Where credit is due

Last month I had a post - "The special gift" - that argued against women's intuitive understanding of men's needs being a special quality given from God:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-special-gift.html

(Yes, I know I am going slowly.)

That post was in large part a reaction to a talk, and a use there that struck me as profoundly incorrect  Then last week's post was about how there isn't really a scriptural prescription for strong gender differences.

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2019/01/this-may-be-stating-obvious.html

I hope those two can be building blocks as I briefly go over three specific harms that come from incorrectly attributing various skills and behaviors to God-given gender differences. There could be more to be said about these specific harms, and they are not the only harms that come from the current structure, but I think they are nonetheless important and need to be said.

The first is on a very simple level that we are not seeing reality clearly, which matters a lot to me.

A good analogy might be how we often talk about gifted musicians. Perfect pitch may have a real hereditary element, and there are a lot of genetic factors that can help or hinder. For example, having larger hands (especially with longer fingers) can help you reach notes that are further apart, but can get in the way of playing speed, at least on piano. At some point, though, what matters most is the actual practice time involved. An early inclination can help, a family can nurture that inclination, a home full of music can create a powerful background, but being good at music takes becoming a skilled musician, with a lot of time spent developing that skill. It is not just accepting a gift. 

Crediting large-scale accommodation to women's intuition leads to underestimating women, and not crediting their actual experiences and abilities. "They're supposed to be that way" does not really appreciate the work that goes into it, which frankly is often exhausting.

Perhaps it is inevitable that the other side of not given women credit for their labor (or exhaustion) is not offering support.

I have thought of this more since reading Rene Denfield's Kill the Body, the Head Will Fall: A Closer Look at Women, Violence, and Aggression, inspired by Denfield's own foray into boxing.

One of the examples involved a mother with a colicky baby who was having a hard time dealing with the negative feelings this caused, including frustration and anger with her child. She even sought psychiatric help, but was only assured that her maternal instincts would keep her from harming her child.

It can be convenient to think that something is wrong with any mother who harms her child, but that philosophy left this mother who was not harming her child feeling like there was something inherently wrong with her. If the unwomanly thing is not acting on the feelings, but having the feelings in the first place, all that could leave her with was more stress and feelings of failure, with a vicious cycle. If you can admit that crying is stressful, and more stressful when you can't comfort the child but feel you should be able to (because of the power of a mother's love), and we can look at things like sleep deprivation and providing support to new mothers, and finding better treatments for colic, all of that is more helpful. It seems glaringly obvious, but then you hear the things people say on Mother's Day, and it clearly is not. This is not really doing mothers any favors.

But it also isn't doing men any favors to say that they lack emotional intelligence, or that they can't help themselves, and to excuse it all as boys being boys. That is the kind of thing that encourages men in mediocrity. That has no place in a church that believes in eternal progression.

And it is terrible to have smugly mediocre people in charge so much of the time.