Part of me just wants to ignore this, but I guess a lot of people still listen to the Pope, so here goes...
Interestingly, the Pope is actually disputing gender theory, not just "homosexual acts", which have been the primary target of the catholics traditionally.
"If tropical forests deserve our protection, humankind... deserves it no less," the 81-year-old pontiff said, calling for "an ecology of the human being."
It is not "outmoded metaphysics" to urge respect for the "nature of the human being as man and woman," he told scores of prelates gathered in the Vatican's sumptuous Clementine Hall.
As a student of feminist theory, I don't even know where to begin. For me, the first time that I fully understood that gender is not something handed down from on high was when I read the diary of Herculine Barbin and Foucault's accompanying commentary. For those who haven't read it, Barbin lived in 19th century France, was raised as a woman but then was told she should become a man when it became clear that she wasn't going to menstruate and that her genetalia more resembled that of a man than a woman. After a few years of trying to live as a man, Barbin commits suicide.
To try to put oneself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know (and doesn't really care) which gender s/he might be is a powerful tool for understanding the extent to which gender is a social construct. Ultimately it is gender, or rather society forcing gender onto Barbin that drives Barbin to suicide (curse our gendered pronouns!)
While that may be an extreme case, all gender is a kind of drag. Social conceptions of masculine and feminine vary from place to place - as do social conceptions of attractiveness. So who at the vatican is going to sit the Pope down for an intro to Feminist theory class?