Part I of this blog post can be found here
In my last post on the subject, I argued that Christian opposition to gay marriage is rooted, at least in part, in a heteronormative view of the world that identifies a fundamental complementarity between women and men. If this is so, then the obvious question to ask is whether this view of gender is a valid one.
On closer inspection, however, this single question of validity quickly dissolves into three closely related but seperate questions, each looking at the validity of such a belief from a different angle. These angles can be summed up as follows:
1) Is this heteronormative understanding of gender politically desirable?
2) Is this heteronormative understanding of gender empirically supported?
3) Is this heteronormative understanding of gender theologically sound?
Like all issues relating to fundamental beliefs about the nature of the human condition, none of these make for particularly easy questions to answer. Over the last three thousand years, various individuals have argued for every conceivable position, and there’s no silver bullet that I can think of that points in any particular direction. Nevertheless, I want to have a stab at formulating and defining my own position, because I think that these are questions that have enormous repercussions for not only our understanding of sexuality, but for how we treat and appropriate gender within Christian and secular society at large.
It’s worth saying from the beginning that this blog post will only properly deal with the first two of these three questions, leaving the rather thorny theological issues aside for one minute, to be picked up at a later date. I should also probably come clean right now and admit that I come at these questions with my mind already firmly made up. None of these three questions will be given a balanced and fair interrogation under the illusion of objective analysis, mainly because this would be an incredibly long-winded way of making the points I want to get across. To all three I will answer firmly in the negative, and while some may disagree with me, I hope I will be able to give a good account of why it is that I give such an answer.
I should also point out that I come to answer these questions in full appreciation of the hypocrisy that I practice on a daily basis. To argue on the one hand, as I will, that coarse heteronormative gender stereotypes should have no place in our rational discourse, and then with the other hand to dismiss half the world’s population as irrational whenever my fiancée and I have a disagreement – that is not something that I am particularly proud of. All I can say is that I’m working hard on disentangling myself from the curly-haired eleven year old who used to call his brother a ‘big girls blouse’ every time he got upset, and that I genuinely do believe what I write, even if I fail to live it out on a regular basis.
And so to the first question.
When I ask whether a heteronormative understanding of gender that identifies men and women as complementary halves of a whole is politically desirable, I am asking whether we should support this perspective practically as a useful and constructive framework for understanding gender, even before we get to questions about whether it has any basis in fact. Does a complementarian understanding of gender help us move forward as a society, particularly in the area of equality?
In my previous blog post, I suggested that this perspective had served a useful purpose for a time, by acting as a bridge between traditional perspectives on gender and a more nuanced egalitarian perspective. It enabled Christian and secular society alike to celebrate the different social roles of men and women, while affirming fundamental equality, and enabled Christian theology to reappropriate traditionally feminine aspects of the Divine nature.
But my answer to this question remains a firm ‘nein!’. As I understand it, a worldview that sees gender as the embodiment of fundamental differences is the worldview of an inevitably patriarchal society. To argue that men and women are fundamentally distinct even in the midst of their equality comes dangerously close to the ‘all animals are equal but…’ of Animal Farm’s pigs. ‘Separate but equal’ may have been forged as a response to a more explicit patriarchy, but it is cut from the same cloth as the worldview that has kept women in the kitchen and men in the office for pretty much all of history. Such a view can only ever paper over the cracks in the Church’s attitude towards gender equality, because at the end of the day it inevitably sees men and women as inhabiting fundamentally different roles within society.
Even if I was open to the notion of a fundamental difference between the genders then, of some innate complementarity between the sexes, I would be tempted to reject it as doctrine on these practical grounds. Because it is an idea that is too ripe for abuse and misuse – too easy to twist into a doctrine of male superiority in all the things that men want to be superior at. Sexism is not something confined to the past, but is still a very present reality in all walks of life. And perpetuating the idea that women and men are fundamentally different in their natures only plays into the hands of those who think that a man’s place is in the boardroom, while a woman’s is in the kitchen.
The question of whether this view of complementarity is empirically supported is in some ways a much easier question to answer. Because if this heteronormative view of the world is empirically valid, then the obvious question to ask is exactly where this complementarity of genders can be seen to exist. And as far as I can see there are only two plausible sources to which we might appeal. The first is the emotional attributes of the respective genders (by which I mean dispositions and inclinations), and the second is their physical attributes. However neither of these sources, I think, is capable of sustaining the notion of a fundamental complementarity in marriage.
With regards to the emotions, the case is sometimes made that men and women have different dispositions, in very real and practical terms, and that these differences are fundamental to their natures without affecting their equal standing. Women have an innate disposition for being caring and compassionate, while men are disposed toward decisiveness and a firm hand. Women are creative, while men think analytically. Women prefer the orderliness of the kitchen, while men prefer the chaos of the hunt. Women nurture, men lead; women heal, men kill; women comfort, men challenge. These might seem like crass generalisations (which they are), but this is surely where a complementarian worldview rooted in disposition leads: to the assigning of fundamental emotional differences between the sexes.
The problem, of course, is that we all know women who embody traits and dispositions that have traditionally been understood as masculine, and men for whom the reverse is true. Women who are decisive leaders and highly logical thinkers, as well as women who spurn what they perceive as a feminine ‘softness’. There are even women who (whisper it) don’t actually like babies. And there are plenty of men who act with compassion and care, just as there are men who abhor violence in any form and men who go weak at the knees at the sound of a newborn child.
To understand these masculine and feminine traits as somehow ‘fundamental’ to the genders is simply nonsensical. Yes, there is probably a greater proportion of men than women who embody certain masculine traits, but this is a surely a general trend, not a fundamental disposition. To argue otherwise is to label those women who embody traditionally masculine tendencies and those men who embody traditionally feminine tendencies as somehow wrong – as ill-formed and ill-created.
It’s worth acknowledging here that there are certain differences in the experiences of the sexes – moments unique to each gender – that can be intensely formative to their emotional development. Child-birth is an obvious example of an experience that can profoundly affect the dispositions and attitudes of those who experience it, but even here I fail to see how this experience is in any way fundamental to female nature. To make that claim would be an insult to women the world over. It might be a uniquely female experience, but child-birth is by no means universal to women, and it surely affects different individuals in different ways.
A slightly different line is needed when it comes to the physical natures of the genders. Without being crass, there certainly are definite physical differences between the male and female bodies. And yet if this is all that complementarily has to root itself in – physical differences relating to the production of children and the like – then its a fairly basic and rudimentary complementarity that has no bearing on the social roles of men and women. Nor should it have much of a bearing on the complementarily of men and women in marriage, unless we’re going to make the physical act of reproduction a fundamental aspect of marriage itself (which is where Catholics get let somewhat off the hook, even if they find themselves caught on another line).
It’s also worth pointing out that there are many in this world who don’t fit comfortably into a binary understanding of physical gender – particularly those who exhibit male and female sex characteristics from birth. Although fairly rare, their presence is a reality that should not be ignored. If we insist on making gender somehow fundamental to our natures, then where does this leave them? Trapped in gender limbo for all eternity?
In the end, I fail to see how we can honestly maintain the belief in a fundamental complimentarity between the sexes that is anything more than skin deep. We’ve been raised to think that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but in these days of greater gender equality and freedom, these coarse stereotypes simply don’t add up. Hormonal differences and social influences may contribute to different tendencies in the emotional disposition of men and women, encouraging masculine traits in men and feminine traits in women, but there is nothing fundamental about a tendency. The cross-over is enormous, and there is a huge variety of other external factors that can influence us in similar ways.
To finish, I want to be careful here and clarify what I am not saying. I’m not saying that we need to do away with the concepts of masculinity and femininity altogether. Rather, I’m saying that we need to hold them with an open hand, recognising that they are by no means ‘fundamental’ to their respective genders. Neither am I saying men should deny their masculinity, or that women should deny their femininity in the name of some bland and boring gender homogeny. Rather, I am suggesting that we need to embrace the enormous variety in our expressions of gender, and to stop demanding that men and women conform to our heteronormative constructions. And however much we protest, a position that sees a fundamental complementarity between the genders inevitably demands such conformity.
I’ll return to the issue of gay marriage more thoroughly in my next post, but for now let me say that I fail to see any secular reason for arguing that marriage should be exclusively reserved for heterosexual couples. From an empirical perspective, heterosexual marriage fails to provide assurance of any complementarity apart from the physical act of reproduction – and even here there are plenty of heterosexual couples who struggle. Ultimately, there is no basis for claiming that men and women are a naturally occurring yin and yang – two halves of a whole. And nor should we expect them to be.
Part III of this blog post can be found here
Standing in the Air 