The soul of gender
by Colette Colfer, Artillery Row:
How trans ideology appeals to deep spiritual instincts.
The concept of “gender identity” is a modern day version of the soul, elevated in importance above the body, linked to bodily modifications, sacrifice, public confession, and a change of name to signify transformation to a higher, truer self. Although gender identities and souls can be understood as connected to but independent of the body, the soul of gender differs from religious conceptions of the soul in that the ego is elevated rather than transcended. The quasi-sacred elevation of gender identity is part of the zeitgeist of our time but is ultimately divisive, reductive, and unhealthy, in both individual and collective terms.
The 19th century anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor’s doctrine of survivals was the idea that cultural practices often survive in modified forms as societies change. Sneezes, for example, were believed to be spirits or demons exiting the body and were therefore followed by a blessing. The practice of saying “bless you” has survived. The eastward orientation of the priest in Christian churches could also be identified as a survival from the time the sun was worshipped. In a similar way, the idea of “gender identity” can be seen as one manifestation of the survival of the concept of the soul.
Early understandings of the soul in the Homeric poems dated to the eighth or seventh century BCE saw it as something only humans have. Although some humans do have anthropomorphic “fursona” identities, animals don’t have gender identities — that we know of, anyway.
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