While the scientific foundations of the notion of gender are questioned, the author has chosen to shift his point of view towards the esoteric and astrological sources of gender. Little mystic of the genre, by François Rastier, was published on September 15, 2023 by Intervalles.
Franceinfo: François Rastier, you are publishing a very erudite little book on gender, why this choice?
François Rastier: I note that this notion is now omnipresent in teaching and research: for example, we have even created a Gender Institute. It is not up to me to define gender, but it is my role to observe the development of this theme and to try to understand why it is developing. Two or three years ago, the president of the CNRS declared that gender and race were the keys to reading the social world. This is therefore essential to the world of research as well as to that of teaching, including for children and adolescents. We are increasing the number of initiations, "transversal" courses - including in the fields of physics or law. This theme therefore naturally imposed itself on me.
What new insights can a linguist bring to gender?
So-called inclusive writing has spread everywhere, especially in union and institutional communication in universities. For a linguist, this remains strange, because writing and language are two different things. A language can be written in different scripts, this was the case for Turkish for example. Furthermore, grammatical gender has nothing to do with the sex of what is designated - when what is designated has a sex. In languages like Japanese or Persian, there is no gender, but the fact remains that gender equality in Iran is not particularly renowned... My questions come from there: of course, gender equality is necessary, but is it by inventing words and punctuation that we can achieve it?
Language can have a performative value: to say is sometimes to make happen. A sacrament, for example… It’s the same thing with gender: we are a man, a woman, or a non-binary person because we decide it, and we say that we are. What is the issue according to you?
If we assume that gender is a "performative identity", everyone can decide that they have this or that gender, in a range that is always open, regardless of biological sex. In all cultures, codifications concern clothing and manners that characterize women and men. It's commonplace, but why has this obvious fact become an object of research? We refer to a social issue, that of equality between men and women: not pronouncing the word "woman", but rather "person", for example, would contribute to this equality. But in order not to offend transgender people, an international medical journal illustrates, The Lancet, describes women as "bodies with vaginas". It is strange, to want to avoid the word "woman" in this way, to achieve a kind of dehumanization. There is perhaps a link behind this with traditional superstitions such as those concerning androgyny... In novels such as the Seraphita of Balzac, as in a whole esoteric tradition, marvelous, angelic beings have no sex but have a gender and thus surpass the human condition.
Precisely, you explain that the difference between the sexes is attached to original sin in Christianity. Most religions believe that the creation of the living world results from the union of a divine couple, like Isis and Osiris, you write…
Yes, and they also illustrate the unassignable gender of angels, today rivaled by trans people. The mysticism of gender deconstructs theology, but keeps the project of a kind of redemption, because it allows us to find an original unity. For various occult traditions, androgyny is a divine prerogative. The sex of angels has always been non-binary.
Today, in the women's press we find articles with the title: "I was born in the wrong body." What does that mean to you?
This means that in addition to your biological body, you would have a real body, another body. Thus, in traditional beliefs, we find the superstition that there is an astral sex – today it would be gender, which is the subject of a revelation. These superstitious elements are interesting: we would be born in a “wrong body” depending on the time of birth, for example. Moreover, astrology and other non-rational and pseudoscientific currents are booming in our societies, particularly among supporters of intersectional ideology.
Is this a concept that is not scientific in your opinion?
This is an irrational worldview. The leading gender theorist, Judith Butler, clearly states that there is no gender theory, and this is all the more readily conceded because we are not here in theory, but in belief. Without definitions, without methodology, there is no possible refutation, and we can affirm with authority that a biological reality that seems obvious to everyone does not exist, that it is a simple social convention, a simple assignment imposed by civil status. It would therefore be a kind of oppression to consider someone as a man or a woman, independently of their sexual orientation. When this reasoning is pushed to the extreme, it opposes homosexuality, because it retains something of the difference between the sexes.
How do you think today's discourses around gender are part of mass narcissism?
Throughout life, we can identify with different models, especially in times of uncertainty, such as adolescence. But today, beliefs about gender justify hormone injections to block puberty or perform operations such as breast removal. However, therapists know that self-acceptance can be improved by simple psychological consultations. Drug and surgical treatments are preparing a health scandal, and there is therefore a public health issue here. The phenomenon of "transitions" is increasing regularly and very quickly. In my opinion, "gender transitions" constitute the first mass transhumanist experience.
Like all voluntary blindness, gender ideology practices the denial of reality and fuels post-truth. The very sharp increase in cosmetic surgery operations is due to the same problem: people are reduced to profiles, stereotypical identities, and it is considered that all psychological problems can be resolved by technical means: this is one of the principles of transhumanism.
“Little Mystic of Gender”, by François Rastier, published on September 15, 2023 by Intervalles, 163 pages, €13.
URL: https://www.editionsintervalles.com/catalog/petite-mystique-du-genre/
NB First published on the France Info website, this interview conducted by Carine Azzopardi – whom I am pleased to thank here – has been revised for this publication.
