What Is a Woman, Anyway? From J.K. Rowling to the Bible
We live in a confused age. Realities that prior generations took for granted are now hotly contested. Our culture can’t define what a man or a woman is. This confusion runs deeper than just biology, as many don’t know how to live out their sex either. The bewilderment of our youth is displayed in countless TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram videos offering direction on how to be a man or a woman, and many more videos expressing despair about the challenges of dating and getting married today. We are truly lost in profound ways.
Much of this confusion comes to a head around the transgender debate. While there are encouraging signs of the medical community regaining a shred of sanity, the culture war rages on. While the biological confusion may be heading in the right direction, the cultural fog over what sex means for day-to-day life remains. Recently Harrison Butker ignited a firestorm for saying what other generations intrinsically knew—women find their greatest fulfillment and meaning in being mothers and wives. The feminist overreaction was as predictable as it was off base.
How did we get so misinformed about biological realities and what this biology means for life? Perhaps no current voice illuminates the source of our confusion more than J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books.
The Curious Case of J.K. Rowling
Rowling should be commended for her courage and clarity of speech in opposing gender theory. In truth, I wish we had more Christian leaders who possessed her courage and clarity. Yet, Rowling fails to see that the very feminism she longs to preserve is exactly what made transgenderism inevitable.
What do I mean? Recently, Rowling defined what a woman is. Much of her definition is very good, particularly her focus on biology and her rejection of feelings defining reality. Rowling asserts that a woman is a human person with gametes that have the direction of getting pregnant. All of this is fine, as far as it goes, but she also separates biology from practical life. In short, Rowling refuses to pull up the diseased root of modern feminism which has produced gender theory.
Rowling operates with a fundamentally Neo-Marxist understanding of the male/female relationship. She wants to keep an objective definition of woman, at least in part, to preserve their status as an oppressed class. Yet her feminism seeks to remove all non-biological distinctions between men and women in practice. Such reasoning undermines the reality and importance of being a woman.
For decades, feminism sought to rid society of all differences between men and women. This was done in the name of equality. Yet the Marxist definition of equality reduces the concept to sameness. Men and women can only be equal if they are the same in roles and abilities. For example, abortion is about justice and equality because it allows women, like men, to not be “forced” to have children. Thus, equality is reduced to sameness in ability and function.
If there are no practical differences between men and women, then why should biology matter at all? If equality is sameness, then the terms man and woman become mere societal labels. In short, modern feminism treated men and women as interchangeable throughout life and society (“anything you can do, I can do better”). It did this in the name of equality. Transgenderism is the mere logical destination of this trajectory. Ironically, transgenderism displays the absurdity of feminism’s assumptions. If men and women are interchangeable throughout life, then the terms are meaningless. To argue that men and women are practically the same in society is to argue that biology doesn’t really matter. Now we have a fertile ground for the confusion of transgenderism to grow in.
An Author Should Know Better
Christianity provides the necessary foundation for equality between men and women without erasing their distinctives. Despite this, in her post defining womanhood, Rowling takes a few ignorant shots at Christianity. She wrote, “[Women] are not the creatures either porn or the Bible tell you we are….[women are not] God’s afterthought, sprung from Adam’s rib.” By linking porn’s treatment of women with that of the Bible, Rowling implies that Christianity has a dehumanizing view of women. Her contempt, and ignorance, are plain for all to see.
As an author, Rowling should know better than to think that women are an afterthought in the Bible. A brief overview of Genesis’s opening chapters will display how uninformed her argument is.
Genesis 1 opens with God speaking everything into existence. His creation is good, and it reflects his glory (Ps. 19:1–2). On the sixth day, the creation week reaches its pinnacle in the creation of humanity. In Genesis 1:26–27, God makes both man and woman in his image. There is a relational equality in humanity—all humans bear God’s image. This equality is found in their worth and their standing before God and others, not in their abilities. Humanity, as male and female, is not an afterthought in the narrative. Rather, the creation of the man and the woman are the pinnacle of God’s creative act. Humans alone bear God’s image. At the end of the week, God declares all of his creation “very good” (Gen. 1:31).
As the story moves to Genesis 2, the narrative shifts to the creation of the first woman. This is no afterthought, but the climax of the first two chapters. Up to this point, there is no tension in the narrative. No problem to overcome. The first thing that is “not good” in creation is the absence of the woman (Gen. 2:18). The creation of the woman is the solution to the first drama in Scripture. In short, creation is incomplete without the woman.
Every good story needs a conflict. In Genesis 1–2, the problem is set forward as Adam is charged with filling and subduing the world but he can’t do so without his other half. The creation of the woman is vital to the whole storyline of Scripture. In fact, through the line of the woman will come the snake-crushing Messiah (Gen. 3:15).
The first two chapters of the Bible reach their peak, right before the fall, with the solving of man’s loneliness. When Adam first looks upon Eve, he breaks out into poetry and the two become one flesh (Gen. 2:23–25). The story is beautiful as it reflects how men and women are made for one another. As an author, Rowling’s ignorance of how the narrative of Genesis 1–2 works is astounding.
The careful reader sees the glory of humanity as it is expressed in both male and female. Moreover, that glory is most fully displayed as the two become one flesh (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:31–32). Men and women are equal in worth as image bearers. Yet, the Bible also teaches that men and women are different and complementary. In the Bible, equality is not reduced to total sameness. Biblical equality is rooted in our relationship to God and others, not our abilities. The differences between men and women serve to bring beauty and completeness to creation.
Men and women, in their differences, are literally made for each other. Alone, they are incomplete. Together, they more fully reflect God’s image. The story of Genesis 1–2 tells that the world is incomplete without both sexes functioning as they should. Rowling attack on the Bible is rooted in a biased ignorance.
Christianity’s Elevation of Women
Through its reinterpretation of history, Neo-Marxism suggests that Christianity has treated women poorly. While it is true that some “Christians” have done so, the same can be said of every movement (including feminism). Any objective study of Christianity shows that it advanced the rights and protections of women throughout history.
Romans often mocked Christianity as the religion “women and slaves.” In the Roman world, the men were allowed to do whatever they wanted sexually, while the women were charged with keeping the family line pure.[1] There were two different sets of standards for men and women. It was Christianity that demanded that men be held to the same sexual ethic as women were. It was Christianity that shut down the sex trade of the Roman Empire.[2] It was Christianity which asserted that women, as image bearers, were equal in worth and status to men. Christianity did all of this without erasing the distinctions between the two sexes. Christianity, unlike modern feminism, values women for being women.
As the atheist historian Tom Holland points out, modern feminism borrows much of its beliefs about equality from Christianity.[3] Outside of the Christian West, equality was not seen as a virtue. Holland summarizes:
That every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely self-evident a truth. A Roman would have laughed at it. To campaign against discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexuality, however, was to depend on large numbers of people sharing in a common assumption that everyone possessed an inherent worth. The origins of this principle –as Nietzsche had so contemptuously pointed out—lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible.[4]
Where in the Bible do we find this foundation for equality? Holland answers, “Genesis.”[5] In short, outside of man being made in God’s image, there is no grounds for any type of equality within humanity.
Christianity alone provides the foundation for the inherent worth of all individuals precisely because it does not ground that in a person’s abilities, roles, or outcomes. No matter what we do in life, there will always be people with better abilities and more stuff. If equality is about the sameness in those areas, then there is no equality. Christianity asserts equality, not in ability, but in relationship to God.
Thus, Christianity does what feminism never could. It asserts both the equality of men and women and their distinctiveness. Men and women need not be the same in ability, role, outcome, or power to be equal. By defining equality in terms of relationship/standing, Christianity affirms the dignity of women without erasing womanhood in the process.
Feminism is a cutflower ideology. As it borrows from and perverts Christian doctrine, it undermines its own goals. By making men and women indistinguishable, it invited gender theory and transgenderism into society. By making men and women interchangeable, feminism is erasing the category of women. Transgenderism is the unavoidable fruit of modern feminism, and this is what Rowling does not understand.
Christianity alone provides the foundation for an inherent equality of worth and standing for men and women, while also celebrating their amazing differences. God created maleness and femaleness in a complementary way; we need one another and our differences. Maleness and femaleness are creational goods to be celebrated and embraced, not ignored and rejected. If we want to know what men and women are, without giving way to misogyny or gender theory, then Christianity is the only way forward.
Pastor Levi Secord
Christ Bible Church
