Femininity, complementarianism and exclusion

Femnism and liberalism
I’ve been struggling with how to write on this topic for a few reasons but a few things recently have made me want to tackle the difficult topic of female equality.  I have reservations about writing this because I don’t want to accidentally tell women about feminism. But it’s an interesting political discussion and if equality is a central part of your political program then you have to look at what that equality is and how equality of rights pans out. I believe that my feminism (and I do consider myself a feminist) is an extension of my liberalism. One fundamental element of this liberalism is that your fate should not be determined by the circumstances of your birth. For me the circumstances of your birth include your gender and your society’s stereotypes of how that gender should act.  

Separate but equal
If you’ve been following the debate within the Christian churches around gay marriage and about women bishops then you may have heard an argument that criticises this liberal position. The counter argument criticises the liberal position for not allowing for individual differences. Users of this argument say that rather than wanting equality for men and women liberals want something impossible, liberals want them to be the same.  Instead we should accept that women and men are inherently different and play different roles. For this reason women should not be bishops because being a bishop involves playing a male role and so only men should be eligible. Similarly, gay relationships cannot work because a well functioning relationship requires complimentary female and male roles⁺. (I’m not trying to construct a straw man here and this is the best I can synthesise the argument, please get in touch if you feel I’ve misrepresented it). This isn’t a new argument and I’ve heard it used before by an Iranian classmate who explained why rules keeping women in the home, raising the family didn’t make them unequal. I’ve heard people who think of themselves as feminists espouse this argument. They say don’t think women should be treated worse than men just not the same.

Different roles
There is something to the argument. There are separate roles in life that are equally valid. It’s not worse to chose to stay at home to raise a family than to work in a career. Often a different kind of person is needed to be a pioneering leader than a caring supporter*.  Me and other liberals don’t think that all people are the same and should be treated the same. People are wonderfully different. My problem isn’t that gender is unrelated to these roles. It might be the case that one gender is more prone to one role than the other (although I have doubts its anywhere near as strong a correlation as some suggest). The problem is where people seek to forbid people on the basis of gender. There is at least one woman in the world who more easily fulfils the worker role rather than the stay at home role.  Why should that one person who doesn’t fit into that traditional role for their gender be banned from fulfilling the role they are better suited to? It seems that violates their rights according to any basic liberal conception. A women who isprevented from preaching is having her right to freedom of religion denied. One person having their rights breached is too much.  Furthermore it is even more important when considering people who don’t identify with either gender. They could play any of the roles described above and gendering them excludes un-gendered people from all.

Dealing with individual differences
In practicalities in everyday life this may get more than a little complicated. If one gender is more inclined to a role than another, then you may well have the case quite legitimately that a job has far more men in than women or the other way round.  That would be fine, but telling that situation apart from one where women are discriminated against because of their gender would be quite difficult to do. Usually it seems to me to be a case of the latter rather than the former.

Not talking about gender roles
 This leads to my final point that talking about these roles in gendered terms is because of what’s been discussed above, inherently problematic. Saying that something is feminine inherently implies that something is for women or that something is masculine implies it’s for men.  Attempts to rehabilitate femininity by some feminists have not helped with this. The problem is not as a Foucaltian would see it, that masculinity has been empowered by robbing femininity. The problem is using these terms at all. Men don’t need to “redefine masculinity” instead we need to stop using gendered terms altogether because they are by their very nature exclusionary.

⁺The rest of the post is mainly about different gender roles in the context of employment, it’s not about the roles that exist within a relationship although some principles apply (e.g. If it works for one couple then why should it be banned?)

*I find the argument that women shouldn’t be bishops slightly hilarious because the traditional female stereotype is them as caring motherly figures and a bishop is supposed to be a pastoral role.