What Part of Gender Is Eternal? A Meditation on Culture, Cognition, and Parts

Having an eternal gender does not mean an unchanged or static gender. If having a static gender were the intended meaning of “gender is eternal,” the authors of the text could have written “gender is static,” “gender never changes,” “don’t be trans,” or “God doesn’t want your gender to change,” but that is not what the text says. The text says gender is an essential characteristic of an eternal existence and purpose. This allows a lot of room for interpretation and dynamic change.—Blaire Ostler, Queer Mormon Theology, p. 56

There can be no doubt that, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gender is eternal. It says so right in the Proclamation on the Family “Gender,” it says, “is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” There, that settles it.

Except it doesn’t. It doesn’t say what happens when premortal, mortal, and eternal definitions of gender don’t align, and we know they don’t always align. Not does it say that the eternalness of gender must always fall into one of two binary choices. And it doesn’t specify what kind of “gender” we mean when we talk about an eternal and everlasting characteristic of human beings.

This creates some category problems, I think, when we consider that the word “gender” is commonly used to describe three not-always compatible sets of characteristics:

• Gender is physiological. This aspect of gender is sometimes called “sex.” Most human beings are born with one of two sets of reproductive organs, which constitute the primary physiological markers of gender. Humans also have secondary sex characteristics like the presence (or absence) of breasts, the various placement of body hair, and the shape of hips.
• Gender is cultural. Different cultures at different times have conventions about the dress, behavior, and social positions of males and females. In some cultures, only men can be leaders. In other cultures, women have ultimate authority. Culture determines what kinds and colors of clothing can be worn by the different sexes, how they should speak, what they should read, and whether or not they should work. After the Industiral Revolution, gender roles in some societies hardened around definitions of “work” (where men should go) and “home” (where women should stay) that would not have even made sense to previous societies, where home and work both looked very different.
• Gender is cognitive. In all species, males and females perceive things differently. Evolutionarily, this traces back to the fact that the differences in reproductive equipment (eggs are rare and valuable; sperm is cheap and plentiful) lead to different ideal mating strategies. Over a millions of years, these differences have produced cognitive differences in human beings that can be labeled “male” and “female,” though all human beings ultimately have access to all aspects of human cognition. The cognitive dimension of gender does not map perfectly onto either the cultural or the psysiological aspects of gender. An important aspect of cognitive gender is what we now call “gender identity,” or how people represent their gender to themselves.

Now, none of these three statements is particularly controversial, though there is a fair amount of debate about how much each of these systems (physiology, culture, psychology) contributes to the experience of any particular human being. There is wide agreement among scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and theologians that there are elements of all three systems wrapped up in our concept of “gender.”

Nor do any of these definitions require a gender binary. In fact, they all mitigate directly against a binary concept of gender. Secondary sex characteristics vary widely across populations and do not always correspond to primary sex organs. And even primary sex is not always absolute. Cultural gender also manifests along a spectrum, with “feminine” and “masculine” traits both occurring across the board. It is simply inaccurate to say that non-binary fluidity is limited to the individual cognitive understanding of gender.

So, when we say that gender is both binary and eternal—that every human existed before, exists now, and will continue to exist as one of two genders—we really need to clarify what we mean. Are the two standard genders—which are not physiologically, culturally, or cognitively binary in this life—an absolute and rigid eternal dichotomy? If so, why is it not like this in our lives? And if not, how can we say that gender in this life is a model for the eternities?

Are all three aspects of gender infinite and eternal? If so, what happens when the same person does not fall on the same end of the binary in all three cases? Specifically, what happens when the cognitive and physiological experiences of gender conflict? Do we try to force the mind to conform to the body? Or do we change the body to conform to the mind? Why is one of these strategies consistent with eternal gender but not the other one? On what basis can we suggest that one’s cognitive apparatus much change to support one’s physiological parts? Do we think that bodies are more real than minds, or more eternal, than minds? On what basis do we think that?

The Proclamation does not address this specifically, but the church’s policies create a very rigid hierarchy among the three kinds of gender. Physiological gender is absolute. Cultural gender is not quite absolute, but it is overwhelmingly important, as long as we are talking about one very specific culture and discounting all others. And cognitive gender is not important at all, so when it is out of harmony with either psychological gender or with the One True Culture, it must be adjusted with drugs, therapy, counseling, and, if necessary, the harshest ecclesiastical punishments that the Church can administer. This hierarchy of gender definitions currently drives much of the policy of both the church and its educational institutions.

The primacy of physiology has been made crystal clear by the church in BYU’s recent decision that it will risk the loss of accreditation for one of its signature programs rather than allow its students to provide speech therapy for people whose cognitive experience of gender is at odds with their the physiological nature of their gender at birth. While it is OK to engage in any amount of chemical or psychological treatment designed to make one’s cognitive gender match their birth physiology, any attempt to do the reverse—to make one’s physiology match one’s cognitive experience of gender—will be subject to excommunication from the church and expulsion from the Kingdom of God.

This is also true, but not quite as true, of situations where people feel at odds with the cultural definitions of gender. A man who wears women’s clothing, for example, cannot take an active role in the church or work at a church-owned university, though one can get away with wearing the occasional pink shirt to sacrament meeting as long as one sits in the back.

It is much worse for women who do not conform to the circa 1950 definition of the stay-at-home mom. For example, a woman in the church may work outside the home as long as she has a low-income, low-prestige job that she hates, both church culture and church employment take a dim view of women who want actual careers. Since 1997, for example, BYU, for example, has maintained a special exemption from civil rights legislation to ask otherwise illegal questions about marriage and children in job interviews.

Whatever one may think of these policies, it must be said that they are, at the very least, inconsistent with other ways that we view conflicts between physiology, cognition, and culture when they do not involve gender. Latter-day Saints do not believe that physiology always represents eternal reality. We do not believe, for example, that someone born blind was blind in the pre-existence and will be blind in the eternities. Nor do we believe that someone born without a limb will lack that limb in the afterlife. Biological sex is the only physical property that we consider an absolute representation of eternal reality.

The contrast is even more spectacular when it comes to culture. Latter-day prophets have continually drawn a distinction between God’s values and the values of any particular culture. Culture is what we mean by “the world,” or “Babylon,” and it is almost always at odds with what we call “Zion.” Except when it comes to the gender roles that predominated in industrial countries in the first part of the 20th century. Those just happen, by some chance, to conform to what we mean by eternal gender.

None of this follows necessarily from the doctrinal statement that gender “is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” This only supports anti-trans, rigidly binary, and anti-feminist positions if we completely discount the cognitive nature of gender expression, elevate physiology to the status of absolute spiritual reality, and accept a specific, time-bound cultural definition of gender as both eternal and universal. And the thing is, there is really no reason in our tradition or our theology to make any of these assumptions. There are other ways to see gender as eternal that don’t require us to be cruel to our brothers and sisters and try to keep them out of the Kingdom of God.