As well it should; it’s a light, airy tongue-in-cheek
exercise conducted in the demolition of a straw man. Which didn’t stop
SisterLisa at Soul Liberty Faith from using it, along with another
satirical list written by Victoria Pynchon at Forbes, to create a
patronizing “there, there, you poor widdle babies” post on male ecclesial
leadership. The essence of her argument is this: Conservative men don’t
want women priests and deacons because they’re insecure.
Men who are insecure in their pants tend to puff up their ego with brutish verbiage with their self proclaimed titles and they belittle those around them. Their childish behavior reveals the fear they suffer from and perhaps it’s time they openly admit their brokenness so they can find healing. In this era of women theologians and justice seekers these men will rise louder and more brutal in their effort to keep women oppressed. The more fervent women are in putting their collective foot down about abuse, oppression, and equality the greater path we pave for women and children world wide. …So perhaps we should be in prayer for our insecure brothers who rail against women in leadership. It just might make a difference for them to know we understand their insecurities and will hold them up in prayer. ... So when you see men like these … just pat them on the back and let them know it’s all going to be okay. We still need men in the world and there’s no hidden agenda to minimize their gender or belittle their sexuality.
Along with the development of psychology and psychiatry has
come a form of genetic fallacy. The attack presupposes that you’re wrong, and seeks
to create a plausible psychological explanation for why you’d hold such an
obviously irrational opinion. The hidden agenda is no longer conscious but
subconscious; it’s nothing that a few billable hours of therapy won’t cure.
It’s a favorite attack of people who’ve had three credit hours of Psych 201 (maybe)
and read a couple of self-help books, though some
accredited professionals aren’t above misusing their disciplines in such a
manner — in fact, Sigmund Freud’s theory of God-as-wish-father is precisely
such an attack.
The fallacy roots itself in SisterLisa’s assumption that
denying ordination to women is all about “keeping women in their place”. This
is false and uncharitable; that’s simply feminist sexism pretending to peer
into the hearts of the hierarchy. The funny thing, though, is that in
attributing the Catholic Church’s refusal to male insecurity, SisterLisa
unconsciously and unintentionally concedes that there are differences
between men and women that aren’t waved away by appealing to social
construction theories, differences
that hold across cultural lines.
Here we necessarily enter a minefield, because the actual
degree to which biology and social forces each contribute to human behavioral
development is not a precisely measured thing. In saying there are differences,
we do not deny that there are overlaps. If men tend more than women to be
aggressive, it still remains that there are aggressive women; men can be
nurturing, stay-at-home parents, while women can be career-obsessed disciplinarians.
Your mileage may vary.
However, in the quest for equality, many feminists have been
driven to the extreme of claiming that there are no real biological differences
save in the reproductive organs. Such differences as we see are “mostly the
result of socialization in male-dominated societies, and that it is patriarchal
oppression that has relegated women to feminine gender roles,” as one author put it. Pelle Billing
explains:
Many progressives want to avoid addressing the whole issue of gender specific biological differences, since they feel that it limits constructive social reform by sowing doubts about whether change is truly possible. After all, if there are biological differences in the brains of men and women, isn’t that then an argument to preserve stereotypes?
A good example is the recent push to open up combat
specialties long closed to women in the military. On the one hand, this is
arguably necessary because a person who doesn’t serve in a combat capacity is
not likely to reach the highest ranks; surgeons, for example, don’t have much
chance of being selected for chiefs of staff.[1]
On the other hand, some specialties would require women to meet the same
physical performance standards as men so as not to slow the unit down, which
would mean in practice that such units would always have fewer women in them.
The error lies in equating “different” with “superior/inferior”.
If a woman isn’t an effective substitute for a father, it doesn’t follow that
she is inferior to a man, because it’s also true that a man isn’t an effective
substitute for a mother either. Simon
Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, writes, “We
don’t want to revert to the 1960s view that human behaviour is purely
culturally determined, since we now know
that view was profoundly mistaken [emphasis mine.—TL].
No one disputes that culture is important in explaining sex differences, but it
can’t be the whole story.”
It isn’t the whole story … unless you’re entrenched in a
socio-political mythos that values women only so far as they do the same things
men do. Then it becomes the only story you accept — science be damned.
SisterLisa assures us, in her unconscious tone of arrogant
condescension, that “there’s no hidden agenda to minimize [men’s] gender or
belittle their sexuality.” And there’s equally no agenda, hidden or otherwise,
to shove women back into the kitchen. Once we can dispose of feminist sexism,
we might actually have a conversation on the matter rather than duelling
monologues.
* * *
Three links to three women who
explain why women can’t be priests:
Marie
Smith (Church Under Attack series in Faith of
the Fathers)
[1]
Lt. Gen. Leonard Wood
(1860-1927) is the only exception to date, as he did lead troops in battle.
