On the Importance of Virgins, Pt. 3

Earlier discussions went over how Western culture has lost the virgin as a conceptual ideal, clearing the way for the gnostic conception of the human person as espoused by Descartes that in turn resulted in the promulgation of fractional complementarity. If you want to catch up on those discussions, you can do so here and here.

The last point I want to consider is how the loss of the virgin and fractional complementarity has terribly stunted most modern discussions concerning gender and what it means to be a man or a woman. Certainly, there are a multiplicity of reasons why modern discourse around men and women has collapsed into a puddle of contradictory gibberish; here, I merely want to focus on this one.

I am endlessly tired of conversations where men are defined as needing to fight a battle or go out into the wilderness, or women are defined as needing to be the heart that teaches emotions and sensitivity to men. I grow equally tired of conversations where women angrily lambast expectations to be sensitive and gentle, or men claim they assert their respect for women by treating them just as they would a man. All of these are hitting on some sliver of truth, but failing spectacularly at capturing its fullness. I still often struggle to find the exact words for what I experience intuitively in my soul, to capture the reality of God’s mystery of man and woman, but I constantly hear descriptions that fail to hit the mark.

It would no doubt be more tolerable if more qualifiers were given, if people began their talks by saying, “It’s often the case that…” and then proceeded to describe men as the warriors and women as gardeners or whatever analogy they’ve chosen, but such qualifiers are rarely present. Over and over again, all discourse, Catholic and non-Catholic, concerning gender falls into the flawed viewpoint of fractional complementarity that divides human traits up between men and women and then defines genders by those traits.

Men are rational, women are emotional. Men proceed with logic, women proceed with sensitivity. Men protect and provide, women cultivate and nurture. Women stay in the home, men go outside the home. Women love beauty, men love functionality. Pick any opposing qualities and you could find examples, but the point is that the human person is divided in half like a pizza and each gender gets delegated its slices. Certainly, I do think there is lots of truth behind the impulse to make these categorizations, and I often see them born out in real life relationships. However, there’s always going to be cases and situations where these generalities don’t quite fit, and we cannot so narrowly define men and women such that these aberrant examples upend the entire understanding of gender. Such strict yet inadequate defining parameters are part of the reason the gender ideology conversations today are so contradictory and jumbled.

For example, I can easily think of women who love beauty, cultivate and nurture, proceed with sensitivity, and yet work full time outside the home and indeed, have the capacity to be logical. They’re complex and, like all of us, still growing and learning to be more who God created them to be, but they aren’t less ‘woman’. I also know women who stay at home and love functionality and don’t have as much eye for beauty, who may also be emotional and sensitive. And they’re women.

There are men who work outside the home and are very sensitive and emotional, and this doesn’t make them less of a man, just as the man who stays at home and is very logical and functional isn’t less of a man.

What I have often seen when we fall into this fractional complementarity for men and women is that people will find in themselves one certain trait, and then think that they must align completely with all the other traits that are seemingly paired with it. This becomes an artificial construction for persons wherein individuals neglect to discern alongside God who He created them to be, in all their various facets and distinctions, but instead grab onto one aspect of themselves, and then allow that aspect to be the defining dictator of their personhood. Most often where I see this exemplified is with women, who can have a tendency of gripping onto the characteristic of whether they work in the public economic sphere or not and then this extends to artificially decide other aspects of their life.

So, a woman who takes care of the home and kids feels an expectation to also then dress a certain way, make certain foods, listen to certain people, drive a certain car, have a home that looks a certain way. Similarly, a woman who works in the public economic sphere might feel that she needs to align her own dress, food, car, public figures, or home to reflect that she’s a different sort of woman.

In my own life, I have experienced this false dichotomy when I’ve thought of myself as falling to be a woman by not being emotional enough in certain situations or not sensitive enough or not neat or creative enough, and allowing that to then dictate that I can’t dress too girly or like too girly of things because I’m not that girl. I have struggled greatly in the past with my own sense of womanhood and how to be a me that felt cohesive. However, this is sort of thinking that my womanhood had to line up correctly along certain lines in order to be a presentable form for the world is the mentality that stems from fractional complementarity, where gender is defined as by traits instead of being defined by your own ontological being as created by God.

I do think much more about women and the phenomenological experience of womanhood than men, mostly because I don’t have access to the male experience and thus it’s a lot more difficult for me to speak to, but I know this same struggle falls on men. The math scholar who loves study and quiet evenings and contemplation feels the same terrifying fear of whether he’s a respectable man as the big game hunter who never went to college and works at the local car shop. Similar false dichotomies befall men who confusedly think they have to meet a list of personality trait criteria to qualify as manly.

Sister Prudence Allen, who literally wrote the three part 2700 page book on the Concept of Woman, instead argued for the viewpoint of synergetic complementarity, which holds that men and women are not two halves of a whole, but rather two wholes that together can create something greater than themselves. Allen states that there are four components that make up synergetic complementarity: first, equal dignity, second, significant difference, third, the synergetic relation wherein together something greater is created (Allen carefully notes that this could be the generation of a child or something more in terms of spiritual generation), and intergenerational fruition, meaning that the new creation continues on for generations. Synergetic complementarity is built on the acknowledgement that men and women are distinct but equal, and that good relationships between them are characterized by the generation of new life, either physical or spiritual, and that that life extends onward to generations.

Let’s note plainly up front that this definition of the complementarity between men and women isn’t as easily grasped or digestible as saying men are the head and women are the heart. But, it is universally applicable, applying to all women whether they cultivate beauty or not, and all men whether they’re good at fixing things or not. For Allen’s description of the relationship between man and woman, whether a woman is a tomboy or a man loves ballet, whether a woman eats only fast food or a man enjoys Greys Anatomy, none of that matters, because the complementarity stems from the gift of your whole person in its integrity. Man and woman do not contribute fractions of a whole, but they are whole, endowed already with the fullness of self that is a beautiful and pleasing gift whether they were to offer it to another person or only to God Himself. That wholeness is what the cultural concept of the virgin ideal protects.

None of this should be taken to mean that we are all perfect just as we are or that there’s nothing men or women have to work on; absolutely, we are all broken human beings that are called to the greatness of sanctity, so we have many areas for growth. It’s quite true that a woman might not be very sensitive, and God might call her to grow in her sensitivity. A man might not be very good at sacrificing for his family, and God might call him to grow in fortitude and discipline. But, those personal faults do not alter their womanhood or manhood, nor does the call to grow in various virtues originate from one’s existence as a man or woman. A woman who needs to grow in gentleness doesn’t need to do so because she’s a woman; she needs to grow in gentleness to love better (and men similarly are called to the same so they can love well).

This is something the virgin provided the example for very well; a nun or priest would pursue virtue and holiness simply to be more themselves in order to give a fuller gift of self to God. Holiness was a worthy goal outside of marriage, and holiness could be found even if one remained a virgin all their lives. There was a concept of the perfection of self that was not grounded on the characteristics of another, and this allowed one to view themselves as with the potential to become perfect with whatever traits God gave them.

Women suffer under the false concept of fractional complementarity - it becomes a list of ways that we are not enough and not lovable, which, generally speaking, are some of our deepest fears. It also causes great division among women by creating camps of safety, where we women can clump together with other women who share our same qualities, not wanting to interact too much with other groups for fear that they judge us as bad at being women.

Years ago, I coached high school cross country, and struggled from what I considered sexist behavior from the parents. They told me that I should give my team more hugs, more special gifts, more words of praise - one of them even gave me mothering advice, all of which I do think was inappropriate. However, I have also thought back to my demeanor to the kids I coached, and I know that today I would be gentler and more sensitive in many of those coaching situations. I would say that, yes, I did need to grow in these virtues at that stage in my life, but I did not need to grow in them just because I was a woman. I needed to grow in them because I was and am an imperfect human who should do everything I can to love more fully the people God places in my life.

This is a complex topic, and still much remains shrouded in the mystery of God’s providence and wisdom when it comes to His design of man and woman. I think the past 150 years, largely due to the mass confusion concerning gender that has arisen in the secular culture, the Catholic Church has had incredible development of her theology of men and women, and I look forward to its ongoing work in this area. But I think we should always try to remain respectful of the complexity, because when we collapse into the simplistic systems of fractional complementarianism, both men and women lose. Certainly, our modern world must be an example of this.