Last year, in an email exchange, Dawn Eden Goldstein, who was writing her own articles on female deacons, encouraged me to follow my search into what a woman is. This series is a beginning of that search. Thank you for your encouragement, Dawn, and may you find in my articles no reason to regret having extended it!

This is the first article in the series “Man and Woman: Image of the Triune God”

“Verisimilitude is best achieved by the real thing.” That sentence stayed in my mind long after I was no longer sure where I had read it. It is not difficult to understand. We instinctively agree that cultured pearls are more beautiful than pop-beads, that sugar cookies made with artificial vanilla and margarine don’t taste quite as good as the ones with real vanilla and butter, and that it is depressing instead of refreshing to take the time to smell the artificial roses. We instinctively recognize that reality trumps artificiality any time.

But there is another quote: “Half a loaf is better than no bread.” Cultured pearls may still be above my income level, margarine is generally healthier than butter, and real roses can be difficult to grow and expensive to buy, so why not sprinkle some perfume on the cloth ones and take a sniff from time to time?

Verisimilitude is very tempting when “the real thing” is not easy to obtain. We settle for the artificial when we cannot get the reality either because the reality is too expensive, or it is simply not available. We would rather possess an imitation of something than not have it at all. This kind of temptation is quite natural and totally understandable.

However, the temptation to accept an imitation in place of the reality becomes serious when it is a matter of being and living instead of merely possessing. To live an artificial life, to appear to be someone that we aren’t, does not give the satisfaction that we get in owning, say, a reproduction of Monet’s water lilies. The copy of a sculpture or a painting still possesses an innate beauty that we can enjoy even though we know that it is not the original. The copy shares in the beauty of the original even if it lacks some of the original’s creative reality. On the other hand, to live an imitation life will hardly give the same satisfaction because we know that the source of the beauty that flows from the original is lacking. The beauty of my life must come from within. If it is not within me, it can only be imposed from without, and however admirable the beauty may seem in appearance, the source of it is lacking.

I am a woman religious, and my appearance is meant to show the beauty of that state of life. However, becoming a religious is more than wearing a habit and accomplishing certain religious practices. The beauty of what I am called to be must shine forth from within, but the spirituality that opens the way for this inner beauty to appear demands a long and challenging formation. There is, as with any reality that is not ready to hand, the temptation to focus on acquiring the appearance of the spirituality rather than the reality. Fr. Benedict Groeschel, in a couple of his conferences, told of women religious who were taught in the past how to appear religious: they were placed in front of a mirror and practiced what was called “la bella figura,” the expression and deportment that was considered suitable for a woman religious. I have never had the experience of quite this sort of formation if only because we don’t use mirrors in Carmel.

But the temptation remains: for anyone to be something worthwhile – beautiful, good, kind, wise – is not easily and quickly accomplished. It is much quicker to create an artificial idea of the goal and to impose it from without.

To a certain extent, this is necessary. We teach children to say “thank you” from a very early age long before they can understand either gratitude or courtesy. We train employees from the beginning in the politeness that is necessary in business because otherwise they risk alienating customers. Priests and religious learn in the seminary and novitiate how to welcome those to whom they minister because their attitude should express God’s love for each person. The imitation is necessary at the beginning because it is too early for the child and disciple to have learned it.

The danger is that what is meant to be a door becomes a jail. One too easily remains in the doorway, practicing the appearance and never acquiring the reality. To inculcate courtesy in the young is meant to introduce them to the communion that should exist between all persons. It is meant to inform them of the dignity and value of each human being. Unfortunately, even something so beautiful as courtesy too easily becomes a rigid mold to cement people into an artificial social framework. This applies to many other human values when they are imposed from outside and never become a source of growth from within.

This is a long introduction to the subject of this article, but I think that it is necessary. Cultural stereotypes of women abound everywhere. It has been said of me that I “think like a man.” I find that very amusing because it is my Mother who taught me to think; my Father died when I was seven years old. My Mother, an artist who loved philosophy, inculcated that “you think with your reason or you’re not thinking”; “don’t rationalize your emotions”; “you can’t know a person by their appearance.” Challenging ideas for a seven-year-old!

Yet are these ideas reserved for men? I have never understood why thinking is considered to be masculine and feeling to be feminine. There are many similar cultural stereotypes that present men and women in such images, but stereotypes do not go deep enough into reality to enable us to deal with identity. Freeing identity from stereotypes is necessary if one wants to know the reality, but having done so, we must look elsewhere for a source from which to establish the reality. For if sex is rejected as a basis for discussing human beings, then the question of man and woman becomes meaningless. One can go further: even the question of personhood becomes meaningless. In the book “Conundrum,” the author, Jan Morris, one of the first to transition from a man, shares a quotation from a friend: “If a man can so inoculate himself with the idea that he is not a man but a woman as to be to all intents and purposes a woman, that idea may in turn be made to give way to a higher idea: that there is neither man nor woman…Ponder deeply and thou shalt know that there is no such thing as I.”[i]

However, this line of thinking leads nowhere in helping to understand human beings. It simply removes all parameters of knowledge. With such an outlook, words can mean anything, and they thus become meaningless. We see this happening in the variety of genders.  Gender refers to “the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed.  This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.” [ii] We are trying to come to a knowledge of the identity of woman and, in order to do so, we find that we need to distance ourselves from stereotypes, which are social constructs imposed on women and on men. Since gender is also “a social construct,” it is therefore too similar to stereotypes to be useful in our search.

The usefulness of gender is also diminished by the various forms of “gender identity.” The number of gender identities has not been determined, for “gender identity is what someone feels is their gender”[iii] and feelings vary greatly not only from one person to another but even with the same person from one moment or time to another.

Looking for “the real thing” among various social constructs, either stereotypes or genders, is a dead end, since social constructs do not deal with the reality of a thing, much less of a person, but with socially acceptable or non-acceptable conceptions. Looking for “the real thing” among a multitude of shifting feelings, such as “gender identity” is worse still, for it seems that those who proceed in this search are not really looking for the definition of a reality but rather for a recognizable expression of themselves. At present there can be listed some 107 different descriptions applying to gender[iv], and there is no indication that this is the final number. Moreover, I have pointed out elsewhere that isolation is a growing problem and a serious one. It can be asked whether the multiplication of genders and gender identities does anything to alleviate the loneliness prevalent especially among the young?

The more we replace stereotypes with a multitude of descriptions, the more we set up distinctions and the greater the risk of isolating the individual. For this reason – to avoid further expansion of categories – I have chosen to base these considerations on the human DNA as being an established scientific fact.  The human DNA makes it clear that two chromosomes decide the sex of each human being, the Y chromosome and the X chromosome. There are several combinations of the two chromosomes, but all the combinations are reducible to the fact that there are two groups of humans: those whose sex chromosomes include the Y chromosome, and those who sex chromosomes do not, who have only X chromosomes. This scientific basis of the existence of two sexes, male and female, is also the teaching of the Catholic Church.[v]

What connection biological sex has with gender may be impossible to decide since biological sex concerns one’s physical being and gender, as quoted above, concerns both social constructs and one’s feelings.  The variety of feelings experienced by human beings is vast, easily as vast as the 10,000,000 shades of color. So, until some definite connection has been developed that links sex with gender, I will consider men and women as being male and female human beings as determined by their DNA. I will certainly be attacked for this position, and I look forward to the various comments my position will call forth.

The title of this article is “What is ‘The Real Thing’ For Women?” It came together from various considerations welling up in following the discussions going on in the Catholic Church concerning the role of women. The role of women in the Church is definitely an important matter and discussion of it is long overdue. However, as far as I have been able to see, present discussions are focused almost exclusively on what women are or are not allowed to do in the Church. I have found little interest in what women are in themselves as members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Since it seems to me to be impossible to understand what women should do without a prior understanding of what women are, I have undertaken to look more deeply into what Revelation as interpreted by the Magisterium has to say on the being of women. This has led me to follow in the footsteps of Pope St. John Paul II and begin my investigation with the first books of Genesis. At the same time, my considerations take a different path from his.

Obviously, with this starting point, I will need to consider far more than just woman as presented in the opening chapters of the Bible. I crave the reader’s indulgence for the necessary development of my thoughts and also for his or her patience when I repeat ideas that I have presented in previous articles.

I have found that these considerations have deepened my own understanding and appreciation of myself as a woman in the Church and, at the same time, they have deepened my understanding and appreciation of the Church herself and of all her members, both male and female, in their various grace-filled vocations. I hope that some of my appreciation will reach through these pages to be shared with my readers.

This is the first article in the series “Man and Woman: Image of the Triune God.” It is to be followed by “Image of One – Image of Three.”

Notes

[i] Jan Morris, “Conundrum,” chap. 18

[ii] https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender#tab=tab_1

[iii] https://www.sexualdiversity.org/edu/1111.php

[iv] See above link.

[v] Cf. the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” # 2331-2335