Let's Talk About...Gender.

Eve Tushnet, indirectly on the CDF letter, more directly on language and gender.

Men and women are courageous, merciful, gentle, fierce; they love, hate, envy, need, crawl, capitulate, and resist. But they don't do it the same way. If you've written a character that could be interchangeably male or female, it is hard for me not to suspect that you've written a cipher, or a trick, or an ideological construct. I write men and women, not "people"; but I don't write concatenations of gender-linked traits. I write people who are often more constrained by gender than they might want to acknowledge; the heroic choices and sublimations and venal refusals women make look different from those made by men. But heroism and sublimation and venal refusal are equally available to either sex, and that too is an important point.

It has the added advantage of being true.

Comments

[Cornelius]

I don't agree with the argument of Eve (and Amy) that in "this kind of gender discourse, men never seem to have special "gifts." Their spiritual talents and preferences are assumed. It's only women who need special praise." If a bunch of bishops issued a list of men's gifts, the immediate response would be "what a bunch of self-important sexist pigs." Some people may disagree with the male-only priesthood, but let's not hold it against the clergy when they try to make an effort to say that, despite the absence of women priests, women are valuable members of the Church.

[Liam]

One problem is the strong tendency among certain theologians to deduce a broader set of Platonic universals into sexual duality than is warranted by the evidence, matched in inversion by an opposing set of theologians. It is one thing to say that men/women tend to be X; to extend that to men/women necessarily or essentialy ARE X only works for a much narrower set of characteristics, et cet. Just because something may be true for the distribution of population within the first standard deviation, does not eradicate the reality of those outside that group or require them to norm to the other.

[Donald R. McClarey]

God, in his infinite wisdom and mercy, made us male and female. Thank you God! How boring the world would be otherwise. The differences between the sexes, I believe, are the underlying motive force behind most human accomplishments, both for good and ill. To deny them is lunacy. We should seek to keep them firmly in mind while understanding that there will always be individual exceptions. However, the exceptions do not disprove the basic differences.

[Frank Elliott]

I'm amused with the arrogance of those writing the Vatican document on feminism. They call themselves experts on human nature and then claim that the difference between the sexes is an essential difference in human nature. Certainly none of these experts are female and the gist of the document is that females need not be consulted.

The essence of fundamentalism is that it supports a view of truth which does not allow validation by experience or research.

[caroline]

so, Donald, what are the basic differnces beyond the physical and the cultural, the uses of which will evaporate in eternity? Is there one theologian anywhere who can give a straight answer to this simple question? If there is no straight answer, why won't they just admit it?

[Donald R. McClarey]

Caroline, go to any school playground in the world and you will see many of the sex differences on display. Ideologues may deplore them, but there they are. I doubt if most of them will not continue in the life to come. The Blessed Virgin Mary is no less a woman now after her bodily assumption than she was before it, and we will remain men and women after the Ressurection. Once again I say, Thank You God!