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Hero For Christ

On Gender



by Christopher Sunami, 1/3/07

As someone who was raised relatively "gender-neutral" I have a special appreciation for the fact that traditional gender roles can and do have their own measure of value and functionality. This is not to deny or minimize the fact that traditional gender roles can also be harmful and destructive, both to society and to individuals, and that they have often been used both as a straitjacket and a weapon. At their best, however, gender roles can help societies and individuals successfully mediate the challenges of what are quite often very real physiological and psychological differences between those of different sexes.

I will concentrate in this discussion on the experiences of the male gender. I am confident that analogous points can be made from the other side of the gender divide, but I am equally confident that I am not qualified to elucidate those properly. Thus, I will stick to the narrative with which I am intimately familiar.

As an adolescent boy passes through puberty, he experiences a sudden jump in physical strength and aggression, which is accompanied by the powerful awakenings of the male sexual response --which, at the time, is often triggered in a haphazard and uncontrollable fashion. He becomes more able to physically harm and/or dominate others at the same time as he becomes less able to make rational decisions.

Learning to be in control of these two characteristics --physical power and sexual desire --is the central challenge of manhood, and the successful gain of that control is the real mark of the exit from adolescence for a man. To place it crudely, a man who never learns to control his strength and his sexuality will one day be a rapist, an abuser, a killer, or all three; and in all probability sooner rather than later.

The irony is that the societies with the most dysfunctional gender roles are often those where boys are raised either in the absence or at a distance from positive male role models. The boy child in such a society is indulged and coddled in childhood, which gives him a lifelong sense of entitlement. Caught in the complex web of female relations, with their shifting hierarchies and alliances, and coded communications, he becomes hypersensitive to social nuance and obsessed with appearances. Raised without roughhousing, he becomes a brooding timebomb, ready to explode into violence at a moment's notice. Upon entering adolescence, he creates his own vision of masculinity, forged chiefly in opposition to what he sees as womanishness, and becomes macho and misogynistic, with a hatred for all women (except the ones in his own family). As an adult, he can be charming, yet he is also vain, sensitive, indolent, shiftless, quarrelsome, ready to fight or kill at a moment's notice, promiscuous, unfaithful, aggressive or uncomfortable around other men, and derisive of women.

In a society where there are strong male role models AND positive, functional gender roles, the male maturation process is much different. In youth, the boychild is encouraged to be independent, self-sufficient and explorative. The roughhousing and sports activities he experiences with older males teach him to be comfortably in control of his strength and aggression, and set the stage for an adult social structure built around friendly competition. As he moves into adolescence, he is taught to channel his strength into useful activities and to bind his sexuality to the standards of socially acceptable behavior. As an adult, he is strong, confident, productive, nurturing of a family, at ease around men and gentlemanly towards women.

These descriptions and scenarios, are, of course, both generalizations, and exaggerations. Many men thrive in the absence of male role models, and others mature badly despite an abundance of male mentors. In addition, there are, as mentioned above, bad and harmful gender roles, as well as individuals who physiologically or psychologically resonate more with the gender circumstances of the opposite sex. In sum, however, and in the most general case, gender roles should be understood at attempts in creating a positive social result from the realities of sexual difference.
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