The Church of England doesn't know what a woman is

The Rt. Rev. Robert Innes is not a biologist. How can he be expected to know what a "woman" is? Truly, it is one of history's greatest mysteries.

Ahem. A woman is an adult human female. See? Simple.

 

Female genetically, or female physiologically? They know what a "woman" is, obviously; they're saying there is no consensus on whether to include transgender women in that category, which is correct.

 

This is a nonsensical question. Genetic females are females. Genetic males are males. How you feel about that is beside the point. Whatever surgeries, hormone therapies, or external adornment happen, the truth doesn't change. God created us as male or female. God does not make mistakes.

Gen 1:27

 

What are you talking about? For the vast majority of human history, no one knew anything about genetics; classifications were based on observable, usually external, characteristics. Possessing male or female organs was what determined whether one was considered male or female. Modern medical technology makes it possible for a person born with an XY chromosomal combination to surgically receive female organs and sustain them with hormone treatments, thus endowing the person with the very same female characteristics that would have caused the ancients to classify that person as a woman. So the question is, Should those people be included under some official definition or not? That's all this is about. It's a fair question.

To treat every biological fact as the "will of God" is also pretty easy to knock down. There's some pretty horrible stuff in nature that I don't think any reasonable person would want to attribute to an intentional divine plan. Instead of thinking about this stuff as violating some abstract rule, why not consider the merits of each position based on their respective logical and practical consequences?

 

The answer to the question is, "no." Obviously. A chromosomal male can be altered to mimic and appear as a female (and vice versa), but the chromosomes tell the fact. Past generations didn't understand chromosomes but that has no bearing on the fact, since chromosomes have always dictated gender.

Would a wolf become a sheep if it donned a sheepskin, ate grass, and bleated? It might fool the sheep, but it would still be a wolf.

 

The genetic argument is irrelevant. No one knew about genes until Gregor Mendel. Prior to his discovery, people based gender classification on observable characteristics. Those characteristics, in turn, can be categorized according to either appearance or function. On either basis, an ancient taxonomist would not have been able to tell the difference between a cisgender woman and a transgender woman. To view a person as determined solely in terms of his/her genetics is another one of those ‘modernist errors’.

There is also nothing inherently male or female about genes themselves. There are some animal populations that actually have the capacity to switch genders physiologically to compensate for the unavailability of the other gender in a population. Function is the determining factor.

 

Genetics can't be irrelevant since the chromosomal pairs are controlling. XY = inherently male, XX = female. Exceptions (such as people born with both equipment) have always been rare & unusual. And as for "some animals" who switch genders, human beings are not "some animals" (although I sometimes wonder about certain members of the species).

I suspect that as long ago as pre-flood there may have been some men who shaved their beards and dressed as women. (If not then, well, almost certainly by the time of Sodom.) That wouldn't have made them women, would it? Even if they managed to fool some folks, they were still men pretending to be otherwise. The 'appearance' argument is the irrelevant one.

 

It wasn’t controlling for ordinary language in the thousands of years prior to the discovery of the gene. People used the word “woman” in various languages for ages without knowing anything about chromosomes. Under that definition - the one people have actually used for the vast majority of time the Church has existed - a transgender woman (in the complete medical sense) would probably qualify as a “woman” based solely on her characteristics. Genetics under most circumstances is thus necessary but not sufficient as an explanation.

 

Wasn't one of the Popes rumoured to be a woman?

 

Your point is moot since there were no sex change operations back then (there were no transgenders "in the complete medical sense"), just like there was no knowledge of chromosomes. Arguing about the latter and trying to make a point with the former is illogical.

Apparently the CoE leaders are not the only people who can't properly define a woman; at least one is on this forum!

 

It’s not illogical at all. The point is that the genetic difference wasn’t the epistemological basis of the convention; the observed external characteristics were. BTW I’m not even saying who’s right; I’m just laying out why I think it’s a fair question for the Bishop of Europe to be asking. To simply not have a policy is to invite discord. It seems like it would be a good idea to get that worked out ahead of time before it becomes a problem.

 

I'll spell it out.

That was good enough back then, but it no longer is good enough today. Today, "external characteristics" are no longer as accurate a gauge of gender. Today we have a more accurate gauge: DNA, chromosomes. We can't claim that the church must continue to use an old measuring system of physical properties when that old measurement has lost accuracy and a new, better measurement has been explained by science. The church does not set itself up in opposition to science in your world view, does it? Therefore, Ananias' statement is true:

A human being may attempt to alter his/her sex through surgery, hormones, and dress, but that person is failing to alter the sex because it's already "set in stone" (so to speak) in the chromosomes.

 

It's apparently already a problem in the CofE (and in the vast majority of western liberal* circles). This confusion about gender vs sex is one of the foundational problems affecting Rousseauian liberalism -- the (perceived rather than actual) mutability of "gender" as a social construct rather than biological reality. This stuff has absolutely no basis or history in Christianity or Judaism; it's a secular humanist philosophy that has been smuggled into the church in the past few decades.

I've long argued that when Anglicans began ordaining female priests and bishops, they were laying the track for exactly this kind of confusion. If women can act as men (since priests and bishops must be men by Biblical fiat), then ordaining women into these roles implicitly assents to the mutability of gender. If women can be men (or at least act like men, standing in persona Christi while performing their pastoral and ceremonial duties as clerics), then men can be women for the purposes of the church as well. It's not just a misconception of the Biblical order of creation, but an outright rejection of it.

The Holy Bible, God's word written, establishes that God created Eve out of Adam as a "fit" (complementary) mate and companion for him. The two are intended to recover "oneness" in both the sexual act and in the lifelong companionship of marriage, as they bear and raise children. This is God's plan, a teaching which is affirmed and underscored by Jesus Christ our Lord in his teaching on divorce (Matt. 19:4-6). In so doing, he also affirms both the gender binary (male and female) and the purpose of the order of creation.

So while in modern times we understand that genetics are the mechanism of biological sex, God is the ultimate designer, and the ancients understood this fact better than we do (apparently). God made us, quite literally; he created us male and female, and it is not for us to attempt to overthrow that sovereign choice of God. It reflects disobedience to God's will, disrespect for Scripture, and an antinomian attitude that is a signature trait of liberal "Christianity".

This is also why transgenderism and other sorts of deviancy are making inroads into Christian churches -- if they don't even know what a woman is, by extension they don't know what a man is either, and so they lose any sense at all of the order of creation. Everything is chaos and confusion...which has always been Satan's plan.

Satan has always known that subversion of God's authority is the best avenue for corruption in human beings. The first sin was not Eve's disobedience to God's command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge; it was her sin in pride at presuming to know better than God himself what was good for her. Adam's sin was in obeying his wayward wife rather than God. The original sin was the overturning of God's created order, in other words, and it led to the Fall and our ejection from Paradise.

*I dislike using "liberal" in the political sense when arguing theology, but nothing else fits here.

 

Some genetic males have a female phenotype.

 

Evidence?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrome

 

Very interesting. It seems Nature doesn't have a definition of 'woman', either.

 

Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is an endocrine pathology resulting in abnormal development of genitalia and organs of reproduction in the embryo. It does not produce 46XY individuals with a completely 'typical' human female phenotype.

 

From the article:

https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/swyer-syndrome/

 

The article you quoted says, "People with Swyer syndrome have female external genitalia and some female internal reproductive structures".

Their ovaries do not function, they do not have ova and their mammary glands do not normally enlarge at adolescence. As I wrote in post #18 they do not have a 'typical' female phenotype. This is a pathological state, i.e. it is not the normal, which is based on the average human.