😄

I'd say they are he/she

*if* not as a description of our natures

I think we need to think about the utility of a corporeal reality in general for living out relationships and complementality. There must be complementary sexes in order for the creation/generation of new life. This gives us a basic teleology for biological sex. A woman is someone who has a body that is ordered toward the bearing and rearing of a child, and a man is a person who is ordered to providing his seed, but just as importantly, to be physically stronger/more aggressive and therefore to be a protector and provider for the family. This sets up the dynamic between the sexes and how love is shared in the family. In the modern world, however, this breaks down. A modern economy has many opportunities for a woman to provide for herself and outsource child rearing and security. Sure, women will still dominate childcare positions and men likewise with security or policing. But there is overlap in the distributions of personality traits. Some men are more feminine than some women and vice versa. So that brings us back to a biologically essential definition. The post-modern will answer that they can change their hormonal milieu, have surgeries, alter their social presentation, and therefore match their personality to what biological sex they believe they are. So you can turn to genetics, but then there are edge cases where there is ambiguity, so that's out. Which leads us back to a general ordering toward child bearing and rearing as a definition for women, and men perhaps the lack thereof. Of course, the next step in medical transitions is uterine transplants where conceptually a man could eventually bear a child via IVF and hormone treatments and deliver via C-section. So the definition would have to be a person who is ordered to bearing and rearing a child at the point of birth. I'm just spit balling here though.

There's seems to be an explicit teleological connection to gender, though. I understand the point you're making, but my uncertainty is that are we making the point that gender is equivalent to accidental circumstances and seems vulnerable to modern gender ideology if it is not teleologically defined but rather circumstantially.

@@archie8767 Teleology and Circumstance are found in Providence.

@SarcasticScholastic This. Thank you again for your comment.

@deussacracommunioest2108 Yes. We're all Thomists. My critique is that when we dispose ourselves toward the "good," we must dispose ourselves to the divine ideal of what we were created to be. I think we need to be more concrete in what gender expression is and isn't so that we don't end up relegating it to mere accident, which is fundamentally wrong and can lead to bad ideas like gender ideology. I do think there is substance to the idea that the first and final causes apropos gender suggest a gendering of the soul to some degree. Is motherhood properly material? That isn't really what the Church teaches about motherhood on a broad scale: she typically demands that all women be at least spiritual mothers in their various circumstances.

In German it is "die Seele", which is feminine, but "der Geist" (the spirit), which is masculine. "Der Körper" (the body) is also maskuline.

​@@Quekksilber Yes, "líkaminn" (the body) is also masculine in Icelandic, as well as "kroppur" and "skrokkur". Same as "andi" (spirit) - but there's also the feminine "önd", that also means "spirit" or "breath" ("með öndina í hálsinum" literally means "with the breath in the throat", but more accurately means something like "with baited breath"), and then there's "að standa á öndinni", literally "to stand on the breath" but it's an idom for "holding one's breath in anticipation". Unfortunately, "önd" also means "duck", and so the two idioms can also mean "to have a duck in the throat" and "to stand on the duck". Can't help but wonder if pre-Christian Icelanders thought ducks had something to do with the spirit, and that bit of linguistic quirk carried over... Then there's the word "hold", meaning "flesh", and that's neutral ("das" in German). "The resurrection of the flesh" in the creed is "upprisa holdsins" ("the upraising of the flesh") in Icelandic, but unfortunately, "holdris" (lit. "flesh-raise") has become a euphemism for an erection. I'm not entirely sure if it's a good or a bad thing the creed's translation hasn't been changed to avoid that sort of misunderstanding. Sort of how the Our Father translation hasn't been changed - we're still using the old plural for "our" (used to have three numbers, singular "ég" ("I"), dual "við" ("we two"), and then the plural "vér" ("we three or more"), but with time the old plural became a "royal we" and the old dual became the "common we", but the translation we all grow up with is still using the old plural), and that has some people wondering "Why do we use the 'royal we' for us, and then the 'familiar you' for God?"

What in the heck

Luke 9:23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me”

@@sethlikes2lift nothing about being a corpse there

@@texhaines9957 it’s called dark humor and this verse is just saying not everything is rainbows and unicorns everyday. “I do not promise you happiness in this world but in the next.” - Our Lady of Lourdes to St. Bernadette