Gender Identity; justice, equality and the interim

I just came across this in an article entitled Jordan Peterson, Identity Politics, and the Church – Covenant:

"Gender is constructed, but an individual who desires gender re-assignment surgery is to be unarguably considered a man trapped in a woman’s body (or vice versa). The fact that both of these cannot logically be true, simultaneously, is just ignored (or rationalized away with another appalling post-modern claim: that logic itself — along with the techniques of science — is merely part of the oppressive patriarchal system.)"

I'm interested in it because it seems a reactionary response from someone who is usually intellectually rigourous but it is a question that presupposes an inadequate answer and implies that we should therefore stop doing this. I think it is missing a 'tactical' response and one which recognises that in such complex contestations in society we have to recognise that we are always in media res -in the midst of things. And that being 'in-between' sometimes requires different and temporary responses than would occur at the end of a process of deliberation when all the relevant facts and perspectives appear to be known, understood and categorised.

While I recognise the logical impasse, I think this misses the point. The point is that at this moment in our cultural history, we appear to be in the middle of some awakenings of understanding about psychology, identity, personal formation and so on. We are also not yet well informed about genes and epigenetic influences in relation to gender identity and sexuality.

This means we are in a period of social and cultural apprehension (in both the sense of apprehending something and worrying about it) where understandings are not evenly distributed across our culture and indeed are contested and under negotiation.

So this does not mean I'm claiming that logic is out when I affirm both that gender is constructed and that I take the experience of trans people seriously in terms of how they relate to their physical 'birth' gender (and that's not including those where that is more of a grey area, about which more might be said).

My 'tactical' response is first to note that while physical 'birth' gender does make some difference: average (note: not absolute) muscle strength and perhaps, again on average, some tasks relating to spatial awareness, it is not absolute differences because there are huge overlaps and across a range of skills and dispositions both men and women appear to be equally competent and able given unhampered initial conditions. There is important research emerging with psychological grounding which seems to be indicating that many so-called innate gender differences are very likely to be to do with the previously unnoticed priming for difference and expectation that goes on at very, very early stages of an infant's life. And until we can unpick the hormonal from the priming from the stereotyping and the social ... but it looks likely that men and women are mostly differentiated by social constructions about roles and abilities which we imbibe at early ages on account of the main innate human early trait being to take in information voraciously and begin to use it to guide behaviour and attitudes using mimetic strategies cued by significant others around us. So while we can begin to recognise that hugely and preponderantly gender is a social construction, we have to come at that with a weight of cultural history and personal development which makes it feel like gender roles are almost physically/genetically innate.

This means, I think, that transgender identification has to work with the cultural gender 'memes' that our societies overwhelmingly re/present in huge swathes of culture. It will take a lot of time and effort as societies to work out what is going on and how.
In the mean time we have people suffering gender dysphoria.
Loving our neighbour means we should be compassionately seeking to help them.
So, for the time being, 'tactically', we can only take the felt sense of being mis-gendered with utmost seriousness. Maybe, one day, we'll have more to bring to understanding the conditions. But for today we have to work at both projects simultaneously and with compassion and earnestness for those who are caught between gender, culture and social respect.

The logical difficulty that Jordan Peterson mentions is actually one that rests on certain understandings of gender which we are discovering may not be serving us well in various ways -either in truthfulness or in psycho-social health. The logical impasse may, actually, start to burn away once we understand better and more the issues mentioned above.
So, in the meantime, we treat the persons in front of us with utmost seriousness and do the best we can.

Transgendered people may be able, even, to help us to better understand culture and psychology around gender in such a way as to free all of us from unhelpful gender-related 'templates' (the line 'big boys don't cry' haunts me from a 10cc song [I'm not in Love] -as a false and vastly unhelpful gender norm, for example. And to be fair, I think the song was questioning the norm).


See also my posts here and here.
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Learning involves shared attention -spiritually too

At the moment, I seem to be making connections between stuff I happen across and things to do with mindfulness. Now this is a bit peripheral to what the linked article is focussing on but nevertheless it caught my... well, attention. In the context of connections to mindfulness, this sentence got me thinking:

"Shared attention is the starting point of conscious human learning"

What is intriguing me about this, I think, is that I'm coming to the theological conclusion that mindfulness is shared attention with God. Mindfulness in the sense of giving attention to something and maintaining/returning attention to it is implicated in the picture from Genesis 1 of God giving attention to what was made and what was teeming or doing its (God-given) thing and seeing that it was good. A Christian mindfulness shares God's attentiveness to what is (made), joins God in being mindful of what God has made. So the quote about shared attention in a way characterises a Christian mindfulness by potentially including God. Of course, a point to take from Genesis and systematic theology is that God is the initiator of sharing; God is inviting us to see "that it is good" one piece of the world at a time.

But let's take that further with what that quote goes on to say about conscious human learning. When I hear or read 'learning', I tend to relate that to 'formation', that is to spiritual development and growth. I see the formation as a partially overlapping semantic field with learning. When we grow spiritually it is learning that takes place. When we learn, as Christians, we are to align our learning with our spiritual outlook and experience.
And I can't help but relate that to Genesis 2 and the naming of the creatures. In the bit of the story I'm thinking of, God brings the animals to Adam to name and Adam's names stand -"that was its name". I have written elsewhere of what is implied by naming. Briefly, naming implies noticing and learning about similarities and differences. It involves, to some degree at least, classifying and deciding what is 'in' or 'out' in the application of a label /name; "Yes that is also a squirrel but it's red, while that one was grey", for example. In this story we note how attention is shared, in fact how God engineers a shared focus to which Adam responds by noticing, learning and consolidating learning by naming. It's worth noticing too that from this perspective the 'naming' which is art or science is essentially the same: focus, notice similarities and differences and render them into another medium in order to think about and share learning. So, in this story shared attention really is the starting point of conscious human learning.

The sharing bit is important too.

before children could acquire the tools of speech and language, you had to ensure they felt a sense of “being and belonging”

Is that not also present in the Genesis 2 story? God's giving being and the sense of belonging engendered by the induction into a status in the garden. It's important too because language is a shared endeavour. Language is never a solo operation. Shared attention requires trust and mutual respect: we won't share attention if we sense that in doing so we are being co-opted to our detriment. There's probably a theology of advertising lurking there ...

How babies learn – and why robots can’t compete | News | The Guardian: ' via Blog this'