Why gender matters

Stentor, in a comment on the post immediately below, asks:

I have to admit that I don't quite "get" what you're saying. I'm trying to figure out what specifically you think men need from other men -- what is it that you can give Craig that a female friend couldn't?

Fair question, and I don't think the answer is inherently obvious.

First of all, a woman can't give Craig intimacy without any possible hint of sexual attraction. No, I'm not saying that platonic friendships between men and women are impossible. But virtually all of us have stories of the strains and stresses that attraction can put on those relationships. For Craig, a heterosexual married man who is struggling with what might be called sex addiction, he needs to be able to reach out to someone with out either party having any sexual motive. I can give him that in a way that virtually no woman can. When one is married, friendships with the opposite sex become even more problematic. If Craig's wife knew that Craig was sharing their marital difficulties with another woman, she would have every right to be furious. I doubt another man would threaten her in the same way. That doesn't make her, or any other woman, irrational -- it is just an acknowledgement of our deep-seated sexual identities.

Of course, on a more basic level, I do think that men and women are in many ways profoundly different. I am a zealous advocate of equality for women in the workplace, and of egalitarian relationships. But acknowledging equality is not the same thing as denying difference! Our biology impacts our identity far more than 1960s and 70s feminists (who were convinced that gender was simply a social construct) were willing to realize. Nowhere is this difference more obvious than in the area of sex.

Are there women out there who have done what Craig has done (cheat on a spouse with a prostitute)? No doubt there are a few, but I'm fairly certain that their numbers are small indeed. Many women tend to be mystified, not to mention threatened and enraged, by that kind of behavior. Few know what it is like to struggle with sexual temptation in the way that so many men struggle. (Women do, of course, have their own temptations and trials, often of a sexual nature -- but they rarely "act out" in the same way.) All of the men whom I know well "get" the kind of struggle that Craig is going through. We ALL "get it", even though many of us, thankfully, have not had to go where he has had to go! Thus while a woman might even be sympathetic to him, a man can be empathetic. Men can offer other men not only the stories of similar "falls", but more importantly the vital experience of temptation overcome, of commitments honored, of relationships restored, of spiritual transformation. We can offer this with compassion and complete understanding and without any interpersonal sexual tension.

Men ultimately show other men how to live. Mothers can tell their sons what kind of men they ought to grow up to be, but they can't show them how to do that job of growing up. Our female friends can offer us valuable and different perspectives on life; my life has been enriched over the years by wise counsel from both my biological and spiritual sisters. But what has kept me sanest and soundest has been the presence of men in my life.

Especially among young people, the failure of same-gender friendships seems to have hit epidemic proportions. I know many of my high school boys who are much more comfortable around girls than around their male peers; similarly, if I had a dollar for every female student who has ever written in her journal "All my good friends are guys", I'd be able to afford a semester off. Opposite sex friendships are especially appealing to the young, and not merely because they often offer the "spice" of sexual attraction. What is most appealing is the freedom from the competition and the judgment that so many young men and women feel in the presence of their same-gender peers. But invariably, those who have no close friends of their own sex feel at a loss at certain critical life points. In order to lead healthy lives, we have to work to overcome our own fears about being judged by those of our same sex. We're going to need folks beside us who know what it is like to live incarnate as a man or a woman. What makes me a man is more than my Y chromosome and my genitalia -- it is a thousand thoughts, feelings, experiences that so many of my brothers know so well. Men need each other, desperately.

And if there is one thing I have come to know with near-certainty, it is that men who have other men (not just boys) in their lives to love them and hold them accountable make much better husbands and lovers, fathers and brothers to the women around them.

Comments

[Lynn Gazis-Sax]

I don't know if men actually struggle more with sexual temptation than women; they do seem, on average, to have temptations that I have a harder time understanding (whether for reasons of culture or nature). I mean, I really can understand being tempted, and succumbing, and having sex with someone other than your wife, but I can't, at a gut level, empathize with that someone being a stripper (rather than, say, an old high school flame reencountered at a reunion). So, yeah, I can understand why Craig would have an easier time talking with another man about it than with a woman.

[Hugo]

Exactly, Lynn; in our lives, we need folks who "get it" on a gut level -- and we need folks who can offer both compassion and firm direction.

[Stentor]

Thanks for this post -- now I understand better, even if I still don't entirely agree. (I have a longer response on my blog.)

[Jonathan Dresner]

The Bly in your background is showing, and I'm afraid that I'm not a convert to that, either.

Our generation doesn't have the kind of gender-bias excuses that previous generations had, and the same thing applies to models and friendships and support systems. Beyond childhood, and excluding encounters with divinity (for those of us who factor such things), we are our own masters and makers.

To insist that our role models must come from our own gender, and that sexual tension is too much to overcome, may work for you (though you deny the power of sexual tension in your own ministry work). Yes, there are social norms, and your interactions with Craig might well be easier for him and his wife (should it come to that), but if he can't hear the same messages from a female friend/pastor/etc. as from a male, I feel like that is indicative of a narrowness on his part rather than a virtue on yours.

[Mumcat]

I can't agree, Jonathan. It would be like a male doctor telling me what it is like to go through labor and delivery -- he can tell me the mechanics but he can't reach the gut-level nitty-gritty stuff I want and need to hear about. Only someone who's actually been through it can do that and that means another woman. And the same goes for men. Would you believe me if I talked about prostate trouble?

There are times when cross-gender relationships, even friendships, are terrific, great and really important, but boys are raised differently than girls. Boys are encouraged to do and be things that even in these enlightened times girls are not. cross-gender relationships are still seen to be open doors to sexual relationships and sexual relationships can complicate things tremendously. Even when that stereotype changes, men are still going to have more in common with men than with women and vice versa. They can be complimentary to each other but not totally similar.

[Jonathan Dresner]

Mumcat: Pop quiz. How many women went through labor and delivery in the last two centuries with only male doctors? The vast majority (my wife included), actually. I'm not sure what that proves, except that gender and knowledge are funny subjects, particularly when you actually take more than recent history into account.

I am not unaware of sexual tension, or social dynamics. I merely refuse to give them authority/power/status by accepting them as givens, and the corrollary to that is that I refuse to limit my growth by operating within those parameters.

Physiological differences, some of them emotional and cognitive, exist. But I also deny the purity of direct experience as a mediator of knowledge: listening, reading, thinking and empathizing are going to produce more useful generalized (and applicable in more specific circumstances) knowledge than limiting knowledge to direct experience. Otherwise, what are we doing?