Out Beyond Ideas
by Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.
This Substack site is for sharing my reflections, questions, and struggles around issues of gender, as controversies and conflicts proliferate about what it means to be a gendered, sexually embodied person. My theological research and much of my teaching have focused on gender throughout my academic career. The challenges posed by gender dysphoria and transgender identities are making me revisit some of the theories and ideas I’ve embraced, asking if they are still relevant in light of this rapidly changing discourse. I post some of my past publications here, as well as sharing my reflections and questions.
Those of us with a scholarly interest in issues of gender have a responsibility to each other and to society to engage intelligently and respectfully in exploring these deep and challenging questions. These are not just intellectual abstractions or theories, for they impinge profoundly upon our most intimate and vulnerable experiences and emotions, while also being of significant public interest. They need a space for informed, reasoned, and respectful dialogue in the public square, but few issues are so ideologically driven and so emotively defended in an increasingly polarized and hostile environment.
Insofar as I understand Gillian Rose’s complex concept of the broken middle, that is where I position myself, in the precarious, shifting middle ground between universality and particularity. I have some sympathy with and share some of the concerns of gender-critical feminists, while respecting the rights of adults experiencing gender dysphoria to adopt trans identities. My concerns focus primarily on three issues: (a) the growing number of young people, especially girls, identifying as trans; (b) the implications of gender identity legislation for women and girls, if this gives anatomical males the right to access all spaces, facilities, and activities designated as single-sex; (c) the loss of vital statistical evidence in the context of law, medicine and other fields where sex is a relevant factor, if anatomical sexual differences and their associated characteristics are not recorded.
Having been silenced by the Vatican and criticized by many in the Catholic hierarchy because of my positions on gender and sexuality in the past, I now find myself on the receiving end of criticism from the other side. Those who have previously respected my work on gender find it unacceptable that I align myself with women such as J.K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock in questioning some of the implications of transgender politics. But these are complex and contested issues, and they do not lend themselves to absolutist positions on either side.
I begin with that verse from Rumi because ultimately, we must seek to accommodate one another in a difficult and painful embrace beyond our differences—what Pope Francis refers to as “a reconciled diversity”.
Thank you for reading this. I have decided not to invite paid subscribers for the time being, because my posts are quite irregular. Once I build up a more substantial body of work to publish here, I’ll introduce a paid option.
