Before reading further, look away from this text and think: How would you define "woman?" Take a few minutes.
If you have difficulty formulating a definition, don't feel bad. Our new Supreme Court Justice, Katanji Jackson Brown famously refused to answer the question, responding "I am not a biologist." Actually, the dictionary definition is precisely biological and straightforward: "A person capable of forming eggs, gestating life and giving birth." But the real question is philosophical: Aside from the obvious biological, procreative dimension, is there something, a form, an interiority, an essence of The Feminine?
There are two contradictory answers to this: the essentialist and the constructivist. The first affirms an interior form or essence of Femininity; the later denies it and sees femininity, aside from the biological, as a social or personal construct, a figment of the communal or individual imagination.
All traditional societies and religions have affirmed or assumed essentialism, the belief in a reality of femininity and masculinity. While the distinction is elaborated in multiple manners, the idea that there is a basic underlying reality of difference is the basis for society and the continuance of life. Additionally, in some form, all religions recognize in gender something Divine, something mysterious, transcendent and profoundly interior to all of reality. This also takes all kinds of forms.
This universal, common sense realism was radically rejected by the militant feminism that exploded in the 1960s. In all kinds of cultures, women saw, men have used the difference to dominate, oppress, and abuse women. The solution proposed: do away with gender differences and treat everyone the same: equality and sameness in employment, opportunities, wages, childcare, and everything. Fairness as sameness. Aided by the contraception pill, a new concept of the human person emerged: the androgynous, neutral, non-gendered individual.
This did not work well for women! Women had to take the pill or device. When it failed, women had to bear the child, often as a single mother, or abort. Women were more often disturbed with sadness and depression in the aftermath of alcohol-fueled, pick-up sexual encounters. Women, now equaling and often excelling men in the professions, were still primarily concerned for childcare, eldercare, maintenance of the home and relationships and therefore increasingly suffering burnout.
In the flight from the feminine, the movement became a mimic of toxic masculinity at its worst: casual sex, careerism, access to abortion, and the imperial Self as autonomous, self-determining, uprooted, lonely, and free of bonds and commitment.
A deeper paradox and contradiction developed. If "woman" is a construct rather than an essential reality, it is up to every group and individual to construct their own understanding. There is no reality behind the word. If that is so, there is nothing to defend, value and admire as "feminine" other than a construction of the mind. This logical contradiction has come full term now with the Trans movement. Bruce (aka Kaitlyn) Jenner, arguably the greatest American athlete of my generation, has three marriages, tons of kids and then transitions into a "woman." He now can claim a legal right to enter woman's areas like bathrooms, showers, protective shelters, and compete athletically. The idea of this impressive male athlete competing with women is ludicrous to anyone not brainwashed into "wokeism."
It will not surprise you that I am an essentialist, not a constructivist. Now my definition:
A woman is a creature, a human person, who is capable of gestating life within herself, in relation to (including reception of) the masculine, and giving birth as well as all the maternal nurture and care of life. The feminine is a manner of relating...as mother, bride, sister, daughter...that distinctively images the Trinity as Good, True and Beautiful.
Creature. This is the most primal, foundational, and significant reality. The Feminine is created by God, to image His goodness, truth and beautiful, in a specific, if mysterious manner. Femininity is NOT a human construct! It is not determined by social consensus or the independent self. It is received as a gift from above. It is discovered. As such it is then shared, generously, as it was received gratefully. And so it has within it, however profoundly and obscurely, an interior logic as Love; an integrity and an identity; a destiny and a final purpose.
Human Person. A human person, as created by God, is an embodied spirit. As a spirit it has intelligence, free will, and self-determination within limits. Imaging God, it has freedom as the capacity to give itself in love, as it has already received itself in love. But essentially embodied, it has already a shape, a form, an orientation and destiny specifically as masculine or feminine. This is an absolute binary: there are no third or forth or fifth options. There is not a spectrum. This is not a buffet in which one can choose some items of femininity and others of masculinity. The human person is essentially relational, as masculine or feminine, towards the other.
The woman is partner with the man, equal in dignity, complementary and asymetrical. Before the Fall into sin Adam and Eve were entrusted together with the dual mission: bring forth new life and tend the garden together. That partnership was wounded, but not destroyed by sin. Specifically, sin robbed man and woman of their mutual, innocent tenderness and reverence for each other. It resulted in the abuse of woman by man. But their destiny remained: to image the holy Trinity in love and generosity to each other and their offspring and their world. This was, of course, definitively restored in Christ.
Gestate Life Within Herself. Not on her own, but only in her trusting reception of the masculine, is she able to gestate life...within herself. By contrast, the masculine gives life outside of himself, but only with the trusting reception of the woman. The biological reality is evident and straightforward.
But the Catholic universe is symbolic, sacramental, and always pointing to other deeper, truer, fuller realities. And so, the maternal gestation and generation of life is not only physical, but is emotional, spiritual, intellectual, moral, social and spiritual. Think of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, a virgin who never gave biological birth but epitomizes in herself femininity as maternity.
In Relation to the Masculine
In a mysterious manner that eludes articulation, the Feminine is self-contained, receptive, inclusive, rested, embracive. The Masculine is donative, initiating, restless, explorative, decisive. Maternity and paternity have within themselves all the same dynamics but are integrated in contrasting, complementary manners. To be generative, the masculine and feminine depend upon each other; neither are autonomous; both are generous, even as they are mutually dependent.
Manner of Relating. Femininity is, then, at once an essential interiority, and a manner of relating. Daughter, sister, bride, mother...these resemble and yet contrast with son, brother, bridegroom and father. They are the same; and they are not the same.
Iconic of Trinitarian Life. It has been revealed to us that within the Trinity there is infinite diversity of the Three, absolute unity, and complete equality. All of created life images the Trinity; but none as well as the love between man and woman. Here we also find difference, equality, and unity... of love. There is the overflowing generosity of gifted, grateful, fruitful, receptive, donative Love. In an authentic, genuine conjugal union, and the family that issues from it, we see Triune life imaged.
But the masculine and the feminine, each in its distinctive, limited, manner, also image the Love of God as True, Good and Beautiful. The feminine particularly embodies the Beautiful, understood as integrity, harmony and radiance. The feminine body and psyche is integrated and interiorly harmonious in striking contrast to the more fragmented, restless and explosive masculine body and psyche. Additionally, she radiates an indescribable but most palpable luminosity that is restful, serene, comforting, reassuring, delightful, charming, gracious and inspiring. By contrast, the masculine (at its best) expresses gentle strength, clarity, decisiveness, movement, action.
Against Stereotypes
The basic feminist critique of essentialism is that it tends to narrowly stereotype the woman as nurturing, emotional, passive, home-bound, volatile, and so forth. This is a very good point. It is very difficult to articulate the essentialist view without walking close to the cliff of stereotyping.
There is a boundless richness and diversity about the feminine and it is violated when it is reduced to a stereotype. It expresses itself in wonderful and wild variations.
A woman can have facial hair; a concave chest; dislike children; despise pink; be attracted to other women. A woman can be a marine, a prize fighter, a mafia hit man. A woman can transition, socially-chemically-surgically, into a male social identity. She can have her breasts and uterus removed. She is still a woman. Interiorly, in her psyche and soul, she is feminine. All the various attributes, exteriorities and accidents associated with femininity are not the essential. In her heart, intellect, will...and in her manner of relating...she can only be feminine. She cannot be masculine. There are no other options.
The Immaculate, Assumed into Heaven
Woman, as a creature, was God's idea. Clearly, he had a concrete, particular woman in mind, the very highpoint of his creation, Mary. In her virginal sensitivity, she is wholly receptive of God's grace. In her maternity she is extravagantly generous in giving life to God's own Son and to all of us. In her vulnerability she suffered the passion with her son. In her holiness she crushed the head of the serpent. In her expectant faith, at Pentecost and always, she opens us to the Holy Spirit. As Queen of heaven and earth, she watches over us and guides us. She is, as Woman, the perfection of Creation.
Let us, all of us, men and women both, place ourselves and keep ourselves ever under the mantle of her holiness and purity, her beauty and her love.
Debt of gratitude: much of the above was received from or inspired by the marvelous book "Genesis of Gender" by Abigail Favale.
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