Gosh, I suck at public speaking.We're having a class at church on Wednesday nights: "Gender and the Kingdom of God". Sounds promising, right? Except that nobody really knows what they mean by "gender".
For maybe 30 years, the word "gender" has been used to denote the socially constructed part of a person's sexual identity. But most folks in the church aren't quite caught up on the latest thinking about gender. So our class starts its discussion of Genesis 1 and 2 by trying to divide the imago dei into "masculine" traits and "feminine" traits. This riles me up a bit, so I try to push people into defining their terms. I ask, "Who says?" Who says "nurturing" is feminine, while "powerful" is masculine?
The answer I want to hear has something to do with society or culture, but that answer is not forthcoming. So, nervous and agitated, I try to explain how sex and gender are different, and why the distinction is important. But what actually comes out sounds like five minutes of:
Bla bla bla nurturing bla gay men bla bla.
Did I mention I suck at public speaking?
Anyhow, I think my points are both important and simple, so I'm going to try again, and I'm going to limit myself to three sentences.
Here goes.
People like what they like, whether it's football or knitting, and attaching gender stereotypes to these preferences muddies our vision when we're trying to tackle the world's big problems: things like hunger, global warming, domestic abuse, and even terrorism.
But what's worse than gender stereotyping is looking to the Bible for support for our stereotypes, implying that we're not just failing our society when we refuse the roles of warrior male or submissive female, we're also rebelling against God's Will for all men and women.
If we fail to recognize that gender is socially constructed, and if we then fail to condemn the gender stereotypes in Genesis 2 as the rhetorical posturing of a patriarchal society, we will be bound to repeat the sinful patterns of bigotry, violence and self-hatred that have marred the church for generations.
There.
Does that make sense?
