of male and female goes there’s a way the bridegroom and his bride, Christ and his mother the theotokos, etc… at least begins to orient us. Part of it is the union of difference that allows for such a union to be such a beautiful iconic reality. I find some of Jean-Luc Marion’s writing on the erotic phenomenon helpful here. In a sense too being beyond our constructs of gender doesn’t negate our materiality and Gods call to deify even it. A powerful example of this is the incorrupt remains of St. John of San fransisco etc.
I think your primary point--that there is a ineffable, undefinable core self that is a metaphysical reality not able to be reduced to psychological or phenomenal states--is right on. So long as we admit that we have an inner being, what we are, the being that we are, then I think all that you say follows nicely. Sadly, I see many moderns now naively rejecting that there is any true grounds of metaphysical identity, and becoming mereological nihilists.
I think, building on this, that we must develop a non-fundamentalist ethic of gender performance and expression, still. Clearly gender expression and performance are real phenomena, even if they do not relate back to that metaphysical core of our identity. A lot of harm is being done, I think, by those in "trad" camps who think that our gender performance should look like 1950s American aesthetics. I think it is totally harmless for men to wear what we would consider dresses, makeup, etc. We westerners are very rigid in our gender expressions, and I see no theological reason to be so.
This is excellent! In the west, this was already lost by the great architects of the modern self, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, who are unable to differentiate between the empirical ich and the metaphysical ich. Reduction of the self to the former was completely detrimental—but also programmatic—to western modernity. Empirical ego is just so fragile, and so easily reduced to a bad infinity of acts—as we even see in what Zizek calls “western Buddhists” today. Schelling is of course closer to the the truth than the other two, because of his readings of Plato, but by placing the impetus of reality upon nature, and trying to develop only the empirical self from that nature, he actually paved the way for later psychologists and other social sciences to undermine what was left of the modern self after the impassible Kantian antimony.
The metaphysical depths of the hypostasis seems to be a key implication of eastern (and western) trinitarian speculation. But I wonder—what do you see that as meaning for the question of gender? That we are more than the identities that we assign or construct for ourselves? That we really shouldn’t worry about all this gender stuff?
Or is there a way that the gendered nature of the revelatory hypostases (Son and Spirit) actually ground gender within the life of God?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I still don’t have the right language for it. But it seems like in the Western Esoteric tradition, or in the pre-Christian agricultural mythologies and rituals, there have been other ways forward, where gender takes on a more religious meaning. Bulgakov takes that up into his own theology—via probably someone like Jacob Boehme. But it isn’t fully developed even there.
It’s hard to put. I think first of all to run after an idea of self by undergoing surgery ultimately is not helpful but can be quite harmful. I think that the problem is gender as we construe it has been too informed by advertising and unobtainable representations of it. This doesn’t mean though that our biological sex might not carry with it certain characteristics or imply certain relational dynamics. It’s just the way we frame identity now and gender and sexuality as prescribing identity which is so attached to an egoistic self image that makes it hard to identify what that is. We can’t help but frame our thoughts, at least at first, in a social context, thus when we release any expectations or roles from carrying intrinsic meaning we’re free floating and just trying to identify with something we like or find attractive to be me. I think the beginning of the answer is realizing how deceptive these ideas of self were attracted to are. Idk if that helps.
As for the icon of male and female goes there’s a way the bridegroom and his bride, Christ and his mother the theotokos, etc… at least begins to orient us. Part of it is the union of difference that allows for such a union to be such a beautiful iconic reality. I find some of Jean-Luc Marion’s writing on the erotic phenomenon helpful here. In a sense too being beyond our constructs of gender doesn’t negate our materiality and Gods call to deify even it. A powerful example of this is the incorrupt remains of St. John of San fransisco etc.
I think your primary point--that there is a ineffable, undefinable core self that is a metaphysical reality not able to be reduced to psychological or phenomenal states--is right on. So long as we admit that we have an inner being, what we are, the being that we are, then I think all that you say follows nicely. Sadly, I see many moderns now naively rejecting that there is any true grounds of metaphysical identity, and becoming mereological nihilists.
I think, building on this, that we must develop a non-fundamentalist ethic of gender performance and expression, still. Clearly gender expression and performance are real phenomena, even if they do not relate back to that metaphysical core of our identity. A lot of harm is being done, I think, by those in "trad" camps who think that our gender performance should look like 1950s American aesthetics. I think it is totally harmless for men to wear what we would consider dresses, makeup, etc. We westerners are very rigid in our gender expressions, and I see no theological reason to be so.
Couldn’t put it better!
Beautiful paragraphs at the end concerning watchfulness/wakefulness and prayer. “Enter into the brilliant and tranquil Ocean of God within” Thank you!
You’re welcome!
This is excellent! In the west, this was already lost by the great architects of the modern self, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, who are unable to differentiate between the empirical ich and the metaphysical ich. Reduction of the self to the former was completely detrimental—but also programmatic—to western modernity. Empirical ego is just so fragile, and so easily reduced to a bad infinity of acts—as we even see in what Zizek calls “western Buddhists” today. Schelling is of course closer to the the truth than the other two, because of his readings of Plato, but by placing the impetus of reality upon nature, and trying to develop only the empirical self from that nature, he actually paved the way for later psychologists and other social sciences to undermine what was left of the modern self after the impassible Kantian antimony.
The metaphysical depths of the hypostasis seems to be a key implication of eastern (and western) trinitarian speculation. But I wonder—what do you see that as meaning for the question of gender? That we are more than the identities that we assign or construct for ourselves? That we really shouldn’t worry about all this gender stuff?
Or is there a way that the gendered nature of the revelatory hypostases (Son and Spirit) actually ground gender within the life of God?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I still don’t have the right language for it. But it seems like in the Western Esoteric tradition, or in the pre-Christian agricultural mythologies and rituals, there have been other ways forward, where gender takes on a more religious meaning. Bulgakov takes that up into his own theology—via probably someone like Jacob Boehme. But it isn’t fully developed even there.
Thanks, again, for the post!