Julia Kelto Lillis

“Genderlessness” examines a resilient impulse among late ancient Christians to imagine genderless/sexless ways to be human. While several early Christian texts refer to transcending gender or a future dissolution of sexual difference, feminist scholars often conclude that the authors envision an elimination of femaleness and sexual desire, but not of the masculine ideals that shaped their understandings of God, virtue, and spiritual ascent. “Genderlessness” argues that some ancient Christians found gender dispensable and tried to think beyond it altogether. Juxtaposing various views from the past and diverse notions of gender justice in the present creates the opportunity to understand the past more deeply, rethink assumptions on the purposes gender serves, and modify simplistic narratives of how religion and gender intertwine in Christian traditions. Through new feminist readings of sources, the project shows that a recurring interest in imagining or enacting genderlessness is visible in pious stories about saints, reports on gender-blurring ascetic groups, and speculation on human beings’ characteristics in a resurrected age to come.