Precarious Recognition. The "Third Sex" from the perspective of Christian Social Ethics

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Marianne Heimbach-Steins
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 492893399

The starting point of our project was the October 2017 decision of the German Constitutional Court (1 BvR 2019/16) regarding the introduction of a “third sex”, which mandated changes to the civil status law. From the perspective of Christian social ethics and philosophy, the project focuses on the social effects of these legal changes. It analyzes the ongoing political and social debate under two leading questions: Which new social conflicts are produced by recognition, and how can theological ethics contribute to a productive engagement with these conflicts? As a forum of critical reflection, social ethics will focus in particular on the Catholic Church, insofar as the church is a social actor involved in the struggles for recognition surrounding the “third sex”. The legislative process, which produced first results in December 2018, does not mark not the end point of (successful or failed) recognition, but the starting point for necessary reflection on ongoing and newly triggered social processes.The mandated (and by now, legally valid) changes are part of a larger development, which includes the creation of civil partnerships for same-sex couples, marriage equality for same-sex couples, the Constitutional Court’s decisions on the Law on Transsexuals (TSG) and the first, hesitant reform of civil status law in 2013. This development concerns, generally speaking, a flexibilization and liberalization of the legal treatment of categories liked sex/gender, identity, sexuality, partnership, and family.The aforementioned legal changes raise new questions, which cannot be answered from within the legal system – and these also concern the self-conception of the Catholic Church as a social actor. In this context, we want to ask how the Catholic Church can engage with these changes from within the framework of its own ethical and metaphysical tradition, which is grounded in a binary and complementary understanding of sex/gender, and how it might offer constructive contributions to the ongoing process of social recognition. A particular focus will be on the question how these conflicts of recognition are carried out within the church. These conflicts are analyzed on the basis of Judith Butler’s work on theories of recognition, which allows us to conceptualize recognition as an open-ended process without a fixed telos of successful recognition. The underlying differences in world-views concerning the concepts of sex and gender will be examined with Ludwik Fleck’s thought-style analysis.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants