www.thegospelcoalition.org
Can a Man Feel Like He’s a Woman?
Earlier this year, Christian hip-hop artist Shai Linne released a new track titled “Farm Talk.” This modern parable uses farm animals to depict one of the West’s most passionately debated cultural phenomena—the body-mind identity confusion of today’s transgender movement. In the track, a hog claims to be a dog, a hen claims to be a rooster, and a horse supports their self-discoveries while a frog lovingly contends for the truth of their biological identities.
The hog says to his farm friends, “Since I can remember, I’ve never felt like a hog, in the deepest part of me, I’ve always known I was a dog.” A farm rebellion results in an attempt to force the farmer to acknowledge and bend to the hog’s and hen’s felt and self-given identities. They assume an animal’s internal feelings are sufficient reason for the farmer to let the hog live in the house, lie on his bed, and become his new best friend. That, however, is quite an assumption.
Should Mr. Hog’s feelings be enough to justify a massive revolution that affects not only the farmer and hog but all others who live in the house? Moving from parable to reality, we might similarly ask: Are people’s feelings about their identities as men or women enough to justify a massive cultural revolution? At stake are surgeries that harm the body, biological boys in girls’ locker rooms, and biological men competing (and dominating) in women’s sports. Do subjective feelings carry enough objective weight to justify such revolutionary change?
The more profound and foundational question is this: Can a person know what it feels like to be something he or she isn’t biologically?
Generalities and Stereotypes
In Linne’s parable, Mr. Hog gives reasons for his feelings. He cites tail-wagging, his love for dog biscuits, and his barking. His reasons for identifying as a dog are based on his food preferences and actions.
Many who adopt transgender identities base their assertions on similar reasoning. They believe their preferences and behaviors don’t fit within sexed generalities and cultural stereotypes. Nancy Pearcey recounts the story of Jonah Mix, who believed his failure to fit within culture’s expectations of “maleness” meant he wasn’t a man. Mix opined, “If we are not men by our bodies, we are men by our actions.”
Mix claims an identity misaligned with his biological sex due to his differing “gender expression.” The LGBT+ advocacy group GLAAD defines this term as “external manifestations of gender, expressed through a person’s name, pronouns, clothing, haircut, voice, and/or behavior.”
Claiming that a transgender identity is the inevitable result of nontypical gender expression has unintended logical consequences. If this is true, all men and women should fit with expected sex generalities (height, weight, muscular makeup, and so on) and rigid stereotypes (interests, hobbies, and so on). Does a young boy necessarily have a sex-gender mismatch because he likes the color pink and isn’t interested in sports or trucks? Does a teenage girl have a sex-gender mismatch because she’s six foot one and more muscular than the boys in her school? Was Jacob a transgender woman because he preferred cooking at home with Rebekah to hunting with Isaac and Esau (Gen. 25:27)?
Transgender ideology might have us believe Jacob wasn’t the father but the mother of Israel’s 12 tribes. The absurdity of such pseudologic led second-wave feminists to argue against biological determinism, and this explains why many non-Christian feminists are now willing to join Christians in the argument against transgender ideology.
Feelings and Identities
When someone claims a transgender identity today, gender expression isn’t usually the given reason. These claims are instead rooted in what’s popularly called “gender identity.” GLAAD defines gender identity as “a person’s internal, deeply held knowledge of their own gender.” Transgender-identifying author Nicholas Teich believes a person just knows his or her gender identity. He says, “The proof of what gender you are lies within your brain.”
Even if one could persuasively argue that subjective feelings justify social, political, and medical revolution, the all-important question remains: Can people know what it feels like to be something they aren’t biologically? Renowned philosopher Thomas Nagel says no.
Claiming that a transgender identity is the inevitable result of nontypical gender expression has unintended logical consequences.
In 1974, Nagel wrote an article for Philosophical Review titled “What Is It like to Be a Bat?” Nagel argued against materialistic reductionism, which holds that mental processes are the sum of chemical and physical reactions in the brain. His work helps us logically answer our foundational question: Can a man feel like he’s a woman?
Nagel argues that “no matter how the form may vary, the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism.” Using flying bats as an example, he contends that though there must be some feeling of being a bat, humans can never know it. Nagel writes, “There is no reason to suppose that [being a bat] is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine.” Only a bat can testify to what it’s like to be a bat.
Humans may observe and study objective facts about bats. For example, we know bats perceive the external world primarily through sonar using high-frequency sounds. We know they hang upside down, fly, and don’t see well. But observing these facts doesn’t give us the experience of a bat. His point is simple: no matter how hard we try, we can’t fully comprehend a bat’s experience because we aren’t bats. We can use our imagination but can’t actually know what it’s like to experience the world as a bat.
Even if one could persuasively argue that a man can feel what it’s like to be a woman, logic still doesn’t allow his claim to be a woman. The claim’s irrationality is proven by the “furry” phenomenon. No “furry”—a person who claims to be an animal—can be properly cared for by a veterinarian. Similarly, no woman who claims to be a man (even after reassignment surgery) needs to worry about testicular cancer, and no man who claims to be a woman needs to be checked for ovarian cancer. No subjective feelings or identity claims can change basic biological realities.
Limits and Feelings
In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who claimed to be black, was socially canceled and fired from her job with the NAACP in Spokane, Washington. The American public, and especially the African American community, understood her to be a confused woman who couldn’t change her ethnicity simply because of her feelings. Dolezal wasn’t allowed to keep her job simply because she “felt like a black woman.” Similarly, the transgender movement, as Ryan Anderson says, “drips with ontological assertions” yet has nothing concrete to hang them on.
Of course, humans can sympathize with each other. We can put ourselves in the shoes of those who are hurting and seek to understand their situation. But identifying with another person doesn’t mean we know exactly what it’s like to be that person. Men and women may seek to understand the particularities of the experience of the opposite sex, but the claim to know what it feels like to be the opposite sex is a step too far. We can identify with someone else, but we can’t identify as someone else.
Honesty and Love
My claim that a man can’t feel like he’s a woman (and vice versa) doesn’t mean a person experiencing gender dysphoria (a feeling of discomfort and/or distress because her biology doesn’t align with her sensed gender identity) has fabricated these feelings. It does, however, mean her feelings are mere feelings, not reality. At best, she’s confused, and at worst, she has a psychological disorder that deserves genuine attention and care.
Contrary to popular opinion, affirming our neighbors in their confusion isn’t caring or loving; it’s lying. For the sake of love, Christians need to think clearly and speak honestly. Linne’s Mr. Frog understood this. He told his farm friends,
But my disagreement doesn’t mean I love you any less
It seems to me that you’re confused concerning what is real
And that reality to you is determined by what you feel
That logic is mistaken, though, let’s just take it slow
Just because you feel that something’s true, it doesn’t make it so
Few, if any, are tempted to affirm other mind-body disorders. We don’t encourage a young woman battling anorexia to follow her feelings and attempt to lose more weight. To do so would be unloving. Likewise, we ought not to lie to those who believe they have a sex-gender mismatch. We should neither encourage them to harm their bodies nor affirm them in rejecting their God-given biological sex.
We can identify with someone else, but we can’t identify as someone else.
As Christians, we’re commanded to love our neighbors by telling them the truth (Eph. 4:15). Loving someone includes fighting against what harms him. In a world where disagreement is understood as hate, we can only show our love in disagreement if we speak charitably about these issues, with each individual’s best interest in mind.
Joking about, laughing at, and showing disgust toward those who’ve adopted a transgender identity shows an impure motive. Genuine love and care for those confused and hurting will be evident in how we speak to and treat those who claim a transgender identity. At the same time, our attempt to love and care must never result in affirming what harms.
New Posts (Home)
ChatBox
Popular Posts 
Game Zone
Top PodCasts
