Ramblings on Gender, Veils, Identity and Christianity
I sit in church, at 8:30 in the morning; I’m wearing a
floral dress made on a 1950s pattern. I’m following a Book of Common Prayer
order of service, singing hymns, reading the bible, Listening to a sermon on 1Corinthians 11:2-16, a passage I’ve never considered particularly controversial
but today, the minister is talking about gender
and I’m I’m squirming in my seat desperately wanting to hide. This is not a “ladies,
be quiet and don’t preach” sermon, or a “submit to male authority” issue, but
as I sit there, I’m hearing the words ‘masculinity’, ‘femininity’ repeatedly,
and what seems to be an exhortation to men to embrace their masculinity and for
women, their femininity, and I’m left thinking something is horribly wrong
here, but why? What is it I take issue with? Is it because I am a woman? Or is
it something else?
The irony of a
(straight, white, Christian) woman wearing a dress cut on a 1950s pattern, one
of the most endearing images of 20th Century femininity questioning the appropriateness of these words, feeling
a little squeamish on hearing them ring out from the pulpit does not escape me.
The absurdity of being someone who grew up in one of the institutions most seen
as promoting heteronormativity, suddenly feeling like the dialogue on gender
being presented was somehow misplaced and inadequate is also not lost. So why
did these things suddenly rock me? Was I being overly liberal and refusing to
hear an unpleasant truth? Or is it possible that Paul doesn’t really care,
primarily, about my gender?
Somehow,
despite this text clearly addressing both men and women and at times
separately, I had never thought of it as
a gendered text. It is a text addressing a mixed congregation (which, as
pointed out in the sermon, was radical) about appropriate approaches to the
acts of prayer and prophesying. And as it happens, the text gives one
instruction to Men (don’t cover your head when you pray) and an opposite
instruction to women (cover your head when your pray), and I just don’t really
see these instructions as being about gender, per se. Paul doesn’t give this
instruction because he expects women to be feminine or because covering your
head is inherently feminine, or because quiet femininity is godly, or because women
are less worthy of display than men are. Surely, he gives this instruction as a
way of providing a practical, but also cultural and historical solution to a
spiritual concern, a still relevant question on our attitude towards worship. The
solution he gives is gendered, because his society was, but there is no reason
to think it has to be. Paul expected a certain attitude from his congregation,
and that attitude, for those in church, is arguably timeless. We could throw
about words like humility, respect, awe,
reverence. He expected both men and women to approach God with awe, to take
prayer seriously, and for whatever cultural reason, he knew no other practice,
the practical solution he gives, is gendered.
I’ve never had
a problem with this, despite never having covered my head in church. I think I
always assumed that Paul expects me to be polite, modest, and respectful, to
not revel too much in my rights. You know, I have every right to stubbornly
hold whatever opinion I like, to dress however I want, to flaunt my body
however I chose, but yet I choose not to wear a bikini to church (or work, or
university or anywhere other than the beach for that matter). I dress nice, not
to show off that I own expensive clothes, not because I want to be stylish or
cool, but because I want to show, through my clothes, that I respect the ritual
of going to church. Just like how we put on our good clothes – whatever they
might be - to go to a birthday party or a wedding or a job interview. I’m not
going to suddenly wear my bikini or ripped jeans to work, and spout some silly
line about God being my ultimate boss now that I’m a Christian, and therefore
making following the dress code of my employer redundant.
Lets face it, if every woman in Corinth, or in
my society, was getting about in a head covering, for whatever reason (dad
says, the church says, society says) but now as a Christian I no longer felt
such behaviour necessary, and threw my veil off because I did not want to be
oppressed by the expectations of my community, would anyone respect me as a
serious thinker, as an example of morality, of a right way to live?[1] Or
would I be considered a brazen, immoral revolutionary? There is nothing wrong
with challenging the status quo, with challenging gender stereotyping, but
sometimes one must take baby steps not radical leaps.
Yet somehow,
despite taking no issue with Paul here, despite having spent years myself
spouting the Anglican line about equal in value, different in role, despite my
minister claiming qualities like bravery and humility as both masculine and
feminine, as I heard him claim that ‘Jesus redeems the beauty of gender’,
something didn’t sit right.
This passage
just isn’t about gender. And I’m going to go as far as saying, being Christian
shouldn’t be about gender. Gender is about how I form my identity, it is
related to my biological sex, my sexuality, my character, how I present myself,
but for some people the intersection between these things is fluid, and
sometimes that fluidity is a joyful, wonderful thing, and sometimes it is messy
and confusing. Whether as adults negotiating our relationships and the gendered
roles we fulfil in them, or a four year old boy wearing sparkly, sequined ‘girly’
shoes, gender is a complex playground, and whether they should or they shouldn’t,
words like ‘femininity’ and ‘girly’ still suggest very fixed ideas.
Gender can be
about how I conform to or subvert what society tells me being an acceptable
woman person is, it can be about how I stand up to the world and say, ‘this is
who I am and what I do’. As a Christian, am I not called to see my identity
primarily and fundamentally not as a woman, not as a daughter, a marital
status, a profession, but as a follower of Christ? Maybe Jesus redeems the
beauty of biological difference, because
“there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or
female, for you are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28).
Perhaps, my problem
was primarily linguistic rather than say, theological or ideological. I cringed
when from the pulpit I heard someone effectively say, go be feminine, and be
feminine for God, because being feminine,
sets off alarm bells about being the ideal
feminine, about being a home maker and cake baker, domestic, passionless,
silent. And despite the controversy of 1 Corinthians 14:34, I don’t think Paul
wants this. He wants me to pray. He wants me to participate in church. Not
because I am a woman, but because I am a Christian. And how I do it, whether I
wear a veil or not, and ultimately, whether I am a woman or not, has nothing to
do with it.
I can see that
maybe my working definition of ‘gender’ is not the same as the definition
understood by the majority in my congregation. But it is a dangerous word to
throw about when it means certain and specific things to some people. I can see
that talking about ‘biological sex’ or ‘biological difference’ is clunky, but
there is a reality that amongst many people that gender is a construct or
choice, something to grapple with, to display, to embody. And for some people
it isn’t clear cut. For some people it is painful. And as a church we need to
welcome those people. Even if you go on
to say things like men and women are interdependent, are complimentary to each
other, to use words like gender, as synonymous with ‘biological sex’, to use
them from the pulpit, the place of instruction really sounds like we’re pushing
normativity and gender performativity as godliness, because for so many of us,
the words ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ signify traditional gender roles and
stereotyping, when actually, rather than redeem (or bring back) the beauty of
gender, which rather than sounding like embracing difference, sounds like
embracing traditional gendered ideals, even if you mean otherwise, Christianity
should free me from the need to conform to an expectation that my life will
follow a certain constructed trajectory, because these feminine things like motherhood and nursing, these masculine things like being tough and
providing an income are not Christian ideals but culturally constructed
gendered ideals, and they do not create worth or value.
I used to hate
feminist literature. I thought it was written by bitter, grumpy women. Maybe I have
become a bitter, grumpy woman, or maybe I saw through the lie that women are
better at parenting because they are women (gender), and that the reality was
something like women are better at breast feeding because they have breasts
(biological difference). For a long time I didn’t get the nuance. I thought
gender was just an inherent thing that went hand in hand with biological sex,
and despite first starting to reluctantly read feminist theory in 2009, it is
only now that I’m really understanding statements that teach us to perceive “
‘feminism’ as a political position, ‘femaleness’ as a matter of biology, and
‘femininity’ as a set of culturally defined characteristics.”[2]
I write this
because I think my concern, as I sat in church, in my modest 1950s style dress,
was one of words and what they imply. Its true, that I probably do hold some
views that are a little too liberal for what most Anglicans adhere to, and that
are simultaneously a little too conservative for what my society upholds. That
is my problem to work out. But it doesn’t make it any less important, that as
church, we get our language right, just in case we send a message we didn’t
intend. There is nothing wrong with asking the men and women in your church to
be humble; to revere God; to approach worship appropriately. But there really
isn’t any need to throw the language of gender into the mix, because exhortation
to behave in a manner consistent with one’s faith is relevant to the whole
church. Advocating these attitudes has
nothing to do with being feminine or masculine, despite the fact that we are
all gendered, one way or another. Being these things has much more to do with
being a decent human, and well, with being Christian, and I don’t think my
being a woman is, in this instance, remotely relevant.
[1] Interestingly, when I was in Dubai in January, I covered
my arms and legs in public, and covered my head when I entered a mosque,
despite knowing I had, as a white Australian woman every right to wear whatever
I wanted. I didn’t do this because I think I am a worse woman if I did not, but
because, a) I don’t want to stand out like an idiotic tourist, b) I don’t want to offend, and c) Can I hope to
be respected by and enter into dialogue with someone who expects a good woman
to appear a certain way, if I refuse appear that way?
[2] Moi, T, ‘Feminist, Female, Feminine’, in Belsey, C and Moore, J (Eds)(1989), The Feminist Reader, Basil Blackwell,
New York
