I think I agree with all of your answers, especially the fourth one. I don't think there are distinct "masculine" and "feminine" virtues - men and women are likely to express "courage" or "compassion" in different ways, but it's not like there's only one way for a man or for a woman to be virtuous, so we'd expect variation. I'd even say that the virtues that don't come naturally to us could actually be the most important to cultivate - I think there are plenty of men who could benefit themselves and others by being more nurturing, kinder and more humble!
I guess my answer to the third question is similar - there are many things to be knowledgeable about, and I'd even say there are many ways to become wise - practical experience vs. deep contemplation, for example. While the first part of that question could be answered through observation, I honestly feel like the only answer to "are they wise by knowing the same or different things?" that makes any sense is "Yes, they are".
Just a note about "contrary" - that's a philosophical technical term by the time of Aristotle, and does not imply conflict as such, just difference. Any two colors, for example, that are not the same one color univocally are "contrary." One cannot be both actually orange and actually blue at the same time and in the same manner - but at the same time, these colors famously compliment one another. So asking if something is "the same with, contrary to, or opposite" something else is, understood rightly, exhaustive in a technical sense.
If there is a difference between these two things signified, a male person as male and a female person as female, but not something that makes them not just contrary but "contradictory", not at all the same and in fact opposed in some absolute or qualified sense, then male and female are contrary terms relative to that difference, not contradictory.
If, on the other hand, what it means essentially to be a male person as male is contradictory of what it means to be a female person as female, then to say someone is a male person, as such, absolutely excludes that way in which someone could be described as a female person, as such.
This is just a clarification for the technical logical use there. Obviously, we often use contrary to mean "different in some opposed way" or even "contradictory" in speech loosely.
How do you distinguish what is absolute vs what is not, without reducing people to sexual body parts? Besides body parts, is there anything exclusive to men or exclusive to women? There's a lot of talk of tendencies - men tend to be like this, women tend to be like that. Ok, but what do we say about women who prefer STEM and football, or men who prefer care work? They are real people, and any anthropology or philosophy of men and women has to account for them somehow. I don't know how to say "some women prefer STEM and football, and they are real women, and the essence of womanhood is something beyond female body parts."
The only answers I've found so far are "you really are a man, despite female body parts" and "you're wrong about your desire for STEM work. Deep down you truly prefer care work." Neither of these is satisfactory.
The best thing I've got so far is "pursue sanctity, grow in virtue, and you will become more your true identity," which is unsettling but perhaps the best we'll be able to do
The (somewhat unsatisfactory) answer I would offer to your first question is that there's a difference in identity between men and women that is a result of biology, but cannot be reduced back to it. That my identity has been molded in ways by having a female body, knowing that I can get pregnant, experiencing a monthly cycle, that won't be undone when I eventually lose these bodily capabilities.
I like that, as far as it goes. A woman who is interested in STEM work is approaching it with all that in the background, consciously or unconsciously thinking of herself that way or knowing that about herself, and probably doing things differently than she might otherwise -- and all those things would be really hard to pin down exactly.
I also want to add to my original comment that with bodies we should be talking about things that are less obvious, e.g. women's immune systems are different than men's, because a "just kill the foreign cells" approach doesn't work if your body is going to accommodate a baby with different DNA. I don't ever really think about that as a feminine thing, but I experience my immune system as it is, and I use tissues for allergies and get treatment for autoimmune diseases and whatever; I adjust to these things that are results of my immune system being what it is. And I probably adjust my behavior in imperceptible ways in response to these immune responses which I don't think of as specifically feminine (or don't really think about at all).
Absolutely, this is a great point! There are all sorts of differences between men and women that aren't obvious even from a decent understanding of our reproduction. And it also helps highlight that even women who never menstruate/can't give birth/etc. are still part of this shared experience.
I have to get to work so I can’t write out a full response, but as someone who grew up evangelical the word “complementary” immediately triggers my defenses. I don’t believe that you mean it in this way whatsoever, but when churches use the language of “complementarianism” it often results in a situation in which men and women are flattened into stereotypes. (And somehow, women are always better at household chores and making food for church potlucks to complement men’s… something? I was never clear on that lol.)
I think “that way of thinking” mostly speaks to a very human tendency to reject nuance because nuance is inherently hard? It’s a lot easier to say “men are x and women are y, so this is how we will construct gender roles” rather than “men tend to be x in aggregate, women tend to be y in aggregate, but there’s a ton of variation among individuals so we want to be understanding of difference while supportive of individual strengths and needs.”
I was at a conference (on women and leadership) once with Sr. Prudence and other speakers and both she and another speaker, Sr. Amelia, made the excellent and oft-repeated point that while we may see general tendencies, womanhood (and manhood) cannot be reducible to a list of personality traits, which I thought was such an excellent and wise point.
I think in this context “complementary / complementarity” is best understood as each sex making up for what the other sex lacks, or completes the other, but primarily on a very essential level of both sexes needed for generation and human flourishing.
Keeping it at such a basic understanding takes out much of the subjective and individual understanding and manifestation, which only distorts if universalized, and allows for the great variety of how men and women live out their lives and in relationships with each other.
I agree with your answers and I think women and men have a way of approaching the same task or subject matter differently; Edith Stein wrote of this but there are also many ways of being a woman and stereotypes make a caricature of reality.
The thing that struck me most reading this was that it completely ignores non-binary people. There have always been people who didn't fit in the gender binary, and this framing of the question seems to forget that they exist.
"There have always been people who didn't fit in the gender binary"
I do not understand what this means. I know that it is often said these days that "sex" and "gender" are different concepts, but I have never seen a cogent explanation of what the concept of "gender" (as distinct from sex) means. If you (or anyone on this thread) know of a good introduction to this concept, I should very much like to read it.
It's hard to understand what the "gender binary" is, without understanding how the word "gender" is being used.
The short answer is that "sex" describes to the biological level while "gender" relates to the halo of social expectations that go with sex but are contingent to a particular society.
To give an example : women have XX chromosomes, that's sex. Women likes pink, that's gender. It should be quite obvious that the association of the colour pink with women in our culture is not causally downstream of their XX chromosomes - and that a different culture may have different cultural assumptions about colour.
I think I agree with all of your answers, especially the fourth one. I don't think there are distinct "masculine" and "feminine" virtues - men and women are likely to express "courage" or "compassion" in different ways, but it's not like there's only one way for a man or for a woman to be virtuous, so we'd expect variation. I'd even say that the virtues that don't come naturally to us could actually be the most important to cultivate - I think there are plenty of men who could benefit themselves and others by being more nurturing, kinder and more humble!
I guess my answer to the third question is similar - there are many things to be knowledgeable about, and I'd even say there are many ways to become wise - practical experience vs. deep contemplation, for example. While the first part of that question could be answered through observation, I honestly feel like the only answer to "are they wise by knowing the same or different things?" that makes any sense is "Yes, they are".
Just a note about "contrary" - that's a philosophical technical term by the time of Aristotle, and does not imply conflict as such, just difference. Any two colors, for example, that are not the same one color univocally are "contrary." One cannot be both actually orange and actually blue at the same time and in the same manner - but at the same time, these colors famously compliment one another. So asking if something is "the same with, contrary to, or opposite" something else is, understood rightly, exhaustive in a technical sense.
If there is a difference between these two things signified, a male person as male and a female person as female, but not something that makes them not just contrary but "contradictory", not at all the same and in fact opposed in some absolute or qualified sense, then male and female are contrary terms relative to that difference, not contradictory.
If, on the other hand, what it means essentially to be a male person as male is contradictory of what it means to be a female person as female, then to say someone is a male person, as such, absolutely excludes that way in which someone could be described as a female person, as such.
This is just a clarification for the technical logical use there. Obviously, we often use contrary to mean "different in some opposed way" or even "contradictory" in speech loosely.
Very much appreciated! These are the wages of not reading the first two volumes first!
How do you distinguish what is absolute vs what is not, without reducing people to sexual body parts? Besides body parts, is there anything exclusive to men or exclusive to women? There's a lot of talk of tendencies - men tend to be like this, women tend to be like that. Ok, but what do we say about women who prefer STEM and football, or men who prefer care work? They are real people, and any anthropology or philosophy of men and women has to account for them somehow. I don't know how to say "some women prefer STEM and football, and they are real women, and the essence of womanhood is something beyond female body parts."
The only answers I've found so far are "you really are a man, despite female body parts" and "you're wrong about your desire for STEM work. Deep down you truly prefer care work." Neither of these is satisfactory.
The best thing I've got so far is "pursue sanctity, grow in virtue, and you will become more your true identity," which is unsettling but perhaps the best we'll be able to do
The (somewhat unsatisfactory) answer I would offer to your first question is that there's a difference in identity between men and women that is a result of biology, but cannot be reduced back to it. That my identity has been molded in ways by having a female body, knowing that I can get pregnant, experiencing a monthly cycle, that won't be undone when I eventually lose these bodily capabilities.
I like that, as far as it goes. A woman who is interested in STEM work is approaching it with all that in the background, consciously or unconsciously thinking of herself that way or knowing that about herself, and probably doing things differently than she might otherwise -- and all those things would be really hard to pin down exactly.
I also want to add to my original comment that with bodies we should be talking about things that are less obvious, e.g. women's immune systems are different than men's, because a "just kill the foreign cells" approach doesn't work if your body is going to accommodate a baby with different DNA. I don't ever really think about that as a feminine thing, but I experience my immune system as it is, and I use tissues for allergies and get treatment for autoimmune diseases and whatever; I adjust to these things that are results of my immune system being what it is. And I probably adjust my behavior in imperceptible ways in response to these immune responses which I don't think of as specifically feminine (or don't really think about at all).
Absolutely, this is a great point! There are all sorts of differences between men and women that aren't obvious even from a decent understanding of our reproduction. And it also helps highlight that even women who never menstruate/can't give birth/etc. are still part of this shared experience.
I have to get to work so I can’t write out a full response, but as someone who grew up evangelical the word “complementary” immediately triggers my defenses. I don’t believe that you mean it in this way whatsoever, but when churches use the language of “complementarianism” it often results in a situation in which men and women are flattened into stereotypes. (And somehow, women are always better at household chores and making food for church potlucks to complement men’s… something? I was never clear on that lol.)
Yep! It's a word I'm reluctant to cede to that way of thinking, but you're not wrong to have your hackles go up when you hear it.
I think “that way of thinking” mostly speaks to a very human tendency to reject nuance because nuance is inherently hard? It’s a lot easier to say “men are x and women are y, so this is how we will construct gender roles” rather than “men tend to be x in aggregate, women tend to be y in aggregate, but there’s a ton of variation among individuals so we want to be understanding of difference while supportive of individual strengths and needs.”
I was at a conference (on women and leadership) once with Sr. Prudence and other speakers and both she and another speaker, Sr. Amelia, made the excellent and oft-repeated point that while we may see general tendencies, womanhood (and manhood) cannot be reducible to a list of personality traits, which I thought was such an excellent and wise point.
I think in this context “complementary / complementarity” is best understood as each sex making up for what the other sex lacks, or completes the other, but primarily on a very essential level of both sexes needed for generation and human flourishing.
Keeping it at such a basic understanding takes out much of the subjective and individual understanding and manifestation, which only distorts if universalized, and allows for the great variety of how men and women live out their lives and in relationships with each other.
I agree with your answers and I think women and men have a way of approaching the same task or subject matter differently; Edith Stein wrote of this but there are also many ways of being a woman and stereotypes make a caricature of reality.
The thing that struck me most reading this was that it completely ignores non-binary people. There have always been people who didn't fit in the gender binary, and this framing of the question seems to forget that they exist.
"There have always been people who didn't fit in the gender binary"
I do not understand what this means. I know that it is often said these days that "sex" and "gender" are different concepts, but I have never seen a cogent explanation of what the concept of "gender" (as distinct from sex) means. If you (or anyone on this thread) know of a good introduction to this concept, I should very much like to read it.
It's hard to understand what the "gender binary" is, without understanding how the word "gender" is being used.
The short answer is that "sex" describes to the biological level while "gender" relates to the halo of social expectations that go with sex but are contingent to a particular society.
To give an example : women have XX chromosomes, that's sex. Women likes pink, that's gender. It should be quite obvious that the association of the colour pink with women in our culture is not causally downstream of their XX chromosomes - and that a different culture may have different cultural assumptions about colour.