Biblical Masculinity: Buried Under Disclaimers

Posted on September 13, 2011 by TwoFriars

Hello there! We at Two Friars and a Fool are huge giggling fanboys of Rachel Held Evans and towns full of monkeys. Conversations with her about her year of biblical womanhood project inspired us to do some thinking of our own about masculinity and biblical portrayals of masculinity and whether we have anything intelligent to say about these subjects, being men who sometimes read the Bible. So we sat down to have a little conversation…

Fool: Lots of talk these days about biblical gender roles. Why do you think that is?

Friar 1: All of this stuff: complimentarianism, joyful submission, prizefighter Jesus… it all seems like trumped up mysogyny to me.

Friar 2: Wait a minute. Talking about biblical gender roles doesn’t have to be a cover for sexism. Why can’t we start looking in the Bible for images of godly masculinity?

Friar 1: Because the very premise of discrete masculine and feminine roles has been demolished. We should be looking beyond gender, not trying to define it further.

Fool: Why can’t we just go back to the good old days, when men were men, and women were women, and the two were different?  It worked well for 10,000 years.

Friar 1: Haven’t we already done this?  It was called patriarchy, and it turned out horribly for everyone involved.

Friar 2: I’m just saying, maybe we don’t need a scorched-earth policy with regard to what people have said about men and women in the past.  Society has changed radically, but people haven’t really changed at all. Some ancient wisdom about what it means to be male and female probably still applies.

Fool: Speaking of ancient wisdom doesn’t the Bible, and 2,000 years of Christian tradition, teach us that men should be in authority, and that women are primarily nurturers?

Friar 1: That is exactly the problem – this is what most people think and what most people say when they start talking about “biblical gender roles”, and with justification because with few exceptions the church has been pretty sexist these past couple millennia.

Friar 2: Maybe, though, there are corn-kernels in the poo here.  As a man, I find that I honestly have no freaking idea what I’m supposed to be doing.  I have no cultural script, except to be told that I am a violent rapist waiting to emerge from some kind of chrysalis.  I know very well all the things I’m not supposed to do.  But what am I supposed to do, as a man? The church using the Bible could have some important words to speak into this void. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who challenged the gender rules in their time more than Jesus Christ.  Two thousand years later, we still don’t really get it.

Fool: A majority of seminary graduates are women; women can be ordained and do any job men can do.  Isn’t this all kind of behind us now?  The liberals won.

Friar 1: I’ll let you know when we win.  You’ll be able to tell because Rupert Murdoch will commit honorable seppuku and neoconservatives will be up for war crimes.  That being said, no, it isn’t over, not by a long shot.  Most traditions still don’t ordain women, and even among those that do things are far from equal.  For all those seminary graduates who are women, very few of them end up in actual pulpits.

Friar 2: I think that a ton of attention has been focused on women – on gender issues and women’s studies and those kinds of things.  I think that’s great, and should continue.  What I’m interested in seeing is genuine men’s studies.  Not studying to be patriarchy 2.0, but rather doing exactly what women’s studies does for women – just with dudes.

Fool: What’s good about men?  The answer seems to be “nothing”.  Isn’t masculinity run amok the problem?

Friar 1: In brief, yes.  For thousands of years, male dominance meant that women were seen as faulty or incomplete men at best; at worst, physical and sexual property of men.  Bad theology hasn’t helped one iota.

Friar 2: But the answer isn’t to just go the opposite direction, unless we are actually going to say, as a culture, that there is nothing good about men.  They are violent, selfish women, but with penises.  It’s past time we started talking about masculinity in the positive sense – what is it? What does it consist of?

Fool: Isn’t this just a way to sneak in patriarchy?  Like “sure, racism is bad, but what about reverse racism?”

Friar 1: That’s definitely my concern, yeah. Oh, poor men, they’re so put upon now, it’s so sad and unfair.  Give me a break.

Friar 2: I’m not going to say reverse patriarchy or something here – that’s kind of dumb.  On the other hand, men are at the top and the bottom of society.  We fill corporate board-rooms as well as prisons.  We earn more but we die younger.  We drop out of high school much more often and are also more likely to be homeless.  Aren’t these things we should be thinking about?

Fool: What’s the point in looking at masculinity?  Isn’t that what every discipline and every society essentially did until about fifty years ago?

Friar 1: Feminism is so young we can still basically count the generations of it on one hand.  First wave, new wave, third wave, and so on.  The pioneers of modern feminism are still alive and being interviewed by Stephen Colbert.  This is not the time to start hitting the brakes.  The study of masculinity is a Trojan horse, and hiding inside of it are Mark Driscoll and James Dobson.

Friar 2: That’s just the thing, though – patriarchy is not masculinity.  The two aren’t the same.  But, apart from patriarchy, what is masculinity?  The thing is, none of us know, because almost no one is thinking about it.  Or worse the only people thinking about it are the ones who just want to push patriarchy in disguise, with hipster glasses and a UFC t-shirt or something. What is it to be a man, apart from either being part of patriarchy or being told how evil you are for being part of patriarchy?  If I knew, I would tell you, but I don’t.  I’d like to, though.

Fool: So do we have anything coherent to say about Biblical Masculinity?

Friar 1: This is such a potential minefield. There are so many things we have to be sure we are NOT saying, but maybe it is time we got a tentative conversation going. There are some interesting directions we could take this – Paul for example advocated celibacy, directly contradicting this image we have of men as helpless victims of their sex drives.

Friar 2: Exactly. We’ve spent this entire time arguing and we haven’t gotten anywhere because when it comes to talking about masculinity from a progressive perspective we just get buried under disclaimers.

Fool: We need a round 2, in other words.

Friar 1: That depends on Rachel Held Evans, and whether she ever wants to be seen in public with us again after this episode.

Friar 2: Tell us what you think below.

Two Friars And a Fool

Two Friars and a Fool

Nick Larson, Doug Hagler, and Aric Clark started this virtual theology pub so they could have awesome conversations with their favorite people. And then you showed up.
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  • http://whitherthougoest.wordpress.com/ Brad Anderson

    I honestly don’t understand why “biblical masculinity” is even a concern. Why is it that we need a theology of masculinity to replace patriarchy? Isn’t the replacement simply Christian discipleship and mission, animated by Gal 3:28? As we raise our son and daughter, I’m really not all that concerned about whether they grow up to be a “proper” man or woman, but rather that they recognize Jesus as Lord, find their place in the People of God, and carry their crosses faithfully.

    • Anonymous

      This is where I live most of the time too. But then I hear someone like Marc Driscoll preach and I get this reflexive fear reaction and it feels like I’m back in middle school and I realize that I have been programmed to think of masculinity as an inherently dangerous and bad thing. There really is no such place as being completely genderless or beyond gender. As such we need to explore positive ways of living into masculinity or femininity that oppose the dominant negative portrayals.

      • http://whitherthougoest.wordpress.com/ Brad Anderson

        Aric, I resonate with your reaction to Driscoll, but I disagree with your subsequent response. I’m not proposing we seek to be genderless, but I am suggesting that most of our discussion in response to folks like Driscoll should be to return the focus to reconciled discipleship, not merely a kinder, gentler vision that still plays by his rules of fundamentally dividing the genders in the church. There may be no such place as being completely genderless (and I wasn’t suggesting that), but that doesn’t mean reifying what is defied by Gal 3:28 is the way to go. Moreover, it isn’t just a matter of masculinity or femininity anymore, either, as theologians are attending as well to intersexed persons (even apart from discussions of lesbian/gay identity). Doesn’t this beg for a robust theological anthropology that doesn’t end up undoing our unity-across-gender in Christ?

        • Doug Hagler

          I guess for me simply talking about discipleship is too vague. There is an overpowering message from the evangelical church in the US about masculinity and what that means. There aren’t really alternative messages that aren’t basically negative. I think that it’s the responsibility of good theologians to put forth better ideas than the bad theologians, so that people who don’t have a ton of time to do theology can just pick what is helpful to them, what is adaptive in their own lives. I don’t see anything adaptive about Mark Driscoll, so I definitely think it is worthwhile to present a strong alternative.

          I also don’t see looking at masculinity/femininity as excluding looking at intersexed persons and the whole rainbow of gender and sexual expression. We don’t have to divert resources from one to the other, or look at masc/fem and immediately enforce categories on people who don’t claim them.

          I think a robust anthropology takes into account the experience of being all kinds of human, including the tens of millions of men who seem to be looking for some kind of insight into what it means to be a man from a theological perspective. They are getting that primarily from James Dobson and Mark Driscoll and John Piper and that ilk because the alternatives aren’t out there apart from deconstruction (which is not enough to build an identity upon). I think there is already a lot to say, theologically, about unity and equality (from my progressive perspective at least) but that, to me, is not yet a robust anthropology.

          • http://whitherthougoest.wordpress.com/ Brad Anderson

            Doug, I don’t think discipleship is vague at all when it’s presented in a properly radical manner (socially, culturally, politically, economically, etc.), which I think Gal 3:28 among other things provides. We have yet to see what that looks like in an evangelical context. I’m just wary of doing this on the terms that have been set by those presenting the problematic paradigms in the first place.

            I never said anything about one approach excluding the other; I was just pointing out that it isn’t merely a discussion of “masculine” and “feminine” in the literature, or in the experience of the church.

            I don’t have a problem talking about being a godly man; I just wonder how we do that in a way that isn’t already handled simply by talking about being a faithful disciple. If you want to focus on the contemporary situation and look at challenges that seem to be somewhat unique to men, do so, but that doesn’t determine the anthropology or root theology.

          • Anonymous

            It appears to me part of our disagreement here is just a different understanding of what we’re trying to do. I agree that masculinity is no basis for any kind of systematic theology or root discussion of anthropology. It is a subcategory of human, below even disciple, and it is not “necessary” to a full understanding of ourselves or our mission.

            It is however a theme, and like any musical theme it can be riffed on and extemporized from to a lot of different possible places. What we are saying is that some people out there are playing this theme and we DO NOT LIKE the music they are playing, but we think the underlying theme has legs and we could do something with it that was better. More we are saying that since no one else is trying to do anything with this theme anyone interested in this type of music is stuck with the one style, which leads to the proliferation of bad music. Certainly one possible option is to ignore it and hope it goes out of fashion, but another option, maybe better since it does clearly seem like a lot of people are interested in this theme, is to try to play better music with this theme.

        • Anonymous

          I completely agree that reification and essentialization are not the way to go (even if they are sadly common), and I agree that developing discipleship would be useful. It’s just that, IMHO, one of the easiest ways for a concept to get reified is to not reflect on it systematically.

          I am unsure a theological anthropology that accounts for gender & sexuality cannot be robust and will necessarily undo our unity in Christ. I’d think an anthropology that acknowledges a distinction in society/culture/language as an issue theology must deal with could be valuable, even (especially?) if that distinction in society does not exist in Christ.

          • http://whitherthougoest.wordpress.com/ Brad Anderson

            I don’t disagree with your second paragraph here at all, Nevermet. I just think an anthropology of gender needs to be contextualized within a larger anthropology, and not left standing by itself.

          • Nick

            In that case, I misunderstood you. When I read your posts, I read you as stating an either/or choice between, on the one hand, a robust anthropology about union, and on the other, a robust anthropology of gender (and sexuality, etc.). That would be problematic in my view, for similar reasons that the rhetoric of color blindness is a poor solution to racism. One needs to account for something to contextualize & integrate it.

            I think I’ve probably missed an internet argument or three about biblical masculinity, and consequently read into posts the wrong way.

      • http://twitter.com/tiffany Tiffany Bridge

        Do you think that it’s really that you’ve been taught to see *masculinity* as bad, or that you see behaviors commonly associated with masculinity (violence, dominance, etc.) as bad? Because that’s the issue I’m trying to sort out for myself.

        • Anonymous

          Masculinity has been unavoidably tied to violence and dominance. This is part of what we are suggesting here needs untangled, because even when I just hear the word masculine used in an innocuous context such as “that is a masculine smelling perfume” or “he looks very masculine in that outfit” it dredges up the same middle-school flashback of getting shouldered in the hallway and called a fag or being chased home from school dodging rocks.

          The concept of masculinity cut both directions. Not only were the bullies doing what they did because they were masculine, but I was a target of their scorn because of my lack of masculinity. This was made abundantly clear.

          • http://twitter.com/tiffany Tiffany Bridge

            Maybe it’s just that I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about Christianity’s call to stand with the powerless against the depredations of empire (or powers and principalities, if one prefers), but I can’t help but see these messages about manliness = dominance = good as the propaganda of empire.

            So is our replacement concept of masculinity more about what you use your own power and strength in service of? To what do you devote the use of your strength?

            And if so, can we at least promise to hold that simultaneously with the idea of masculinity and femininity as not binary and therefore not mutually exclusive? If it’s “masculine” to be strong in the defense of the defenseless, it’s still okay, and even encouraged, for women to be strong. And if it’s “feminine” to be nurturing and gentle, then it’s okay, and even encouraged, for men to be gentle.

          • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/X2MF7YIYWACZGIJWJVRIZG2F4I Patricia

            Hi Aric, I relate to your middle school experiences. In 6-8th grades, I got pulled outside during lunch and threatened to be beaten up by a girl gang, death threats in my locker, kicked in my back at P.E., my clothes trashed while dressed out for P.E., made the butt of an elaborate practical joke played out before the whole lunchroom, and a host of psychological warfare that girls play on each other at that age. From my experience, girls can be just as brutal, violent bullies as guys are, without masculinity in play at all.

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Douglas-Hagler/848645164 Douglas Hagler

          For myself, I would say that I have been thoroughly taught to see masculinity as bad. Only recently have I begun to see the possibility of another view. That is, obviously, part of my motivation here. I guess I would also say that I have also been taught to see certain things as associated with masculinity – violence, domination, unconscious privilege, etc. – and that all of those things are negative things. That’s also part of it.

  • Anonymous

    Over in my discipline of sociology, this shift is an interesting one, as we’ve begun to take things seriously such as masculinity studies, whiteness studies, etc. In doing so, the dominant group is analyzed and relativized, and we get to talk about the construction / maintenance / reproduction of privilege in addition to the construction / maintenance / reproduction of marginalization. This immediate benefit gives us more ways to talk about how power operates in a system. A longer term benefit, however, is that it moves our understanding away from thinking in terms of static categories (MAN! WOMAN!) and into a more relational thinking of how marginalization, privilege, and culture works.

    However, that’s sociology, not theology (and I need to read someone named Milbank, who made some interesting rants about sociology ruining theology or something). I suspect there is an analogous statement that whatever normative claim we want to make, theology is better if we try to have an explicit, systematic theology of gender and sexuality (with all the combinations and permutations in between – transexuality included).

    This is an area I know essentially nothing about, though, so… yeah. But that said, I could imagine some analogy between disciplines being relevant here.

    • Anonymous

      The cross-discipline observation is absolutely relevant. My undergraduate work was a lot of cultural anthropology and I can’t help but do some comparisons in my head all the time.

    • Doug Hagler

      My impression, not being in the world of sociology, is that the masculinity studies and whiteness studies fields are nascent. I.e. they didn’t exist 10 years ago when I was in undergrad, and in the few interviews/articles I’ve heard/seen, the people doing masculinity studies are few and far between (I heard an interview recently that said there was one masculinity studies department in the entire US – tho could be dated by now, I don’t know). I can definitely see value in theologians getting in on the ground floor here, and I’m curious to see what comes of these areas of study.

      • Anonymous

        Yep. They are very new fields, and it’s hardly stabilized at all. Still, the theoretical void on the map has been identified, even if it hasn’t been filled in yet.

        It’s not my realm of expertise, so I’ll err on the side of not saying a lot rather than blathering on.

        • Doug Hagler

          I could learn from you. I have two settings: 1. blather and 2. keep blathering despite clear signals that I should stop.

          • Anonymous

            Clearly, you should be a sociologist ;)

  • http://www.moonchild11.wordpress.com Sarah Moon

    You brought up so many good questions! Thanks for making me think.

  • http://twitter.com/tiffany Tiffany Bridge

    I think some of the problem is that any discussion of “biblical manhood” or “biblical womanhood” turns so quickly gender-prescriptive and reductionist simply because of the cultural baggage attached to the word “biblical,” and then suddenly what “biblical manhood” is for a particular man becomes Biblical Manhood For All Men.

    A particular man does not follow Christ differently than I do because he is a man and I am a woman, a particular man follows Christ differently than I do because his life and circumstances are different than mine. Surely, some of that is related to sex and gender, but it’s also related to financial situation, particular gifts and talents, the community one lives in, and on and on through the whole list of variables that make one person’s experience different from another’s.

    So I guess to the extent that I am willing to say, “here is man-specific advice for Christian men,” it would be: Learn about what “privilege” means, and learn to recognize it in yourself and in the structures we all live under, then work to heal it, because healing and mercy are your calling as a follower of Christ. But even as I’m typing that out, I realize that it’s still advice for all Christians.

    • Anonymous

      Being gender- prescriptive is definitely a problem we want to avoid.

      On a humorous note, we used Biblical “Masculinity” instead of “manhood” because I have a gutter mind and couldn’t help thinking – “His manhood was positively Biblical!” What does that even mean? It was circumcised?

      • http://twitter.com/tiffany Tiffany Bridge

        Heh. Usually, I also have a loud, inner 12-year-old but I was hung up on the parallel construction to “biblical womanhood.” Apparently my inner editor can shout down the inner 12-year-old.

    • Doug Hagler

      I agree completely on the risk of becoming prescriptive – on the other hand, honestly, being told just to learn about privilege and deconstruct that privilege is not very helpful to me, as me. That’s what I was told starting in adolescence, and I think I’ve got the message. Or, if I haven’t got it, it isn’t for lack of repetition (in every class and conversation I’ve ever had about gender, that’s come up). Now what? My entire life, the meaning of being male, is to chip away at privilege? There’s nothing distinctive and positive that I can bring to the table at all?

      I agree that understanding privilege and justice and injustice in structures is important, and there are an overwhelming amount of resources in those areas for me to draw from (and I do). In the area of masculinity, though, there’s just Mark Driscoll on the one hand, and nothing at all on the other hand. I think I’m probably part of the first generation of humans, ever, to have few or no models or powerful ideas of what it is to be a man. In place of patriarchy is nothing. What I want to do, what I propose, is to do something constructive. What I’m realizing is that this will probably have to be almost from the ground up.

      • http://twitter.com/tiffany Tiffany Bridge

        I’m not trying to imply that deconstructing privilege is all you have to offer as a person… the point I am getting at is that all the stuff we might say that men have to offer are not things that are *uniquely,* specifically associated with men. No doubt you have tons to offer- perhaps you’re a great teacher, or maybe you have an especially compassionate heart, or maybe you are flippin’ fantastic at making people feel welcome… but none of that seems like something that would fall under the category of being “biblically masculine,” because those are things that are worthy for *all people* to do.

        In other words, the problem, I think, is that we’re spending a lot of time trying to come up with “what it means to be male” or “what it means to be female,” instead of saying “what it means to be a person in community.” (For what it’s worth, this is my problem with any attempt to define “biblical womanhood,” too. I’d far rather be taught about “biblical humanity” and let my femininity fall into place under that governance.)

        But since you asked, don’t be so quick to dismiss the staggering, world-changing implications of deconstructing privilege. We live in a society founded by white men, on laws designed with white men in mind, from an intellectual tradition almost exclusively articulated by white men, for thousands of years going back to… the Romans? The Greeks? And there’s still a strong undercurrent of our society that thinks white men are somehow “under attack” when progressives make it a point to seek out alternate voices. What a wonderful thing it would be if our idea of masculinity included the idea that a man should work to bring people up to equal footing with himself rather than expecting them to work around the socially-constructed systems that oppress them.

        • http://whitherthougoest.wordpress.com/ Brad Anderson

          Tiffany’s comment here expresses some of my own concerns well.

        • http://whitherthougoest.wordpress.com/ Brad Anderson

          I’d add here (as well as to my response to Doug) that much of this theology by Driscoll et al on the neo-Calvinist side is rooted in a particular strain of federal Calvinism that sees hierarchy in the natural order. Thus, for things to be natural – properly ordered according to God’s creation – there has to be a substantive difference between how a man is a faithful disciple and how a woman is. They simply do no, and cannot, look the same, or the God-ordained system breaks down.

          I’m simply unwilling to grant any of those premises at this point.

      • Hesed_shalom

        Nothing at all on the other hand? What about Jesus? Why is He not enough? To me, that seems to be the main problem with this issue. When did His “model” become obsolete?

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/X2MF7YIYWACZGIJWJVRIZG2F4I Patricia

    I think Biblical masculinity is a concern, because raising kids isn’t always a cakewalk, and as they transition in their teens from childhood to adulthood, there’s a lot of mixed messages out there coming at them, especially from Christian perspectives, as ya’ll have wonderfully pointed out. My oldest son’s ex-girlfriend from his 8th grade through sophomore year of high school frequently made negative comments about males in general, and also jeered at him for being so smart. He never responded to it, because I don’t think he knew what to say. It hurt him, but he wasn’t the kind of kid to respond in kind. I was glad when she broke up with him. As parents, we want our sons to be good men, not merely shaped by the cliches that paint them as inherently bad or inherently superior. We don’t want their views of women and girls to be shaped by cliches either, because eventually, there’s going to be girlfriends, wives, children of their own, grandchildren of their own. And we don’t want the girls they date and one day marry to treat them with contempt.

    • Doug Hagler

      That’s kind of my observation too (though my child is only 3 weeks old, so this is mostly as a non-parent). Messages about gender are getting out there. Most of those messages are awful. In order to replace them, we need to do more than just deconstruct – we need to build something in their place. By “we” I mean “I”, and whoever else sees this as a problem to be addressed theologically.

      There’s also the 900lb gorilla of actual differences between sexes – not a binary, but two sliding scales that overlap. Do we dare talk about that? In a way that doesn’t just contribute to the awfulness we’ve inherited from the past? Every parent I’ve ever spoken to about this says that boys and girls are different, and they are different very early, different despite the efforts of some parents to excise those differences from what they teach at home.

      Can we be different, but not hierarchical about it? Can we have concepts and images of gender but hold them lightly, knowing they cannot be prescriptive, but still using them to make meaning?

      These are questions that are on my mind a lot as we have this conversation.

      • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/X2MF7YIYWACZGIJWJVRIZG2F4I Patricia

        Congratulations, Doug! Parenthood is pretty amazing, watching them grow up and into their own person.

        I’ve raised only boys, so I don’t have a comparison to go by on raising girls. The sad reality is that, depending on the parents, there’s often a gender bias and favoritism one way or the other within the family unit between their children, either favoritism toward a son or toward a daughter. I’ve seen it both ways, (experienced it as the unfavored) both equally damaging to both the favored sex and the unfavored. So it seems to me that how a kid grows up to see him/herself, and his/her gender, comes largely from home. Maybe how the parents see their kids is shaped by their theology, or their own experiences, or a combination.

        At one point, my son’s girlfriend was arguing with him that she was right because she was a girl. She turned to me and asked in all seriousness, “Don’t you think that girls are right most of the time?” I told her I didn’t think gender had anything to do with it, but maturity did.

        • Doug Hagler

          Zinger! (I grin thinking of you delivering that line to a girl you’re not a big fan of)

          • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/X2MF7YIYWACZGIJWJVRIZG2F4I Patricia

            When your kid gets in junior high, and you attend the pep rallies, you’ll see how young – and how effectively – a lot of the Mark Driscoll dribble gets implemented. Little 12- and 13-year old girl cheerleaders are paraded as sexual objects as their mothers beam on. And the boys of the football team get bowed down to like little gods. Of course this continues throughout high school, and churchianity and the business community reinforce these roles, rewarding these kids with scholarships, recognition, and accolades. Meanwhile, the smart kids, and the band kids, seem to have a healthier social dynamic, but are quite under the radar.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Douglas-Hagler/848645164 Douglas Hagler

            If my daughter’s experience is anything like mine, junior high will be the worst time of her entire life. She’s already clearly stubborn, though (gets that from both sides of the family), and so I wouldn’t be surprised if she detected my feelings about what you describe and went full-on princess/cheerleader on me.

          • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/X2MF7YIYWACZGIJWJVRIZG2F4I Patricia

            Time will tell. But never doubt that you do have an influence, and your love and guidance will mean more to her than you’ll know.

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  • Nick

    Also, Aric, I would COMPLETELY go to a conference on D&D, theology, and politics :D

    • Doug Hagler

      Ok, a moment here. There are a ton of small conferences in the gaming world, and the gaming world is a niche world, just like the little world we’re part of here.

      Why don’t we have a conference?

      Could we do that?

      I think maybe we could do that.

      • Nick the Nevermet

        There is an active group of Christians (many progressive, some not) over on RPG.net (which, btw, is where I found a link to this site for the first time).

        Just sayin’

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Douglas-Hagler/848645164 Douglas Hagler

          What’s cool about that is, while I have lurked there a bit in the past, none of the three of us are active on RPG.net at all.

      • http://profiles.google.com/harpingmick Mick Bradley

        I’d come. Heck, I’d help organize it. And LPTS could host it. Just sayin’.

  • http://profiles.google.com/harpingmick Mick Bradley

    Okay, I wanna be a woman now.

  • Anonymous

    Interesting discussion.

    As a girl brought up in the Equal Rights era, I have a few observations/questions.

    1) Women’s studies were instituted as a way of identifying and celebrating the contributions of women. Since most history is written about and for men, what would be the purpose of Men’s studies, if not to reassert dominance? I don’t mean this as a put down. What I mean to say is the women’s movement had a very specific goal – empowering women in a man’s world. For any study of masculinity to gain traction it will need to have a similar goal. That is what Dobson and his ilk offer, the goal of reasserting the ‘natural order’ that was usurped by we uppity women.

    2) What is there in the physicality of being a man to see as a special burden/privilege? For example, every young girl is made aware of the burden of her menstrual cycle and the attendant privilege of motherhood. We consider it. We embrace or reject it, but we can never get fully away from it. That monthly reminder of our biological function is something we deal with for 40 years. I think many of the types of identification and awareness that women experience come from this. Can men be taught a similar awareness/reverence for their sperm? What would the landscape of masculinity look like if guys felt truly responsible for each and every sperm?

    3) How do we tackle the might makes right mentality of the currently male dominated world? Aric mentioned this I think, in the need for more acceptance of female leaders and teachers.

    4) Who is the man you want to be? Doug is right – there is no alternative to the ‘bad’ man or the ‘mighty’ man out there. If you don’t want to join the ranks of the misogynists then you are left acting the part of the “I’m not that guy’ brigade.

    This brings me back to the first question, with my own answer. We do not need Men’s Studies that are patterned in any way after Women’s Studies. We need Theoretical Sciences of Masculinity. The starting point would be the negation of past paradigms, and the study would lead to what else is possible and desirable for an emerging version of post-dominance masculinity. In turn, women would be freed from fighting against history and a prevailing suppression and could themselves turn to creating a better future.

    • Doug Hagler

      Briefly (since Poppy is asleep, thank the Jesus, and I’m sprinting through things):

      1) I want to try to draw a distinction between power and empowerment here, or something. It is possible to be locked into a dominating role. Though I wouldn’t weep tears of sympathy for such a situation, I don’t think that patriarchy is about empowering so much as it is about domination. I want the two to be different, but I can’t articulate it well here.

      2) Maybe testosterone? There’s no question that it has a big impact on physiology as well as psychology.

      3) Nonviolence, always :) I’ve read a couple of articles on how women, given the opportunity, abuse power at about the same rate as men, it’s just that they have not historically had the chance very often. It’s more like going for an un-dominance-oriented world – which might be impossible, since humans seem to be hierarchical/social creatures to begin with. Maybe a healthier form of hierarchy (i.e. value wisdom instead of violence)? Or back to premodern, where generosity was a much higher virtue?

      4) Utah Phillips (RIP) is the man I want to be, pretty much. He’s high on the list, anyway, and has a ton to say about gender and non/violence.

    • Nick the Nevermet

      I cannot currently answer any of those questions to my satisfaction. However, thank you for giving me more clear wordings to deal with than the rumblings in my head.

  • http://profiles.google.com/revsongbird revsongbird

    Here’s what terrifies me about Driscoll and his ilk. They talk about women and sex as if men are nothing but huge penises waving around in the world, constantly having to control themselves because women are so freaking tempting. That’s all bullshit. It’s a highly developed argument designed to make women feel dirty and guilty and helpless, to make submission seem like not only a relationship good but a civic good (those waving penises are a traffic hazard, no?). That kind of sex role bullying is about as far away from Jesus as a person could be.
    I’ve raised two sons with ridiculously minimal guidance being offered by their father (and the stepfather who passed through bringing and then taking away his D&D gear, but we won’t blame D&D for that). I honestly never focused on teaching them how to be men. I was more interested in having them be decent people, which for me means people who have a regard for God, for neighbor and for themselves. Their male parts had nothing to do with that. I hope for them what I also hope for their younger sister, which is that they fulfill their callings, putting the talents God gave them to use for good in the world. Does that really have to be color-coded “man” or “woman” like blue and pink Duplos?
    I simply don’t see the place where Jesus asks me to do anything gender-specific. He asks me to follow, to take up my cross and follow, to care for those in need and show a return on the talents bestowed on me, and to love God and y’all and even the terrifying dinosaur pseudo-Calvinists who would send me straight to hell for seeing things this way. The rest is the local culture and/or ordinary details of life: meal preparation and marriage and procreation if that’s your bag and a possibility and vacuuming and changing the toilet paper roll and planting vineyards or drinking beer (again, if that’s your bag, I prefer a Cosmopolitan) and playing Scrabble or Candyland or D&D.
    We can all be whole people without one shape being the model for it. We can be that because of Jesus, in whom we are neither…well, you know the verse. That’s my 21st Century theology of gender. The Creator turned out two models of body; Jesus made it pretty clear that wasn’t what mattered anymore. The Spirit is active in these conversations, which is literally wonder-full. I’m astounded at the conversations Rachel engenders (no pun intended).

    • Anonymous

      I agree the giant waving penis model of masculinity is horrible. It’s designed to be oppressive of women & serves to also be terribly reductive of men as well.

  • http://profiles.google.com/revsongbird revsongbird

    Yeah, I was trying to get my image in the little box. Sigh.

  • http://theblueroomblog.org MaryAnn

    I’m still stuck on “corn kernel in the poo.”

    That is seven kinds of wrong.

    • Doug Hagler

      Being a reprehensible person, I take that as a personal victory.

  • http://perichoreticlife.blogspot.com/ Michael

    I haven’t read all of the comments carefully because it’s time for bed. While I don’t believe in the complementarian picture of defined manhood and womanhood, there is a ligitimate issue to explore here. A good amount of effort goes into defining womanhood that leaves men with a “neutral” position. This can leave men without direction and women still feeling like they need to explain things in special terms. There should be some middle ground, but I don’t think the proper referent lies with external roles. We are male and female in relation to one another. Our identity must be worked out together and not in isoloation from one another.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Douglas-Hagler/848645164 Douglas Hagler

      Not relativism, but relativity. I like it. Maybe gender can be like space and time – measurable separately, but really only understood as spacetime, an interrelated fabric of forces.

  • http://profiles.google.com/harpingmick Mick Bradley

    I really resonate with a lot of the “post-gender roles” aspirations that are being mentioned, and as an ideal to work for I totally support it – just like working for all the other issues related to bringing God’s commonwealth to fruition on Earth. Ande certainly I’ve grown up with so many negative, abusive, dangerous and ugly images of what it supposedly means to “be a man” and self-identify as masculine that I am more than happy to work against that imagery, that programming, those instincts … and eradicate them from within myself and from society in general.

    But there’s still a little voice inside me that keeps whispering that if we were to theoretically achieve the ideal homogenization of gender roles and all recognize – and behave like – we’re all just people; if we eradicate or neutralize all the things about masculinity and femininity and the spaces in between, that something good and important will disappear from the world. I don’t know what it is, but my gut tells me its … something.

    I find joy and value and community in so many things about my fellow humans who identify as “feminine”, and those who identify as gay, or bisexual, or transgendered, or anything along the spectrum. The world would totally suck without people embracing and celebrating those aspects.

    Therefore it stands to reason that there has to be *something* about masculinity – or at least “maleness” – that is worth keeping and nurturing and celebrating. Something we can aspire toward, and not just work to eliminate from ourselves and our world.

    Right?

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Douglas-Hagler/848645164 Douglas Hagler

      Yes, I think so, yes. I don’t see homogenization as a virtue at all…in pretty much any circumstance, now that I think about it. I think all that leads to is *ignoring* differences, and the way that we ignore them can be itself damaging to those involved, because we only ignore some particular differences, and normalize the others. To me, homogenization is tragic. Enforcing gender stereotypes as social roles is also tragic. I don’t want to enforce anything about gender on anyone – I want to be a better person, and I’ve realized that part of that has to be being a better man-type person specifically. Finding how this particularity that just shy of half of us share can be something good rather than evil or an excuse to dominate.

    • http://twitter.com/tiffany Tiffany Bridge

      I don’t think going “post-gender roles” necessarily leads to homogenization. To whatever extent men and women are inherently different across those broad groups, they will continue to be so. I think moving past getting hung up on those differences, though, means that men who don’t feel especially traditionally masculine and women who aren’t traditionally feminine will feel more welcome in our communities of faith. Women who are more assertive or men who are more nurturing deserve to not be told that they don’t measure up to yet another socially-constructed gender expectation.

      And if we take a trait that we associate with maleness, perhaps assertiveness, and celebrate it as something awesome about maleness, what message does that send to the assertive woman? If we’re celebrating strength, what does that say to the man who thinks his wife is stronger than he is?

      My interest in getting to the post-gender point isn’t homogenization, it’s about our natural tendency to see these things as directive. I like Douglas’s point about trying to hold these things gently; I just don’t think that people in general are very good at that when you attach adjectives like “biblical” to them.

      • Nick the Nevermet

        I agree, but then, I’m a postmodern(-ish) cultural sociologist. Anything that has an aura of being natural makes me reflexively dubious. From my POV, one possible goal is to show how gender is constructed, and how its assemblage privileges a particular groups, marginalizes others, and then hides or legitimizes the power relations. This isn’t the same thing as “MEN BAD!” or living in a society that is “gender blind,” though it may require exposing various hierarchical power relations and/or celebrating histories & experiences that don’t toe the party line. Also, if things (bodies, discourses, norms, medical practices, laws, political economy, etc.) are assembled one way regarding gender, they may be able to be assembled in a different, superior way (by some definition).

        • http://twitter.com/tiffany Tiffany Bridge

          Yesyesyes. This clarifies what I’ve been trying to scratch out but have lacked the education/training to articulate so clearly. All of our assumptions about “well, clearly men and women ARE different” are built upon how human society has been ordered for literally all of history. Being progressives, we know better than to say “well, that’s always how it’s been, so there must be something to it,” and yet we are still products of the very social structures we seek to challenge and are not necessarily aware at how the political/gender/economic/yadayadayada assumptions that have been handed down are STILL coloring our expectations of how men “must” be different from women. (I mean, okay, sure, maybe they ARE inherently different but I’ve been bombarded with the very same false ideals about them as everyone else so I’m not ready to make my ideas about that into teaching for someone else to follow.)

          Which means that deconstruction is a critical part of what we should be doing. I get why people don’t find that to be very satisfying as an ethic of how they SHOULD behave, but nonetheless, if we’re trying to be inclusive of people who have felt marginalized by the very ideas of masculinity/femininity we’re trying to replace (AND of the people for whom those ideas have worked out pretty well), we’d better be willing to buckle down and do the homework that allows us to figure out how it all went wrong, and continues to go wrong in our own minds.

          • Anonymous

            No one has said we need to stop doing deconstruction or analysis of power/privilege/history/context etc… In fact, if you’ll notice, our entire conversation was a long series of disclaimers about the very idea of engaging in a constructive conversation on masculinity. None of us here are interested in abandoning the great work that feminist scholarship has been and should continue doing. We’re not interested in any kind of return to the past or reifying or normativizing of gender differences and we are adamantly egalitarian.

            The very humble proposal we make toward the end of the discussion above is maybe it is time, IN ADDITION to all of this deconstruction and criticism for us to begin an exploratory conversation toward a constructive approach to Biblical masculinity. Deconstruction is insufficient – in any field. At some point you have to start saying what you believe to be true, not just what you know to be untrue. Sure doing constructive work carries the danger of getting things wrong, but there’s no way around that. It’s better to go forward in humility willing to admit when you make mistakes and to correct them, but still trying to forge some kind of path in the wilderness.

            It’s hard not to chuckle at the irony of this 55 comment long robust conversation all about how we don’t need to have this conversation…

          • http://twitter.com/tiffany Tiffany Bridge

            I think there are two threads to that, the “We don’t need to have this conversation” thread and the “we feel completely ill-equipped to even begin to have this conversation” thread. :)

  • http://twitter.com/reflectant Nick Larson

    Doug’s video is up. We’re sorry it took so long but hey that’s life. Plus mine should be fixed now (the stutter).

  • Pingback: Keeping us in our Places | uneven ground

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Douglas-Hagler/848645164 Douglas Hagler

    This is awesome, thank you all. If you want to keep going, feel free. We talk about this periodically on Twitter too, and when we do, we use #biblicalmasculinity, in case you want to keep an eye on it.

  • Deborah
  • http://www.facebook.com/margaret.mowczko Margaret Mowczko

    Ahhh . . . It’s good to have a laugh about this topic. Sadly, laughing is something I rarely do when thinking about the topic of equality; and I think about it a lot.

    • Anonymous

      Glad you could laugh with us.

  • Anonymous

    Some really good reflections on this subject by Tad Williams, here.

  • Lara

    My friend Austin used to teach a class to troubled boys about what true masculinity means. It was a really powerful class. He worked with them to undo their view of men being violent and selfish. And it worked. So this is happening, some people have real answers to this. But it isn’t through the church. I’m going to see if I can find a website or something for the non-profit he was working for.

    • Nick the Nevermet

      There was a decent documentary called “Tough Guise: Violence, the Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity.” Not perfect, and now a bit dated, but it was good enough for classroom use, and it is free online now. IIRC, you can find it legally free to boot ;)

      EDIT: however, it’s not explicitly Christian or biblical, so that may be a challenge for some audiences.