Culture Friday - Supreme gender ideology

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, March 25th, 2022. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Culture Friday.

Maybe you noticed the story a few weeks ago about a lingerie brand that hired a model who has Down Syndrome. Media outlets reported this as a historic first for the brand that had come under fire for its lack of diversity, as that word has come to be used.

So the company—Victoria’s Secret—rebranded itself and hired Sofia Jirau, a 26 year old from Puerto Rico. Here she is in a YouTube video speaking Spanish with an English interpreter:

Interpreter: She feels really happy and content and it’s been an amazing experience.

Jirau: No limits!

Interpreter: I’m here for that! No limits. No limits! Yea!

No limits on people differently abled sounds like something we could all rally around— a good thing to give people differently abled a hand up in a life.

BROWN: The question arises, though: is this latest with Victoria’s Secret really a good thing?

Joining us now to talk about it is Katie McCoy. She is director of women’s ministry at Texas Baptist. Morning, Katie.

KATIE MCCOY, GUEST: Good morning!

BROWN: I think our first inclination is to celebrate the inclusion of people with Down Syndrome in mainstream media, ads, movies etc. I think of the movie Peanut Butter Falcon that featured a man with Down Syndrome. The character Reggie in the Netflix series Call the Midwife. Just two examples.

As Christians, how might we think about that as compared to what Victoria’s Secret has done?

MCCOY: You're right, Myrna. We look for ways to celebrate the full personhood and value of Down syndrome people. What Victoria's Secret did though is it seemed to conflate or equate a person with Down Syndrome and their value with how much we can sexualize them, as if to say, “Look, we see Down Syndrome persons as equal, too! We will objectify women with this disability as well!” And especially when you think about how Down Syndrome has multiple effects on a person, among them cognitive abilities, so of all the people in society that we should be protecting from being exploited, it seems that this not just missed the mark, but it was so upside down. Every now and then you find a story in the news that just sort of typifies where we are as a culture. And there's something about this one that was, it kind of can give you a bit of a visceral reaction because of what it says about us as a culture. The other thing it's demonstrating too is this value we have of equating sexuality with power. And so what you're seeing the language of inclusivity and elevating a woman with Down syndrome, that the way to do that is to empower her by allowing her to sexualize herself. It's ironic, it's one of the ways that the feminist movement in the last 60 years has kind of turned in on itself in the last decade or so. So there's a lot of things going on with this story that is very much a cultural commentary of where we are and how we value and assess the value of other people.

REICHARD: And just to follow up on that, what of the idea that these messages teach all women to view themselves as objects? Talk about that.

MCCOY: Precisely. And when you consider the prevalence of pornography at a young age, this is all the more disturbing and along with that what you're telling women is that their goal in life, part of their value in life, is to become not just sexually desirable, but sexually objectifiable. And for a young woman, especially who has no idea the the amount of very perverse things that are online that men regularly view, for her to be presenting herself as a sexual object, is is not just degrading, it's it's actually kind of terrifying.

BROWN: Let’s segue to another cultural phenomenon, this time involving Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominated by President Biden to the Supreme Court. I want to call attention to an exchange between the judge and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. This is during part of the ongoing confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Let’s listen:

Blackburn: “OK. Can you provide a definition for the word woman?”

Jackson: “Can I provide a definition?”

Blackburn: “Yeah.”

Jackson: “I can’t.”

Blackburn: “You can’t?”

Jackson: “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”

Blackburn: “The meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?”

Jackson: “Senator, in my work as a judge what I do is I address disputes. If there’s a dispute about a definition. People make arguments and I look at the law and I decide, so I’m not...”

Blackburn: “The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.”

Katie, what do you think about that exchange?

MCCOY: Well, I'm glad Senator Blackburn asked the question. You know, you think about legislation like the Equality Act and how that could affect Christian organizations and how Judge Jackson, as a sitting Supreme Court judge may be weighing in on legislation like the Equality Act, if it were to pass. She very admirably tried to stay away from political issues. But what's interesting about her answer is that I think it actually is a political statement. Now it's possible we could very narrowly view her response, right, we could look at it and say, maybe Judge Jackson was trying to refer to an established legal category of woman. And perhaps she was answering it on very narrow legal terms. But implicit in her response is this idea that biological sex and gender identity are not just distinct, but disconnected. And that would mean that being a woman has nothing to do with being female. And that itself is the prevailing belief in today's gender ideology that's being more and more taught in schools and accepted in the mainstream. So biological facts that you can see and verify don't necessarily have to correspond to reality. And they certainly don't determine reality or the truth of who you are. So when Judge Jackson reasoned that she's not a biologist, so she can't give a definitive answer, she's actually being very consistent with gender ideology, which claims the fact that being female is disconnected from the reality of being a woman. Because if the truth about gender is so unknowable, so indiscernible based on biology, then only a professional biologist can even define it? And then even a mind as brilliant as Judge Jackson's isn't qualified in that case. Let me take it one step further, though. To claim that biological sex is the result of a design that we can observe, that it has a purpose and that purpose should guide how we are to understand ourselves. That is a claim that something or someone has authority to tell us who we are, what we are, and how we should live. And gender ideology views that claim as something that is culturally fabricated or culturally constructed, and also created to protect the power of a certain privileged few. And Christians are among those certain privileged few. So Judge Jackson saying she can't define what a woman is, I think that actually is a political claim. And that's concerning, not just because of the cases that may come before her but also because of the worldview that that statement represents.

BROWN: Another question about Judge Jackson’s silence on the “What is a woman” question.

By refusing to acknowledge what a woman is, do you think Judge Jackson recognizes the disservice she has done to women who look like her, who look like me? Women like, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ida B. Wells.

MCCOY: You know, I never want to take away from the historical significance of Judge Jackson's nomination and eventual confirmation. There's a beautiful picture online of Judge Jackson's daughter beaming with pride as she looks at her mother and we should celebrate every bit of that. And I think also celebrating the fact that we live in a country that is based on ideas and principles, so much so that even when, for generations, we fail to live up to them, we can make course corrections and see something like Judge Jackson being confirmed to the Supreme Court— something that I know in my grandparents generation would have been unfathomable. With that though, we also give every human being the dignity of being assessed not on the basis of their demographic category or categories, but looking at the body of their work, their thoughts, their mind. In Judge Jackson's case, her opinions and her rulings. And I think that's something that as Christians we can and should be able to hold together is to celebrate the the advancement, to celebrate the historical significance, but then also to look at who Judge Jackson is as a judge and recognize that there are things in her rulings and opinions that are out of step with a biblical worldview.

REICHARD: Last question here, Katie. It occurs to me that if Judge Jackson admits she’d need to be a biologist to define what a woman is, shouldn’t that settle the question that this is a biological issue, and not one based on feelings?

MCCOY: Bingo. Bingo. And this is one of the things where gender ideology is so self refuting. One of the reasons we celebrated Judge Jackson's appointment to the court is because she's a woman, we're going to have another woman on the court. I have yet to hear anybody say that we are going to have a dress wearing, uterus having, birthing person. It sounds even disrespectful to talk about a woman like that. But that's what gender ideology does. It reduces people down to specific reproductive anatomy and how they present themselves as opposed to seeing a whole person. And I think you've hit it, Mary, there's a lot of self refuting stuff that is going on with these arguments.

BROWN: Katie McCoy has been our guest today. She’s director of women’s ministry at Texas Baptist. Thanks, Katie.

MCCOY: Always great to be with you.

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