Volume 94, 2020
The Good, the True, the Beautiful: Through and of the Ages
Harrison Jennings
Pages 129-138
A Thomistic Sexual Realism
Sexual realism has traditionally held that our categories of sex refer to something real about our biology. Sexual non-realism, on the other hand, either partially or wholly rejects this position. Sexual non-realists typically point to intersexuality as evidence that our categories of sex are not inherent to nature but are culturally constructed. This paper makes use of the work of Carrie Hull in her book The Ontology of Sex to explore the philosophical backgrounds of sexual non-realism and to make a general case for sexual realism from a Thomistic framework.