The Sweetest Poisons: Preston Sprinkle's "Embodied" Chapter 2B Sex and Gender. A Review

This is the fourth installment in my series reviewing Preston Sprinkle's book Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, & What the Bible has to Say. Click HERE for the Intro to this series where I discuss my thematic concerns with the book and for an index for the full series.

In the second half of Chapter 2 Preston Sprinkle focuses in on defining and briefly exploring Sex and Gender. So let's do this.

Sex

Sprinkle has a lot to say about sex and, to quote him, "Not having sex, but biological sex" and that's fair enough. The thing that is often referred to as biological sex (1) is a really important concept in this conversation. He starts by saying that humans are sexually dimorphic and that that means that our species reproduces when the gametes of two different "kinds" of humans fuse. He then offers the first in a long list of varied definitions he provides, and seems to endorse, for "male" and/or "female" throughout this section. Here is the full list as best I can compile it (the following list are all direct quotes; italics + bold are my emphases):

1. The categories used to classify the respective roles humans play in reproduction are "male" and "female".
2. Females are distinguished from males based on their different reproductive structures.
3. Males and females also have different levels of hormones.
4. Genetically, the presence of a Y chromosome distinguishes males from females.
5. To sum it up, a person is biologically either male or female based on four things:
• Presence or absence of a Y chromosome
• Internal reproductive organs
• External sexual anatomy
• Endocrine systems that produce secondary sex characteristics
6. Feminist philosopher Rebecca Reilly-Cooper describes "female" and "male" as "general biological categories that apply to all species that reproduce sexually.
7. The American Psychological Association says, "Sex refers to a person's biological status and is typically categorizes as male, female, or intersex. There are a number of indicators of biological sex, including sex chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive organs and external genitalia."
8. [A]n organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction," and "[t]here is no other widely accepted biological classification for the sexes."(2)
9. Male and Female are categories of biological sex based on structures of reproduction.

After a number of read throughs of this section and the rest of the book, it remains unclear to me whether Dr. Sprinkle thinks that person's sex is based on a role or on certain physical characteristics. He is fairly clear later on that he doesn't think a person's sex can change even when some, or even a majority, of those characteristic change and typically people who hold that view want to reduce sex to the size of gamete a person produces—yes it is very strange to suggest that we can't know whether a person is male, female, or another sex category without measuring that person's gametes—and get a little vague on the topic of people who produce differently sized gametes or none at all. On the other hand the definition Sprinkle Provided—implying that he agreed—from the APA is probably the closest to what you would hear from trans and intersex people: sex references someone's status and that status is typically (not universally or necessarily) categorized as male, female, or intersex, and that those categories are indicated by a variety of physical factors. Honestly when I read it, Sprinkle providing that definition seemed out of place as it seems to undermine his repeated assertions that 1. Sex is binary and 2. Sex is clear (except for intersex people). I almost wonder whether he somehow glosses over terms like typically and variety of factors. 

For the record, I am inclined to accept and use Julia Serano's defintion based on it's similarity with the APA definition cited by Sprinkle and her qualifications as a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics together with her own history of research and writing on this subject:

[W]ith regards to bodies, [sex] refers to a suite of sexually dimorphic traits that may include chromosomes, gonads, external genitals, other reproductive organs, ratio of sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics...

For the purposes of making sense of  the book, I would suggest that Sprinkle most frequently means by sex and the related terms male and female, the definition he cites from Paul McHugh: 

[A]n organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction

but let the canny reader beware: he will not be consistent and that definition is subject to change in places where Sprinkle needs a more expansive definition to make his argument work. 

Sprinkle's Bracketed Intersex People.

Much of the reasons for Sprinkle's inconsistent definitions of sex may be attributable to the approach he takes in this book to the existence of intersex people—he brackets them. To be fair, I think he wants to be nice about it. He says:

The topic of intersex [sic] has its own set of questions and assumptions. It'll be better to discuss intersex [sic] head-on rather than weaving intersex [sic] in and out of conversations about non-intersex people. So, for the next several chapters, I want to focus on humans who don't have an intersex condition. My motivation for doing so is to honor my intersex friends, not to sideline them. It's common for non-intersex people to invoke "intersex" as some faceless concept in service of an argument. But I find this practice rather dehumanizing to actual intersex people, and many intersex people do as well. I'd much rather talk about (and with) intersex people extensively in a separate chapter before considering how intersex [sic] relates to our conversation. 

Let's start by recognizing and appreciating that Sprinkle is (I will assume sincerely) attempting to prioritize and center the humanity and dignity of intersex people. That is a good impulse and something that is important to keep in mind. I have done some writing of my own on the subject and have been engaging with Sprinkle about it every since his review series of Megan DeFranza's Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God. The problem in this case is that Sprinkle's decision to defer questions about how the existence of intersex people impacts the definitions of of terms like sex, female, and male has the effect of distorting the conversation. Intersex people obviously complicate simplistic, binary, and reductive accounts of sex in the human population. Sprinkle tacitly admits as much with constant caveats that he is talking about non-intersex people and with his announcement in this chapter that he is postponing any discussion of intersex people for Chapter 7. Trying to define sex, female, and male while bracketing intersex conditions and then concluding that "[A]n organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction" is bit like trying to define all animals as "mammals, birds, amphibians, and fish" while bracketing platypuses(3). When real beings don't fit the categories, we don't get to bracket them, we have to admit that our categories are imperfect and, if we want to have accurate and comprehensive categories we then re-do, or at least soften the boundaries of, our categories. You see this boundary softening in the APA and Serano's usage of qualifiers like suite of, typically, and variety of factors. 

By bracketing any incorporation of intersex people from his definition of sex, male, and female, Sprinkle erases those persons from having an impact on his argument at this point in the book, thereby justifying an over-simplified definition of key terms in the conversation. He is, in effect, cherry picking his human data and justifying it by deferring discussion of counter examples for a future Chapter. In principle that could be sort of technically acceptable if Chapter 7 itself were to somehow demonstrate conclusively that the existence of intersex people in no way impacts his conclusions here. But first Chapter 7 does not actually accomplish that, and second the effect is to leave the trusting reader with the impression that Sprinkle has made that case without actually exposing them to the argument. By the time the reader gets to Chapter 7 (I do wonder why it wasn't Chapter 3) Sprinkle's definitions of these terms are likely to have lodged in their mind as solid rather than as "provisional provided he successfully makes the case in Chapter 7" which would be the logically rigorous, and also psychologically difficult, way to read the text.

Conclusions on Sex

Beyond the above, Sprinkle meanders a bit (he briefly explores his best understanding of Judith Butler's claim that sex (and not just gender) is socially constructed but he ultimately rejects it on the basis of the "cold hard fact that sexual dimorphism exists in humans" a claim, depending on what he means by "sexual dimorphism"—he seems to be thinking of hermetically sealed categories rather than heavily populated poles along a dimorphic spectrum—, that can only work so long as he continues to bracket the existence of intersex people. His conclusion is fairly straightforward: "Our interpretations of sex and sexed bodies might be socially constructed, but sex itself is not socially constructed". Honestly I suspect he simply doesn't actually understand the philosophy involved and what it means to "assign meaning" to a phenomenon. At any rate he then moves on to gender.

Gender

Sprinkle opens this section first by saying that the distinction between sex and gender only goes back as far as the 1960s—a claim I would like to see some evidence for since C.S. Lewis made the distinction in 1946 and it may well pre-date that significantly we we recognized that the concepts themselves may have been expressed in different terms—which transition him to what he calls "the most basic and widely agreed upon definition of gender" which he takes from Mark Yarhouse:

The psychological, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female

In a footnote he claims that this is widely accepted by scholars. I don't love it but he is probably correct about it's general acceptance. He then breaks the definition down into what he says are "two different (yet overlapping) categories": gender identity and gender role. 

Before I get to an analysis of his reflection on those terms though, I want to quote Serano's definitions both since they are closer to what I would use and so you can hold them in apposition to what Sprinkle has to say.

Gender Role: a term that has been used in psychology to describe the various roles that one is expected to fulfill in society or within relationships based upon their gender status; this might include specific behaviors (e.g., acting masculine, feminine) or more formal interpersonal roles (e.g., father, mother, boyfriend, girlfriend). This phrase is used less frequently today, and has been largely replaced by (or subsumed under) the term gender expression.

Gender Identity: the gender that one identifies as. The term originated in teh field of psychology where it is generally understood to be distinct frm an individual's sex (i.e. their physical body), as well as their gender role/gender expression (i.e., outwardly-directed gender-related behaviors). While most people in our culture identify as either a boy/man or girl/woman, others come to adopt non-binary gender identities. In Whipping Girl (pp. 77-93) I introduced the term subconscious sex in order to distinguish between the conscious and deliberate act of idenitfying with a particular gender, and the more unconscious and inexplicable self-understanding of what sex/gender one should be (the latter of which many trans people experience prior to explicitly claiming that gender identity).

Gender Role

Sprinkle's treatment of this term, which he describes (he doesn't really define it) saying:

Gender roles have to do with how males and females are expected to act in any given culture.

I don't really take significant issue with his description so rather than a point-by-point analysis of his reflection on it I want to offer a few top-line observations and one critique of his sourcing for this section. 

First, I am not at all clear on why Sprinkle decided to use the term "Gender Role" rather than "Gender Expression". It may have some ideological basis (he doesn't really refer to the latter term), perhaps based in a desire not to present the concept as emerging from, or being rooted in, a person's gender identity, or because he is getting ready to talk about John Money who is thought to have coined the term; it may be as simple as the fact that his research and reading seems to have been disproportionately weighted towards TERF and trans-denying accounts which are potentially more likely to have used the term, but it isn't clear. It is odd for him to have chosen the less common, and largely outdated term though.

Second, throughout this section, Sprinkle plays pretty fast and loose with a sort of impression that trans people's concerns are significantly formed by "Gender Role" expectations. Now it is absolutely the case that navigating and working out how we relate to existing cultural expectations regarding our gender expressions (the way we live out our gender) is a significant subject for trans folk. My concern is that Sprinkle is overplaying it to the point that one might expect after reading this section to hear that trans-ness at least can consist only in wanting to have a non-standard gender expression while still having a cisgender identity. And in as much as there may be some people who identify cis-ly but feel drawn to non-standard gender expressions and identify as trans on that basis, those folks just kinda aren't what the conversation generally and in this book is actually about—remember that Sprinkle says the central question for the book is "If someone experiences incongruence between their biological sex and their internal sense of self, which one determines who they are—and why?" and that "internal sense of self" references not gender expression but gender identity. I have to notice, then, that the time Sprinkle spends on this topic and on decrying oppressive gender stereotypes and establishing himself as affirming a far wider-than-is-common-for-Christians vision of expansive gender expressions (I would agree with him on those points) will end up serving as a serious foundation for his regurgitation of harmful TERF talking points later in the text when he makes the move to question whether gender identity may not actually just me a desire for serotyped gender roles. In short it isnt' that I particularly disagree with him in most of this section—I would quibble with a few phrases—it is that I am, by now, suspicious of what he is doing with it.

Finally it stood out to me, and not in a positive way that Sprinkle devotes a significant part of this section to the story of David Reimer. On the one hand, that seems almost inevitable. The rather tragic story of David Reimer is a sort of touchstone for nearly everyone who wants to talk about trans people. The appeal is, is suppose, obvious. David was a twin who suffered an accidental injury to his genitals as an infant. Dr. John Money—about whom everyone has a lot to say—convinced David's parents to try raising David "as a girl" on the theory that gender is entirely a social construct and that children who are raised "as girls" will adopt that understanding of themselves. It went horribly wrong, David quickly and early on asserted himself as a boy and at 14 he detransitioned from a forced "role" into his own gender identity—that of a boy. He then continued to live his life in his gender identity until his tragic suicide which is generally attributed to his complicated childhood. 

Everyone wants to draw conclusions from the David Reimer case. It is s a sort of obvious go-to for Nature/Nurture debates (which is how Sprinkle deploys it) but it is often cited by trans affirming folk as evidence that gender identity persists regardless of how a child is raised (thereby challenging various claims made by people who think trans-ness can be treated out of us) and it is sometimes rather ham-fistedly deployed by anti-trans people as a sort of "any transition type treatments of youth are bad". Sprinkles use is mostly just to sort of point to it and observe that neither nature or nurture seem to give the whole story on the subject of gender. What I find concerning is first that he put it in this section (geneer role) rather than the next (gender identity) and second that he seems to have made a point of portraying Dr. Money as a sort of pro-trans researcher. Money was complicated but is in no way broadly accepted or celebrated in the trans community and it isn't great seeing Sprinkle hanging him around our necks.

But it is after all of that that we get to the heart of this chapter. Preston Sprinkle's reflections on gender identity.

Gender Identity

Buckle up.

Sprinkle starts off relatively well. His immediate definition of the term is "one's internal sense of self as male, female, both, or neither" and he cites (for once) solid sources (name the Human Rights Campaign an Austen Hartke. He pretty much goes off the rails from there. 

More than any part of the book to date, I think this section highlights the paucity of Sprinkle's research into what mainstream trans folk are actually saying and the distortions in reporting that result from that. As I have remarked elsewhere, I don't have any clear way of determining whether Sprinkle was just lazy/unconsciously motivated in his research or was aware of the broader conversation, perspectives, and accounts that his book ignores and simply chose to suppress them. Either way the effect is a read that probably makes sense to cis people who don't have a lot of trans people in their lives but comes across as alternately confused and alarming to actual trans people.

Sprinkle organizes his reflections into four questions.

Does Gender Identity Exist?

He concludes the two paragraphs he devotes to this section by tabling it as requiring more exploration to answer. The rest of the two paragraphs are almost entirely devoted to highlighting the voices and positions of people who say that gender identity is not real and expressing his concerns. He does follow that with an acknowledgement that "there are some biblical and scientific arguments for gender identity being a more ontologically robust aspect of human nature" but instead of even listing them—much less explaining them with the detail he used for the anti-trans arguments—he just tables the discussion.

The effect is to leave the reader dubious about even the reality of gender identity without giving them even a representative experience of "the debate", hardly an open minded position from which to evaluate the rest of what he says about the topic.

In fact, if Sprinkle had done his reading he would have encountered the works of trans theorists who enunciate (in the vein of Serano above, but Talia Bettcher, Sandy Stone, Justin Sabia-Tanis, even Contrapoints or Abigail Thorn would have clarified it as well) an explanation that gender identity designates an experience that we largely hold to be very much real while recognizing that (at least for the time being) the experience of a person's gender identity is available only to that person. It is just a fact of human existence (consult your own) that there are some experiences which we have but which we cannot grant outside observers access to. For instance, if I were to take Sprinkle's approach in this section but apply it to the concept "being a Christian" I would observe that many Evangelicals mean by being a Christian that they have accepted Jesus into their heart or that they will sometimes use the phrase believing in Jesus. "But" I would argue, "there is no caridographic instrument that will show us Jesus in a heart and there is no brain scan that can demonstrate that a person believes in Jesus—we can't really even know what they mean by 'Jesus' there: a historical figure they have only read about? a person they have only spoken to or experienced as an inner feeling? Honestly there seem to be as many versions of Jesus floating around as there are Evangelicals who say they believe in him." The irritated Evangelical would likely respond that the experience of believing in Jesus—having him in their heart—is very real even if it can only be known subjectively. 

The fact of the matter is that there just are a certain set of experiences which are only available to the person who has them and, as many trans people and philosophers have pointed out, a lack of external verifiability does not indicate that a claim is false.

In any case and for the record, my response to the question is that, yes, gender identity does exist, that it is a thing we all can know subjectively and which has very real and verifiable impacts on each person. I would add that cisgender people, those whose gender identity easily or comfortably aligns with the sex they were assigned when (or before) they were born, have a hard time "locating" it for the same reason that we are less likely to constantly notice comfortable, well fitting, clothes but are constantly aware of pinching, ill fitting clothes: unless something seems to not fit, the whole thing is processed in the back ground at a pretty deeply subconscious level. 

 

But having cast a significant shadow over the concept as a whole, Sprinkle moves on to:

How Many Gender Identities are There?

I don't see why Sprinkle thinks this is an important question to ask at this point. Rather, I can't think of a compelling good faith reason why he would. The effect that this section has—Sprinkle spends it first positing that there may be as many as ten thousand gender identities and then rather ironically reminding the reader that we need to make sure we know what people mean by the terms they use—is to give the impression of a sort of arbitrary gender chaos without giving any real consideration to what is meant by people who talk amount a multiplicity of gender identities and why they make those claims. What is so difficult to explain away is the clear contingency of this question: What does it matter how many gender identities there are before we have established whether or not genders identities are real in the first place? Even then, Sprinkle doesn't really explore the particularities of different gender identities anywhere in the book, so why should it matter to him how many there are if the answer has no bearing on what he has to say? 

The answer that springs to mind isn't charitable so please take it with a grain of salt. The only reason I can see for Sprinkle including this question at this point is to give himself an opportunity to portray gender identity as vague and a bit ridiculous in in the mind of his readers.

How do you determine a person's gender identity?

On this question Sprinkle only responds that there are a range of views and he locates self-id at one side of that range and transmedicalism at the other side. From various podcasts (and somewhat in line with Mark Yarhouse's "Least Invasive Treatment" approach) I know that Sprinkle takes a sort of begrudging transmedicalist-as-last-resort-and-if-nothing-else-will-work position on the question of transition and that likely has a bearing on the way he thinks about that range of views. 

I will note before moving on that Sprinkles' "If you identify as a woman, then you're a woman. There is no objective criteria that need to be met" line when describing the self-id position is rather dismissive. 

Is gender identity malleable?

This comes right at the end of the chapter, is very brief (81 words) and contains no citations whatsoever so I don't really have any insight into the justification for Sprinkle's claim in it that: 

The fact is—and it is a fact—for some people gender identity changes, and for other it doesn't. This shouldn't be surprising. After all, we're dealing with "one's internal sense of self."

Sprinkle is on the record as still believing that conversion therapy (though he doesn't like it being called that in this instance) is a real and positive option for "people who experience gender dysphoria" and beyond holding open room for that heinous view I don't know that Sprinkle is accomplishing, or trying to accomplish much here. 

As for the claim itself, the truth is significantly less cut and dried than Sprinkle seems willing to admit. Put another way, the word "some" is doing a lot of heaving lifting in his claim.  Sprinkle sums up the section and chapter by promising to revisit each of these questions in more depth later in the book, once more effectively giving himself a sort of permission to have done a sloppy job with them here while also establishing a degree of doubt in his readers minds about the claims of trans people. 

Series Index

Intro

Part 1—Chapter 1: People

Part 2—Chapter 2A: Terms

Part 3—Chapter 2B: Sex and Gender

Part 4—Chapter 3: Varieties of Trans 

Part 5—Chapter 4: Male, Female & The Image of God

Part 6—Chapter 5: Gender Stereotypes

 

Footnotes:

(1) There isn't really a perfect term for the thing he is trying to get at and hopefully the reason for that will become clear over the course of this series. I would argue that sex is only the physical manifestation of gender but my take on that is not mainstream in even transgender Christian discourse.

(2) He cites Dr. Paul McHugh for this claim and that is more than a little problematic for several reasons. First because Dr. McHugh is a really problematic source, and second because in this interview conversation he had with Christina Beardsley on the Unbelievable? podcast, he takes offence and pushes back when she lists Dr. McHugh among his sources, she apologizes and qualifies that other in Sprinkle's camp cite McHugh and he sort of harumphs back something to the effect of "others but not me". Meanwhile in the book they are talking about he had specifically cited McHugh to define a term he identifies as crucial to understanding the topic.

(3) Platypus as a word is in a class of English words (along with octopus and a few others) with Latin sounding Greek roots. The result has been considerable misinformation about the proper pluralization of these words in English. If the word were derived from Latin, the correct plural would be Platypii or something of the sort, but when English incorporates words from non-Latinate languages the practice is to either keep the original pluralization (the classical Greek knowers in my life tell me this gives us something like Platipodes) or to use the standard Germanic English pluralization. Hence, Platypuses.