The egalitarian vs. complementarian divide is a contentious issue regarding the distinctions between male and female roles. It is somewhat of a spectrum of how distinct one regards male and female roles, with the strongest egalitarian position being that gender-based role distinctions should not exist anywhere in the church or society, and the strongest complementarian position being that gender roles should be enforced in every aspect of the church and society. Anyway, I'm not interested in engaging in all of that debate here; it seems that most people would hold to some of the numerous, more nuanced positions that lie between those two extremes. This question is posed to the extreme of the egalitarian side. (Some names I think fall into this camp would be F.F. Bruce or Craig Keener, but I have not read much of their own works.) How do theologians who reject gender distinction in all aspects of society understand the design of "male and female"? It is clear from Genesis 1:27 that human beings were made by God to be male and female, but the text does not indicate what the purpose for the sexes is. Augustine (by no means an egalitarian generally) understood the purpose of male/female distinction to be for the purpose of reproduction. However, I don't think this explanation is tenable because lots of animals are hermaphrodites and some reproduce asexually, so sex difference is plainly not a prerequisite for reproduction. **Do egalitarians have another explanation for the existence of male and female?** If the distinction is not intended to be reflected in any area of our social lives, what *is* it intended for?