We live in a world today that is sometimes, unfortunately, complex.  Our first filter on anything we write should be “is this immediately true or false?” but we also have a duty to consider, much as we can, the other messages we are sending by what we choose to say and not to say.  The world (and especially the academy) is badly confused today on issues of identity generally, sex and sexuality specifically, and we should do what we can to promote the better and more beautiful (and more real) message of Scripture and the Church.

The trendy phenomenon of sharing your pronouns in your email signature is fortunately still rare where I teach science, at a public college in the Midwest.  But I was a bit dismayed last week to discover that one of my science-teaching colleagues had recently adopted the habit, and doubly so because I know this person attends a confessional church and makes sacrifices to send her children to Christian schools – progressive culture warrior of any sort she is definitely not.  So, what is going on here?

What is going on, I suspect, is that she thinks she is just being nice – she is barely even conscious of the fact that she is implying endorsement of one side in a battle between worldviews and anthropologies.  And sure, it’s easy enough to say that, in adding a line to your email that basically reads “I am a woman, by the way,” you aren’t saying anything false (provided you are one, of course).  And I could well imagine that there are Christians out there working for institutions where everyone is ordered to behave in such a manner who comply without complaint, reasoning within themselves something like, “OK, the motivations of my institution may be bad here, but they aren’t actually requiring me to say anything untrue, and as long as I am not required to say anything untrue, I will comply.”  But voluntary participation is another thing, for let us not miss the fact that the motivations of the institution are bad!

Adding your pronouns in the current cultural climate sends the following messages:

1. It amounts to an implicit endorsement of our society’s goal of complete and unlimited individual autonomy. We despise judgment and “discrimination,” in the broadest sense, therefore any characteristic that could be used to classify me that I did not choose for myself must be denied or overcome, up to and including my own personal biology.  (The whole idea of “preferred” pronouns is that they are just another choice you make for yourself, after all.)  Just a couple years ago “gender identity” was supposed to be a chosen (or discovered) thing connected to one’s behavior and preferences, whereas “sex” was still biology – but today the fixity of “sex” is increasingly denied, as it had to eventually be given the goals of the worldview.  If “sex” is real and fixed and unchosen, then people could be out there making judgments based on sex that I don’t like, so it has to go, too.  There is a logic to all of this, but it starts from a false place – “I am, or should be, only what I choose for myself.”
2. To reiterate, that explicitly it amounts to an endorsement of our culture’s desire to literally eliminate the idea of biological sex, at least inasmuch as it applies to humans, thus effectively reducing humans to a bag of organs and parts.^1,2 This is not only contrary to science, but more importantly for Christians a denial of a transcendent human nature and of the reality and goodness and beauty of the differences between the sexes.  The Church would do well to rediscover its voice to preach “masculinity is this and it is good in men; femininity is this and it is good in women.  And all of these things are real.”  There are many people out there (I see them in my classes) who want and need that message, as their intuition on this subject is a surer guide to truth than the instruction they now receive from their teachers.  If we take the academy literally today, it teaches that the words “man” and “woman” mean nothing at all, they are mere descriptors anyone could choose to apply to themselves that necessarily point to nothing.  We have a better and more beautiful message.
3. It provides implicit endorsement to a belief in the fluidity of human sex and gender, an idea that is now indisputably causing harm especially to children, who are being encouraged to undergo chemical and physical interventions in an attempt to bring their body into alignment with what they now believe their gender to be.³
4. It weakens the response of the Church and fellow Christians on this issue who are trying to resist this culture of autonomy by giving someone the world can point to and say “see, she is doing this and she is a Christian, so your faith isn’t really the issue it’s just a problem with you.”

We live in a world today that is sometimes, unfortunately, complex.  Our first filter on anything we write should be “is this immediately true or false?” but we also have a duty to consider, much as we can, the other messages we are sending by what we choose to say and not to say.  The world (and especially the academy) is badly confused today on issues of identity generally, sex and sexuality specifically, and we should do what we can to promote the better and more beautiful (and more real) message of Scripture and the Church.

Notes

1: For a good example of this attempt to eliminate quite literally even the words “male” and “female” and instead just talk about organ and function in the context of teaching biology: https://www.weareteachers.com/gender-inclusive-science/ .

2: See also a WSJ article by biologists Colin Wright and Emma Wilton, “The Dangerous Denial of Sex”: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089

3: There are sadly many stories that could be cited here, but for one especially well written: https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/07/i-spent-a-year-as-a-trans-man-doctors-failed-me-at-every-turn/

David Surely teaches science at a public college in the Midwest.