ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on exclusive essentialist binary approaches to gender. It argues that naturalistic essentialism, though deeply entrenched, has been yielding more readily than religious essentialism to the results of empirical studies on the abilities of women and men. The warfare metaphor between science and theology as described in is applicable to sexuality and gender in some of the same ways it has been in evolution. The chapter explores emerging scientific and religious views on sexual orientation. Religiously based sexual apartheid continues to be a straightforward truth at the outset of the 21st century. The reasons offered by all male hierarchies for the separation of sexual spheres are often packaged in the language of theology and/or various interpretations of history and myth. The implication was that many of the presumed essential differences between women and men would disappear if the two sexes were on a level playing field with respect to educational opportunities.
