This week I had an email exchange with a colleague who questioned whether there was too much emphasis on man and woman, whether they were the important categories. She equated the distinction between them as similar to differences in thyroid functioning, digestive processes and nervous systems. In other words, minor distinctions. Although seldom explicitly stated, the monosexing of distinctive characteristics of women and men is widely seen and widely seen as a good thing.
Here’s why I think we can and should do better.
Male and female are fundamental categories on which we build and project meaning. If the two don’t carry an equal weight in our psyches, we live in a lopsided world, one that’s not in accord with biological reality. We have a world of yin only or yang only and realities must bend to fit.
The categories of man and woman are natural to us: Stating the sex of another is a first thing we say about another person for example.
Understanding that simple underlying reality, that there are irreducibly two in the phenomenal world, is the first plank in what we might call Gender Literacy. Gender literacy precedes literal literacy - the ability to read and write - because what we read and write is based upon primary categories.
I prioritize boys and men because the language of today often washes out the experience of boys and men, including the values and virtues that come naturally to them. I’d like to see them added in. What are they? Things like a draw toward heroism, intense physical expression including the joy of rough and tumble, prioritizing action over feeling, the setting of limits, stocism and an interest in healthy detachment. All these are related to men’s psychobiology. All have been devalued in the social contract over last three generations.
The lack of a positive and clear identity for boys is surely not incidental to the difficult problem of school shootings. All of the boys whose history we know, including Salvador Ramos from Uvalde, were dad deprived, for example. Warren Farrell sets out the context for the situation and points to a way forward here.
Gender Literacy starts with seeing that the psyches and values of the two overall are complementary - all the way down. Each are the way they are because of the way the other is. Unless we understand that, we can't understand either one. They’re psychological gestalts formed in relation to one another. It’s the dynamic quality of the two poles together that makes each one feel alive.
Men and women are forever in this together. And of course, not just straight people. Because how can LBQT+ find themselves except in relation to the categories of men and women? All the sub-categories are variations of relation to the first two. How could there be lesbians or gays without women or men as love objects, for example. Absent these primary categories, sexual choice has no context and becomes as trivial as today’s choice of candy. Sexual identity is related to the biological psyche and is not an add-on.
The recognition of the complementary nature of the two sexes stabilizes us and society. People know where they fit in and that that they have a good place. There are healthy limits. We can’t be or have everything we want just by imagining it. Gender literacy starts here. I can imagine women and men exploring this together in an experiential group, an experiment. But that’s another post.
Whether on this subject or something else, I’m offering private sessions using Family Constellations to see more of what’s present now and to explore different futures. Reply to this post to connect with me and set it up.
Andrew, I think this is a terrific application of philosophical thought to a thorny real world problem.
Spot on.