A Question of Gender (part 1): Gender, sex, and gender ideologies

Hi folks, I trust you are good? This week we will be meeting at Platform 2 on Tynemouth station meeting at 7.30. We hope to see you there.

This weeks blog will be split into two parts, and is written for us by Caleb.

 

What better person to talk about gender than a straight cisgender man? Fortunately I have studied this a bit at uni and benefited from a lot of wisdom from feminist/queer friends, so hopefully I can give some insight not just from my own limited experience.

 

This week I’m going to talk about gender/sex ideologies throughout history. Next week, I’ll talk about how I think the Bible can support a feminist perspective. And in a future blog on ‘a question of inclusion’ I’ll talk more about transgender and intersex people and a ‘diversity’ perspective.

 

Gender/sex is about everything to do with being male/female, man/woman, masculine/feminine, or neither, both, or in between. Some of gender/sex is caused by biology (chromosomes, hormones, physiology) and some is caused by society and human choices (raising children, social interaction, systems that affect different genders differently, ideologies, marriages, workplace structures, culture, ideology, social roles, how we express ourselves, etc). Some people prefer to say ‘sex’ is the biological stuff and ‘gender’ is the social stuff, and this distinction can be useful. But the two are often quite intertwined, and people often disagree about what’s social and what’s biological. In everyday life we mostly use ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ interchangeably.

 

People have had many different ways of thinking about gender and what should be expected of people of different genders. These ideologies or perspectives shape our behaviour and societies, but also our behaviour and societies shape our ideologies.

 

Here are four ways people have thought about gender throughout history:

 

• Explicit Patriarchy: Men and women (and others, if acknowledged) are inherently unequal and should be socially unequal. Men are superior to, and more valuable than, women in most ways: stronger, more intelligent, better at most things, morally better. Women (and others, if acknowledged) are physically, intellectually, and morally weaker. Men should run things and take on most important public social roles; women should support men, and birth and raise the next generation.

 

• Complementarity: Men and women are inherently equal but should be socially unequal or at least perform different roles. The two genders (this view basically ignores non-binary options) are equally valuable and should both be celebrated, but they have very different characteristics (it’s like they are from different planets—‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’). Men and women, boys and girls look different, act different, like different things, buy different products, etc. Therefore they should perform different ‘roles’ (and male ‘roles’ tend to have more status/power). The ‘male role’ and the ‘female role’ fit together (or ‘complement’) each other to create a harmonious whole in heterosexual relationship. It can be argued that this is simply patriarchy in nicer packaging, though some versions of complementarity are more overtly patriarchal than others.

 

• Feminism/Equality: Men and women (and others, if acknowledged) are inherently equal and should also be socially equal. Men have traditionally dominated in patriarchal societies and this is oppressive of women (and others). Nobody should have any more or less power, privilege, or prestige because of their gender. There should be equity between the genders, which doesn’t mean denying gender difference but it does mean not exaggerating gender difference (‘men are from North Dakota, women are from South Dakota’). Certainly, gender differences should never be used to support social inequality.

 

• Diversity: Gender/sex are complicated; they are on a spectrum; there are people who are neither, both, or in-between, or people whose personal gender identity doesn’t match their social identity or their assigned sex, etc. I’ve put this last, because from our modern Western perspective it probably seems the most recent, but it’s an ancient understanding in most societies. There have always been people who don’t fit, and different cultures have understood them differently (not always positively). I will say more about all of this in my future blog on ‘a question of inclusion’ for transgender and intersex people.

 

These days the most common attitudes would probably be (a) some kind of  complementarian perspective, and (b) a combination of some kind of feminist/equality and diversity perspectives, with some people having more awareness and openness to diversity than others, and some people being more aware than others of how far short of gender equality we actually are.

 

However, if we go back just 250 years, feminism and complementarianism as fully articulated ideologies hadn’t been invented yet. There were glimmerings of equality perspectives here and there.

 

The people rich and powerful enough to write down their thoughts and have them remembered, who were mostly men, tended to endorse explicit patriarchy through most of Western history. Ordinary people, from what we can tell, probably didn’t care that much: gender roles are a luxury when everyone is needed to work the fields and keep everyone alive. They probably took for granted some societal patriarchy, with some having beginnings of equality perspectives.

 

Among rich and poor, there was more acknowledgement of diversity than we might assume—more on that in ‘a question of inclusion’.

 

Next week I will turn to Christian tradition, asking how the Bible can point to a feminist/equality perspective.

 

Questions for discussion

 

1. What is the most ridiculous example of gender stereotypes you’ve seen in our society? E.g. in media or marketing.

 

1. What is the most ‘masculine’ thing about you? What is the most ‘feminine’ thing about you?

 

1. What are some ways you’ve changed your perspective on gender throughout your life? What changed your mind?

 

1. Do you think gender differences are mostly from ‘nature’ (biology) or from ‘nurture’ (society and our choices)?

 

1. If you have a faith, how does it influence your understanding of gender? Have you found anything challenging about your faith tradition in relation to gender?

 

1. What would you like to change about how we do gender (as a society, as Beachcomber, in your family or workplace, etc)?

 

Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay