What Causes Gender Dysphoria?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:05.000 | Rob Smith is a pastor and theologian who lectures in systematic theology and ethics at Sydney

00:00:10.320 | Missionary and Bible College in Australia.

00:00:13.000 | Rob, last time you said gender dysphoria is real.

00:00:15.960 | It's the experience of real felt distress, which some people have when their psychological

00:00:22.120 | or emotional gender identity or sense of gender doesn't match up with their biological or

00:00:28.020 | birth sex.

00:00:29.540 | Of course, many Christians are agnostics here.

00:00:32.000 | I mean, we need to be informed so we can be careful in what we embrace and in what we

00:00:36.900 | deny.

00:00:38.520 | So are there any common precipitating causes behind gender dysphoria?

00:00:47.120 | That's again a very important question and in some ways, I guess, an obvious question

00:00:52.960 | to ask.

00:00:54.640 | And I have to make clear, I'm not a medical doctor nor a psychologist.

00:00:59.860 | I'm a pastor and a theologian, but I am talking with doctors and psychologists and sexologists

00:01:05.160 | and others about these issues, trying to come to grips as they are with this question of

00:01:10.300 | causation.

00:01:11.660 | And here's the perhaps disappointing answer to the question.

00:01:15.720 | Nobody really seems to know.

00:01:16.720 | I mean, there are various theories out there, and in some cases, it may be easier to determine

00:01:24.480 | what the causes are for this particular person or that particular person.

00:01:28.540 | But in general, it's something of a mystery.

00:01:32.780 | Now having said that, I guess the general answers or at least ways of trying to think

00:01:38.080 | through an answer are simple enough.

00:01:41.260 | Is it nature?

00:01:42.300 | Is it nurture?

00:01:44.060 | Or is it some combination of the two?

00:01:47.460 | Is it determined by our heredity and biology or is it determined by our environment and

00:01:54.440 | experience or is it some interaction?

00:01:57.720 | And certainly, there have been people who've tried to, I guess, discover some sort of biological

00:02:03.660 | cause or nature component.

00:02:06.160 | And there are different theories that you can perhaps, anyone can read about if they

00:02:10.560 | are researching on this, prenatal hormone theories, for example, or brain difference

00:02:17.120 | theories.

00:02:18.120 | But the bottom line is none of these theories are, well, certainly not clearly supported

00:02:23.000 | by the evidence to date.

00:02:25.680 | So that's not to say that there can't be some sort of biological contribution to these things.

00:02:36.560 | But it's certainly not clear and it's certainly not determinative.

00:02:40.920 | So that suggests, I think, that the cause lies more obviously in the realm of, again,

00:02:47.600 | nurture or environment.

00:02:51.120 | But of course, there's often an interaction between these two things, between nature and

00:02:55.240 | nurture as most psychologists now recognize that you can't really separate out sort of

00:03:00.120 | heredity and environment.

00:03:03.240 | One person's written biology interacts with both cultural context and personal choice.

00:03:10.120 | And so, it's the old chicken and egg.

00:03:16.240 | These things impact one another.

00:03:19.360 | But I think, again, I think it's fairly clear that the major contributors have got to mind

00:03:25.160 | the area of environment.

00:03:26.840 | Well, what here, and again, this is where I think it becomes very case specific.

00:03:34.680 | I guess for all children born into this world, there is a process of social labeling and

00:03:41.640 | differential treatment that goes on as people react to, it's a boy, it's a girl, and therefore

00:03:50.200 | dress them a certain way, give them certain gifts, and just interact on the basis of that.

00:03:57.120 | But of course, children can pick up mixed signals and develop confused perceptions of

00:04:04.320 | gender roles and can make assumptions.

00:04:07.960 | If they like a certain thing, does that mean I'm not like the other girls or not like the

00:04:14.720 | other boys?

00:04:15.880 | And then there can be issues of gender envy or even gender idolization, I think, would

00:04:26.840 | be a way of talking about it.

00:04:28.960 | And so, all of those things can go on for a person.

00:04:32.580 | And then there's also some other, what do you call them, medical psychological conditions,

00:04:38.320 | like for example, Asperger's syndrome.

00:04:41.480 | There's a very high correlation between girls with Asperger's syndrome and their experience

00:04:50.840 | of gender dysphoria, which sort of makes sense.

00:04:55.000 | If one of the, I guess, features of Asperger's syndrome is difficulty connecting with your

00:05:01.440 | sort of social context and reading social cues and interacting straightforwardly, then

00:05:09.480 | it sort of makes sense you might then also be confused about who you are and where you

00:05:14.800 | fit into the matrix of things.

00:05:16.520 | So again, I wish I had simpler answers, but I think that's sort of the best perhaps we

00:05:23.760 | can say at this point.

00:05:24.760 | >>Corey: No, not simple at all.

00:05:27.120 | That point alone, I think, is really good for Christians to hear, though.

00:05:30.840 | It's complex.

00:05:32.000 | And so, I think it forces the question then of how deep is our biological gender coded

00:05:39.000 | into us individually?

00:05:42.040 | Can we say our souls are engendered?

00:05:45.440 | Does the biological me reveal the true me?

00:05:48.960 | How would you go about explaining that?

00:05:50.600 | >>John: Yeah, well, now we're moving into the realm of theology and philosophy.

00:05:58.280 | And again, it probably won't surprise you that it's a contested field here, and there

00:06:02.960 | are different thoughts and different answers that people will give.

00:06:06.960 | My view is that as human beings, God has given us a distinct body and soul, but they exist

00:06:14.240 | in what some theologians like to call psychosomatic unity.

00:06:18.760 | And so there's an integration there or an interaction there.

00:06:22.800 | Again, some philosophers talk about this as dualistic interactionism.

00:06:28.200 | So that it's therefore not possible to sort of have a body of one kind and a soul of another.

00:06:35.160 | The two are knit together.

00:06:37.440 | Psalm 139, "You knit me together in my mother's womb."

00:06:42.080 | Not just knit my body together.

00:06:44.800 | The two are given by God.

00:06:47.720 | Now, again, one of the interesting questions within that is, okay, well, does, as it were,

00:06:54.480 | our biology determine our personality, or does it simply reveal the person that God

00:07:00.440 | has made?

00:07:01.440 | Well, I don't know that we really have to answer that question, because the end point

00:07:06.360 | is the same.

00:07:07.360 | There's a congruence.

00:07:11.480 | We have sex bodies, and we are gendered persons, and our sex both reveals and in large measure

00:07:19.080 | determines our gender.

00:07:22.800 | So that's certainly my view.

00:07:24.400 | Again, if you trace back the sort of history of Christian discussion on this, you've got

00:07:28.400 | people like Thomas Aquinas, I think, who thinks that souls are sexless or genderless, and

00:07:34.080 | it's only bodies that have gender, and others who therefore speculate that in the eschaton,

00:07:40.520 | we'll all be sort of asexual and that sort of thing.

00:07:46.240 | My reading of Scripture is, no, no, the resurrection of the body is, whilst it'll be a transformed

00:07:51.360 | version of this body, it will be a version of this body.

00:07:56.280 | And therefore, we should expect that we will be sexed and gendered in the world to come,

00:08:04.760 | even though, as Jesus says, that there will be no continuance of marriage and other things.

00:08:10.520 | So again, some of those things we'll have to wait and see, of course, when we watch

00:08:15.000 | this space thing.

00:08:16.360 | But the simple answer, I guess, to the question is, yeah, no, I think our bodies and souls

00:08:22.280 | are designed by God to speak to one another.

00:08:26.600 | We have male or female sex, and masculine or feminine, and gender as a consequence.

00:08:33.000 | Yeah, that's helpful, and it honors Scripture as well.

00:08:36.360 | Thank you, Rob.

00:08:37.360 | Rob will be with us all week, and next up is the question, "Why is transgender such

00:08:42.880 | a big deal for us Christians?

00:08:44.760 | Why are we talking about it on this podcast?

00:08:47.360 | Why not let people do with their bodies whatever they want to do?

00:08:50.520 | They're not hurting anyone else."

00:08:52.360 | We hear that all the time, and it's the next question I have for tomorrow.

00:08:55.760 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with guest Rob Smith from Sydney,

00:08:59.360 | Australia.

00:09:00.360 | For more details about the podcast, to subscribe to the audio feed, or to send us a question

00:09:03.600 | of your own, go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:09:09.160 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.

00:09:10.160 | I'll see you tomorrow.

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What Causes Gender Dysphoria?

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