Gender is not enough

Lesley Leyland Fields writes,

A man or woman, a boy or girl who tends toward the features considered “the other” may question his or her identity in a way that may not have happened a few decades ago.

It seems to me that men are hit particularly hard on this, from two directions. Women and girls enjoy a generous allowance that encourages the athlete, the supermodel, the CEO and the mother as equally valid expressions of femaleness. Many parents, like me, encourage our daughters to be pitchers and point guards (and fishermen) rather than princesses. But cultural expectations of masculinity are far more stingy. If a man is gentle, compassionate, artsy, empathetic, cultivates beauty in his life, talks with his hands, enjoys the friendship of women, his masculinity and sexuality is instantly questioned.

Nor are the stereotypes themselves gender equitable. After suffering generations of sexism, women fare much better than men under the current spotlight. Women are lauded for their neural plasticity; are seen as flexible, cooperative, compassionate, honest. Women outpace men in higher education, in employability, and in a score of other measures. And at the movies, they’re as glamorous and sexy as ever but they’re also Avengers, superheroes, as kick-ass as the men. Angelina Jolie, all 100 pounds of her, can flick a 300 pound villain over her gorgeous head. Women can do and be it all.

And men? Yes, athletes and superheroes, but not much else. They’ve been lame pathetic fathers in sitcoms for more than 20 years. The moral failures of male politicians has come to feel like the norm. Physiologically, men are critiqued for their single-lobed rigidity, for their lone-wolf leadership style, leading one social observer, Hanna Rosen, to her 2010 provocative cover story for The Atlantic, The End of Men. In my day, many girls wanted to be boys, myself included because the boys held all the power. No longer. Now it is men who want to be women: three times as many men as women are undergoing sex reassignment surgery.

I’m not explaining away Jenner’s transformation on the media-ized ascendency of women in our time, though it may be a contributing factor. That double image of Bruce and then Caitlyn is a fitting poster for the increasing gap between the genders. But even more than this, Jenner’s interview and his Vanity Fair coverage poignantly highlights that our sexualized obsession with gender is failing us.



This is my hope, that whoever we are, we will be known not for our gender category but for our mercy, our wisdom, our kindness, our humility, our grace, and our love. If we allow the Holy Spirit to do this in us, we will be exactly who we were created to be, inside and out.

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