Religion and Gender
Today I learned basically that gender is a social construct. The first thing to know is that gender is different from sex. Sex is the biological nature one was born with determined by the presence of XX or XY chromosomes, at least in typical nature as genetic abnormalities regarding these chromosomes occur and that would encompass a part of the complicated nature regarding gender, and gender is fundamentally a social construct or an act that we all do without realizing it that can be expressed in variable masculine and feminine characteristics on a spectrum as well as other characters such as (insert probably anything even conceptually existent) which also occurs. This, as gender, is, but is not limited to, a continual expression of identity and is in itself identity.
That all being said, gender relates to religion in its expression and relation to culture. Gender is associated with culture in that culture is fundamentally what controls gender expression. As to necessity, such as food or shelter, gender conforms to whatever may be most useful. For example in unadvanced societies it may be so that biological men, XX people, would typically be physically stronger and therefore hunt or fish and such. Conversely those born with XX chromosomes typically are not physically as capable in average and therefore are told to partake in different tasks such as domestic care and farming. These societies then would form religious centers of which the culture takes part in and now genders play roles in religious practices. These societies fall into a traditionalist pattern even as they advance and continue to oppress XX people as they were on average less physically dominant and therefore had no capacity to control society.
This all thus far was simply what I learned in class but I can’t help but want to express my own opinions in what is happening. First things first, which I take great issue with, in all the resources given, the authors posit these conclusions and frames of thought as philosophical theories in which they have their own validity. However this is where I have the problem. After bringing forth this theory, openly as theory for the record, continue to use it as justification for occurrences in the world and choose to state it as fact. It continues to interpret literature from the psychological and sociological constructionists as fact and makes an argument around that. This seems deeply flawed to me as if one is to make an argument, it should be based of what is, not what could be, especially when conveying what has been taught as fact. Furthermore, no or little psychological or sociological evidence has been posited to give these theories validity before they are continued upon.
It is totally valid to bring up this point of view, however it seems invalid to teach us this point of view with little to no substantiation of the view in reality as well as not consider the other views.
I posit no views of my own and this isn’t representative of my beliefs nor is it intended to but there are those who believe that gender is solely biological. In addition to this they believe that social constructionism is a point of human nature clashing with philosophical liberalism. There are those who view gender as solely an operative of sex and reproduction. My point is there are very many views on it as it discussed in modern political discourse but I find the views learned today are just postmodern archetypes shoved into the frame of religion.
This isn’t even meant to diminish the theories presented but rather to question the furthers of the study when the point of view given is so one sided.
On top of that I find that in independent research, the social constructionists haven’t had too much success in explanation of human nature, but rather the greatest psychological minds thus far such as Freud and Jung have found widely that humans have little control over their own nature let alone society controlling them into controlling themselves.
At the beginning of this course I found the arguments to be more convincing and the posits more straight forward and factual. I feel like I’m being lost.