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Never philosophise while knackered
May. 24th, 2016 08:01 amSo the other night, quite late, I was in a discussion on FB with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pbristow on the possible genders of the various aspects of God. All right, he was under the affluence of incohol whereas my consciousness has been unaltered by anything save exhaustion for what feels like bloody centuries, so it was that kind of discussion, and the conclusion to which we both stumbled was this: that the hypothetical truth about whether that which we call God has gender or not and if so which, how many and what do they do on Sundays, being unknown, is less important than the fact that our ideas and beliefs about the gender of deity condition the way we treat our own differently gendered fellow human beings on this planet, so we should start believing something different in order to change our own behaviour.
Yes, I know. Walked straight into it. What can I say? I was tired.
This is completely bitupon-sackwards, of course. Our beliefs about the gender of god (for those of us who have them) derive from our feelings about the genders of humanity, not the other way around. Those who believe that maleness is both the original blueprint and the perfected form of humankind see god as male. Those who have thought about it a little more decide that god is probably gender-neutral, while those who are consciously trying to redress the imbalance that patriarchal religions have reinforced over the centuries construct images of deity that are female. As of course do those who don't believe in any deity but simply want to shock those who do.
As for the writers of scripture, we can only speculate. Perhaps they were trying to establish, or shore up, a politico-economic system in which women, and their scary and incomprehensible reproductive capabilities, could be owned and controlled by men, in order to keep the records of property ownership neat and tidy. I like to think that those who originated the stories of polytheistic deities and their antics knew the truth that we have lost, that in practice (and leaving politico-economics out of it) neither gender can or should own or control the other gender, because "men" and "women" are illusory concepts. In real life, individuals can and should be free to work out their own relationships for better or worse. Of course, it's also possible that they viewed female deities the same way they viewed female characters in the theatre, as gods in drag. We don't know.
The point is, though, that making what, in any established religion, can only be cosmetic changes to the perceived image of deity won't, for the majority of religious, make any difference. There will be those few who will uncritically accept whatever their church tells them (I've never denied that such people exist, merely that they form any kind of majority), who will presumably change their ideas about gender, and there will be those, rather more, whose ideas about gender are already nicely independent of their religious beliefs, who will carry on as before. Those, however, who use their religious beliefs to justify their ideas about gender, will simply decide, as some IRA groups did when the main body began participating in the peace process, that they have been betrayed, their leaders have been turned by the enemy, and it's up to them to carry on the struggle. Not, you understand, to defend any ideas they may have about the nature of god, but simply to defend their perceived right to hold on to their property and status, which they see as threatened.
And meanwhile, the actual truth about the gender of any actual deity will remain, not "unimportant" as I said to Paul (the truth is never unimportant), but irrelevant in this context. Gender has nothing to do with most of what I do, yet I still have one; not the one I'd prefer, but it's mine and I'm stuck with it. God may be male, female, neuter, futanari, fleep, snurgle, binnaum or none of the above, or perm any x of y. We won't know till we find them.
Coming up next, why I believe the Iliad and the Odyssey were satires on male behaviour composed by a group of women while doing the laundry. Or maybe something completely different. But now it's breakfast time, and I must go cook.
pbristow on the possible genders of the various aspects of God. All right, he was under the affluence of incohol whereas my consciousness has been unaltered by anything save exhaustion for what feels like bloody centuries, so it was that kind of discussion, and the conclusion to which we both stumbled was this: that the hypothetical truth about whether that which we call God has gender or not and if so which, how many and what do they do on Sundays, being unknown, is less important than the fact that our ideas and beliefs about the gender of deity condition the way we treat our own differently gendered fellow human beings on this planet, so we should start believing something different in order to change our own behaviour.Yes, I know. Walked straight into it. What can I say? I was tired.
This is completely bitupon-sackwards, of course. Our beliefs about the gender of god (for those of us who have them) derive from our feelings about the genders of humanity, not the other way around. Those who believe that maleness is both the original blueprint and the perfected form of humankind see god as male. Those who have thought about it a little more decide that god is probably gender-neutral, while those who are consciously trying to redress the imbalance that patriarchal religions have reinforced over the centuries construct images of deity that are female. As of course do those who don't believe in any deity but simply want to shock those who do.
As for the writers of scripture, we can only speculate. Perhaps they were trying to establish, or shore up, a politico-economic system in which women, and their scary and incomprehensible reproductive capabilities, could be owned and controlled by men, in order to keep the records of property ownership neat and tidy. I like to think that those who originated the stories of polytheistic deities and their antics knew the truth that we have lost, that in practice (and leaving politico-economics out of it) neither gender can or should own or control the other gender, because "men" and "women" are illusory concepts. In real life, individuals can and should be free to work out their own relationships for better or worse. Of course, it's also possible that they viewed female deities the same way they viewed female characters in the theatre, as gods in drag. We don't know.
The point is, though, that making what, in any established religion, can only be cosmetic changes to the perceived image of deity won't, for the majority of religious, make any difference. There will be those few who will uncritically accept whatever their church tells them (I've never denied that such people exist, merely that they form any kind of majority), who will presumably change their ideas about gender, and there will be those, rather more, whose ideas about gender are already nicely independent of their religious beliefs, who will carry on as before. Those, however, who use their religious beliefs to justify their ideas about gender, will simply decide, as some IRA groups did when the main body began participating in the peace process, that they have been betrayed, their leaders have been turned by the enemy, and it's up to them to carry on the struggle. Not, you understand, to defend any ideas they may have about the nature of god, but simply to defend their perceived right to hold on to their property and status, which they see as threatened.
And meanwhile, the actual truth about the gender of any actual deity will remain, not "unimportant" as I said to Paul (the truth is never unimportant), but irrelevant in this context. Gender has nothing to do with most of what I do, yet I still have one; not the one I'd prefer, but it's mine and I'm stuck with it. God may be male, female, neuter, futanari, fleep, snurgle, binnaum or none of the above, or perm any x of y. We won't know till we find them.
Coming up next, why I believe the Iliad and the Odyssey were satires on male behaviour composed by a group of women while doing the laundry. Or maybe something completely different. But now it's breakfast time, and I must go cook.