Gender
Featured Essays
The nesting urge is not born in the months before birth. It does not arrive from out of the blue.
I have been patronizing my dishwasher. I have been subsidizing its efforts.
For all the talk of “anti-discrimination,” current policies discriminate unjustly against actual human beings in favor of a disembodied, counterfactual “ideal.”
“Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory.” This is the cry of the family.
Nuns are useless. And liberalism doesn’t know what to do with them.
Conservatives will either become Catholic or remain unconvincing opponents to transgenderism.
The unknown of sex demands an openness to surprise.
Children contradict all the major anthropological assumptions of liberalism.
Podcasts
Esther defeats the idolatrous god-king through the strange power of weakness. Join Marc and Maria’s discussion of monolithic and idolatrous power structures and their vulnerability to the particular vocation of women.
What is the metaphysical difference between man and woman? Philosophy has long had a problem explaining the difference between men and women, even though it is a basic and fundamental reality. Are men and women different essentially? Is there a particularly "female soul" and a "male soul?" Is the brute fact of the sexually differentiated body the basis for sexual difference, or does that presuppose the problem? In man and woman are we dealing with an opposition or a contrariety? In this new podcast series, Marc Barnes and D. C. Schindler discuss the metaphysics of sexual difference, arguing for a new approach to the question.
What do the matriarchs of the Old Testament teach us regarding the roles of men and women? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss the biblical story of Esther and how it reveals the specific vocation of women.
We don't know what to do with consecrated virginity. The only way we can think of it as a disembodied spiritual calling; or as a fairly strange alternative to what is normal, marriage. Marc and Maria describe how Protestantism (and, in particular, Luther) denied the purpose of the virgin.
Modern economics takes the wage for granted, but during the feudal era, working for a wage was considered a sign of poverty. What changed? And how did this shift in economics shift gender roles? Join Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell as they discuss how capitalism rewrote our modern conception of gender.
Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell take another look at the "you complete me" narrative. Is each person's gender an incomplete half, left in lack of the other? Or, is each person complete as their gender and called to join with the other? In defense of completed gendered worlds, Marc talks about the phenomenon of The Boys and The Girls.
All Gender Essays
A Re-examination of “Stereotypes.”
The nesting urge is not born in the months before birth. It does not arrive from out of the blue.
I have been patronizing my dishwasher. I have been subsidizing its efforts.
For all the talk of “anti-discrimination,” current policies discriminate unjustly against actual human beings in favor of a disembodied, counterfactual “ideal.”
Plastic “makes” a thing present to all and yet seals it within itself, which is of course, the liberal description of the self.
I am excited to have more children, largely because I have a lot to do, and after a certain increase in their muscle mass and spiritual faculty, a child can help me to do it.
The very possibility that, after all, I may kill it, may “terminate,” may become not-mother, negates the female into a perverse image of the male—who looks upon a pregnancy from the outside.
It is stupid to name generations; furthermore, it is tasteless; also, I think it mean-spirited.
The best way to make a baby laugh is to pretend to kill it.
“Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory.” This is the cry of the family.
The marriage vow says, “Virtue or death.”
Nuns are useless. And liberalism doesn’t know what to do with them.
Mothers are unequally superior citizens: abortion works to equalize them.
Conservatives will either become Catholic or remain unconvincing opponents to transgenderism.
The unknown of sex demands an openness to surprise.
Children are granted a pre-modern, moralistic education precisely for the sake of breaking with it.
Though there are many names to call our liberal, technological society, it is edifying to call it One Great Social Transvaluation of Curiosity.
We are male and female: here’s why.
Children contradict all the major anthropological assumptions of liberalism.
The ideal biological subject within a “population” is not woman created by God, holding her differentiation as a gift that no power of Earth or Hell could take from her, but a subject whose gendered and sexual actions are most malleable to the suggestions of those who hold power over a mass society.
By transforming gender from a received gift into a human achievement, predicated upon certain kinds of activities, our dearest queer theorists did the good of work of their capitalist god, transforming a subsistent reality into a scarce commodity.
Thorns and thistles are only a curse to a man who no longer understands them according to their nature.
All Gender Podcasts
In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Star Plato continue their discussion of the book of Judith. Specifically, they discuss Judith's "strategy" of using her beauty to trick the Assyrians. What is the meaning and power of female beauty?
In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Star Plato continue their discussion of the book of Judith. Specifically, they discuss Judith's "strategy" of using her beauty to trick the Assyrians. What is the meaning and power of female beauty?
Do men and women differ only in regards to the body? Or, can we speak of there being a "feminine" soul and a "male" soul? How do we explain the different ways that men and women relate to their bodies? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and D. C. Schindler discuss the different ways of explaining sexual difference. Specifically, they discuss Schindler's recent article in New Polity Issue 7.1/2, and a possible way to metaphysically understand the body/soul problem in relation to men and women.
"The Lord struck him down by the hand of a female!" Is the story of Judith a rejection of male power and patriarchy? What does Judith show about how power is used differently between men and women? How does God reveal his power in the actions of men and women? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Star Plato discuss the Book of Judith and what it teaches regarding the sexual difference.
Esther defeats the idolatrous god-king through the strange power of weakness. Join Marc and Maria’s discussion of monolithic and idolatrous power structures and their vulnerability to the particular vocation of women.
What is the metaphysical difference between man and woman? Philosophy has long had a problem explaining the difference between men and women, even though it is a basic and fundamental reality. Are men and women different essentially? Is there a particularly "female soul" and a "male soul?" Is the brute fact of the sexually differentiated body the basis for sexual difference, or does that presuppose the problem? In man and woman are we dealing with an opposition or a contrariety? In this new podcast series, Marc Barnes and D. C. Schindler discuss the metaphysics of sexual difference, arguing for a new approach to the question.
What do the matriarchs of the Old Testament teach us regarding the roles of men and women? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss the biblical story of Esther and how it reveals the specific vocation of women.
In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Michael Boland discuss the upcoming New Polity magazine, Issue 7.1, on Man and Woman. Specifically, they discuss the philosophical and metaphysical problems of sexual difference, and how our understanding of man and woman impacts our view of politics.
The sixth annual New Polity conference aims to refute bad ideas concerning marriage and sexual difference; to debate the metaphysics of man and woman; to argue for a profound continuity between the order of man and woman and the political and cosmic order as a whole; to shed a light on the tyranny-destroying potential of marriage; and, in sum, to rediscover the mystery and purpose of sexual difference as revealed by the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Andrew Willard Jones discuss the relation of man and woman, the metaphysical implications, and the 2026 conference.
In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley review the latest New Polity Magazine, Issue 5.3, which includes articles on sex discrimination in the workplace, the demise of the hippocratic oath, the state of the pro-life movement, and more.
Gender season 2 has come to a close. Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell answer your questions and discuss the second season of Gender.
Marc and Maria discuss how the Third-Person perspective of pornography changes the way we view sexual difference.
Marc and Maria continue their conversation on Humanae Vitae; specifically on the desire to control the body and its reproduction through abortion. They discuss how abortion not only plays the function of the killing of innocent children, but reshapes the experience of the body as such.
Maria and Marc read Humanae Vitae, the Catholic Church's decisive rejection of contraception, as a text which prophesies and makes sense out of the meaninglessness we ascribe to our male and female bodies today.
Everywhere is beige. The same beige houses, the same big box department stores, even the exact same food is served everywhere all across the country. What has this monotone sameness done to produce our cultural moment - one that seems to glorify diversity on the one hand, but ship it out en masse with the other? Join Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell as they explore our desaturated modern world and why we look to gender for the way out.
We don't know what to do with consecrated virginity. The only way we can think of it as a disembodied spiritual calling; or as a fairly strange alternative to what is normal, marriage. Marc and Maria describe how Protestantism (and, in particular, Luther) denied the purpose of the virgin.
Modern economics takes the wage for granted, but during the feudal era, working for a wage was considered a sign of poverty. What changed? And how did this shift in economics shift gender roles? Join Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell as they discuss how capitalism rewrote our modern conception of gender.
Welcome to the Politics of Gender Season 2! Gender remains a hotly contested issue: gender constructionists and biological reductionists in an all out warfare. But, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell argue that the Church can surpass these debates, and provide a way of understanding one's sex beyond imposed identities or brute facts.
Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell take another look at the "you complete me" narrative. Is each person's gender an incomplete half, left in lack of the other? Or, is each person complete as their gender and called to join with the other? In defense of completed gendered worlds, Marc talks about the phenomenon of The Boys and The Girls.
Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss the continuity of our current transgender moment with the pattern of origin stories found in the ancient myths—and how the Genesis narrative serves as a polemic against the anthropology of primal androgyny.
This is the end of Gender—Ivan Illich's book, that is. Join as Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell wrap up with Illich's best chapter yet, including a critique of capitalism and how to build a gendered world.
Holy Spime blocks! Today, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell venture further into Illich's gendered domains, exploring an older world of gendered tools and spaces, and musing on how these worlds manifest (or don't) today.
Are today's traditional gender roles really traditional? In this episode, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss Illich's description of the gendered world of pre-modernity and why stay-at-home moms are as lonely as ever.
The regime of sex, the reign of gender, a cynical take on capitalism and sexism, and shadow work of the 1950's house wife's... join in for all this and more as Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss chapters 1 & 2 of Ivan Illich's provocative text, "Gender."
Blessed Easter to you! No long podcast in honor of this great solemnity, but we'd like to invite you to join our second "Politics of Gender Book Club." Follow along by reading the first three chapters of "Gender" by Ivan Illich.
Thomas doesn't comment on modern gender theory—directly. But in this podcast, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell explore how Thomas' notion of "human law" (combined with the brilliant insight of Ivan Illych on modern gender) help us grasp how our primordial task to image God as creative "world-builders" manifests the realm of gender.
Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell return for more gender trouble—but this time, gender trouble for the liberal project. The goal is to make all genders equal and free before the law, so we begin with liberalism’s first task: the creation of an equal legal definition.
Queer theory is all about the search for one's authentic sexual identity and the freedom to express it—or is it? Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss the conclusions of Butler's queer theory and the ultimate aim of its political project.
Whoever controls the narrative, controls the truth. So can "constructing a new narrative" actually liberate oppressed identities? Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell explore the Butlerian critique of gender structuralists to find out.
Gender is a social construct. And so is sex. And so is everything else. Maria Brandell and Marc Barnes finish the first chapter of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and try to show the difference between academic postmodernism and the naive identity politics of popular transgender and queer identity construction.
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A Re-examination of “Stereotypes.”