I recently had a conversation with a detransitioned woman who told me her story. She explained to me that she used to live as a man socially because her personality didn’t match stereotypical femininity. Though my friend later came to embrace her female identity, sadly many like her surgically alter elements of their bodies according to the lies of the transgender movement. This radical ideology holds that differences between gender – which it sees as a sort of social, sexual “self-consciousness” – and bodily structure should be reconciled artificially and in appearance.
But could overemphasizing sex stereotypes actually be fueling this movement?
The “Trad Wife” phenomenon has risen in popularity among conservatives who rightfully insist that men and women are different, and their roles do not completely coincide. However, this movement is deeply reactionary. To resist the extremes of modern feminism, it posits a complete separation of men and women as social groups: men as breadwinners and women as homemakers. Though I appreciate the aesthetic values of those who present this model (I, too, at times don the apron), many women have come to see this lifestyle as the definition, rather than an example, of femininity. The trad wife philosophy undermines authentic femininity insofar as it universalizes a particular vocation, reinforcing only a singular model of feminine expression.
This shouldn’t need to be said, but personality does not determine sex. Transgender ideology, while correctly affirming that personality and body are deeply connected, fails to acknowledge that biological sexual identity lends itself to a range of personalities and aptitudes. The range of human personalities does not warrant harmful bodily reconstruction.
But sex does not exclusively determine personality either. If transgenderism argues that social expression determines sex, trad wife proponents suggest that sex should exclusively determine social expression.
Both movements are correct in seeing a link between male and female identity and social norms. But it’s helpful to look beyond Instagram influencers when we seek to understand the comprehensive nature of male and female personality. Personality is rooted in sexual biology, but it allows for a range of talents, tastes, and vocations, a reality both conservatives and liberals should acknowledge. Yet too few do.
Matt Walsh humorously acknowledged the growing transgender controversy in his 2022 Daily Wire documentary “What is a Woman?” His simple answer, “an adult human female,” provides a simple response to this movement. However, simplistic definitions of a woman—such as biological constitution—are insufficient to describe what a woman is in the family and broader society.
We should embrace an understanding of the human person (and hence, social norms) which accounts for the whole person, denying neither bodily sex nor rational human individuality. After all, biological sex in humans does not exactly correlate with masculine and feminine personality traits. For example, a woman may be more assertive or objectively minded than her male counterpart, and a man may be more nurturing or emotional than his female counterpart.
This begs the question: How do we maintain that masculinity and femininity bear inherent and direct correspondence with biological sex, while individual personalities and roles do not naturally chart into a dichotomy?
Two observations inform a resolution.
First off, sexual difference does not determine everything about the human subject. Between individuals, genetic diversity often overrides expected biological and sexual traits. The XX and XY genotypes direct the development of the two natural human phenotypes as expressed in the primary and secondary sex characteristics. However, within a single phenotype, variation in hormone levels and physical proportions are undeniable. Similarly, between the different phenotypes, differences emerge. This natural range in physical attributes also contributes to variation in psychological development.
Second, men’s and women’s personalities stem from both the external and internal dimensions. Because man is both body and soul, the expression of individual identity will develop through the rationality of the human soul. In “Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body,” Saint John Paul II writes, “the body reveals man.” Yet, the material body is not the whole person. The sex of our body expresses itself in our personality as guided by the rational faculty. Since rationality exists in individual persons, each man and woman will rightly express their objective biological truth in a unique way within society.
The transgender movement, which espouses the Gnostic heresy that the mind is the only reliable basis for self-realization, exaggerates the rational dimension of sexual expression since it divorces the person from the truth of his or her sexed human body. On the other hand, trad wife followers often exaggerate the external bodily dimension, romanticizing strict sex roles determined exclusively by biology as a reactionary impulse to modern feminism.
While there is nothing unhealthy about the breadwinner/homemaker divide between husbands and wives, pro-life lawyer and mother of seven Erika Bachiochi believes that insisting on strictly predetermined sex roles can arise from a flawed philosophical basis. To be fair, trad wife influencers do not claim that everyone should live like they do, but I have found that many trad wife followers consider this model almost the definition of femininity.
In her “First Things” essay “Sex-Realist Feminism,” Bacchiochi opposes Aristotle’s view that women are rationally deficient and hence only belong in the home since the domestic sphere is best suited to their reproductive potential. Bachiochi, who raised her children at home while working part-time as an author and legal scholar, believes that both the rational and biological components should inform individual vocation. In her piece, she argues that while banning women from the workforce or civic life undermines women’s rational nature, as Bradwell v. Illinois in 1873 did by prohibiting women from practicing law, legalizing abortion undermines the sexual nature of women in their reproductive capacity.
The transgender and trad wife movements both risk whitewashing the complexity of human identity. If biological sex exactly correlated to personality, talents, and ability, the trad wife household might be for everybody. On the other hand, if we presume that a dichotomy between men’s and women’s ordered personal expression follows exactly from biological difference, spectrums in the former might suggest that some people are born into the wrong biological category, and the transgender ideologues would win the point.
The overlapping ways in which men and women develop in their rationality, and hence, pursue their vocations, are fitting on the basis of the shared rational human nature. A comprehensive vision of personhood, rooted in the Imago Dei, recognizes humanity first and the dually-sexed incarnations second, though the two are indeed inseparable in the individual. Saint Pope John Paul II again writes in his “Theology of the Body” that “the fact that man is a ‘body’ belongs more deeply to the structure of the personal subject than the fact that in his somatic constitution he is also male or female.” Our social roles should account for this.
In a culture that seeks to erase sex differences and encourages social uniformity between men and women, the impulse is to insist on a strict sex role dichotomy. Rather than fall into reactionism, we should return to first principles. Men and women are different, but they are first united in nature as rational persons created in the Imago Dei and called, not by sex alone, but to a vocation as unique as their name. Aprons might be feminine, but feminine women aren’t always wearing them.
