Pathologizing Masculinity

Silmarien · Jan 11, 2019

redleghunter said:
You are doing the same from the post modern understanding of what people should be like.

I'm a neo-Aristotelian. I just don't believe that the virtues are inherently gendered.

redleghunter said:
God made them male and female. For objective traits start there and not long after this man and woman decided elsewise.

That makes no sense. If objective traits existed at the beginning of human history, but we also decided otherwise at the beginning of human history, then how can we even determine what those original traits are? Everything you want to consider "traditional masculinity" would just be part of us going wrong from the very beginning.

SolomonVII · Jan 11, 2019

Spiritlight said:
Sadly people mix up biological sex with gender. Gender is a societal construct. These days we define what is male and female gender by the popular definition of those traits at the time according to societal beliefs. For a man to caution another man about how to act as one he will base his understanding on the meanings he got from TV marketing and societal popular beliefs of the time. Paul’s instruction on not appearing feminine as a man was based on Jewish understanding and fashion at the time and it has to be understood that way and is not interchangeable with what’s in vogue this week in 2019. Unfortunately many men feel self conscious about these things and get a feeling of guilt if they do things women do like go to a hair salon. What I am trying to explain is how futile and dangerous it is to be trapped in defining what it is to be a man by popular culture. Eg beards right now.

What is even more futile and dangerous is to dismiss culture as nothing more than transient and unrelated to core differences between men and women that are based in a billion or so years of sexual dimorphism.
Popular culture is a means of expression of those core differences according to the local situations of a particular place and time. If the popular culture does not reflect the reality of the differences between men and women, it is dysfunctional.

The APA makes the claim that it is the lingering effects of past definitions of masculinity that are dysfunctional. It does not stop and reflect on the possibility that what is truly dysfunctional is the modern definition of gender that represents a radical break with everything in our historic and prehistoric past.
We can either believe the Bible, cultural traditions that have been with us for millennia, and evolutionary biology are dysfunctional, or we can believe the APA has the right understanding, and double down on what has been happening in our cultures for the past 40 years.
I tend to go with the science of biology and behavior, and the wisdom of the past to guide me rather than the agenda-driven analysis of the APA which has a habit of consulting the current culture for their statements, rather than science.

dms1972 · Jan 11, 2019

CS Lewis on the transcendent nature of gender:

"Gender is a reality and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaption to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. Female sex is simply one of the things which has feminine gender; there are many others and Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless.... The male and female of organic creatures are rather faint and blurred reflections of masculine and feminine.... Their reproductive functions, their differences in shape and size partly exhibit, partly also confuse and mis-represent, the real polarity." - from Perelandra

Spiritlight · Jan 11, 2019

SolomonVII said:
What is even more futile and dangerous is to dismiss culture as nothing more than transient and unrelated to core differences between men and women that are based in a billion or so years of sexual dimorphism.
Popular culture is a means of expression of those core differences according to the local situations of a particular place and time. If the popular culture does not reflect the reality of the differences between men and women, it is dysfunctional.

The APA makes the claim that it is the lingering effects of past definitions of masculinity that are dysfunctional. It does not stop and reflect on the possibility that what is truly dysfunctional is the modern definition of gender that represents a radical break with everything in our historic and prehistoric past.
We can either believe the Bible, cultural traditions that have been with us for millennia, and evolutionary biology are dysfunctional, or we can believe the APA has the right understanding, and double down on what has been happening in our cultures for the past 40 years.
I tend to go with the science of biology and behavior, and the wisdom of the past to guide me rather than the agenda-driven analysis of the APA which has a habit of consulting the current culture for their statements, rather than science.

I think it is bad that we feel need to categorise ourselves so much these days and feel a failure if our lives do not meet the definition of those made up categories. We need Just be ourselves and honest about it.

Paidiske · Jan 11, 2019

Resha Caner said:
My problem is that when you say, "what's best for the family" I sense a subtext of "what's best for each individual irrespective of family needs." Why? Because of what you wrote before that:

IMO this is all backwards. If you decide to have a family, you've made commitments that impinge on your vocational choices. And that applies to both the father and the mother. Maybe it's my background. I grew up in a family that began as hired hands on farms. The women worked just as hard as the men. The idea of "vocation" or "career" was nonexistent. You worked to survive and the entire family pitched in. My mother started driving a tractor before she could reach the pedals.

The idea of work as fulfillment I get. The idea of career as fulfillment - not so much.

When I was in college I faced an interesting dilemma. I was dating a girl who was super smart. It forced me to face my own biases - to admit she was smarter than me when I had assumed she wasn't just because she was female. She then indicated she had no intention of being a stay-at-home mom. Truth is, she probably had more income potential than I did ... and I could digress on that interesting tidbit but I don't want to stray too far afield. The point is, I didn't want to stay home either. So we faced a choice: 1) Don't have kids, 2) Don't get married. We didn't get married.

What I've noticed since is that very few people are willing to make those kinds of choices. They delude themselves into thinking not only that they can have it all, but that they deserve it all.

No, I don't mean what's best for each individual in a selfish way. I mean husband and wife working together to construct the best situation for their family. And at different times that will require different sacrifices from each; but what I don't accept is a dynamic that prescribes roles which may or may not fit particular individuals, and then allows no flexibility or capacity to respond to changing circumstances or context.

I reflect on my own experience; I also was not willing (frankly, given my mental health history, I'd say not able, sustainably for the long term) to be a stay at home mum. So my choice was not to marry a man who'd expect that of me, and to be clear with my husband that having the child he desperately wanted meant sharing the raising of that child, not expecting me to be at home by default. Fortunately that suited my husband.

Our society does tell us that we can "have it all," and it's often a shock to young people (young women especially, I suspect, because "having it all" is often painted in terms of the traditional male experience of career and family) to discover that that's not really true. Unfortunately, from what I can see, many women don't really discover how untrue it is until their first baby, and it's not as if that's a decision that can be changed!

Resha Caner said:
Sure, but women need to seriously consider their role in such a venture. I'm not the type who insists on always being at the head of the line. So, if I don't feel qualified for a job, I gladly step aside for those who are.

I really don't believe any of these big social questions can be adequately resolved without there being space for everyone's voices. Not women's more than men's, but also not men's without women's.

Paidiske · Jan 11, 2019

dms1972 said:
CS Lewis on the transcendent nature of gender:

"Gender is a reality and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaption to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. Female sex is simply one of the things which has feminine gender; there are many others and Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless.... The male and female of organic creatures are rather faint and blurred reflections of masculine and feminine.... Their reproductive functions, their differences in shape and size partly exhibit, partly also confuse and mis-represent, the real polarity." from That Hideous Strength

This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. What evidence does Lewis cite for his projection of biological realities onto the transcendant?

Sparagmos · Jan 11, 2019

kufe said:
I definitely agree that further deconstructing masculinity is not the way to go for males these days, but I believe their belief in taking away the association of masculinity, heterosexuality and the male gender is due to the perspective of men and women being equal (thats what I assume is the pov of the secular world) but ofcourse that could be further from the truth considering that men and women are built differently and have different roles to play not necessarily implying that one role is better than the other. But generally speaking this whole ideology is driven by the idea of total equality within the genders in society, but as it is seen in todays world I dont think that perspective is helping anyone.

Interesting that when society followed these supposedly “natural” roles it meant women were barred or heavily discouraged from participating in much of society and paid less for doing the same work as men. They were also considered less intelligent and “childish.” And it was legal to beat and rape one’s wife. Fact is, when that view was dominant, women were treated like property. And you want us to think it only meant that we were different but just as valuable?

Sparagmos · Jan 11, 2019

OldWiseGuy said:
Our culture is falling apart. No amount of 'self-criticism' will change it. It's the last days, we're circling the drain...doomed!

Hmm, violence is down, women and minorities are finally getting representation in Congress, there is less poverty and hunger than there was 100 years ago, more literacy... but yeah if you are a white man you do have less power.

OldWiseGuy · Jan 11, 2019

dms1972 said:
You make it sound like we are all doomed (like Frazer out of Dad's army ;-)
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But should all nations not get the same exposure to the Gospel, and time for it to permeate, why do some get to hear the Gospel for centuries, and others only for a few years? What constitutes preaching the Gospel? If someone went to a nation where the Gospel had not been yet heard, and there were no Christians and if he stood up and preached in the street for an hour, would that mean that the Gospel had now been preached to that nation?

I think most on planet earth have heard the gospel.

OldWiseGuy · Jan 11, 2019

Paidiske said:
The problem is, if you make women the "core" of family life, you're denying them agency to discern and pursue their own vocation. It really was oppressive, and hideously bad.

They should remain single then.

Paidiske · Jan 11, 2019

OldWiseGuy said:
They should remain single then.

Oh awesome. Domestic servitude coupled with being a baby making machine, or singleness.

Nope, we can do better than that.

OldWiseGuy · Jan 11, 2019

Sparagmos said:
Hmm, violence is down, women and minorities are finally getting representation in Congress, there is less poverty and hunger than there was 100 years ago, more literacy... but yeah if you are a white man you do have less power.

This white guy has lots of power...over his own life. This angers many, is cheered by some, and totally confuses everyone else.

OldWiseGuy · Jan 11, 2019

Paidiske said:
Oh awesome. Domestic servitude coupled with being a baby making machine, or singleness.

Nope, we can do better than that.

I think you're limiting women to either/or. There's lots of wiggle room in between. Husbands and wives are the best judges of how to manage their marriage. So-called experts tend to make a mess of such things. Marriage either works or it doesn't. When it does it's great. When it doesn't, get a lawyer.

Life is short.

Paidiske · Jan 11, 2019

OldWiseGuy said:
I think you're limiting women to either/or. There's lots of wiggle room in between. Husbands and wives are the best judges of how to manage their marriage. So-called experts tend to make a mess of such things. Marriage either works or it doesn't. When it does it's great. When it doesn't, get a lawyer.

Life is short.

I thought you were limiting women to either/or, by saying if women didn't want to be the core of domestic life they should remain single, and I was arguing against that.

I agree that each couple should manage their own family life, without people opining that women need to be at home.

dms1972 · Jan 11, 2019

Paidiske said:
This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. What evidence does Lewis cite for his projection of biological realities onto the transcendant?

He is not projecting biological realities onto the transcendent, he is saying gender (rather than sex) is the more fundamental reality. Gender existed before biological sex. God is not male, He is masculine. Maleness and femaleness didn't exist until God created Adam and Eve. Lewis says elsewhere "What is above and beyond all things is so masculine we are all feminine in relation to it..." The church is called the Bride of Christ in scripture.

Leanne Payne reaffirms Lewis's insights in her own book, and a similar line of thought can be found in Karl Stern's book The Flight from Woman.

Payne for instance sees Masculine and Feminine as attributes of God : "Ultimately masculinity descends to us through the way of love - the way of divine revelation and incarnation. Ultimately masculinity is an attribute of God."

Here is a fuller quote from Lewis . In this scene the protagonist Ransom meets the two Eldila (something like archangels) of the planets Malacandra and Perelandra (or Mars and Venus).

"Both the bodies were naked, and both were free from any sexual characteristics, either primary or secondary. That, one would have expected. But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try–Ransom has tried a hundred times–to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear, but the hands of the other were open, with the palms towards him. But I don’t know that any of these attempts has helped me much. At all events what Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and others feminine. What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees? Ransom has cured me of believing that this is a purely morphological phenomenon, depending on the form of the word. Still less is gender an imaginative extension of sex. Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse. Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. Female sex is simply one of the things that have feminine gender; there are many others, and Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless. Masculine is not attenuated male, nor feminine attenuated female. On the contrary, the male and female of organic creatures are rather blurred reflections of masculine and feminine. Their reproductive functions, their differences in strength and size, party exhibit, but partly also confuse and misrepresent, the real polarity. All this Ransom saw, as it were, with his own eyes. The two white creatures were sexless. But he of Malacandra was masculine (not male); she of Perelandra was feminine (not female)."

OldWiseGuy · Jan 11, 2019

Paidiske said:
I thought you were limiting women to either/or, by saying if women didn't want to be the core of domestic life they should remain single, and I was arguing against that.

I agree that each couple should manage their own family life, without people opining that women need to be at home.

I said that wives and mothers, used to be the core of the family. That ship has sailed. Now it's everyone for themselves, including the kids. Traditional roles are long gone. Heck, marriage might become a thing of the past.

Paidiske · Jan 11, 2019

dms1972 said:
He is not projecting biological realities onto the transcendent, he is saying gender (rather than sex) is the more fundamental reality. Gender existed before biological sex. God is not male, He is masculine. Maleness and femaleness didn't exist until God created Adam and Eve. Lewis says elsewhere "God is so masculine we are all feminine in relation to him..." Hence the church is the Bride of Christ.

Yeah... I think there's no reason to accept his claim about a "more fundamental reality." God is neither male nor masculine (though Scripture can and does use masculine, feminine and non-biological metaphors for God). That we conceive of God as such is a limitation of our thinking and language.

OldWiseGuy said:
I said that wives and mothers, used to be the core of the family. That ship has sailed. Now it's everyone for themselves, including the kids. Traditional roles are long gone. Heck, marriage might become a thing of the past.

Changing social roles for mothers doesn't entail that it's "everyone for themselves." Why can't it be, "everyone in this together"?

In our household we talk a lot about how we're a team. People might take different roles in a team - or even swap sometimes - but we're still a team.

SolomonVII · Jan 11, 2019

Silmarien said:
….if objective traits existed at the beginning of human history, but we also decided otherwise at the beginning of human history, then how can we even determine what those original traits are? Everything you want to consider "traditional masculinity" would just be part of us going wrong from the very beginning.

What is a traditional trait is the existence of duality itself. Sexuality involves the dual affirmation of life when it comes to the biological function of reproduction. Unisexual reproduction requires no exterior affirmation of life's continuance.
The whole genius of sexual reproduction is that intelligent choice is involved in formulating the plan for the future species.
If sacrifice is accepted as the first religious bargain with the future, delayed gratification in hope of tomorrow, then sexual selection of traits in a partner through which you will to continue your own traits through is an even more primal expression of intelligent choice in shaping the future.
That in itself is the basic religious impulse, a recognition of the existence of the future. Successful intelligent choice in partner proceeds even consciousness, for that is how primal sexual intelligence is.

In terms of sexual differentiation here, in humans at least, it is the woman that makes the choice far more than the man does. Women have been far more active in determining the future makeup of the human race than men, who tend to being much more indiscriminate in where their seed is spread.

I often get a disquieting feeling that we are headed to a post-scientific age, where basic scientific knowledge does not matter. Women and men are biologically different, and it stands to reason that this can be a great benefit to any society that is able to use this built in diversity to its own advantage.

Silmarien · Jan 11, 2019

SolomonVII said:
What is a traditional trait is the existence of duality itself. Sexuality involves the dual affirmation of life when it comes to the biological function of reproduction. Unisexual reproduction requires no exterior affirmation of life's continuance.
The whole genius of sexual reproduction is that intelligent choice is involved in formulating the plan for the future species.
If sacrifice is accepted as the first religious bargain with the future, delayed gratification in hope of tomorrow, then sexual selection of traits in a partner through which you will to continue your own traits through is an even more primal expression of intelligent choice in shaping the future.
That in itself is the basic religious impulse, a recognition of the existence of the future. Successful intelligent choice in partner proceeds even consciousness, for that is how primal sexual intelligence is.

In terms of sexual differentiation here, in humans at least, it is the woman that makes the choice far more than the man does. Women have been far more active in determining the future makeup of the human race than men, who tend to being much more indiscriminate in where their seed is spread.

I often get a disquieting feeling that we are headed to a post-scientific age, where basic scientific knowledge does not matter. Women and men are biologically different, and it stands to reason that this can be a great benefit to any society that is able to use this built in diversity to its own advantage.

Well, like I said. I'm Neo-Aristotelian. I don't disagree with you on anything here.

What I'd like to know is how we get from objective biological differences to normative social behavior that is somehow objectively binding across cultures. I keep on asking what people mean by "traditional masculinity," because that could really mean anything from the Greco-Roman civic virtues to "boys will be boys" and "if your son likes to dance, he's a sissy and/or gay." Both of these things are problematic, though for different reasons.

Now, I also agree with you that women do seem to hold more power than men do in terms of choosing partners, which I think makes the question of "traditional masculinity" even more interesting, because what is considered masculine will to a certain extent match whatever recent generations of women have decided that they find attractive in men, and if there has been a genuine change in what women are willing to accept over the past few generations, then the notion of traditional masculinity will have to keep up.

(° ͡ ͜ ͡ʖ ͡ °) (ᵔᴥᵔʋ) · Jan 11, 2019

parousia70 said:
That seems like a spurious claim to me.

What statistics can you cite that bear this notion out, that MOST Boys today do not have a fatherly figure in their lives?

Well, perhaps "most" was inaccurate. "Many" would be a more appropriate statement. I will edit the post for you.

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Pathologizing Masculinity

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