Christianity and Self-Love

I would like to respond to a concern that some people have regarding the Christian worldview.  Let me first try to articulate the concern:

Christianity is harmful to a healthy, positive self-image and self-esteem.  It tells us that God is everything and that we are nothing.  We are mere worms in comparison to God.  It tells us that we are all fallen sinners, that God is angry with us and always judging us, that we are so bad we deserve to go to hell for all eternity.  It tells us we are never good enough, that we can never be enough ourselves.  This attitude leads to an unhealthy, negative self-image that harms mental health and keeps people from seeing their true value.  It leads them to despair and depression.  It leads them to see themselves as ugly, as deserving of all the bad things that happen to them.  This hinders people from having the self-love that gives them what they need to be the best they can be.  It causes them to be endlessly introspective and self-doubting, and to feel endlessly and hopelessly defeated.  People with this attitude will be miserable with self-loathing, fearful, and inclined to accept abusive situations, believing they deserve what they get.  What we need instead is to be told that we are enough, that we do have what it takes, that we are doing great, that we are beautiful and valuable and worthy, that we don't have to put up with bad situations in our life because we deserve better.  We need to love ourselves and relax, feeling confident, freed from our neuroses of self-doubt, so we can live our life to the fullest and make the world a better place.

Going along with this, Christianity teaches people to be ashamed of central aspects of their humanity.  It encourages a sense of shame with regard to the body and human sexuality, for example.  It encourages people to see their physicality and their sexuality as shameful, harmful things that must be guarded against, that make them bad people.  Instead, we need to encourage body-positivity and sex-positivity.  We need people to feel, not shame, but pride for their bodies and for their feelings and their nature as human beings.

I want to respond to this concern with a two-pronged response.  I want to acknowledge, first of all, that there is a good deal of legitimacy and validity in the concern.  There is a true need to emphasize a positive attitude towards the self and towards human nature.  And it is true that Christianity has often been presented in a way that harms this positivity and encourages self-loathing, a constant sense of shame, and neurotic attitudes towards self, body, sexuality, etc.  But then I want to go on to claim that Christianity, rightly understood, actually promotes a very positive view of the self, and yet it also teaches that these truths about "positivity" need to be balanced with other truths about humanity and the human condition that rightly encourage within us a proper humility, a recognition of our creaturely finitude, our need for grace, etc.  Christianity, taught in a balanced and full-orbed way, captures both of these sides of the human condition in a way that tells us the full truth about ourselves and gives us the tools we need to understand who we are so we can live most effectively.

Humility and Affirmation

In the Christian view of human nature, both the "positivity" and the "humility" strands run through everything.

There is one God, one Supreme Being, who is the fullness and source of all reality.  God is the Creator of the finite universe.  There is a fundamental dichotomy at the heart of reality - there is the Creator, and there are creatures.  We human beings are creatures.  God is infinite being - unbounded, all-encompassing.  He is infinitely superior in being to all creatures.  Creatures are nothing in comparison to him.  A good way to get at this is to look at the difference between the divine and the creaturely point of view.  God's point of view is all-encompassing.  He sees all in one view.  His conscious experience includes reality as a whole.  Because of this, his consciousness transcends space and time.  On the other hand, as finite beings, our view and experience constitute a mere infinitesimal point in a universe that extends out from us with potential infinity in all directions of space and time.  We see/experience only from one limited vantage point among an infinite number of other possible vantage points.  We are bound within space and time.  God's consciousness and experience constitute the true, ultimate reality, while ours is nothing but an infinitesimal sliver of reality - and our sliver is derived from his fullness.  God is thus the center of reality, and we are infinitely far from it.

Tbis is a realization, of course, that leads to deep humility.  What Christianity teaches here has been recognized by many human philosophies and religions to varying degrees.  One great example is Buddhism.  The enlightenment of the Buddha came precisely when he recognized that it is an illusion to think of this world, or even of our own selves, as if they are a true, ultimate, substantial reality.  Buddhism goes so far as to view the world as an illusion.  "There is no self" is one of the key ideas of Buddhist philosophy.  As a Christian, I recognize that Buddhism is perceiving the very same thing that I perceive - the utter distance between ultimate, substantial reality and this comparative nothingness we tend to think of as reality.  (Christianity does not tend to refer to the world as an illusion, because, despite its finitude, it does exist in its own sphere - something I think Buddhism would not deny, though they would put it in other terms - but we agree with the truth that this language is pointing to - that, compared to Ultimate Reality, this world is nothing, and to treat it as ultimately substantial is to seek fullness in nothingness and therefore to be utterly miserable.)  Hinduism is another religion that recognizes these realities, as do all religions and philosophies, at least to a degree, that hold to a supreme state of reality beyond this one.

It is here that I would bring into the picture the Christian view of humanity as "fallen".  According to the Christian worldview, our first parents, who were created in a right relationship with God, turned away from that relationship in an effort to declare independence.  They wanted to be their own ultimate principle instead of trusting in God to fill that role.  But God is the fullness and source of all being, goodness, life, power, wisdom, knowledge, and happiness.  To declare independence from God, then, is to plunge oneself into a condition of emptiness, evil, death, weakness, foolishness, ignorance, and misery.  This is what our first parents brought upon themselves, and this condition has been passed on to the whole human race.  We are not blamed for what our first parents did, but we inherit the consequences - cut off from the life of God and experiencing the condition of alienation from him.  This is what Christians mean by speaking of humanity as being in a "fallen" state.  But we should not think that there is any injustice done to us in this situation.  We would have done the same thing had we been in the situation of our first parents, for we, like them, have nothing in our nature that, without God's special gift to us of his own divine life, would keep us from falling away from God.  We fall together as a human race because we all share the same fundamental nature and condition.  The final conclusion of the narrative begun by the Fall is the condition Christians call "hell".  Hell is nothing other than complete alienation from God and all that that entails.  That is the destiny of all of us, and justly and naturally so, unless God chooses to give to us something we cannot deserve - the gift of his divine life.  And that is the gospel - that God has come into the world in Jesus Christ and united himself to our fallen human nature, absorbing our weaknesses, sins, death, and misery, so that he can share with us the power, goodness, and ultimate blessedness and happiness of his divine life.  From him, and not from ourselves, we receive all that we need.

According to Christianity, this is who we really are.  We may react positively or negatively to this account of things.  But I think the first question should not be whether we find this view of things attractive or repulsive, but whether or not it is actually true.  Reality is reality whether we like it or not, and we have a duty to accept it as such.  That is yet another thing true humility teaches us.  Now, I believe that the Christian worldview is ultimately one of supreme beauty once we see it fully for what it is; but if we are used to thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought, it can seem very bitter at first.  It is like the sabra fruit of Israel - prickly and off-putting on the outside, sweet and delightful on the inside.

Now, having addressed the humility required of us as creatures, let's address the other side of the equation - the side of "positivity."

We are creatures of God.  All that we are is derived from God.  And God is the fullness of all that is good, beautiful, and valuable.  Therefore we, too, in our intrinsic nature, are good, beautiful, and valuable, and we should see ourselves as such.  Yes, unlike God, our being comes to us from without.  We cannot be enough on our own.  But we are not on our own.  We are never on our own.  To the extent that we exist, we are like God.  We reflect the divine beauty.  Love of God entails love of creatures and love of ourselves - for our existence is a participation in God's.  In a sense, I can say that I am nothing and God is everything, and this is a central and crucial truth.  And yet, at the same time, I can say that because God is everything, I am something too, and that is also a central and crucial truth.

Yes, I am nothing without God.  But God has created me, and so I am not nothing.  Yes, without God's grace in Christ, I am a sinner bound for hell.  But I am not without God's grace in Christ.  He has come into the world to give grace to us all.  "Grace" is nothing other than the gift of the divine life.  So what we are given through the redemption of Christ is the gift of sharing truly in the beauty and glory of that life.  This is true even in this current life we live, and it will be infinitely more true when we grow up into the fullness of our redemption and come to partake fully in the glory of God.  This is our destiny.  No, it is not something we have of ourselves apart from God.  But we are not apart from God.  In God, we are legitimate heirs of infinite glory and beauty.  This, also, is who we truly are, and we should see ourselves accordingly.  (We do have free will.  If we choose to reject the divine life offered to us, we are still valued and loved beings participating in God's life, but we will have cut ourselves off from the eternal fruition of this reality and sentenced ourselves to lose it all in the end.  But if we receive what God offers us, we will grow up fully into the glorious identity God has planned for us.)  In the words of C.S. Lewis:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory [HarperOne, 2001], 45-46).

We must recognize that we are creatures and not God - but having recognized that, we should value ourselves as icons of the divine.  We should have great and humble self-love, positivity, and self-esteem.  If we recognize who we really are, we should know that we are enough, by the gift and grace of God.  And we should bask and delight in our beauty and value and in the beauty and value of all our fellow creatures.

A More Balanced Christian View

OK, so having laid this foundation, let's tie up some loose ends.  There are better and worse ways of living out Christianity, just as there are better and worse ways of living out any religion or philosophy.  And Christians haven't always lived and taught in ways that have encouraged the best that Christianity can be.  Let's address some of these areas.

Shame - We should not have an attitude towards ourselves centrally characterized by shame.  Yet there are things it is proper to be ashamed of.  When we fail to live in love towards God, our neighbors, or ourselves, that is something we should not view positively.  And yet these failures don't characterize us.  We are not perfect, but if, by God's grace, we are choosing to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be, even if there are areas where we are not that great at it yet, then our lives are characterized fundamentally not by shame but by beauty.  If we are trying to be good people in this world, that is something we should be proud of!  Sure, it is a gift of grace.  We could not do it on our own.  But that doesn't make it any less ours.  Christianity, rightly applied, encourages a kind of paradoxical "humble pride."  We do not see ourselves as superior to everyone else or as existing independently.  And yet, recognizing our limits and our dependence on God and others, we see the beauty of what God is making out of our lives and we are proud to be that sort of person!  Catholic theology has always emphasized (against those who would advocate an overly pessimistic view of human nature and goodness) that while our merits are pure grace, yet they are, at the same time, our merits.  With God's help, we are not shameful but beautiful beings.  Our sins, failures, mistakes, and weaknesses are things we struggle with, but they do not fundamentally define us.  It is true that Christians have sometimes failed to keep this balance.  But Christianity, properly defined, teaches us to do so.

Scrupulosity - It is true that many Christians live a life full of what Catholics call "scrupulosity" - a neurotic, obsessive focus on fearing to do the wrong thing, feeling guilty, feeling ashamed, wondering if we are in a right relationship with God or if God is angry with us, feeling useless, ugly, and defeated.  There is a sense in which Christianity, as such, can even be "blamed" for this tendency.  Christianity teaches us to take goodness very seriously, and whenever we take something seriously some of us are going to be prone to excessive introspection, obsessive doubt, a sense of shame and despair for failures, etc.  I would say that this is one of many examples of a case where a true and good thing naturally brings along with it unique, specific dangers.  (For another example, notice that conflicts and wars happen because people care about things.  A society full of completely apathetic people who value nothing would never fight, but would that be a good thing?  It is better to care and therefore to have to take extra precaution to control our immoderate tendency towards conflict.)  But Christianity does not truly recommend this excessive scrupulosity.  In fact, the Catholic tradition warns us away from it, giving it a label ("scrupulosity") and addressing it explicitly as a problem for our spiritual lives.  God is not following us around, looking for minor infractions so that he can zap us!  Remember, as God's creatures, we bear his image and divine beauty.  He loves and delights in us.  He wants to give us good gifts and make us happy, and to help us in every way.  He is looking out for our good.  As I said earlier, we do have free will, and we can fundamentally reject him and turn away from him and persist in this to the end of our lives.  But if we do so, we have to do it "against the wind," as it were, of all of God's pleadings, warnings, encouragements, helps, graces, and opportunities to turn around.  And if we do choose, fundamentally, to pursue the path of goodness, that is what matters in the end.  Sure, we are not perfect, but our imperfections do not characterize us.  God does not look on us with shame and disgust, but with love and delight.  If we don't do something perfectly, if we mess something up - well, we recognize the fact, acknowledge it, ask for forgiveness if necessary, try to fix our mistakes, and move on.  We do not, we should not, continue to dwell on our mistakes.  This is something many Catholics find delightful about the Sacrament of Confession.  If you've committed a sin, you don't go into despair and fear.  You go to Confession, admit your mistake, receive forgiveness, and leave it behind.  All God asks of us is that we pursue goodness.  Sure, that takes effort and diligence.  But obsessiveness does not further our goal but rather hinders it, for it stops us from seeing clearly and objectively.  Rather, we should approach our pursuit of goodness and efforts towards personal growth and improvement with common sense.  Don't be lazy and apathetic about doing the right thing, but don't be neurotic and obsessive either.  (And, of course, if you struggle with neurosis, or scrupulosity, or any other such thing, don't obsess about that either!  It's not something to feel shame over.  These things are a part of our human condition in this life.  We do the best we can in our own particular circumstances.  None of us, in this life, have arrived at our destination.  We're on the journey, struggling with our own peculiar trials and difficulties.  There's nothing wrong with that - it's the way it should be.  We should give ourselves a break, and make sure to give each other a break as well!)

I addressed the problem of scrupulosity in an earlier article, and I'd like to copy here some of what I said there:

As Aristotle famously pointed out, a lot of times error and vice are found in the extremes, and virtue is found in the mean between the extremes.  One set of extremes that is often a pitfall for those seeking to live a holy life involves, one the one hand, laziness and carelessness with regard to sin and bad habits, and, on the other hand, an excessive fear, obsession, or even paranoia about these things.  Those inclined towards the former extreme need to be reminded that sin is a serious matter.  The fundamental nature of sin is opposition to God and the moral law, and this attitude is the essence of all wickedness and the fount of all misery (because God is the Supreme Good).  We need to take God with the utmost seriousness, and therefore sin needs to be our mortal enemy.  This is why the Bible is always telling us to "fear" God--that is, to have a proper recognition of the gravity of who God is and to fear being against him as the greatest of all calamities.  To be righteous is to love God above all things, so our ultimate goal in life should be to please him and enjoy him perfectly and eliminate all sin and all tendencies to wickedness in our life.  The more virtuous a person becomes, the less such a person will come to tolerate even venial sin, for the clearer our vision is of the greatness and beauty of God, the more repulsive all sin will seem to us.  This should be the chief aim of our entire life.

But the other extreme--obsessive fear and obsession about sin--can also be a serious problem, especially for those particularly inclined towards it.  Such people need to be reminded that what really matters is the fundamental choice of our life--are we choosing God as our chief good, or are we ejecting him out of that place in order to put something else there?  Is God the one we choose above all else?  This is not a matter of feelings or the strength of feelings, but of the will.  What do we choose to put supreme value on?  If we choose to follow God as our chief goal, and we orient our lives towards seeking him as our greatest value and ultimate end, then we can be sure that we are in a right relationship with him, a state of grace, and everything will come out fundamentally right in the end.  The only thing that can put us out of the reach of God's salvation is mortal sin--and mortal sin doesn't mean all sin; it doesn't even mean all serious sin (objectively speaking).  Mortal sin involves a deliberate, fully-informed, fully-aware, intentional choice to adopt an attitude or pursue a course of action which involves rejecting God as our supreme value and end in life, choosing instead to break from him fundamentally and go our own way.  Mortal sin is defined by being incompatible with "charity"--that is, with supreme love to God as the choice of our will.  Mortal sin is not the ways in which we regularly slip up and act inconsistently with our chief goal, the bad habits we have that tend to draw us into foolish and sinful actions, the difficulties we face in developing virtuous habits, how many times we tend to slide back into sinful tendencies, etc.  These are all natural and ordinary parts of life in a state of grace as we pursue holiness in this fallen world.  When we understand this, it will help us to relax a bit, to let go of obsessive fear.  We will remember that "there is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:18).  To "fear" God in the biblical sense is not to be obsessively afraid of him, but to recognize his supreme value and importance and therefore to take holiness with the utmost seriousness.  If we love God, and trust God, we need not live in obsessive fear, but can rest confidently in the help of his grace as we grow in holiness.  If we fall into sin from time to time, well, that is to be expected of fallen creatures struggling to be holy.  The Council of Trent actually condemns as false doctrine the idea that people can avoid all sins throughout their entire life.  "If any one saith . . . that he is able, during his whole life, to avoid all sins, even those that are venial,-except by a special privilege from God, as the Church holds in regard of the Blessed Virgin; let him be anathema" (Sixth Session, Canon 23).  When we sin, we don't need to dwell on it.  We can learn what we need to learn from it, get back up, repent, go to confession if appropriate, and then move on--like a gymnast who doesn't fall into despair every time she falls onto the mat, but just keeps getting back up and resuming her practice.  (In fact, overly obsessing about sin often has the effect of making it worse rather than better.  There's hardly a better way to ensure that something will have a strong presence in one's mind than to continually be worrying about how strong a presence it has.)

Another practical tip to make our path to holiness smoother is to recognize the difference between concupiscence and sin.  Concupiscence is the Catholic theological term for our fallen, disordered desires that have a tendency to lead us into sin.  But concupiscence, while it tends towards sin, is not itself personal sin.  Acts of sin involve the consent of the will.  Insofar as our desires happen to us without such consent, they are not sin.  So stop feeling guilty for having such desires.  You can't just banish them away with some strong act of the will.  We will all struggle against concupiscence throughout our entire lives, for that struggle is the pathway to holiness.  Holiness isn't only about avoiding sinful acts of will; it is also about developing virtuous habits and unlearning vicious (that is, un-virtuous) ones.  We are trying to learn not only to avoid individual sinful acts of will in particular cases, but also to develop habits such that we will become more and more naturally inclined towards virtuous attitudes and actions in general and away from vicious or sinful ones.  So even when you are avoiding particular acts of sin, you will still have plenty to work on in terms of building habits of virtue.  Don't be paranoid about that, but just go forward, like the gymnast I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  Keep practicing.  Don't worry if you mess up, or you haven't got a particular skill down yet very well.  Just keep going forward.  You'll keep getting better (but don't get paranoid about your rate of progress!).  You won't get fully where you want to be until after this life, though, so don't be impatient.  Be diligent, but also be tolerant of yourself and where you are.

Just briefly, before moving on, I want to mention for the sake of non-Christian readers that, in the Catholic view, being in a right relationship with God is not a matter of passing a theology exam.  It is about the fundamental orientation of our will towards the Supreme Good.  A person can have proper theology but be, in spirit, very far from God and even against him, while another person might have very bad (from the Catholic point of view) theology and yet, in spirit, in terms of the orientation of the will, that person might be very close to God and in a right relationship with him.  This is not to say that correct doctrine is not important.  It is just to say that there is a complex interplay in our lives between the intellectual, volitional, emotional, and spiritual components of our souls.  God is the Supreme Good, but the Catholic Church recognizes (see, for example, Lumen Gentium #16) that people are in different places in terms of how well (from a Catholic point of view) they consciously realize or can articulate this reality.  It is the orientation of the will towards the Good, as that is understood with greater or lesser clarity, that is of central importance in terms of a person's moral character.

The Body and Sex

Now let's look a bit at the Christian view of the body and sex.

Body Positivity - Remember, we are creatures of God.  Our bodies come from God as well.  Therefore they are intrinsically good.  They are to be celebrated and delighted in!  We should not be ashamed of our bodies.  We can recognize their weaknesses and oddities in an affectionate way (we remember St. Francis, who called his body "Brother Ass"), but we should acknowledge the body's intrinsic goodness and beauty.  And that means all bodies.  Our culture tends to put forward such unrealistic standards of beauty, and so many people are ashamed of their bodies because they don't match up with these standards.  But it's all fake.  Real human bodies come in lots of shapes and sizes.  They all have their unique beauty.  Just as each of us should celebrate the uniqueness of our individual personalities (quirkiness and all!), so each of us should celebrate the uniqueness of our individual bodies.

In some circles, body positivity is expressed in an openness to public nudity.  The Christian virtue of modesty is sometimes characterized as a kind of shameful embarrassment we are supposed to feel towards our bodies, and that is why we are supposed to keep them covered up.  And it must be said that, particularly in some circles, Christians have sometimes twisted modesty into this kind of attitude of shame.  But this is not what Christianity, properly understood, truly points us to.  Modesty is about recognizing and valuing the dignity of a human person as a human person.  The body is not to be treated as an object for another's use or personal pleasure, detached from respect for the entire person.  Before the Fall, humanity is portrayed in Scripture as naked.  This is because, in that unfallen condition, when the grace of God was still ruling human attitudes and behavior, the human body could be expressed in all its beauty without being reduced to an impersonal object (objectified).  After the Fall, the parts of the body most prone to abuse and objectification should ordinarily be covered as an expression of respect for the dignity of the body and for the safeguarding of that dignity - just as a person's private thoughts should ordinarily not be expressed entirely without any guard, as that also tends to lead to abuse and objectification.  The body is so worthy of value and respect that it should not be promiscuously exposed without guard in a fallen world.  That is the moral reason for clothing - not because the body is shameful, but actually quite the opposite!  There are particular circumstances, however, where nudity can be appropriate - when there is a situation established where the body can be seen with a proper understanding of its dignity as part of a person who deserves our respect as a person.  In marriage, for example, assuming the marriage relationship is healthy, there is a mutual giving and sharing of selves in a uniquely deep and profound way, and that involves the sharing of bodies.  That sharing is recognized as the gift of something of great dignity and value and is received in that attitude, and the body is not divorced from the person and made an object for another person's personal use or pleasure.  There is a special relationship of trust established there.  Another context would be the arts, when they are governed by proper values - where the body is appreciated in an artistic fashion and there is a recognition of its dignity and value and its context as part of a whole person, where objectification is absent by agreed consent and understanding.  In the Catholic view, then, nudity is normally avoided but occasionally allowed, not because the body is shameful, but precisely because it is recognized as something that deserves special protection and respect.

Sex Positivity - Some people believe that the Christian view of sex is that it is a bad thing, or at least a shameful and negative thing, and that is why there are so many sexual taboos in Christian teaching.  But, as with the body, the truth is very different.  However, it is true that many Christians have indeed twisted Christian teaching into this kind of overly-negative attitude, and that has done a lot of harm.  As with the body, sex is part of God's creation from the beginning and is essentially good.  In the Catholic view, sex was created by God for the enjoyment and bonding of spouses and for the procreation of children.

Everything I said above about scrupulosity applies here in particular.  It is true that Christians, at some times and places in history, have tended to promote or model a kind of morbid, overly introspective and obsessive, and fearful attitude towards sex.  Sex is a powerful thing.  It is easy for human beings to become enslaved to sexual desires or to fall into immoderate and overly-indulgent sexual habits.  Aware of this, Christians have often approached sex with great wariness, warning of the dangers that accompany sex.  As I said above, when people take something very seriously or are acutely aware of its dangers, an inevitable side effect is that some, at least, will tend to fall into an overly scrupulous attitude.  Such an imbalanced attitude has definitely been a real issue at various times and places in Christian history.  And yet the Church has never fundamentally lost sight of the essential goodness of sex.  She even recognizes marriage (with its ordinarily essential component of sexuality) as one of the seven sacraments - a high status that is pretty hard to beat!  A well-adjusted Christian moral approach, true to a balanced appreciation of the whole of the Christian worldview, opposes scrupulosity in sexual matters as much as it does in any other matter.  As in all things, so in sex:  We must guard against the extreme of over-indulgence and moral laziness on the one hand, and the extreme of obsessive fear and "puritanism" (in the worst sense, unfair to historic Puritans by the way!) on the other.

For example, I mentioned above that Catholic moral teaching cautions against a promiscuous public nudity that does not adequately guard the precious gift of the human body.  OK, there is a value here that needs to be protected, from the Catholic view.  We do well to challenge forms of "naturism" that would make public nudity a near-universal and unguarded norm.  However, we do not need to go to the other extreme of being obsessive or fearful about nudity.  Obsessive fear of something is not only an imbalanced attitude in itself, but it actually tends to strengthen the very thing it is fearful of!  There's hardly a better way to ensure that something will have a strong presence in one's mind than to continually be worrying about how strong a presence it has.  We need to avoid a kind of over-mystification of the nude human body that is a result of an obsessive attitude towards nudity and sex.  There is a kind of "taboo" mentality we can fall into.  We need to remember that, in a sense, nudity is really not a big deal!  What I mean is that we all know what the human body looks like.  Why, then, put so much mystique into seeing it like it's some astonishing or fearful thing?  Why do we need to be so obsessively fearful of being naked?  Why do we need to feel like we've been polluted or damaged somehow if we should see nudity?  Making such a big deal out of nudity actually tends to inflame immoderate desire  We all know that there is hardly anything more appealing to our human nature than something that has been forbidden to us and that has been placed in the special category of "taboo" and "off limits."  Pandora just had to open her box.  If we are going to follow Christian moral teaching more holistically, we need a more balanced attitude.  The human body is not some mysterious and forbidden object.  Experiencing nudity is not, in itself, a big deal.  Modesty in clothing is not the upholding of a "taboo" but merely a practice that is born of an attempt to protect something that is of great dignity and value that we don't want to be treated less respectfully than it deserves to be treated.  The naturist movement and the body-positivity movement have done a great service in challenging the "taboo" approach to nudity and encouraging a more healthy and less neurotic acceptance of our physical nature.

We can say the same thing about sex.  It should not be approached as if we are in the realm of some mysterious and forbidden taboo subject.  It should be approached with openness and realism and accepted as a normal part of human life.  It does have to be protected, because it exists for a particular purpose and belongs in a particular context and should not be taken out of that context.  In the Catholic view, sex is for spousal enjoyment and bonding and for procreation.  If it's used outside of that context, it's misused (though see here for some further nuances).  So we need to preserve the ethical use of sex, but there is no need for this to lead us to an obsessive attitude towards it.  Again, the more "sexually liberal" components of our modern society deserve our gratitude for challenging the unhealthy neuroticism about sex that, unfortunately, has been common in a lot of "conservative" and Christian circles in recent times.

Another concern/objection some people will have which I should deal with while we're on the subject is that there is an inherent problem with the actual Catholic teaching with regard to sex, even interpreted in the best and most balanced way possible, because it still forbids sex outside of the marriage of a man and a woman.  The concern is that this is contrary to basic human nature which is "designed" to allow sex to happen in a broader context.  Since the Christian position is out of accord with human nature, it naturally leads to frustration, guilt, despair, and mental health issues.  This is a big topic, and I can't do it justice in this brief context.  I will say two things, though, for now:

1. The first question we have to ask when we come across any idea, whether we like it or not, is Is this idea really true or not?  Just because something is very hard for us, contrary to our deep desires, and leads to all sorts of practical problems, that doesn't in itself necessarily prove that it is not real.  Reality has no obligation to make things easy for us, and, as we all know, it all too often cashes in on that lack of obligation.  In the Christian view, we live in a fallen world and are in a fallen state.  Instead of being the harmonious and peaceful world God made in the beginning, the world is now chaotic and divided.  Everything is at odds with everything else.  Unfortunately, it is often the case that ethics is in conflict with the tendencies of human nature.  That's why ethics is notoriously hard.  We are all often called to do very difficult and painful things.  Some of us are called to extreme forms of this - like being ethically bound to stand up for justice even to the point of enduring the physical or psychological torture of persecutors.  Some are called to be martyrs.  In this fallen state of the world, our desires are often at odds (and deeply and seriously so) with the values we should seek and how we should live.  This is a very unfortunate state of affairs, but does that prove it is not the actual state of affairs?  Personally, I find the evidence for the truth of Catholic Christianity compelling, and that gives me a reason to embrace Catholic moral teaching.  As much as I empathize with those who feel the weight of difficulty Catholic moral teaching can bring sometimes - and as much as I myself often feel that burden personally in various ways - I do not find in this a convincing argument against the truth of the Catholic worldview.  So I must follow where I think the evidence leads, as we all must.

2. Sometimes, we simply can't do it.  There are those who break down - physically, mentally, emotionally - under the weight of what happens to them in life, whether that comes to them unavoidably or through their own choice to do the right thing.  This is not a failure; it is simply a reality.  We are only expected to do the best we can.  But, oftentimes, we find that we are more resilient than we previously thought.  People can find ways to survive and even thrive under seriously adverse circumstances and while pursuing extremely difficult and painful courses of action.  Perhaps sometimes we paint certain conditions as impossible when they are not always so.  Once we accept reality and decide to learn how to live within it, sometimes - sometimes - we find that things are brighter than we thought they could be.  Sometimes there are compensations for our pain that we didn't anticipate.  This also is something important to bear in mind.

As I mentioned earlier, Christianity can sometimes be like the sabra fruit.  It can be very, very prickly on the outside, but it is full of great sweetness on the inside.  Following Christian morality can be very hard.  But it also brings with it much reward in this life.  And, at the end of our lives, when we finish the race, Christianity tells us that we shall reap a fruit that is beautiful, glorious, and satisfying beyond our wildest ability to imagine.  If we follow the Good, we will reap it in full in the end.  We will find God, the fullness and source of all Being and all Good, and in him all creaturely goods fulfilled and summed up and embraced.  Once again, I find myself wanting to quote C.S. Lewis:

Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [New York: Touchstone, 1996], 190-191).

There is that fundamental paradox again.  Because of who we are and who God is, the only way to truly find and affirm ourselves is to give up our lives conceived of as our own apart from God, to give ourselves wholly to God, and to find ourselves restored and grounded in him.  But at any rate, this topic moves us into fundamental questions about the nature of reality and therefore goes beyond the scope of what can be done in this article.  However, whether we agree with Christian sexual morality or not - understood in its best form - we can at least distinguish it from the obsessive, scrupulous, fearful attitude that has often been associated with it but which is actually contrary to its best practice.

For more on the topics of sex and the human body, I will refer you to Pope St. John Paul II's famous Theology of the Body, which sums up modern Catholic moral teaching in these areas to a great degree.  You can read a (very) long summary of John Paul's teaching here (it's summarizing a very long collection of lectures given over a series of five years by the Pope).  Despairing of finding a reasonably short summary of the teaching, I once again took up exploring the potentialities of AI (ChatGPT) and asked it to summarize the Pope's teaching overall and in a few specific areas.  I think it did a pretty good job, though it didn't capture every aspect or every nuance.  You can read those (much shorter) summaries here.  And here is an article I wrote up on this subject a couple of years ago.  You can also read more from the Catechism of the Catholic Church on this topic here.

Conclusion

In conclusion, then, Christian morality, rightly understood and in its best form, promotes a nuanced view of the self and of human nature.  It critiques both those who would idolize the self and those who would denigrate it.  It challenges those who believe we are good enough by ourselves without God's grace and also those who would say we are not good enough even with God's grace.  It warns us against licentiousness and moral laziness, but also cautions us against excessive scrupulosity.  It promotes a positive and celebratory view of the human body and sex but also reminds us to be wary of how both of these can be abused without proper protections and safeguards.

Some Thoughts on Male and Female, the Body, and Human Sexuality

What I want to do here is lay out some thoughts, informally, about male and female, the body, and human sexuality.  I'm not attempting to give a thorough treatise of everything that must be said about these complex issues, just jotting down some important ideas.  My thinking draws from the teaching of the Catholic Church (such as can be found here and here, and which was famously expounded upon in Pope St. John Paul II's well-known lectures on the Theology of the Body), combined with some ideas and observations of my own.

Male-Female Complementarity, Sexuality, and Marriage

God designed the human race to exist in two complementary forms--male and female.  He did this because relationality is a central part of reality.  God himself is a unity, but not simply a unity.  His Being also involves relationality, as he is a Trinity--one God in three Persons.  The very center and pinnacle of reality is the life and love of the Triune God, and creation is simply a spilling over of that love as God manifests his glorious life in the created world and we are brought to share in it.  The complementary nature of males and females in the human race highlights relationality.  Relationships involve the giving and receiving of selves, and the male-female complementarity of humanity allows for an abundance of this sharing of selves.  Of course, this sharing doesn't happen only between males and females, but it happens (at least within the human race) in one of its deepest ways in male-female relationships.

This sharing of selves in male-female relationships is seen most profoundly in marriage--and especially in sacramental marriage.  Marriage (in the Catholic view) is supposed to be a stable, permanent, committed relationship between a man and a woman in which one of the greatest examples of the sharing of selves can happen in the human race.  When we talk about "sharing of selves," we're talking about giving and receiving.  Husbands and wives give themselves in a deeply profound way to each other in the marriage relationship.

The human self involves both body and soul.  These cannot be separated from each other, for we humans are not simply bodies, or souls in bodies, but we are a unit of body-and-soul.  In the marriage relationship, husbands and wives give themselves body and soul to each other.  They give their whole selves to each other in a uniquely profound way.

The body plays an essential role in this.  When husbands and wives give their bodies to each other, this is both a part of and also symbolizes the complete gift to each other of their entire selves.  An essential component of maleness and femaleness is the unique bodily characteristics of males and females.  The bodies of males and females are designed for each other.  There is a physical, biological, sexual attraction that exists between males and females.  Men (generally) delight in the female body, and women delight in the male body.  In the marriage relationship, husbands give their bodies to their wives and wives give their bodies to their husbands, and both husband and wife are fulfilled as they delight in each other's bodies and also delight in the enjoyment their spouse finds in their own body.  This delight and enjoyment are manifested in many ways--enjoying the beauty of each other's bodies, acts of physical affection and intimacy, etc.--culminating in the sexual act itself.  (That's not to say that the sexual act must be the immediate end of every expression of affection, etc.  It's just to say that the sexual act is the pinnacle of all the various ways in which spouses enjoy each other's bodies.  Spouses should find the fulfillment of their sexual attraction to each other in the sexual act, since God designed the sexual act--with its functions of bonding and procreation, which we'll talk about further below--to be the place where sexual enjoyment reaches its fulfillment and climax.)

How does nakedness fit in?  The showing of the whole body is part of and symbolic of the revealing and giving of the whole self.  Being naked in front of someone implies being vulnerable, letting one's inner/deeper self be seen and accessed.  (When the whole body is seen, our private bodily parts are seen, and this is part of and symbolic of our inner selves being seen.  That's why physical nakedness is so often used as a metaphor for other kinds of general exposure of self.  "He could read my thoughts.  I felt naked.")  This is why we wear clothes in general public life.  Trust is required when we bare ourselves, but trust cannot be taken for granted in a fallen, corrupt, sinful world.  If we bare ourselves, we subject ourselves to possible objectification, scorn, contempt, ridicule, abuses, etc., which can damage our inner selves which we want to protect from such things.  People can disrespect our bodies and their private parts, and they can disrespect our inner selves.  This is why Adam and Eve were naked--there was unfallenness, so there was no lack of trust, no possibility of abuse.  And that's why clothes were introduced after the Fall.  So when husbands and wives get naked in front of each other, they are being vulnerable, exercising trust, baring themselves--their private body parts and their inner selves--to each other, giving themselves to each other as a gift, and they want to enjoy and be enjoyed--but as persons, not as disrespected objects.

Also, sexuality is a deeply intimate part of a person's self and life.  In sex, we bare ourselves body and soul in a uniquely profound way.  Our passions are intense and play a more central role in our experience than they do in much of ordinary life, where a more objective reason (hopefully!) tends to have greater influence, and this makes us vulnerable.  (How many times do people do things in the heat of sexual passion they would find absurdly irrational at any other time?)  Sex inclines us body and soul to each other.  Physically, we bond.  Spiritually and personally and in every way, we bond.  Love of that sort creates vulnerability, because when we love, when we bond, we can be hurt.  When we share and unify, we can be hurt.  In many ways, in sex, some of our deepest desires, longings, and concerns are expressed, as we enter into an intimate relationship which bonds us to another human being--what we want, what we love, but which makes us vulnerable.  We keep people at greater distance generally, because it is such a commitment of self to break down those barriers and engage in the intimacy of sex.  (That's one reason why promiscuity is often so painful emotionally, and why casual dating often leads to much heartache.  We are treating as casual something that is wired to be something deep, profound, and permanent.  We are giving our very selves in a way that lacks the protection required for such giving.)  Therefore, the sharing of sex is part of and symbolic of the deep, intimate sharing of selves in general.  It makes sense, then, that the parts of our body that we consider our "private parts" are those parts that have associations with sex to varying degrees.  To be naked, then, is to share our private body parts and our private inner selves, especially those parts connected to sex which is itself an intimate sharing of selves.

Of course, sex is also connected to procreation.  That is its most obvious and immediate function, as is evident biologically.  But procreation is not its only function.  It is also an expression of affection and love, bonding, etc.  But these all fit together, for the love and bonding is indeed designed for the good of the husband and the wife, but also for the making of a family structure in which new life will be brought into the world and raised and nurtured.  Love and commitment lived out in life is the framework needed for the production and nurturing of new human life.  God designed the most intimate and dramatic expression of love between two persons, a male and a female--the sexual act--to be the mechanism by which new life is brought into the world, showing that life and love are intimately bound up together.  Love leads to life, and life is love.  In the Trinity, there is one God in Three Persons.  The relationship of the Father and Son produces the Holy Spirit.  The love of the Trinity is the basis of creation, our very existence, as well as our final destiny as human beings and our salvation.  We are destined to enjoy the Beatific Vision, which is sharing in the Trinitarian life and love.  So human love in general, and especially love between males and females, and especially married love, and the sexual act in particular as a dramatic expression of this love, is made a metaphor and revelation of what reality is all about at the deepest level, what our human destiny is all about, and what salvation in Christ is all about.  Hence, marriage is a created reality, but Christ raised it to a sacrament--a sign and means of grace.

We can see from God's having made marriage a central creation ordinance and a sacrament that he has put a very high value and sacredness on romantic and sexual love and the sexual act.  "Sacramentality" carries the idea of a kind of special communication of the divine.  Of course, this manifests itself in many ways in the marriage relationship in general, but one of the ways it manifests itself is in the very nature of romantic and sexual love and the sexual act.  There is a mystical quality to sexual relationality and the sexual act.  Like many other things--music, art, nature--but in some ways even more profoundly, sexuality is a doorway to experience of the transcendent.  That's one reason it has been so central in human experience and culture.  Much of our poetry, music, stories, etc., are associated with it.  In many cultures, it has even played a role in religious and mystical rituals and experiences.  It has mind-altering effects in some ways similar to that which can be produced by certain drugs or medicinal substances (which have also often been used in religious experiences in various cultures) or by deep meditation and other forms of spiritual or religious experience.  The connection between two persons experiencing sexual attraction or relationships or involved in sexual acts in some ways transcends any other relational connection possible to us in this life.  In this way, it functions as a kind of special appetizer for the Beatific Vision.  It is an immensely powerful experience.  I would not say that sexual relationality is the closest overall we get to the Beatific Vision in this life.  The Eucharist, for example, certainly takes a higher place.  But purely in terms of the mystical experience of relationality, it is no doubt among the highest and most profound that we can have in this life.

(Although my primary focus here is on the body and sexuality, it needs to be said that, of course, the total giving of selves in marriage that sex symbolizes goes far beyond sex itself.  It involves the hard work of loving throughout life, sacrificing one's self for the good of the other, dealing with the ongoing, daily, and sometimes "mundane" aspect of living together--maintaining a household, raising children, comforting in affliction, easing burdens, practicing patience and forgiveness, learning the art of compromise and unselfishness, being faithful through adversity, etc.  The joy of marriage is not just physical, but also spiritual and personal, and marriage involves not only joy in an ecstatic sort of sense but also commitment, sacrifice, penance, hard work, etc., and the fruits and satisfactions these bring.  In all of these things together the love of married couples is fully lived out.)

All of this is why God designed sex to happen only in committed, protected relationships.  It requires the protection and trust of commitment.  To avoid harm, it requires stability--for the sake of the two persons themselves and also for the sake of the family structure that is the context of the procreation and raising of children.  It requires a stable, protected place for love and life to be kept safe and nourished.  And the relationship God designed for this purpose is marriage--which involves the coming together of a male and a female.  Sex in any other context is forbidden, for any other context robs sex of some of its essential elements.  Masturbation, for example, robs it of its association with relationships and the giving of selves.  It becomes simply an activity for personal self-gratification.  Homosexual acts remove it from its divinely-designed context of male-female relationships.  As we've mentioned, God designed sex for the bonding and support of husband and wife and also for procreation.  It should not be intentionally removed from this context, or it is misused, even if some elements of good sexual relationships--a great degree of affectionate bonding, for example--are present.  Sex between males and females but outside of a marriage relationship lacks the necessary support and commitment both for the safe bonding of the partners and also for the procreation and raising of children--a task which requires a great degree of commitment and permanency.  Adultery breaks the commitment of marriage and harms the bonding between spouses and the stable family structure for the raising of children.  And so on.

Sometimes people these days criticize the Christian doctrine of sexuality--particularly the idea that sex is to happen only in heterosexual marriage relationships--as condemning other expressions of sexuality arbitrarily and for no purpose.  "What's the big deal about sex between unmarried people, or homosexual sex, or masturbation, etc.?"  But this objection ignores all the reasons discussed in the previous paragraph, and it also ignores the deep sacredness of the sexual act.  Contrary to the way it seems often to be treated in our culture, sex is not simply a hobby or a fun extra-curricular activity or a nice way to pass the time.  It is profoundly sacred.  And, like all things, it belongs ultimately to God and not to us.  God designed it for particular purposes and to be used in particular ways, and he puts very high value on it, so when we take it and twist it away from the divine intentions for it and use it however we see fit, we commit a serious act of sacrilege.  We take something holy that belongs to God and treat it as if it is ours to do with as we will, according to our desires and regardless of God's.  Imagine someone coming into your bedroom and, upon seeing some memento of great value to you up on a shelf, after being told by you how important it is to you and how you want it to be treated, declares that all your concerns are "silly" and "arbitrary," takes it down from the shelf, and decides to use it for his own purposes--perhaps as a doorstop, or even in a more serious way but a way contrary to your deep desires for how it should be treated.  Perhaps that can give a bit of a hint of God's point of view when we misuse sexuality.

Male-Female Complementarity Outside of Marriage

But what about male-female relationships outside of marriage?  Does the male-female complementarity of humanity have any function or role in other human relationships or in human society more broadly?  Yes, it does.  There are many ways in which this complementarity plays and can play a role.  It plays a role in the broader society, as men and women contribute their unique points of view, interests, and abilities to the general goal of furthering the good of society.  Men and women can be friends, and, while such friendships partake of the same general nature as friendships between members of the same sex, there are often elements of the male-female complementarity involved.  For example, men often tend to be more empathetic towards women than towards other men, or they feel a greater desire to protect and support them.  Men and women, even outside of marriage, find each other attractive and are drawn to each other's beauty.  (This includes both visible, physical beauty, and also things we might not think of, such as the enjoyment of the sound of the other sex's voice in speaking or singing.)  This can manifest itself in art, such as in the enjoyment of paintings that express the beauty of human beings, both male and female.  Men and women also find the male-female relationship itself beautiful, and they often naturally enjoy illustrations of it, whether drawn from real-life (just think of the excitement of bridesmaids as they help the bride get ready to be married) or from imaginative portrayals (think, for example, romantic comedies).

But what about nudity?  Can it ever be licit for men or women to enjoy any portrayal of the nude body of the opposite sex outside of marriage?  Pope St. John Paul II, in his Theology of the Body, answered yes to this question (though with great caution).  Nudity is not inherently an evil.  The Book of Genesis seems to make this pretty clear, as it portrays the idyllic state of unfallen humanity in the Garden of Eden as a state of nudity.  The danger of nudity in our world comes not from any inherent problem with nudity per se but with the fact that nakedness, in a fallen world, inherently invites corruption--disrespect of the body and the person, and objectification, where a person's naked body is used by someone to gratify their own desires outside of the proper relational context.  General nudity requires a kind of general assumption of righteousness and trust, and a general self-control, which can't be had in this world.  However, in limited and very carefully-controlled contexts, Pope John Paul II said that the beauty of nudity can be enjoyed even outside of the marriage relationship--such as in certain forms of art.  (Think of the nudes in the paintings of the Sistine Chapel.)

All male-female relationships outside of marriage, however, are potentially dangerous, because male-female complementarity naturally tends towards the full gift of soul and body that ought to take place only in a marriage relationship.  Men and women can be friends, but they must always be on their guard against their friendship evolving into a deeper kind of relationship of the sort that only belongs in marriage.  Men and women can enjoy the beauty of the opposite sex, but they must constantly be on their guard against that enjoyment evolving into an attempt to find sexual fulfillment and gratification outside of marriage.  We want to avoid two extremes here.  We want to avoid simply condemning wholesale any male-female relationality of any sort outside of marriage, but we also want to avoid a laziness that does not take proper guard towards protecting such relations from corruption.  We want to avoid a kind of paranoid fear on the one hand, and a kind of moral carelessness on the other.  And relationships within marriage are not void of danger either.  Objectification, abuse, neglect, and many other evils are just as possible within marriage as they are without--some forms even more possible.

Considering these dangers and the extremes we must avoid, how do we draw the lines properly and maintain the proper balance?  As in many areas of life, this requires the virtue of prudence.  There are some clear rules given to us in the moral law, but the application of these rules requires the development of prudence.  Prudence is a gift of God, but it is also a skill that must be learned, and we get better with practice and experience.  In prudential matters, there is often not a one-size-fits-all, easy answer to all questions.  The application of moral principles requires discernment.  We must be aware of the complexities, details, and nuances of particular situations.  We must be aware of ourselves--our personalities, our tendencies, our inclinations, our strengths, our weaknesses, our level of wisdom, etc.  We must recognize relevant cultural issues.  Think of drinking alcohol.  There is nothing inherently wrong with drinking alcohol in moderation.  But should everyone drink alcohol?  No.  Should children drink alcohol?  No.  Should everyone have exactly the same amount of alcohol, or drink it in all the same circumstances?  No.  (Does everyone even like alcohol?  No.  I myself can testify to that!)  With regard to male-female relations, as with many, many other areas of life, we must learn the art of discernment as we prudentially apply moral principles to our lives.  Such diversity of application can exist not only between individuals, but also between cultures, peoples, and ages.  Different cultures often draw the lines somewhat differently.  And different ages have their own emphases and concerns.  (We can think of how a pope allowed Michaelangelo to paint nudes in the Sistine Chapel, later popes had them covered up, and then a later pope had the coverings removed.)  We need to strike the proper balance between thinking for ourselves as we form our own consciences and following the spiritual advice and direction of those who are skilled in moral discernment.  We must, of course, form our consciences by reason and by the revealed Word of God, and we must be guided by the application of God's revelation in the teaching of the Church.  If we are young, we must listen to the counsel of our parents and obey them, and not seek to strike out on our own without them.  We must avoid, on the one hand, an obsessive scrupulosity that is overly afraid of danger and which draws lines too narrowly, and on the other hand an overly lax attitude that does not sufficiently guard against corruption.

Not all people are called to marriage.  Some people are called to be single.  There are those called to various forms of religious life, for example.  There are those who are unable to get married for some reason or another.  There are those who are elderly and who, if they were once married, will not marry again.  Etc.  Does male-female complementarity play any role for people in these callings and situations?  Yes.  I mentioned above that society in general benefits from the unique insights, points of view, sensitivities, and abilities of men and women.  This certainly plays a role in something like religious life.  Religious orders of women, and individual women in religious life, contribute something unique in addition to what is contributed by religious societies of men and men in religious life.  Also, the relationship of single persons to God can tie in to the sacramental meaning of marriage.  Marriage symbolizes the relationship between Christ and the Church, and points back in general to the relationship between God and his people and the relationships within the Blessed Trinity.  Being called to singleness often involves a calling to be specially devoted to God in a more direct and focused way than is often possible in the married life (because the married life involves many worldly cares).  Sometimes those called to the religious life will refer to this as being "married" to Christ.  Priests are sometimes said to have forgone a family so that the whole congregation of God's people can be their family.  We even call them "father."  Those called to the religious life are called to be a witness to all people that there is something more important than the relationships that are a part of this world.  Ultimately, it is our relationship with God that counts.  So the religious life works hand in hand with the Sacrament of Matrimony to point the world to a relationship with God.  (See here for more on religious life and the "evangelical counsels" in general.)  And those who are single for other reasons can also complement those who are married as they live their lives with special devotion to God and in forms of service which are not as accessible to those in married life.  Male-female complementarity, as we said at the beginning of this post, is one expression of the life of love and self-giving we are to practice in community in this world, and this life of love, of giving and receiving, is something that all people, whatever their state and calling, are called to participate in.

Some Practical Tips for Living a Chaste and Virtuous Life

Living a virtuous life is not easy.  As fallen creatures, the path to holiness involves a lifelong struggle to fight against our disordered fallen nature and its natural inclinations to sin and stupidity.  But sometimes we make the journey harder than it needs to be by allowing our thoughts to get confused.  So let me provide here just a few practical tips for a smoother journey towards holiness with regard to male-female relationality and sexuality.  (In Catholic language, "chastity" is basically a condition of virtue with regard particularly to sexuality.)

As Aristotle famously pointed out, a lot of times error and vice are found in the extremes, and virtue is found in the mean between the extremes.  One set of extremes that is often a pitfall for those seeking to live a holy life involves, one the one hand, laziness and carelessness with regard to sin and bad habits, and, on the other hand, an excessive fear, obsession, or even paranoia about these things.  Those inclined towards the former extreme need to be reminded that sin is a serious matter.  The fundamental nature of sin is opposition to God and the moral law, and this attitude is the essence of all wickedness and the fount of all misery (because God is the Supreme Good).  We need to take God with the utmost seriousness, and therefore sin needs to be our mortal enemy.  This is why the Bible is always telling us to "fear" God--that is, to have a proper recognition of the gravity of who God is and to fear being against him as the greatest of all calamities.  To be righteous is to love God above all things, so our ultimate goal in life should be to please him and enjoy him perfectly and eliminate all sin and all tendencies to wickedness in our life.  The more virtuous a person becomes, the less such a person will come to tolerate even venial sin, for the clearer our vision is of the greatness and beauty of God, the more repulsive all sin will seem to us.  This should be the chief aim of our entire life.

But the other extreme--obsessive fear and obsession about sin--can also be a serious problem, especially for those particularly inclined towards it.  Such people need to be reminded that what really matters is the fundamental choice of our life--are we choosing God as our chief good, or are we ejecting him out of that place in order to put something else there?  Is God the one we choose above all else?  This is not a matter of feelings or the strength of feelings, but of the will.  What do we choose to put supreme value on?  If we choose to follow God as our chief goal, and we orient our lives towards seeking him as our greatest value and ultimate end, then we can be sure that we are in a right relationship with him, a state of grace, and everything will come out fundamentally right in the end.  The only thing that can put us out of the reach of God's salvation is mortal sin--and mortal sin doesn't mean all sin; it doesn't even mean all serious sin (objectively speaking).  Mortal sin involves a deliberate, fully-informed, fully-aware, intentional choice to adopt an attitude or pursue a course of action which involves rejecting God as our supreme value and end in life, choosing instead to break from him fundamentally and go our own way.  Mortal sin is defined by being incompatible with "charity"--that is, with supreme love to God as the choice of our will.  Mortal sin is not the ways in which we regularly slip up and act inconsistently with our chief goal, the bad habits we have that tend to draw us into foolish and sinful actions, the difficulties we face in developing virtuous habits, how many times we tend to slide back into sinful tendencies, etc.  These are all natural and ordinary parts of life in a state of grace as we pursue holiness in this fallen world.  When we understand this, it will help us to relax a bit, to let go of obsessive fear.  We will remember that "there is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:18).  To "fear" God in the biblical sense is not to be obsessively afraid of him, but to recognize his supreme value and importance and therefore to take holiness with the utmost seriousness.  If we love God, and trust God, we need not live in obsessive fear, but can rest confidently in the help of his grace as we grow in holiness.  If we fall into sin from time to time, well, that is to be expected of fallen creatures struggling to be holy.  The Council of Trent actually condemns as false doctrine the idea that people can avoid all sins throughout their entire life.  "If any one saith . . . that he is able, during his whole life, to avoid all sins, even those that are venial,-except by a special privilege from God, as the Church holds in regard of the Blessed Virgin; let him be anathema" (Sixth Session, Canon 23).  When we sin, we don't need to dwell on it.  We can learn what we need to learn from it, get back up, repent, go to confession if appropriate, and then move on--like a gymnast who doesn't fall into despair every time she falls onto the mat, but just keeps getting back up and resuming her practice.  (In fact, overly obsessing about sin often has the effect of making it worse rather than better.  There's hardly a better way to ensure that something will have a strong presence in one's mind than to continually be worrying about how strong a presence it has.)

Another practical tip to make our path to holiness smoother is to recognize the difference between concupiscence and sin.  Concupiscence is the Catholic theological term for our fallen, disordered desires that have a tendency to lead us into sin.  But concupiscence, while it tends towards sin, is not itself personal sin.  Acts of sin involve the consent of the will.  Insofar as our desires happen to us without such consent, they are not sin.  So stop feeling guilty for having such desires.  You can't just banish them away with some strong act of the will.  We will all struggle against concupiscence throughout our entire lives, for that struggle is the pathway to holiness.  Holiness isn't only about avoiding sinful acts of will; it is also about developing virtuous habits and unlearning vicious (that is, un-virtuous) ones.  We are trying to learn not only to avoid individual sinful acts of will in particular cases, but also to develop habits such that we will become more and more naturally inclined towards virtuous attitudes and actions in general and away from vicious or sinful ones.  So even when you are avoiding particular acts of sin, you will still have plenty to work on in terms of building habits of virtue.  Don't be paranoid about that, but just go forward, like the gymnast I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  Keep practicing.  Don't worry if you mess up, or you haven't got a particular skill down yet very well.  Just keep going forward.  You'll keep getting better (but don't get paranoid about your rate of progress!).  You won't get fully where you want to be until after this life, though, so don't be impatient.  Be diligent, but also be tolerant of yourself and where you are.

Another, really important practical tip, one which I think a lot of people struggle with:  Don't make things to be sins that aren't.  There are enough actions in the world that are actually sinful that we don't need to be adding to them.  Reason, Scripture, and Church teaching, understood in light of each other, applied with prudence and wisdom by an informed conscience, will help us know what is sinful and what is not.  What we don't want to do is go beyond these or ignore these and let an overactive imagination add non-sinful things to the category of sin.  With regard to male-female relationality and sexuality, here are some things that are sins (I'm sure I'm not going to think of everything, but here are some things that come to mind):

1. Engaging in sexual acts outside the proper context of such acts--an established, legitimate marriage between a man and a woman.  This includes actions such as masturbation (the deliberate self-stimulation of oneself in order to achieve sexual fulfillment and gratification by oneself), homosexual sexual acts, sexual acts between unmarried men and women, etc.

2. Seeking sexual fulfillment and gratification outside of sex that takes place within a legitimate marriage relationship.

3. Within a legitimate marriage relationship, seeking complete sexual fulfillment apart from a fully complete sex act.  Romantic and sexual affection can certainly be enjoyed outside of sex or the final culminating act of sex, and romantic and sexual activity can and should involve more than just that final culminating act, but there should not be a culmination of the sexual act that hinders, blocks off, or leaves out essential elements of the sexual act--such as by using artificial contraception to block any natural procreative tendencies in a particular sexual act, by engaging in forms of sexual activity that complete the sexual act outside of the body, etc.

4. Reducing the body of another person, or onself, to the level of an object to be used to achieve personal sexual gratification.  While, of course, sexual pleasure and the enjoyment of that pleasure is a valid and good part of sexuality, legitimate sexuality should never be reduced to that, but should always involve love between two persons as persons.  This can be a sinful attitude within or without a legitimate marriage relationship.  This would also include seeking sexual relations apart from the consent of both parties.

5. Intentionally failing to practice adequate modesty.  Modesty is the practice of behaving in such a way as to endorse, practice, and promote a proper view of the body and of sexuality in all our relationships and interactions in the world.  We don't want to promote the misuse of sex or the body, or the objectification of the body, or work to tempt people into sin.  We should make reasonable effort to ensure that our behavior and interactions match and promote our moral beliefs and values and encourage ourselves and others towards virtue.

6. Being wilfully careless about sin or bad habits in these areas.  We should do our due diligence--again, without needing to get obsessive.

Now, here are some things that aren't sins (again, of course, this is not an exhaustive list):

1. Engaging in sex and seeking sexual gratification and fulfillment in its proper context (a legitimate, valid marriage between a man and a woman), with moderation and balance, without objectification, with love and care between the spouses, with consent of both parties, etc., with proper caution.

2. Proper enjoyment of the beauty of the human body, and the beauty of human relationships, romance, sexuality, etc., both within and sometimes even outside of marriage to a degree (going along with our discussion of these subjects earlier in this article)--without engaging in sex or seeking sexual fulfillment outside of marriage, without objectification, with consent, etc. with proper caution.  This is an area where people often go to unhealthy extremes in both directions, I think.  Sometimes people are too careless here.  Other times people are too paranoid.  I talked about this quite a bit earlier in this article.  It is not a sin necessarily to enjoy, to a degree, the beauty of the physical characteristics of another person, even outside of marriage.  It is not necessarily a sin to enjoy the human body portrayed in art.  It is not necessarily a sin to enjoy artistic portrayals of human relationships, including even romantic relationships, to a degree (think romantic comedies, etc.).  It is not even necessarily a sin to gain some enjoyment vicariously from other people's relationships (think of friends enjoying watching other friends "fall in love," get married, etc.).  To what degree, and in what form, such enjoyment can be legitimate, is going to be a matter of prudence and won't necessarily be the same for every person.  There is a clear, objective line, however, at the point at which this kind of enjoyment turns into an attempt at sexual gratification or fulfillment (or, of course, actually engaging in sexual acts).  There is a difficult balance here.  On the one hand, we should recognize that all enjoyment related to male-female relationality and sexuality has a natural tendency towards evolving into sexual gratification and fulfillment and actual sexual acts.  There is a real slippery slope here we must be aware of and consciously guard against.  On the other hand, we should not equate all enjoyment rooted in male-female relationality, or the beauty of the human body or human relationships or sexuality, outside of marriage with an attempt to gain sexual gratification or fulfillment.  For example, there is a point at which the enjoyment of the beauty of the opposite sex turns into an attempt to gain sexual gratification through such enjoyment, and yet it is also true that not all enjoyment of such beauty is, per se, such an attempt.  Enjoyment of beauty in this area, though intrinsically related to the desire for sexual fulfillment, is yet broader than an attempt at such fulfillment.  If this wasn't the case, we would have to equate, for example, someone seeking to gratify sexual desire by means of pornography with a person enjoying a romantic comedy--which seems absurd, and I think it is in fact absurd.  So, again, caution is called for here, but not paranoia.  (For more, see here and here.)

3. Having and enjoying friendships with members of the opposite sex, with proper balance and caution.  I would also include here, particularly for those with homosexual tendencies and inclinations, the enjoyment of relationships with members of the same sex.  While homosexual sexual acts are invalid, along with attempts at homosexual marriage, or seeking sexual fulfillment in a homosexual relationship, yet there can be friendships and relationships between members of the same sex which can involve elements of love, enjoyment of beauty, etc., short of sexual acts or sexual gratification (just as there can be between members of the opposite sex).  For a biblical example, think of the relationship between David and Jonathan portrayed in the Book of 1 Samuel.  I don't think this kind of thing is much on the radar in modern American culture, but it has been recognized at various times and places in human cultures.  (This is probably one reason why people today are always trying to turn David's and Jonathan's relationship in the Bible into a homosexual relationship.  They recognize elements in that relationship which seem to go beyond the sort of male-male friendship common in our culture, and they don't have any category in which to put such a thing except the category of homosexual sexual relationships.  Perhaps we need a greater dose of imagination here.)

4. Desires, thoughts, images in the mind, dreams, acts in dreams, etc., which do not involve the consent of the will.  Again, without the consent of the will, there might be harmful or undesirable thoughts, tendencies, acts, etc., but there is no sin (in the strict sense of a personal sinful act engaging personal culpability).  In some cases, it might be sinful to consent to or willingly cultivate certain thoughts or images in the mind, certain acts, etc., and we can sometimes be guilty of wilful negligence in terms of trying to avoid sin and harm, but the mere existence of such things without the consent of the will is not sin.  Dreams are an interesting example here.  In some cases, a person might be so conscious in a dream that they really do have consent of the will.  But this is not true for everyone.  I don't know how common it is.  In my own personal experience, I never find myself with that level of consciousness.  My dreams go on without ever bothering to ask my will if it consents.  My mind just plays out random scenarios on automatic, without my having any say in the matter.  Of course, one can learn to cultivate habits which can help to some degree to control one's automatic tendencies, but I'm sure no one can ever gain complete control over such things in this life.  In general, again, remember to distuinguish between acts of the will and other acts, and that personal moral guilt can only exist in connection to acts of the will.

5. Having romantic or sexual desires or experiencing romantic or sexual attraction.  This is not a sin, nor is it even, per se, an example of concupiscence.  The capacity and tendency to experience these desires is a normal part of being human and there is nothing wrong with it.  It is true, however, that, in a fallen world, these normal desires often become immoderate and extreme, or they end up leading us towards something wrong or harmful.  But, as we said earlier, even when natural desires turn concupiscential, there is no sin unless the will consents to something that is wrong.  To make this more concrete, we can give an example of each of these "levels":  A. A person experiences sexual desire, or is attracted romantically or sexually to another person, but in a way that does not distract them away from a virtuous life or try to lead them into sin.  This is a natural part of human psychology and physiology, and there is nothing wrong with this.  It is a good and beautiful part of human nature.  B. A person experiences such strong sexual attraction that they are tempted to fulfill that desire through inappropriate means.  Or a person is attracted to someone they ought not to seek a romantic or sexual relationship with, such as someone who is married to someone else, and they are tempted by their desires to commit sin with that person - say, for example, adultery.  In these examples, normal human desire has crossed over into the realm of concupiscence because now the desire is ordered towards something wrong and is trying to draw a person into sin.  But even here, there is no sin unless the will consents to do something wrong.  Choosing to do what is right in such a situation is not only not sinful, but is a powerful expression of virtue.  C. A person is drawn by desire to commit adultery, and they freely choose to follow through on that desire.  Now we have actual sin.  This person needs to repent of their sin, do what they can to make up for the harm they have caused, and work to live a more virtuous life going forwards.  But at any rate, my main point here is to say that having sexual and romantic desires and attractions is normal and not something we should feel guilty about or concerned about.  Even if our desires go the way of concupiscence, we have to recognize that that is a normal part of being human in a fallen world and is still nothing to feel personally guilty about.

Someone once asked me, "How can I avoid giving in to temptation?"  There is, of course, a whole host of good advice that could be given in response to this question.  But here is what I said to the person who asked me this:  "What kind of person do you want to be?"  First of all, figure out what you believe to be true.  Given those beliefs, what is truly good and valuable, and what does it mean to be a good person?  Do you want to be a good person?  Do you want to be the sort of person who embodies, as well as you can, a living example of your beliefs and values?  If you don't, then why are you trying to avoid temptation?  The fundamental motive to avoid evil ought to be a love of what is good.  If you do want to be a person who lives out what you believe to be good and right and beautiful, then that is your strongest defense against temptation.  How do you avoid temptation?  By being motivated by the positive desire to be a different kind of person.  Looking at things this way, I think, helps us to focus on what is truly central to our choices, our attitudes, and our behaviors and to avoid the kind of fruitless efforts to avoid temptation that arise from feeling external pressure to avoid certain sins without really wanting to avoid them or to embody any opposing virtues that we ourselves truly value.

Well, much more could be said, but that's enough for now.

Published on the feast of the First Martyrs of the Holy Roman Church.

Some Musings on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Below are some musings regarding sexual and gender identity and how we tend to think about these issues these days.    I'm not really interested here in trying to provide a complete philosophical or scientific case for my ideas, though I think what I'm saying is philosophically sound and consistent with what we really know from science.  I just want to plant some thoughts and suggestions that might provide an impetus for thinking through some of these things more deeply.

Until recently, the mainstream "liberal" or "progressive" party line on homosexuality was to portray it as a kind of inevitable genetic/biological binary.  There are two sorts of people one can be born as - "gay" or "straight."  One is pretty much either one or the other, for the most part.  And if you are born one of these, that's what you are.  It's determined by your biology and not at all a product of cultural influence, and it is unchangeable and clear.  Once one figures out which one is, one will be determined by this identity and unable to escape from it.  I'm oversimplifying a little bit, but not much.  This is, by and large, pretty much how most liberal or progressive people tended to think about it.  Many promoters of the ethicality of homosexual acts have tried to bolster their case by arguing that people don't choose to be "gay" or "straight."  They are just "born that way," and what can anybody do about it?  It's just who they are.

My own take on this view is that it is unrealistic and too simplistic.  I'm sure that there are biological and genetic factors that influence sexual orientation, but I think that a much larger role is probably played by cultural factors than people have wanted to admit.  To think about this, it helps if one has a good degree of self-awareness about one's own sexual psychology and potentialities and is aware of how human psychology in general works in this area.  Sexuality in human psychology is very flexible and can naturally be drawn in lots of different directions.  I think that a large number of people are quite capable of being drawn to lots of different kinds of sexual practices and expressions--including sexual experiences with both males and females.  A lot of this, I think, depends on the cultural and moral expectations and values one has imbibed, as well as one's personality and how inclined it is to stick within cultural norms.  Within Western history, until recently, anything other than monogamous heterosexual sex has been considered morally abhorrent and even repulsive, and this has no doubt influenced a lot of people over the centuries.  Most people would have felt a strong sense of inappropriateness, guilt, and even revulsion if they found themselves contemplating sexual acts with a member of their own sex.  They would have tended to close off such pathways in their minds and viewed themselves as in accord with the heterosexual norm.  In recent times, this has changed, as homosexuality has been mainstreamed to a great degree, as well as other sexual practices frowned upon in previous generations.  Young people today do not carry the same cultural antipathy to such things, and they are even encouraged by the culture to explore these areas of their psychology, to look inside themselves and ask questions like, "Am I attracted to men, or to women, or to both?", etc.  They are encouraged also more and more to experiment in various ways with these kinds of things.  They are therefore finding that they are capable of finding pleasure and attraction within same-sex sexual relationships or experiences or in other forms of what historically would have been considered "sexually deviant behavior."  But I don't think that these modern people are, for the most part, all that different in their psychological sexual potentialities than people in the past.  I think that a great many people through history have had similar sexual potentialities.  The difference is that, because of changing cultural views and norms, modern people feel more comfortable allowing themselves to explore these potentialities, and so they have been able to find and admit these things in themselves in a way most people in the past would have found unthinkable.  Again, I don't deny that there are probably significant biological/genetic factors involved in same-sex attraction.  I'm sure that some people are more naturally drawn to and satisfied with same-sex sexual acts and relationships than others.  But I think that this potentiality is more widespread than those who explicitly identify as gay or lesbian or who practice homosexual acts.  It is probably a matter of degree rather than "you have it or you don't."

In recent times, up until just the past few years, the "liberal" party line was to look at sexual orientation as a deterministic biological binary for the most part, and this, I think, influenced how people identified themselves.  Most people felt that they must be either "gay" or "straight," and they eventually locked themselves into one identity or the other.  I'm sure some of the reasons for why some identified one way and some another had to do with biological/genetic tendencies, but I'm pretty sure a lot of it had to do with quirks of individual personality and cultural development as well.  That is, I think it highly likely that a lot of people have had the capability of finidng pleasure and attraction in same-sex acts and relationships, to varying degrees, but different people have developed these potentialities differently based on a whole host of personal and cultural influences, with some of them ending up identifying as "gay" while others identified as "straight."  Over the past few years, however, the lines of the gay-straight binary have been blurred, and people have more and more started to think of sexual orientation as manifesting itself in a wider variety of ways, often along a kind of spectrum.  I think this is why we've seen a growth in people identifying as "bisexual," "pansexual," etc.  I think that a lot of these people would have identified simply as "gay" or "straight" if they had come of age a few years earlier when the "progressive" viewpoint was different.  But now they are encouraged to explore their sexual potentialities more widely, and so they are discovering that they are capable of sexual excitement and attraction in a whole lot more ways than they probably previously would have realized.  The cultural norms have changed so as to allow and encourage them to explore their psychology and to experiment in more directions.  (I'm not saying that there weren't recognized "bisexuals," etc., in the past, but it was less frequent.  There was more of a binary and less of a spectrum kind of view, and sexual orientation was viewed more rigidly and less fluidly.)  People are typically highly influenced by prevailing cultural trends and ideas, and this cultural "zeitgeist" can influence and even determine to a great degree what people are able and willing to find in themselves and how they interpret their characteristics and experiences.

I think a lot of these same kinds of observations are also relevant with regard to the modern "trans" movement.  Males and females (using these terms in the classic way as referring to biological and anatomical characteristics oriented towards playing certain roles in reproduction) have a lot of diversity within their ranks.  The spectrum of attitudes, interests, behaviors, ways of thinking, etc., within the broad categories of "male" and "female" is a vast one.  In the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the feminist movement worked hard to break down stereotypes regarding alleged general differences between males and females.  They attacked ideas such as that women are fit only for certain social roles, or that they are more emotional than men, or that their minds work in fundamentally different ways, or that they must have certain interests (like women being attracted to makeup, dresses, dolls, etc., while men are supposed to be attracted to cars and trucks, beer, sports, etc.).  In this regard, I often think of a line from the 1989 made-for-TV movie, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, in which Keisha Knight-Pulliam played the main character, Sir Boss, who had come to medieval Camelot from the future (1980s) United States.  At one point, when Queen Guenivere is trying to give King Arthur governing advice, Arthur says to her, "These are things for a man's mind."  Guenevere replies, "But Sir Boss says there is no difference between a man's and a woman's mind."  From the perspective of 1980s liberalism, this was a very progressive thing to say.  Guenevere was challenging Arthur's quaint, sexist medieval view (as the show-writers obviously saw it) by means of wisdom coming from the more-enlightened future.  Today, however, with the rise of the trans movement, Guenevere's statement seems almost as antiquated and offensive as the medieval view she was challenging.  The party line has changed, becoming, in some ways, almost the reverse of what it was before.  Trans ideology has to insist that there are meaningful differences between men and women other than the traditional biological, anatomical, and reproductive differences, for otherwise trans ideology is dead.  A lot of trans ideologists frequently appeal to differences in the mind to justify the currently-popular attempt to divorce "gender" from "biological sex."  They also, ironically, often try to bring back stereotypes that earlier feminists worked hard to root out.  If a young boy is found wanting to play with dolls, or to do other "girly" sorts of things, or to associate with girls, or if a young girl is found wanting to play with cars or trucks, be "tom-boyish," etc., the progressives today often want to use these as grounds for suspecting that the young boy might actually, in reality, be a young girl (in identity and in the mind, even if not in biology or anatomy).

There has been a significant increase in young people identifying as "trans" or as "gender-fluid" or "non-binary" when it comes to gender identification.  As with homosexuality, the current party line is that these people have found in themselves--or have had found in them by others--a kind of clear, absolute, unchangeable trans identity which they have to acknowledge as objective reality and which will determine their destiny.  Modern progressives take this so seriously that they are often pushing for dramatic and permanent surgical and hormonal treatments even for young children in order to try to allow them as much as possible, and as soon as possible, to "turn into" the gender they have decided to identify with.  What is the cause of this trend towards more and more young people identifying as trans?  Is it because being trans is a clear, objective state of being and there are more objectively trans people these days?  Is it that there have always been this large a number of trans people but in the past (due to the unenlightened state of the culture) they have not been able as easily to identify themselves?  I suspect, rather, that what we have here is similar to what I described above with regard to homosexuality.  While I'm sure there are, at least sometimes, biological/genetic factors that cause people to find themselves prone to identifying with the opposite gender, I think it highly likely that cultural influences are playing a large role as well.  In the 80s, or 90s, or 2000s, a young person who found themselves drawn to actions or interests associated with the opposite gender would simply have been viewed, and would have viewed themselves, as an example of the large amount of diversity that exists within the boundaries of being male or female.  Feminist ideologists would have made (and in fact did make) use of such persons and such experiences as arguments against stereotypical gender norms.  That's how the cultural ideology of the day would have led them to perceive and interpret these kinds of characteristics and experiences.  Today, however, the cultural "zeitgeist" has changed.  Now, among the most "progressive" segment of society, these same sorts of experiences tend to be taken as indicating that the young people who have them actually belong to the gender opposite the one historically associated with their biological sex.  If Johnny likes to play with dolls, or acts in more "girlish" kinds of ways, etc., instead of seeing this as an evidence of the diversity inherent in "maleness," the tendency now is to see it as evidence that Johnny, in the deepest sense, is not really male at all.  Objectively speaking, "Johnny" is the same now as he would have been if he had been born in the 1980s.  What has changed is the prevailing cultural ideology, which has caused Johnny's chraracteristics and experiences to be seen and interpreted in light of a different set of expectations and norms.

One really interesting dynamic all of this has caused is the conflict we are seeing now between trans ideologists and people still holding to the older gay or feminist ideologies.  We are seeing splits within the "liberal" or "progressive" ranks.  Some gay activists are opposing trans ideology partly on the grounds that it is seen as threatening gay identity.  This article by gay activist Andrew Sullivan, for example, argues that trans ideology is dangerous to gay kids because it encourages them and their caregivers, with regard to signs that previously might have been taken as indicating that a child is gay or lesbian, to instead read those same signs as indicating that the child might be trans.  If my analysis above is correct, this of course makes perfect sense.  Is a young person attracted to members of the same biological sex?  In the past, that probably meant they were gay or lesbian.  It showed the breadth of sexual orentation possible within the categories of "male" and "female."  Now, however, such attraction is increasingly taken to indicate that the young person actually belongs to the opposite gender, regardless of their biological sex.  After all, girls like boys and boys like girls, right?  So if I like girls, I'm probably a boy, and vice versa.  Instead of seeing homosexual attractions as indicators of just how broad and unstereotypical males and females can be, now the trend is to assume those previous stereotypes and use them to argue that the young person may be or even is likely to be the opposite gender.  (Of course, if one wanted to irritate pretty much everyone, one might suggest, as I have done above, that both the homosexual and the trans intepretation of same-sex attraction is an attempt to force something more fluid into artifically rigid categories.  Perhaps what we really have are simply a bunch of human beings with the potential to experience a great deal of sexual diversity depending on beliefs, values, cultural influences, personal background and experiences, genetic/biological traits, etc.  A spectrum, rather than a strict "gay-straight" binary.  And a greater diversity within the categories of "male" and "female" rather than rigid, more simplistic definitions of "male" and "female" requiring us to assign a person to the other gender if they don't fit into such stereotypes.)

We are also seeing more traditional feminist ideologists reacting against the trans movement for similar reasons.  (Think of J. K. Rowling's recent run-ins with the guardians of ultra-progressive orthodoxy.)  Trans activists are trying to restore gender stereotypes that feminists worked for decades to break down.  Those stereotypes were an obstacle to feminist ideology, which wanted to recognize variety inherent in males and females in order to break down differences between the sexes, but those same stereotypes are beneficial to trans idelogy, which wants to find ways to define "male" and "female" that are not dependent on biological sex.

One important implication of these musings is that thinking along these lines can challenge both homosexual and trans ideologists in terms of their tendency to see homosexual or trans identities as clear, objective, absolute, and unquestionable or unchangeable.  If sexual potentialities and proclivities are not necessarily the result of rigid, clear, objective forms within particular people but can be manifestations of the elasticity of human sexual psychology and potentiality, influenced by both biological and various cultural factors, then people who find in themselves these sorts of attractions, tendencies, characteristics, etc., need not be forced by these observations to choose some clear and rigid identity--like "gay" or "trans"--and to feel a need to commit themselves irrevocably and firmly to it.  They might find that they have the sexual elasticity to allow a greater role for their own choice in terms of what sort of sexual or gender orientation they will conform to, practice, experience, and enjoy in their lives.  They might not need to cut themselves off from the possibility of enjoying more ordinary, classical, heterosexual relationships, or of identifying with the gender historically associated with their biological sex.  They need not regard their sexual proclivities as necessarily inevitable or unchangeable or uninfluenceable.  Of course, this will be different from person to person.  I'm not saying everyone will or must take the same route.  There will probably be some people who, because of biological/genetic traits, cultural influences, or a combination of factors, may never be able to be attracted to or succeed in a classical heterosexual relationship, or be entirely comfortable with their own native gender.  What I'm doing is simply challenging the rigid, fatalistic categorizations that pretty much all modern "progressives" seem determined to apply to sexual orientation and gender-identity and to suggest that human psychology and potentialities may be more fluid and flexible than most people these days feel they can allow themselves to believe.  (And perhaps, ironically, the recent push to widen the spectrum in these areas--as manifested by increasing emphasis on categories like "pan-sexual" and "gender-fluid"--might end up having the effect of helping to make this same point in the end.  If there is more variety, fludity, and flexibility in human sexual psychology than our culture has previously tended to believe, then perhaps people who experience "sexually-deviant" desires or who find themselves at odds with gender stereotypes or expectations may not have to conclude from these things that they cannot live according to the gender associated with their biological sex or allow their beliefs and values to influence the direction in which their sexual orientations and proclivities develop.  They need not necessarily be slaves to the rigid identities the culture has tried to force them into.)

For more, see here, here, and here.

ADDENDUM 11/21/22:  I recently came across an article from the University of Sydney which indicates that research is starting to come out on sexual orientation as something more fluid and versatile, and sexual flexibility more common, than people have recently been inclined to think.  This is exactly what I'm talking about in this article.  I predict we will see more and more of this sort of research being released.  I think we could have seen such research earlier, but it's only more recently that people in mainstream culture have been willing to consider that the old, strict, gay-straight binary is not as strict and rigid as has been assumed in recent decades.  We often cause ourselves to only be able to see what we think we should see, especially when it comes to highly-charged social issues like homosexuality.  But now the culture's growing interest in "pansexuality" and seeing more fluidity and diversity in sexual expression, and the growing sense among people that it is good and healthy (and perhaps a source of social acceptance and popularity?) to find evidence of "sexual deviance" within oneself, is creating a platform where the culture is more and more allowing itself to see human sexual proclivities more realistically.  I think we are going to come more and more to realize and admit that what has locked people into rigid "straight" or "gay" categories has not been so much biological necessity but rather social structures that lock people into certain modes in terms of what they feel themselves allowed to find in themselves.