Spirituality, Gender, Bad French, and a Seinfeld Reference
Viva La Difference?
I’ve seen a number of blogs touch on the topic of spirituality and gender. (Touché, risqué, and ooh la la…) People seem to see no spiritual gender differences and basically agree that spirituality is spirituality – but then it’s not like I’ve taken a scientific poll…
The fact that women in the clergy is still controversial in many circles and that God is the traditional Father in western religion suggests that many people continue to view female spirituality as inferior or somehow properly subordinated to male spirituality - i.e., different.
But I sure can’t put my finger on a difference. Perhaps if I were more fluent in French…
Le Psychologie…
Even vis a vis the psychological realm, there are always plenty of exceptions to the lists of traits commonly associated with one gender or the other. For example, I’ve met any number of gentle, considerate men who don’t come off as woman-like or effeminate on that account. And there are certainly plenty of women in business with drive, ambition, and highly rational approaches to decision making who don’t come across as manly.
Une Observationne
To go from being a girl to a woman, you just need to have your first period.
To be accepted as a “real man” has more exacting requirements.
Les Questionnes…
What’s a “real man” and how come women get to be real women without undergoing feats of strength at Festivus?
How come lists of traits don’t really seem to cut it when it comes to definitively indicating gender – and yet, speaking personally, my sense is that there really is a definitive difference?
An illustration of that certain je ne sais quoi: I’ve met gentle, considerate, and even nurturing men whom I’ve respected and admired without feeling the least romantic involvement. Something not only about their bodies but their souls, or at least their psyches at some deep level, fails to evoke that response in me.
Can you put a figurative finger on sex differences in psychology? Spirituality?
I’ve seen a number of blogs touch on the topic of spirituality and gender. (Touché, risqué, and ooh la la…) People seem to see no spiritual gender differences and basically agree that spirituality is spirituality – but then it’s not like I’ve taken a scientific poll…
The fact that women in the clergy is still controversial in many circles and that God is the traditional Father in western religion suggests that many people continue to view female spirituality as inferior or somehow properly subordinated to male spirituality - i.e., different.
But I sure can’t put my finger on a difference. Perhaps if I were more fluent in French…
Le Psychologie…
Even vis a vis the psychological realm, there are always plenty of exceptions to the lists of traits commonly associated with one gender or the other. For example, I’ve met any number of gentle, considerate men who don’t come off as woman-like or effeminate on that account. And there are certainly plenty of women in business with drive, ambition, and highly rational approaches to decision making who don’t come across as manly.
Une Observationne
To go from being a girl to a woman, you just need to have your first period.
To be accepted as a “real man” has more exacting requirements.
Les Questionnes…
What’s a “real man” and how come women get to be real women without undergoing feats of strength at Festivus?
How come lists of traits don’t really seem to cut it when it comes to definitively indicating gender – and yet, speaking personally, my sense is that there really is a definitive difference?
An illustration of that certain je ne sais quoi: I’ve met gentle, considerate, and even nurturing men whom I’ve respected and admired without feeling the least romantic involvement. Something not only about their bodies but their souls, or at least their psyches at some deep level, fails to evoke that response in me.
Can you put a figurative finger on sex differences in psychology? Spirituality?
Posted by Paul at 6:32 PM Permalink
18 Comments:
Do you remember when my pen-name was Yves, and you thought (through lack of fluency in French names!) that I was a girl? When you found out that Yves is a boy's name, your sense of who I was changed! I imagine how you may have felt from my own reaction in similar circumstances. It bothers me when I read something by an author whose gender I cannot determine.
There are those who are so convinced, psychologically, that they are in the wrong gender, that they undertake intrusive surgery and/or hormones to have it - in their eyes - normalized.
I'm convinced that the psychological phenomenon is subjective rather than objective: that self-identity is almost always gendered; an "important part of myself", one might say. Not just self-identity but our relation to the other person.
For example, the one thing that would convince me that an angel is not human - never has been and never will be - is lack of gender. And this remark is not dependent on whether angels actually exist.
Gender politics, for its own ends, variously denies the difference between the sexes, or emphasises them, depending on the argument. It is not about truth but power. Let us not confuse the two.
Btw, when I found out your name was male my reaction was "Oh - of course!" I'd picked up on a discord between what I'd thought was your gender and your writing style.
At my church I've heard people say "Isn't nice to see the church full again." I have to laugh because they have not realized that we closed one church dropped the number of masses from three to two masses. In actuality there are less people coming to church because they either don't like being in a cluster or they don't like the times that the masses have changed to be to provide for all three churches. Other religions have female ministers and are doing nicely. I see parking lots full and I have not seen many non catholic churches clustering. My daughter was married before a minister and I was quite impressed by the female minister. It's time for the catholic church to make the change. Gender should not be an issue.
But yeah, the Catholic Church (my church) has a really unfortunate attitude towards women's ordination. We're not even really supposed to talk about the subject. I think women should be able to be priests.
Re: 'what is gender?' I have been contemplating this for a long time and still I have to say I am somewhat stumped myself...I know what you mean re: sensing there is a 'definitive different' and yet philosophically I tend to view it as entirely a social construct...then on a spiritual level, I identify 'womens spirituality' - and for that matter 'mens spirituality' - as just addressing particular issues women or men typically face in their spiritual journeys right now, as the world views gender right now, not in terms of absolute truths or spiritual differences between the two...the difference tends to be in the journey, not at the level of 'spirit'...anyway, I know we've broached this before, too much to write here, maybe will post on this soon (or maybe even go there in your interview!!)
I agree with both of you that gender shouldn’t be an issue, not only because I can’t think of any rational grounds for why it should, but also, at least within Catholicism, it sounds like there are compelling practical reasons for admitting women to the priesthood.
Lisa – Viewing men’s vs. women’s spirituality as “addressing particular issues women or men typically face in their spiritual journeys right now, as the world views gender right now” makes sense to me. But I was having trouble coming up with a concrete example – until I thought about the preceding discussion on this thread!
In fact, unless I’m missing some important subtleties around the issue of women in the clergy, it seems to me that it’s as blatant an example of sexism as it would be racism if blacks were banned from the clergy.
"If there are no psychological or spiritual gender differences beyond how one feels about oneself, how does one identify how one feels about oneself as being particularly masculine or feminine?"
I apologize for being unclear and perhaps implying that there are "no differences". I said in fact that the differences are perceived subjectively. I know this could be construed as meaning that they are imaginary.
What I meant was that one's concept of self-identity and the identity of others includes the concept of gender. This works not from an awareness of differentiating attributes, such as women being "the fair sex" or "the gentler sex"; but from saying to oneself, "This person is like me" or "this person is not like me". Within this "like" or "not like" is a deep and possibly instinctive hard-wired perception of gender.
Within gender, there are many possible attributes which one may identify as "like me" or "not like me". I may be more at the Bruce Willis end, or the Woody Allen end, of the male spectrum, but still I know what male means, by reference to my own self and "those like me".
As for Catholic spirituality being dominated by men, the figures show something different. I quote from BBC News February 2008:
"The number of members, predominantly women, some engaged only in constant prayer, others working as teachers, health workers and missionaries, fell 94,790 to 945,210.
"Of the total, 753,400 members were women, while 191,810 were men, including 136,171 priests and 532 permanent deacons."
The number of monks is thus tiny compared with that of nuns.
This puts a different slant on the male domination in the Catholic church. Could it be that women are denied power because they would easily take over if given equality, changing the organization drastically?
I've read that more women go to church and go on retreats, etc. But the women in the Catholic Church aren't allowed to have roles that are considered powerful. Just recently there was a discussion at one Catholic blog about allowing girls to be altar servers - even that is somewhat contested. Women are nuns/sisters, but there's a recent hubbub about a Vatican inspection of US religious women - some think it's meant to rein them in and make them more servile - here's a link you might find interesting .... We've given birth to a new form of religious life
In Catholicism, the various religious orders are only given a blessing to exist within Mother Church if they are approved theologically and organizationally.
As I understand it, Catholicism is based on authority of the Pope and not everyone doing their thing.
my humble opinion.
Patty – Thanks for checking in, I was actually wondering about that – gender differences in brains. If that’s the case, I’m still left wondering why something so palpable and definite is so conceptually and verbally elusive outside of references to Festivus.
Crystal and Vincent – Crystal, thanks for your input on what Vincent has to say. Vincent, my impression growing up Catholic is that while the pope has great institutional authority, the laity pretty much ignores him on things they don’t agree with – birth control, for example.
Tuti – Especially when they do each other’s hair in public.
Yet men have also displayed a lot of "fight energy" on behalf of good causes too. Something in their favor? Hard to say. Men have historically been in positions of greater power with more ability to fight back against oppression.
As you know, I DO think men and women are quite different energetically and most are psychochologically as well, but I don't think that translates into being closer to awakening - it just means each gender tends to have different types of blocks...
When I hear this view that women are closer, I tend to think it is just because the 'yang' of the world has so overpowered the 'yin', and we associate women with 'yin' qualities, and view the world as a pretty unspiritual place overall, so end up thinking women, by virtue of representing yin, are 'closer' to what it means to be spiritual...not sure that made sense, but what I'm trying to say is that if we were in a yin-dominated culture, we might associate 'yang' traits (such as fighting for justice, like you mentioned Paul) with spirituality...i.e. whatever we perceive the world as lacking, we project onto spiritually
In a society where women had disproportionate power – actually it’s hard to visualize just what that would look like. Maybe anthropology has found cultures like that here and there??
k
And all this time I thought it was my photo...
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