I wrote this as a comment to someone on r/Christianity who asked where genders come from. I tried to do a bit of research on it and thought it could open up some discussion here.
Binary gender essentialism comes, ironically, from Enlightenment science. This might be a bit of a journey, but I promise it ends with answering the question.
Christianity is made up of both Judaic and Greek traditions. In these specific traditions, there have been more than two genders, and in most cases, only one sex. Sex was seen on a continuum of increasing "perfection" that peaked at men/males. The word "man" even used to include the definition of "people" (mann-, mankind, manslaughter). The word originally comes from the Proto-Indo-European word for "one who thinks": men- (where the men in mental comes from).
In Judaism, the Talmud identifies seven unique genders (really six, but saris can be broken up into two categories):
- Zachar, male.
- Nekevah, female.
- Androgynos, having both male and female characteristics.
- Tumtum, lacking sexual characteristics.
- Aylonit, identified female at birth without developing secondary female sexual characteristics at puberty.
- Saris hamah, identified male at birth without developing secondary male sexual characteristics at puberty.
- Saris adam, identified male at birth without developing secondary male sexual characteristics because of castration.
The one sex sexual continuum comes from Book IV of Aristotle's Generation of Animals. Where your sex is determined at birth by the amount of "vital heat" that was transferred from your father. The more heat, the more masculine. If you didn't have enough heat, your male reproductive parts weren't "ejected" by birth, making you female.
Many of those stops in the continuum were put under the umbrella term eunuch. The traditional way we think of eunuchs, where they were castrated before puberty, removed this "vital heat" before it was allowed to spread throughout the body and "perfect" an adolescent boy into a man.
This view held for most of history, where it's argued that eunuchs represented a "third" sex. All the way up until the 18th-century. Thinkers like Rousseau and Carl Linnaeus promoted the idea of "complimentary sexes." Where men were on one end and women on the other. This dichotomy was thought of as "advanced" and was a way to "naturalize gender social roles onto the sexes. For example, since only one sex nurses children, that sex must be unfit for public life and "naturally" was only fit for the home. The considered intersex or hermaphroditic people to be unnatural aberrations of "natural" law. Linnaeus classified these people under the "monstrous" category, and even created a term for them: Homo monstrosus (monstrous man). Essentially classifying them as not fully or less than human.
This inflated sense of superiority was doubly enforced when colonialism started in full swing. These "lesser" cultures didn't adhere to this two sex dichotomy, and they had to be (mostly violently) "enlightened" by the colonialists to accept the "reasonable" definition that they arrived at. That there are only males and females (men and women) and that any other classification system was barbaric and uncultured.
This bleeds into today. Even though the Enlightenment classification went the way of scientific racism (meaning it was ultimately bunk), it's been hard for us to shake the idea that those who don't fit into binary norms are monstrous, less than human, or less deserving of grace and kindness.
A big part of Judaism in Jesus' time was the command "be fruitful and multiply." Since many under that eunuch umbrella couldn't do that, they were seen as less able to fulfill God's will. This is ultimately a reason why Jesus says "That's not what I meant" in Matthew 19:11-12:
>^(11) Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. ^(12) For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
If you got this far, I really appreciate you reading the whole thing and would love to get your feedback or reactions. Would this help you in any discussions of gender you have in the future? Did you already know this and I'm just playing catchup to a well known position?