The declaration that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose” is presumably attempted to rebut the second-wave feminist articulation of the sex/gender dichotomy which sees sex as natural and gender as culturally/socially constructed, and therefore malleable. While it is perhaps unclear that “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is theoretically sophisticated enough to be aware of the sex/gender distinction that emerged in the 1970’s starting with the work of Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (1970), it is nevertheless situated in a historical moment in which these terms escape easy definition. Indeed, the definition of such terms is in fact the most contested element of feminist theory, and the failure to articulate any precise definition opens the text up to multiple interpretations.
Millett introduces the sex/gender distinction via the interpretive tradition that developed in the 1950’s and 60’s in the medical and psychological study of transsexuality. Robert Stoller, John Money, and others attempted to give articulation to the phenomenon of transsexuality by noting a gap between actual “sex” and perceived “gender.” Interestingly, in this articulation, these thinkers see “gender” as the fixed, durable element of human identity and “sex” as that which can be changed. The beginnings of transsexual surgeries are based on this theoretical model.
For this reason, there is some irony with the Church’s statement that “gender is eternal” as a rebuttal of Millet’s theoretical revolution in feminist thought. Millet’s misappropriation of the way that the sex/gender distinction was being used in transsexuality reversed the assumption that gender was durable and sex was changeable, or at least more easily changeable than gender. In the Church’s rebuttal of Millet, it implicitly sides with and recovers the transsexual’s conception of “gender,” without explaining why mortal “sex” should also be imagined as eternally fixed.
Indeed, LDS theology can account for transsexuality and the self-description that one feels to be a “male soul trapped in a female body,” or vice versa. Given LDS theological anthropology which conceives of the soul as gendered in some essential way, the misalignment with a particular body is not outside of the realm of possibility (though some GA’s have sought to shore-up this loophole). In the same way that other birth “defects” may be seen as temporal and imperfect representation of the soul, for the transsexual, the biological sex itself is seen as in the very same class of accidental defects which would be restored and corrected in the resurrection. The durability of the soul despite the changeability of the body is a persistent theme in the LDS theological imagination.
The theoretical tension between transsexuality and feminism has been the subject of recent rethinking, most importantly in Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender. Such a tension remains unresolved in the political activism of both groups, despite the philosophical problematization of both versions of a fixed gender or a fixed sex over the last 15 years or so.
The church’s intervention into this debate, whether unwittingly or not, however, takes the side of (earlier) versions of transsexuality. The theological implications of this have been decried by feminists, but at the expense of transsexual (and queer) political and theological agendas. This unfortunate tension fails to see the political and theoretical/theological possibilities that the church’s statement contains.
Faith-Promoting Rumor 
Fascinating stuff, TT. Your contextualization of the discourse surrounding gender and sex is quite helpful in situating the church’s position, but also (as you state) in opening up the theoretical/theological possibilities it contains.
The problem I have with the possibility you raise of a misalignment between body and spirit is that unlike in the case of birth defects, you are talking about the God-directed side of things rather than the natural laws side of things. Birth defects happen because the transmission of DNA is not perfect, mothers are exposed to harmful substances/diseases or deprived of nutrients, and so forth. God is the ultimate author of that system, but seems generally to keep his hands off the clockwork. However, I find it hard to conceive of there being a way for cock-ups to happen in the assignment of a certain spirit to a certain body. When the body itself is abnormal, sure (then there might not be a clear “right” gender of spirit), but when people are claiming that their physically normal body is inhabited by the wrong flavor of spirit, I just don’t see it.
But more on your topic, I am quite sure that in the process of crafting the proclamation there was someone involved who was fully aware of the scholarly discourses you refer to. Too much brain power involved in these circles to think otherwise.
Owen, I am not sure what you mean when you say that “Birth defects happen because the transmission of DNA is not perfect.” Do you think that biological sex is something other than DNA?
If you are correct that bodies can never have the “wrong” spirit, how then do you account for the experience of the transsexual?
Further, what do you make of intersexuality, where there is no clear biogical sex of the person?
I don’t think I understand your first comment. My point was just that there are lots of reasons why physical bodies can end up abnormal, most or all of which seem to be a result of natural laws and events, not the will of God.
As for your second point, I don’t feel any need to account for every type of experience people have. There are too many kinds of crazy out there. Only God knows whose psychic distress is the result of circumstance and biology and whose is a result of sin and stupidity. There seems to be a lot of both. At least in my own case, the line of reasoning that supposes that an “explanation” for one’s circumstance is going to alleviate mental distress has never borne much fruit. Asking “who am I” and trying to “find” oneself (there’s nothing there to find…) and untie the knots of identity just seem to make things worse. I find it much more useful to discard the metaphor of identity cum object and just get to work.
And on your third point, again, I don’t see the point in coming up with a doctrinal explanation for something so rare. The spirit had some (spiritual) gender before that body was ever created, the body ended up biologically damaged, and faith and repentance will still lead to salvation.
Owen,
“My point was just that there are lots of reasons why physical bodies can end up abnormal, most or all of which seem to be a result of natural laws and events, not the will of God.”
That is my point too, except I don’t understand why you draw the line at God’s intervention into the birth process as only about sex. I am asking why you think the assignment of XY or XX chromosomes is the will of God, but not XXY. Or, why you don’t think that ambiguously sexed individuals represent the will of God, only unambiguously sexed individuals. Or, why God ensures that a female spirit is born into a female body, even if that body suffers from massive birth defects. Couldn’t he have gone a little further?
“I don’t feel any need to account for every type of experience people have. There are too many kinds of crazy out there.”
Wow, this is actually quite offensive. You don’t think that these people are even worth thought? They are simply unthinkable? I think that you should go rent Boys Don’t Cry. Well, besides the fact that they are actual living breathing human beings, including people that I know and love, and including members and former members of our faith as being good enough reasons to think about them, let me suggest a few others. First, if we claim that gender is an eternal and universal human trait, and it turns out that for many people this isn’t the case, then we need to think about what we mean by eternal and universal. We can’t make sweeping claims and simply ignore all the contrary evidence. Second, given that the Brethren have thought about this, and even changed their views moderately over time, I think that it is worth figuring out what is going on here.
As for transsexuals being “crazy,” possibly as “a result of sin and stupidity,” I think that you need to do a little more research on this. The professional evaluation and critical discourses about transsexuality have changed from this view over the last hundred years, especially in the last decades. Further, I have met transsexuals mostly in academia, including one former Mormon (and I know of at least one other). These people are by no means stupid or crazy, nor is their situation “worse” after undergoing surgery.
“I don’t see the point in coming up with a doctrinal explanation for something so rare. The spirit had some (spiritual) gender before that body was ever created, the body ended up biologically damaged, and faith and repentance will still lead to salvation.”
I don’t understand how your second sentence follows from your first here since you say you don’t see the point and then do it anyway. But I don’t get it. Are you saying that the damaged body that houses the gendered spirit could be a mis-gendered body?
Owen,
One more thing. If you are right that the GA’s (or others) who drafted the Proclamation knowingly sided with transexual accounts of subjectivity over feminist accounts, what significance does that have?
I didn’t mean to go quite this far. I wouldn’t say they were “siding” with the line of thought you lay out, but simply that they were aware of the distinctions between sex and gender that come out of this discourse. I shouldn’t have said “fully”. On the other hand, I’m often surprised at the breadth of reading some of them do.
I think that statement gender’s being eternal was a reflection of President Kimball’s emphatic position that God did not put male spirits in female bodies and vice versa, that there was no “third sex.” I think this was part of his world view that while God might allow for other types of biological “defects”, God would not allow that sort of gender error and, in particular, God would not allow for biological causation of same sex orientation that could not be reversed by self-discipline. “Those who would claim that the homosexual is a third sex and that there is nothing wrong in such associations can hardly believe in God or in his scriptures. If God did not exist, such an unnatural and improper practice might be viewed differently, but one could never justify it while accepting the holy scriptures.” Miracle of Forgiveness at 77.
Early on in his administration, President Kimball also condemned emphatically transsexual surgery, announcing that it would result in excommunication (I think without possibility of reinstatement). I think this was also based on the same world view.
The Church has backed off from President Kimball’s inflexible position on transsexual surgery, and also from his position regarding the mutability of same sex orientation.
Unlike President Kimball’s earlier position, the Proclamation on the Family takes no position about sexual orientation, nor, as TT points out, does it deny that spirit and physical sex/gender may be misaligned.
DavidH,
Thanks for bringing this into the discussion. I am not sure, however, that Kimball’s statement about homosexuality refers to transsexuality in any way, at least not without further evidence. I think that the confusion of the transsexual and the homosexual is certainly possible, though shockingly ignorant even in 1969. (Interestingly, the term “gender confusion” to describe homosexuality appeared in the 2008 “Divine Institution of Marriage,” reflecting a persistent conflation of misunderstanding of these separate phenomena).
To my knowledge, “elective” transsexual operations are still grounds for excommunication, though the ambiguity around the term “elective” is grounds for some slipperiness. Further, there is no ban on other transsexual changes short of operations, such as cross-dressing and hormone therapy.
I just checked the handbook of Instructions. I could not find a reference to transexuals in it. I might have missed it. I am not sure if they are excommunicated or not.
Book I, p. 111
I see it on page 113 under the title. When a Church Disciplinary Council may be necessary. Seems like wiggle room to me. Similar to Abortion
Mine’s 2006. Am I out of date? I agree with your interpretation that there are instances where church leaders could decide that it is not grounds for discipline. Yet, it also could be.
I do not even have one of those.
TT,
I agree that President Kimball’s quote in Miracle of Forgiveness does not directly refer to transexuality. By condemning the theory that gays and lesbians are a “third sex” (I am not sure whose theories he was referring to), he was, in my mind, stating that God only made men to be attracted to women, and women to be attracted to me, and there was nothing else, biologically speaking. That God would not make an error, or allow an error biologically to be made so as that a human would be sexually oriented to his or her own sex.
That “black and white” thinking about biological sexuality I believe also lay behind President Kimball’s early opposition to transexual surgery (which I heard him express while I was in the MTC in 1973). The official printing of his comment reads as follows: “Then we’re appalled to find an ever-increasing number of women who want to be sexually men and many young men who wish to be sexually women. What a travesty! I tell you that, as surely as they live, such people will regret having made overtures toward the changing of their sex. Do they know better than God what is right and best for them?” http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=6057
Again, the theory, to my mind, is that God does not make mistakes or allow biological mistakes of gender/sex assignment to be made.
Of course, the handbook’s current distinction between “elective” and “non-elective” sexual reassignment surgery indicates that God has inspired the Brethren to understand that it may not be as black and white as President Kimball seemed to imply.
Thanks DavidH,
By doing a quick google search, it appears that the notion of a “third sex” to understand the (male) homosexual was in fact current by the time that Kimball was writing, from Willy’s 1929 book, The Third Sex, which described Parisian and German gay culture. (The term today is used in anthropological literature quite differently to refer to those who are otherwise gendered).
While I don’t doubt that GA’s including Kimball would have objected to transsexuality on the basis of the logic that you offer, it is still not clear to me from either of the quotes you have provided that this is in fact the case. From the BYU speech, it seems to me again to be a reference to homosexuality when it speaks of those who wish to be “sexually” women or “sexually” men, which again is the popular etiology of homosexuality that he is working with. Here, as you say, the logic is that one’s given biological sex is God’s way of defining proper object choice in sexual relationships. If this reading is right, that Kimball sees homosexuality as a kind of transsexuality, I still maintain that this was out of date research even by the time he wrote MoF.
TT,
That application of Judith Butler to any Mormon discussion of sexuality would be interesting. She seem the reject the very classifications that are assumed to be eternal in LDS thought. For here the question would not be whether gender is eternal but whether there is really gender. The extent to which we have gender is a basis for oppression.
While I am part of the feminist camp that reject Butler, I am often tempted to borrow from her when commenting in Gospel Doctrine.
“God only made . . . women to be attracted to me, and there was nothing else, biologically speaking.”
Sorry, DavidH, but that made me laugh out loud.
If someone undergoes a sex-change operation, there are other problems with full participation in church (besides the potential for excommunication). Namely – no priesthood and no temple recommends. Converts who have undergone such operations need to have special interviews prior to receiving permission to be baptized, as well.
That is, an elective sex-change operation. Operations to correct birth defects or ambiguous genitalia aren’t addressed.
What does everyone think of Joseph Smith’s statement that God “gendered” the spirits? It sure makes gender seem less eternal.
J,
I’m not aware of tv quote. Can you provide it?
DavidG. Sometimes the truth is spoken by accident or typographical error. Thanks for noticing and the laugh!
Mcintire Minute Book, March 28, 1841.
“God saw that those intelligences had Not power to Defend themselves against those that had a tabernacle therefore the Lord Calls them together in Counsel & agrees to form them tabernacles so that he might Gender the Spirit & the tabernacle together so as to create sympathy for their fellowman.”
ie. God genders the spirit and then combines it with a tabernacle (gender is not eternal because God “genders” the spirit).
Hmm. This is interesting, though I am not quite sure what to make of it. My hunch is that he may mean something like “engender” when he speaks of the way of bringing the spirit and tabernacle together. I see you have the original source citation. Where is the whole thing published? I’d like to read it in context to see if my hunch is correct.
I believe the quote can be found in Ehat and Cook’s Words but I haven’t looked it up in my copy. I cant vouch for the link, but here is a link to another citation in context, http://www.boap.org/LDS/Parallel/1841/28Mar41.html
I came across the quote from Blake Ostler who reads it as God fixing the gender of the spirit as opposed to engendering or joining spirit to flesh. I dont think we can say for certain what Joseph meant but it “engender” is a possible reading
I don’t think interpreting this as “to give gender” makes any sense at all. Why would you “gender” two things “together”. He just means “combine”. If this were meant to be about gender, then there would certainly be some other mention of maleness and femaleness. It’s just a poor verb choice.
Im not sure what to make of the quote but it sounds as if JS taught that gender is not part of our intelligence or spirit (Joseph uses the two interchangeably here and elsewhere)
TT,
It appears that you have made the assumption that the writers of the proclamation distinguish between gender and sex as you have. You do this because it makes your argument appear valid, but without substantiating this assumption, much in your argument is weak.
I think you have to assume that the authors are dumb as dirt to think they didn’t know the difference between the two terms.
MadChemist,
Basically, I see there being three options:
1. The conservative view: The Proclamation knows about the sex/gender distinction and rejects it. In this view, gender refers to masculinity and femininity. (this is the one that I suspect)
2. The liberal view: The Proclamation doesn’t know about the sex/gender distinction and sees the the terms as synonymous. What they mean by “gender” is what most people mean by “sex,” namely maleness and femaleness. (this is perfectly plausible. It doesn’t change my argument at all, however, because my argument isn’t based on authorial intent)
3. The confused view: The Proclamation knows about the sex/gender distinction and chooses to ignore it for various reasons like: a) they want to avoid the term “sex” (which may also be the reason they refer to “same gender marriage” despite the non-sensical nature of that phrase; or b) there is something in some other language that makes them prefer this term. c) any other made up reason for which there is no evidence.
I explicitly do NOT assume what the writers mean to say (which I am not sure is either relevant or knowable), but instead analyze what they actually did say. I acknowledge that the document may not be “theoretically sophisticated enough to be aware of the sex/gender distinction.”In the original post I suggest that “the failure to articulate any precise definition opens the text up to multiple interpretations.” This post is an attempt to tease out to what seems to be the most obvious interpretation of the text, namely, that the text is aware of the sex/gender distinction made by second-wave feminists for over two decades before the Proclamation was written. In this view, the Proclamation intervenes in this debate and rejects the idea that gender is culturally conditioned.
I should add that one other reason that I think that the conservative view is meant is because it makes no sense to speak of a “sexed” spirit, if by sex we refer to any of the common ways of determining sex-identity, such as DNA, gonads, or hormone levels. These all strike me as exclusive to bodies, so I think that what must be meant when one speaks of a gendered spirit is masculinity and femininity.
God knew the DNA, He also knew the gender, and He assigns a 1:1 correspondence.
You probably disagree. Because you do not believe that the eternal gender determines what sex God assigns (spirit to body), it must be easier to accept gay marriage as an acceptable alternative. I guess, you assume there’s a possiblity for a masculine spirit being placed in a female body. When I read about Gender being eternal, I hear not only that Gender is eternal, but that God correctly assigned the right gendered spirit to the correct anatomy. Do you have any evidence of this false gendered assignment other than it fits the gay agenda well?
If you do not believe that, these are good distinctions to make. It would be great to ask any of our general authorities what the authors meant.
If there is “gay agenda” (a term that takes me back), there must also be a “1950s conception of the family agenda.”
Owen, Calling anyone dumber than dirt isn’t an argument.
I think they were keenly aware of the distinction of the two terms, and chose “gender” deliberately and forcefully.
No, I can’t prove it. It’s just a hunch.
Well as long as my hunch cancels out your hunch, David J.
MadChemist,
“God knew the DNA, He also knew the gender, and He assigns a 1:1 correspondence.”
I certainly concede that possibility, but I am curious as to why you assert this without answering the questions that I pose to Owen: “I am asking why you think the assignment of XY or XX chromosomes is the will of God, but not XXY. Or, why you don’t think that ambiguously sexed individuals represent the will of God, only unambiguously sexed individuals. Or, why God ensures that a female spirit is born into a female body, even if that body suffers from massive birth defects. Couldn’t he have gone a little further?”
“Because you do not believe that the eternal gender determines what sex God assigns (spirit to body), it must be easier to accept gay marriage as an acceptable alternative.”
Well, just to inform you about these issues, the question of transsexuality has nothing to do with homosexuality. The general divisions of human subjectivity in recent decades distinguish between sex, gender and sexuality. So far I have only discussed sex and gender since I believe that these are the only two that are specifically addressed in the assertion of the eternal nature of gender. Of course, there was once a time when gender and sexuality were conflated, and I would listen to your arguments that the Proclamation makes this conflation between sexuality and gender in a similar way as it does sex and gender, but that would raise a different host of issues. Let’s stick to the question of transsexuality and avoid sexuality per se.