[1] One key idea embedded in feminism is that gender is socially constructed.<\/p>\n
[2] One core idea of Lutheran theology is that human beings are created in the image of God.<\/p>\n
[3] Can both of those things be true at the same time?<\/p>\n
[4] If we take seriously the significant influences of biology, society, psychology, culture, and politics on our understanding of what it means to be a woman or to be a man, where does that leave central theological claims like the one about human being imago dei<\/em>? After considering how feminism has enhanced our understanding of the processes by which we understand, construct, and define gender, I will explore ways that Lutheran theological ideas build on them and indeed help us flesh out a more holistic understanding of being woman, of being human.<\/p>\n Feminism & Gender<\/strong><\/p>\n [5] Introducing my undergraduate students to \u201cfeminism\u201d inevitably starts with a healthy amount of deconstructing the \u201cfeminazi\u201d trope popularized for decades by right-wing media personalities.[1] After getting all the negatives on the table, we move to actual definitions:<\/p>\n a. Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.[2]<\/p>\n b. Feminism is the policy, practice, or advocacy of political, economic, and social equality for women.[3]<\/p>\n c. Feminism criticizes sexism and patriarchy, and advocates for the equal humanity of women.[4]<\/p>\n [6] After a more thorough understanding of how feminism has both responded to injustice and been an essential part of working toward gender justice for many generations, students inevitably wonder why the negative stereotypes have taken hold and persisted for so long. This is a very good question that leads to important discussions about the processes in place to create and maintain inequalities based on not only gender, but also race, social class, sexuality, and myriad other elements of our human identities. Conversation about gender, as distinct from biological sex, must happen with an understanding that its construction always intersects with sex, race, age, class, and other things. It is also crucial to understand that society, in particular a white racist patriarchal society, stratifies all of these things, so that one way of being a woman is more valued than another, that being a man is more valued than being a woman, that being white is more valued than being black, and so on. This all directly contradicts the idea that human beings are created in the image of God, and so we shall return to that concept in a subsequent section.<\/p>\n [7] To say that gender is \u201csocially constructed\u201d means most basically that what it means to be \u201cappropriately\u201d man or woman is defined by society, informed by culture, rewarded by a complex system of privilege and oppression, and subject to change over time and across cultures. Some theorists describe gender as performance, something we all do when we get dressed, style our hair, accessorize, walk, and talk. Judith Butler says that \u201cgender is a kind of a doing, an incessant activity performed, in part, without one\u2019s knowing and without one\u2019s willing,\u201d but this does not mean \u201cit is \u2026 automatic or mechanical. On the contrary, it is a practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint.\u201d[5] This metaphor of improv and stageplay extends Butler\u2019s performance idea. We understand, more or less, what is expected of us \u201constage\u201d each day. We know what we can get away with, what risks might be fun, and what risks are too great. Just look around. What are you wearing? What are others around you wearing? How are you and they \u201cdoing gender\u201d right now? (This makes for a fun classroom activity in itself.)<\/p>\n [8] Butler points out the fundamentally social and even public nature of gender, noting that \u201cone does not \u2018do\u2019 one\u2019s gender alone. One is always \u2018doing\u2019 with or for another, even if the other is only imaginary.\u201d[6] If you were always and only by yourself, you would have no real \u201caudience\u201d for the \u201cperformance.\u201d It is the next part of her discussion that leads to central definitional issues and theological questions:<\/p>\n a. \u201cWhat I call my \u2018own\u2019 gender appears perhaps at times as something that I author or, indeed, own. But the terms that make up one\u2019s own gender are, from the start, outside oneself, beyond oneself in a sociality that has no single author (and that radically contests the notion of authorship itself.)\u201d[7]<\/p>\n [9] There are many key pieces of this statement relevant to Lutheran and feminist theology: \u2018one does not do one\u2019s gender alone\u2019 \u2026 \u2018something that I author or own\u2019 \u2026 \u2018a sociality that has no single author\u2019 \u2026 or does it?<\/p>\n [10] Butler is a philosopher and theorist unconcerned with God. But we can introduce theology to this by taking the basic theological claim undergirded by Genesis 1:26-27 that human beings are created in the image of God, that God is in some measure the \u201cauthor of sociality.\u201d Then, what does it mean to be a woman? To \u201cdo gender\u201d? Classic feminist theology like that of Rosemary Radford Ruether began with Genesis 1 to simply state that women are fully human, so that \u201cwhatever diminishes or denies the full humanity of women must be presumed not to reflect the divine.\u201d[8] Black liberation theologian James Cone argued similarly that \u201cto say that God is creator means that my being finds its source in God. I am black because God is black!<\/em>\u201d[9] This is well-tread ground, so I want to turn here to exploring how the created-ness of our humanity might square with the social-constructed-ness of gender.<\/p>\n Lutheran Interlude<\/strong><\/p>\n [11] Gerhard Ebeling\u2019s reading of Martin Luther\u2019s ontology of being human provides important resource for this work. In other writing, I have explored the structure Ebeling ascribes to Luther\u2019s writing on humanity.[10] The basic idea is that as human beings, we exist in relationship. This is not unlike Butler\u2019s claim that we don\u2019t do gender alone. Ebeling uses Luther\u2019s Latin phrasing when he specifies that our relationality extends in four main directions: coram Deo<\/em> \u2013 in relationship with God, coram mundo<\/em> \u2013 in relationship with the material world, coram hominibus<\/em> \u2013 in relationship with other people, and coram meipso<\/em> \u2013 in relationship with one\u2019s self.[11] This gives us tools to reconcile the created-claim with our understanding of the socially-constructed reality. Humans are created (Deo<\/em>) to be in relationship with other people (hominibus<\/em>) and the world (mundo<\/em>). The latter two can be seen as the \u201csociality\u201d of which Butler speaks, the location of social construction and, we might theologically note, a location of sin.<\/p>\n [12] Perhaps social construction, of gender, of race, of class and other things, can also be seen as part of this world. Like civil government, the family, and other institutions Luther and Augustine ascribed to the kingdom of this world,[12] flawed insofar as they are human-made, they are things through which God works toward justice. The human body itself is a temporal reality through which God works, via the incarnation, to bring about spiritual ends. A gendered body is one of these temporal realities.<\/p>\n [13] As Butler describes it,<\/p>\n \u201cGender is the apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative that gender assumes.\u201d[13]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n [14] Along with being produced and performed, gender also involves hormonal and chromosomal elements. It is the biological body within the social reality. Similarly, Lutheran theologian Mary Elise Lowe states in a 2009 article that<\/p>\n \u201cQueer theorists also assert that human identity is unstable and that individual subjects come to be amidst discourses such as law, medicine, economics, and religion.\u201d[14]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n [15] In referring to individual subjects, Lowe turns attention to our self-understanding and awareness. This is fundamental in discussions of gender identity, personal identity, and it is what Luther sees as human life coram meipso.<\/p>\n [16] How does our theological and political advocacy advance justice for women when the category of \u2018woman\u2019 is complicated by looking at the confluence of, as Butler notes, hormones, chromosomes, psychic, and performative reality? Or, taking into account, as Lowe names, discourses of law, medicine, economics, and religion?<\/p>\n [17] What is a woman? Really?<\/p>\n Trans* Theoretical<\/strong><\/p>\n [18] When we try answering the question of what is a woman, perhaps biology or chromosomes or female anatomy come to mind \u2013 she has a vagina, uterus, ovaries, breasts, certain facial shape, particular hormones, soft body hair, fallopian tubes, and so on. Or, maybe she doesn\u2019t. The presence or absence of any of those things does not in fact determine whether or not someone is a woman. So, what does?<\/p>\n [19] In her 2007 book Whipping Girl<\/em>, Julia Serano reminds us that \u201cit\u2019s downright sexist to reduce any woman (trans or otherwise) down to her mere body parts or require her to live up to certain societally dictated ideals regarding appearance.\u201d[15] Emerging scholarship on queer and transgender issues is an important resource for this theological conversation. Consider the basic questions often asked of trans*[16] people: But, what ARE you? Really? Or, what IS she? Really? Think about descriptions like \u201cbiologically male but living as female.\u201d Is biology our destiny or not? The assumption in much of this is that there is something REAL to be gotten at, and that it\u2019s related to biology and what\u2019s between a person\u2019s legs.<\/p>\n [20] Serano actually challenges strict social constructionism when it comes to understanding gender. Here is how she describes the term trans and the reality it reflects:<\/p>\n \u201cI will use the word trans<\/em> to refer to people who (to varying degrees) struggle with a subconscious understanding or intuition that there is something \u2018wrong\u2019 with the sex they were assigned at birth and\/or who feel that they should have been born as or wish they could be the other sex.\u201d[17]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n [21] In other words, she says, \u201ctheir subconscious sex does not match their physical sex.\u201d One of the things this reveals is that gender and sex are not, and trans* people tell us cannot be, completely socially constructed. If it could, in our heteronormative patriarchal culture, there would be no such thing as a trans* person. A profound sense of self, at odds with the body, is the key indicator. This is a powerful example of human life coram meipso<\/em>.<\/p>\n [22] Serano uses language of \u201cintrinsic inclination\u201d alongside social construction. These inclinations, she says, \u201care likely to be hardwired into our brains (as they exist on a subconscious level and often remain constant throughout our lives),\u201d though it remains true that \u201csocial factors clearly play a strong role in how each individual interprets these inclinations.\u201d[18] She points out that we rarely can tell the difference between the intrinsic and the social, and that \u201cwe only ever notice our inclinations when they are exceptional \u2013 when they deviate from both biological and social norms.\u201d[19] Many of us don\u2019t notice them because we are \u201ccissexual,\u201d people \u201cwho are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced [our] subconscious and physical selves as being aligned.\u201d[20] We, who have experienced our inclinations as more or less matched up with our socially prescribed roles, and our physical bodies, rarely think about them as different or even conflicting things.<\/p>\n [23] Until recently, we have privileged this way of being in the world by calling it \u201cnormal.\u201d Much in the same way, Serano notes, that 60 years ago we used to speak of \u201cnormal\u201d sexuality in contrast to \u201chomosexuality.\u201d Social, philosophical, and theological discourse has moved in the direction of naming the norm, in that case \u201cheterosexual,\u201d in this case \u201ccissexual,\u201d as a way of starting to dismantle social privileges and see oppression and injustice where and when it exists.<\/p>\n [24] To do this, we have to work at the messy intersection of inclination and social construction. We have to work at the intersection of self (meipso<\/em>) and world (hominibus\/mundo<\/em>). The epigraph for the introduction to Marcella Althaus-Reid\u2019s book, The Queer God, reads: \u201cThe body does not lie, but the truths it tells us may seem strange.\u201d[21] Serano also points out that \u201cthe vast majority of us are gendered primarily based on our physical bodies rather than our behaviors.\u201d[22] So despite our efforts at understanding the complex process of socially constructing gender, there is clearly more to the story.<\/p>\n [25] The simple fact that there have always been individuals whose socially assigned and constructed gender is not the one that they understand themselves to be should be enough to complicate things. We know this is real from the stories that trans* and intersex people tell about their lives. These experiences witness to the power of the relationship we have with ourselves, as creatures, and as created by God. Reconciling all of these dimensions, all of these relationships, has to be part of achieving wholeness and justice \u2013 when a self understanding is and can be reinforced, supported, and affirmed by the socially constructed models of being human in the world and with other people, and when all of this is framed and centered on each individual imago dei and coram deo.<\/p>\n [26] Mary Lowe points out that the \u201cqueer political approach, however, rejects the essentialist solidarity argument and claims that gender is performance and all persons are queer. This opens the door to trans, bi, and queer persons and challenges discourses about sexuality, gender, relationships, and family commonly operating in Christian churches.\u201d[23] This leads us finally to consider what a Lutheran social statement on women and justice<\/a> might look like, given all of these theological and theoretical resources.<\/p>\n Justice and Women<\/strong><\/p>\n [27] It is a little ironic and exasperating that so much of recent local and national politics has centered around women\u2019s biology, specifically their reproductive capabilities, and their very particular genitalia. Transvaginal ultrasounds have now been debated extensively by male politicians and pundits, and of course mandated by several states for any woman seeking an abortion. A United States Senate candidate (among others) tried to repeat the old bizarre unscientific lie that a woman can\u2019t get pregnant during rape if it is sufficiently traumatic to her body. Feminist activists and people of faith found themselves having to restate old arguments<\/a> for the compatibility of contraceptive use and Christian family life. If anything, women\u2019s bodies and lives have been more threatened and essentialized in recent years than they have been in generations. So while we need to talk about social, theological, and political issues raised by complicating the definition of \u201cwoman,\u201d we also have to keep advocating for some basic rights and access issues for those born and living as female.<\/p>\n [28] Is there room in our work for justice for a trans* woman, for whom justice might mean that her insurance policy covers hormone therapy if she wants it? For whom justice might mean protection from employment discrimination and harassment? For whom justice might mean no more fetishizing of the cross-dresser on reality-tainment television? For whom justice might mean access to a public restroom in which she feels most comfortable as herself? For whom justice means not being addressed with the wrong pronoun? For whom justice might mean things we haven\u2019t even considered because we haven\u2019t fully heard the stories? A social statement on women and justice<\/a> is challenged to take these things into consideration.<\/p>\n