According to the Proclamation on the Family, gender is an eternal characteristic. The proclamation goes on to describe certain traits within marriage as male and others as female. The problem is twofold: diction and science. On the diction side, words used to describe gender are often unclear, imprecise, outdated or simply not the right word. Saying gender is eternal could be nonsensical depending on what you actually mean by gender. Secondly, science shows that gender is not a binary.
First, a few definitions related to gender:
- Gender essentialism is the idea that men and women have inherent, unique, and natural attributes that qualify them as their separate genders. [1]
- Gender identity is defined as a personal conception of oneself as male or female (or rarely, both or neither). This concept is intimately related to the concept of gender role, which is defined as the outward manifestations of personality that reflect the gender identity.
- Biological sex is our anatomy as female, male, or intersex. It includes our internal and external sex organs, chromosomes, and hormones. Some people are intersex rather than female or male.
- Sexual orientation refers to the sex of those to whom one is sexually and romantically attracted.
- Gender expression is the way in which a person acts to communicate gender within a given culture; for example, in terms of clothing, communication patterns and interests. A person’s gender expression may or may not be consistent with socially prescribed gender roles, and may or may not reflect his or her gender identity.
- Cisgender refers to people who feel there is a match between their assigned sex and the gender they feel themselves to be. You are cisgender if your birth certificate says you’re male and you identify yourself as a man or if your birth certificate says you’re female and you identify as a woman. Being cisgender is considered a position of privilege because cisgender individuals aren’t scrutinized the way intersex and transgender people are.
A recent Time article discusses the problematic nature of so-called Bathroom Legislation which requires children to prove their sex before allowing them access to the school bathroom. The case is cited of a 17-year old girl whose pediatrician was trying to determine why she hadn’t advanced through puberty yet. A blood test showed that she had 46 XY chromosomes; despite having female genitalia, she had male chromosomes. About 10,000 babies are born the the US every year that have an intersex trait, complicating gender identification and often resulting in singling out and persecuting a misunderstood minority. These types of bills typically give cis kids a pass and only require transgender or intersex kids to “prove” their sex. They assume that sex is binary and that it’s just a matter of finding out what it is. The problem is that there are no bright lines, either in genitalia (as seen in this example) or in brains. From the article:
A 2015 study published in the journal PNAS—entitled “Sex beyond the genitalia”—found that the majority of human brains are “mosaics.” Many features of the brain typically look one way in women and another in men . . . . What the researchers found after analyzing MRIs of 1,400 brains was that most people have a mix of these features, some that look the way those features commonly do in males and others that look the way those features commonly do in females. “Brains,” the researchers concluded, “with features that are consistently at one end of the ‘maleness-femaleness’ continuum are rare.”
Trying to force people into an all-male or all-female bucket isn’t as simple as we think. The other factor is that our gender identity is partly formed by how people perceive us. If you’re Pamela Anderson or Burt Reynolds, you are probably used to people treating you like the gender you express, but if you are comedian Julia Sweeney’s “Pat” character, your androgynous or ambiguous characteristics result in a different kind of treatment and assessment.
So is our gender identity (whatever it may be) the thing that is eternal and essential or does the proclamation reveal a bias toward binary gender assignment that is contradicted by emerging science? Given the focus on binary gender roles, the proclamation seems to be stating that one is either eternally male or female, all in, which is not what science shows.
Descriptive or Prescriptive
I’ve often observed that the problem with the proclamation’s gender roles is that they are either descriptive or prescriptive. If they are descriptive, what’s the point? If so, that’s the way people behave naturally, so who cares? If they are prescriptive, then that means it’s not how people behave, so we are telling them to behave in a way that isn’t natural or true to their lived experience. That seems destined to fail. We’re not talking about sin or the natural man being an enemy to God. It’s not a sin for a man to be nurturing or for a woman to be decisive. It’s not against the commandments for a woman to earn money or ask someone to say a prayer or for a man to go to parent teacher conferences, clean a toilet or cook dinner.
If we are all a mix of male and female brain characteristics, a gender soup, somewhere on a continuum, then the assignment of familial duties based on an assumed gender binary will create discomfort for most people. Are the gender roles in the proclamation supposed to function like a cultural restriction to assign us and keep us in distinct genders that don’t occur naturally, sort of like foot binding for our genders?
Job Descriptions
Maybe a more useful parallel for the the marital roles in the proclamation is a job description. [2] In the workplace, a job description prevents you from stepping on a colleague’s toes in the workplace or from being inefficient and overlapping duties. But still, it’s kind of silly to create job descriptions for people’s marriages. What’s the point? A marriage is more fluid than that, and both of you are owners, not employees. You carve out your own job duties together using communication skills and mutual respect. If you rely on “gender roles” to define work, it’s a recipe for entitlement and blame. It gives you a basis to outsource tasks to your partner and then criticize how they do it while having no firsthand experience with the difficulty of doing it.
George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch illustrates this very well as both Dr. Lydgate and his bride Rosamond Vincy navigate the perils of their failing marriage. They each invent an imaginary set of motives and thoughts for the other person, one that fits their own romantic ideals about the other sex. Relating to one another on the basis of this fantasy rather than engaging with each other using direct communication has repeated disastrous consequences. The author laments:
“Poor Lydgate! or shall I say, Poor Rosamond! Each lived in a world of which the other knew nothing.”
and
“She was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers; she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her husband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently to his heart-beats, but only felt that her own was beating violently.”
The gender roles they embrace undermine their ability to know themselves or each other and prevent true communication from occurring. Instead, they can blame one another for failing to live up to their expectations. Rosamond is disappointed that Lydgate doesn’t earn as much money as her father did, so she feels it’s unfair of him to expect her to manage a household on such a small budget. Lydgate expects her to defer to his manly strength and admire him for it, but instead he finds that she is clever enough to subvert every attempt to influence her while seeming to be the picture of feminine sweetness and docility. Their untested assumptions about the other sex results in continual miscommunication and lack of empathy. Rather than creating intimacy, these beliefs create barriers to communication, resentment and tension, and result in a very unhappy marriage.
Too much specialization erodes empathy. In a work setting, it’s why the sales department complains about operations and operations complains about the finance department. We know the frustrations of our own jobs, and we underestimate the negative impacts our performance has on peers in other roles. We are keenly aware of the ways they negatively impact our work, though.
We used to joke at American Express that every job description ended with “and other duties as assigned,” so if anyone ever objected to what they were asked to do, it fell into that catch-all category. And clearly, the phrase “individual adaptation may apply” performs the same function in the proclamation. Nobody is guaranteed that their job duties won’t change in marriage. There are no free passes on responsibility just because of one’s sex.
Because we are individuals, not just the sum of our gender, then what is the best practical advice to strengthen marriages?
- Marry someone whose natural skills and interests complement your own, not a cookie cutter idea of masculinity or femininity.
- Divide and share marital work based on skills and interests, using communication, rather than assuming what people will do based on their sex.
- Relate to all people as individuals, and quit judging others based on gender stereotypes.
- Let people self-identify and pursue happiness, believing and respecting them rather than considering them broken or damaged.
Discuss.
[1] A caveat: Often, essentialism supports and is supported by transphobia, as essentialists claim that a person’s sex is the sex they were coercively assigned at birth (often mischaracterizing this sociological sex assignment as “biological”). It’s common for essentialists to claim that trans people’s genders and sexes are less valid than cis people’s genders and sexes, by using irrelevant scientific facts like the unchangeability of chromosomes to lend their arguments scientific legitimacy. In this case, essentialists support a double standard that involves using a trans person’s karyotype to undermine their innate sex and gender, while never asking that a cis person be karyotyped to confirm that they are the gender and sex they say they are. A related form of essentialism is the use of “male socialization” to insinuate that trans women are really men, while refusing to acknowledge narratives from trans women that show that many trans women were never fully recognized as male and absorbed the same social programming that girls and women do.
[2] The problem is that I didn’t apply for this job, and I’m not sure I want to work at this company now that I’ve read the job descriptions.
Wheat & Tares 
The 63rd fastest human in the marathon at the 2012 olympics went home anonymous and empty handed. The 64th fastest human in the marathon won a gold medal and was lauded and honored. We as a society don’t seem to have a problem with that kind of gender essentialism. There are male teams and female teams, male athletes and female athletes. Title IX codified this dualism in American society as an issue of equality and fair play.
Why is the male/female binary egalitarian and noble in athletics yet bad in everything else? Should those who demand an end to the male/female binary in society be honest and also demand an end to it in athletics?
hawkgrrrl,
I’d be interested in where, “About 10,000 babies are born the the US every year that have an intersex trait” comes from. Who came up with the stat and who reviewed the finding where was is published. It is only about two decimal points off from when I took genetics in school.
Mark, that study is linked in the Time article. When I look at the wording, though, I think that’s your clue. It says 10,000 in the US have “an intersex trait.” It doesn’t say what the trait is, so it’s not stating that all 10,000 have chromosomes that mismatch with their genitals. It’s just saying they have some sort of intersex trait, and of course there are many varieties. I’m sure some of these are less intrusive than others. Also, 10,000 is a very small percent of the 300 million people in the US.
KLC: “Why is the male/female binary egalitarian and noble in athletics yet bad in everything else? Should those who demand an end to the male/female binary in society be honest and also demand an end to it in athletics?” I tend to think that those who seek to abolish gender would also seek to abolish it in athletics. I suspect we are talking about different groups of people. I’m not sure where you are going here.
Of course, another option is to have weight / strength / height classes for all athletics, similar to wrestling and boxing. Most of the gender split in athletics is due to most men being physically larger than most women. But obviously, some men are small and some women are large, minimizing those athletic differences between the sexes.
An excellent post, no hyperbole, just a little reasoned thought brought to bear on the subject. Also loved your illustrations. And the title.
All your suggestions for building and supporting a marriage are far more rational as a set of expectations to bring to a relationship. DH and I were lucky enough to come to marriage as converts with a set of expectations formed by ‘The World’ of common sense and gender equality. We just shake our weary heads at all of this stuff.
Unfortunately in educating our children likewise, we have given them the information that has allowed them to de-construct their testimonies. They can’t make sense of this reductionist reading of gender, it seems to them less than christian. They have always known otherly gendered people.
But I think as a couple we’re also aware that the church is for the world, not just fourth and fifth generation members or the tertiary educated, and there are major swathes of the world where it would be a step up for men to take any responsibility for the outcome of their sexual liasons-in that context the proc flies a little better I think.
That’s how I finesse my cognitive dissonance-but I’ve had enough positive experiences of the gospel in my life to set one against the other and come down on the side of testimony, whilst finding myself constantly tried by thoughts such as these.
Clearly, as a couple, we haven’t managed to get this any more right than our TBM friends. It was nice for a while back there when we thought we just might.
I’m not sure where you’re going by claiming I’m not going somewhere…
Don’t we have regular cultural self examinations over “unfair” treatment of women in athletics? And aren’t they all based on a strict and rigorous separation of the sexes combined with the demand they be equal? Most recently it was the women’s world cup and outrage over perceived disparities in venues and prize money. Once upon a time it was demands for equal pay for male and female Wimbledon winners. I regularly read cultural pundits decrying the lack of enthusiasm and attention for women’s pro basketball compared to the NBA. If I really cared I could dredge up more. But they all point to the idea that a sex segregated, separate but equal, athletic playing field is the way a caring, thoughtful, inclusive world ought to be.
And yet outside of athletics, according to a growing segment of society illustrated in your post, the world ought to be the exact opposite, with no distinctions, no binaries, not segregation, even if it is equal. And this is also held up as the way a caring, thoughtful, inclusive world ought to be.
Which is the ideal, the binary sex segregated world of the athlete or the fluid, sliding scale illustrated by your post? Both camps seem to be the same kind of progressive, socially responsible voices that dominate cultural criticism. I’ve never heard anyone even slightly suggest that athletics should abandon sex segregation, have you? I’ve never seen any evidence that “those who seek to abolish gender would also seek to abolish it in athletics.” To me they seem to be the same kind of people advocating two contradicting world views.
An appropriate post for the International Day of Women.
I am not sure that specialization erodes empathy. In my recent workplaces, various groups of specialists were greatly appreciated: The IT people, the Spanish translators, the statisticians. The predominant attitude towards other groups is one of awe and appreciation, not complaint.
And some Mormon men also treat their wives with awe and appreciation, that they can bring to life and feed a new human being.
Are descriptive or prescriptive the only choices? I would add supportive, in that it is legitimizing a choice that may not not be widely accepted in other contexts.
I basically agree that within marriage, tasks can often be assigned by talent and enjoyment of that kind of work. We taught a variety of life skills to our children of both genders, so everyone can cook a meal and use power tools, etc.
But the reality is that at this point in our species’ technological development, no choice is possible for gestation and lactation. A heterosexual human couple cannot decide that the husband will handle the pregancy thing this time. I totally appreciated your [2], but that is how things are nowadays. Of course I say this from the perspective of an incompetent woman who couldn’t quite control my fertility and was ill throughout each pregnancy. Had I been blessed with infertility, I would not require as much support from my husband, and would likely have a different outlook on gender issues.
This was the other thing that really bugged me about Elder Bednar’s answer to that question… doubling down on the whole gender-essentialist stuff. A diet of that in YW and singles ward RS caused me a great deal of mental distress in my early to mid-20s, because I simply did not fit the picture they were painting of a woman. I just feel so very very weary…
I like your list of practical advice, which is pretty much what I try to do. I widh it was what we hear from the pulpit.
*wish
Hawkgrrrl, your post focuses on the mismatch between the biological expression of our gender (which can vary considerably, and is on a continuum) and the more delineated gender roles assigned by our church and culture.
But Jung would probably say that cultural roles (collective consciousness archetypes) are important dimensions of our identity, apart from whatever random things our chromosomes might be telling us. We live in a very individualist society, and so its natural that we are collectively gravitating to more individual freedom in defining our identity. This has led to a plethora of new categories apart from male and female which people can choose from, if they felt uncomfortable in whatever culturally assigned role they’ve been given. It’s good to grant people autonomy in expressing their identity of course.
But I don’t think anyone can stand up to the extraordinary power of traditional gender archetypes, which continue to define our world as much as they ever have, if you look at media and advertising. That is the true barometer of our entrenched gendered state as a society, and no amount of progressive re-education is going to kill those archetypes. Nor should we seek to. Our biology is important, but our collective consciousness is also important, I’d say as much as 50% of what our identity really is. By constantly berating culture and trying to point to biology as the all-in-all of identity, we impoverish identity. We are not our own. We are expressions of universal archetypes, and we find great joy and meaning in the expression of those archetypes. And of course there are homosexual and androgynous archetypes which have been around for thousands of years as well. It’s good to welcome those archetypes as valid expressions, but I don’t think we should dismiss cultural archetypes in a fruitless quest to try and find all the answers in biology.
From comment #3: …10,000 in the US have “an intersex trait.”
From the OP: About 10,000 babies are born the the US every year that have an intersex trait…”
Unless all of those 10,000 babies die on their first birthday, these two assertions are not even remotely consistent with one another.
I’ve read that in athletics it’s actually been really hard to come up with a way to consistently identify males and females. DNA/x-y chromosomes don’t work. Apparently the only thing they’ve been able to come up with is testosterone levels — and that doesn’t seem like that much of a difference to me (though I’ve also read that people who get hormone treatments are amazed at how their thinking is affected).
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, the reason that people even care about sex in sports is to protect women from unfair competition with men — a rationale that doesn’t seem widely applicable. And transsexuals are allowed to compete in international competitions.
It seems that male-female identification in athletics isn’t any clearer in athletics than anywhere else.
Whoever wrote the Times article doesn’t know how to do math. They quote the “1 in 2000” statistic from the intersex society, and then they stretch it to 10,000 births per year. About 4 million kids are born in the USA each year. 1 in 2000 would be 2,000 kids, not 10,000.
The 1 in 2000 number from the intersex society includes abnormalities that some wouldn’t technically classify as intersex (like Turner’s and Klinefelter’s), so we’re dealing with some differing definitions. My husband estimates maybe 5-10 “true” intersex kids born in Utah per year. Seeing him sputtering at the ratios and classifications at the intersex society’s website provided me some good laughs tonight. 🙂
Mortal gender essentialism requires truncating the human bell curve. Quite an arrogant concept!
Lch, I agree that in actual practice there can be difficulties in determining what sex you are for athletic purposes, although we should be honest and acknowledge that those difficulties affect a very small portion of the total population.
But that difficulty really doesn’t apply to my comments. In spite of the difficulty, as far as I can tell, we are completely committed to the ideal of gender essentialism in sports.
Just as we are beginning to accept females in military if they meet all of the same standards as males; some women also hope the same would be said for women in sports. Jackie Mitchell struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gherig in 1931 only to have her contract voided for being a girl and the league commissioner banned all future females from the MLB.
Think about what happened in the medical profession: women weren’t allowed to be doctors so a separate path was created, nursing. Once we progressed to a point gender barriers were holding us back, both fields became mixed gender.
Perhaps that is the ultimate goal for sports, a alternate tier is necessary to develop the availability and opportunity for the oppressed group. Once everything reaches a certain tipping point, both major and minor leagues can become co-ed. I think with title IX we’re still at the point of expanding opportunity and skill development for women. Although intersex and transgender athletes may require us to rethink and change our current path, who knows.
“the proclamation seems to be stating that one is either eternally male or female, all in, which is not what science shows.”
Well, science shows (currently) that mortal gender is not binary, but I’ve yet to see the test that can accurately describe spiritual gender. This is the big part missing from this post, as it ignores the spiritual gender completely.
Gender essentialism and the gender binary fits very well in the church, even when other LGBT ideas do not. I just recently learned of another person who has been allowed to have her name and gender changed on church records, with the stipulation that she no longer use the Priesthood she was given. This permission was given via the First Presidency. This is still handled on a case by case basis, and local leaders are still likely to handle it poorly, but there continues to be increasing acceptance of the idea that a person can have a different gender than was assigned from physical characteristics.
Absolutely the expectation of gender roles should continue to be challenged, as there are currently only three physical processes that require gendered structures (lactating can be accomplished with hormones, we’ve just seen the first successful uterus transplant, that leaves the creation of gametes).
For spiritual genders, we have nothing but what we’ve been given; that we have spirit genders, that only males can have the Priesthood, that something in the process of progression requires both male and female. Kinda hard to shake that in the Church, especially when they are allowing for changes in mortal gender.
I’m not sure I believe in gender – although a strong belief in the importance of gender is definitely something that unites two very different communities (Mormons/christian conservatives and most progressives).
Sex is clearly something that falls into generally two categories. Those categories aren’t perfect, and there are plenty who don’t fit into those categories, but they seems to be meaningful in ways that are useful for understanding health.
Gender just seems to be a way to assign social constructs based on sex-based characteristics. I’ve not really seen any convincing evidence that there are any real differences between men and women that don’t go back to biology (sex) or social constructions. Human characteristics exist on a huge spectrum in both men and women. I just don’t see the use in having a “gender identity,” other than the fact that it seems to be something that is out there in society.
As for the “gender essentialism” in sports – that’s not gender essentialism. That is a sex-based division. Is sex occasionally (very occasionally) hard to define? Sure. That doesn’t make it gender, though.
I don’t think we existed in our intelligent states (pre-spirit creation) in binary genders. I’m really baffled if I try to think about what in my brain/spirit is specifically “female.” I can’t think of anything. So the definition of my womanhood is just who I am in the constructs of being the best individual I can be, based on my unique talents/weaknesses.
Frank: “I’ve yet to see the test that can accurately describe spiritual gender. This is the big part missing from this post, as it ignores the spiritual gender completely.” I tend to think that the term “spiritual gender” is equivalent to “gender identity,” or so I hear most people who believe gender is eternal yet that gender isn’t always a clear binary mean. As such, it is addressed in the post, just not referenced by that term. Do you see spiritual gender as something different than gender identity (one’s own inward perception of one’s gender)?
KLC, it looks like Kristine A. and the readers of this blog who gave her comment a thumbs-up believe that the only thing keeping girls and women from competing on an equal footing with boys and men on track, swimming, and basketball teams of high schools and colleges is oppression. In other words, they have no experience playing or watching sports, so they don’t understand the point you’re making. With a co-ed NCAA basketball tournament, how many of the 64 teams would have an outstanding female player who comes off the bench occasionally? How many would have a female starter? I’ll guess 20 and 2, and I think I’m being generous with those guesses. Likewise imagine the preliminary heats and finals of every track and swimming meet. That would be quite a change from Title IX.
KLC and John Mansfield: Maybe you missed my comment in #4: “another option is to have weight / strength / height classes for all athletics, similar to wrestling and boxing. Most of the gender split in athletics is due to most men being physically larger than most women. But obviously, some men are small and some women are large, minimizing those athletic differences between the sexes.”
Because professional athletics consists of the top physical specimens of both sexes, the top performing men will usually have an advantage over the top performing women in terms of size and strength. I imagine female jockeys might have an inherent advantage over male jockeys by contrast. But if we are just talking about the total population of men & women (not the top pros) an average man couldn’t beat a WNBA player on the court. Her strength, height and skills would outmatch him.
John Mansfield & KLC that’s not at all what I’m saying. I mentioned the military – now that combat is opened for women it’s a possibility that 1-2 women per year could make the standards. Obviously women are built differently, but along the bell curve of women’s physical abilities will be outliers that are only being held back by an arbitrary ban. Lift the ban and keep the standards.
Nice stretching my words though. As for sex-based division I have no idea why people are wanting to argue about it. It comes up as an issue because sex isn’t binary. So we’ve got to figure out what to do with the exceptions. Meanwhile do all competitions have to be divided? No. There are plenty of things that could be co-ed and made better.
Sheesh.
I see no evidence that the Church has adopted the secular philosophy of Gender Essentialism as a religious doctrine. Nor that the Proclamation on the Family uses the word “gender” in the same rarefied — and increasingly coerced — sense originated by academics in 1945.
The idea that the Proclamation endorses Gender Essentialism looks like an example of the Fallacy of Equivocation, and a forced, strained reading. Nearly all of the Proclamation is explicitly uniform, applied without regard to gender. Of the 28 sentences of the Proclaimation, only 2 are gender-specific.
Other than reading “gender is an essential characteristic…” as academic jargon, almost certainly not what its authors intended, what evidence do you have that the Church as adopted Gender Essentialism as doctrine?
Hawkgrrl: “…the proclamation seems to be stating that one is either eternally male or female, all in, which is not what science shows.”
I’d be surprised if science shows anything about Eternity. Which scientific studies report demonstrable, reproducible facts about Eternity?
“what evidence do you have that the Church as adopted Gender Essentialism as doctrine?” The incessant talks that define all women one way and all men another. It may only constitute a brief part of the Proc, but it’s the one that gets the most airplay.
“I’d be surprised if science shows anything about Eternity.” If eternity includes mortality and science shows that our mortal brains aren’t either male or female, then our brains are not “eternally” male or female. Unless you are theorizing that eternity excludes our mortality. Is that what you are suggesting? That we are eternally one way, but not that way during mortality? Again, given the existing doctrinal concept of pre-mortal gender accompanied by the doctrinal concept of gender being eternal, then one’s gender being different ONLY during mortality undermines the idea that it is eternal.
wow. i am personally impressed that someone could look at the body of the church’s comments on gender yet still dispute that the church is gender essentialist.
Thought I would mention at the 1992 Olympics that Zhang Shan, a women, won the gold medal in skeet shooting.
In 1996, she couldn’t defend her title, because they had made it men only, and they didn’t offer a women’s skeet event.
I have no idea who shoots guns in the eternities.
hawkgrrrl (21): “Do you see spiritual gender as something different than gender identity”
I do. Gender identity can change over a lifetime. Spiritual gender is static, determined somehow in the life before and continuing in the life after.
Course it would be nice to learn exactly what is different between spiritual genders, or why (at least) one of each is needed for progression. “It just is” isn’t a very satisfying answer.
And I am -so- ready for women to be able to be in the Major Leagues again. Softball is a poor replacement, desperately trying to fit women into a “softer” sport.
“I have no idea who shoots guns in the eternities.” Liberal.
Jonathon,
Secular definition of gender essentialism: the idea that men and women have inherent, unique, and natural attributes that qualify them as their separate genders.
Elder David A. Bednar – “there is a divinely designed difference between a female spirit and a male spirit. You need to read and study over and over again the family proclamation. It teaches that gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. So, whenever you take those divinely designed differences – the capacities and talents of the female spirit and a male spirit, and they are sealed together by the power of the priesthood, it creates a unity and a oneness, a whole, that cannot be achieved any other way. Sister Bednar and I have been married for 41 years. She is, other than the Holy Ghost, she is the greatest teacher I have ever had. She does not think like I think. She does not see what I see, and I learn a lot from the things that she thinks and sees that are different from me. Sometimes men and women get frustrated with each other because they don’t see things the same way. They’re not supposed to see things the same way. And the education that comes from a man and a woman in a marriage ordained of God is one of the richest blessings in this life.” (23 Feb 2016)
Elder David A. Bednar again: “[Gender] in large measure defines who we are, why we are here upon the earth, and what we are to do and become. For divine purposes, male and female spirits are different, distinctive, and complementary. … The unique combination of spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional capacities of both males and females were needed to implement the plan of happiness” (2006)
Elder M. Russell Ballard: “My dear sisters, we believe in you. We believe in and are counting on your goodness and your strength, your propensity for virtue and valor, your kindness and courage, your strength and resilience. We believe in your mission as women of God. We realize that you are the emotional (and sometimes spiritual) glue that holds families and often ward families together. We believe that the Church simply will not accomplish what it must without your faith and faithfulness, your innate tendency to put the well-being of others ahead of your own, and your spiritual strength and tenacity. And we believe that God’s plan is for you to become queens and to receive the highest blessings any woman can receive in time or eternity.” And “We men simply cannot nurture as you nurture. Most of us don’t have the sensitivity—spiritual and otherwise—that by your eternal nature you inherently have. Your influence on families and with children, with youth, and with men is singular. You are natural-born nurturers. Because of these unusual gifts and talents, you are vital to taking the gospel to all the world, to demonstrating that there is joy in living the way the prophets have counseled us to live.” (2001)
President Spencer W. Kimball: “In the world before we came here, faithful women were given certain assignments while faithful men were foreordained to certain priesthood tasks. While we do not now remember the particulars, … we are accountable for those things which long ago were expected of us” (1979)
President Spencer W. Kimball: ““The Lord organized the whole program in the beginning with a father who procreates, provides, and loves and directs, and a mother who conceives and bears and nurtures and feeds and trains.” (1973)
“Sometimes men and women get frustrated with each other because they don’t see things the same way. They’re not supposed to see things the same way. And the education that comes from a man and a woman in a marriage ordained of God is one of the richest blessings in this life.”
This quote from Elder Bednar just doesn’t jive with my personal experience. As a woman (cisgender) I have always had a much more difficult time understanding the women around me than the men. I have more “traditionally male” characteristics than I have “traditionally female” characteristics. As a child it used to confuse me to no end when I would hear quotes like those Mary Ann pointed to above. Every time the characteristics that women innately have were listed, it was clear to me that I was not included in the women they were talking about. From a young age this made it very simple to just disregard everything any GA ever said about women vs men. I just wasn’t one of those women. I think that is what has enabled me to stay in the church so long. My faith crisis started when I realized that I really was meant to be part of that group of women they were describing.
To add to the OP’s questions regarding marital advice:
I think it is a symptom of our obsession with heterosexuality that we think spouses need to be complete complements of each other in order to function. I have a very functional marriage. There are some things I am good that my husband is bad at and vice versa. But there are also a lot of things that we are both really good at (like managing finances) so we share in those things. There are some things that we are both really bad at (cleaning) but they have to get done so we share in those things as well. Each day when it comes to raising our kids and taking care of a house we have to negotiate tasks. I think it helps that there are very few assumptions regarding who is going to do which task. It makes each day a new negotiation. It is hard for your spouse to let you down when you don’t have expectations regarding how tasks are going to be done until you’ve discussed it.
EBK, I also don’t tend to follow stereotype in the way I think. I was often accused of thinking like a guy and not being sympathetic enough to the girls around me. At one point I had to sit down and help my brother understand what his wife was getting at, and help his wife understand what he was getting at. I guess being a girl but thinking more like a guy did help me with translation.
Hawk, I have no problem with your comment in #4. But do you seriously think that proposal would go anywhere in this world? I can’t see it happening. But Kristine A. I also have no problem with Title IX and women’s sports, really, none at all. I’m not arguing for non sex linked athletic competition. I’m only saying that it seems strange to me that on one hand we can get very worked up about the cruelties of sex assigned roles in society and seem to be leaning toward their abolition yet on the other hand we can get very worked up about inequalities in sex assigned roles in sports and seem to be hell bent on reinforcing them. These seem to be incompatible world views and I would think that proponents on either side of this fence, if they are honest, would find it at least curious and probably disturbing.
hawkgrrrl, Andrew S and Mary Ann: thank you for the kind replies. LDS doctrine and Gender Essentialism do have some points of agreement. However, Gender Essentialism denies or ignores God, Christ, the Atonement, revelation, souls, and pre- and post-mortal life, among other things that the Church strongly emphasizes.
The differences seem, to me, to be far more numerous and significant.
Furthermore, I’ve yet to read any opponent of Gender Essentialism (there appear to be no confessing proponents) identify any of the following as among it’s constituent ideas:
“…divinely designed difference between a female spirit and a male spirit…”
“For divine purposes, male and female spirits are different, distinctive, and complementary…”
“…we believe that God’s plan is for you to become queens and to receive the highest blessings any woman can receive in time or eternity…”
“In the world before we came here, faithful women were given certain assignments while faithful men were foreordained to certain priesthood tasks…”
“The Lord organized the whole program in the beginning with a father who procreates, provides, and loves and directs, and a mother who conceives and bears and nurtures and feeds and trains.”
If these statements were made by cynical materialists, they would indeed be Gender Essentialist: words like “divine”, “spirit”, and “Lord” would be mere manipulation. But Prophets and Apostles are not cynical materialists.
When speaking of men and women, Prophets and Apostles emphasize divine roles; opponents of Gender Essentialism complain of mundane, arbitrary, socially-imposed “essences” and restrictions, and avoid talk of divinity and eternity (as real things) altogether.
Denial or ignorance of the Divine renders Gender Essentialism incompatible with LDS doctrine.
EBK: “Every time the characteristics that women innately have were listed, it was clear to me that I was not included in the women they were talking about. From a young age this made it very simple to just disregard everything any GA ever said about women vs men.” Likewise.
hawkgrrrl: “If eternity includes mortality and science shows that our mortal brains aren’t either male or female, then our brains are not “eternally” male or female.”
Parts of eternity differ (thank God!), just like parts of anything can differ. And brains, just like to rest of our mortal bodies, are not eternal, but temporary.
In addition, the validity your statement depends on science and the Church using the terms “male” and “female” identically, which they do not. It’s another example of the fallacy of equivocation.
If we’re talking about the fallacy of equivocation, as the article points out, the terms male and female are inherently ambiguous. The church doesn’t use them one way and science another; individuals use them various ways in both science and the church. There’s no “church’s definition” and “the world’s definition.” It’s even messier than that.
When you assert that parts of eternity differ, well, that’s another interesting definition issue, another fallacy of equivocation–or at least I think it is. Church leaders and scriptures usually refer to things as being “eternal” that they perceive as unchanging. Perhaps that’s simply another ambiguous term.
Jonathon, I’m trying to understand your argument.
Gender Essentialism: “the idea that men and women have inherent, unique, and natural attributes that qualify them as their separate genders.”
NOT Gender Essentialism: “the idea that men and women have divinely established inherent, unique, and eternal attributes that qualify them as their separate genders.”
Is that an accurate assessment?
Like Mary Ann #14, I’m just shaking my head at Time.
It starts with an anecdote, as do many articles, which is fine, but it goes downhill from there. The scope of the problem is escalated by citing the 1 in 2,000 statistic with a link to ISNA’s website, but that’s a little problematic:
– ISNA’s site calls all the stats approximations, and also acknowledges the difficulty in defining intersex.
– Time uses faulty math, as Mary Ann pointed out. 4 million babies at the 1/2,000 rate = 2,000 children; Time quintupled its estimate based on ISNA’s assumptions.
– ISNA itself no longer exists, having shuttered its organization in 2008 (see the home page). Maybe that’s irrelevant, but I find it a little weak that the problem is quatified using a stat that is at least 8 years old.
I have no issues with the discussion above or the former INSA, just curious that pulling an old, approximated statistic from a now-defunct organization and adding bad math is what passes for journalism at Time these days.
Great post Hawkgrrrl, as usual. And you know you have written it well when it makes some of the readers here uncomfortable! I am impressed by the amazing cognitive gymnastics going on in the comments, contorting words to make things fit in boxes. People don’t fit in boxes.