I What about Gender?

*The first six entries to this blog are written as a class assignment, but I think I have strayed far enough to appeal to both my instructor and any other audience equally.*
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What about gender? Depending on your inflection, you might be raising a worthy topic or dismissing it. You're born with your gender, then you get married, what else is there to it? And if you start questioning it, wouldn't that open a can of worms? It’s like questioning something as basic as morals, right? But on the other side, isn't categorizing someone's feelings or personality demeaning? And what would be the purpose of it all, to assign more meaningless labels to natural things? What kind of person studies gender?
...What do we mean by gender, as opposed to sex? In sociological terms, gender is more about one's identity, while sex deals with the anatomical level. The concepts of gender have continually shifted like any social issue, and the information age has pushed us into the open to take a look at ourselves closer than ever before. Why? When we recognize awkwardness, cognitive dissonance between independent norms, we have made the first step of truly understanding: confusion.

As for a little relevant news, the Washington Post recently published this story:

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111116943.html

Perhaps fortunately, city officials claim the Church is not indispensible, even though it pours millions of dollars into city programs and “serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington's homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church.” But how can pride become an obstacle for charity? This is the same institution that insists God must be on our currency, and the Ten Commandments be posted in our courts, because morality depends on it. If they insist on calling it immoral or silly, didn’t Jesus love sinners and children? Since when has withdrawing charity ever preserved the moral fiber of society? It’s a fairly moot point to judge institutionalized religion against the original teachings of its prophet, but the hypocrisy and hate won’t go away by letting it go. How do we reconcile this clash between traditional definitions of masculinity and femininity and the new interpretations? It ultimately seems to come down to what works, and (for better or worse) the former has a track record and postmodernism does not. How can we trust something that has never been done before to work out? An equally important question is whether status quo can really be trusted to carry us through a totally new era.

There is an image stuck in my head of a friend who used to play on local recreational league soccer teams for years when we were growing up. He kicked like a sissy, as they say, whatever that means. He would always be on defense, and go at the ball on his toes, arms up in a chicken posture, and never really made powerful kicks. I don’t remember what sort of, if any, flack he might have received for this, but I certainly got scowls and heckling for behaving like him. I didn’t dance around it like he did, and he would admit he did, but I always tried to wrestle the ball away from the incoming offensive line. He didn’t take most things seriously, but I tried to be dexterous because I took it too seriously. “Boot it out of there!” parents and teammates would yell at me, infuriated that I was somehow being unorthodox for my field position. And yet most of the time it looked impossible, from my position, to punt a ball being dribbled between the feet of someone running at full speed—that is, without accidentally kicking his leg, breaking his knee, and being called out for a foul. It was infuriating to have teammates looking at me as if I was trying to lose the game, and the coach and sideline crowd giving half-hearted encouragement as if I just didn’t know any better. Why blow up on someone if you can’t explain the problem? Who had the better perspective of my playing, the crowd or those on the field?
These frustrations made a lasting impression on me, and I will never know whether they were assuming something or I was the one being blind. But this is the point of doing your best to articulate what you feel, instead of letting opinions run loose and unchecked. This brings us to sociology, religious studies, philosophy, and the questions they ask about regulating humans and their different ways of living. So once again, why study gender or morals? The point is institutions have never been united, at least in the sense that there are dozens of them that have independently risen on different continents. There is nothing to preserve if what we have is a set of religious and cultural perspectives that are not only autonomous, but assume their correctness extends beyond their own borders. If we are to live in the inevitable, rapidly globalizing world of 21st century communication, we have to find ways to reconcile differences and find truth instead of claiming it in the face of contradictions. Is the Catholic diocese in Washington D.C. more morally correct than those who campaign for gay rights? If I let the ball go by, was it my fault or was I a victim of circumstance? Perhaps the better sorts of questions are: how are both sides right and wrong, and can both sides agree on any higher ends?
One reason I have a hard time drawing lines between theories or fields of study is that I generally agree with the views of Indian intellectuals like Jiddu Krishnamurti, who says things like,

Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.

And once I begin quoting him, there’s no end to the relating meaning between other quotes of his:

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

And perhaps more relevantly,

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

A problem is not solved by the solution itself. A fire hose didn’t save your house from burning to the ground, it was the firefighters and their efforts that should be thanked. By the same token, a gun doesn’t need to be put on trial for murder, the human who used it should be. Could a murder take place, or a house be dowsed without the help of these tools? It’s certainly possible by different means because humans invented guns and hoses to begin with. So why is it that many people fail to see the extent that this principle applies to other areas in our lives? The gap between a philosopher’s world and the lay audience is chiefly in the latter’s unwillingness to believe in the interrelatedness of all things without having a bridge built for them between each individual thing.
But certainly things like society, law, science, religion, music, murder, sports, or even pornography are non-overlapping magisteria, right? If I were to only compare religion and science, one could argue the separateness for a while, as Steven Jay Gould did. But it seems the longer the list grows, the list of excuses to discriminate becomes shorter. Similarities can be picked out between law and science, or law and religion, for example. Science explains our past in terms of evolution, the origin of our instincts and sexual drives, but then what could pornography ever have to do with religion? An uncle of mine, who studied in a Catholic seminary and is as averse to Indian philosophy as anyone I know, cherishes the quote of G.K. Chesterton: “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God [in the wrong place].” The chart below explains the logic of transcendental meditation, where one can at least supposedly gain control over one’s mind and thoughts by drifting down (whichever verb and prepositional combination you prefer) to the essential, intangible, indescribable place from which all things come. One way to explain would be that the dot at the base of physics is the “Big Bang,” and the dot under consciousness is enlightenment.


It presents the dichotomy between all things (yin and yang, inductive and deductive, expression and concentration, etc…). But in fully understanding both dispositions, one can learn to apply both depending on the context. I believe the wider your perspective, the more connected you will be to everything and everyone around you, and from there you are better qualified to spot what is truly the source of problems or interrupting the flow of what is ultimately valuable. And yet, anyone who lets themselves get stuck in that wide perspective will never truly understand the subjective feelings of another person’s inner world. So the best perspective on truth isn’t necessarily the widest and most inclusive. It manifests itself as a paradox, applying to higher dimensions as fractals have shown us. One must able to see how we are even smaller than a grain of sand on a beach; that even our galaxy is smaller in the scale of our universe and who knows how many other universes there are? But equally important is the ability to see the universe or infinity within a grain of sand. The world can be either perceived objectively in a removed sense, or subjectively in an experientially. As Bruce Lee said, “Knowing is not enough, we must do,” and we must not only theorize and objectify things into terms as concrete as a cup, but be like water and conform to situations as they are, like a cup.
We dissect and compare beliefs or gender identities in sociology not because of the sort of curiosity that kills cats, but the sort of curiosity that leads people to understanding and loving each other. The campaign for gay marriage is not the result of selfish indignance in defense of whims, but an outcry by human beings asking for permission to be who they are and feel what they feel without being ashamed or illegitimized. By the same token, the very same religious institutions that oppose “deviant” sexuality defend themselves from the criticism of atheists by claiming science is (philosophically) as much a matter of faith as religion is, and that people should be allowed to cling to whatever beliefs get them through the day or their miserable lives (I have watched a considerable number of high profile debates on this subject and challenge anyone who claims this is anything less than a summation of all apologetics). If believing in an afterlife gets you through the day, I have no right to step on your beliefs—yet the inescapable implication is that those who don’t share your faith will be going to hell. We study to understand, not to objectify. Truth isn’t something magical to be used like a “ring to rule them all,” but rather something we can share, like the view of a sunset. Now comes the hard part: determining where the sun is. But doesn’t that take us back to the question I asked in the beginning? Once again, I return to Krishnamurti, who claims the first step is the last step. If you were to finally understand something fully, having it in clear view, it would then become a situation where it’s almost as if the world is staring back at you, waiting for you do make a move: “Whatcha gonna do now that you know it all?” And in the other case we are pursuing clarity in the dark, facing indecision because we can’t see how anything relates in any big picture. If the first step is the same as the last step, the differences between us may be just on which foot we take that step.