Part 1 of 2
What's in the Definition?
‘Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’…
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
‘Now, girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’[1]
When a man says he is a woman, what should be our response? Like with conservative commentator Matt Walsh, when we are confronted with this situation, the question that comes to mind is: What is a woman? In an attempt to answer this, one feels very much like Charles Dickens’ character Sissy Jupe. Dickens illustrates how the average person is thrown into a conundrum when trying to define the thing one is most familiar with, even though one knows it very well when one sees it. We all know intuitively what a woman is, but today’s gender dysphoria challenges us to put that into words.
Unlike Dickens' character Mr. Grandgrind, the Church vindicates common judgment. The Church takes as the norm for determining sex the aestimatio vulgaris (the estimation of the common person) rather than the aestimatio scientifica (the judgment of a scientist).[2] The common person needs to be able to distinguish between a marriage and a homosexual relationship. Judging whether this particular subject is a woman then cannot depend on the subject’s chromosomal make-up. Rather it must depend on what visible things follow from such hidden things. Nevertheless, while it is sufficient for a groom to know by common estimation that his bride is a woman, this will not do for a philosopher, a theologian, and even a lawmaker. We must be able to define what it is to be a woman.
Inseparable Accident
When we aim to define a thing, we start with what it has in common with other things and then separate it by what makes it different. A human, for example is in the genus of animal. But what makes him different from other animals is numerous. What we are concerned with is something which is common to all humans and indeed essential to being human. Aristotle determined the specific difference of the human is rationality. It does not matter if someone is born with a defect which impairs his use of reason. Since rationality is in his nature, he is still a rational animal. The definition of a human then is rational animal.
Man and woman do not differ in species. Church Father St. Gregory of Nyssa explains that man and woman are the same in nature, made in God’s image:
In the compound nature of man we may behold …the Divine, the rational and intelligent element, which does not admit the distinction of male and female…For the image …extends equally to all the race: and a sign of this is that mind is implanted alike in all: for all have the power of understanding and deliberating. [3]
The difference between the sexes is not in their nature, he says, but in the human animated body: “the irrational, our bodily form and structure, divided into male and female.”[4] St Thomas follows Aristotle saying:
[M]ale and female are proper passions of animal, because animal is included in the definition of each. But they do not pertain to animal by reason of its substance or form, but by reason of its matter or body. This is clear from the fact that the same [animal's] sperm can become a male or a female...[5]
Man and woman are of the same specific nature, rational animal. This is their common immutable essence, but each particular woman's "essence" (here the term is used equivocally) is made unique by her individuating principles, called accidents. Accidents range from one’s genetic hair and eye color to one’s current bodily position.
There are three genera of accidents: some are caused by the principles of the species, and are called proper accidents, for example, risibility [humor] in man;
others are caused by the principles of the individual, and this class is spoken of [in two ways]: first, those that have a permanent cause in their subject, for example, masculine and feminine, and other things of this kind, and these are called inseparable accidents;
secondly, those that do not have a permanent cause in their subject, such as to sit and to walk, and these are called separable accidents.[6]
Separable accidents, like bodily position, are contingent, i.e. they can change, without destroying the subject. On the contrary, proper accidents, like the ability to appreciate humor, are permanent and common to all humans, because they follow from the principles of the species. Similarly, inseparable accidents, like one’s sex, are permanent because they follow from the principles of the individual.
Woman's Purpose
Just as a chair is defined in terms of its purpose to hold a sitting person, so natural beings are defined in terms of the purpose put in their natures by the Creator. St. Thomas explains the reason behind diversity of sex.
…[T]he noblest vital function in plants is generation. Wherefore we observe that in these the active power of generation invariably accompanies the passive power. And as among animals there is a vital operation nobler than generation, to which their life is principally directed; therefore the male sex is not found in continual union with the female in perfect animals, but only at the time of coition… But man is yet further ordered to a still nobler vital action, and that is intellectual operation. Therefore there was greater reason for the distinction of these two forces in man.[7]
It is not inappropriate for a plant to have the male and female principles existing in constant union because reproduction is its most noble activity. However, this constant union would be problematic in the human because intellectual activity is more noble than the reproductive activity, and must be given pride of place. For this reason a human’s reproductive forces are not meant to be in continual union like the plants, nor even united according to the urge of the passions like the beasts. Rather the male and female forces are meant to be joined only at the appropriate times ordained by human reason. Hence, the male and female powers are separated in individuals differing by sex. Sex differentiation, then, is an inseparable accident following from the human’s rational nature.
[W]e are told that woman was made to be a help to man (Gen 2:18, 20). But she is not fitted to help man except in generation… [8]
St. Thomas is saying that the male requires specifically female help in the work of generation (and generation includes much more than just sexual intercourse[9]), whereas in other work the help he requires need not be female. Sex differentiation, then, exists for the purpose of the reproduction and raising of offspring. Hence, masculinity and femininity both exist and are defined in respect to reproduction and the tasks associated with it.[10]
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