Thursday, June 23, 2011

Gender Bender

I read an interesting article today on NPR's website about the possibility of ours being a post-gender or gender-neutral society. "Does gender matter?" the author asks. "In a country with the ideal of treating everyone fairly and equitably, do we really need to know if someone is a boy or a girl? These questions are driving decisions and actions around the country."

There is, of course, much to be said here but one thing that really struck me about the article is its presentism. Discussions of gender must be steeped in a recognition of the complexity of gender, complexity that both neutrality and reductive sexism miss. Part of respecting this complexity requires an awareness that these questions are not new. They aren't even just questions from the 1960s. What little work I've done on burlesque comes immediately to mind when trying to historicize the content of this article. Check out this picture (genderfork.com) of one of the pioneers of burlesque, Lydia Thompson:

Clearly gender-bending is not new. To say this, however, is not to dismiss the question. I for one find it immensely comforting that we're not venturing into completely new territory. The work, of course, is to approach the current moment with enough appreciation and knowledge of the past to give these questions the level of sophistication and nuance they deserve.

For the theologian, the work is informed by both cultural history and the Tradition, particularly the historical claim of the Paschal Mystery. It is unhelpful to simply catalogue the ways in which the examples given in the above article and beyond in our society miss the mark in terms of Christian anthropology. Time might be better spent asking why the question persists and how it complicates our theology. Or better yet, where we have succeeded and failed to be true to the Gospel on the question of gender. Uncritically reasserting rigid gender roles in the name of Truth belies the mystery of what it means to be human and fails to account for the complexity of the issue of gender that even the Church has recognized in the saints.


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