Gender

Since I am passionate about the benefits of Menswork I have come to the conclusion that I cannot avoid having a public opinion about gender. It is sometimes forced when I am in a group that asks me to share my ‘pronouns’, or occasionally when I have been overheard talking about gender, as happened at a recent May-Day event. This post is my work in progress attempt to articulate my views.

I believe passionately that mens’ circles and spaces, and womens’ circles and spaces, are a historic force for healing and unity in the world. They help human beings to gather themselves in discrete and sanctified sub-groups that are universal and transcend the many divisions of humanity. I hope that in time more people will take-up accessing of mens’ and womens’ spaces. I see this as a bridge to bring people together across other divisions; such as race and class.

Mens’ and womens’ spaces work, in part, because there is a unifying force within such a space: an acknowledgement of the dignity within each gender. I use the word sacred too. Women can give birth to new life. Men can seed new life. Across the ages our tribal ancestors have typically passed down instruction and wisdom to children as they hit puberty to prepare them for the expectations and challenges that their gender will likely involve them in come adulthood. For girls this has been bringing conscious and honouring attention to their capacity to birth, alongside wisdom on how to understand and spot the menstrual and pregnancy cycles. This is valid whether or not a girl goes on to have children. For boys this has often involved bringing conscious and honouring attention to their capacity to know pain and fear, even death, recognising their capacity for power and allying them with the men in their tribe and the wellbeing of the community. This was relevant given that warfare and conflict has been predominantly the likeliest cause of mortality for men following from their more common assumption of this role. In earlier times this may have likewise reflected their likelier role as hunters.

These are initiations or ‘rites of passage’. I recently remarked at a May-Day celebration how much joy I felt that in the 21st Century there was still a public rite of passage for girls. One person took offence at this and ‘cancelled’ my views on the grounds that I was implying girls had to act one way and boys had to act another way.

My thoughts in loose form are:

Gender is not a personality choice. It is an embodied reality that we are born with.

Defined single-sex spaces are a valuable ancient holistic custom that is urgently needed in the world today.

‘Trans-humanism’, or some versions of the gender-wars ideology, threaten to ‘cancel’ single sex spaces, on the grounds that gender is a personality choice, or an identity.

I believe that an adult male is a man and an adult female is a woman. Likewise a young male is a boy and a young female is a girl.

I am happy to welcome someone wherever they are at. I see all beings as a soul. However, I am not going to necessarily adopt their view of reality as a condition of being in the room with them. To this end I find the recent cultural invention and adoption of ‘pronouns’ as, at times, a coercive tool to control the narrative on gender and imply by group think one right view on this topic above others. It implies an ideology in the ascendent and creates a growing group pressure to go along with it. Here would be two other hypothetical examples: please tell us your name and when your last covid vaccination was; please tell us your name and your patron saint, etc.