323

Theological Trends

T H E L E N S E S OF G E N D E R 1
By ANNE MURPHY

HE HEATED DEBATES ABOUT THE EQUALITY o r inequality o f the

T sexes, and their application to theological questions such as the role of
women in ministry, have been transformed in the light of newer perspectives
on gender and human subjectivity. A traditional dualistic view saw men and
women as possessing male or female bodies, but sexless, rational souls.
Though Christian anthropology understood men and women as sharing a
common human nature, female sexuality and a woman's way of being human
posed endless problems about her ability to mirror the fullness of the nature
she possessed. The template of normative humanity was the man; measured
against this, a woman was usually seen to possess humanity in a derivative,
subordinate or defective way. Arguments about the 'special nature of women'
were, and still are, hotly debated. 2 These are really arguments about what it is
to be fully human and how to find language which might incorporate concepts
of both equality and difference between the sexes.
However, these usually adversarial debates have been transformed by the
more inclusive discourse of gender, by the recognition that all human life and
experience is gendered. This discourse has been stimulated by research and
discussion within the human and social sciences, especially in anthropology,
biology and psychoanalysis, each of which has an interest in how gender is
constructed. Above all, gender studies have been strongly influenced by
women's studies and the broad movement to retrieve women's history and
experience. In general theology, spirituality and pastoral practice have been
slow to incorporate insights from other disciplines, and arguments are used, or
positions are held, which have been discredited or critically reassessed in non-
ecclesial circles. This article will highlight some of the main issues in a
growth area of human reflection which deserves the closest attention of those
interested in the study of religion and in the construction of a religious identity
within the Christian traditiom

Women's studies, feminist studies, gender studies

Before critically examining the key question of the distinction between sex
(supposedly given by nature) and gender (supposedly acquired by culture), it
may be helpful to outline the shift from women's studies through feminist
studies to gender studies, and why many find the latter more inclusive and less
threatening. From the early 1970s, new methods in historical scholarship,
especially from the French Annales school, led to the development of 'history
from below', history in terms of the lives of the majority of ordinary people.
324 THEOLOGICALTRENDS

Its subject matter included social and cultural factors previously overlooked in
traditional history: attitudes to family, kinship, sexuality, birth, childhood,
infanticide. The hidden history of most women, who had been assigned to the
unrecorded work of reproduction and repetitious daily domestic tasks, began
to emerge. Historical anthropologists became interested in the study of the
family and of sexual roles in all cultures, i n differing approaches to the human
body, and in questions relating to gender and power. Feminist historians
devised new courses to raise women's awareness of themselves as active
agents, not merely passive spectators, within the human story. This was a
stage of retrieval, of making women visible where they had previously been
invisible or ignored.
Once the material had been amassed; the next task was to assess it critically.
There was a danger that women's history could become just an interesting
chapter added on to traditional historical narratives. Feminist historians,
however, challenged the content, structure and assumptions of all such
narratives, and feminist scholarship undertook a radical reassessment of
western culture, history and literature. Scholars such as Gerda Lemer and Joan
Scott in North America, and Michelle Perrot and Arlette Farge in France,
began to ask why and how inequality between the sexes, and the asymmetry of
their social and political roles, had first emerged. Lerner's The creation of
patriarchy (1986) and The creation of feminist consciousness (1993) uncov-
ered the origins and sources of women's subordination, of men's sexual and
bodily control over women, and of the consequent social constructions of
gender identity. 3
In time the growth of womanist history, giving voice to the experience of
Third World women, made feminist scholars more aware of the tendency of
privileged white women to interpret all women's experience in terms of their
own, screening out the wide and rich variations between differing cultures and
historical periods. To appeal to some universal 'woman's experience' was
seen to be as flawed as the previous appeal to a universal man's experience
had been. Human experience varies as much within the sexes as between the
sexes.
A period of retrieval (stage one) was followed by a period of critical
deconstruction (stage two), moving into a period of the reconstruction of all
reality from a feminist perspective (stage three). Though critical feminist
deconstruction is certainly valid in its own terms, and though it needs to be
continued in order for centuries of imbalance to be redressed, such work could
leave women's or feminist studies in their own academic ghetto. If women
were invisible in traditional history, men were certainly invisible in critical
feminism. However, men and women do not live in two separate, watertight
departments of history, but rather in varying modes of reciprocity. What was
needed, therefore, was a study of the history of relationships between the
sexes: the gendering of historical understanding. 'Just as, since Marx, no study
of a historical situation is complete without economic analysis, the suggestion
is that no historical study is complete without gender analysis. '4
 THEOLOGICAL TRENDS 325

Women's hidden experience can be legitimately retrieved in its own right:

an example is the moving study of the trousseau in French social custom, as a
symbol of the 'long history between mother and daughter', and the gradual
but costly acquisition of a young woman's contribution to her future h o m e :
Equally valid is the study of the concealment of male suffering, of how men
experienced cultures in which only women could express grief openly. Men
too need to be brought openly into a sex-differentiated history. 'What we must
do is to identify the systems of representation, the network of fears, the kernel
of anxiety that govern male language and behaviour. '6 Masculinity as well as
femininity has been socially constructed, with consequences for both sexes.
Women's studies pointed towards a parallel need for men's studies, with the
result that there are now two distinct but related areas linked by the title
'gender studies'. The concept of gender studies seemed less threatening and
more inclusive than feminist studies, and this may partly account for its recent
acceptance in the academic and publishing world. But the inclusion of men
does not necessarily mean the exclusion of a feminist critical agenda. As Mary
Daly puts it, gender studies must not be allowed to become 'blender studies',
presenting us 'with an illusion of symmetry when we experience sexual
difference as a powerful factor of dissymmetry in everyday life'.7 With this
important caveat, the concept of genderedness should nevertheless be wel-
comed as 'an important new insight of feminism, not derived from earlier
philosophical positions', s Moreover, attention to the gender constructs and
representations that shape popular thinking has particular relevance for reli-
gion, theology and spirituality.

The sex-gender debate

In ordinary everyday language the tendency to speak of 'the opposite sex'
suggests male and female as 'inherent opposites rather than as persons with
statistically overlapping qualities who share a common humanity'.9 Trad-
itionally sexual difference was linked to some kind of biological determinism:
sex was a factor 'given' at conception and 'biology was destiny'. However
'gender theorists' in the Anglo-American tradition suggested that, while sex
(male or female) is biologically determined, gender, the expression of mas-
culinity and femininity, has been socially and culturally determined. Different
societies have constructed different role expectations for men and women,
related to strategies of survival, division of labour and symbolic represen-
tations of power. There are some societies where women, not men, labour in
the fields, or where inheritance comes through the female, not the male, line of
descent. Gender theorists tended to focus on social and historical forces to
explain difference between the sexes; 'culture' rather than 'nature' was at the
root of discriminatory practice. They sought to redress injustice and imbalance
by political action to gain equal rights for women.
The validity of the sex-gender distinction, accepted since the 1970s, is now,
however, under attack from several quarters. The 'sexual difference' theorists
of the French/European tradition have pointed out that the distinction only
326 THEOLOGICAL TRENDS

makes sense in an English-speaking cultural context. The French cognate of

'gender' - le genre - can be used to refer to humanity as a whole - 'le genre
humain', lO The French language is more 'sexuate', attributing the masculine
or feminine article to nouns and objects which are not necessarily male or
female. The words 'sexuality' and 'sexual difference' are preferred to the
more neutral 'gender'. Some even suggested that gender was a 'fig leaf' used
by those who were uncomfortable with sexuate modes of speech.
It is of interest to note that the word sexuality does not appear in the
documents of the Second Vatican Council or in post-conciliar teachings before
1981. Though slow to begin, the Church is now well on its way to developing
a theology of sexuality 'as the core characteristic of human beings that leads
us out of ourselves and into relationship with each other', tl A theology of
sexuality (as distinct from sex) is slowly coming to accept the existence of
both homosexual and heterosexual orientations, as also the fact that celibacy is
a way of being sexual. A recognition of the human gift of sexuality, and the
search for ways to deal creatively with it, are essential aspects of human and
spiritual growth and integrity. 'Writing the body' is also a first and essential
step towards the possibility of gender analysis, or how the scripts and
stereotypes of masculinity and femininity are learned and upheld by social
institutions such as family, education and religion. Gender is now seen as a
fundamental form of social relationships. It is fluid, complex and in constant
transition, not ontologically 'given' or biologically determined.
Meanwhile genetic research indicates that the human foetus does not
exhibit distinctive sexual features until six weeks after conception, when the
process of differentiation begins. Sex is not so much 'given' at conception, as
acquired through complex genetic processes during the period of gestation.
Sexual difference appears much less as something bi-polar than as 'a series of
graduations, with some individuals experiencing transsexnalism'A 2 Mean-
while gender is acquired through a number of influences, conscious and
unconscious. Each society has its own 'script' for the acquisition of gender
roles, and many cultures recognize that 'gender may be adopted, changed or
assumed in certain circumstances'. 13 We need to recognize the diversity and
plasticity of human nature. The hard lines of the sex-gender distinction give
way to a much more complex series of interactive processes, before and after
birth, by which a human person acquires self-identity and subjectivity.

The lenses of gender

One of the most helpful recent contributions to the sex-gender discussion
has been that of Sandra Lipsitz Bern. In The lenses of gender 14 she suggests
that most cultures look at male and female gender through one or more
'lenses'. The first is that of polarization, which maximizes the differences
between men and women on the ground that their genetic structure and
experiences of human living literally set them poles apart. All 'complemen-
tary but different' theories fall within this category, though some versions may
 THEOLOGICAL TRENDS 327

be more gently constructed than others. The second lens is that of androcen-
trism, which sees men as the dominant sex, inherently superior, and exem-
plifying the normative way of being human. Woman thus appears as the
problematic 'other', whose humanity cannot (usually) be denied, but cannot
be fully affirmed either. The third lens is that of biological essentialism:
male-female differences are natural, and so essentially and ontologically
grounded.
Bern argues that we must become aware of these 'lenses' through which we
look at human experience and from which we construct our cultural d i s -
courses of gender. We must strive for a critical awareness of how these lenses
shape our perceptions, analyze how they are used to legitimate sexual
discrimination and inequality, and search for other, more adequate lenses
through which to view and understand our shared humanity in its two
gendered modes.
Each of the lenses named by Bem highlights a difference between the sexes,
whether natural, cultural or biological. By contrast, most feminist discourse,
notably Anglo-American social and political feminism, highlights the equality
between the sexes and downplays the difference. There is a danger that this
way of viewing the sexes could come close to a unisex or androgynous view
of human nature in which male and female embrace what belongs to the other
and lose any distinctive identity. Attempts at a gender-free language in liturgy
or common discourse often screen out the richness and diversity of human life
for the sake of political correctness. The result is a blandness and uniformity
which is limiting and uninspiring. It shouldbe possible to avoid insensitivity
and to use gender-inclusive language without resorting to banality. Equality of
rights need not mean uniformity or identity.
More recent French philosophical feminism, with an interest in psycho-
analysis and symbolic representation rather than socio-political issues, asks
the question 'equal to whom?', 15 thereby once again focusing on difference. If
women are equal to men, what difference does their presence bring? Are there
special gifts, insights or perspectives which women and men may bring to the
practice of the law or medicine or any of the professions? Are these gifts
innate or culturally acquired? But those who focus on difference and minimize
equality face other dangers. Their viewpoint seems to be closely related to a
form of biological essentialism. More problematically, in the history of
(western) philosophy and political thought, 'difference' has almost always
been used to denote an otherness which implies inferiority: to be less than, or
of less worth. Difference has been colonized by power relations (Simone de
Beauvoir). The white man looked down on the coloured man because he was
'different', not one of the ruling race. The stranger, the foreigner, the servant,
the woman, were excluded from 'belonging' to a superior and more powerful
dominant group. For postmodern thinkers, difference has to be redeemed from
racism, sexism and classism, but still celebrated. However, French philosophi-
cal feminists who want to celebrate women's difference have yet to persuade
Anglo-American feminists that this is not a betrayal of their mutual cause.
328 THEOLOGICAL TRENDS

Both have to explore what it means to be equal and different, while avoiding
the impasse of equal but different.

The gendering of religious studies and theology

The 'gendering' of religious studies and theology has exposed and dis-
credited a theology of the subordination or inferiority of women. In official
ecclesial discourse it is giving way to a new theology of the 'eternal feminine'.
The preferred language of those in the churches opposed to radical or liberal
feminism is that of complementarity between the sexes, seen as part of God's
ordering of creation. The writings of Pope John Paul II and official Roman
Catholic Church documents now reflect the respect and honour due to women,
who have a 'special role' within the Church. Angela Tilby has observed that
John Paul II,

assumes, when he speaks and writes of the human person, that the
template of humanity is Christ, and that to see human beings in any
other way is to distort them. The only problem is that the Pope cannot
quite make sense of women within this Christ-centred template. He
seems to assume, though he cannot quite say so, that their humanity is
of another kind. Theandric perhaps, yet not quite within the template
of Christ, since, unlike men, they cannot image Christ through the
ministerial priesthood. 16

John Paul II and many others have been influenced by the theology of Hans
Urs yon Balthasar (1905-1988), who has drawn attention to the rich symbol-
ism of the binary gender system, and to its expression in biblical, patristic and
traditional theologies and spiritualities. Such ideas are attracting many theo-
logical writers, including women scholars from the North American scene, ~v
who would argue that men and women are both made in the image of God but
have complementary roles to play in embodying that image. God is 'male' to
creation; creation is 'feminine', receptive to God's creative activity. The
covenant between God and his people is a 'nuptial' relationship, as is that of
Christ to his body the Church (Eph 5). 'Given the internal relationship
between the dispensation of redeeming grace and the order of creation, the
Church as the immaculate bride of Christ becomes a sacrament and effi-
cacious sign of the world in its proper responsiveness to the Lord of
creation. ~8 In the celebration of the eucharist Christ becomes one flesh with
his Church. 'The dialogue between priest and the worshipping community is a
realization, symbolically and sacramentally, of the encounter between the
bridegroom and the bride.' 19 A priest, acting in persona Christi, must, it is
argued, be an icon of Cbxist's maleness.
At its best this is a creative and persuasive theology, which has some
apparent affinities with the French philosophical feminist assertion of diffgr-
ence and gender-symbolism. But the French feminists write with an awareness
of how difference has been critically deconstructed; advocates of this kind of
 THEOLOGICAL TRENDS 329

theology, by contrast, do not. The gulf between the complementarity theories

of an 'eternal feminine' theology on the one hand, and radical and liberal
feminism on the other, may seem unbridgeable. The discussion has not ended,
but 0nly just begun. Symbolic representations do matter, and life cannot be
interpreted in purely socio-political terms. But symbolic power may change,
or may even die. At any rate, arguments about gender-symbolism and gender
constructs are probably one of the important areas of growth in contemporary
theological thought,a°
Conventional wisdom - including religious wisdom - has been challenged
by the current debates surrounding gender identity and human personhood,
and by the recognition of 'all situations as bearers and generators of gendered
relationships, meaning and symbolism' 21 Radical feminists argue that Christ-
ian thought and practice are essentially and irredeemably sexist and andro-
centric. This challenge can be met by a recognition of the distorting lenses of
gender through which traditionally we have viewed Christian life and practice.
We do not have to continue to use the lenses of polarization, androcentrism or
biological essentialism as part of the Christian way of seeing things. We can
search for and test alternatives which might correct and enhance our vision,
rather than remain visually impaired.

NOTES

1 Title taken from Sandra Lipsitz Bem, The lenses of gender: transforming the debate on sexual
inequality (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993).
2 See Anne Can: and Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza (eds), The special nature of women?,
Concilium 1991/6.
3 Gerda Lerner, The creation of patriarchy (Oxford University Press, 1986), and The creation of
feminist consciousness from the Middle Ages to 1870 (Oxford University Press, i993).
4 Anne Cart, citing Carl Degler in 'The scholarship of gender: women's studies and religious
studies' in Transforming grace: Christian tradition and women's experience (San Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1990), p 68. See also pp 63-94.
5 Agnes Fine, 'A consideration of the trousseau: a feminine culture' in Michelle Perrot (ed),
Writing women's history (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp 118-145.
6 Alain Corgin, 'A sex in mourning: the history of women in the nineteenth century' in Writing
women's history, pp 106-117.
7 Rosi Braidotti, 'Sexual difference as a nomadic political project' in Voicing identity: women and
religious traditions in Europe (Fifth Biennial Conference of the European Society of Women in
Theological Research, Louvain, 1993), p 4. See also her Nomadic subjects (Columbia University
Press, 1993).
8 Ursula King (ed), Religion and gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p 6.
9 Elaine Graham, Making the difference: gender, personhood and theology (London: Mowbray,
1995), p 215.
1o R. Braidotti, 'Sexual difference', p 4.
i J William McDonough, 'Acknowledging the gift of gay priestly celibacy', Review for Religious
55 (May/June, 1996), pp 286-287.
12 Graham, Making the difference, p 42.
~3 Graham, Making the difference, p 62.
la See above, note 1.
 330 THEOLOGICAL TRENDS

15 Luce Mgaray, 'l~gales h qui?' ('Equal to whom?' trans Robert L. Mazzola, differences 112]
1988, pp 59-76.)
i6 Angela Tilby, 'From the real to the unreal: religious belief in a sceptical world', The Way 35
(April, 1995), p 155.
17 For example Sarah Butler or Prudence Allen. See Fergus Kerr, 'Discipleship of equals or
nuptial mystery?', New Blackfriars 75 (July/August, 1994), pp 344-354.
I8 Kerr, 'Discipleship', p 350.
t9 Ibid.
20 See also: Grace M. Jantzen, Power, gender and Christian mysticism (Cambridge University
Press, 1995); Daphne Hampson (ed), Swallowing a fishbone?: feminist theologians debate
Christianity (SPCK, 1996); Mary Aquin O'Neill, 'The mystery of being human together:
anthropology' in Catherine Mowry LaCugna (ed), Freeing theology: the essentials of theology in
feminist perspective (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), pp 139-160; Joan Scott, 'Deconstructing
equality versus difference', Feminist Studies 14/1 (1988).
21 Graham, Making the difference, p 217.