Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 06:2 (Fall 2024)
Article: The New “Conservative” Gender Egalitarianism: A Critique Of Abigail Favale’s "The Genesis Of Gender" And Nancy Pearcey’s "The Toxic War On Masculinity"
Author: David Talcott

Eikon 6.2 (Fall 2024) p. 93

The New “Conservative” Gender Egalitarianism: A Critique Of Abigail Favale’s The Genesis Of Gender And Nancy Pearcey’s The Toxic War On Masculinity

David Talcott

Dr. David Talcott is a Fellow of Philosophy and Graduate Dean of New Saint Andrews College. He and his wife, Anna, have seven children. His most recent book is Plato, published with P&R Publishing.

Eikon 6.2 (Fall 2024) p. 94

As American culture continues to degrade, Christians increasingly find themselves needing to defend biblical ways of thinking. Two recent books aggressively defend the Christian view of man and woman by debunking important and influential misunderstandings present in the broader culture. Yet, as helpful as these books are, they inadvertently abandon the natural differences between the sexes and the practical, functional outworking of those differences.

Abigail Favale’s The Genesis of Gender artfully deconstructs the idea that transgenderism is good for human beings, especially women.1 Starting with its origins in feminism, she explains the emerging “gender paradigm,” which “affirms a radically constructivist view of reality,” according to which “there is no creator and so we are free to create ourselves. The body is an object with no intrinsic meaning.”2 In contrast, the Christian view affirms God as Creator and sees both men and women as beings of high intrinsic worth. She writes, “once understood as created, selfhood, including one’s sex, becomes a gift that can be accepted rather than something that must be constructed. This initiates a different orientation to all of reality, even one’s own body: a shift from control to receptivity.”3 We can receive our created natures as gifts that have a purpose. In the case of sexual difference, she argues this purpose is symbolic: representing love, unity, and wholeness from two different angles. The male/female difference is a difference in being that has a symbolic meaning; there is no difference of activity or function. She writes that we shift “from doing to being. This opens the possibilities of sex-lived-

Eikon 6.2 (Fall 2024) p. 95

out, freeing us from constricting stereotypes and compelled performance.”4 Thus, Christian men and women are freed to live out their distinctive mode of being in an endless variety of ways, all of which testify to God’s creative goodness.

Nancy Pearcey’s The Toxic War on Mascu...