Gender: Who Has It?

20150809_211514What do you think of when you think of gender?

If you’re me, it’s something you don’t have but others do. That probably reflects my privilege as a man.

Whatever social marker it is–gender, race, class, ethnicity, age, etc.–I usually think of it as something others (Others?) have.

Let me expand on that a bit. It’s not that I don’t think I have a gender. It’s that when I think of “gender issues” I’m not usually thinking about myself, because I don’t have a glass ceiling to break through. Worries about rape are not on my mind when I walk down a street at night. Anorexia and bulimia are not problems I deal with (if you’ve seen me in person, you can tell pretty quickly I don’t have these problems). Do these affect some men? Maybe. They just don’t affect me, and I presume they don’t affect a lot of men.

This somewhat reflects the field of gender studies. When I started reading Ursula King’s edited work, Religion and Gender, she indicated that many times gender studies=women’s studies.

Now this isn’t the case across the board. There is a subfield in gender studies called men’s studies or men and masculinities, so there’s an exception to this rule.

And maybe this is just me and something I will need to look at, but when you think of a category like gender, race, class, etc., do you think about it in reference to yourself or others?

Perhaps it is also true that I don’t get out much. Chalk it up to being a father of two young children, working, and being a student.

I have started asking some close family and friends what they think of when they hear the topic of gender. When I was waiting for church to start this morning, I wrote the following in my journal:

All I know of the past (before my conscious memory) is mediated. What would I think of gender were I alive in the 1950s? If I try to image this, all of my imagination of the 1950s is already constrained by what various patriarchs and feminists have informed me about it: it was utopia or a nightmare.

My “knowledge” of the 50s comes from books, movies, shows, clips. This is not to say that if I interviewed someone who lived during that time period would be any less colored by their perspective. However, I wonder what I would catch in the conversation unedited.

In print and in video, a lot of editing goes on. Granted, if you’ve had some practice answering a question, there has been editing done there, too.

What am I saying? I have a lot of work to do. Much of my research (maybe I’ll just call them “thoughts” instead of research since I haven’t really tested them against other peoples’ thoughts) on gender comes from inside my head.

However, if I want to pursue knowledge about gender, I will have to incorporate more than just my thoughts. It will require questioning others about their experiences. It will require probing their answers, being aware of my responses, making those responses known to them to gauge how they react, probing how others think about the data I gather, and continuing this cycle over long periods of time.

Here is what I think of when I think of gender: it is an amalgam of one’s sex organs, hormones, appearance, social interactions, experiences, sexual orientation, and how each of these interact with each other over time.

With this in mind, there will be many  masculinities, femininities, or just general gendered expressions. To put it another way, gender looks different for a black lesbian, a poor Chinese man, or a young trans woman. Each social marker will affect how gender appears.

Free Association on Difference

index“You must read literature, for there you find how people live.” That’s not a real quote, but Robert Turnbull said something similar in my “Theological French” class six years ago. I don’t know why they slapped “theological” on it since it was really a whirlwind course in French grammar, but alas…

Seminary was an interesting time for me. I had started considering that maybe I didn’t want to pursue theology. But still, when he said those words, I had an internal reaction. Theology was reality. All I needed to do to be right with God and people was to read theology. This would order my life and life would be grand.

This isn’t to say that I hadn’t enjoyed novels. I had read The Da Vinci Code while in seminary and absolutely enjoyed it. I don’t know how many would call that literature, but then again, what is literature? Is it merely a piece that literary critics have declared part of “the” canon? Is it a piece that has something of timeless, enduring value? Is literature a book people say you should read but never have themselves?

As I was performing a meticulous, mindless task at work, I began listening to Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

What have I been missing all this time? Sure, gritty shows like Mad Men, House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, or The Wire have a similar “realness” to them, but their writers, directors, or producers are somewhat invisible to me. Furthermore, I cannot see and hear the internal workings of the characters. These shows also seem to match a lot of my experience in the following way: white protagonists.

What would happen if I continued to read non-fiction about my research interests, but augmented it with literature, pop- and classic? What sort of things would I come across that I might otherwise miss? As the narrator in Invisible Man speaks of his youth, I wonder how much that voice reflected a generation.

How much did young African-Americans in the 1930s and 40s wish to be successful, but only in a way that didn’t upset white supremacy? How many constantly feared that they had upset whites? How many had tried to be “good blacks” as defined by their white lords? As I listen, I wonder how different a person I would be if I were raised in a different body, time, family, and social setting. The big value that shines through early in the novel is to speak to whites in a humble way or else incur their wrath. Is that assumption still present in the minds of African-American minds today?

Perhaps it’s my Millennial sense of entitlement, my narcissism, my white privilege, or healthy sense of self, but I don’t generally put on airs with people. But to approach an entire class of people as if they don’t use toilets, as if they were gods? It doesn’t compute.

How many voices are absent in my life? Not only do I not have a very diverse group of friends at work or church, but also at school. They’re primarily straight white Protestants. I don’t have anything against straight white Protestants. I am one. But I along with my group are not the only people in my city, state, and country. If I cannot find different voices in my experience, is it at least desirable to hear alternative voices in literature? This is elementary, but I probably have a lot of unconscious opinions that I never become aware of because I don’t have Difference showing me how much my assumptions don’t reflect everyone else’s reality.

If you have any good novels that deal with the following topics, send them my way: gender, sexuality, race, class, age, rites of passage.

My Weird Views on “Religion,” Part 3: Community

I have been presenting how I view “religion” for the past two weeks. This is the third of four installments on it. While it can get maybe too theoretical, I have tried to make it like the dentist: touch on the essentials (but not essentialism) but as quickly and painlessly as possible.

3. Community

Religion is at least, though not necessarily reducible to the following, in Lincoln’s thought:

  1. discourse
  2. practice
  3. community
  4. institution

holyterrorsuofcpressRegarding “community,” Lincoln speaks of a group that defines itself upon certain discourses and practices. He really expands on this in another book of his I’ve already mentioned: Discourse and the Construction of Society with his concepts of affinity and estrangement based on social markers.

Part of my piece last week included a conversation with Russell McCutcheon about the use of rationality and persuasion in public “discussion.” He had remarked how public debates weren’t so much about rationality and persuasion (though they may include those) as gaining control of the rules to your side’s benefit (e.g., getting to define what is “fair”). Sometimes this last piece is not conscious on the group’s part. They have processes and modes of authorization that to them are universal, though in reality, they are contingent. It is not beliefs that make a religion but that things are believed. At least.

Russell T. McCutcheon
Russell T. McCutcheon
For a group to form, they must have an identity based on agreed upon markers. Social borders are maintained on what Lincoln calls affinity and estrangement. The former refers to “feelings of likeness, common belonging, mutual attachment, and solidarity” and the latter entails “feelings of distance, separation, otherness, and alienation.” You can probably easily fill in ways in which people set up markers for belonging or exclusion. He lists some, to which I added some more. The first list is his and those that follow are mine. I have tried to include as many real world religious examples of the following categories, but they can really apply to any sector of society. These are by no means exhaustive, as we humans seem boundless in contrasting and distinguishing from among themselves.

Lincoln’s:

  • language
  • space: physical or geographical
  • diet
  • economy
  • marriage
  • customs
  • aesthetics

Monte’s:

  • music
  • leisure
  • work ethic
  • access to resources
  • body composition
  • body alteration
  • type of job
  • accent
  • eloquence
  • dis/ability
  • ethnicity
  • sexuality
  • race
  • technological prowess
  • age
  • gender

I contend that group identification depends as much on what you aren’t at least as much (sometimes maybe more so) as what you are. Difference is inevitable, but in defined communities, an othering process sometimes starts, particularly among competing religions. Various strategies are available. Within a tradition, you can try to cast your competitors as not as faithful to the discourse (“original teachings”) as your group is. You can say that times have changed and the other group has not handled the change in a way your group sees as ideal. You can say your group is original and established and the other is aberrant or “heretical.” You can say the other is old and irrelevant while yours has its finger on the pulse of humanity.

Not a Muslim
Not a Muslim
Othering of groups outside your tradition is where things can really get nasty (though Catholic/Protestant wars in Europe weren’t exactly tame). Consider the treatment of Muslims post 9/11. At the time of this Pew article, 24% of the United States public viewed American Muslims increasingly supporting extremism, while only 4% of Muslims agreed; significantly, 48% of Muslim laity said their leaders had not spoken resolutely enough against terrorism.

If you are religious (or not: this is a rather human thing), think who and what you have affinity with and whom and what you estrange or are estranged from. Are those distinctions natural? Are they contrived? How often are they actively said over and over again as if not saying them would make the distinctions evaporate? Consider someone you usually think as quite different from you.

I’ll be honest: when I see a transgender person at Walmart, my bodily reaction is to stare. I do not mean to do this; I am simply not used to seeing transgender persons, and have unfortunately never had a conversation with one. My somewhat legitimate excuse is that my job and family situation limit who I see in any given day. If I step back and think about what differentiates me from a transgender person, I only notice one thing: they do not appear in the way that I would express my gender. However, like me, they are shopping at Walmart. They are purchasing food, games, clothing, medicine, electronics, decorations, office supplies, and diapers. How different does a difference make us? Are they unworthy of dignity and respect? Do they need to be forced toward assimilation? Does their appearance encapsulate their persons?


Groups are fluid. And yet they persist over time. What makes some elements stick around and others slough off? How often are group members included and excluded? How sharp is the inclusion/exclusion? I will be covering this next week in Part 4: Institutions.