Saturday, August 3, 2024

Male And Female

Genesis 5:1-2 reiterates what 1:27 already specifies: it is humans, whom "He created male and female," not only men or only women, that have God's image.  As metaphysical equals, men and women were to co-manage the landscape, animals, and plants of creation (1:26), and they have the same moral rights (two examples in the Torah are in Exodus 21:26-27 and Deuteronomy 15:12-14), and except for the likes of circumcision--a purely anatomy-based activity that has nothing to do with fallacious gender stereotypes of personality ("men are naturally more aggressive"), moral character ("men rape, not women"), or talents ("women are not strong leaders")--moral obligations could only be the exact same for both.  The stereotypes that are associated with something like casual sex being morally good/neutral for one gender but despicable for the other are mere cultural constructs that irrationalists believe in.

If men can do something and women are obligated to do it, then so are men.  By necessity, likewise, if something is morally good for men and women are also able to do it, then women could only be obligated to do so as well.  A man could not be obligated to give birth to children because he cannot produce them in that way; Biblically, women are not obligated to give birth, but even if women were, this could be a moral duty only women have because only women could have it given human biology being as it is.  Women do not have a foreskin that can be removed, so they could not partake in male circumcision.  Other things, having nothing to do with the actual structure of the body's gender, are not this way.  In the case of something like giving birth or circumcision regardless, neither men nor women have some additional metaphysical value because of these involuntary anatomical or physiological matters.

Anatomy also has nothing to do with idiocy like the notion of women being obligated to be submissive to others but not men (see Ephesians 5:21 anyway, though no one should be submitted to who is irrational or evil).  Genitalia do not entail psychological traits, so there is nothing about happening to be male or female that makes one gravitate towards certain sins or mental characteristics, though something morally mandatory for one is mandatory for the other as long as it is doable.  Can a woman rape a man?  Absolutely, and thus if rape is evil for the latter, it must be for the former.  Can a man be a nurturing parent just like a woman?  Absolutely, and thus if this is morally obligatory for the latter, it cannot not be obligatory for the former as well.

Men and women have somewhat different bodies.  Women have a uterus, and men do not, for instance.  Men have one kind of genitalia and women another.  It does not logically follow from this that either has any gravitation towards certain priorities, worldviews, desires, behaviors, and so on, and one person's mental habits are not automatically those of other people (the fallacy of composition, not that someone needs to know its formal name to recognize it), be they male or female.  This is why gender complementarianism cannot be true even if the Bible did teach it.  It is logically false in itself because gender is not personality (or any other psychological as opposed to physical characteristic) and one individual could have wildly different talents and dispositions than another person, genitalia being irrelevant.

However, as for Biblical statements and not strictly logical truths that are necessarily true independent of science and religion alike, what of Paul's comment on how men are in the image of God and women are in the image of men (1 Corinthians 11:7)?  Nothing that even superficially seems to teach this is mentioned in the Torah, the part of the Bible along with Paul's writings perhaps most misunderstood from a distance as being sexist.  The truth about this is simple: if men are made in God's image and women are made in men's image (with Eve being fashioned from one of Adam's ribs, according to Genesis 2:18-23), then they would also have to possess the divine image, not an inferior, distorted imitation of something more removed from God.  The Biblical stance is that women are the bone of men's bone and the flesh of their flesh (2:23), with neither being superior to the other by virtue of being relationally closer to God, more like him, or have non-anatomy related moral obligations whatsoever.

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