The Debate on Gender: Anthropological Assumptions and Theoretical Models

Abstract

The term «gender» has become a central concept in contemporary cultural discourse, but also a deeply ambiguous category. The lack of distinction between its various theoretical, ideological, and political uses has contributed to growing polarization and has hindered rigorous dialogue, both in academic and ecclesiastical circles. This article aims, first, to demonstrate the internal heterogeneity of gender theories through a philosophical model that distinguishes six major paradigms, defined based on the relationship between sex and gender and the conception of the subject that underlies them. Second, it analyzes the current orientation of the debate within feminism, marked by the tension between classical feminism and queer and trans currents, and highlights the anthropological assumptions implicit in this divide. Finally, the article offers some insights for contemporary Catholic thought, emphasizing the need for a more precise and profound philosophical dialogue with gender theories, capable of avoiding simplifications and addressing fundamental questions about identity, the body, and the person from a perspective open to the truth.

Keywords: Gender, Sex, Philosophical Dialogue, Philosophical Anthropology, Cultural Dialogue.

Introduction

The word «gender» is part of everyday vocabulary today and yet remains an ambiguous term. This is a widely acknowledged fact, including within feminism itself, which largely recognizes its «theoretical inadequacy and politically amorphous and imprecise nature.» Moreover, whatever definition is given to the term carries —more or less directly— social, ethical, and political consequences. For this reason, the most bitter disputes frequently arise around the question of gender, and it is not easy to define a theoretical framework that allows for genuine dialogue. The question of gender is thus fertile ground for competing interests, and consequently a frequent source of conflict, particularly between generations. It is also common to find an «ideological use» of the term, which distorts its meaning by treating it as a monolithic unit and emphasizing whichever aspects prove most useful for defending a given position.

Properly scientific debate also frequently produces sharp positions («pro-gender» and «anti-gender») that fail to find common ground, for at least three reasons: 1) insufficient understanding of the different positions; 2) failure to situate the discussion at the appropriate levels, and to adequately distinguish the theoretical plane from the ideological-political one; 3) because they arise from radically different conceptual universes. This causes debate to be reduced, time and again, to the ethical or political consequences of the various positions. It is striking that conflict with theories proposing a radical epistemological revolution and a new idea of the subject, for example, tends to concentrate on questions such as whether children should be adopted by same-sex couples, marriage equality, and similar issues. Without diminishing the importance of such fundamental questions, what is missing is a serious philosophical debate that adequately distinguishes the different theoretical levels at play: the political and ethical domain of applications, the underlying anthropological notions, and the implicit epistemological and metaphysical assumptions.

In this article I set out to do three things: first, to illustrate the heterogeneity of the various gender theories by offering a model that makes it possible to appreciate the diversity of the philosophical assumptions from which they proceed and the conclusions they reach. Second, I will present the direction the debate is currently taking within feminism. As a conclusion, I will offer some paths forward.

1. Gender and the World of Feminism

The category «gender,» as a descriptive tool for the social relations between the sexes, was introduced in medical circles by John Money (1921-2006), a psychologist and sexologist, professor of pediatrics and medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.[5] However, the term’s large-scale dissemination is owed to feminism, which adopted it in the 1970s.

The first to introduce the term into Women’s Studies was Gayle Rubin, in her famous 1975 article The Traffic of Women. Notes on the Political Economy of Sex. Writing within the sociopolitical context of the New Left, Rubin set out to perform a «neo-Marxist exercise» to understand the roots of women’s oppression. In this article she coined the expression «sex-gender system,» defining it as the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity. For her, the existence of sexually differentiated bodies has nothing to do with masculinity and femininity, which are entirely the product of culture. This had an immediate echo: within a short time, the term had already become part of feminist culture, first in the Anglophone world and from there spreading elsewhere. In a sense, the notion filled a theoretical gap, since it captured in a single concept the leitmotif of several feminist currents:

• The questioning of the «naturalness» of the characteristics, roles, and functions traditionally associated with the sexes.
• The distinction between what is given and what is constructed in being male and being female.

American feminists quickly adopted the term, but endowed it with new meanings. For many, following Rubin, it became a way of distinguishing between biological sex and its cultural interpretations. Others came to give priority to gender over sex, and even to question biological sexual dimorphism itself. The difference in perspectives and conclusions is enormous, which makes it wholly inadequate to speak of «the» theory of gender; it is more appropriate to speak of «gender theories,»[6] which cannot, under any circumstances, be treated as a monolithic reality.

I believe this complex reality could be systematized into six gender models, which classify this heterogeneity of theories on the basis of shared elements.[7] This allows for a panoramic view of a field that, given its vastness, might otherwise seem unmanageable, and it establishes the boundaries for dialogue with broader positions. I have defined the models according to how the different theories answer two questions: 1) how they relate sex and gender in the formation of identity;[8] 2) what theory of the subject they proceed from.

The six models, according to the relationship between sex and gender and the underlying theory of the subject:

• Sex = Gender — Theory of the subject: Nature — Essentialist model.
• Sex / Gender (independent) — Theory of the subject: Marxist — Marxist model.
• Sex / Gender (independent) — Theory of the subject: Existentialist — Existentialist model.
• Gender shapes sex — Theory of the subject: Foucauldian — Foucauldian model.
• Sex AND gender (distinct but related) — Theory of the subject: Psychoanalytic — Psychoanalytic model.
• Sex AND gender (distinct but related) — Theory of the subject: Person and nature — Personalism of equality within difference.

This systematization is intended to help engage in dialogue with each theory by taking into account the philosophical categories proper to the model in which it is placed.[9] Below, I will briefly note some strengths and weaknesses of each model, taken as a whole, mentioning some of its main representatives, primarily from the Anglophone world.[10]

1.1. The Essentialist Model

«Essentialism» has been a constant target of criticism from gender theorists, who have exposed the reductionism with which the question of sexual difference was addressed until relatively recent years. Consequently, perhaps no author would voluntarily identify with the essentialist proposal. What follows are some traits that would characterize this paradigm, although it is probably not fully embraced today by any single thinker: some hold certain aspects of it and not others.[11]

The essentialist model identifies sex and gender: the characteristics, functions, and roles of men and women would spontaneously flow from their sexual differences. This is treated as an absolute difference, reflected in every domain: sexuality, the family, civil and religious society.[12] The structural complementarity of men and women would also justify a clean division of domains and functions between them, conceived in a certain resonance with the Platonic myth of the androgyne, as though man and woman were incomplete in themselves.[13] Other differences among people (race, class, etc.) would be secondary with respect to sexual difference, which is considered original.

Some hold that it is natural for women to specialize in private life, prioritizing motherhood and family.[14] The economic dependence this generates in women with respect to their husbands is not seen as a threat, and criticisms of patriarchy are often met with suspicion, seen as an attack on masculinity. Indeed, this model prefers to speak of «vocation» rather than roles, to emphasize its link to sexed identity.[15] In this model, heterosexuality is the natural state and homosexuality a deviation.[16]

Within this conception, the term gender is seen as ambiguous and dangerous: a genuine «Trojan horse» that implies a separation of nature and culture and entails an unacceptable anthropological vision.

The theory of the subject[17] underlying this view emphasizes the concepts of nature and teleology, rooting its thought in classical metaphysics, and considering that culture and history play a relatively minor role in the relationship between sex and gender. Those who fall within this model react against and denounce the nature-culture dualism that, in their view, underlies the distinction between sex and gender. In reality, they understand nature in a reductive way, and likely fail to adequately account for the role of freedom, which sets up an opposition between nature and freedom in which they choose to defend nature.

Placing sexual difference at the level of nature has the advantage of explaining the physical and psychological differences between men and women and of grounding cultural expressions of that difference in something stable. The order and proper ends associated with the idea of nature mean that sexual difference is not a matter of chance, but bears on the good and the happiness of the human being, thereby providing an objective foundation for ethics and for positive law, especially regarding marriage and the family.

A limitation of this model is that it does not account for the fact that all experience is culturally shaped, and it risks treating what may in fact be cultural stereotypes as natural. History shows that certain characteristics and functions once considered proper to men or to women have changed over time. Claiming that everything in the formation of sexual identity is natural is an excessive simplification that fails to explain the role of freedom or of individual differences.

This is the model that Catholic thought is frequently, and clearly, associated with by feminists.[18] However, it does not correspond to the Church’s own view, which «does not share the notion of biological determinism, according to which all the functions and relations of the two sexes are fixed in a single, static pattern.»[19]

1.2. The Marxist Model

This model recognizes the reality of both sex and gender, and treats them as independent. Sex would be a fact concerning human anatomy on its various levels — chromosomal, genital, morphological. However, the characteristics and roles of men and women are the result of culture. If the human being has no fixed nature,[20] but is instead defined by activity, then the division of roles between the private sphere (women) and the public sphere (men) generates the differences between them. There are no innate differences beyond biology: everything else is acquired. Consequently, the oppression of women has no biological origin, but a social one, and gender relations are not natural relations — they are historical.

From a dialectical standpoint, sexual difference is conceived as the historical cause of women’s oppression. Hence some theories propose liberation from the activities that have prevented women from developing at the same pace as men: motherhood, marriage, and domestic labor.[21] Some regard sexuality as the terrain of emancipation, from which to overcome the sex-gender system proper to patriarchal society, and some theories within this model go so far as to argue that heterosexuality lacks any grounding and is instead a product of culture.

Other forms of oppression — tied to differences of race or class — can be added to gender oppression. Although sensitivity to these differences varies across theories, they are generally viewed dialectically, through the lens of the master-slave relationship, from which two types of response emerge: erasing the difference, or exalting it. Theories influenced by the Frankfurt School could also be placed within this model, identifying social institutions as the channels through which instincts are repressed, with patriarchy as the paradigm that imposes the logic of domination.[22]

In this model, a nature (understood only as raw material) exists prior to the human being, but it cannot be separated from social praxis. The underlying theory of the subject therefore conceives the human being as a product of society, in which nature and history cannot be distinguished. The subject is made through its praxis, which is why technology is welcomed in some of these theories as a means to rethink the relationship between sex and gender. Individual freedom is placed within concrete coordinates that condition and sometimes determine it; hence it is sometimes framed as a negative freedom, asserted only when it is capable of opposing the established order.

The Marxist model has the advantage of explaining the historical oppression women have suffered, identifying some of its social and cultural causes. The category of gender becomes a useful instrument of cultural analysis, allowing what is biological to be distinguished from what is constructed. Its particular sensitivity to oppression favors the identification and overcoming of discrimination in cultural or legal spheres, and it has driven concrete practices that have genuinely improved the living conditions of many women.

A limitation of this model could be considered the overuse of the dialectical category, which turns every relationship into a power struggle and history into a war between the sexes. Furthermore, treating every non-biological difference as socially constructed ends up depriving sexual difference of meaning and undoing feminism’s hard-won achievements in opening cultural spaces to women’s subjectivity and perspective.

This model would include classical Marxist feminists such as Sulamith Firestone and Juliet Mitchel, as well as Catherine MacKinnon; some influenced by Freud, such as Gayle Rubin, Carole Vance, Meryl Altman, and Muriel Dimen; and some critics following the Frankfurt School, such as Sheyla Benhabib, Jessica Benjamin, and Jane Flax.

1.3. The Existentialist Model

Like the Marxist model, the existentialist model recognizes the reality of sex, and likewise holds that the differences between men and women are of cultural origin. The body is a situation that confronts freedom: something given, with which one relates without being determined by it — a mute datum.[23] There is nothing binding in the relationship between sex and gender, such that one could say gender depends on one’s own freedom, with no limits on its free configuration and no reason genders must be limited to two.

Here too, patriarchy would be a political and social form whose origins are not natural but historical, from which follows the need for sexual liberation, understood as the «disappearance of the sexual taboos and inhibitions that constrain those activities most seriously threatening the patriarchal institution of monogamous marriage: homosexuality, ‘illegitimacy,’ relationships between adolescents, and premarital and extramarital sexuality.»[24]

Although the Marxist and existentialist models agree that sex and gender are independent, the underlying idea of the subject differs: in the Marxist model, the subject is a social product; in the existentialist model, it is freedom itself. Here, existence precedes essence: there is no human nature either, nor any concept that defines the human being prior to their existing. The human being is created through freedom — the capacity to define oneself and to be responsible for one’s own being, such that being human and being free are one and the same.[25] Freedom is the foundation of values, and there is no way to define objectively what is more or less authentic: it is an unconditioned, absolute freedom.[26] This model rests on the dialectical opposition between nature and freedom.

A strength of this model lies in discovering the role of freedom in deciding the meaning and value of one’s own being: the situations in which a human being finds themselves are never determinative. Recognizing the fundamental indeterminacy of the human being helps to understand them as an unfinished project, made in the course of history, with the immediate positive consequence of recognizing responsibility: we are responsible for our actions, and no situation excuses us.

A limitation of this model is that, since freedom is the only limit on freedom itself, negotiated agreement becomes the way to regulate coexistence, with no objective parameters for discerning the good.

Simone de Beauvoir is certainly the best-known existentialist author, though her thought predates the introduction of the term «gender.» Mary Wollstonecraft (whose thought also predates the term) and Kate Millett would likewise fall within this model.

1.4. The Foucauldian Model

In this model, sex is a consequence of gender. Society and its discourses precede and determine all experience. Since gender is a central part of these discourses, it precedes sex. This is where the theory of performativity is situated: it is not sex that produces gender, but gender that produces sex. Some theories go so far as to claim that bodies are organically shaped as a consequence of discourse;[29] others do not deny the bodily fact but strip it of any meaning that is not culturally constituted.[30] What we know today as sexuality or sexual difference would in fact be a «historical invention,»[31] a product of cultural discourses.

Gender relations are historical and are formed on the terrain of power struggles. There is, therefore, no natural relationship between gender, sexuality, and individual identity, and even the subject itself is produced by discourse. Heterosexuality would clearly be a product of culture, imposed by it. In short: there is nothing natural about genders (which can be multiple), nor about reproduction, motherhood, or fatherhood.

Here the subject is conceived from a social monism, as in the Marxist model, but radicalized, since nothing exists prior to discourse. Freedom is correspondingly diminished: the margin for personal agency shrinks to the extent that the subject is a result of discourses. Since discourses are multiple, the subject can be too: fragmented and decentered. The queer is presented here as a strategy for challenging the established order and searching for a new paradigm.

This model has the advantage of understanding how all experience — and therefore the formation of subjectivity itself — arises within and from cultural parameters that the subject cannot escape. It affirms one of postmodernity’s gains over modernity: the awareness that all knowledge is necessarily situated. The critical analysis of power to which every discourse is subjected makes it possible to uncover the constructed and cultural character of ideas once thought natural, which have been a vehicle for violence and suffering.

A weak point is that this critique is itself a discourse, unable to escape the very opposition between truth and power that it denounces,[32] which ends up erasing the criteria for distinguishing true from false.[33] But the weakest point of this model may be the dissolution of the subject: if the subject is produced by discourse, it becomes intrinsically impossible for that subject to deconstruct it.[34]

This model would include the theories of Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky, Henrietta Moore, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Teresa de Lauretis, and Donna Haraway.

1.5. The Psychoanalytic Model

The psychoanalytic model recognizes the reality of both sex and gender and does not treat them as entirely independent, but as related. Gender identity is built out of the psychic processes triggered by experience. The body is the site where these experiences occur, and therefore plays an important role in the formation of subjectivity. This gives rise to a set of innate characteristics and differences between men and women, though the oppression of women would not be natural but historical.

Theories following Lacan conceive the relationship between body and experience differently: the symbolic (cultural) order takes precedence over the bodily fact, because language precedes experience. Unlike the Foucauldian model, these theories do not deny the bodily fact, but they too hold that meanings are, in some way, culturally constructed. Within psychoanalytic theories there is likewise no consensus on whether or not heterosexuality is natural, nor on whether there are two or more genders.

As for the underlying theory of the subject, all these theories agree in granting a central role to the unconscious in the formation of identity, while also recognizing the fundamental importance of sexuality in the formation of subjectivity. The clinical grounding of psychoanalytic theories also functions as a testing ground for underlying categories, and as an appeal to reality sometimes lost in the deconstructionism proper to other models.[38]

This model includes, among others, Nancy Chodorow and Dorothy Dinnerstein, as well as several theorists of sexual difference: Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, and Julia Kristeva.

1.6. Personalism of Equality within Difference

The term «personalism» is a broad one, encompassing quite distinct theories. In using it for this model, I propose the expression «personalism of equality within difference» to refer to the contributions — still in fieri — of a number of contemporary authors who share the following: 1) the «structural centrality» of the notion of the person;[40] 2) they draw on figures such as Wojtyla, Stein, Zubiri, Polo, Marías, López Quintás, Guardini, and others; 3) they hold that sexuality is constitutive of the person, not merely an attribute;[41] 4) they seek to respond to the questions raised by feminism and gender theories by proposing a model of equality within difference between men and women.

As in the psychoanalytic model, this model recognizes both the reality of sex and of gender.[42] The notion of gender allows for a fuller understanding of the complexity of elements at play in the formation of sexual identity (biological, psychic, and cultural), without treating as natural what is, in part, constructed. It recognizes the role of freedom in integrating one’s sexed condition, which is presented to us at once as «gift and task.»[43] The distinction between sex and gender frames the possibility of a critical judgment regarding the historical discrimination suffered by women,[44] and of analyzing how the relationship between the two terms has been configured across history.

In this model, sex and gender can be distinguished, but not separated. The body is not reducible to biology stripped of meaning: it is a constitutive part of the “self,” clothed in personal dignity. The person is inseparable from masculinity or femininity, because one’s sexed condition is one’s own proper mode of being,[45] permeating body, psyche, and spirit. Hence one may speak of complementarity between men and women, since the human being is conceived as a “dual unity.”[46] Some authors prefer the term “reciprocity,” in part to avoid the difficulties that a reductive understanding of complementarity has caused.[47] They agree in affirming that there are two ways of being human — the masculine person and the feminine person — that refer to one another and need each other to attain human fullness, and that the synergistic relationship between man and woman produces an effect that is itself generative, greater than the sum of its parts.

Regarding where sexual difference is located, there are different perspectives among these thinkers, but all agree that it is an original trait, penetrating and permeating the whole person.[48]

It is perhaps somewhat premature to name specific representatives of this model, since dialogue with the question of gender among Christian thinkers is relatively recent.[49] One could mention Mary Ann Glendon and Helen Alvaré in the United States. In Spain, Blanca Castilla de Cortázar, Ángela Aparisi, or Ramón Lucas Lucas. In Italy, figures such as Antonio Malo, Giorgia Salatiello, Maria Teresa Russo, Carmelo Vigna and his school, or Susy Zanardo stand out. In Mexico, Rodrigo Guerra has been a pioneering figure, and more recently the FIAT network at Universidad Panamericana has been working intensively on this, with Diana Ibarra, María Fernanda Crespo, and Susana Ochoa as coordinators. From other Latin American countries, one could mention Maria Teresa Compte, Lucía Ramón Carbonell, Rocío Figueroa, María Teresa Donoso, or Maria Clara Bingemer. In my judgment, this model of the relationship between sex and gender is the one that best captures the Christian anthropological vision.[50]

Keeping these models as a reference can help illuminate the debate and avoid excessive simplification. To cite just a few examples: speaking of a libertarian position refers to theories within the existentialist model, not the Marxist or Foucauldian ones, for which freedom is profoundly problematic. Referring to the body as a nonexistent fact, or one produced by discourse, refers to the Marxist or Foucauldian model, not the others. Psychoanalytic theories generally give considerable weight to the body and sexuality. Nor is it accurate to claim that gender theories propose “the utopia of the neutral,” since some emphasize particularity so strongly that they slide into nearly nominalist positions. Finally, it is possible to speak of dialectics in the case of these last two models, but this is not a category proper to the others. Making explicit and situating these underlying conceptions would allow for greater precision when referring to these theories, and therefore for the possibility of genuinely advancing the dialogue.

2. The Cultural Direction the Debate Is Taking, and Its Main Protagonists

Although classifying theories into models has given us a sense of their heterogeneity, it is worth mentioning the current debate in the scientific and cultural sphere. In academia, several countries are witnessing a progressive divorce between the world of feminism and the more recent drift of the term “gender.” As illustrated so far, the term had, from the outset, received different meanings among feminists. In recent years, however, the term “gender” has been shifting from a critical category into a way of referring to identity, in which the subject has full autonomy to define themselves from their intimate, individual experience — turned into an absolute truth.[51] And it is here that a fracture is taking shape between queer theorists and feminists over the very definition of woman and the status of the sexed body.

“Genderism” has been gaining ground since the 1990s, following the queer turn and trans theory advanced by figures such as Judith Butler. These theories fall within what I have called the “Foucauldian model,” in which sex ceases to be a determining reality and gender becomes performative. Within trans discourse, the body is no longer a stable reference point: self-identification replaces biology as the criterion for belonging to a gender. Gender identity thus becomes the result of the subject’s own perception or decision.[52]

Main lines of tension between classical feminism and queer/trans positions:

• Definition of woman — Classical feminism: based on biological sex. Queer/trans position: based on self-affirmed gender identity. Core of the conflict: what defines the political category “woman”?
• Materiality of the body — Classical feminism: sexed body as the basis of oppression (and of political solidarity). Queer/trans position: body as a modifiable construction, priority given to self-perception. Core of the conflict: does the body carry political meaning in itself?
• Women’s policies and spaces — Classical feminism: need to preserve exclusive spaces (sports, quotas, shelters). Queer/trans position: demand for full inclusion of trans people in those spaces. Core of the conflict: rights and inclusion policy.
• Language and representation — Classical feminism: defense of the term “woman” and the category of sex. Queer/trans position: use of inclusive or neutral language (pregnant people, menstruating bodies). Core of the conflict: symbolic and linguistic dispute.
• Gender model it falls under — Classical feminism: Marxist, existentialist, psychoanalytic, personalism of difference. Queer/trans position: Foucauldian. Core of the conflict: epistemological rupture.

Today, in every country, one can distinguish between feminists critical of the trans movement (often called “gender critical” or “radical feminists”) and queer feminists. The former argue that dissolving sex as an objective category destroys the political foundation of feminism. In Spain, classical feminists include Celia Amorós, Amelia Valcárcel, Ana de Miguel, Alicia Pube, and Alicia Miyares.[53] For the latter, it is clear that “feminism, as a political theory aimed at transforming reality, seeks to alter the conditions of oppression or subordination in which women live, and to do so, it stabilizes the designation ‘women’ as a category of political analysis.”[54]

From this understanding of feminism, they denounce theories that carry the name but are not, in their view, truly feminist, calling them a “Trojan horse”[55] that empties out feminism’s very agenda. Miyares calls it “sexual solipsism,”[56] considering it to proceed from assumptions diametrically opposed to those of feminism, responding to a “kind of postmodern utopia” in which sexuality becomes so subjectivized and individualized that it “ends up becoming a capricious, solipsistic identity construct,”[57] no longer useful for identifying and overcoming social inequality. These authors identify themselves as feminists, not as anti-trans, though they are accused of “transphobia” by queer sectors.

The trans front in Spain is led by figures such as Itziar Ziga, Beatriz Preciado, and the Medek group. Preciado’s work has had an impact throughout Latin America; her definition of counter-sexuality is emblematic — the end of Nature as an order legitimizing the subjection of some bodies to others — and her proposal to replace that social contract with a counter-sexual one, in which bodies recognize themselves not as men or women, but as speaking bodies.[58] Understandably, the idea of turning a woman’s body into a mere “speaking body” has not been welcomed by classical feminism.

In Anglophone countries (the United Kingdom, the United States), this conflict has reached universities, media, and public policy. In the Spanish-speaking world, the tension is more recent, but is beginning to play out around gender identity laws, education, and inclusive language. In Spain, the debate intensified between 2019 and 2023, with the gender identity laws and the so-called “Trans Law.”

The divorce between classical feminism and trans/queer feminism is, above all, a dispute over the nature of identity and the body. The former proceeds from a realist or materialist anthropology: being a woman has a biological and social anchoring. The latter proceeds from a constructivist or performative anthropology: being a woman is a subjective identity free of bodily determinations. Behind the debate lies a deeper philosophical difference: what it means to be human, and what place the body occupies in the definition of the person. According to the model offered here, trans advocacy falls primarily within the Foucauldian model; reducing the entire question of gender to “gender ideology,” and identifying it with theories that belong to a single model, is an unacceptable reductionism.

I close this section by briefly mentioning the debate within the Church. Although disagreements persist at the ecclesial level over whether and how to adopt the term gender, the larger debate concerns the evaluation of relationships between people of the same sex. This question has become one of the areas of greatest hermeneutical plurality within the contemporary Magisterium, revolving around at least three axes: the moral evaluation of homosexual desire, the interpretation of love between people of the same sex, and the ecclesial place of homosexual persons.

Three main positions can be distinguished. The first advocates moral continuity with the Magisterium’s position to date: homosexual inclination is an objective disorder, though not a sin in itself; homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered; and the proposal is an integrative chastity together with pastoral welcome without moral approval. A second position suggests a pastoral perspective and a hermeneutic of accompaniment: reading homosexual orientation as an existential reality rather than simply a disorder, prioritizing moral conscience and pastoral gradualness, distinguishing between objective sin and subjective guilt, and recognizing that authentic love can exist between people of the same sex, even if not fully conforming to the sacramental ideal. A third position proposes an affirming or inclusive theology, advocating a queer theological reading and a rethinking of sexual anthropology and the Magisterium based on the lived faith experience of LGBTQ+ people, holding that homosexual orientation requires neither conversion nor abstinence as an ideal, that homosexual relationships can have sacramental value in themselves, and that the experience of love and fidelity can be a “sign of the Kingdom.”

The debate at the ecclesial level paralyzes pastors themselves at the parish and diocesan level, who often delay addressing the question of gender and homosexuality pastorally for lack of a clear frame of reference. The consequence is significant disorientation among the faithful, who hear dissonant voices within the Church, while people with same-sex attraction, gender confusion, and their families continue to go without the accompaniment they would need to grow in their Christian life. This lack of pastoral direction is, in part, a consequence of confusion at the anthropological level, which needs to be seriously addressed from a transdisciplinary approach.

3. Some Directions for Catholic Thinkers

The path traced throughout this article makes it possible to establish, first, that the term “gender” does not refer to a univocal reality or a homogeneous theoretical framework. On the contrary, this designation groups together a plural set of theories that proceed from profoundly different anthropological, epistemological, and philosophical assumptions, and that offer divergent answers to fundamental questions such as the relationship between sex and gender, the status of the body, the meaning of sexual difference, or the very conception of the subject. The model proposed here — articulated in six major paradigms — does not claim to exhaust the complexity of the field, but it does offer a conceptual tool that makes it possible to move past excessive simplification and to situate each position within its own proper theoretical horizon. Without this prior clarification, dialogue becomes practically impossible, and debate tends to slide into ideological polarization.

Second, the analysis of the contemporary debate within feminism shows that the current rupture between classical feminism and queer and trans currents cannot be reduced to a terminological, strategic, or merely political dispute. It is, rather, a deeper anthropological divergence affecting the understanding of identity, of the body, and of the very category of woman as political subject. While classical feminism maintains a material, sexed anchoring of feminine identity, theories of Foucauldian inspiration tend to dissolve the meaning of the body in favor of a performative, self-affirmed conception of gender. This epistemological rupture explains both the critical force of these theories and the tensions and aporias they generate, especially when subjectivity becomes detached from any shared bodily reference.

From this perspective, the proposal of a personalist model of equality within difference emerges as a particularly fruitful path for philosophical dialogue. By recognizing the distinction between sex and gender without separating them, and by situating sexuality as a constitutive dimension of the person, this approach makes it possible to integrate biological, psychic, cultural, and free elements into a unified vision of the human being. In contrast to reductionisms — whether biologistic or constructivist — personalism offers an understanding of the body as a bearer of personal meaning and dignity, and of freedom as the capacity to creatively integrate one’s received sexed condition. This is, however, a proposal still in development, called to deepen its dialogue with the categories of contemporary thought and to avoid defensive or merely reactive formulations.

Finally, the landscape described here poses a particular challenge to Catholic thought. The difficulty in addressing the question of gender lies not only in its ethical or pastoral implications, but in the absence of rigorous philosophical discernment that adequately distinguishes the different levels of the debate. Reducing the discussion to its practical consequences, without first examining the anthropological and epistemological assumptions at play, impoverishes the analysis and contributes to confusion. What is needed, therefore, is greater intellectual boldness and a genuine willingness to engage in dialogue — one that allows gender theories to be understood from within, without prejudice or oversimplification, and responded to from a reason open to truth.[59] Aware that gender theory has emerged within postmetaphysical philosophical paradigms, it would also be desirable to develop the capacity to become genuine “cultural translators.”[60] This means being able to enter into dialogue with postmodern thought using its own categories, so that dialogue itself becomes fertile ground for a genuine search for truth. Only in this way will it be possible to offer a meaningful contribution to one of the most decisive debates of our time, one in which the very understanding of human identity is at stake.

Notes

1. FLAX, J.: “Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory,” in NICHOLSON, L. (ed.): Feminism/Postmodernism. Routledge, New York, 1990, pp. 39-62.
2. BRAIDOTTI, R.: Feminismo, diferencia sexual y subjetividad nómade. Gedisa, Barcelona, 2004, p. 131.
3. Cf. GUERRA, R.: “Persona, sexo y género. Los significados de la categoría ‘género’ y el sistema ‘sexo/género’ según Karol Wojtyła,” in Open Insight VII/12 (2016), pp. 143-168.
4. Cf. PALAZZANI, L.: Sex/gender: gli equivoci dell’uguaglianza. Giappichelli, Torino, 2011.
5. Money distinguishes between biological sex and gender, the latter referring to the psycho-social components of identity. In 1968, psychiatrist Robert Stoller (UCLA) took up and formalized this distinction: sex would designate the biological components, and gender the masculine and feminine categories referring to “behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and fantasies that relate to the sexes, but that do not primarily carry biological connotations” (STOLLER, R.: Sex and Gender. Routledge, New York, 1994).
6. The Magisterium continues to use the expression “gender theory” (cf. Dignitas Infinita, 55-56), while also recognizing the difference between “gender ideology” and “gender research” in the document of the Congregation for Catholic Education, “Male and Female He Created Them.”
7. The author has not found an equivalent systematization based on philosophical roots, though she cites related efforts by Blanca Castilla de Cortázar, Ángela Aparisi, Ramón Lucas Lucas, and Susy Zanardo, whose approaches differ from the one proposed here in that they focus more on the relationship between men and women than on the formation of gender identity itself.
8. Jane Flax identifies a series of questions on which there is no consensus among gender theories (what gender is, how it relates to anatomical sexual differences, whether there are only two genders, etc.), which have served as a guide for establishing the differences between models (FLAX, J., op. cit., p. 43).
9. Most analyses by Catholic thinkers point to certain philosophical roots of gender theories, explicitly referring to Sartre, the Frankfurt School, Foucault, or Freud; the approach proposed here seeks to properly distinguish these roots in order to engage each theory on better-defined terrain.
10. The Anglophone world was chosen because it is where the term was coined and first flourished.
11. Dale O’Leary and Marguerite Peeters are two figures known for their outright rejection of the term “gender”; M. Schooyans, Scala, Trillo-Figueroa, and Sanahuja are also mentioned as critical voices widely circulated in Catholic circles.
12. Cf. MALO, A.: Uomo o donna. Una differenza che conta. Vita e Pensiero, Milano, 2017, p. 45.
13. Cf. CASTILLA DE CORTÁZAR, B. / VILADRICH, P.-J.: Antropología del amor. Universidad de Piura, Piura, 2018, pp. 183-183.
14. The vocation of women to be wives and mothers is emphasized insistently, while the vocation of men to be husbands and fathers is mentioned significantly less often.
15. Cf. ALZAMORA REVOREDO, Ó.: “Ideología de género: sus peligros y alcance,” in Lexicon. Palabra, Madrid, 2004, pp. 575-590.
16. It receives various names: anomaly, illness, sin, perversion, etc.
17. Within this paradigm, one would prefer to speak of a “conception of the person” rather than a theory of the subject; this expression is used here only for consistency with the other theories.
18. Cf. LAMAS, M.; HARAWAY, D.; AMUCHÁSTEGUI, A. / RODRÍGUEZ, Y., among others.
19. HOLY SEE DELEGATION TO THE UNITED NATIONS: “Statement of Interpretation of the Term ‘Gender’ by the Holy See,” in L’Osservatore Romano, Spanish weekly edition 38 (1995), p. 2.
20. Marx does not deny the idea of nature as raw material, but insists that it must be shaped by the ends given to it by human practice.
21. HARTMANN, H.: “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism,” in SARGENT, L. (ed.): Women and Revolution. South End Press, Boston, pp. 1-33.
22. Bonnie Fox distinguishes between patriarchy as a characteristic of a male-dominated society and patriarchy as an autonomous system (FOX, B.J.: “Conceptualizing patriarchy,” in Canadian Review of Sociology 25/2 (1988), pp. 163-182).
23. The author considers the weight Sartre and Beauvoir give to the body as situation to differ between them; cf. RODRÍGUEZ DÍAZ, M.: Teoría de género: presupuestos y raíces filosóficas. GBP, Rome, 2022, pp. 313-338.
24. MILLETT, K.: Sexual Politics. Cátedra, Madrid, 2021, p. 128.
25. Unlike the Marxist model, which holds a more modest conception of freedom due to the social determination of the individual.
26. LUCAS LUCAS, R.: Horizonte vertical. BAC, Madrid, 2008, p. 38.
27. [Notes 27-60 continue in the original edition of Diálogo Filosófico 124 (2026).]

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Received January 2, 2026. Approved March 4, 2026. Marta Rodríguez Díaz, Institute for Advanced Studies on Women, Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum (Rome). Originally published in Diálogo Filosófico 124 (2026), pp. 4-35.