The following is an excerpt from Renewing Gender: An Orthodox Perspective by Jean-Claude Larchet. In celebration of its official publication date of September 16th, 2025, we are sharing this key passage from the chapter, “Criticisms of Gender Theory”.
Gender theory presents certain symptoms which indicate schizophrenia: a dissociation of the psyche from the body; perceiving the body, or some of its organs, to be a reality external to oneself; rejecting the organs which represent one’s own body; and ambivalence in the presentation of oneself.
A. The Separation of the Psyche from the Body
Although gender theory aims to reduce conflict between sexes and eliminate their disunion, it simply creates further disunion. The first is the separation of the psyche from the body. The natural continuity between biological sex and gender is rejected. Most of those who embody gender theory represent themselves psychologically in a way that is at odds with what they really are physically: their psyche is discontinuous with their physical reality. This is true even for transsexuals. The new sex of a transsexual is an artificial construct which can never correspond to the basic natural reality of the equivalent biological sex.1
B. The Rejection of the Body
As we have seen, many of those who embody gender theory reject the body. The body is experienced as foreign to oneself, like a garment decreed by biological nature which is often seen with disgust. Living as if one’s body, or some of one’s organs, are foreign and external to oneself is a typical symptom of schizophrenia.
Rejection of the Difference and Narcissism
Here is a paradox: gender theorists present themselves as those who respect the difference (or differences). Yet gender theory itself is a denial of difference, or at best, an indifference to it. For as we have seen, gender theory has been introduced to primary schools in order to persuade girls and boys that they are interchangeable and that there is no difference between them. The radical feminist movement also denies the difference, for it totally and utterly rejects the masculine, one of the two poles of the basic difference. Nonbinarism is another example of this. It denies the duality of gender by refusing to identify with either.
Denying the difference makes you a loser. For a human person blossoms through recognizing a difference with the other and accepting it so that a complementary relationship can grow through an exchange which builds up the human person.
In this denial of the difference lies a form of narcissism which is expressed by a desire for self-reproduction and is enabled by medically assisted reproduction and surrogacy. These were originally developed to help sterile couples of man and woman. Now they have been permitted by law, without any medical reason, for homosexual couples and single women. The aim is to reproduce without the other. Of course, another person is needed to give the sperm or the egg, and a surrogate mother may be required; but these people are all unseen and impersonal, far off and/or anonymous. The woman desires to give birth without a man, without a father for her child. The man desires a child without a woman, with no one to be the child’s mother. He wants to be the only begetter and to raise his child as an image of himself. He will be the sole image of his gender for the psychological development of the child.
We had the contraceptive revolution which broke the link between the sexual act and reproduction. And now we have assisted reproduction and surrogacy which break the link between reproduction and the sexual act.
The psychoanalyst Michel Schneider writes:
Failing to take account of the difference between sexes leads to an indifference to sex. When there are not two sexes, there is no sex. Many people may wish to be relieved of the need to meet another and to make love to have children. In time this need may disappear. It may become possible to clone human beings so that we may reproduce, like amoebas, by scission and cellular mitosis. This would avoid all the pain of desiring and winning the heart and body of another. It would be ‘the brave new world.’2 … At last humanity would be delivered from the yoke of seeking a woman to reproduce if one is a man, or the reverse if one is a woman.3
Hatred of the Male in the Radical Feminism Which Promotes Gender Theory
In our times, feminism in general has had the positive effect of restoring dignity to women who face a widespread masochistic mentality. This puts women down and sees them as objects of desire, subject to the phantasms and sexual impulses of men who dominate them by physical and psychological violence. This has been somewhat checked by the way the rape, bullying, and violence suffered by some women has been denounced by feminist associations on social media. The #MeToo4 movement has allowed many women to emerge from behind a wall of silence to salve the wounds which they have borne in their unconscious for many years, wrecking their lives. Nonetheless, within radical feminism these acts of violence, though rightly denounced, have been generalized most improperly.
A typical attitude of radical feminism, the movement mainly responsible for the promotion of gender theory, is to detest the male (misandry) or to hate him5 (androphobia6). It is no longer only the misdeeds of individual men which are condemned, but the male in general. He is belittled and treated as negligible, as one with whom no harmonious, balanced, and equal relationship is possible. He is considered to be a representative of the patriarchy7, as a dominator and an oppressor. He is supposed to be violent by nature and whoever he is, to be a potential or actual sexual aggressor8. In all cases he is thought to be systematically and solely to blame for any violence in his relationship with women9. He is stigmatized and victimized, expelled from the couple and the family and even from social relationships. His castration and elimination are advocated, and any form of violence against him is justified, even murder10. A well-tried system of propaganda has persuaded public opinion that the male is the one who solely and systematically discriminates against women and oppresses them, whilst women are always the innocent victims11. This gives birth to new ethics: the sex seen as dominant is evil, whilst the other is good.
These ideas have an effect which goes beyond the domain of radical feminism. They help to make all relationships between men and women very difficult, strained, confrontational, or even impossible. The aggression of certain women, members of associations, and published authors who promote aggression have so frightened certain men that they avoid women altogether.12
The Consequences for Feminine Sexuality and Procreation of Rejecting Heterosexuality, Seen as a Means of Masculine Domination
Radical feminism almost always assumes that relations between men and women are always colored by sex. Sexuality is supposed to be the main means of masculine domination, both within the couple and in society at large. Society is seen as a “patriarchal system.” This leads to the rejection of all sexual relations between women and men. Some feminists recommend abstinence, a new form of otherworldliness and puritanism13. Others recommend feminine homosexuality as a means of pleasure without men14. Another result of the evolution of feminism is that motherhood is once more accepted15. With this goes social pressure for the legal recognition of medically assisted procreation for single women and lesbians living together. They take sperm from a masculine donor, distant and anonymous so that he can be ignored. Conception is then an impersonal technique which takes place in the laboratory with no sexual relations. So, children are born without fathers, and both girls and boys are raised to reject and even hate the masculine sex.
Confusing Difference with Inequality and Discrimination, and Equality with Sameness and Lack of Difference
Gender theory has a problem: it confuses the difference between man and woman with inequality. So, it refuses to accept the difference, systematically seeing it as an inequality. Any recognition of the difference is treated as discrimination. Intersectionality, which is now so fashionable in sociology, places sexes and genders on the same plane as races16. To affirm that there is a difference between races is seen as racist. This is plainly ridiculous since there are biologically observable differences such as genetics, shape of the face, skin color, and hair type. In reality, to be racist is to affirm that one race is superior to another.17
Confusing equality and sameness is linked to the idea of getting to one through the other. This confusion arises partly from the inequality of power, linked to sex, in almost all societies, which corresponds to the distinction between men and women.18 However, the campaigns of moderate feminists show that this inequality may be reduced without denying distinctions and differences. In physics it is obvious that objects which are quite different may weigh the same. In the same way, two different people may have the same value through their respective qualities. This is true whatever their gender.
A False Idea of Freedom
Gender theorists have the idea that freedom means to be able to do as one pleases without any constraint. It is seen as absolute power, able to deny the reality of the body and to pass over all natural limits and laws. It also means that one may ignore all social laws and values whatever they may be. This is like the thought of a young spoilt child who knows no rule or limit but believes himself to be at the center of a world which will obey his every wish. It is also close to existentialism which believes that all which exists is built up independently of any prior fact: from nothing. The individual sets himself up as the creator of himself and of the world. He pays no attention to anyone or anything but sets himself up as the Creator in his work of creation ex nihilo. An example is the creation, noted above, of more than fifty new genders, or lack of gender, apart from “masculine” and “feminine.” This aims to give the idea of a great range of choice, or almost limitless freedom. It also shows how each individual who chooses one of these genders wishes to set him(her)self apart from others. The desire to escape the common condition of mankind is combined with inflated individualism.
Another aspect of this idea of freedom in gender theory is that one can change gender at will, several times per day according to Judith Butler, One can change sex, alter nature, and change social norms. This idea supposes that each individual has an all-powerful will which allows him(her) to mold him(her) self as he(she) wishes, and to change the world about him(her) to suit.
This reveals another root of gender theory apart from those examined in Chapter 1: Renaissance humanism and its promotion of individualism. This humanism rejected God and set up mankind as the center and origin of everything, and individualism went on to place the individual at the center. Cartesian philosophy illustrates this. It considers individual consciousness (cogito) as the basis of existence, first of the subject himself, then of the whole world, thus determining what he (she) is. For Descartes, what the mind conceives is more important than the fact itself, which echoes down the ages in the philosophies of idealism and rationalism. Mankind’s struggle to possess and master nature is also Cartesian. The technology developed in the nineteenth century was to this end. In the twentieth century mankind went even further to develop techniques for fabricating human beings without sexual interaction.
Liberalism made individualism worse. An example is the promotion of minorities which is a kind of social individualism. This breaks up society into many tiny independent entities which are often at odds with each other. There is also progress, that ideology of the Enlightenment, which has become an engine of capitalist development. It drives individuals to change and to reject all stable values, norms, and institutions. It makes people believe that any change is for the better. It is progress.
This excerpt is from:
Renewing Gender: An Orthodox Perspective
by Jean-Claude Larchet
ISBN: 9781942699576
The first major work appearing in the English language to address gender theory from an Orthodox Christian perspective, Renewing Gender offers a scriptural and patristic vision of humanity, as expressed by the Church through the centuries, that transcends the limits of both fallen nature and vacillating social norms.
- Colette Chiland is one of those who accompanies transsexuals “on their long and painful path.” She is nonetheless obliged to admit: “We have entered a new era where surgery and hormonology have made possible a certain transformation of the body. However, this does not change a biological man into a biological woman or a biological woman into a biological man. It just changes the appearance and the identity card.” (Changer de sexe: illusion et réalité, Odile Jacob, Paris, 2011.) See the testimony of transsexuals quoted in the work of Claude Habib, La question trans, Gallimard, Paris, 2021. ↩︎
- The title of the futuristic novel by Aldous Huxley in which children are conceived in test tubes in the laboratory. ↩︎
- From the show “Répliques” of France Culture broadcast on October 8, 2011, entitled “Théorie du genre, différence des sexes,” hosted by Alain Finkielkraut. ↩︎
- There are certain currents in this movement which are regrettable as pointed out by Sabine Prokhoris, Le Mirage #MeToo. Réflexions à partir du cas français, Cherche-midi, Paris, 2021. ↩︎
- Amongst those feminist works which preach and justify such detestation and hatred are those of Alice Coffin, Le Génie lesbien, Grasset, Paris, 2020, and Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste, Seuil, Paris, 2020. The first is a lesbian, co-president of the Association des Journalistes LGBT and the co-founder of la Conférence Européenne Lesbienne. She advocates boycotting masculine artists, writers, producers, and composers alleging that all men are “aggressors.” “It is not enough that we help each other. We must eliminate them,” she writes. The second recommends misandry which she defines as “a negative sentiment towards the masculine race as a whole …, which forms a spectrum from simple mistrust to outright hostility. ↩︎
- Logically, on the basis of the policies of feminist associations and the LGBTQI+ lobbies, androphobia should be punished by law just like homophobia, xenophobia, and racism. However, like ethnic groups, these groups also benefit from positive discrimination. It’s fine to have a meeting of black people where whites are excluded, but the reverse is illegal. ↩︎
- Looking at how modern Western societies have evolved over the last fifty years, the feminists’ concept of a “patriarchy,” an enemy to be destroyed, may seem rather irrelevant. See Emmanuel TODD, Où en sont-elles? Une esquisse de l’histoire des femmes, Seuil, Paris, 2022. ↩︎
- “An example is the word of Caroline de Haas: “one man in every two or three is a sexual aggressor” (“‘One man in every two or three is an aggressor’. La militante féministe Caroline de Haas balance des chiffres,” 20minutes.fr, 15 février 2018). Another is the statement of Alice Coffin, a lesbian and LGBT militant: “Not having a husband means that I am not at risk of rape, murder, or beatings, and nor are my children.” She makes the same generalization in her book Le Génie lesbian: “Men kill women. With no let up. They rape them. Without stopping. They attack them, bully them, sequester them, and exploit them. Going even further than Caroline de Haas she writes: “It’s obvious. From the beginning of humanity, we’re always far from the mark” (ibid). This idea that all men are violent toward women comes from American radical feminists. They maintain that this marks every sexual relationship, even with no physical contact. They correctly condemned pornography and sexual harassment, but then, most improperly, generalized these cases to the whole male race. For them, the most normal of sexual relationships is rape, even within a married couple. Examples of this attitude may be found in: Kathleen Barry, Female sexual slavery, Prentice Hall, Hoboken, 1979; Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men possessing women, New York, Perigee Books, 1981; Intercourse, Free Press, New York, 1987, trad. fr. Coïts, Éd du Remue-ménage, Montréal et Éd. Syllepse, Paris, 2019; Catharine A. Mackinnon (for whom rape is the model of all heterosexuality): Toward a feminist theory of the state, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1989; Feminism unmodified: Discourses on life and law, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998. However, though their denunciation of pornography is perfectly justified, it has aroused, paradoxically, some opposition from certain feminists. They say that a woman should be free to use her body as she likes, in pornography, as a prostitute or as a surrogate mother, defending the social rights of sex workers. All this is quite at odds with the dignity of woman. ↩︎
- Aggressivity is undoubtedly stronger in men than in women due to both biological and cultural factors. However, this male aggression is usually directed toward other males, as in wars and brawls which are the affairs of men. Moreover, women can also be violent. They can be violent toward men, something that feminists hide, but which is very real though less frequent. See Elisabeth BADINTER in chapter 2 of her book Fausse route (Odile Jacob, Paris, 2003). The longest section is “Feminine violence.” It has three subsections: “Historical violence,” “Daily Violence,” and “Conjugal Violence. ↩︎
- See Irene, La terreur féministe: Petit éloge du féminisme extrémiste, Divergences, Paris, 2022. Christiane Rochefort even wrote fifty years ago: “The time comes when one must draw the knife.” (“Definition of the Oppressed” in Valeria Solanas (éd.), SCUM Manifesto, Olympia Press, New York, 1968, p. 3; This manifesto is seen as one of the founding texts of radical feminism.) ↩︎
- Élisabeth Badinter has criticized the exaggerations of this idea of victimization of women in Fausse route, Odile Jacob, Paris, 2003, in its Introduction and in the section entitled “La logique de l’amalgame” in chapter 1. This idea of victimization, which goes far beyond the feminist movement, is also criticized by Pascal Bruckner in his book La tentation de l’innocence, Grasset, Paris, 1995. ↩︎
- See Christina Hoff Sommers, The War against boys: How misguided feminism is harming our young men, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001. Paul-François Paoli, La tyrannie de la faiblesse. La féminisation du monde ou l’éclipse du guerrier, Françoise Bourin, Paris, 2010. A. De Benoist, L’idéologie du genre, dans Les démons du bien, Paris, 2013, pp. 208–214. ↩︎
- Bérénice Levet uses this as a sub-title in her book, La théorie du genre “ou Le monde rêvé des anges” and includes a section named: “Gender, a new puritanism. ↩︎
- See, for instance Adrienne Rich, “La contrainte à l’hétérosexualité et l’existence lesbienne,” Nouvelles questions féministes, 1, 1981, pp. 15–43. ↩︎
- See above. ↩︎
- Amongst “materialist feminists,” or Marxists, such as Monique Wittig and Christine Delphy, an analogous intersectionality may be observed. They treat genders as unequal classes, obliged to struggle with each other. ↩︎
- Nathalie Heinich writes: “To deny differences between races, sexes or social classes rests on an implied logic: any difference is clearly discrimination. Here we have the classic confusion between equality and likeness which marks a large part of the modern feminist movement. It feels obliged to deny any difference between sexes so as to struggle against sexual inequality. But racism, contrary to what is often said, is not to say “that races are different.” It means believing that race makes men unequal.” (“Six naïvetés à propos du mot “race”,” Libération, 25 juillet 2013.) ↩︎
- On this subject, see the works of the ethnologist, Françoise Heritier. According to her, the distinction between masculine and feminine is universal, and “everywhere, in every age and place, the masculine is considered as superior to the feminine”; she calls this the “differential valence of the sexes” (in Françoise Héritier, Michelle Perrot, Sylviane Agacinski, Nicole Bacharan, La plus belle histoire des femmes, Seuil, Paris 2011, p. 21). ↩︎