Alchemical Gnosticism - 2

An area explored early at this blog, Thomas Storck writes at the New Oxford Review, "Hating the Body - Body Piercing, Blood Rites, and Transsexualism." He outlines the nexus of what Girard calls the "crisis of distinctions" at the individual and interdividual levels of gender differentiation.

Those who hate the fact that mankind is divided into two sexes, with a corresponding range of behaviors rooted in this natural fact, try to destroy the idea that any sex-related behavior is natural. They say instead that the behavior that seems to flow from maleness or femaleness is in fact a societal "construct." Some would admit the reality of the two biological sexes, but after that all is in flux. Thus, one physically female person can describe herself as a "masculine, lesbian, female-to-male cross-dresser and transgenderist" (in Feinberg, Trans Liberation). Basing their theories on the margins of human behavior, they then make such margins normative. It is as if they were to assert that since some humans think they are dogs, the canine personality is as natural to us as the human. Having first rejected the notion of any natural norms, they logically go the next step and throw out statistical norms. All that remains is flux.

It might seem that the mutilation of the body, and indeed of the human personality, engaged in by transsexuals is the summit of the hatred of the human that I speak of here. But it is not. For the ultimate project of many transsexuals, and others as well, is to proclaim the utter irrelevance of the body, or at least of its sexual aspects. For they assert that there are not just two sexes; and there are not just the six or seven sexes (or genders) that some revisionists have advocated (hermaphrodite, male homosexual, lesbian, transsexual, etc.). Instead there is just human sexuality, a continuum on which "male" and "female" are only two points on a line that extends indefinitely. The book of Genesis declares, "Male and female He created them." But the new teaching seeks to replace that by declaring, in effect, "Sexuality is." For instead of a defined process and activity, created for definite natural ends which are inherent in the process, this view simply asserts that any kind of genital activity engaged in by anyone with anything and in any way fulfills the meaning of sexuality. We have progressed to the point, so these would say, where we must overthrow not just God but also nature. Reality itself is now our oppressor.

One can see the dynamic of this in homosexuality. Homosexuals argue that since they are attracted to persons of the same sex, therefore for them this is proper sexuality, even natural sexuality. Of course this is absurd, as the logic and structure of their bodies proclaim. But still homosexuals at least seem to keep the notion of two sexes, just that some members of each sex are inclined toward same-sex relationships. But this is illusory. For in fact, as soon as we escape from the rule of the body's own logic, from the conduct indicated by the very shape and function of the body and its parts, then we are in a fantasy land where anything can be, anything that the mind can imagine and the will can desire. We end up with a world in which we have "those who blur or bridge the boundary of gender expression they were assigned at birth: cross-dressers, transsexuals, intersex people," and so on. Sexuality simply is, and sex simply happens.

This deconstruction of sexuality is manifested, for example, in the career of one who is known as Kate Bornstein:

Kate Bornstein is neither a man nor a woman but "hir" own special transgressive creation - and, inevitably, something of a traveling circus. "Ze" was born male, raised as a boy, opted for a sex-change in adulthood, and became a woman. A few years later, she got tired of being a woman so she stopped - but didn't want to become a man again (The Independent [London], March 8, 1998).

Supporters of this way of life believe that once we recognize that transsexuality is not a "gender illness" which can be cured by surgery, then we will realize that "transsexuality may be more destabilizing than homosexuality." For then even "biological sex is revealed to have no inevitable natural meaning, but only the social meaning attached to it on the basis of gender identity" (Harvard Law Review, June 1995). There is no nature; again, sexuality simply is.

Today we are confronted culturally by a badly confused attempt to destroy Cartesian culture which itself engages in the extremes of Cartesian behavior, and by those who deny the obvious fact that human sexual activity and sexual organs have a natural purpose or finality.

Only if we return to God, in fact to Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, the Redeemer of both bodies and souls, do we have any hope of returning either to nature or to cultural sanity. Though the modern world shows little interest in such a return, we Christians must continually point out that the world has strayed from God and from nature. We must point to Jesus Christ as the only remedy. For without such a return we cannot expect much future for the human race. Read all …

Storck clearly presupposes Natural Law as per the understanding of the Catholic Church in this essay. Refer to David P. Lang's absolutely essential Why Matter Matters [OSV 2002] for deeper explorations into the Church's anti-gnostic truth.