It's Ok to Be A Man but not to Patronise

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 22 September 2011 16:28:36

Kester Brewin is asking "Is it wrong to be a man?", a conversation which is stemming from "The Year of Opposition" something which I'd not come across but which Kester discusses in this post and which links in with Ben Edson's post which I touched upon here. I found it interesting reading this in the context of an experience I had a couple of weeks ago at a circuit service. The service was celebrating the work of Network and the launch of its successor Methodist Women in Britain, something explained on this bit of the Methodist Website. At the end of the service which was very slanted to empowering women I was heard to ask the question "what was that all about?", not because I did not understand the message but rather I was confused about why a second wave feminist approach may still be required. For me the big problem was the whole thing smacked of positive discrimination and this is a worry I have.

Kester makes the comment "But… sometimes it just feels ‘wrong’ to be a man." This is one of the big problems I have with alot of the feminist ideology, and why -if I had to take a label - it would be Christian post-feminist. As a church and within wider society it is true we are contributing to the crisis of masculinity. I worry that more than that in contributing to this and looking with angst about the under-representation of women or certain groups of women we are also further marginalising certain groups of men.

My area of academic study is single parents, note not single mothers but single parents. Too often I think our conversations, in the rare cases they occur relate to "how to we support single mums?" and so forth. If we allowed men to be a little more blokey and made space for this I think we would learn that we also need to support "single dads", both with main responsibility for their kids but more commonly without.

But moving back to Kester's post he asks. "I’m not sure about is why women don’t post much on blogs, or submit so many applications to speak at events, or offer to write articles so much. Is this still part of a history of being oppressed, or is it something else? It seems to matter, because if it’s the latter, then perhaps men and organizations/publications need to feel less guilty about gender imbalance."

There are I think a range of answers to this question and I can't cover all of them here. However, here are a few ideas:

1) In the UK, and I think the US, Theology departments are still predominantly male domains of power. This is slowly changing, but it is taking time. as for the rest of the world there is an Northern Hemispherecentric thing going on and so what the situation is there isn't even taken into account but I suspect they may also be quite male dominated. The acceptance of articles, invitations to speak and so forth involve "having a reputation" and in many areas of theology those with the credibility remain male. Putting it bluntly promoters and event managers want what will sell and put bums on seats, so often this is well known men.

2) Women have more caring responsibilities for children or elderly relatives often. Thus, we may have less time for sitting and writing articles. We have to make more choices about how we use that time which is available to us.

3) Following on from the above there is the thing that in terms of the more popular Christian events and indeed certain types of academic conference they take place during vaccation time. If women are balancing jobs in teaching or academia particularly with caring responsibilities then having the vacations to give those we care for the majority of our time is important. Our lives have to go much more into boxes.

4) There is, whether we like it or not, an "old boy's style network" which exists, particularly in relation to certain things like the emerging church conversations - whilst some of those involved are women the majority are men, thus there will be the inevitable problem of those inviting their friends being male.

5) Some women, myself included, have found ourselves dealing with issues related to "the family" simply because we recognise the gap which exists within the conversation - these are not the topics which generally have mass appeal across both genders or where the resources are centred.

6) Blokes like playing with techy stuff more - end of....this is not wrong - it's how it is.

7) The shadow of certain debates about gender and leadership are still hovering around, particularly in organisations such as the CofE. Therefore, there is a certain amount of time and energy being devoted to fighting wider battles going on, I believe. Additionally, women may be more worried of the impact a word out of place in the public domain may have, because they are still in some ways establishing their credentials.

So is positive discrimination the way forward? No, I think we actually need people to be blokey and openly blokey. To put it bluntly the least likely group to want to have anything to do with faith stuff are going to be "Nuts" or "Zoo" reading guys - if we are serious about evangelism we need to find ways to engage with these guys who educationally and socially are going to be those most accutely suffering from a crisis of masculinity, according to studies - waffling on about wanting more women involved is not the way to go about it, although neither is the mysoginistic approach of certain sections of the conservative evangelical right. The fact is many of these guys are being attracted to groups like the EDL and we need to find ways, as Christians, of reaching them and giving them alternatives, rather than through our focues creating a vaccum for them in the sphere of "religious activism" too (see this Guardian for comment on the results of political vaccum) - so Kester be as blokey as you like.

In terms of the listening to women thing, my bottom line comment remains the same as it was the other day, "We need to find a way of hearing people who haven’t been through the gatekeepers and taking them equally seriously." (and you know what that is, I think, as much a class thing and level of educational attainment thing as much as it is a gender thing).