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Section Three: The Proper “lived” Experience of a Belonging
The popular understanding of gender argues for a purely relational view of the human person.
In this understanding, human nature is defined in terms of relations (how one person relates to
another).The teleological perspective, as presented above, argues for a primarily, though not
exclusively, substantial view of the human person. In this understanding, human nature has a concrete,
specific form (the importance of embodiment). Which view is correct? Can they both be correct? I will
leave open these two questions, because they both address difficult questions of “lived” experience and
are likely both partially correct concerning the overarching question of what is gender. This thesis will
not definitively answer the complex question, ‘what is gender’. Rather, this thesis will criticize the
popular understanding of gender and its foundational concept of body schema as philosophically
inconsistent: the popular understanding of gender claims that the physical body is objectively important
for the human person (affirming embodiment), while concurrently denying inherent meaning in the
physical body. Therefore, the popular understanding of gender denies the objectivity of human nature
as embodied, as if the importance of the physical body were solely relational and subjective.
Despite this philosophical inconsistency, arguments presented by the popular understanding of
gender are emotionally compelling. For example, the popular understanding of gender claims that some
people “live” through a transgender experience of self. This incongruence between mind and body
compels them to consider such actions as sex-reassignment surgery. Such action is considered a correct
response to “felt” incongruence, because when incongruence occurs between mind and body, priority
of truth rests with the mind as the real self. For the sake of love transgender people must be accepted as
they are. For if the body belongs to the person, then ought not the body be made congruent to the mind
for the sake of easing personal suffering? As Amy Ellis Nutt recognizes, “[b]odies hold our stories. They
connect us to the world, because they are the instruments by which we experience the world.” 107 If the
instrument is broken, should it not be fixed?
107
Amy Ellis Nutt, Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family (New York: Random House, 2015),
252.