Why Escaping the Body Isn’t Liberation
There’s a strange twist happening in progressive feminist circles today. In their fight to liberate women, many have ended up sounding eerily like ancient Gnostic heretics—(oh no, he used the H word!) those early critics of Christianity who claimed the material world (especially the body) was evil, and that salvation meant escaping the flesh. Only now, instead of mystical secret knowledge offering the way out, we have the turgid prose of Professor Judith Butler, postmodern gender theory, and a growing discomfort with the stubborn reality of biological sex.
Victoria Smith, in her insightful piece “Why Progressives Fear the Female Body” published on Fairer Disputations, makes this connection powerfully clear. She argues that modern progressivism, in its attempts to reject oppressive gender norms, has ended up rejecting the female body itself. Her critique is not only culturally relevant—it is theologically resonant. It echoes the warnings of early Christian thinkers like Irenaeus and the modern affirmations of St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. All three—Smith, Irenaeus, and John Paul II—sound the alarm against a mindset that sees the body, especially the sexed body, as a problem to solve rather than a gift to receive.
This post brings their voices together, not to bury feminism, but to redeem it from the disembodied dead-end it’s wandered into.
Victoria Smith’s Bold Call to Re-Embodiment
Smith begins by analyzing how the female body has been treated historically and culturally. From The Taming of the Shrew to 21st-century think-pieces, femininity has been associated with softness, emotion, and fragility—qualities that society often devalues. Feminists rightly rebelled against the idea that biology is destiny. But somewhere along the way, a noble resistance to stereotypes morphed into a rejection of biology itself.
Enter Judith Butler (University of California, Berkeley), the godmother of modern gender theory. Her claim? That not only is gender a performance, but sex itself is socially constructed. The body is no longer a given—it’s a canvas onto which culture, power, and preference paint whatever identity suits the moment. This erasure of biological sex, Smith argues, has led to a bizarre and self-defeating place: a feminism that can no longer define what a woman is, let alone defend her rights.
Smith writes:
“It is not the social role alone that has been rejected, but the female body itself, now portrayed as a problem to be solved, a site of oppression that must be transcended or reshaped.”
This isn’t liberation. It’s the ancient Christian heresy of Gnosticism in new clothes.
Meet One of the Original Anti-Gnostics: Irenaeus of Lyons
In the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons—bishop, theologian, and one of the most important early defenders of orthodox Christianity—battled a similar set of ideas. He had been a student of Polycarp, who in turn had been a disciple of the Apostle John. That connection gave his theological arguments both apostolic weight and deep spiritual insight. Irenaeus wrote extensively against the Gnostic sects of his time, who believed that the physical world was made by a lower, evil god, and that the human body was a trap from which the soul must escape. For them, salvation was about becoming pure spirit, free from the so-called corruption of matter. Sound familiar??
Based on the biblical evidence, Irenaeus said no. God created the world, and He called it good. More than that, God Himself entered creation—took on human flesh—in the person of Jesus Christ. Far from escaping the body, salvation happens in and through it.
“The glory of God is a living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.” (Against Heresies, IV.20.7)
This is not metaphorical. Irenaeus believed in the resurrection of the body. Not just Jesus’ body, but ours too. Bodies matter—not just now, but forever. To deny the body, or to see it as irrelevant to our identity, is to deny the Incarnation, the hope of resurrection, and the very doctrine of Creation—that the material world, including our bodies, was made good by God and is essential to who we are.
And not only Creation past, but the New Creation promised in Scripture, of which the resurrected Jesus is considered the “first fruits.” As Paul says, God is “uniting all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10), and again, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:21). Paul adds in 1 Corinthians 15:20, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Revelation echoes this hope with a vision not of souls floating in the clouds, but of a renewed, embodied world: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… and I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:1–2).
And why is the New Jerusalem “coming down”? Because it has always been God’s desire to dwell with His creation, not whisk it away. Revelation 21:3 makes this abundantly clear: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man (i.e. humans). He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” The biblical story does not end with escape from the body, but with its redemption, glorification, and the permanent presence of God with His people in a renewed creation.
Irenaeus—as well as all biblically grounded Christians—would look at today’s “gender is just a social construct” mantra and shake his head. The human person is a unity of body and soul. Tear the two apart, and you don’t get freedom. You get fragmentation. You get the good-book definition of Death.
John Paul II: The Body as Theology
Fast forward to the late 20th century. Enter Pope John Paul II and his revolutionary Theology of the Body. Drawing on Scripture, philosophy, and personalist ethics, he declared something radical in its simplicity: The body reveals the person.
What does that mean? It means that our bodies aren’t just containers or tools or costumes. They are expressive of who we are. They are not incidental—they are essential.
John Paul II insists that sexual difference is not a mistake or a social accident. It’s part of the divine plan for communion and love. Male and female bodies point to something beyond themselves—they are sacraments of self-gift and relationship.
“The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine.” (TOB, Feb. 20, 1980)
Smith’s analysis finds a powerful echo here. When progressives treat the female body as a problem to be solved—something to downplay, flatten, or escape—they are rejecting the very grammar of our humanity.
John Paul II does not romanticize the body or deny its vulnerability. But he insists that it is the stage on which love, meaning, and redemption are played out. To erase the sexed body in favor of some abstract “identity” is to reject the stage altogether.
Feminism at a Crossroads: Recovering the Body
Here’s the great irony. In trying to liberate women from oppressive stereotypes, progressive feminism has come to mirror the very Gnostic impulse the Church condemned: the desire to be pure mind, unencumbered by our material selves.
But real liberation doesn’t come from denying the body. It comes from understanding it rightly. Smith, Irenaeus, and John Paul II all offer that path. They call us back to an older wisdom—one that affirms the goodness of creation, the dignity of embodiment, and the integrity of the person.
This doesn’t mean going back to 1950s gender roles or pretending sexism doesn’t exist. It means refusing to fight injustice by erasing the very thing we’re supposed to be defending: the reality of being women and men.
For feminism to have a future, it must reclaim the body—not as a problem, but as a promise.
Conclusion: Bodies Are Not Obstacles—They’re the Path
We live in a moment where it’s increasingly difficult to say something as basic as “women are adult females.” In fact, some have lost jobs, been deplatformed, or publicly vilified for affirming this seemingly obvious truth—often branded as hateful, transphobic, or fearful of inclusion. It’s not bigotry being expressed but biology, not malice but clarity. Yet we live in a cultural moment where empathy—especially toward ‘the marginalized’—has been weaponized. A false empathy now demands affirmation of delusion as love, confusing emotional validation with moral truth. In this framework, to question someone’s self-identification is seen not as conscientious objection but as cruelty. But empathy divorced from reality is not compassion—it’s capitulation to an ancient deception. And without the courage to speak the truth—‘women are adult females’—our ability to advocate for women’s rights and protections is seriously jeopardized. Sisterhood, safety, fairness in sport, and integrity in health care all depend on recognizing the reality of the sexed body.
Victoria Smith is doing brave work by naming this reality. She’s not alone. Irenaeus, centuries ago, and John Paul II, decades ago, also stood against the spirit of disembodiment in their time. We would do well to listen.
Below are some helpful links to the teachings of Irenaeus and JPII. Those teachings will require a sustained, yet rewarding commitment. At a minimum, please read Smith’s important article.
Because if we’re ever going to move forward—spiritually, culturally, politically—we’ll need our bodies to come with us. After all, they’re not the problem. They’re the very place where the Spirit-empowered purposes of God are meant to unfold—in flesh and in history, not in abstraction or escape.
[Sources: Victoria Smith “Why Progressives Fear the Female Body“; John Paul II Theology of the Body; Irenaeus, Against Heresies.]
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Honor the Body
