Wednesday, September 05, 2018

Gender Fluidity: The Destruction of the Symbols That Serve to Distinguish One Gender from Another

An aspect of righteous living is men dressing in men's things and women in women's.  Someone may wonder why it's got to be such a big deal.  Why can't we just ignore it and act like it's nothing?  It's a requirement from God.  A godly culture constitutes symbols of manhood and womanhood as an endorsement or confirmation of God's design in His creation and to model the distinction.  The culture does this because of God, if it's a godly culture.  When it stops mattering to a culture, it's because the culture is turning away or has turned away from God. It has rejected His way, like Lamech rejected God's definition of marriage, because He rejected God in the ungodly line.

To write about this, I want to start with a baseline of a couple of definitions, two that are important, first, the distinctions between gender and sex.  I'm going to use Wikipedia, despite some's opinion that it isn't credible as a source, but to give us something to work with.
The distinction between sex and gender differentiates a person's biological sex (the anatomy of an individual's reproductive system, and secondary sex characteristics) from that person's gender, which can refer to either social roles based on the sex of the person (gender role) or personal identification of one's own gender based on an internal awareness (gender identity).
Sex and gender are related, because sex is what God created.  Gender should be based upon the sex of a person, but it is also learned or chosen behavior.  Someone is born male and female, but we know from scripture and can see with our eyes that people turn from how God created them based on sin.  Gender is a combination of nature and nurture.  People were born with obvious sexual differences and then those are supported through multiple elements of training, parents and church foremost.  It helps if society at large upholds these, but that shouldn't be expected.

The other definition is in the title, that being gender fluidity.  A term that didn't come on my radar until just recently.  Mirriam-Webster says that it wasn't invented until 1994.  Both these quotes come from the Mirriam-Webster online dictionary.
of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity is not fixed 
And then I found that gender can have fluidity, which is quite different from ambiguity. If ambiguity is a refusal to fall within a prescribed gender code, then fluidity is the refusal to remain one gender or another. Gender fluidity is the ability to freely and knowingly become one or many of a limitless number of genders, for any length of time, at any rate of change. Gender fluidity recognizes no borders or rules of gender. —Kate Bornstein,  Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us,  1994
Sex isn't fluid, and gender is fluid insofar that people rebel against God's created designed differences between men and women.  Sin influences this as seen in Romans 1.

Gender fluidity is where we're at as a culture.  I'm not saying that everyone in the world has accepted it, but most people reading this know that we've reached a time where someone can self-identify gender.  If this is going to change, if it's going to be put in the bottle like it should be, Christians above all must want it.  They must support gender distinction.  If they won't, it's not going to happen and we will continue along this same path.

The foundations of gender fluidity, yes, are related to rejection of Genesis 1, proceeding out of naturalism.  If people remove God as creator, then they can choose what they want to be, instead of believing what God did. I'm asserting this began with the rejection of the symbols of manhood and womanhood. Continuing to defend the elimination of the symbols is an embracing of gender fluidity.  This is how it looks in scripture.

Gender distinctions are purposeful.  A culture must believe them and support them to ward off what is now being called fluidity.  The symbols are important, which is what we see taught at least in Deuteronomy 22:5 and 1 Corinthians 11:3-16 (this is taught in several other places too, but those are classic locations). Mocking the symbols, ridiculing the designed distinctions in a culture, is welcoming gender fluidity.  People who profess to be Christians do this now.

More than any other factor, worldliness is the cause of the Christian cooperation with fluidity. Christians don't want to stick out in their culture.  They want to be Christians, essentially go to heaven when they die, and yet not suffer in the world (my point in Monday's post).  This is truly a form of Christianity, not actual Christianity.  Christians have hastened gender fluidity, because they themselves are ashamed of the distinctions in gender.  This is easy to see today.

Christian men more than anyone are responsible for gender fluidity.  They have capitulated to women as what are called beta males.  They so want the favor of women, like Adam in the garden, that they cede their manhood, what some call the man card.  Men then talk and walk in an effeminate manner with no repercussions.  Those who say anything are said to be "bullying."  Most bullying is pointing out the obvious even in a nice way.  It started, I assess, with women not wanting the "rough" treatment of their sons by fathers, who wanted to develop toughness in their boys.

There is something both symbolic and real to women now wearing the pants.  Women wear pants and wear the pants.  Women challenge men and men fold.  The symbols have been eliminated and Christian accede to this in culture, even pushing for it.  The biggest arguments that I read are usually effeminate men who mock in an effete manner.  They don't have arguments coming from strength, but manipulative, emotional arguments like would be expected from women, then glancing around for similar expressions from similar males for reinforcement.  Here, when I write on related subjects, and they comment, they almost always remain anonymous.

If gender fluidity is going to end, men will have to lead, and to start, in the most simple way, they must return to the symbols of gender established by a godly culture.  Their women must stop wearing pants.  This isn't all there is to it, but it is so basic, that it is a starting point. Some reading here will say they can't do that, because scripture isn't clear, so they do nothing.  Scripture says something, not nothing.  The historic (and biblical) position has not been replaced.  It's just been dropped.  There is still a female symbol, the dress or skirt.  Men are not wearing skirts or dresses at Bob Jones University and Maranatha and their constituent churches, yet.

The attack on roles almost always goes one direction.  It doesn't start with men attempting to be women.  That should be obvious.  It should be.  Part of being effeminate for men is feigning ignorance on this, not knowing what I'm talking about.  It's another lie, just like gender fluidity is a lie.  So fluidity starts with women wearing pants.  Society was aghast to start and then this eroded for the same reasons it always has eroded and does erode.  One book called it the death of outrage. Move on, nothing to see.

If the United States is not going to change on this, and I don't think it will, it doesn't mean it should not change in your family and in your church.  That's where it must happen first.  Judgment begins in the house of God.

1 comment:

Kent Brandenburg said...

People aren't serious about this, which is tell-tale. They would rather please girly boys than risk alienation.