Fr Gareth explores whether we are created male and female? But does science support one of the most sensitive claims in Scripture, that we are created male or female?
The very first chapter of the Bible contains a statement which is guaranteed to stir up controversy today. When we are told that God created human beings, the text goes on to specify “male and female he created them”. And here we do not have the liberty of concluding that the Hebrew Bible only contains partial and veiled revelation from God, because these very words were quoted by Jesus Christ when his disciples asked him a question about marriage (Matthew 19 & Mark 10).
The problem of defining distinct sexes is similar to that of defining species, which I looked at previously. Living organisms are not instances of some abstract template, but particular examples of how genetic blueprints can give rise to individual creatures. Biologists have long known that many species exhibit what is known as ‘sexual dimorphism’ – those creatures come in two patterns, which we label male and female. The female is the one which gives rise to egg cells, full-bodied cells waiting to be fertilised by genetic material from the male. Sometimes the distinction between male and female is profound: among spiders, males of many species are much smaller than females and risk being eaten following mating. Among birds, males often have brighter plumage to compete for female attention, and many species of mammals have stronger males which physically fight for access to females.
The question, “What is a woman?” has become complex in current political debate. Nevertheless, in the limited context of biology, it is possible to give an answer. The vast majority of human beings fall into one of two patterns. The one we historically call ‘female’ has ovaries, a womb, developed breasts capable of nourishing babies with milk, and widened hips to allow her to give birth after nine months’ gestation. Each cell in her body contains two X chromosomes.
Although the Y chromosome is effectively an X with a missing quarter, it does have a short stubby fourth arm, which contains a crucial gene known as SRY (a rather prosaic abbreviation for ‘sex-determining region Y gene’). It is this gene which signals a developing human embryo to grow into a boy rather than a girl. Organs which would otherwise have become ovaries migrate downwards and start producing higher concentrations of testosterone, which has powerful effects in many parts of the body. Between eight and 24 weeks’ gestation, during the second year after birth, and at puberty, the presence of sex hormones (progesterone and oestrogen in women, testosterone in men) drive particular pathways of development in human growth, usually resulting in what we would immediately recognise as a ‘typically female’ or ‘typically male’ appearance.
As with any complex system, reproduced billions of times in human history, things can and do go wrong. In most cases, the presence of a Y chromosome makes a person appear male; babies without one develop as female. However, it is also possible for the SRY gene itself to be faulty, in which case a baby will appear ‘XY’ (apparently male) by a chromosome test and yet will develop as female; or an SRY gene can relocate to another chromosome in which case a baby may be ‘XX’ (apparently female) and yet the active SRY gene causes it to develop as male. There are even a handful of recorded cases where the same person has XX cells in one part of their body and XY in another; this can happen when two embryos, one XX and the other XY, fuse together before they start developing the body structure; or due to a faulty sperm carrying both an X and a Y from the father.
It’s not only the ‘big picture’ of whether the cells are XX or XY which can go wrong. Each stage of development of the sexual organs can develop a fault, as could the development of the ‘appearance’ of a man or a woman. When this results in a clear physical ambiguity about whether a person is considered a man or a woman, the person is said to have an ‘intersex’ condition. Jesus himself recognised that this was a possibility, for just after quoting Genesis 1, to affirm that it was the Father’s plan that human beings should be male or female, he immediately went on to note (Matthew 19) that some people were “born eunuchs” – they will not be able to identify clearly with either of these categories.
Does ‘being male’ or ‘being female’ also imply distinct ways of thinking or relating to people? Behavioural studies show that the ‘average man’ behaves in a way measurably different from the ‘average woman’. However, most people are not average and the more manly women will overlap strongly with the more feminine men. It’s also notoriously difficult to isolate how much, if any, of the difference is due to genetics (‘nature’) rather than environment (‘nurture’), since society treats boys and girls in different ways, sometimes subtly, from the moment of birth.
In addition to all these scientific measurements of sexual characteristics, humans uniquely can use language to state how they identify themselves. Sometimes, a person reports a strong and consistent conviction that they identify with the sex opposite to their bodily form. Science is still untangling the ways in which brains might develop in subtly different ways as ‘male’ or ‘female’, and why this might not align with external appearances. But science alone will never be able to answer the question, “Is this person a man or a woman?” That is a question for society.
A Biblical perspective would be quick to allow a person to identify as ‘not clearly male or female’ but slow to allow a person to declare themselves in the category contrary to the reproductive ability of their God-given body. While the Bible is clear that men and women are distinct in God’s plan, it has relatively little to say about the distinct social roles which God wishes men and women to play. One complication in the Greek of the New Testament is that the word gyne can be translated as ‘woman’ or ‘wife’, so the Bible translator must make a judgment each time about whether what is said is only meant to apply to married women. It is hard to find any Bible verse which gives a universal command to women other than a call to modest dress in 1 Timothy 2.
Most of what the New Testament does say about women’s behaviour is clearly applied to wives in the ‘household codes’ at Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Timothy 2, Titus 2 and 1 Peter 3. The ‘perfect wife’ (combining money management with needlecraft!) was also exalted in Proverbs 31. The Bible has nothing to say about whether mothers should go to work or stay home, nor how spouses should divide their domestic labour. There are rules for widows (1 Timothy 5) whose only source of social security is the Christian community.
Isaiah 56 contains great words of consolation for those who find their situation ambiguous:
Let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
Sex is unambiguous when all of the markers align in the usual direction – external organs, chromosomes, behavioural patterns, and a sense of identity. When one or more of these are unclear or aligned differently, we then have to define what we mean by sex or gender, by ‘man’ or ‘woman’ – and this is a social, not scientific, judgment, where the nuance of the words used may differ according to context.
In a sporting tournament, the ‘women’s draw’ might be distinct not only from the ‘men’s draw’ but also the ‘girls’ draw’ for younger players. Whenever an activity is created for ‘men-only’ or ‘women-only’, this now requires a clear focus on who the activity is intended to exclude, and why this is justified. The rules for access to a sporting event, intended to create a ‘fair’ match of physical abilities, may differ from those for entering a social gathering.
For Jesus, being ‘male’ or ‘female’ pointed to distinct roles in God’s plan for procreation and marital unity. Later New Testament Christians would describe this as a ‘mystery’ and ponder its symbolic meaning – a task of reflection which continues to this day.
Revd Dr Gareth Leyshon is a parish priest in the South Wales Valleys, who read physics at Oxford and completed a doctorate at Cardiff (a study of the structure of distant galaxies) before entering seminary.
