43
Conclusion and Final Thoughts:
In his recent autobiography God or Nothing, Cardinal Sarah condemns gender theory for
denying an ontological difference between man and woman. He condemns what he calls a
“deconstructive philosophy of gender,” 146 a philosophy implicitly denying the concrete and vital
importance of human nature as embodied. The Cardinal’s description is telling of a deep-seated
problem:
[Gender theory] claims that masculine and feminine identities are not inscribed in nature but are only the
result of a social construct, a role played by individuals through social tasks and functions. For these
gender theorists, gender is performative, and the differences between man and woman are nothing but
oppressive norms, cultural stereotypes, and social constructs that have to be undone so as to arrive at
parity between man and woman. [This] idea of a constructed identity actually denies in an unrealistic way
147
the importance of the sexed body.
The problem is obvious. Contrary to gender theorists who deny the objectivity of human nature – as the
Cardinal points out – the actual contours of the physical body matter greatly to the life and love of the
human person. Gender cannot be divorced from one’s sex. Mind and body are not meant to coexist in
radical discontinuity.
Critiquing the popular understanding of gender in this way, I believe, provides a foundation for
defining gender in a positive manner. However, the purpose of this thesis was not to provide a positive
definition of gender, because the primary purpose was to establish a sound philosophical foundation
upon which to define and understand gender. At best, this thesis gave an implicit definition of gender in
the negative sense of what it could not be – the popular notion of a body schema.
Whatever it means to be gendered (a topic left open by this thesis) remains intimately caught up
in human nature. Human nature comes in one of two discrete and different forms: man or woman
(mentally/psychologically), respectively male or female (biologically). This is a brute fact supported by
146
Robert Cardinal Sarah, God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith with Nicolas Diat, trans. Michael J. Miller (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2015), 164.
147
Ibid, 163-64.