The Crisis
The last 10 years have seen an explosion of emotional suffering among our teenagers, especially girls. Suddenly the crisis in femininity seems to be surpassing that of masculinity. Depression, anxiety, self-harm, drug abuse, isolation, eating disorders, gender dysphoria...all surging! It has surprised me recently to learn that use of pornography, which I always took to be a male problem, is prevalent among young women, even from good families.
There is a consensus that social media is fueling this. Inordinate time on the computer is associated with reduced, wholesome personal interaction and a spiral into loneliness and narcissism. Additionally, parenting style has become overly protective and disempowering: the "helicopter mother." Broader cultural/global problems can add to hopelessness: environmental warming, war, the pandemic, political polarization, and increased violence.
All these factors contribute, but the root cause is deeper, moral, cultural, spiritual, psychological: loss of the very meaning of the feminine. "Being a woman" has lost meaning. Our binary human identity as male/female has been deconstructed. "Woman" has become a social or personal construct. The girl maturing into womanhood has no inherency, interiority, meaning or destiny. She is left to seek worth in the marketplaces of achievement and/or popularity/attractiveness.
Undiagnosed Cultural Contempt for "Woman as Woman"
Underlying and informing our culture is a diabolical assault upon "woman as woman," a contempt for femininity itself. In the first wave of the Cultural Revolution, in the 60s and 70s, femininity in itself was assaulted on three fronts: promiscuity attacked femininity as virginity; abortion assaulted femininity as maternity; and careerism (the doctrine that one's worth depends upon career achievement) destroyed femininity as endowment, as inherent, as unmerited gift. Subsequently we have seen contagious epidemics of self-harm (cutting, etc.) and eating disorders which are clearly assaults upon the female body as female. More recently we have witnessed surges in sexual disorientation and gender dysphoria which are, in part, flight from the feminine as vulnerable, weak, contemptable.
This aversion to the feminine is interiorly related to the loss of fatherhood, that of God and that within the traditional family, as it is the gaze of the loving father that specifically recognizes and affirms the feminine as worthy in itself.
Marian Femininity: Virginity and Maternity
We Catholics honor Mary as virgin and mother. She is, to be sure, singular and exceptional in her Immaculate Conception, perfect Fiat, Virgin Birth, Assumption bodily into heaven, and coronation as Queen of heaven and earth. In her very sinlessness, however, she is the prototype of all creatures as receptive of God's love. She is the defining analogue for all of us. She is especially the model for all women.
In her, virginity and maternity indwell each other. For us, of course, they are contradictory. Biologically virginity refers merely to an organic, feminine barrier that is intact. There is nothing comparable in the male body. It is defined as a lack of having sexual intercourse. In our contemporary society this implies naivete as weakness, a lack of experience, a deprivation, an immaturity. For us a virgin is not a mother and a mother is not a virgin.
Traditionally, virginity is not a lack, but a positivity. It is itself a fulness, a rich potentiality, an innocence, a freshness, a youthful vitality. The etymological root of the word means: fresh, green, flourishing. For example, a virgin field, for a farmer, is not merely one that has not been seeded, but one that is fertile, promising, rich in nutrients and potential for life.
Virginity as Passivity, Positivity and Life -Giving
Virginity is itself passivity, not activity. It is not something that is achieved or performed. It is a state of being that is GIVEN and RECEIVED. It is not an act of the will, not agency, not an executive function. It is a form of innocence: pure, wholesome, charming, delightful. Think of the sanctity of the Holy Innocents: they did nothing to merit canonization. They were passive as victims. But we see in them an eternal goodness that was never on their part intentional or deliberate. Think of BEAUTY. Genuine beauty, even in art, is not constructed or achieved but is in some sense received, if in the artistic intuition. Feminine beauty especially is never the result of exercise, fashion and cosmetics. It is natural, organic, effortless, given and received.
Virginity is unknown in our society because we have entirely lost the contemplative in favor of the active; the received in favor of the achieved; the organic in favor of the artificial and fabricated; the authentically feminine in favor of a toxic masculinity.
Virginity then is positivity: it is goodness, truth and beauty. It requires no intellection, no deliberation, no volition, no exertion. It abides, effortlessly. The virgin...our Blessed Mother or our daughter, sister, friend...is effortlessly, organically, spontaneously resonant as beautiful, hopeful, charming, calming, serene, reassuring. There is no competition here; nothing to prove; no effort required.
Virginity is a capacity, yet unseeded, to give life, to conceive life, to bear life, to nourish and provide for life. It is maternity-in-potential. As such it is sacred in itself. It need not prove itself. It need not compete. It merely is. It abides. It remains. It rests. It waits...for its fruition.
Feminine as Virginal; Masculine as Chaste and Faithful
We tend not to speak of men as virgins because their body is different: it lacks the physical structure of virginity. Its generative abilities are activated naturally, without deliberation or volition. It has nothing to protect and treasure: not biologically. But the physical is always expressive as well of the emotional, spiritual, and moral. The generative propensity of the male is donative, aggressive, and explosive: his challenge is not primarily to protect his innocence, but to restrain his energies in a tender, reverent chastity and to direct them in fidelity, to his bride, to the family they will bring forth, and to the broader family. For that reason we do not normally speak of male virgins, but of men as chaste and faithful. For the male these virtues are eventually received as gifts from God, but they normally require, unlike feminine virginity, a long, muscular itinerary of discipline, effort, accountability, confession and reparation.
Restored Virginity
There is a sacredness to the innocent, virginal, female body. The physical is always symbolic, sacramental and iconic of the spiritual. However the Gospel wipes away, always, shame, guilt and isolation in all their forms. So we see that the woman who has "lost" or mistakenly given away her virginity in sin has good news: Christ, marvelously in confession, restores fully the integrity, innocence, purity and generosity of virginity. This is sometimes called secondary virginity. I prefer restorative virginity. Virginity is restored in its fulness. It is not second class. Indeed the repentant woman who washed Jesus feet with her hair is praised by him: "She who is forgiven much, loves much."
St. Mary Magdalene, St. Mary of Egypt. More recently, Dorothy Day and Heather King. So, if the virgin may treasure the gift of innocence, the repentant can exult in her restoration in mercy.
Virginal Love
Monsignor Luigi Giassani understood virginity as "possession, in love, within a detachment." I take this to mean a love that is not possessive in the ordinary sense. It is love that is pure, innocent, detached...and yet mysteriously possessive of the beloved. It leaves the beloved free to be fully herself, free of control, possession, domination, manipulation, oppression. It delights, in detachment, in tender, reverent awe before the integrity, loveliness and preciousness of the beloved. So, even within married love, the spouses love each other virginally to the degree they free each other, contemplate each other, reverence each other, and care for each other.
A Father's Love for His Daughter
The love of a father for his daughter is quite distinctive. It is less intimate than that of a mother. It is distant. In this difference, there is a heightened awareness, tenderness, reverence precisely for the daughter in her femininity which so contrasts with his masculinity. His son reflects back to him his masculinity; as the daughter mirrors the mother's femininity. But the father is in awe before what is so different from him: femininity in its inherent worth, beauty, truth and delightfulness. The father naturally views his little girl as virginal: innocent, lovely, precious, charming, and radiant with life.
The father is pleased by and proud of his daughter as she is (by social standards) attractive, intelligent, athletic, accomplished. Those are additions; they are not the essential. If she is none of them, if she is (by social standards) homely, academically challenged, uncoordinated, and unsuccessful...he loves her nevertheless. Because she is precious in her very self, aside from achievement or social recognition. It is noteworthy, however, that the young woman who interiorizes this inherent worth becomes effortlessly, fluidly charming, alert, wholesome and proficient.
It is the distinctive task of the father...as other, as authoritative, as objective, as representative of the outside world...to certify his daughter as worthy, as valuable, as delightful, as precious...in herself, aside for any achievement or social recognition.
Our Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, is emblematic: she knew herself, surely from Joachim her biological father, as favored and worthy. But, even before the greeting of the Angel she knew herself, intuitively, as SO worthy in the eyes of her heavenly Father. As in her prayer The Magnificat, she exulted in her own worth, as gifted from the Father. It was not her intelligence, her physical attractiveness, her achievement: it was her inherent virginal worth that ravished the heart of the Father.
The Affliction of Fatherlessness
Here we arrive finally at the root cause of the current crisis in femininity: it is the prior failure of masculinity as paternity. Our young women, so many of them, lack a father's love: a love that is tender, reverent, virginal (as pure, non-possessive, liberating), protective and delighted. A girl with such love is largely immunized against even the most pernicious toxins of our culture: internet, drugs, despair, anxiety, etc.
This is not in all cases the fault of the father. A decent father may be viewed by the daughter with suspicion, disinterest, or disrespect. Imagine a mother who is hostile to the father. Imagine a peer environment that is pulling the girl away from trust in the father.
Virginal Feminism
St. Maria Gioretti had lost her father at the age of nine. At the age of eleven she had no one to protect her from rape by the porn-addicted Alessando Serenelli. She herself defended her virginity and died as a martyr in the act. She died a painful death. She forgave him. She appeared to him from heaven and won his heart over to the Mercy of God. She knew her worth. She knew her strength.
May she, and all the virgins and martyrs, and the chaste St. Joseph and our Blessed Mother...in Jesus our Lord...pray for all our young people who suffer such emotional afflictions. May they know their worth, and their strength...and delight in it, giving praise to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment