What Is Catholic about French Secularism?: Debating the “Nature” of Sex Change in France

In 1992, France was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for refusing to allow transsexuals to alter the sex listed on their birth certificates.  Since then, the French legislature and judiciary have attempted to define the categories of people for whom and the conditions under which voluntary alterations of birth certificates are legal.  But even as France has tried to align its legal norms with European regulations, French understandings of “sex” remain distinct from European ideals.  Since 2010, the European Commission has encouraged member states to guarantee the right of all citizens to carry papers and official documents that correspond to their “chosen gender.”  In contrast, French law and jurisprudence has worked very to limit such options to a category of medically monitored “transsexuals” whose sex reassignments—whether through plastic surgery or sterilizing hormonal treatments—are considered “irreversible.”

This is puzzling.  If sex can be changed voluntarily, if it is open to intervention and manipulation, how can such change become “irreversible”?  What might we make of the French legal and juridical investment in such a counterintuitive concept, an investment that puts France at odds with European norms?  I argue that in a political moment seemingly characterized by the “denaturalization” of certain social categories and statuses, there is a “resilient” naturalism in French law and jurisprudence that may be tied to Catholic theological commitments to “nature” and “the natural.”  This paper thus explores the surprising “resilience” of Catholic norms about “nature” and “the natural” in secular France.