What does it mean to be
Neither Gender is Normative
While the first creation account
establishes that man and woman are
equal, the second account reveals
what differentiates them. The
complementarity that characterizes the
nature as such has now been embodied in
two concretely existing beings, differentiated
by two distinct but related kinds of matter.
For Aquinas, gender is thus a type of
“accident” (something that inheres in
a substance and cannot be understood
apart from it), and it is an “inseparable”
accident, that is, one that cannot be
separated from the composite of body
and soul. Gender is not an accident like
blue eyes or red hair; these are accidents
of matter. Gender is attributable to the
totality of the composite; it is a feature of
the person. Man as such is a composite
substance made of body and soul. And
so, though matter is indeed one of the
things that differentiates woman from
man, since both are constituted by a
union of body and soul, woman is, in
some essential way, a woman—and
man is, in some essential way, a man.
Neither “woman-ness” nor “man-ness”
resides merely in the matter of which
persons are made, for both the body and
the soul make us what we are. We are
man and woman, as St. John Paul states,
physically and ontologically.
Thus, the equality of men and women
is clear: they are both composite creatures,
differentiated by the matter of which
they are made. Here we find in Scripture
“Woman can be seen as the pinnacle of creation, not
as a creature whose place is somehow less in stature.”
the proof that neither the male nor the
female of the species can be considered
normative for the species. This means
that women do not have to act like men
to be considered human, and men do not
have to act like women to be considered
such. We have two equally human but
differentiated ways of being in the world.
A Person Not a Thing
But what of their actual relationship?
Here we take Genesis 1 and 2 together.
In Genesis 1, the sacred author seems
to lay out the particular hierarchical
order by which God creates. God begins
with the heaven and the earth, then
light, then he divides the waters, and
so on. He goes on to create swarms of
living creatures: birds, monsters, cattle,
and things that creep. This activity
culminates in the creation of adam,
human nature created for relationship.
This is clearly a hierarchy that is on its
way up, from lower life forms to higher.
In the