Gender

Question 1

What is the definition of a patriarchy?

Answer 1

Male dominated: a patriarchal society is one where men have more power than women

Question 2

Who was one of the earliest female philosophers?

Answer 2

-Mary Wollstonecraft published her work ‘A vindication of the rights of women’ in 1792 in which she argued that women fundamentally have the same rights as men. Educating women was the highest priority- as well as refocusing them away from obsession with looks and outward accomplishments
-Wollstonecraft was an early challenge to the patriarchy of her day

Question 3

What 3 historical waves is feminism usually divided into?

Answer 3

1. First wave feminism. Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, this focused on equal rights for women, such as in the right to vote
2. Second wave feminism. During the 1960’s, this challenged patriarchy and pressed for women to have rights over their own selves, not just to exist as homemakers; the result was developments in sexual health
3. Third wave feminism. This began in the 1990s and explores gender roles and identities; women need to change the approach they take to themselves, making sure they don’t conform to the stereotype of ‘white heterosexual woman from the west’

Question 4

What are the different approaches to the relationship between men and women?

Answer 4

-Men are superior to women. A view dating back to the ancients, such as Plato and Aristotle, but also held by Aquinas, who described women as ‘defective’
-Men and women are of equal value. This is the idea that men and women are different, but of equal value, leading to mainly male and mainly female roles in the workplace and even in church leadership
-Women are superior to men. As advocated by Mary Daly: patriarchy in the church has hidden women’s superior knowledge
-Gender is not as straightforward as traditionally thought. We can express ourselves as one or other gender, or as a mixture; it is artificial and misleading to assign characteristics to gender and not necessary to identify with the biological identity we have

Question 5

Where should and do Christianity stand on the relationship between men and women?

Answer 5

-Christianity has sometimes been seen to struggle with where it should stand in relation to the above bullet points. Some Christian’s have accepted women in leadership roles in the church; others believe it is a matter of theology, not equality, and that different rules apply in the context of the church
-Some Christian’s are accused of still supporting a patriarchal society. Contemporary Christian’s seem to be unsure how to respond to new issues such as gender identity and expression, sexuality and so on
-As we are in the middle of the third wave, Christian’s are often accused of being slow to respond and so churches can frustrate those anxious to bring about change

Question 6

What does Genesis 5:22-33 teach about the roles of men and women in the family and society?

Answer 6

-This passage is traditional in it’s outlook, although it’s interpretation over the years has varied:
-‘Wives should submit to their husbands’
-‘The husband is the head of his wife’
It also puts a Christian twist on the traditional views
-The husbands leadership is like the leadership of Christ to the church
-Husbands should love their wives like Christ loved the church
-This Christian twist is actually quite radical in outlook- Christ loved the church so much he gave up his life for it, as a husband should do for his wife
-This familiar ‘body of Christ’ imagery also would have spoken to Paul’s readers who were used to the idea that the church is an inter connected body of people; here it reminds us that marriage is a small section of a wider community and so family life is part of the wider life of Christianity

Question 7

What is a key quote from mulieris dignitatem?

Answer 7

“It is therefore necessary that the man be fully aware that in their shared parenthood he owes a special debt to the woman. No programme of ‘equal rights’ between women and men is valid unless it takes this fact fully into account

Question 8

What is mulieris dignitatem?

Answer 8

-This text is a catholic 1988 letter of pope John Paul II on the dignity and vocation of women in response to feminism
-The emphasis was on respect for women- a respect that is mirrored by Mary, without whom the Christ event would not have happened

Question 9

What were the key points of mulieris dignitatem?

Answer 9

-Motherhood, a natural follow on from marriage, which is part of the order of creation, comes from the total giving of a couple to each other, open to procreation, a way of sharing in God’s act of creation
-The psycho-physical structure of a woman is made for motherhood. Parenthood, although it is shared between the man and woman is more specially the women’s. The man should learn parenthood from the mother
-It is Mary’s acceptance of the message of the angel that begins the new covenant (the new relationship between God and humans brought about by Jesus)
-This understanding of motherhood must continue for modern mothers and they must be appropriately supported when their immense maternal love is challenged

Question 10

What is said in mulieris dignitatem about motherhood/parenthood?

Answer 10

-In mulieris dignitatem, the catholic church attempts to underline the special dignity, deliberately given by God at creation, to women to be mothers. This reflects many Christian approaches to the topic as the ability of women to be mothers is seen as a great privilege and not in any way making them lesser beings.
-However, in the context of suspicion of patriarchal institutions, some might feel that this approach is patronising, or limiting the abilities of women

Question 11

What is a response to motherhood in mulieris dignitatem?

Answer 11

A response to this might be to reject any view of women that defines them as mothers first and foremost. Reading on in the document, one might feel that the stark alternative being suggested by the pope for women is to be either mothers or virgins

Question 12

What would fundamentalist protestant traditions say about motherhood/parenthood?

Answer 12

Fundamentalist protestant traditions, which might read the Ephesians passage in a literal sense, would emphasise the role of the woman as wide and mother: her role is primarily to create a home suitable for the husband. Other Protestants might take a view similar to that of the Catholic Church

Question 13

What is a more liberal approach to motherhood/ parenthood?

Answer 13

A more liberal approach removes the idea of motherhood from the definition of women. In line with many moves within third wave feminism, it understands gender roles in less black and white terms. Mary may have been a role model, but not for everyone: just like Peter wouldn’t be a typical role model for all men

Question 14

Reasons why motherhood is liberating?

Answer 14

-It is what women were created for and so it is a way of them fulfilling their purpose
-It draws on the natural abilities of women to be caring and nurturing
-Mulieris dignitatem suggests that motherhood is extremely liberating for women
-Some argue that a women’s desire to be a mother is biological
-A woman is able to provide the best start to the education of the next generation

Question 15

Reasons why motherhood is restricting?

Answer 15

-A woman must give up her own life, interests and personality to take care of her children
-It slows down progress with careers, it affects bodily health
-When children leave home, a woman is left without a proper purpose
-Others argue that the desire is purely the result of social conditioning
-A women’s intelligence is wasted when at home with children

Question 16

Where do the restricting arguments come from?

Answer 16

-The first three points on the ‘restricting’ side of the table come from the work of Simone de Beauvoir, whose work The second sex (1949) says that women over time have let themselves be made into the inferior gender, defined by their relationship with men as wife, lower and object
-De Beauvoir argued that society forms people into their gender identities and she calls on modern women to redefine who they are and to be who they want to be- whether that is a mother or not

Question 17

What do traditional Christian’s believe about family?

Answer 17

-Traditional Christian’s would emphasise the importance of the type of family they see in the Bible: heterosexual and married. They might accuse some feminists of changing the idea of love between a couple from selfless Christian love to a love based on the sexual aspect of the relationship
-They argue that the Biblical model of marriage leads to support for struggling married couples in the community and a more stable society

Question 18

What do other Christians believe about family?

Answer 18

-Other Christian’s accept that the traditional view of the family is not a reflection of the way people are made. If some are made homosexual and want to have children, then it follows that there will be loving families with same gender parents
-Any reluctance to endorse same gender parents is a societal issue, rather than a faith one for these Christian’s;
-Jesus himself welcomed those who did not fully conform to society; love needs to remain at the centre
-Another argument might be that in the Bible there are many different types of family- men with more than one wife or with children from concubines, for example
-The argument would go that the idea of family is not predominantly religious and is more cultural and Christianity must welcome any model that current society offers

Question 19

Why could it be argued that the idea of family is entirely culturally determined?

Answer 19

-The family is seen as a microcosm of society- a society that is made up of families that work well is likely to work well itself. Recently, the notion of family has changed rapidly
-Marriage has been permitted in the UK for homosexual couples only since 2014 and this will lead to a greater number of children from same gender parents and inevitably lead to a change in the way that we look at families
-By this argument, the idea of family will be entirely determined by culture and Christian’s will need to decide how they react to what a family is

Question 20

Why could It be argued that the idea of family is not entirely culturally determined?

Answer 20

-Christian’s believe that most are called to parenthood and family life, to mirror God’s love and creative work and so on. Many commandments in the Bible concern family life and catholic natural law supports families
-Holding love at the centre of family life also mirrors many Christian’s approach to ethics
-Those Christian’s who believe heterosexual marriage is a fundamental part of the order of creation will do all they can to defend this model of family life

Question 21

What is Jesus’ challenge to the male warrior messiah expectation?

Answer 21

-At Jesus’ time, the messiah was expected to be a liberator of the line of David who would save people from the Romans. Ruether says that this is not the messiah, Jesus was. For Ruether:
-There was no expectation of the incarnation of God or of salvation through sacrifice
-Jesus was not a military leader- he rejected use of force to win arguments
-The kingdom of God was a place of harmony, not power
-Jesus rejected patriarchal God talk by using ‘Abba’ for God- meaning ‘daddy’; the dominant-subordinate dynamic was rejected in favour of a more familiar relationship
-Therefore the military (and therefore male) view of God is not needed; the fact that Jesus was biologically a man does not matter

Question 22

What is God as the female wisdom principle?

Answer 22

-The person of ‘wisdom’ is very much present in later old testament books, perhaps left over from the earliest time of Judaism when monotheism wasn’t fully established.
-Wisdom is always portrayed as female. For Ruether, this wisdom principle has been lost in modern Christianity behind the patriarchal structures, especially the male focused view of the incarnation

Question 23

What is a key quote by Ruether on Jesus as the incarnation of wisdom?

Answer 23

“The Logos who reveals the ‘father’, therefore, was presumed to be properly represented even though the Jewish wisdom tradition had used the female metaphor, Sophia, for the same idea”

Question 24

What is Jesus as the incarnation of wisdom?

Answer 24

-Instead, Ruether feels we should recognise in Jesus that feminine aspect of God. Sophia can be found in John’s portrayal of Jesus as the word in John 1, in Paul’s reference to Jesus as the ‘wisdom of God’ in 1 Corinthians 1 and through a deeper understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit
-Ruether believes that this greater understanding will move Christianity in the right direction to understanding that Jesus’ maleness was not essential- he could have come as either gender

Question 25

Reasons why a male saviour can save women?

Answer 25

-Jesus can because Jesus was only male by chance- modern Christianity has lost sight of Jesus’ feminine/ wisdom aspect
-Jesus can because Jesus challenged the warrior king expectation of his day, which was at the time a traditionally masculine aspect
-At Pentecost, both men and women were equally empowered by the gift of the saviour, Jesus
-Jesus engaged with women as much as he did with men- women should have no need to fear that this message and salvation was any less for women than it was for men

Question 26

Reasons why a male saviour cannot save women?

Answer 26

-If Jesus is the perfect human then the Perfect human is male- there is nothing for women in that statement except the belief that they are less important
-Salvation requires us to ‘buy in’ to the Christian message- why should women be expected to buy into patriarchy
-The Christianity that we have inherited is one that drew on male domination, from the Roman Empire onwards
-Ruether believed that the catholic church’s view that women cannot be priests is inherited from Aquinas’ view that women are defective- if women are defective in some way, how can they be saved by a male saviour

Question 27

What did Mary Daly say was Christianity’s unholy trinity?

Answer 27

1. Rape. Not only literally (male dominance has led to the thinking that it is permissible to rape or otherwise attack women) but also metaphorically; ‘armchair rapists’ are those who subscribe to the same approach, perhaps through pornography; ultimately, it is a mentality that the patriarchal society has oppressed women with, often violently
2. Genocide. If rape objectifies a women then a culture of rape is one in which women are imagined as a group of objects- it sets men as a whole against women as a whole. Genocide is the killing of a large group of people and so the current hierarchical structures place men over women in the same way that genocide sets one group over another
3. War. Daly argued that we live in a world of violence that is based on a ‘phallic mentality’- a male dominated approach that women need to move away from. War is defended as necessary but abortion and euthanasia are rejected- violence for ‘good’ ends- and so there is hypocrisy in the setup

Question 28

What is spirituality experienced through nature?

Answer 28

-Daly argued that God, as God is generally thought of, is a fixed, male figure but verbs are better ways of conveying the ongoing and unlimited nature of spirituality
-Daly refers to ‘be-ing’ as life being viewed as a spiritual process instead of aiming to become like a God. Once we move away from objects, we come to a communion with nature
-They key to women’s spirituality comes from collaboration towards reinventing society
-For Daly, theology and spirituality will not be appropriate for women if one simply changes God the man into God the woman. God is not an object
-Because of the uses men face through the corruption of power, they cannot attain spirituality- only those who have broken away from this can be spiritual beings. Many would reject this, pointing to the vast range of female mystics and saints who have flourished without Daly’s approach and would criticise Daly on the grounds of her overemphasis on language- playing games with words to create a desired effect

Question 29

Where are Ruether and Daly’s thinking similar?

Answer 29

-Both feminist approaches agree that simply to start calling God ‘she’ and emphasising the feminine aspects of God does not successfully remove the established patriarchy- a patriarchy that Ruether thinks came especially with Christianity and which Daly thought was all pervading and predated the Old Testament
-Both also feel that a side effect of patriarchy has been the assumption that men have power and dominion over nature; both feminist approaches think that only women can save the environment

Question 30

What are the responses to Ruether and Daly with sexism and patriarchy in Christianity?

Answer 30

-Some might suggest that the Christian story is not too male dominated. Some might say that it is important to read beyond words; others might suggest that the history of Christianity has shaped the church as it is now and the maleness is part of that process
-Indeed, ancient religions all had mother goddess figures. It could also be observed that Hinduism, which has real devotion to the Goddess and female manifestations of the divine, is no less male dominated
-Both could also be accused of being selective with the texts they use. There are texts in the Bible that use male language (for example father) but the female concepts (for example, compassion) and so the Bible as a whole is more balanced than they suggest

Question 31

Reasons why Christianity should be changed (Ruether’s argument)?

Answer 31

-Men can be brought alongside women to help make the change happen
-The idea that God is both female/male is celebrated
-God can be maintained and redefined as has happened throughout history- for example, in the way Sophia has been reinterpreted
-The Catholic Church can be changed from within. The people are essentially good and there is sufficient evidence from within the Bible that ‘true’ teachings can be found
-God the creator ultimately differs from the God that the church has emphasised

Question 32

Reasons why Christianity should be abandoned (Daly’s argument)?

Answer 32

-Women need to be in control of the change
-God can never be understood with gender language
-God as he is understood currently is to be rejected and replaced by spirituality through the verb that is nature
-The church needs to be rejected. It plays a major part in the unholy trinity and is built on sexism and patriarchy
-The Church has gone to far to be saved

Question 33

Is Christianity essentially sexist?

Answer 33

-Christianity resisted the influences of the Greek and Roman worlds who had both male and female figures as Gods and chose it’s Jewish heritage of one, male God. Jesus deliberately chose men as his key disciples. Some would say:
-Jesus broke every other cultural norm;if he chose only men then there must have been a reason behind it- so it was not a sexist decision but a theological one
-What seems to us as sexist now was not then. It was seen as a real privilege to be in charge of the household and education of the next generation. It is only layer cultural (and religious) influences that made Christianity sexist
-Early church meetings described in the New Testament clearly have women in leadership roles (for example, Lydia and Sapphira)
-If the Bible is evidence for Christianity being sexist, then perhaps the Bible needs to be understood in it’s cultural context and we can move away from being sexist ideals. Underneath it all the message of Jesus is about breaking away from oppression

Question 34

Can only women develop a genuine spirituality?

Answer 34

-Daly suggested that the maleness of Christianity and the Christian God makes spirituality unattainable for women unless they move behind Christianity. Ruether would disagree and say that there is enough of the feminine in the concept of the divine; it just needs to he rediscovered
-There are countless women who have successfully- and alongside men- developed and written about a spirituality and there are women of note throughout the Bible.
-However, Daly would accuse this approach of simply trying to carry out a transsexual operation on God- it needs a much deeper change and a very different spirituality

Question 35

Can the Christian God be presented in female terms?

Answer 35

-The first question is whether God can be presented in terms of gender at all. The catholic church says that God is beyond gender and reflects both what we call ‘male’ and what we call ‘female’ characteristics at a perfect level
-However, we take for granted the language that calls God a ‘he’ or ‘father’ and feminism challenges whether we should do this. Some would say that they can transcend words that are used; others make a conscious decision not to use male pronouns for God; others think that we are too far along the path to be able to have a spiritual relationship with this God
-If the Bible can be reinterpreted or read in a new light, then it is perhaps possible to move away from patriarchal interpretations and it is unlikely that most Christian’s would have a problem with feminine language being used more about God
-This would enable us to rediscover the feminine aspects of the Bible, such as Sophia