Has Gender Evolved? - Vol 2 No 3

The professor asked, "Why you would say that this new expression of gender is destructive...?"

A Unique Position!

Mike was early to class as usual because of the great conversation that often happens in the in-between times.  The professor of his Sociology of Gender Theory class came in and began to set up her PowerPoints and other materials for class.  Other students were filing into their seats.  She turned to Mike and said earnestly,

"Mike, I have not been able to get what you said in the last class off my mind.  You mentioned that the world was made to work efficiently. You said that men and women were complementary to one another, made to help and support the different roles of each sex and that together they had a mission to fill the earth with people. I just think that’s a unique position!"  

She continued, "Everyone knows that we must view genders, race and socioeconomic aspects in an evolving way that transforms the world. This diversity is good for the world, and it increases the thinking of the world. It just...I just wanted to figure out why you would say that this new expression of gender is destructive and why it would need to be interrupted. That it was abnormal."

Mike was delighted that she had been listening and pondering what he had said, even if she didn't quote him exactly.

Gender is not biological

Mike responded, "It's destructive because it has to fail.  If a car manufacturer designed a car to be fueled by gasoline, and we choose to put syrup in the tank instead, it will not work properly.  You will destroy it.  God has created this world, and as His crowning achievement, He created man in His own image.  He made man to be male and female and from the start determined their roles and functions in order for the world to run smoothly and properly.  When we cooperate with that paradigm, God is pleased and things go well.  When we strive against it, we are always the losers."

Undeterred the professor replied, "Recent medical science has taught us that we have evolved such that gender and sex are not biological, that they are social constructs based on the way we present ourselves.  They do not in any sense have to do with chromosomes."

"Then let me ask you a practical question."  Mike began. "Do you think that before...say, 1950, there was a college class anywhere in the world to teach people how to not be a male if they were born a male, or how not to be a female if they were born female? If it is such a good thing, why didn't people come to this conclusion before 1950? I’m not talking about homosexuality, that's different, but why did people identify as the gender they were born for the most part of six thousand years, and why are we now having college classes on how to deny and rebel against the reality of how you were made?"

Gender has evolved

The professor replied, "Because we have experienced the gross inadequacies of the former male and female relationships, we have evolved to be making our own." 

Mike smiled, "No. The passage of time does not have the ability to change that which God has fixed immutably.  Parallel lines do not begin to meet simply because thousands of years have passed since Euclid. Men and women are who they are. It’s comportment with reality that I am a man…"     

She interrupted, "And you probably see me as a woman."     

"Yes” said Mike with a slight smile.  “I would pretty much bet money that you are a woman."

Christian men repress women...not!

She became more ardent.  "You want to pay women less. You want to make women go home.   You want to force them to have children. You want to lock them in their houses.  You want to stop women from rising to the highest possibilities that they can."

Wanting to call her out on her straw man fallacy, Mike refrained.   Instead he kindly replied, "Actually, I want just the opposite.  I want women and men to be respected and fulfilled in this life, and I know the only way that can happen is as we cooperate with the designs of our Maker.  The roles that God has designed for us as men and women are good for us and satisfying when done as He prescribes. He is wise and kind and good.  The fact that you talk about women being 'locked' and 'forced' has no part in God's plan."  

She shot back, "But God-speak as been used to suppress women for centuries."

"Well, actually, in God's plan women are free to  be and do all sorts of things in and out of the home, but the home and family is to be her priority.  She is called by God, and therefore most fulfilled, as the nurturer of her family and that includes her husband and her children.  Generally speaking, every woman in the world who is not trying to suppress the truth in unrighteousness and who is not seeking to deny what is in her heart, wants to have a child. She wants to be a nurturer, but that doesn't preclude her doing other things as well.  My wife has worked with me to raise eight children and while doing so at various times helped start and then administrated a classical Christian school, started and ran a crisis pregnancy center, and managed a foundation among other things. But if you ask anyone, you will know that her priority and her orientation is to our home.  And she would say she is very fulfilled."

Avoiding a direct response, she replied, "I can tell exactly where you fall on the intersectionality scale.”  (Intersectionality is a framework that examines how overlapping social identities, such as race, gender, class, and sexuality, create interconnected systems of discrimination or privilege. (See Diary Intersectionality

Mike smiled broadly, "So, you think you have me pegged."

"Oh yes," she said with a little twinge of snarky. “I know right where you fall.”

Mike smiled, "You may not want to be so hasty."

Women can do what men can

She began the class encouraging interaction among the students with the goal of tearing down the distinctions between men and women.

She turned directly to Mike hoping to expose what she believes is Mike’s bigotry. "So, let me ask you, Mike, if you had your own business, would you tend to hire a woman or a man?”

Sensing that perhaps she wanted to “catch him out” he thoughtfully responded,

"That's a pretty broad question.  It depends on the work.  If it were hard work, lifting heavy things, I would hire a man.  If it were, say, accounting work and a woman was excellent in accounting, I would hire a woman.  But I would not hire a woman to do a job that needed strength and stamina.  Typically men are stronger, they can work harder and put out more horsepower in a day."     

"Listen” she said with a tone of offense. "Women can run up and down ladders just as easily as men."

Mike sighed and his stomach wrenched as his mind was flooded with memories from forty years ago, and he told them all of a personal experience.  He told them...

the Timmy Stanley Story.

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