Mary Frances Sparrow gave this talk at the 1989 Leaders’ Conference for Women. She presented evidence for the claim that differences between men and women are not simply culturally determined. She then examined and refuted eight common feminist claims. She concluded by arguing for the value of women’s unique contributions to society.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
[Recording begins after Mary Frances has already begun speaking.]
MARY FRANCES: . . . All right. I had a little question in the box. I like that system because you have time to think about the questions. [Chuckles.] The question was, “If feminist philosophy in the church is so absurd, why are so many people accepting it?” And I think the answer would be that I don’t think it is absurd. It may have sounded absurd the way I was presenting it [laughter], but that’s just—I think what’s going on is that they have part of the truth. They don’t have the whole truth, or nothing but the truth, but because they have. . . . They are saying true things, and that makes—and that is convincing. Truth is convincing.
For example, if you take the first stream of feminism, that says women wanting entrance into—women want entrance into the ordained ministry, part of the answer to that question depends on how you understand the ordained ministry. Our churches, our different denominations, have understood that differently. It’s a difficult question. Some of those feminists want entrance into the ordained ministry as they gained entrance into a lot of professions in society. And the ordained ministry is another profession. It’s like a profession in society. Well, underlying that is the issue of, how much is the church like society? That’s a very difficult issue to answer. Yeah, so it’s—those people that hold those positions—that’s not a stupid position. Those are hard questions, really hard questions, and I don’t know if I know the answer. The one thing I did choose to say about that, about the role of the laity—I think that’s true. I picked a true thing to say about that, I think, but that’s not to deny that those are difficult questions.
Or the second stream of feminism that says we can pray “Our Father/Mother,” for example: the argument is that God is spirit, and that therefore he’s not of the male sex. And after all, doesn’t the Scripture—doesn’t the Old Testament speak of God as a mother? All those things are true. I mean, the reasons that the feminists are giving for that are truths. The answer is that the truth is broader; we need to think harder about that. But still, they’re giving truths in support of their position.
Even the third stream of feminism, which perhaps does seem a little outlandish to us—if you’re a convinced feminist of the second stream, [and think?] that you really can change your language about God, and then you begin to talk about God as mother, it does make a certain sense . . . to begin to get into a “goddess” type of spirituality. And in fact, the third stream of feminists may be more intellectually honest than the second stream.
And on top of all this, I—this is what I experienced when I was reading the feminist literature: they tell you story after story after story of injustice. And there are true stories, and it gets you really angry. And then they give you an argument. And because you’re already angry, your vision is clouded, and the argument seems more reasonable. So, there’s something of that going on.
For example, I was thinking again about Amy’s question about Genesis. And—you said, “Well, what do they do about Genesis?” And I said, “Well, they just say it was written by Jewish men who hated women, and reject it.” Now, that sounds absurd. But, if you have read more than one book that argues—that interprets Genesis wrongly: that argues that Eve is the cause of all evil in the world, that Eve is intrinsically more evil than Adam, that somehow her sin was greater, something like that, there is. . . . You read enough of that—and that has been present, okay? People have said that, that Eve is the really evil one in the pair of Adam and Eve. You read enough of that, and it’s brought to your attention enough—well, it seems a little bit more reasonable to say, “Well, we don’t really need to think about what Genesis says.” So. . . .
Another reason, I think, sometimes, why the feminists are very persuasive is that—do you remember how I said they have communities, kind of, of women on the edge of the church, and they’re moving into the institutional church? Well, there is something good about women gathering together, just even on a natural level. Some of the sociologists and thinkers about the nature of our society say that one of the problems, especially of modern middle-class American women, is that we’re isolated. And so, hooking into the feminist movement, into these groups of women, meets a need, a really legitimate need, on women’s parts. And there’s something good, just on a natural level. You could even call it sisterhood among the feminists, and they experience that.
So it’s not—I don’t want to give the impression that it’s absurd. Because it—there’s truth in their positions. . . .
Now, I’d like to go on and start this second talk, but I’d like to ask you not to ask me any questions until I’m done, because I’m a little bit concerned about getting it all on the table. There’s a lot of material. As Paul said, it’s a very important issue, and I’d like to get all the cards on the table before we talk about it. So. . . .
I said yesterday that we’re gonna be talking about the feminist analysis of the human person, and about the feminist analysis of society.
I want to warn you at first that this talk is gonna be about general principles. If you’re looking for concrete answers to specific situations, you might be frustrated. My goal is to help us understand what the feminists are saying, and quite frankly, to help us understand what’s wrong about what they’re saying. That’s important, as I’m giving this talk, is to realize that that’s my goal. My goal isn’t to talk about what’s right, necessarily. I don’t think I need to convince you that we need to work for justice, for example. So, I wanna—I picked the areas that are confusing . . . to talk about.
I do hope, however, that this talk will help us understand the feminists better, and the last one too. And this will be able to better—and this will help us, then, to be better able to think about the problems that we face, and to solve them. So, as I’m giving this talk, we should be thinking, “Well, how can I use this? What kind of concrete situations am I facing? How can I apply this in a practical manner?” And that’s something that we should be talking about. But I am gonna be just talking pretty generally here.
Let’s begin with the feminist analysis of the human person. As I was reading the feminists, the things that they wrote, the feminists’ writing, it was very clear that the feminists are making claims about human nature. They have an opinion about what is the ideal human being, and on the basis of that vision, they offer claims about how to achieve psychological health. I’m gonna first look at the foundation of all their arguments about human nature. And I’m gonna argue, basically, that it’s a foundation built on sand, that it’s not a very strong foundation. I’m also going to turn and discuss some of the implications of their understanding of human nature.
The foundation of the feminist analysis of human nature is pretty simple to lay out. They believe that there are no essential differences between men and women, basically. And I would like to argue that that is a claim that doesn’t adequately account for the findings of sociology, psychology, anthropology, and biology, in a general sort of way. [Chuckles.] I guess I’m gonna to argue that!
Before examining any further the feminist analysis of the human person, I think it would be helpful to stop for a few minutes and look at what we do know, to the—as best as we can, about the differences between men and women. This is—the following is gonna be a list, and I—it’s a list from a sociologist, Alice Rossi. And I’m not necessarily recommending her list. She did a kind of a summary of the state of what we know about the differences between men and women. And these are the differences that mostly sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, I would say, think are not merely socially determined.
I’m gonna divide them into four broad categories.
The first category is that it seems that there are differences among men and women in sensory receptivity. That means that females show a greater sensitivity to touch, sound, and odor, and that they have a greater fine motor coordination and finger dexterity. . . . Sounds are judged to be twice as loud by women as by men. Sounds—things sound louder to women. [Chuckles.] And that women pick up nuances of voice and music more readily. And that they are six times more likely to sing in tune as men. Isn’t that an interesting little fact? They are six times more likely to sing in tune than men, women are. [Laughter.] However, in men the sense of vision seems to be sharper or more acute than in women. Men show a greater sensitivity to light, and they respond more quickly to changes in its intensity than do women . . . intensity.
The second broad area, and this is—men are more aggressive than women are. . . .
The third area is the area of observed differences in cognitive skills: in the way we think, I think you could say. Females are more sensitive to context. . . . They show greater skill in picking up peripheral information, and they process information faster. They are more attracted to human faces . . . and respond to nuances of facial expression just like they respond to nuances of sound. They also seem to have a greater verbal fluency. Now, this female combination of sensitivity to sound and face and rapid processing of peripheral information implies a quicker judgment of emotional nuances.
However, males are better at object manipulation in space. For example, they can rotate objects in their minds better. They can read maps and perform in mazes better. (I always thought that’d be fun, to see the studies where they have men running around in mazes.) [Laughter.] And they are better at mathematical reasoning. They also show a better sense of direction [some laughter]. . . . Males are less sensitive to situational nuances, but they seem more capable of detaching reasoning from emotion.
The fourth broad category is that women are more nurturing. . . . Wait a minute. Let me repeat the last one. Males are less sensitive to situational nuances, but they’re also more capable of detaching their reasoning from their emotions.
And the fourth broad category is that women seem to be more nurturing.
The question is, “Well, why do we say that? Why do sociologists, for example, say that these differences seem to be not merely socially determined?” Social scientists have developed a list of criteria for answering that question. If a difference between men and women falls into two or more of the following categories, it is considered to be a difference between men and women that is not socially—not merely socially—determined.
So, I’m gonna give you a list of four criteria. A difference, such as “women appear to be more nurturing,” has to appear in two—at least two of these categories to get on the list of things that are not merely socially determined.
The first category is just psychological and sociological tests. Studies have shown that men behave in this way and women behave in this way.
The second criterion is that the pattern of behavior that we’re studying is found in infants and young children prior to major socialization influences. Or—this is a kind of a two-fold—the pattern emerges with the onset of puberty. . . .
The third criterion is that the pattern is stable across cultures. The fourth criterion. . . . The third is that the pattern is stable across cultures. . . .
And the fourth is that a similar sort of behavior is noted in species, particularly the higher primates, who are most genetically similar to the human species. Okay? The fourth criterion is that similar behavior is noted across species. The species that are especially interesting to study are those higher primates that are most genetically similar to the human species.
This means, for example, that if a sociological study shows that men behave in a particular manner, and women behave differently, such a difference is not put on the list of differences between men and women that are not merely socially determined unless it falls into another of the three categories. So, it’s not enough just to say that psychological or sociological tests show this. You have to have another reason for putting it on the list of differences between men and women that aren’t just cultural.
Now, you may have noticed that the differences that I have listed between men and women are primarily differences in behavior: observed differences. You should be aware, however, that there is a growing evidence of just how these differences in behavior are linked, first of all to the different sex hormones of men and women, and secondly, to differences in brain structure between men and women. Biologists would put it this way: they would talk about the differences in brain structure between men and women as “sex differentiation”—I don’t think you need to write this down—”in the neurological organization of the brain.” It took me a while when I was reading the literature to tell what they were talking about.
It seems pretty clear—I’m gonna talk about first how some of the differences in behavior are related to differences in the sex hormones—it seems pretty clear that the male sex hormone is related to the male’s greater aggressiveness.
And if you’re willing to consider studies done in animals as evidence—and you should be aware that not all feminists will grant you that. They’ll say, “No way. We are different than animals. We are not biologically determined.” But still, think of all the medical research that has been done on animals that has helped us, and how our knowledge of the workings of the human body is often made possible by what we learn from animals. Anyway, if you’re willing to consider the studies done in animals as evidence, it seems that the male hormones have effects not only on sexual behavior and aggressiveness, but also on spatial visualization and maze-running. . . . I think those are studies done on rats. [Mary Frances and all laugh.]
Finally, animal research has shown not only that the male sex hormone has effects on sexual behavior, aggressiveness, spatial visualization, and maze-running, but also that it generates, they’ve found, some differences in the structure of the brain. But remember that I’m talking about animals, and rats in particular. So, they know that there’s—at least in some animals, that there are some connections between behavior, the sex hormone, the structure of the brain. Okay?
There is some evidence that there are differences in the human male and female brain. We know that the right hemisphere is dominant in facial recognition, music, visual tasks, and the identification of spatial relationships. I think that means those kind of tests—I don’t know if you ever did ’em when you were a kid—where you have different shapes, and you have to put them all together. I think that’s . . . okay, because. . . . [Someone has apparently asked Mary Frances to repeat.] These are things that the right hemisphere are dominant in: facial recognition, music, visual tasks, and in particular, I suppose you could say, the identification of spatial relationships. It also seems that we know that language skills are dominant in the left hemisphere of the brain. . . . Language skills are dominant in the left hemisphere of the brain. . . .
We also know—and this has been discovered in, I would say, about the last six years or so, that the divider between the two hemispheres of the brain—that divider is called the corpus callosum—corpus callosum, it’s C-A-L-L-O-S-U-M—that divider between the two halves of the brain, which carries information, we think, between the two halves of the brain, is larger in human females than it is in human males. That was a big discovery, to actually be able to see something in the brains of men and women that are [sic] different. . . . Larger in females. I’ll get to that. We also know that if you look at this particular section, if you look at the corpus callosum in the male brain—so you’re just looking at a man, and you’re looking at this section of his brain, you can tell by looking at it whether he’s left-handed or right-handed, okay? You can’t tell that by looking at the same section of the brain in a female brain. That’s just kind of an interesting fact that shows that there are . . . differences in the brain.
Now, scientists postulate—and I wanna emphasize “postulate,” because you can’t do real good studies on the brains of humans. They’re not ethical. You can’t do experiments, okay? [Laughter.] So, if someone presses you on this issue, for example, and you’re not—I wouldn’t hold too hard on it, okay? But they postulate that the larger corpus callosum in females suggests a greater ease and frequency of communication between the two hemispheres in the females. So, you have the two brain hemispheres, and it seems like information—we can process information back and forth easier than men can, because the corpus callosum is bigger, thicker.
But we do know for sure that there are observed structural differences in the brains of human males and females. We have observed the difference in size in the corpus callosum. And the point of all this is that science is just beginning to go beyond the observed differences in behavior and try to find biological causes of these observed differences. And there is much work to be done in this area. It’s only just begun. But the work is promising, in terms of showing real differences between men and women.
What does the feminist say when confronted with the evidence that I just have given you? Usually the feminist will try to refute this evidence with one of the following eight arguments. Now, remember: her rock, her foundation, is that there are no differences between men and women. So, I trot out this evidence; the feminist is gonna try to refute that evidence. I’m gonna give you eight ways she tries to refute that evidence.
She might say, number one—you might want to listen to the whole thing and catch the gist of this, okay? But . . . within-sex differences, okay—that means differences among women, for example—are greater than between-sex differences: differences between men and women. That—now, that may be true, but it doesn’t mean that the between-sex differences—the differences between men and women—don’t exist.
Let me give you an example. I’m gonna take a non-controversial example that’s kind of easier to see. Men are, in general, taller than women. It makes no sense to claim that men are not taller than women because the difference between the tallest and the shortest woman in a group being studied is far greater than the difference between the average height of the man and the woman. It doesn’t change the fact that the average—that the man is—the average man is taller than the average woman.
Argument number two. The feminist might argue, for example, in response to studies that show men in general have a greater ability in mathematical reasoning—faced with that evidence, she might argue that there are many intellectual areas in which the sexes do not differ. That is true. There are many intellectual areas in which men and women do not differ. But they do differ, as far as we can tell, in our [sic] ability at mathematical reasoning. It is, in fact, the areas in which men and women do differ at this particular point that is of interest to us, and no demonstration that they don’t differ in other areas is relevant.
What’s going on in these first two examples? They’re both a similar sort of argument. I say, “Men and women differ in a certain area.” The feminist introduces a true observation: “But within-sex differences are greater than between-sex differences.” That’s true. Or, “There are many areas in which men and women do not differ.” That’s true. The point is that while such statements are true, they’re irrelevant to the point that I’ve just made. They don’t disprove anything.
The third feminist argument. The feminist might respond by turning a description of observed differences—just describing something that we see—into a statement of observed superiority. Let me give you an example of that. This is a real example. In response to an argument I read that was drawing a connection between the male skill at mathematical reasoning and the male sex hormones—because the male skill at mathematical reasoning seems to rise at puberty, okay?— that’s a postulate, that’s not proven—an eminent psychologist responded, “There is no reason to believe that male hormones are associated with high levels of intellectual abilities.” What’s going on? I say, “Men are better at mathematical reasoning.” The feminist says, “How dare you say that men have greater intellectual abilities?” That’s not what I was saying.
The fourth argument. The feminist might, in response to a claim that men are more aggressive, say, “Yes, women are aggressive, too.” Well, obviously, women are not passive. Or they might respond to some studies that say that women are more vulnerable to the cries of an infant, say: “But men are vulnerable, too, to the cries of an infant.” And yes, they are. That’s a true statement. But what’s going on here is that the feminist has turned a case of “more and less” into a case of “have and have not.” It’s all a matter of degree. We’re all human beings.
Feminist objection number five. The feminist will point to the fact that slave owners defended slavery by claiming that there are no real biological differences [sic] between blacks and whites. That is true. Some slave owners, perhaps a lot, defended slavery in this way. However, differences in the behavior of different races is, as far as we know, cultural. But that doesn’t mean that the differences in the behavior of sexes is likewise only cultural. It’s another example of the introduction of a true, but irrelevant, fact. . . . I might have. You want me to try it again? The feminist will point to the fact that slave owners defended slavery by claiming that there are no real biological differences [sic] between blacks and whites.
A FEW VOICES: . . . that there are.
MARY FRANCES: Oh! That’s right. That’s a mistake I made. That there are biological differences. That’s the way they defended their position. Does that make more sense now?
CROWD: Yes!
MARY FRANCES: Okay [Mary Frances laughs lightly.]. . . . Let me go on to feminist objection number six.
You want me to go to five again? Okay. The feminist will point to the fact that slave owners defended slavery by claiming that there are real biological differences between blacks and whites. Some slave owners did defend slavery in that way. However, differences in the behavior of different races is, as far as we know, cultural. But that doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t mean that the differences in the behavior of men and women is also cultural. It doesn’t prove anything. It’s an irrelevant fact to the argument at hand. . . .
Feminist objection number six. The feminist might point to all the ways social and cultural factors affect the different behaviors of men and women. That’s true. Our societies and our cultures do affect our behavior. But that doesn’t mean that there is no biological component in observed sexual differences. Now, the feminist might point out, “But we can overemphasize the biological factor. And we could rationalize any attribute[s] of either sex as inevitable results of biological predispositions.” She’s right. We can overemphasize the biological factor, and that’s been done. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t real differences between men and women. It means that the biological factor has been overemphasized. It means that we need to correct—we need to be correct about what are the biological components, and what are the social and cultural components, of the observed differences between the sexes. We gotta get it right. We’re gonna do harm if we get it wrong.
Objection number seven. The feminists also frequently point to exceptions. I say, “Women generally behave in this way,” and the feminist points to a woman who is an exception to what I just said. I say, “Men are, in general, taller than women.” So, the feminist points to the exception, the six-foot-three woman. I say, “So what? What does that prove? It’s still true that men are, in general, taller than women.”
Objection number eight is kind of similar to objection number seven. You could almost put ’em in the same category. The feminist might say that statistical differences. . . . A lot of these psychological tests and sociological tests that [sic] compile their results with statistics, and this is the result of the statistics: men are in general—in general behave this way; women in general behave this way. They might say that those differences say nothing about a given individual. And that is very true.
I wanna examine objection number eight a little bit closely—more closely. Let’s go deeper. The point is that when a biologist or a psychologist or a sociologist speaks of masculine and feminine characteristics, he’s almost always speaking in the statistical terms of probability: statistics show that men in general behave this way; women in general behave this way. To understand what the biologist or the social scientist is saying, one has to understand that when one deals with probability, one expects exceptions. I’m gonna—I’ll give you an example of this, if it’s not clear. Now, if one expects exceptions, one knows that one’s statistical differences say nothing about a given individual. The given individual might be the statistical exception.
For example, 80% of those who score above 750 on the math part of the SAT are male. That means that 20% are female. That’s what that statistic means. To point to an exception doesn’t disprove that 80%. That’s what 80% means.
Let’s continue to think about this objection, number eight. When the feminist points out that statistical differences say nothing about a given individual, she has in mind, I think, instances in the past where statements of statistical differences, such as “men in general behave this way; women in general behave this way”—she has in mind instances where those statements were used to set up rigid norms of femininity, norms that excluded some women, norms that classified the exceptions as somehow unfeminine. The feminists are right in pointing out that these descriptions of, say, feminine qualities should not be used to set up rigid norms of femininity. We can’t let general statements fool us about the complexity that underlies them.
They are also right in pointing out that such descriptions of masculine and feminine qualities have been used against women, either because they were not correct—we need to be sure that we get them correct—or precisely because they were used to set up a rigid norm of femininity to which all women were expected to conform. I think I would say to the feminists: “Yes, you could say that these observations that I am making are dangerous. They could be misunderstood. They have been used, in fact, to set up rigid norms of femininity, norms that classified many women unjustly as unfeminine. However, the question is not whether such observations are dangerous to make. Rather, the question is whether they are true or false. We have to ask ourselves, Won’t knowledge in the long run serve women’s welfare far better than false beliefs?”
I wanna stop and make a point about how to think about feminism and the issues that the feminists raise. This is a good example. There have in the past been rigid norms of femininity. Feminists have reacted to such norms, perhaps understandably so. And then they claim that there are no differences between men and women. So, there’s been a kind of pendulum effect: rigid norms, every woman must behave in this way; [to] there are no differences between men and women. It’s kind of—it’s—you go from one extreme to the other. And I think that the truth is in the middle. Yes, there are differences. But descriptions of the differences are general statements, and there will be exceptions. And the exception is not unfeminine. Is the six-foot-three woman unfeminine?
But the point is, I think, that that kind of middle-of-the-road position is very difficult, and it’s very often very hard to take, because it’s kind of too close to the dangerous position: that rigid norm of femininity. A dangerous—a position that perhaps has caused me, or my mother, or women that I know . . . a lot of sorrow, a lot of grief. They’ve suffered because of that. I think sometimes it takes a lot of courage, or—I don’t know if courage is the best word; maybe it’s a love for the truth. But it takes something, a certain amount of gumption, I guess, to take the position—the middle position—the position that is a little bit close to that dangerous position that’s caused me pain or caused injustice.
In fact, I think that sometimes, when—at least, this was my experience—when thinking about the issues that the feminists raise, it’s not very helpful to always, always, always be thinking about past injustices. It makes it very difficult to avoid the pendulum effect in our thinking. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t forgive ’em. It’s a matter of emphasis and degree and prudence in thinking, I think.
Let’s pause a moment. Where are we? I started saying that we’re going to look at the feminists’ analysis of the human person. However, at the foundation of their analysis is the claim that there are no essential differences between men and women. I just spent a significant amount of time trying to argue that that’s a very shaky foundation. In a certain sense, I could just stop talking now. That is their foundation, and when a foundation fails, the whole structure begins to crumble. But I’d like to stop now, and I’d like to continue—take a look at some of the implications of their feminist claim that there are no essential differences—no really significant differences between men and women.
I’m gonna look at one implication in particular. A typical feminist argument goes something like this: since there are no really significant differences, no essential differences between men and women, well then, there are no masculine and feminine personality characteristics. There are only human personality traits. You’ve got this pool of human personality traits that are—is open to everybody. So for the feminist, the ideal human person becomes theoretically the psychologically androgynous person. That means that the ideal human person possesses what we would call masculine and feminine personality traits. Only according to the feminist definition, they’re not really masculine and feminine personality traits; they’re human traits. Okay? So, we’ve got all these things that you say typically men do—behave psychologically or think this way, and women think this way. But what the feminist says is, “Just put them in a pool, and all of them are good, so all of them are open to everybody.”
This might get a little confusing, because there’s a confusion in terminology here. But if you have questions, we can ask—you can ask me at the end.
And I think that most feminists—there’s a big stream, at least, of feminists, that would say that the healthy human being is one who successfully blends the attributes of both sexes. Now, this particular view of the human person is especially appealing to feminists because as one feminist author said, “It frees women from the shackles of complementarity.” Okay? What does that mean? “The shackles of complementarity.” Traditionally, the position that they’re reacting against is that—it has been thought that women have a particular set of qualities, feminine qualities, and men have a particular set of qualities, masculine qualities, and that these masculine and feminine qualities complement each other. That’s kind of the traditional view. That’s the view that the feminist is gonna argue against.
The feminist objects to this view because she thinks that this masculine/feminine complementarity divides our species in half, so that each and every one of us is less than whole. She thinks that speaking of the masculine and feminine complementarity makes each sex in its own way subhuman. For example, she would think that when I’m speaking of masculine and feminine complementarity, that means that because I’m a woman, I cannot possess these other qualities. I can only have half of the available human qualities. I’m not a whole human being. I’m only half of a human being.
I found this a diff- —kind of a difficult argument, or—I found it difficult to find a solution to this. But I think that what’s going on here is that the feminists have misunderstood what complementarity means. If [sic] I, as a woman, say, “Yes, I am a woman and not a man, and I have a psychological makeup that is different from that of a man. I am not less than whole. I’m a complete human being.” And in fact, I’m not less of a human being, say, for example, if I’m not married. But still, it’s true that the masculine and feminine complement each other. But the point is that they complement each other at the level of society, and not at the level of the individual.
I wanna point out that I think that you probably know this without maybe even knowing that you know it. At least, that was the case for me. Think about what you know about the body of Christ. I am a full-fledged human being, yet I play a role in the body of Christ. Say I’m a hand. If I am a hand, I cannot be an eye, too. Yet both a hand and an eye are needed to make up the full complement of the body of Christ. I am a woman, and I am a full-fledged, complete human being. Yet, in society, both men and women are needed for a complete human society.
I’d like to look a little bit closer . . . [Long pause and skip in the tape.] . . . at this ideal of the psychologically androgynous human being. When you hear something—I mentioned this before—when you hear something like, “Enable boy children to experience the womanliness in themselves. It can make them whole,” we might say, “Oop, something’s wrong here.” But when you look at other examples that the feminists give of the psychologically healthy individual, it gets a bit more confusing.
Let’s say our goal is to cultivate all the desirable attributes among male and female traits. They’re human traits. We just want to have good ones, good traits. In fact, a lot of feminists claim that you can think of male and female traits as kind of a continuum, with extreme . . . what we would call “masculinity” on one end of the continuum, and extreme “femininity” on the other end of the continuum. And the feminist claims that the person doesn’t want to be at either end of the continuum; they want to be in the middle. They want to have a balance.
So, for example, let’s say that you have a man who views a woman as something to be conquered or dominated. The feminist might say he is too aggressive. His masculine side, his aggressiveness, needs to be balanced by the feminine. What that man needs to do is to become more nurturing. Now, I think this is where it gets a bit tricky. Because if you have a man who is domineering, he’s got a problem. It’s a wrong behavior. There’s a true observation of wrong behavior. But we have to ask ourselves, “What is, exactly, his problem?” In order to find the solution, we have to correctly identify the problem. Is the problem that he is too aggressive, too much of a man?
Let’s stop a minute and look at what’s happening. What we have here, basically, is a behavior problem, and the feminists are posing a way to deal with this problem. In effect, they have what we would call a pastoral approach to this behavior problem: become more nurturing. That’s their pastoral approach. I want to stop and remind you of what perhaps you already know: that we, too, have a pastoral approach. For example, in—this is just one example—in Fr. Harris’s book Resist the Devil [Greenlawn Press, 1989]—on page 45, he says, “The proud person exalts himself over others, often belittling them in an attempt to make himself look better. He disdains the give-and-take of community, preferring to ignore or manipulate others. . . .” We would say that this man’s problem is not being too aggressive. It’s pride. Now, this may be a bit simplistic kind of analysis of the problem, but I wanna keep the examples simple, okay? Now, we also know if we’ve gone through CFS III that one should counter vices with the opposite virtue[sic]. So, we say that this man needs to cultivate humility. Maybe he should counter his pride by doing humble tasks, by serving more. He does not need to become more nurturing.
If you think about it, what is really going on in the feminist analysis of the domineering man is that she has turned aggressiveness into a kind of vice. We know that the princ- —we say that the principal vices are pride, vanity, gluttony, lust, greed, anger, sloth, and envy. Aggressiveness is not on the list. In fact, we would say that aggressiveness is a morally neutral category. It’s like having blue eyes. It’s just the way one group of people happen to be.
To make sure we understand, let’s look at another example, a little bit more subtle. Let’s say you have a woman who is always—I hope you’ll recognize this example. (This wasn’t planned!) Let’s say you have a woman who is always encouraging others to pursue noble goals or just to do good, but does nothing herself. She is always the inactive spectator. The feminists might say that such a woman is too nurturing, too feminine. She needs to be balanced by the masculine. Such a woman is, according to the feminists, in danger of living her life on the sidelines, always looking regretfully at the victories and the accomplishments of other people. Gregory the Great, as we saw this morning, sees that that could be a problem. That person may need to be admonished. But that person does not need to be admonished to become more masculine, less feminine. That person needs to be admonished to imitate the behavior that she admires: [to] get in the fray. It’s a different pastoral approach.
I wanna stop and say—I would say that from my reading—I would say that while the feminist speaks in theory about women developing masculine qualities—what we would call masculine qualities—and men developing feminine qualities, in reality what is spoken of most often is the way men need to change. [Laughter.] They would say that men need to balance their masculine qualities with feminine qualities. We would say that the feminists are calling for men to be more like women. Take, for example—and I already mentioned this book title to you in the last talk—The Nurturing Father: Journey Toward the Complete Man.
There is, however, among some strains of feminism a blatant anti-male bias. We saw that yesterday in the streams of feminism that work for feminist alternative societies: societies without men. And I already read you the example of the feminist who longs for the day when there will be no more fathers. [Light laughter.] But, however . . . . [Laughter.] She meant, by the way, in that example, that she doesn’t—they don’t want anyone who has moral authority in the—that’s wrong. The only real way to care for a child is atten- —is nurturing them. Okay? Anyway. . . .
Sometimes, however, the anti-male bias is less blatant; it doesn’t hit you over the head as obviously as that example does. For example, very often in the feminist literature, nurturing is spoken of as being relational. That means the only way of relating is being nurturing. Those two terms are co-extensive. I ask you, what does that do to your teenage son who relates to his friends by playing basketball with them, by competing with them? What does that do to men whose aggressiveness is a component of their relationships? It just defines such a way of relating right out of existence.
Another example. I read an article that was analyzing parenting. But, it became clear to me as I read the article that the author was defining parenting as mothering. That was the only way she understood parenting. So in fact, she described—she defined fathers right out of existence. Now, I particularly found this very difficult—well, not “very.” It took me a while to catch onto it, because they’re describing a way of relating that’s feminine. And I read it, and I think that’s just fine! Or they describe a way of parenting that, if I were a parent, would be the way I parent. So, it sounds fine to me. But it doesn’t sound fine to men. In fact, I don’t think we should be surprised when men react with some kind of vehemence to this particular view of the human person.
Now, we’ve examined the feminist analysis of the human person, and I want to turn to the feminist analysis of modern society. I wanna argue that the feminist analysis of modern society has a—does have a lot going for it, but I think it’s fatally flawed. It takes a wrong turn very early. The feminist movement as we know it today—now, you probably know this, okay?—began in the early to mid-sixties with the demand for equal rights being heard more and more frequently in our society. This kind of feminism was essentially a demand for fairness: equal pay for equal work. And in general, the same rights for women as for men.
These feminists weren’t so much offering a critique of American life. They were seeking, rather, just kind of to enter what had been the man’s world in the past: the world of work. And they were also seeking justice in the world of work. The early feminists worked to achieve their goal by working for changes in the law, so that there was equal opportunity in the workplace. This is, I think, the kind of feminism that is most appealing to the average American woman, because it comes closest to our mainstream values, and consequently often sounds like the very voice of reason, especially when it’s juxtaposed to more strident feminist positions.
However, when you think about even this mild form of feminism, it’s problematic. It’s not problematic insofar as it calls for justice, but insofar as its call for a woman’s right to enter the workplace is essentially a call for women’s rights to be like men. The mistake comes when “entering the workplace” becomes “be like men.” But this demand to compete with men begins to break down when we look at women who are mothers, or are becoming mothers.
Now, in this part of the talk, I’m gonna do something like the following: “This is what the feminists say. Let’s look at what the implications [are] of what they are saying by looking at mothers and motherhood.” The question is, do the feminists adequately account for what is unique in women?
Motherhood is the most obvious example of what is unique about women. So I’m going to use it as a kind of “test case.” It’s not the only thing that is unique about women. In my research, I ran across a quotation by an anthropologist, Steven Goldberg, which I think at least begins to describe what is unique about women. He spoke of women’s roles as “directors of society’s emotional resources.” That comes a little bit close. But I’m gonna use motherhood as a test case, because it’s the most obvious.
As I was saying, when this demand to compete with men begins to—it begins to break down when we are looking at mothers. For example, in the effort to be in a man’s world, the feminist has to define pregnancy and the period following childbirth as disabilities. [Light laughter.] It makes a certain amount of sense. In order to achieve equality between men and women, doesn’t the feminist have to think of pregnancy and childbirth as comparable to experiences that men have? So, she has to view it as a disability condition, comparable to other disability conditions, so that women workers can be made comparable to men workers.
The question is, what about the uniqueness of motherhood? What does the feminist do to the uniqueness of motherhood and pregnancy? She devalues it. She calls it a disability. And if a woman views pregnancy as a disability, won’t she then view the child that she is carrying as a disability? Women as mothers are especially hard-hit by this apparently mild, oh-so-reasonable form of feminism. Their specific needs as mothers is [sic] not taken into account.
But, we should know that as time passed, the feminists began to realize that changing laws in order to provide women with equal opportunity with men was insufficient as a means of achieving their goal. Laws in our society, in fact, began to change. But still, weren’t the majority of national and state congressmen, governors, mayors, corporation presidents, doctors, lawyers, engineers—weren’t the majority still men? The law had changed, but the reality hadn’t changed. The feminists began to ask themselves, “What’s going on?” In fact, women began to ask themselves, “Isn’t it the case that because of our responsibilities as mothers, and our responsibilities in the home, don’t [sic] we have to settle for less demanding or lower-paid jobs? Isn’t it the case that because of our responsibilities as mothers, we don’t have the time and energy to build those social ties that are—with business and professional associations—associates that are really important for advancement on the job? Don’t we suffer a loss in pay due to absenteeism to care for our sick children?”
So, in order to begin to compete with men on the job, feminists began to cry out, “Give me access to the reproductive technology that can free me from biological victimization!” And they began to cry out, “Free us from the burdens of child care!” In fact, they began to say—they went even farther: they began to say that women have not successfully competed with men throughout all of history . . . because each generation of women has been sacrificed to its own children. They say that women haven’t successfully competed throughout history because each generation of woman [sic] has been sacrificed to their children. They take care of their children; they can’t compete.
The feminists began to—as they began—continued to think about this issue, they began to realize that in our society, the average workday presupposes an individual who can leave his home for eight to ten hours every day. The average workday assumes a separation between home and work, a separation that is only possible if women stay home to take care of the children. In short, it assumes a separation that is certainly easier for men to achieve, because they are not primarily responsible for child care. In fact, they went even further.
They theorized, “Look how much it is to the man’s advantage that we take care of the children. That’s why they are so successful. That’s why they’re the mayors, the corporation presidents, etc. Men have been using women. Motherhood is a form of slavery. The fact that women are, and have been throughout history and in every society, primarily responsible for child care is a result of patriarchal oppression exercised at the level of conscious policy and stretching back to the dawn of history.” That’s where their argument stands today, I would say.
So, where does the right to compete with men in the workplace lead us? It leads us to devalue one of the things that is unique about women. At best, motherhood is a disability; at worst, it is a form of slavery.
Where else does this right to compete with men in the workplace lead us? I would like to propose that it results in one of the most—a really common image of our modern culture: the image of the working and carefree and essentially single woman, freed from the drudgery of home and motherhood, and free from any and all biological constraints on behavior. We’ll just sweep under the rug, so to speak, that such a lifestyle is very difficult for most single women to enjoy. It doesn’t matter; let’s just forget about the fact that it glamorizes the single life. Let’s forget about the fact that it’s helped produce a generation of women who are intensely conflicted: conflicted when working, conflicted when not working.
Look where else this call to compete with men in the workplace leads us. Feminists call for the right to be freed from biological victimization. Women can’t be burdened by unwanted pregnancies. In fact, if you read the feminist literature, it seems almost as if female contraception is the best thing to happen to women since the vote, and that it has no social consequences—this is the key—that it has no social consequences, except a grand new freedom for women.
But sociologists are beginning to argue that contraception does have social consequences, and, in fact, that what was supposed to free women, isn’t [sic]. Now, I’m talking here about the social consequences of contraceptives, not the morality of them. The point is that we have to think very hard before we say that something is going to free women. Sociological studies have shown that men take care of their children—take care of children when they are sure that they are the fathers. It makes sense when you think about it. A woman always knows that a child is hers. Not so with a man. In fact, [in] some ways, you could say—and this is on a really basic level—that marriage is a certain trade-off: the extra resources the male provides in order for the female to bear and raise children, in return for a guarantee that the child is actually his.
Now, let’s look at what’s happening today. For the first time in history, the human female can be totally in charge of her genetic and reproductive future. She has taken over a responsibility that used to be shared. In the past two decades, the female has taken control of the issue of whether or not she gets pregnant. As far as men are concerned, she’s separated sex from reproduction, and absolved him of any responsibility for reproduction. In effect, she’s liberated the male, but not herself. The irony is that what is seen as freeing . . . might be imprisoning. Women feel a terrible guilt if they get pregnant, as if it’s their fault, as if the man had nothing to do with it. At the same time, because [of] female contraception and the freer exercise of sexual choice it allows a woman, a man really does have less confidence in his paternity. In our society today, we complain about the abdication of men from responsibility. There are more and more single mothers who are at or below the poverty line. Sociologists speak of the feminization of poverty. But maybe we’ve done it to ourselves. Maybe we haven’t thought hard enough.
Now, you might say, “Oh, I would never say such things. I don’t think that motherhood is a disability or a form of slavery. I know that that image of the single woman isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m not calling for all-out reproductive freedom for women with no constraints. I would never say such things.” But I wanna ask you, isn’t what the feminists are saying—isn’t it true? If you’re going to compete with men in the workplace, if there are going to be equal numbers of men and women in high places in the professions and government, isn’t it the case that children are a hindrance and not a help? Think about it. Women who are really successful—successful in our society’s eyes—they have fewer children, or they don’t have children at all. As more and more women enter the workplace, the birth rate goes down.
But why do women want to compete with men in the first place? Well, for one thing, in our society’s eyes, women’s traditional role as mother isn’t valued. When a mother takes care of a child, it’s called “mothering.” When a childcare worker takes care of a child, we call it “unskilled labor.” When was the last time you’ve heard someone say that the care and rearing of the young is the single most important function served in any society, or in nature itself? You don’t hear that very often.
So what happens? The woman who wants to do something valuable in our society’s eyes—she has to enter the workplace and compete with men for what our society considers to be valuable: high status jobs. She enters the workplace. She wants to be treated just like men. After all, she knows she can do the job. She’s right. But after a short time, it becomes clear that to really compete with men, to gain success in this new world, to climb the corporate ladder, children and the having of children are real problems. She can’t really compete with men in the men’s world. It’s made for men, and not for women with children. Some of the mothers who enter this world and compete with men win. They rise to high positions in their job. But the majority of mothers who enter this world and try to compete with men—they lose. After all, even today, aren’t the majority of high-status positions, top jobs in government and business—aren’t they still occupied by men? Even today?
I’m almost done. I’m sorry I’m going over.
We have to ask ourselves, “Are the feminists just setting up the majority of women for failure?” For example, feminists frequently call for women to enter the engineering profession. “Let’s have an equal number of men and women in the engineering profession” (a profession that calls for good visual–spatial skills and mathematical reasoning, skills that men are better at, as far as we know). Some women have entered the engineering profession and are succeeding, and that is very good. But if this is a goal we are setting up—a society—a goal in our society—if we’re setting that up for a lot of women, aren’t we setting up the majority of women for failure? More generally, if women are caring for children, and men and women are competing for certain high-status jobs in our society, won’t men win more often? The system is set up to their advantage. Furthermore, if men are more aggressive (and it seems pretty clear that they are), won’t men sometimes win in the competition for high-status jobs, simply because of their greater aggressiveness, and in spite of an equality in ability?
So, where does this lead us? The woman who wants to do something valuable—she has to enter the workforce and compete with men for high-status jobs. But she’s not just like men. She can’t compete with them. If we as women are competing with men, in a men’s world, on male terms—well, some women will win. But won’t the majority lose? And . . . the majority who “lose,” must they then view themselves as a failure [sic]? Maybe they just have other, more important things to do. And don’t we have to ask ourselves: if we’re competing with men on male terms in a situation where we won’t always win, are we in danger of losing men’s respect?
And if we insist on competing—which is understandable, given what our society says is valuable—where do we end up? Denying or pushing into the background what is most unique about us as women. Motherhood is the most obvious example of this, but think of the engineering example. Obviously, what is of value is visual–spatial skills and mathematical reasoning skills. Verbal abilities? No, they’re not worth as much.
Now, it may be true that jobs requiring visual–spatial abilities or mathematical reasoning abilities pay more than jobs requiring verbal abilities. Our society may value, at least monetarily, jobs that men can do better. But the problem is with society. When we’re thinking of the particular gifts of men and women, neither is better, neither is worse. It is culture that causes inequality, not biology.
You know, anthropologists claim that in most societies, the tasks relating to protection, fighting, and political authority are associated with men, and then in every society that we know of, women are primarily responsible for child care. I ask you, what warrant does the feminist have for claiming that it is better to have one sex associated with authority and leadership rather than with the creation of life? Anyway, the problem we face is something like the following: in our society, the low status of roles that only a woman can play, roles like motherhood, forces a woman who desires status to compete with men, which creates a situation in which the majority of women cannot win without denying all that is best in her [sic] as a woman.
Let me put it in a slightly different way. If you have a society that values what women do, and a society that doesn’t value what women do—does [sic], a woman is—in this [first] society, she just does what she does. She just is who she is. And she’s in a winning position, because the society values who she is and what she does. [If] She’s in this other society, she’s not always gonna win, okay? She might lose, in fact, frequently.
Now, I know this is. . . . It would seem, then, that part of the solution—and I know that this is just a kind of—a general kind of statement—would be that we need to raise the status of those things that only we as women can do, that—things that men can’t do: motherhood, obviously, but more generally, nurturing in all its forms; sustaining life; making life more worth living; making wherever we are a better place. If this is true, then attempts within the feminist movement to improve women’s situation by de-emphasizing all that is best in her as a woman is very dangerous. The feminists are saying, “It’s what men do that really count [sic].” Don’t buy it. It’s not true.
In fact, in today’s world, what really needs to be emphasized is the value of what we as women are uniquely gifted to do.
That’s all.
[Applause and cheers.]
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