Book reviewed by Andrew Sloane, September 2024
The Gender Revolution: A Biblical, Biological and Compassionate Response
by Patricia Weerakoon, with Robert Smith and Kamal Weerakoon
Sydney, Australia: Matthias Media, 2023; 199 pages
ISBN 9781925424973, first edition, paperback
AUD$19.95
It is becoming something of an unfortunate cliché to note how contested discussions of gender and sexuality have become, and how much the landscape has changed in the last decade in Western democracies. It is territory that most Christians would feel ill-equipped to address, especially those who hold to a traditional theology and ethic of sex, sexuality, and gender. In this book Dr Patricia Weerakoon, a retired Christian sexologist, addresses these complex and fraught issues with the aim of equipping ordinary Christians to understand and respond to these issues—and more importantly—those who are struggling with them.
With the help of her son, lecturer and Presbyterian minister Rev. Dr Kamal Weerakoon, and Rev. Dr Robert Smith, lecturer in theology at Sydney Missionary and Bible College, Dr Weerakoon orients her readers to the social and cultural context of the discussion and presents a response that engages biblically and theologically with the relevant issues of sex, embodiment, gender, and identity. She does so explicitly from a conservative “heteronormative” evangelical perspective that engages openly and critically with the relevant scientific and medical data. In this she is largely successful, although I suspect that those who adopt a different theological framework would find many of her arguments unpersuasive.
Let me briefly outline the argument of the book before I note what I appreciate about it, as well as what I found problematic.
The book opens with a brief preface justifying the need for the book. While the concern for vulnerable people is clearly evident, so is a focus on cultural critique: “There is a war going on in Western culture, and gender is one of the chief battlefronts” (p. 3). One of the authors’ chief aims is to combat what they call “transgender ideology” and its damaging effects on young people. The first chapter, “A world awhirl with words,” seeks to chart the nature of this ideology and its development with reference to how word-use shapes our imaginations. Chapter 2, “Who am I? Seeking the source of our identity,” traces this to a shift in cultural views of the nature of the self and of our identity. In contrast to a Christian notion that grounds identity in who we are as redeemed creatures, expressive individualism sees our identity as self-determined and inward. We are who we see (or feel) ourselves to be, and any contesting of that is illegitimate. The authors counter that with a redemptive–historical view of Christian identity, before moving in Chapter 3, “Harmony and Disharmony,” to an examination of the biology of sexual development, sexual attraction, and their relationship to what they see as the biblical view of sex. This binary view of sex, and what they see as its necessary expression in binary (but not stereotypical) gender expression, is the focus of Chapter 4, “Embodied and binary: Is biology destiny?” They recognise the reality of intersex conditions but see their existence as consistent with a binary view of sexed embodiment determined at conception. They also contend that the “transgender ideological” claim that changing the body is an appropriate response to the distress of gender dysphoria is false and damaging.
Chapter 5, “Desire, orientation, romantic love and choice,” addresses specific questions relating to sexual attraction. Weerakoon’s experience as a sexologist is evident in this chapter as she helpfully discusses the physiology and psychology of desire and orientation, as well as the important influence of character development and the will. It is particularly useful (if quite countercultural) to recognise that sexual desire is not an unstoppable force that must be released for psychological health. Weerakoon also notes that there can be a biological predisposition towards same sex attraction—but given the complexities of attraction and desire, this does not entail that one might be “born gay.”
As is evident from the title, Chapter 6, “Gendered behaviour and transgender ideology: Biblical, biological and cultural views,” locates questions of gender in relation to a “transgender ideology.” This chapter makes some helpful points, including the reality of gender distress in children and young people, and that “gender nonconformity is not synonymous with gender identity confusion” (p. 123). They also argue that, while gender is necessarily grounded in biological sex and ought to be lived out in conformity with it, the Bible does not establish a rigid pattern of gendered behaviours—and certainly does not affirm our gendered stereotypes. The authors’ framing of their discussion of culture around what they call the “transgender ideology” shapes both the content and tone of their discussion in this chapter in ways that some people may find off-putting.
This tone continues in Chapter 7, reflected again in the title “The minefield of management.” Once again, there is a mix of helpful discussion (especially noting the disputed and fraught nature of the data on causation and management which references the [then interim, now final] Cass review’s critical evaluation of the care of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria in Britain), and unhelpful rhetoric. Both this chapter and the next, “How should we live? Responding with compassion and truth,” reject all forms of transitioning as unfaithful to God and harmful to vulnerable persons. While in my view they overemphasise the evidence against the efficacy of transitioning (especially in adults), they do rightly note the irreversible nature of any medical or surgical intervention in children, and the associated problems of consent. Given the fluid nature of personal development in childhood and adolescence (especially around matters of sex and gender), the tendency to push early “gender affirming treatment” is indeed a matter of serious concern. A postscript and glossary deal respectively with the matter of what names and pronouns we should use with trans people and important terms.
I must confess to a clear ambivalence about this book. On the one hand, Weerakoon and her colleagues orient us to important cultural shifts in late modern capitalism and the dominance of expressive individualism and its associated notion of an incontestable privately determined sense of self. As they note, this does reinforce the notion that my gendered sense of self should take priority over and be expressed in my bodily form—including the sexed appearance of my body. The book is also broadly informative and provides an accessible entry into the complexities of the biology and sociology of sexual development. Moreover, the authors seek to be compassionate in their response to individuals who struggle with matters of sex and gender, and strongly encourage their readers to do the same. This is to be commended.
On the other hand, while I am in broad agreement with their heteronormative ethic, I disagree with them on a number of important theological and practical details, especially in relation to whether transitioning might be an appropriate response to intractable distress that some people with gender dysphoria experience. My biggest concern, however, is with the tone of the book. On (too) many occasions they adopt an unhelpfully adversarial tone, in part because of their desire to combat a pervasive “gender ideology.” Here are a few examples: “Only now, in the last decade or so, have we discovered ‘the truth’ about the human condition: that our bodies are essentially nothing more than clothes, which we can change if we don’t like the way they fit us” (p. 19); “… today we face a major problem: we have begun to manipulate and distort scientific truth and empirical research to fit the transgender ideological agenda” (p. 40); “… transgender ideology reverses hundreds of years of hard-won gains in the arena of women’s rights … A biological man can declare himself to be a woman anytime he wants to—even while he has a penis, testes, and full male characteristics and functions” (p. 65). While I would agree with (at least some of) the substance of the claims, and understand why they adopt that tone, it does not, in my view, serve them well.
Nonetheless, it is good to see a significant Australian contribution to this discussion and, so long as you understand both the tone and the intended audience of the book, it is well-worth reading. It will inform and stimulate your thinking (even at points of disagreement) and, please God, help shape a faithful and compassionate response to people in need.