Below is an edited version of remarks that Abigail Favale originally delivered in Rochester on September 18th as part of the 2026 Women’s Convention. A full, unedited video of the panel discussion can be viewed here.
When I was a starry-eyed, twenty-something graduate student in women’s studies, I used to sometimes wish I’d been born a few decades earlier, to have had the chance to be part of the founding of the discipline of women’s studies itself. I was born too late, I thought to myself. The “woman question” has been thoroughly answered. What else is left to say?
Now, as a clear-eyed, forty-something professor and mother, I think perhaps I was born—all of us were born—at exactly the right time. What else is left to say about women, in our post-feminist age? Everything.
The French philosopher Luce Irigaray has contended, since the 1970s, that sexual difference remains unthought. She was right then, and she is right now. For all the toppled ink about sex, gender, and feminism from the past century, debates about women still tend to slip into the ruts of bad theories—some of which are novel, some of which stretch back to the dawn of philosophy itself. Our path forward is crisscrossed by errors old and new.
The central claim I would like to offer is that a movement that seeks to advocate on behalf of women must be grounded in an accurate and holistic account of what a “woman” is—an accurate account, in other words, of human nature in a female mode. A vision of women’s dignity and rights that is not grounded in a deep respect for female embodiment is woefully impoverished and bound to create problems for women, rather than solve them.
I want to begin by giving a brief tour of four theories that fail to meet this criterion. These theories do not offer an accurate account of woman, because they only capture part of the truth, rather than the whole. After critiquing the limits of these theories, I will offer a holistic vision that takes up the half-truths into a fuller picture of who we are.
Naming Lies
In our ever-shifting cultural landscape, I see four misbegotten concepts of woman: two that have emerged more recently, historically speaking, and predominate on the left wing of the political spectrum; one that is as ancient as the Fall, predominating on the right; and a fourth that is also age-old, but has bipartisan reach.
Let me begin with these two ancient theories, which keep regenerating in new forms. I will borrow here from the taxonomy of philosopher Prudence Allen, who is the only intellectual who has written a comprehensive account of how woman has been conceptualized in western thought, from the Presocratic philosophers to the twenty-first century. Her work is completely ignored in the field of secular women’s and gender studies. According to Allen, there are two basic theories that develop in ancient philosophy: sex polarity theory and sex unity or unisex theory. Both of these theories attempt to respond to a tension between equality and difference raised by the fact that the human species is sexually dimorphic—human nature comes in two forms. In other words, man and woman are equally human, and yet they are clearly meaningfully different instantiations of human nature.
Instead of taking that bull by both horns, polarity theory resolves the tension by emphasizing difference, and frames that difference as an oppositional polarity. On this view, men and women are not merely different, they are opposites—and one is better, more capable, than the other. Difference is understood as polarized and ordered in a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority, traditionally favoring men (though inverse versions certainly exist). Polarity theories downplay the equal humanity of men and women by portraying our personalities, virtues, and aptitudes to be as binary as our bodies. This oppositional understanding of difference is typically translated into rigid, sex-based roles.
What appears to be the opposite of polarity theory is unisex theory, which tries to resolve the tension between equality and difference by emphasizing sameness between the sexes, presenting them as more or less interchangeable. In unisex theories, difference is regarded as a threat to equality—and it is easy to understand why, given how often women’s distinctiveness has been used to justify our subordination. Both right-liberals and left-liberals find unisex theory appealing, and so it has various forms, from evangelical egalitarianism to mainstream liberal feminism.
While polarity and unisex seem like opposites, they are working from a similar error—namely, the assumption that meaningful difference is a threat to equal dignity. Polarity works from that error to affirm a strict hierarchy of value; unisex works from that error to affirm equality by downplaying difference.
I’m going to now make an argument that Allen does not make: namely, that polarity and unisex might not actually be as different as they initially appear. There is often a hidden polarity at work in unisex theory: an implicit bias toward maleness, toward the kind of human body that can have sex without ever getting pregnant. If you look at both Plato’s Republic, say, and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, there are clear parallels in their visions of how sexual difference should be treated at a societal level. Women should be educated just like men and be able to do any role a man can do. In order to make this happen, to adapt women to the male mold, we must be rescued from pregnancy and motherhood. For Plato, this involves an elaborate state-run mating scheme, the abolition of the mother-child bond, and infanticide. For Beauvoir, this involves contraception, abortion, and state-run childcare. The underlying implication is straightforward: motherhood is a threat to equality, and for women to achieve equality, they must become as much like men as possible. They must go to war with their own bodies, their own offspring, to be free. Instead of adapting society to the realities of femaleness, this unisex vision demands that women disrupt their female physiology, make it malfunction, in order to approximate the male norm.
Unisex theory appears to affirm equality, but in failing to accommodate difference, it compromises the possibility of true justice. Similarly, while polarity theory appears to at least recognize sexual difference, it actually fails on this front as well. Because only one sex is granted full human status and invited to develop his human potential, polarity leads to a caricature of difference. Unisex is implicitly polarity, and polarity is implicitly unisex. Both fail to truly reckon with the reality of sexual difference, lapsing back into a normative model based on only one sexed subject—the male—rather than two. Both theories, albeit in different forms, offer us, as Irigaray puts it, “a culture in the masculine.” Sexual difference remains unthought.
Let’s turn now to the novel theories I mentioned that have been embraced by the left, theories that animate cultural debates about gender identity. I’m not going to offer an elaborate genealogical argument here, but I will say that both of these theories are downstream from unisex theory, in the sense that they flow from a rejection of essentialism, which in feminist theory is the basic claim that men and women differ at the level of nature or ontology. The rejection of essentialism in this sense becomes endemic to feminist theory from the second wave onward—or, more precisely, from The Second Sex onward. (NB: I am using the term “essentialism” not in a strict Aristotelian sense, but in the more general sense in which it is used within most feminist theory, i.e. as the belief that men and women differ at the level of nature. I would be an essentialist in this sense, but not in an Aristotelian sense, in that I hold both men and women share a human essence, which is then embodied in two distinct modes.)
I will call these two theories gender constructivism and gender subjectivism. Constructivism holds that the word “woman” does not name anything real at all. It is purely a social construct. “Woman”—indeed, the sex binary itself—is an artificial category, a false story, a lens through which we impose meaning onto certain bodies. These very concepts—woman, man, gender, sex—are oppressive, upholding the regime of heteronormativity. In this theory, justice demands that we disrupt these concepts, deconstruct them, play with them, show them to be fictions.
Subjectivism, the youngest of these theories, is downstream from constructivism, a product of our deconstructive and digital age. In this theory, being a man, or a woman, or neither, or both, is rooted in a subjective sense of self, an inner gendered essence that is not determined by the body, but that nonetheless must be expressed through the body. At first glance, this seems quite different from constructivism. Here, gender is not artificial but deeply authentic; not a construct but real, immutable. Gender is not extrinsic, a construct of society; it is intrinsic, embedded in the inner self. And this notion of gender is not oppressive, but liberating. Despite these stark differences, what unites both theories is their shared premise that the sexed body does not matter.
The central error uniting all these false theories, in fact, is a disregard for the reality and dignity of the body. In polarity theory, women’s bodies make them inferior to men. In unisex theory, femaleness is subtly pathologized; women should liberate themselves by altering their bodies to emulate a male norm. And in constructivism and subjectivism, the sexed body carries no intrinsic meaning. In one way or another, these theories denigrate the body—a denigration that doubles for women, as we are the kinds of bodies from which all bodies are born.
Gathering Truths
I’ve been very critical of these theories thus far. Yet each of them contains a seed of truth that, when tempered by other truths, can be gathered up into an authentic anthropology. These theories each take their truth-seed and make it absolute in a way that crowds out other pieces of the picture. The good intuition each contains gets too big, too totalizing, gobbling up other interrelated, counterbalancing truths like Pac-Man.
The foundation of a more holistic account is the twofold principle of equal dignity and meaningful sexual difference. As noted earlier, all of these false theories fail to embrace this twofold truth, leaning too far in one direction or the other—and by losing one side of this principle, they end up compromising both. This, then, is the necessary first step: affirming that men and women have equal dignity, and yet we are meaningfully different.
What is the ground of that difference? Our meaningful differentiation is foremost rooted not in personality traits, in fashion or color preferences, in distinct virtues—it is grounded in the organization of the body. The words “man” and “woman” name the reality that human nature manifests in two modes, two bodily arrangements that carry asymmetrical yet synergistic powers of generation. Or more accurately: co-generation, because each sex’s generative powers can only be activated by the other. The definition Aristotle offered two thousand years ago still holds true: a woman is the kind of human being who generates within herself. A man is the kind of human being who generates outside of himself.
Polarity theory recognizes this. That’s the seed of truth there, a recognition of the reality that our bodies are asymmetrical, and that asymmetry matters. We should be responsive to that reality, rather than denying it, or trying to destroy or overcome it. But polarity goes too far in exaggerating that difference, depicting our minds and personalities to be as binary as our reproductive systems, and thus losing sight of our shared human nature.
Unisex theory, for its part, recognizes our shared human nature, and thus the reality that both men and women should have the freedom and support to develop their capacities for virtue, for intellectual and creative work, for leadership, for nurturing, for artistic and athletic excellence. These are the good intuitions this theory can bring—men and women are fully human, and human nature must be cultivated and developed to fully flourish. Yet this cannot come at the cost of denying our differences.
And what truth can be gleaned from our more postmodern theories? Part of what it means to be human is to be both a “what” and a “who”—there is an objectivity to human nature, a specific set of potentialities that characterize what it means to be human. We are interdependent, rational animals. We carry the potential to develop abstract thought and complex language. We make art. We tell stories. We reproduce sexually. We make jokes. Yet there are boundaries to our nature, limits to the range of powers we can actualize. We don’t fly. We don’t breathe underwater. We don’t change sex. There are objective truths about what it means to be human. And yet there is also a rich, subjective dimension to being human. Indeed, this subjectivity is part of our objective human nature. The “who” is part of the “what.” A human being reflects, agonizes about identity, seeks meaning. A human being contemplates. A human being looks up at the streaks of stars in the dark and wonders how old that light might be.
Subjectivism gets at this glimmer of truth: we are the kinds of beings who ask: who am I? What is the meaning of my existence? We are the kinds of beings that can reflect upon what is good, and choose to pursue it, or not. In this way, we can actively participate in the development or realization of our own nature, which at the individual level is unique. Yet our complex inner world, our moral agency, our unique individuality—these do not determine the objectivity of our nature, our sex, or the nature of reality as a whole.
There is also a complex social dimension to being human. This, too, is part of our nature. The “nature versus culture” quandary sometimes misses this important point. It is in our nature to be nurtured, to be responsive to our social environment, and for the development of our natural potential to be fostered or impeded by the actions of others. It is in our nature to make culture. And the cultures we make profoundly shape our perception of what is real, what is good, and who we are. This is what the constructivists get right. There are many different cultural articulations of sexual difference—some beautiful, some deeply unjust—yet these articulations do not determine reality, even if these can disrupt our perception of what is real.
Let’s gather these truths. To be human is to be both a what and a who, to have an objective nature with a rich, subjective interior life. A human being is, by nature, relational and social. A human being is sexually differentiated, carrying—in the structure of the body itself—either a maternal or paternal potential.
And this potential, as noted earlier, is what grounds the categories of “man” and “woman,” “boy” and “girl.” There is, of course, a rich and beautiful diversity among women. Of all the billions of women who have ever existed on this planet, no two are exactly the same. We should pause on this for a moment, with awe. And yet there is something we all share. “Woman” and “girl” are not simply nominal categories or social constructs. These words name something real, a significant aspect—but not the only aspect!—of our nature. As female human beings, our bodies are arranged according to the potential to become mothers rather than fathers, the potential to procreate through gestating new life. That is what the category of “sex” names: the distinct ways in which males and females participate in generation. It is in this area that the meaningful difference between men and women is most clearly displayed, and our dignity most threatened.
This maternal potential that women share is, of course, not always fully actualized in literal motherhood, and indeed is often dormant. We are not always fertile, and not all women are mothers. Yet even if we have not yet or never do become biological mothers, our lives and experiences are profoundly shaped, from the beginning, by the fact that we are the kind of human being with the inherent potential for motherhood. This potential manifests in bodily rhythms and processes like ovulation, menses, and menopause, as well as our distinctive anatomy that, while carrying the potential power of generating life, also makes us more vulnerable to violence and sexual exploitation. Our lives are shaped by these bodily realities themselves, as well as how those realities are regarded by our cultures and communities.
We have become, in our time, afraid of this maternal potential. There is an underlying fear that defining “woman” according to generative potential risks reducing our social value solely to reproduction. This fear is not unfounded; in various times and places, this has happened and does happen. This reduction loses sight of the whole personhood of women, of our intelligence and wisdom, our culture-shaping capacities—loses sight, in other words, of the holistic anthropology I have been describing. Women’s value and influence can never be limited to reproduction.
Yet fear of this error has steered us into the opposite extreme. Female embodiment is now seen as a threat to women’s dignity and flourishing, something from which we must be freed. Let me speak plainly: our bodies are not the problem. The problem is a failure to fully welcome and respect our full personhood, which includes our bodies and their maternal potential. When societies fail to embrace and honor women as we are, it is women themselves, and our children, who bear the burden.
The Holy See recently emphasized, in a statement to the United Nations, that “the advancement of women can only be achieved when women are cherished and respected in their whole being.” I could not agree more. A vision of women’s rights that does not attend to our whole being—to our humanity and our femaleness—is no real vision at all.
