Review of The Genesis of Gender by Abigail Favale, Ignatius Press, 2022.

In the decade from 2010 to 2020 referrals for gender treatment in the UK increased nearly 2000%, a trend mirrored across Europe, the United States, and Canada.^[1] Prior to 2014, adolescent girls were totally absent from the gender dysphoria literature, yet this population now makes up a 75% majority.^[2] Something unusual has happened and never has there been so much polarization and confusion surrounding sex and gender. Those on the “pro” side of this trend view any opposition as hostile to human rights; those on the other side tend to see the movement as hostile to common sense.

Dr. Abigail Favale, a research professor at George Fox University, rather than simply denying and railing against the trend from the outside, enters in and asks, “How did we get here?” Dr. Favale, an award-winning feminist gender studies professor turned Catholic, employs her insider experience and sharp research acumen to shine a light on the current moment, exploring the unstated assumptions and philosophical foundations of the gender paradigm while offering a better, more holistic and honorable vision for understanding the sexed body drawn from Christian (specifically Catholic) theology.

The Genesis of Gender is as much Dr. Favale’s own story as the story of gender in the modern west. Since she has written about her spiritual journey from a “Christian”-but-mostly-agnostic to Catholic elsewhere,^[3] she mentions this aspect of her story only as it pertains to her academic exploration and teaching. Her career as a professor of feminist and gender studies halted with her conversion to Catholicism, which interfered with her convictions and raised questions the gender paradigm could not answer. In Chapter 2 Favale explores the Christian conviction that the sexed body is a gift connected to the imago dei. Sin distorted the complementarity and giftedness of maleness and femaleness from a “dynamic of communion” to a “dynamic of possession,” and the stage was set for millennia of sex inequality.^[4] 

Favale begins the exploration of the gender movement by tracing the history and development of feminism in its four various waves. The first wave, identified with women’s suffrage, contrasts starkly with the waves that follow, which began locating the problem between men and women not within society, but within female biology. The enlightenment existentialism—existence precedes essence—^[5] that sought to identify an individual as an individual over against any “givens” of society, relationship, or biology, established a faith in “freedom-as-choice.”^[6] Female fertility roadblocks this freedom, therefore sex and procreation must be severed.^[7] The solution, ground zero for this cultural explosion, is the popularization (by Margaret Sanger) of contraception which could allow women to “transcend their genetic burden of femaleness.”^[8] Once sex is severed from a procreative context, the chromosomes of the depersonalized bodies involved no longer matter. This unprecedented philosophical move began the domino effect that has led us where we are; with sex “de-throned,” gender—and whatever people feel that means—takes its place.^[9] 

But affirmative care, Favale warns, only works if the body is not part of the self.

A product of the gender paradigm, and the heart of the gender-affirming medical care movement, is the novel ability to identify a solution to a myriad of deeply complex personal problems in the simple and unquestionable answer of gender therapy. But affirmative care, Favale warns, only works if the body is not part of the self.^[10] The alternative to this movement of fragmentation is a move toward a holistic (and biblical) understanding that “the body reveals the person,”^[11] of seeing the sexed body—with all its limitations and flaws—as a gift to be accepted and given rather than a burden to transcend.^[12]

A major conclusion of theology proper and biblical anthropology is that human beings are constituted in relationships. God Himself eternally exists within a relationship, and human beings reflect God by a relationality inherent to their being, the center of which is the distinction between male and female. The Genesis of Gender explores results of life lived against the grain of that truth. One such aspect, unexpected and disturbing, is her exploration of the autogynephilic aspect of the traditional male type gender dysphoria and its connection to pornography, an aspect of transgenderism many writers tend to avoid. Favale suspects that, like anorexia nervosa, the rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) trend is, in-part, a reaction to the hypersexualization of female bodies, the attempt to dissolve away those depersonalized features of femaleness that have been made objects of a sexually consumptive gaze.^[13] 

This hypersexualization can be seen in male type gender dysphoria as autogynephilia; the female body is reduced to a sex object, and some men want to become that sex object.^[14] With femaleness identified with sexual consumption and domination, a distortion of the truth recognized is seen: persons were designed for reciprocal giftedness with each other to partner, in receptive submission to God, in the good dominion of the world with Him; in the current order, dominion is exercised over the woman in reflection of the curse’s description in Genesis 3:15, a reversal of the true order. Observed within the innerworkings of the gender movement are underlying recognitions of truth, pursued by destructive and self-defeating means, the chief of which is the attempt to practice self-acceptance by rejecting one’s body. The body reveals the person, and therefore the body, with its flaws and limitations, is a mode of belonging, and thus a gift. So it is impossible to accept yourself and reject your body.^[15]

The body reveals the person, and therefore the body, with its flaws and limitations, is a mode of belonging, and thus a gift. So it is impossible to accept yourself and reject your body.

The role of the popularization of contraception is significant in the development of the gender paradigm. As an aside, this important subject may present some difficulty for non-Catholic readers. The line of argumentation from the severing of sexual gratification from a procreative context (a real problem) to the disallowance of contraception makes sense but is nonetheless difficult for non-Catholics to understand or accept. Protestants who are wary of Catholic theology may find in Favale’s book (particularly in Chapter 2) a refreshing look at the beautiful theological explorations Catholics have done in the area of theology of the body. Nothing here will conflict theologically with Protestant views; theology of the body, much like theology proper, goes back much further than the Reformation. With that said (an aside within an aside?), it may have provided some clarity for non-Catholic readers to include to some comments regarding sexual pleasure within marriage and how non-Catholics might think about that issue. 

Dr. Favale’s book is recommended for anyone, Christian or not, who wants to make sense of the gender culture we are experiencing today, how it has developed philosophically and politically, and what an alternative might be. The academic rigor behind the book is not compromised by the ease of writing style and eminent quotability, which might be an intentional push-back against the impenetrable and inscrutable writing of gender theorists like Judith Butler.

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^[1] Pg. 167, citing “Referrals to GIDS, Financial Years 2015-16 to 2019-20”, NHS Gender Identity Service. 

^[2] Pg. 167-168. 

^[3] Abigail Favale, Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018). 

^[4] Pg. 48. 

^[5] Pg. 62.

^[6] Pg. 110. 

^[7] Pg. 111.

^[8] Pg. 88, 64. 

^[9] Pg. 145. 

^[10] Pg. 200.

^[11] Pg. 199, 135. 

^[12] Chapter 9. 

^[13] Pg. 171-172.

^[14] Pg. 172. 

^[15] Pg. 230-231.