I was recently a guest of Collin Hansen’s on the Gospelbound podcast, talking about Digital Liturgies and the opportunities for the church in the coming years. Check it out! A while back ago I wrote two essays on the emerging “gender war” in American culture and why, in my view, the cultural decline of marriage was a major contributing factor. My big takeaway in those pieces was that marriage creates empathy between the sexes in a way that platonic friendship or mere collegiality cannot. If this is true, in a society where fewer people are opting to get married, we should see evidence that men and women are becoming ideologically polarized and suspicious of one another. That’s what we see.
Thanks for another very helpful and balanced post.
That Instagram is female-coded and Twitter male-coded makes sense, but I've never thought about it that way. It definitely seems plausible that spending a lot of time on these platforms skews our vision of reality.
One thing I'm not so sure about though is the “functional theology of gender". You suggest Christians ought to develop how men and women ought to approach and politics, work etc. different as men and women. I think one reason why this has not happened yet is that this is very hard to do. Even though I myself believe men and women to be different, I've observed hundreds of different ways how individual men and women do things. When I discuss gender issues with friends I often struggle to articulate specific things that are generally different because just from my own experience I've seen so many unique ways how the genders operate.
For example, as a high school teacher I've many great colleagues that have various teaching styles and it is (very) hard for me to say which of these is due to them being “male” or “female”. You could say generalities like male teachers tend to be a bit more tough and less nurturing and caring, but even while saying this many counter examples come to mind.
So I wonder if it is really necessary and useful to always specify and articulate things down to each detail. In a way, each individual Christian has to prayerfully and thoughtfully find out and practice what being an authentic male or female _____ means for him/her specifically. I know the language of “authenticity” raises many alarm bells for conservative Christians, but nonetheless I do believe that our bodily make up, our biography, our environment and our personality all contribute to a unique and potentially healthy representation of masculinity or feminity we should aspire to.
Thanks for another very helpful and balanced post.
That Instagram is female-coded and Twitter male-coded makes sense, but I've never thought about it that way. It definitely seems plausible that spending a lot of time on these platforms skews our vision of reality.
One thing I'm not so sure about though is the “functional theology of gender". You suggest Christians ought to develop how men and women ought to approach and politics, work etc. different as men and women. I think one reason why this has not happened yet is that this is very hard to do. Even though I myself believe men and women to be different, I've observed hundreds of different ways how individual men and women do things. When I discuss gender issues with friends I often struggle to articulate specific things that are generally different because just from my own experience I've seen so many unique ways how the genders operate.
For example, as a high school teacher I've many great colleagues that have various teaching styles and it is (very) hard for me to say which of these is due to them being “male” or “female”. You could say generalities like male teachers tend to be a bit more tough and less nurturing and caring, but even while saying this many counter examples come to mind.
So I wonder if it is really necessary and useful to always specify and articulate things down to each detail. In a way, each individual Christian has to prayerfully and thoughtfully find out and practice what being an authentic male or female _____ means for him/her specifically. I know the language of “authenticity” raises many alarm bells for conservative Christians, but nonetheless I do believe that our bodily make up, our biography, our environment and our personality all contribute to a unique and potentially healthy representation of masculinity or feminity we should aspire to.
This is great.
Dr. Anthony Bradley is one person I see promoting male issues from a wholistic lense: sociological, psychological, theological factors all work together to create healthy Christian men. (For example: https://anthonybbradley.substack.com/p/reaching-college-guys-hbcu-edition)
So many people miss this.
I appreciate your own take on these gender dynamics, and how truncated our dialogue can sometimes be.
Brilliant