That men and women differ from each other in deep (usually religiously
invested) and complementary ways has been characteristic of a large
number of civilizations through history. Only in modern times in a
manner analogous with the entire "historicist" explanation of
religion, was it suggested that these differences are _merely_
socially constructed. And a significant body of feminist scholarship
has challenged the "social construction" explanation of sex
differentiation, arguing instead that men and women differ
essentially.

I hope I don't need to "prove" that men and women are biologically
complementary. Even a plumber knows that.

Exactly what these deep and essential differences are, of course, is
the matter of great controversy. But Christianity and Judaism (and
Islam, I might add), which contribute these differences to deliberate
choice on the part of the Creator, is in company in this broad sense
with much of the rest of human thought. The minority view is that of
"social construction." It was possible only with the hollowing out of
the concept of "nature" in the Enlightenment and technological
revolutions of modernity.

You need not accept the Catholic Church's claims for the supernatural
authority of the Church and the claim that the Church transcends
culture (I assume that about 98 % of the people on this list do not
accept those claims) to recognize that an essentialist view of sexual
differences is the majority view throughout history and that most
cultures have seen these essential differences as in some sense
complementary.

This is probably pushing the margins of topics for inclusion in this
list, but it is relevant to medieval religion in that the Church in
the Middle Ages is frequently accused of being unfair to women, as Mr.
Holtgrefe as charged here. This is a serious charge. It needs to be
examined in particulars, not by way of broad generalizations. My
point was simply that a "social construction of gender" is
incompatible with a traditional Jewish and Christian understanding of
men and women. I know of no one in the Middle Ages who would have
claimed "social construction of gender."

Indeed, this is one of my main criticisms of much of contemporary
medieval studies work. Frequently people recognize that medieval
people believed that the "way things are" (sex differences, natural
phenomena, biological phenomena) were religiously established and
enjoyed in some sense "divine authority." Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam, because of their insistence on absolute creation of everything
by a single God, cannot abandon this religious/supernatural
understanding of biology and nature without abandoning their faith
entirely.

Modern and especially post-modern people do not accept such religious
grounding of "the way things are." We have learned to manipulate
nature in all sorts of ways and we are tempted to conclude that it is
infinitely malleable. Hence the "historicist" explanation of religion
and the "social construction of gender," to name only a few
consequences of confidence in technological manipulation (including
social engineering).

So we look at medieval people and say, "they didn't realize that
gender was only a social construct, so they attributed religious
signficance to it. Indeed, where they thought things were
god-ordained, we (wink, wink) know that they were really just power
manipulators--the people at the top of the social or gender heap kept
the people at the bottom in line by claiming religious significance
for sexuality, beginning with biology."

But this only spreads over medieval people the insistance that the
way "things are" for modern/postmodern people (that everything or
virtually everything is socially constructed) is "really, really" true
for all time. We know best, medieval people, naive as they were, were
mistaken, unable to see that what they thought was god-given
naturalness was _really_ a complex system by which the powerful
manipulated the less powerful.

This may be true, of course, but how would one know? It privileges a
new (postmodern) hegemony over an ancient and medieval religious
hegemony. Once one decides that everything is class- and power-based
social construction, then one really has to shut up, since one has
hollowed out the warrant for one's own claim that everything is
"reallly, really" socially constructed.

But, I hear someone saying, "it's just so obvious" that everything,
when you get down to it, is socially constructed.

But isn't that what medieval people said? It's so obvious that
everything was created the way it is by God, including sex
differences? Actually, medieval people were more sophisticated on
this point than the postmodern hegemonists of social construction.
Medieval people at least attributed many things to a perversion of
God's good created order: war (with its attendant evils of slavery and
various other injustices) and male injustice in domination of women.
They argued, of course, about what constituted injustice and we might
disagree with their conclusions in various specific verdicts, but they
did recognize both a goodness to the ultimate reality of things, based
on belief in creation, and the perversion of that goodness as an
explanation for injustice.

If one abandons that to explain everything as socially constructed,
then deciding whether something is just or unjust will depend entirely
on who is most powerful.

Finally, I have always been amazed that some of those who who are
deeply concerned about the way that technological manipulation of
"nature" has so often backfired with horrendous ecological
consequences and who appeal to us to respect the "reality" of nature,
to live within the boundaries of the _natural_ interdependence of the
ecological system, have so much difficulty entertaining the notion
that male and femaleness might be really, really natural, that their
bodies (which are clearly both different and complementary) probably
have some real, essential impact on the (very likely complementary)
maleness and femaleness of their minds, and that one probably ought
not try to manipulate any of these technologically at will or treat
them as mere social constructs to be socially engineered at will.

Finally, lest anyone bring up Thomas Aquinas's statements about women
as _mas occasionatus_, let me say that he did not say that women were
deformed men. His argument is much more complex than that. The claim
by early second-wave feminists that he said women were deformed men
has been uncritically repeated ad infinitum but it rested on incorrect
philology and lack of attention to the ductus of his argument in the
relevant passages. The details are found in Michael Nolan, "The
Defective Male: What Aquinas Really Said," _New Blackfriars_, 75
(March 1994), 156-66; cf. Richard J. McGowan, "Augustine's Spiritual
Equality: The Allegory of Man and Woman with Regard to Imago Dei,"
_Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes_ 33 (1987), 255-264 and "Misogyny in
Augustine and Sexist Scholarship," _University of Dayton Review_, 21.3
(Spring 1992), 85-90

Dennis Martin

>>> <[log in to unmask]> 12/23 11:35 AM >>>
In a message dated 12/23/1999 11:36:17 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Sex
 differences and complementarity are thus not merely socially
 constructed but lie at the heart of self-identity.

I doubt that. In fact that sounds flat out wrong.

 Obviously this
 will not be palatable to many modern people, but it has been
central
 to Jewish and Christian teaching for millennia.

Prove it.

My point here is
 simply to point out that the Catholic teaching is not an innovation
 and is internally consistent.

It isn't, it's just an excuse to denigrate women.

 >>


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