This essay is the third in a four-part exchange between Catholic theologian Rachel Coleman and radical feminist philosopher Kate Phelan. Click here to see all four installments.
I am thankful for Kate Phelan’s thoughtful engagement with my essay about the relationship between Catholicism and radical feminism. I want to respond to her on just a few key points.
Sex vs. Sex-Class
Phelan denies my assessment that radical feminism shares a foundational principle with Catholicism: the affirmation of a reality that transcends any one individual. Instead, she asserts that “It is not the current denial of sex that radical feminists oppose; it is the current denial of sex-class. Thus, it is not the metaphysical and transcendental reality of sex they affirm; it is the political and historically contingent reality of sex-class that they assert.”
But how does one assert the reality of sex-class without first asserting the prior reality of sex? Class is (according to Marx), mutable and ascriptive. If radical feminists only assert sex-class without affirming the transcendent reality of sex, their rejection of trans ideology (amongst other things) ultimately falls apart. If it could be the case that the reality of sex doesn’t matter one day—even if, according to Phelan, this could never occur in a liberal order—then isn’t the argument of trans ideologues correct? That is to say, if the foundational reality is class, then why shouldn’t someone be able to identify into or out of that class?
More simply, if sex-class is the relevant category, then it seems that sex (and therefore the body) does not in fact matter. This is the position of trans-inclusive liberal feminists, even if they admit we haven’t completely technologized our way out of all the inequalities yet.
It seems to me that if the radical feminist rejection or criticism of trans ideology, hormonal birth control, pornography, and surrogacy is built on the construct of sex-class rather than the reality of sex, then it cannot hold. Its foundation is not built on the ground of reality, and thus it will fall. In order to achieve their ends, radical feminists must be rooted in reality, and I think their anthropology ultimately calls for this principle, even if they do not.
Woman as Help-Meet
Phelan’s second objection—not unrelated to the first—is that because Catholicism takes the Genesis creation stories seriously, it cannot help but assert an inequality between men and women. Phelan asserts, along with other radical feminists such as Kate Millet, that it is not the sexually dimorphic human body but only the male body that is made in the image and likeness of God.
This is based in an anachronistic reading of Genesis 2: “then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being . . . Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (18, 27 RSVCE). The radical feminist interpretation of this passage ignores important questions of translation. The Hebrew word ‘adam, which is used in these verses, is generally translated as “man.” But this word means “humanity,” not “male.” The word for “male,”‘is, does not appear until the word for “female”, ‘issah appears alongside it.
The radical feminist interpretation also ignores the creation story in Genesis 1: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (27). In other words, it is not the male body that is the image of God. Rather, it is humanity—male and female, together, in loving relationship with one another—that is made in God’s image.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky, in her excellent book In the Wake of the Goddesses, offers convincing evidence that “there is no real ‘woman question’ in the Bible” and that the “biblical idea that the desires and actions of men and women are similar is tantamount to a radically new concept of gender.” Frymer-Kensky demonstrates, by comparison to other ancient near eastern texts, that “the biblical story of Adam and Eve presents woman and man as the true suitable companions to each other. The same gender ideology also underlies the other biblical tale of the creation of humanity, Genesis 1. Male and female are created at the same time, and they are both created in the image, and the likeness of God.”
There are, of course, those who read the Genesis creation stories as giving men license to dominate women or as asserting that women are somehow unequal to men. Yet it is important to note that the Catholic tradition has never subscribed to such a reading. For a few examples, consider texts as early as Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Making of Man (XVI, §10) and Augustine’s De bono coniugali (1.1), and as recently as John Paul II’s 1988 apostolic letter, Mulieris dignitatem (6). As the last is a modern text, it is perhaps easiest for us to understand.
John Paul II writes: “the human race, which takes its origin from the calling into existence of man and woman, crowns the whole work of creation; both man and woman are human beings to an equal degree, both are created in God’s image.” And later: “Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of a personal God.” And again: “The biblical text provides sufficient bases for recognizing the essential equality of man and woman from the point of view of their humanity. From the very beginning, both are persons, unlike the other living beings in the world about them. The woman is another ‘I’ in a common humanity.”
It is frustrating to me that radical feminists, like bad patriarchalists, accept an understanding of the Genesis creation stories as texts that give license for the unequal or mistreatment of women.
One of the reasons I call this an anachronistic reading is because I understand it to be a liberal reading. A liberal anthropology is one that sees human beings’ worth and dignity in terms of what they can do rather than who and what they are. It is true that the Genesis creation stories (and therefore the Catholic tradition) recognizes and celebrates the difference between men and women. This recognition of difference has led to thinking and speculation about different talents or aspects of the human genius men and women may tend to embody more fully or different roles each sex may play. Yet this recognition of difference does not mean that Catholics believe that there is any inequality at the level of being.
A liberal anthropology equates dignity or worth with action, implicitly asserting that any difference in the capacity to do means inequality at the level of being. A Catholic anthropology resoundingly rejects this assertion, and instead affirms that a human being (whether male or female) is good simply because she is.
Both bad patriarchalists and radical feminists thus buy into a liberal anthropology and framework that implicitly asserts that because women may not be able to do the same things as men (and vice versa), they are not equal. The Catholic tradition has enough intellectual space, so to speak, to recognize that not only is sameness not necessarily equality, but that a false assertion of sameness can often result in inequality.
In closing, I want to point out that Phelan agrees that both radical feminism and Catholicism “reject the individual as the arbiter of reality,” though she disagrees that our alignment goes any further. But I’d like to suggest that this rejection of the individual of the arbiter of reality holds within it a (perhaps implicit) affirmation of reality. If the individual does not get to dictate the terms of reality, then it seems to me that is the same as saying that there is such a thing as reality—that is, a common space, as it were, with a natural order that transcends all of us.
Thus, I think that both radical feminism and Catholicism think that reality matters. And if that is the case, then a real friendship between the two is possible.
