Monday, January 23, 2012

Gender and stereotypes

There was a story on the news this morning - I haven't been able to find an online version, although I haven't looked very hard - about a couple who decided not to let anyone beyond close family know the gender of their child until he was five years old.  Their stated aim was to avoid the stereotyping which they feel often goes on.  They didn't want their son forced to conform to the societal norms for little boys; they therefore elected to keep his gender under wraps until such time as his true character had begun to develop, independent of expectations related to gender.  There have been more extreme stories than this floating around - I saw one recently about a couple who told nobody the gender of their child, and deliberately dressed him/her (I can't remember which) in clothes which would normally be associated with different genders on different days.

I think this is pretty seriously wrong, but also a little bit right.

It is wrong because gender is a given, in at least two senses.  Firstly, gender is biologically given.  We are gendered creatures, and it is not given to us to decide to which gender we ought to belong.  It is true that there are people who do not seem to be clearly gendered physically, but I would suggest that this class forms the limit of human experience - to be taken seriously, to be treated with respect, but not to be used as a source of norms.  The attempt to escape from all forms of 'given-ness' is a part of our society's carrying on of the Enlightenment quest for autonomy.  (Another way this shows itself is the desire to be disembodied, something which we see in the preference for digital media over face to face interaction.  I heard someone on the BBC a little while ago say that she thought that our vestigial attachment to being in the same physical place as someone would soon wither and die.  I doubt it).  For the Christian, of course, these 'givens' - embodiment, gender - are given by God, and therefore to be taken doubly seriously.  If I am male, I am called by God to be male, and to seek to do otherwise is disobedience.

Secondly, gender is socially given.  It is a false model of human existence to assume that I can construct my own identity apart from the norms and expectations of society.  I am born as part of a family, in a specific geographical, temporal, and cultural context.  Many of the most important things about me are decided by these 'givens'.  To try to escape them altogether is to try to be less than fully human.  Again, this is all about the quest for autonomy, and it relates to the first point.  The societal norms surrounding gender are about the regulation and expression of the biological differences.  To deny society a voice altogether is to deny the basic biological difference, and in the Christian framework to deny the Creator.

But these people are also a little bit right.  Unlike the God-given biological differences, the societal norms surrounding these differences are open to critique.  The expression of masculinity and femininity is not the same everywhere and at all times, nor need it be.  Moreover, there are certainly aspects of these norms which inculcate wrong (sinful) attitudes and aspirations.  Whilst we cannot completely discard society's norms, neither ought we to accept them uncritically.  There is a real masculinity and femininity which can only be disregarded by disobeying God; the ways in which these are expressed in a particular culture will vary, and indeed there will and must be variation between individuals within a given culture.

It is this point which I think is often overlooked by evangelical Christians when they talk about gender.  Particularly amongst our North American complementarian brethren, there is a tendency to assume that when God calls men to be men he calls them to be rugged, individualist, North American men.  Well, perhaps he does, in that culture, but perhaps not.  Taking social norms and enshrining them as the only way to express God-given differences seems pretty risky to me.  Perhaps we need to be a bit more open; to accept that masculinity and femininity are there, to be embraced and enjoyed, as part of our God-given identity - but then to think carefully about the way in which we are accustomed to express those identities, and to engage critically with our culture.

7 comments:

  1. This is such good common sense, Daniel. Thank you.

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  2. Interesting.

    I think in your first point you misunderstand what they are trying to achieve by dressing the child in an ambiguous way. they are not trying to make the child actually gender-less, that would be a physical and biological task, but free the child from some of the cultural associations / society's prejudices attached to the different sexes as you go on to say.

    Also your statement 'there is real masc and fem....by disobeying god' might be worth qualifying, do you mean conceptually speaking, or as qualities that each man has or each woman has? Or do you mean purely genetically speaking?

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    1. Thanks for the comment, Clare. To clarify, I don't think (and the news article was brief, so I'm not sure) that the couple were trying to raise a gender-less child - as you say, that would be impossible and foolish. What I am saying is that we cannot totally ignore the ways in which our society expresses gender; part of what it means to be male is to be male-in-this-society. So I'm not sure it is possible to completely ignore the social aspect and still preserve the basic assignation of gender. (With the caveat, as in the post, that the social aspect is open to critique and can change over time).

      I think I would want to say that masculinity and femininity are vocational; that is to say, God calls each of us to be a man or a woman. Biology is a pretty serious indicator as to what calling we have received! However, I think we get into trouble when we start to try to define 'masculinity' and 'femininity' in the abstract - outside of the relationship to 'the other', meaning other humans (of both genders) and ultimately God. Any list of supposedly masculine/feminine traits will, I think, fall into that trap. So, it's complex, it's relational, and it can't be exhaustively defined - hence the need to tread carefully.

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  3. Can I ask you a question thats unrelated to this subject? I was wondering if you would you consider writing a blog post about why / how your political leaning relate to your faith? I find it challenging and difficult to understand the correlation between being religious and being right wing, and yet statistically the two outlooks often coincide. It would be really great to hear your view.

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    1. I'd be happy to write that post. I started, way back in 2008, trying to show how my theology and politics meshed - starting here and continuing here, here, and here. It was a while ago, but I think I still broadly agree with what I wrote then. But I will endeavour to write an updated summary post shortly. For the record, I wouldn't really describe myself as right-wing, but as an anti-utopian, anti-statist, historicist communitarian conservative. But I can see that might not exactly trip off the tongue.

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    2. Really interesting, and i have many questions about each of those entries! I would suggest that a state that does for its people what they cannot do better for themselves, that encourages community rather than individual self interest and protects its weakest members is perfectly consistent with god being king of all, and the position that we are all inherently flawed and that ultimately all ills cannot be fixed by man. The question of how can we best organise ourselves on earth, and the problems of transparency and corruption, equality and opportunity, need to be continuously be addressed and persevered with, but deciding that that necessarily needs to be through small government seems misplaced, pessimistic and comes with its own enormous risks. It seems to me that the only political models ruled out are those that restrict significant freedoms and those governments that are cruel or uncompassionate. I can't see how this moves christian communities toward the right.

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    3. Hi Clare,

      Thanks for your rejoinder. I have started writing some more detailed posts addressing some of these issues. I would agree with you that there are not many political models that are absolutely ruled out, and that within the many models that are left to us once these are taken off the table there will be different strengths and weaknesses to each. I suspect that one of the big differences - perhaps the major one - between Christians on the 'left' and 'right' (I am not a fan of the terminology) is to do with the role of the state. That is to say, we ought to all agree that the vulnerable should be protected, and that community rather than individual self-interest should be pursued - the question boils down to whether this is best done through the state or not. I would argue, and have tried to argue this morning in a new post, that the answer is that it is not. Would be interested in your response.

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