For what it’s worth, Classical Arabic has a nearly full set of dual pronouns and conjugations: masculine and feminine in both the second and third persons (the further you go along the spectrum of vernacular Arabic varieties, the fewer of those grammatical forms remain). One of the most commonly cited works of the pre-Islamic Arabic literary canon, the mu‘allaqa of Imru’l Qays, has a second-person dual imperative verb as its very first word (qifā/قفا). I sometimes fiddle with an English translation when I have trouble falling asleep. Unfortunately, Classical Arabic is very concise and compressed, which means an English line leaves little room for what a literal translation might render, “Stop, you two! Let us weep at remembering a beloved and his abode…”
"Is [the] way to find solidarity across that asymmetry to find ways to blend more and more, to grow to resemble each other?
"Or is it to lean into some elements of your unlikeness, the way choristers hold harmonies?"
Both! Especially among choristers, I'd think. A potentially-beautiful difference in pitch may not be beautiful if choral blend is off in other ways. Choral blend requires (rather obviously) becoming more like your fellow singers when necessary, and (less obviously) more different when necessary, too. (A naturally-huge voice might unobtrusively bow out entirely on the softest passages, leaving those to smaller voices. Breathing at different times in order to create an impression of no gap in phrases most choristers can't do well in one breath is also important. And so on.) Blending makes individual differences unobtrusive. It doesn't annihilate them.
Female-female duets are normal in synchronized swimming. A pair so matched it could be mistaken for identical twins seems especially prized in competition, but even then, gestures mirroring one another are opposites (an axis is flipped). Even symmetry needs difference, if only of axis, angle, or displacement, to manifest, revealing what's alike despite the difference. Interestingly, the following essay claims that polyphonic singing has an egalitarian symmetry that mere harmonizing typically lacks:
Analogy finds similarity across difference, and analogy's beauty comes from both the similarity and the difference. Writing verse about how my beloved's eyes are like eyes, nose like a nose, and so on, would thwart the purpose of analogy (to comic effect, I hope, if anyone tries it!).
"The Father forever sees and infinitely loves the whole depth of his being in the Son, illumined as responsive love in the fullness of the Spirit, and in the always determinate infinity of his triune being God begets all the riches of being – all that all things might ever be – in the image and light of his essence; and thus God himself is already his own analogy, his own infinite otherness and perfect likeness." – David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite (a great book, both in excellence and size – here's one review: http://thesometimespreacher.com/2016/01/the-beauty-of-the-infinite-by-david-bentley-hart/ )
For stories on symmetrical foils, I immediately thought of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. The play presents both identical twins and married couples as dyads, and starts out with exploring the anxieties for the self in being intimately connected to another half who is actually a different self. But the conclusion of the play resolves all of the fractured pairings (separated twins, a rocky marriage) with a restoration that depends on recognition. Difference first has to be acknowledged so that each pairing can work as united.
Ha! I appreciate this (especially because I haven’t engaged that deeply with this very silly play).
My husband’s students just wrapped up Twelfth Night, with a number of sort-of symmetrical pairs, where the audience is aware of the mismatch but the characters aren’t.
I love this invitation to think about the dyads I’m a part of. Most obvious to this discussion is my marriage to my husband, but my first association with the word “dyad” is the mother-baby dyad, so I’m also thinking of both my nurslings in turn. The asymmetry in the mother-baby relationship is unavoidable and to some extent self-explanatory. It wouldn’t make any sense for me to be physically cared for by my baby!
But the relationship between two grownups is a bit more ambiguous. I think at best there’s some of both the dynamics you describe. In the big picture we encourage each other symmetrically toward our common goal of Christlikeness, and in day-to-day practicalities we often work best when we specialize. If the family is the smallest church, we two are the smallest unit of the “one body, many parts” model.
I like this: "In the big picture we encourage each other symmetrically toward our common goal of Christlikeness, and in day-to-day practicalities we often work best when we specialize." That seems largely true of the relationship between my husband and I as well.
I wonder if a general statement about dyads that work well might involve something similar, but along lines that are more general and secular (as in, based in the way people are, rather than based in a specific religion). In thinking about different kinds of lack, philosophers (going back at least to Aristotle) will distinguish between lacks that are more incidental and lacks that are attacks upon the nature of a thing. Blindness, for instance, is a classic case of a lack for a human being that is not a lack for a mole (or not in the same way) and definitely not a lack for a plant or a rock. (Though I suppose there might be a corresponding "blindness" in a plant that lacked some, for plants, normative ability to respond to the outside world. But that plant wouldn't last very long.) But not being a figure skater (while I feel it personally as a lack!) is not a lack in the same way.
Moving out of the realm of more physical abilities and talents into the ethical realm, if one spouse has an abiding flaw--e.g., gossiping or anger or overeating or procrastinating--that is a lack in the way that blindness is, a deficiency in what human beings out to be. But to lack, say, the ability to make small talk or fix the plumbing, while they belong to the same sort of intellective/emotive realm as virtues and vices, is not really the same thing (though such amoral lacks may be inconvenient at times). These are not lacks in the way that blindness is; they do not attack the root of what it is to be human.
Ideally in a spousal pair, then, it seems the relationship oftentimes works well when the spouses make up for each others' lacks, when those lacks are not moral in nature. It's OK and in many cases actually beneficial for one of the couple to do the small talk for the other, or fix the plumbing for the other--since lacking these skills is not a deficiency in human nature, but simply a matter of personality and habits. But in those areas that are real lacks, true deficiencies in what it is to be human, it would be absurd (and wrong) to say, "Hey, you can be the just spouse and I can be the merciful spouse" or "You get to be good at honesty and I will be good at prudence." You want to become more like your spouse in those areas where they are virtuous, and you want them to gain your specific virtues. And I think in happy relationships this does often happen.
Of course, vices can rub off too. I'm rereading "Emma" for another book club for the manieth time, and I'm struck again by how Austen shows healthy couples (e.g., Mr. Knightley and Emma) sanding down each other's rough edges, but also, more strikingly perhaps, how bad couples make each other worse (Mr. and Mrs. Elton in this novel, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet famously in P&P).
Tl;dr, how you handle relationship asymmetry probably depends at least in part on the nature of that asymmetry--you want to blend when doing so grows your own soul; but with other things, leaning into unlikeness can be more profitable.
I like how E.L. Konisgburg's narrator puts it in About the B'nai Bagels:
"Sometimes I thought that Hersch was more of a brother to me than Spencer. We each had some bumps in our personalities, but they were in different places and at least they were the same size. That made it good; you need a friend who is a little different from you to rub against. That way you file down each other's rough edges."
I love Mary Harrington's definition of marriage as a way to show "radical solidarity between the sexes". But of course. I never thought of it that way, we lend a hand to each other to outmanouver our individual weaknesses (e.g.not being able to open jam glasses) and to double our strengths. Lovely way of putting it.
As to the summer book club - I'd like to propose reading "The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous" by Joseph Henrich et al.
It's an anthropologists' and psychologists' view on the differences in the ways in which "we", i.e. people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic countries, and people from other cultures think and organize their societies. I think this might be especially relevant to you and your readers because we are all looking for a way to create community and foster interdependence in cultures that promote independence, individualistic view and rather hostile to community (not necessarily in theory but in practice). It's an eye-opener to read about peoples that put community and interdependence at their core. The book is very entertaining as well, it was great fun learning about a variety of societies and the way they're organized.
I am not particularly attached to dancing, but I think it's worth noting that even in ballets there are large-scale group dances, which are themselves like line dating or country dancing. I think if we look at group dances we will see this principle of dyad. Men on one side, women on the other. This reveals to me that dancing arises out of, or at least along side of, the belief that the world is split into two. You only participate in one side of it. The other side is a mystery, and it is only slightly revealed in the moments when the two sides meet: dance is but one example of this, and marriage is the more obvious one. This mirrors the basic division into heaven and earth, which meet only at exactly one point: The reception of Holy Communion.
Dances looked at philosophically or even phenomenologically really should be understood, in my opinion, as the celebration of distinction, the mystery of the other, and the true union with the other, if only for the duration of the dance. Dances end, and though the mystery remains throughout, it is reestablished. Eventually, your participation in the dance ends.
Hmmm...that's very much in line with more "traditional" cultures where women and men were firmly put into seperate spheres. I think my grandmothers never thought of their husbands much in the way of a "natural community". Their "natural" community were: their original families, i.e. parents and siblings, and other women. Their husbands were THERE, but they were not necessarily confidants; they were people who were slightly outsiders in all that mattered. You obviously had to be married so you could have a family, and you did your utmost to make the family thrive (which would include supporting your partner) but if you were looking for someone like YOU, you would go to your siblings or parents or female friends/relatives.
There was always a tension between your "natural" community and that slightly forced community of married people.
I really wonder whether it's a homo sapiens thing comparable to all those mammals where you have a herd of mostly female animals with their offspring and a couple of solitary males grumpily wandering about by themselves most of the time.
That's one of the strengths of Christian teaching on marriage, I think: They become one flesh, and a new family. This is a natural reason why a love match is important to Christian teaching---and I'll note that the children help cement the unity of a partnership, so long as the husband is involved in developing the children.
As far as the traditional society bit, that's the biggest part of what I had in mind. Without a separation into two spheres, women always get shafted. The development---reduction---of worlds of gender to mere physical sex has had many bad effects. In particular, a traditional society is more flexible to allow exceptions to its order because it is a comprehensive division, such as when from necessity widows and orphans might be admitted into an otherwise male-only guild; our own society is far more rigid, relying far more on stereotypes, which were at best the arbitrary markers of the grand mystery-division of separate worlds. To tear down the barrier between male and female, to create a comprehensive and universal theory of man, makes humanity a comprehensive and universal male, and women always get shafted in that arrangement. It was industrialization which created the second sex.
This is, I think, why the fights over bathroom access and sports are so hard-fought. They are the last women's spaces without competition with men. In competition with men, women lose. I appreciate the project of Other Feminisms because it seeks a route other than competition.
Absolutely, Christian teaching on marriage is a wonderful and lofty ideal, especially at the time when it was developed, which was enormously brutal for women (being considered to be property etc.). Tom Holland's "Dominion" does a good job of showing how revolutionary early Christian teaching was because it actually regarded women as equally made in God's image.
I think we're all doing a lot worse since we've drifted into a postreligious society - because we're losing the awareness that we're more than bodies to poke and push around for our pleasure.
"To tear down the barrier between male and female, to create a comprehensive and universal theory of man, makes humanity a comprehensive and universal male, and women always get shafted in that arrangement. "
Your words reminded me of what I read in Gertrud von le Fort's Eternal Woman concerning woman's efforts to be like man and join in, as you said, the "comprehensive and universal theory of man": “In a doubly fatal way, [woman] succumbed as woman to the very one-sidedness, to the mistakes and the dangers upon which the man of the period (“The period of the rising feminist movement”)had sickened…In succumbing to man, woman no longer surrenders; she throws herself away. She has nothing more to give, she is no longer man’s other half. As woman she ceases to be, and the balance of life, its polarity, has been destroyed thereby. In clinging exclusively to the pole to which she does not properly belong, she loses the one that is her own; the mystery of charity with its profound reciprocity becomes extinguished, and the fruitfulness of the relationship ends.” Pg60
Also helpful is her description of the detrimental effect on man: “During the epochs when a one-sided, masculine culture prevails, not only are all feminine characteristics absent, but faith in the hidden forces is replaced by confidence in bare evidence…Such a culture means, furthermore, an excess of masculine characteristics, and their disfigurement in the face of the man who stands alone. The absence of one part of reality, and this is extremely important, calls forth a strange unsteadiness in the image of the remaining part.”pg54 Maybe this describes the birth of the distorted image of masculinity that so many today are fleeing from?
"I appreciate the project of Other Feminisms because it seeks a route other than competition." Me too!!! As you point out, the fruits of competition are sour.
I think there is a lesson in economics and politics in that statement, even a revolutionary one, and such a revolution for which the reddest communism is not nearly radical enough.
I think I can go further. It is my contention that to reassert reality against ideology will mean unraveling liberalism and capitalism. This is not anti-liberal in terms of being anti-Biden or anti-Bernie but in terms of being anti-voting. Capitalism, for its part, created democracy as part of its end to make everyone self-interested. If self-interest is as pervasive as I am saying, the medieval term for our kind of governance is not democracy but tyranny.
It's not all hopeless. I think all it takes at this point is personal relationships and a gift economy, and the all-consuming system will collapse. Its propagandas will become impossible and live will become more liveable. For more on what I mean, I recommend checking out the New Polity podcast series on YouTube on the topic of tyranny.
Thank you for the recommendation! I will check out the podcast and search for tyranny.
For my part, I am partial to the market economy - a market economy is the tool and as we become better human beings (through community, personal relationships and more) we mature our ability to wield that tool well. It is a gamble...always a gamble with human beings...the possibility of neglect and abuse alongside the possibility of generosity, charity, etc. The choice of that lower road must always be there because it is in choosing the higher road that we become truly human. To become human, we must will the good and that, God knows, means having the choice to serve ourselves or serve others.
That characterization of group dancing is true of Anglo cultures--my British isles ancestors would recognize it--though even in England, weren't May dancers traditionally all male? And my husband's Jewish ancestors were used to dancing separately; you had a complete male dance that was distinct from the female one. Dyadic things like contra and swing dancing aren't necessarily the only model (even though I prefer them, personally).
Fair enough. I think in that regard I was responding to the prompt, which assumed dyadic dance as typical of dance. I do appreciate how you do underline the "separate worlds" of men and women even in those counter-examples.
I love Elizabeth Goudge's Green Dolphin Street as an exploration of symmetry and asymmetry. Two sisters, Marguerite and Marianne, fall in love with the same man. The sisters are very very different, but their names are similar and poor William cannot keep their names straight no matter how hard he tries. William ends up in far away New Zealand and writes to ask Marguerite's hand in marriage. Unfortunately he writes the wrong name and Marrianne ends up traveling from Guernsey to New Zealand where she is met by a very surprised William who realizes his mistake too late, but nobly decides to make the best of it and marries the wrong sister. He has to work so hard for solidarity with her, much harder one assumes than if he'd married the gentler and sweeter Marguerite. But both of them grow in solidarity and in holiness. Meanwhile Marianne's stealing of her beloved opens a door for Marguerite to pursue a religious vocation, which turns out not to be a consolation prize but a true flourishing of her soul. There are many lovely moments in the beginning and the end of the sisters as a dyad and this constant back and forth with William having these unequal relationships with each sister in turn. Marguerite becomes a powerful intercessor in her prayers for the married couple, highlighting the way those incelibate religious vocations can strengthen and support married life.
Hmm, these first two questions take my mind to why this asymmetry exists…what is its purpose? What does it mean? Over the last few years I have found great hope and satisfaction in learning about why this asymmetry exists….this male and female aspect of humanity. And, because my worldview is theistic, indeed Christian, I have looked to God for answers...Why would God do that?
I have heard Orthodox priest and patristics scholar, the Very Rev. Dr. John Behr postulate that it is tied to the very purpose of our existence. And, along similar lines, in her 1934 book, The Eternal Woman, Gertrud von le Fort explains that this polarity in our lives characterizes “the revelation of all being,” meaning the totality of being. How magnificent! Who are we? This is what I have found from these two marvelous minds:
WHAT IS IT TO BE HUMAN?
Father Behr noted that being human was described in a very curious way by St. Ignatius of Antioch when he was being marched to his martyrdom in second-century Rome. Along the way, he wrote to fellow Christians in Rome, imploring them not to try and save him: “Birth-pangs are upon me. Suffer (allow) me, my brethren; hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die…Suffer me to receive the pure light; when I shall have arrived there, I shall be a human being. Suffer me to follow the example of the passion of my God.”(quoted from a translation of Ignatius’ Letters by Alistair Stewart found in the article by Father Behr From Adam to Christ: From Male and Female to Being Human, pg20, The
Wheel 13/14, Spring/Summer 2018). Ignatius was "not yet born, not yet living, not yet human; only by his martyrdom, in imitation of Christ, will he be born into life as a human being.” (Behr, pg20)
Wondering how Ignatius could have come to this understanding of being human, Fr. Behr looked to Ignatius's community, “the school of John”, in particular John's gospel. Father Behr notes the well-known parallels between the Gospel of John and Genesis (foremost in this case, the start of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning…”) and suggests that Christ’s words from the cross in John, “It is finished,” are actually the conclusion to God’s words in Genesis: “Let us make a human being.” So, in John, Christ is confirming the perfection of God’s project: Behr notes that in Genesis, God speaks everything into being with a “let it be", UNTIL he says, “Let us make a human being,” thereby entering into the project that is brought to perfection in Christ, the first human being. And in John, Pilate also announces this truth when he says of Christ before he is crucified, “Behold the man!” But, if Christ is the first human being, what is God showing us in Adam? Further on, Behr takes us back to Paul’s words: “Adam was but ‘a type of the one who was to come’ (Rom. 5:14), as are we who have come into the world in Adam; a preliminary sketch, the starting point from which we are called to grow into ’the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’ (Eph. 4:13).” (Behr, pg20). Paul's words teach us that Adam exemplifies our beginning, and Christ shows us our end as human beings. And, most interestingly, Behr points out that, “If God’s project is to create living human beings in his image and likeness, what he in fact does is to create males and females.” (Behr, pg.25)
WHY MALE AND FEMALE?
Indeed, Behr notes that in Gen. 1:27-28, "being 'in the image' and 'being male and female' are put in parallel with one another, “ (Behr, pg.25) and “[o]ur existence as male and female is in fact the horizon in which we (or at least most of us) learn, through the power of erotic attraction, to lay down our lives for another….In marriage then, males and females are, quite literally, 'humanized’!” (Behr, pg.25-26). Behr goes on to explain that it is martyrdom, self-giving love, dying to self, that brings us from Adam to Christ whether that is in marriage, monastic or single life. And, elsewhere, Behr has stated the startling fact that we are the ones who must say, “Let it be!” in order to bring about God’s own work, making human beings. Amazing!
GOD SPEAKS THROUGH MAN AND WOMAN
And, if Behr introduces the idea that this polarity is what draws male and female together so that God can mould us into human beings, it seems to me that von le Fort’s work shows what it actually is that God is bringing together in man and woman and so explains how God is working in those non-romantic relationships as well. In fact, man and woman are God’s own symbolic language: Woman embodies the surrender of the creature to the Creator, and man embodies the capacity of the creature to cooperate with the Creator. If woman bears her symbol faithfully, she lives in surrender to the Creator and points the way for man to learn that his creative power is not his own, not intended for self-redemption, but is received, and that redemption only comes when he surrenders his creative power to God’s purposes: “[t]he faith in self-redemption as man’s belief in his own creative powers is the specifically masculine madness of our secularized age [she’s writing around 1934]and is at the same time the explanation of all its failures.” She goes on to say, ”Nowhere is the creature a redeemer, but it should be a cooperator in the work of redemption. Creative power can only be received, and the man also must conceive the creative spirit in the sign of Mary, in humility and surrender, or he will not receive it at all... for the world may indeed be moved by the strength of the man, but blessed, in the true sense of the word, it will be only with the sign of the woman.” (The Eternal Woman, Gertrud von le Fort, 2010 by Ignatius Press, pg18). And, this view through a cosmic lens sharpens our view of the male/female relationship, in marriage or otherwise: "Every sort of cooperation, even the most insignificant, between man and woman is, in its bearing upon the wholeness of life, of far greater import than associations that are purely masculine or purely feminine." (von le Fort, pg. 45) "The dominating creative qualities of man are but one part of a productive reality; the other is humility. The dawning of the other dimension of existence is at bottom the dawn of the humility of the creature. This is the great condition for the dawning upon man of God the Creator, the God who inexorably works only from the two spheres of being. In the cooperation of woman as the mate of his spirit, man experiences his own creativeness as mere cooperation in the work of God, who creates alone." (pg. 50). So, as we learn to co-create, sharing in each other’s cosmic qualities while each bearing our symbol well, we are moulded by God into human beings, suited for participation in the life of God. So it is by both ways that we find solidarity ...across and within this magnificent asymmetry. (See also Fr. Behr's book, The Mystery of Christ- Life in Death,2006 )
Well, that just blew my mind. I'm particularly grateful for the intro to Fr. Behr's work, specifically in reference to Christ's death and, "It is finished." Thank you.
Analisa, I am so happy - I have wanted to share Fr. Behr's work on the early fathers for a long time because having their vision presented to me "blew my mind" as well. It literally made Christ real for me.
For what it’s worth, Classical Arabic has a nearly full set of dual pronouns and conjugations: masculine and feminine in both the second and third persons (the further you go along the spectrum of vernacular Arabic varieties, the fewer of those grammatical forms remain). One of the most commonly cited works of the pre-Islamic Arabic literary canon, the mu‘allaqa of Imru’l Qays, has a second-person dual imperative verb as its very first word (qifā/قفا). I sometimes fiddle with an English translation when I have trouble falling asleep. Unfortunately, Classical Arabic is very concise and compressed, which means an English line leaves little room for what a literal translation might render, “Stop, you two! Let us weep at remembering a beloved and his abode…”
"Is [the] way to find solidarity across that asymmetry to find ways to blend more and more, to grow to resemble each other?
"Or is it to lean into some elements of your unlikeness, the way choristers hold harmonies?"
Both! Especially among choristers, I'd think. A potentially-beautiful difference in pitch may not be beautiful if choral blend is off in other ways. Choral blend requires (rather obviously) becoming more like your fellow singers when necessary, and (less obviously) more different when necessary, too. (A naturally-huge voice might unobtrusively bow out entirely on the softest passages, leaving those to smaller voices. Breathing at different times in order to create an impression of no gap in phrases most choristers can't do well in one breath is also important. And so on.) Blending makes individual differences unobtrusive. It doesn't annihilate them.
Female-female duets are normal in synchronized swimming. A pair so matched it could be mistaken for identical twins seems especially prized in competition, but even then, gestures mirroring one another are opposites (an axis is flipped). Even symmetry needs difference, if only of axis, angle, or displacement, to manifest, revealing what's alike despite the difference. Interestingly, the following essay claims that polyphonic singing has an egalitarian symmetry that mere harmonizing typically lacks:
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/music/the-politics-of-polyphonic-singing
Analogy finds similarity across difference, and analogy's beauty comes from both the similarity and the difference. Writing verse about how my beloved's eyes are like eyes, nose like a nose, and so on, would thwart the purpose of analogy (to comic effect, I hope, if anyone tries it!).
"The Father forever sees and infinitely loves the whole depth of his being in the Son, illumined as responsive love in the fullness of the Spirit, and in the always determinate infinity of his triune being God begets all the riches of being – all that all things might ever be – in the image and light of his essence; and thus God himself is already his own analogy, his own infinite otherness and perfect likeness." – David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite (a great book, both in excellence and size – here's one review: http://thesometimespreacher.com/2016/01/the-beauty-of-the-infinite-by-david-bentley-hart/ )
"Even symmetry needs difference, if only of axis, angle, or displacement, to manifest, revealing what's alike despite the difference."
Oh I really really like that.
For stories on symmetrical foils, I immediately thought of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. The play presents both identical twins and married couples as dyads, and starts out with exploring the anxieties for the self in being intimately connected to another half who is actually a different self. But the conclusion of the play resolves all of the fractured pairings (separated twins, a rocky marriage) with a restoration that depends on recognition. Difference first has to be acknowledged so that each pairing can work as united.
Ha! I appreciate this (especially because I haven’t engaged that deeply with this very silly play).
My husband’s students just wrapped up Twelfth Night, with a number of sort-of symmetrical pairs, where the audience is aware of the mismatch but the characters aren’t.
I love this invitation to think about the dyads I’m a part of. Most obvious to this discussion is my marriage to my husband, but my first association with the word “dyad” is the mother-baby dyad, so I’m also thinking of both my nurslings in turn. The asymmetry in the mother-baby relationship is unavoidable and to some extent self-explanatory. It wouldn’t make any sense for me to be physically cared for by my baby!
But the relationship between two grownups is a bit more ambiguous. I think at best there’s some of both the dynamics you describe. In the big picture we encourage each other symmetrically toward our common goal of Christlikeness, and in day-to-day practicalities we often work best when we specialize. If the family is the smallest church, we two are the smallest unit of the “one body, many parts” model.
I like this: "In the big picture we encourage each other symmetrically toward our common goal of Christlikeness, and in day-to-day practicalities we often work best when we specialize." That seems largely true of the relationship between my husband and I as well.
I wonder if a general statement about dyads that work well might involve something similar, but along lines that are more general and secular (as in, based in the way people are, rather than based in a specific religion). In thinking about different kinds of lack, philosophers (going back at least to Aristotle) will distinguish between lacks that are more incidental and lacks that are attacks upon the nature of a thing. Blindness, for instance, is a classic case of a lack for a human being that is not a lack for a mole (or not in the same way) and definitely not a lack for a plant or a rock. (Though I suppose there might be a corresponding "blindness" in a plant that lacked some, for plants, normative ability to respond to the outside world. But that plant wouldn't last very long.) But not being a figure skater (while I feel it personally as a lack!) is not a lack in the same way.
Moving out of the realm of more physical abilities and talents into the ethical realm, if one spouse has an abiding flaw--e.g., gossiping or anger or overeating or procrastinating--that is a lack in the way that blindness is, a deficiency in what human beings out to be. But to lack, say, the ability to make small talk or fix the plumbing, while they belong to the same sort of intellective/emotive realm as virtues and vices, is not really the same thing (though such amoral lacks may be inconvenient at times). These are not lacks in the way that blindness is; they do not attack the root of what it is to be human.
Ideally in a spousal pair, then, it seems the relationship oftentimes works well when the spouses make up for each others' lacks, when those lacks are not moral in nature. It's OK and in many cases actually beneficial for one of the couple to do the small talk for the other, or fix the plumbing for the other--since lacking these skills is not a deficiency in human nature, but simply a matter of personality and habits. But in those areas that are real lacks, true deficiencies in what it is to be human, it would be absurd (and wrong) to say, "Hey, you can be the just spouse and I can be the merciful spouse" or "You get to be good at honesty and I will be good at prudence." You want to become more like your spouse in those areas where they are virtuous, and you want them to gain your specific virtues. And I think in happy relationships this does often happen.
Of course, vices can rub off too. I'm rereading "Emma" for another book club for the manieth time, and I'm struck again by how Austen shows healthy couples (e.g., Mr. Knightley and Emma) sanding down each other's rough edges, but also, more strikingly perhaps, how bad couples make each other worse (Mr. and Mrs. Elton in this novel, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet famously in P&P).
Tl;dr, how you handle relationship asymmetry probably depends at least in part on the nature of that asymmetry--you want to blend when doing so grows your own soul; but with other things, leaning into unlikeness can be more profitable.
I like how E.L. Konisgburg's narrator puts it in About the B'nai Bagels:
"Sometimes I thought that Hersch was more of a brother to me than Spencer. We each had some bumps in our personalities, but they were in different places and at least they were the same size. That made it good; you need a friend who is a little different from you to rub against. That way you file down each other's rough edges."
I love Mary Harrington's definition of marriage as a way to show "radical solidarity between the sexes". But of course. I never thought of it that way, we lend a hand to each other to outmanouver our individual weaknesses (e.g.not being able to open jam glasses) and to double our strengths. Lovely way of putting it.
As to the summer book club - I'd like to propose reading "The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous" by Joseph Henrich et al.
It's an anthropologists' and psychologists' view on the differences in the ways in which "we", i.e. people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic countries, and people from other cultures think and organize their societies. I think this might be especially relevant to you and your readers because we are all looking for a way to create community and foster interdependence in cultures that promote independence, individualistic view and rather hostile to community (not necessarily in theory but in practice). It's an eye-opener to read about peoples that put community and interdependence at their core. The book is very entertaining as well, it was great fun learning about a variety of societies and the way they're organized.
I am not particularly attached to dancing, but I think it's worth noting that even in ballets there are large-scale group dances, which are themselves like line dating or country dancing. I think if we look at group dances we will see this principle of dyad. Men on one side, women on the other. This reveals to me that dancing arises out of, or at least along side of, the belief that the world is split into two. You only participate in one side of it. The other side is a mystery, and it is only slightly revealed in the moments when the two sides meet: dance is but one example of this, and marriage is the more obvious one. This mirrors the basic division into heaven and earth, which meet only at exactly one point: The reception of Holy Communion.
Dances looked at philosophically or even phenomenologically really should be understood, in my opinion, as the celebration of distinction, the mystery of the other, and the true union with the other, if only for the duration of the dance. Dances end, and though the mystery remains throughout, it is reestablished. Eventually, your participation in the dance ends.
Hmmm...that's very much in line with more "traditional" cultures where women and men were firmly put into seperate spheres. I think my grandmothers never thought of their husbands much in the way of a "natural community". Their "natural" community were: their original families, i.e. parents and siblings, and other women. Their husbands were THERE, but they were not necessarily confidants; they were people who were slightly outsiders in all that mattered. You obviously had to be married so you could have a family, and you did your utmost to make the family thrive (which would include supporting your partner) but if you were looking for someone like YOU, you would go to your siblings or parents or female friends/relatives.
There was always a tension between your "natural" community and that slightly forced community of married people.
I really wonder whether it's a homo sapiens thing comparable to all those mammals where you have a herd of mostly female animals with their offspring and a couple of solitary males grumpily wandering about by themselves most of the time.
That's one of the strengths of Christian teaching on marriage, I think: They become one flesh, and a new family. This is a natural reason why a love match is important to Christian teaching---and I'll note that the children help cement the unity of a partnership, so long as the husband is involved in developing the children.
As far as the traditional society bit, that's the biggest part of what I had in mind. Without a separation into two spheres, women always get shafted. The development---reduction---of worlds of gender to mere physical sex has had many bad effects. In particular, a traditional society is more flexible to allow exceptions to its order because it is a comprehensive division, such as when from necessity widows and orphans might be admitted into an otherwise male-only guild; our own society is far more rigid, relying far more on stereotypes, which were at best the arbitrary markers of the grand mystery-division of separate worlds. To tear down the barrier between male and female, to create a comprehensive and universal theory of man, makes humanity a comprehensive and universal male, and women always get shafted in that arrangement. It was industrialization which created the second sex.
This is, I think, why the fights over bathroom access and sports are so hard-fought. They are the last women's spaces without competition with men. In competition with men, women lose. I appreciate the project of Other Feminisms because it seeks a route other than competition.
Wonderful post.
Absolutely, Christian teaching on marriage is a wonderful and lofty ideal, especially at the time when it was developed, which was enormously brutal for women (being considered to be property etc.). Tom Holland's "Dominion" does a good job of showing how revolutionary early Christian teaching was because it actually regarded women as equally made in God's image.
I think we're all doing a lot worse since we've drifted into a postreligious society - because we're losing the awareness that we're more than bodies to poke and push around for our pleasure.
"To tear down the barrier between male and female, to create a comprehensive and universal theory of man, makes humanity a comprehensive and universal male, and women always get shafted in that arrangement. "
Your words reminded me of what I read in Gertrud von le Fort's Eternal Woman concerning woman's efforts to be like man and join in, as you said, the "comprehensive and universal theory of man": “In a doubly fatal way, [woman] succumbed as woman to the very one-sidedness, to the mistakes and the dangers upon which the man of the period (“The period of the rising feminist movement”)had sickened…In succumbing to man, woman no longer surrenders; she throws herself away. She has nothing more to give, she is no longer man’s other half. As woman she ceases to be, and the balance of life, its polarity, has been destroyed thereby. In clinging exclusively to the pole to which she does not properly belong, she loses the one that is her own; the mystery of charity with its profound reciprocity becomes extinguished, and the fruitfulness of the relationship ends.” Pg60
Also helpful is her description of the detrimental effect on man: “During the epochs when a one-sided, masculine culture prevails, not only are all feminine characteristics absent, but faith in the hidden forces is replaced by confidence in bare evidence…Such a culture means, furthermore, an excess of masculine characteristics, and their disfigurement in the face of the man who stands alone. The absence of one part of reality, and this is extremely important, calls forth a strange unsteadiness in the image of the remaining part.”pg54 Maybe this describes the birth of the distorted image of masculinity that so many today are fleeing from?
"I appreciate the project of Other Feminisms because it seeks a route other than competition." Me too!!! As you point out, the fruits of competition are sour.
> the fruits of competition are sour.
I think there is a lesson in economics and politics in that statement, even a revolutionary one, and such a revolution for which the reddest communism is not nearly radical enough.
I think I can go further. It is my contention that to reassert reality against ideology will mean unraveling liberalism and capitalism. This is not anti-liberal in terms of being anti-Biden or anti-Bernie but in terms of being anti-voting. Capitalism, for its part, created democracy as part of its end to make everyone self-interested. If self-interest is as pervasive as I am saying, the medieval term for our kind of governance is not democracy but tyranny.
It's not all hopeless. I think all it takes at this point is personal relationships and a gift economy, and the all-consuming system will collapse. Its propagandas will become impossible and live will become more liveable. For more on what I mean, I recommend checking out the New Polity podcast series on YouTube on the topic of tyranny.
Thank you for the recommendation! I will check out the podcast and search for tyranny.
For my part, I am partial to the market economy - a market economy is the tool and as we become better human beings (through community, personal relationships and more) we mature our ability to wield that tool well. It is a gamble...always a gamble with human beings...the possibility of neglect and abuse alongside the possibility of generosity, charity, etc. The choice of that lower road must always be there because it is in choosing the higher road that we become truly human. To become human, we must will the good and that, God knows, means having the choice to serve ourselves or serve others.
That characterization of group dancing is true of Anglo cultures--my British isles ancestors would recognize it--though even in England, weren't May dancers traditionally all male? And my husband's Jewish ancestors were used to dancing separately; you had a complete male dance that was distinct from the female one. Dyadic things like contra and swing dancing aren't necessarily the only model (even though I prefer them, personally).
Fair enough. I think in that regard I was responding to the prompt, which assumed dyadic dance as typical of dance. I do appreciate how you do underline the "separate worlds" of men and women even in those counter-examples.
I love Elizabeth Goudge's Green Dolphin Street as an exploration of symmetry and asymmetry. Two sisters, Marguerite and Marianne, fall in love with the same man. The sisters are very very different, but their names are similar and poor William cannot keep their names straight no matter how hard he tries. William ends up in far away New Zealand and writes to ask Marguerite's hand in marriage. Unfortunately he writes the wrong name and Marrianne ends up traveling from Guernsey to New Zealand where she is met by a very surprised William who realizes his mistake too late, but nobly decides to make the best of it and marries the wrong sister. He has to work so hard for solidarity with her, much harder one assumes than if he'd married the gentler and sweeter Marguerite. But both of them grow in solidarity and in holiness. Meanwhile Marianne's stealing of her beloved opens a door for Marguerite to pursue a religious vocation, which turns out not to be a consolation prize but a true flourishing of her soul. There are many lovely moments in the beginning and the end of the sisters as a dyad and this constant back and forth with William having these unequal relationships with each sister in turn. Marguerite becomes a powerful intercessor in her prayers for the married couple, highlighting the way those incelibate religious vocations can strengthen and support married life.
I’ve heard this book recommended repeatedly without knowing much about the premise and now I’m very interested!
Hmm, these first two questions take my mind to why this asymmetry exists…what is its purpose? What does it mean? Over the last few years I have found great hope and satisfaction in learning about why this asymmetry exists….this male and female aspect of humanity. And, because my worldview is theistic, indeed Christian, I have looked to God for answers...Why would God do that?
I have heard Orthodox priest and patristics scholar, the Very Rev. Dr. John Behr postulate that it is tied to the very purpose of our existence. And, along similar lines, in her 1934 book, The Eternal Woman, Gertrud von le Fort explains that this polarity in our lives characterizes “the revelation of all being,” meaning the totality of being. How magnificent! Who are we? This is what I have found from these two marvelous minds:
WHAT IS IT TO BE HUMAN?
Father Behr noted that being human was described in a very curious way by St. Ignatius of Antioch when he was being marched to his martyrdom in second-century Rome. Along the way, he wrote to fellow Christians in Rome, imploring them not to try and save him: “Birth-pangs are upon me. Suffer (allow) me, my brethren; hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die…Suffer me to receive the pure light; when I shall have arrived there, I shall be a human being. Suffer me to follow the example of the passion of my God.”(quoted from a translation of Ignatius’ Letters by Alistair Stewart found in the article by Father Behr From Adam to Christ: From Male and Female to Being Human, pg20, The
Wheel 13/14, Spring/Summer 2018). Ignatius was "not yet born, not yet living, not yet human; only by his martyrdom, in imitation of Christ, will he be born into life as a human being.” (Behr, pg20)
Wondering how Ignatius could have come to this understanding of being human, Fr. Behr looked to Ignatius's community, “the school of John”, in particular John's gospel. Father Behr notes the well-known parallels between the Gospel of John and Genesis (foremost in this case, the start of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning…”) and suggests that Christ’s words from the cross in John, “It is finished,” are actually the conclusion to God’s words in Genesis: “Let us make a human being.” So, in John, Christ is confirming the perfection of God’s project: Behr notes that in Genesis, God speaks everything into being with a “let it be", UNTIL he says, “Let us make a human being,” thereby entering into the project that is brought to perfection in Christ, the first human being. And in John, Pilate also announces this truth when he says of Christ before he is crucified, “Behold the man!” But, if Christ is the first human being, what is God showing us in Adam? Further on, Behr takes us back to Paul’s words: “Adam was but ‘a type of the one who was to come’ (Rom. 5:14), as are we who have come into the world in Adam; a preliminary sketch, the starting point from which we are called to grow into ’the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’ (Eph. 4:13).” (Behr, pg20). Paul's words teach us that Adam exemplifies our beginning, and Christ shows us our end as human beings. And, most interestingly, Behr points out that, “If God’s project is to create living human beings in his image and likeness, what he in fact does is to create males and females.” (Behr, pg.25)
WHY MALE AND FEMALE?
Indeed, Behr notes that in Gen. 1:27-28, "being 'in the image' and 'being male and female' are put in parallel with one another, “ (Behr, pg.25) and “[o]ur existence as male and female is in fact the horizon in which we (or at least most of us) learn, through the power of erotic attraction, to lay down our lives for another….In marriage then, males and females are, quite literally, 'humanized’!” (Behr, pg.25-26). Behr goes on to explain that it is martyrdom, self-giving love, dying to self, that brings us from Adam to Christ whether that is in marriage, monastic or single life. And, elsewhere, Behr has stated the startling fact that we are the ones who must say, “Let it be!” in order to bring about God’s own work, making human beings. Amazing!
GOD SPEAKS THROUGH MAN AND WOMAN
And, if Behr introduces the idea that this polarity is what draws male and female together so that God can mould us into human beings, it seems to me that von le Fort’s work shows what it actually is that God is bringing together in man and woman and so explains how God is working in those non-romantic relationships as well. In fact, man and woman are God’s own symbolic language: Woman embodies the surrender of the creature to the Creator, and man embodies the capacity of the creature to cooperate with the Creator. If woman bears her symbol faithfully, she lives in surrender to the Creator and points the way for man to learn that his creative power is not his own, not intended for self-redemption, but is received, and that redemption only comes when he surrenders his creative power to God’s purposes: “[t]he faith in self-redemption as man’s belief in his own creative powers is the specifically masculine madness of our secularized age [she’s writing around 1934]and is at the same time the explanation of all its failures.” She goes on to say, ”Nowhere is the creature a redeemer, but it should be a cooperator in the work of redemption. Creative power can only be received, and the man also must conceive the creative spirit in the sign of Mary, in humility and surrender, or he will not receive it at all... for the world may indeed be moved by the strength of the man, but blessed, in the true sense of the word, it will be only with the sign of the woman.” (The Eternal Woman, Gertrud von le Fort, 2010 by Ignatius Press, pg18). And, this view through a cosmic lens sharpens our view of the male/female relationship, in marriage or otherwise: "Every sort of cooperation, even the most insignificant, between man and woman is, in its bearing upon the wholeness of life, of far greater import than associations that are purely masculine or purely feminine." (von le Fort, pg. 45) "The dominating creative qualities of man are but one part of a productive reality; the other is humility. The dawning of the other dimension of existence is at bottom the dawn of the humility of the creature. This is the great condition for the dawning upon man of God the Creator, the God who inexorably works only from the two spheres of being. In the cooperation of woman as the mate of his spirit, man experiences his own creativeness as mere cooperation in the work of God, who creates alone." (pg. 50). So, as we learn to co-create, sharing in each other’s cosmic qualities while each bearing our symbol well, we are moulded by God into human beings, suited for participation in the life of God. So it is by both ways that we find solidarity ...across and within this magnificent asymmetry. (See also Fr. Behr's book, The Mystery of Christ- Life in Death,2006 )
Well, that just blew my mind. I'm particularly grateful for the intro to Fr. Behr's work, specifically in reference to Christ's death and, "It is finished." Thank you.
Analisa, I am so happy - I have wanted to share Fr. Behr's work on the early fathers for a long time because having their vision presented to me "blew my mind" as well. It literally made Christ real for me.
Is it a way to find solidarity across that asymmetry to find ways to blend more and more, to grow to resemble each other?
Or is it to lean into some elements of your unlikeness, the way choristers hold harmonies?
What are the best stories you’ve seen centered on symmetrical foils?
My thoughts: Leaning into elements of unlikeness in order to build strengths through solidarity and partnership.
DH is far more mechanical--that was his background, mechanical and electrical.
He fascinated me for that reason when we began dating and through our marriage.
I'm more into reading and writing, the latest things we should be reading and talking about.