genders, values, norms

in the two weeks since my last post, i've had the good fortune of participating in several interesting conversations about gender. there were also some interesting things said in the comments on the last post. furthermore, i have been trying to do some more thinking on my own about the topic. in spite of all this, however, i'm still mostly at a loss for what to say on these issues.

in her comment on the last post, natalie expressed some skepticism about giving 'gendered' descriptions of the virtues. i share this skepticism. she asks: "where would such a description come from? and how would you protect against these lists being used normatively (as, historically, they always have)?" i think her concern about normativity may be instructive. in one sense, what i am trying to imagine is precisely a normative description of 'maleness' and 'femaleness', insofar as the description i am interested in is value-laden, and would play a role in our grammar of human excellence. i think we can distinguish this (general, vague) sense of normative from a sense of normative that conveys something like 'this is the only acceptable way of proceeding' or 'this is the best way of being.' i take it that natalie's primary concern is that gendered descriptions would be normative in the second sense.

a central worry about this kind of normativity has to do with saying that an excellence is both gender-specific and an expression of humanness. in particular, if we think of a certain trait as being expressive of 'masculinity', and also of that trait expressing something important about human excellence, then there seems to be some pressure to conceive of 'femininity' in a way that characterizes women as somehow less than fully human. i have in the mind the following sort of example:

i find in myself an association between a certain ideal of 'manliness' and decisiveness. (i am not saying i consciously endorse this ideal, but no doubt it exerts some influence on me). behind the value of decisiveness is, i think, the value of a kind of self-direction -the value of being not merely the subject of forces acting on oneself, but rather the origin of action. and what is involved in this kind of self-direction is closely connected to, or perhaps is even constitutive of, what goes into being an agent. to be self-directed, we might say, just is what it means to be a person; if one were fully the subject of forces, one would not be a self at all. now, if decisiveness is connected to 'manliness' then we seem dangerously close to an unwelcome implication: 'womanliness', especially if it is conceived as somehow the mirror image of manliness, may involve something less than being a full agent or self. of course, what corresponds to 'manly decisiveness' will probably not be described as 'womanly indecisiveness', but it may well be described in terms of 'receptivity' or 'passivity'. and the worry is that such descriptions push us toward regarding womanliness as expressing something less than full humanness, toward regarding women as less than full selves.

with these concerns about gender and normativity in mind, i have been trying to think about other ways of describing and evaluating value and may give some direction as to how to think about gender in a way that is value-laden but avoids such pitfalls. perhaps the case of architecture will be helpful. in describing various buildings, we can evaluate them with an eye toward their style or period. and it seems that different terms of praise will be characteristic of different style. for example, we may say that a certain gothic cathedral is ornate and grand, or that a particular church in the romanesque style is elegantly simple and quietly sturdy. interestingly, different terms can be ways of praising different buildings, even if the qualities they pick out are incompatible -e.g. we might praise one building for its lavishness and another for its sparseness. both of descriptions, however, are value-laden and both are positive. both pick out something of excellence and beauty in design and construction of the building. in the case of architecture, diverse and incompatible qualities can all express and embody value.

unfortunately, i'm not sure how to apply this example of value to the question of gender. nevertheless, there are several features of the case i find interesting. one is the way that the judgments of value are made relative to a particular style or period, and yet the judgments are all about the beauty of buildings -there are significantly differences in the standards of excellence, but it isn't that the subject has simply been changed. another interesting point is that we have no problem saying that architectural styles and periods were formed by historical and cultural forces, but recognizing that doesn't cause them to lose their value. we don't think the 'constructed-ness' of architectural styles and standards someone calls into question their beauty or value. i wonder if there isn't a hint here for thinking about gender that is neither 'essentialist' nor merely biological.

male and female he created them

some friends of mine have been keeping a group blog as a forum for discussing leon kass' book "the genesis of wisdom" (www.genesiswisdom.blogspot.com). a recent post there on the nature of resurrected bodies has got me thinking about gender, and about the meaning of 'maleness' and 'femaleness.'

here is a thought i have had (and expressed) more than once before: many of us want gender to be meaningful, and we want it to matter not merely at a biological level, but at a human level. that is, we want 'maleness' or 'femaleness' to carry some significance not just as a fact of anatomy, but as something important to the things we care about and the way we live. at the same time, however, in trying to characterize the meaning of gender, it is hard to know how to proceed without just relying on stereotypes -e.g. lists of 'male' or 'female' traits or qualities. its seems that such stereotypes are likely to be not only inaccurate, but also biased and even destructive. how then, can we think about gender as something more than anatomy without falling back on vague generalities about 'what men are like' or 'what women are like'?

before tackling that question directly, its worth saying a bit more about what i mean by saying that we want gender to be meaningful at the human level. part of what i have in mind is that we want being male or female to play some role in what it means to live well. one way to think about this role is the idea that there are 'masculine virtues' which capture what it is for a man to live well, and there are separate 'feminine virtues' that capture what it is for a woman to live well. this is a very old idea. but its rejection is also very old, and can be found in more than one philosopher from ancient greece. this is also an idea with persistent appeal, and it it my sense that many people still hold something like this to be the case, though perhaps not with much consistency.

the idea that there are separate virtues for men and women is tightly connected to the idea that there are distinctive roles for men and women. the virtues corresponding to each gender are what they are in virtue of the gender's respective roles or functions. courage, then, is a masculine virtue, because it is the man's role to protect the family and city from harm. gentleness is a feminine virtue, because it is the woman's role to nurture the children. to many of us, the idea of such fixed roles seems outrageously misguided, because: 1) it frequently, if not always, is grounded in (or at least implies) the notion that women are somehow inferior to men in terms of important human functions, such as rational decision-making, 2) it overlooks the variety of capabilities that both men and women have with respective to the whole range of human activities, 3) it leaves too little room for individual choice and creativity in structuring human lives -e.g. that some men could flourish as 'stay-home dads', while some women may flourish in non-domestic roles.

i have no sympathy for the idea that the genders have separate virtues. however, a related view that is more appealing is this: there are not separate lists of virtues for men and women, but the virtues will be inflected differently for men and for women. thus, courage is not a 'masculine virtue' -it is a virtue for all humans, but in men courage will be displaying or realized in a distinctly masculine way, and likewise women will display a distinctly feminine form of courage. there is, i think, something intuitive about this view. we are used to thinking of a distinctive ways in which a man or a woman will 'get the job done' or successfully navigate a situation. this is a frequent theme in movies and tv. on reflection, though, i'm unsure if it actually makes sense to say that virtue can actually be 'gendered' in this way, or what this really amounts to.

perhaps our wanting gender to be meaningful can also be expressed this way: from a first-person perspective -in looking at our own lives- we feel that our gender is important, and we when we think about living well we want to live well as men, or as women. we want to be good human beings, be we also want to be good men, or good women. that is, we do not imagine ourselves as gender-less, and in the way we carry ourselves and the way we plan our lives, we are (somehow) aware that our 'maleness' or 'femaleness' is important. thus, to say that gender is 'merely anatomy' is to miss something about our own (perhaps inchoate) sense of the importance of our own gender.

the enduring desire that gender be meaningful is testified to everywhere in our culture. not to long ago, some friends were telling me about the popularity of a series of books written by an evangelical christian about the meaning of 'manliness' and being a 'real man.' these books, it seems, probably fall into the very trap i am wary of -turning shallow (and possibly prejudiced) generalities into the basis for a theory of gender and its importance. at the same time, the popularity of these books (and others like them) suggests to me that people are unwilling to think about gender as mere biology, and they are hungry for a way to make their own maleness or femaleness a considered part of their self-understanding.

i would like to add two of my own reasons for wanting gender to be meaningful. first, the vast, vast majority of human cultures throughout history have understood maleness and femaleness to be significant in our understanding of what it means to be a human and what it means to live well. i am wary of dismissing such a widespread human practice and outlook, even if it we think it was infected with bias and ignorance and must be examined critically.

second, the church has historically understood gender to be meaningful. even if we think this understanding has been misguided in certain ways, and even if we do not agree with how this has always played out (e.g. not allowing women to be ordained ministers), it still seems that there are deep theological reasons for wanting to take gender seriously. if nothing else, we have the basic formulation from genesis that god created humans male and female. it rings false to me to suggest that this creation was merely a matter of biology, just as god could have created us with three legs instead of two.