After a tour of Catholic nuns researching 400 religious institutions across America, the collective consensus of the nuns was of universal faith, joy and hope; in regards to their undying initiatives of anti-poverty and social justice. Their on going initiatives even went so far as having had meetings with legislators to fight spending cuts in social programs; whereas, because of the deep historical masculine gendered church, the doctrinal congregational authorities felt this was pushing radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.

This gendered divergence was described by one nun this way: the Catholic church believes in the patrimony of God in Vatican Rome and conflicts with the religious nun’s beliefs that man and women are created equally. I guess this gendered constraint towards equality would be understandable being that if we were reading the scripture in the Christian bible; Complementarianism; which their view is "historic;" the "old testament" narrates in the very beginning, the female (Eve) was responsible for the weakness of disobeying God with tempting Adam to bite the apple of good and evil; and then mankind being subjected to the consequences. This also sets a tone for future writing judgments in Corinthians and Timothy where it's said a woman shouldn't teach or needs to submit to the man. If further researched and as it turns out in our studies, there a host of reasons historically why religion is masculine gendered.

Oddly and interestingly though, is that the traditional view of Judaism (also old testament), even though scripture writes both man and woman were created in the image of god, and man was created (built) in Genesis 1:27 with dual gender, and was separated into male and female. Most Judaism scholars suggest the idea that God has never been either male or female in gender; unlike most Christian views. At the same time, with my "somewhat of" a Christian upbringing, I can say my positive experiences and teachings were enveloped around women. The nuns were sweet hearts (although I have heard of nasty ones) but, the positive biblical figures of: Ruth, both Mary’s – mother of Jesus and his disciple, Rebecca, Sarah, Rachel and of course our modern day Mother Theresa, all were excellent role models of a spiritual Christian rhetoric.

Sadly, women aren’t allowed to be ordained in the Catholic because like stated in Kristy Maddux (2012) article; "The feminized Gospel" (supplementary art.), women don’t exhibit the same masculine gender as Jesus and therefor can’t represent the gospel. Hogwash I say; if noted in my earlier post when we were writing about family, I referred to the lord and I intentionally didn’t give the lord a masculine gender label even though the lord is written as a he and is referred to as he, and we assume a masculine gender but do we really know, especially if the lord supposedly never made any sexual orientations, that we know of.

Nevertheless, the Christian church is the major affiliated church in the United States and takes up a third of the world’s affiliation. For those reasons we have major influential gendered perspectives from those institutions and the like, and that of the other religions that might follow close behind. For example, Islam is not that different in the way they come into understanding of women and men’s roles, and have been coming together to slow progressive language, and to promote gendered roles. Meanwhile on a collective analysis level, according to writing by Fred Kniss suggestions in the book God, Science, Sex, Gender 2010, chapter 3; "We must attend to how groups (religions) define and prioritize various factors of human sexuality; how that might position them ideologically and philosophically; what ethical issues arise and what social consequences of conflict outcome might be." Or in addition, predict what the terms of debate are likely to be. Where potential allies or opponents might be found; how shifts in ideological or theological stances may affect relationships to other groups.

On an individualistic level, according to our studies, religion informs on not only peoples personal relationships with their god(s) but also peoples relationship with their gender/sex. Religious institutions communicate messages about gender and sex. So religion is an important institution to study on how to do gender and how to be sexed.

Egalitarians got it better in understanding in my opinion. They believe like Aimee Semple McPherson believed in the Maddux (2012) article, in that leadership and for that matter, higher spirituality is not determined, exercised, manifested and or dominated by gender but by the gifting and calling of the Holy Spirit, and that God calls all to submit to one another. So I must say, how’s that for real rhetoric? The Buddhist religion believes that we are all on this this earth for the sole purpose of helping others. Confucianism’s highest virtue is humanness toward others; to give you similar other perspectives.

Lastly, even the title of Muscular Christianity sounds too physical to have any spiritual diplomacy to me. In Maddux (2012), the analysis of McPherson’s innovative feminized personae as a preacher showed the strength against the masculine gendered culture of the time even though the a masculine preaching style would be the ideal because of the masculine gendered Jesus and a connotation to being manly or not emotional affected. When in reality, compassion is very much at the top of attributes of spiritual leadership and is very much intertwined with emotion and a compassionate responsability. Conversely, it is odd that the Puritan tradition in the mid-nineteenth century viewed muscular Christianity as an immoral waste of time. The justification of trying to win men back to church membership or any other phony rhetoric in regards to gender might explain some poor procedures and policies and sloppy Christian ideology in the church today.

Questions:
1) How do you think the religious future will hold up as an institution regardless of how it is gendered?

2) If the religious institution falls apart as it may if not supported, how do you think spirituality will be structured, practiced, exercised and carried on for our children?

3) Even though masculinity seemed to play some what of a negative role towards equality by gendering, masculine females and feminine males were the researched to be more the majority of church attendees, What might that suggest of the persons who seem to seek stronger spiritual structure or edification of a principle centered way of life?

Gender in the workplace, a life choice

     While we enjoy doing what we love, our social construct only allows for us to partake in what society deems is ok for us, or so we’re taught.  We often are full of judgment when we see a person doing a job that we feel that they can't normally handle, or if they can handle it, it's because they must be out of the realm of cis-gendered things.  An example that I want to share is the interesting look that was taken at female firefighters.  A job that is primarily filled by men, and not just any men, men that enjoy being in a very tough and dangerous job.  Men are known to feed off of the gender or masculinity of other men, in the book it’s known as “performing virility”.  So, it really throws off the masculine growth when we have women enter the field, many egos will no longer grow at the rate they once would’ve.  So it’s very hard for a women firefighter to be accepted as the men are subconsciously thinking, “I have nothing to learn from her.”  It’s well known that a smart firefighter beats a brawny firefighter any day of the week. This really doesn’t fit societies view on what women should do for a living and it really should make us question our stereotypes.  When it comes to communicating, people believe that women in this career would probably be emotional wrecks and not be able to handle the job and would be a strain on the team’s resources.  According to the article I’m using as the supplemental reading,” The masculine heroism associated with firefighting has been attributed to its military overtones according to Greenberg.”  I feel that a lot of the sexual harassment that the chapter speaks about can happen in some less normative ways, ways that are more unspoken and are stagnant in the brains of a lot of people; it’s a feeling that we perceive things and don’t really acknowledge that we’ve done anything.  A good example of the harassment is the original hiring of an individual, why they are in the position is often based on the role that someone feels will fit well at one firm or another.  Firefighting is extremely interesting when learning about how we communicate between genders, many of these women can’t be themselves, or are constantly performing their gender. 

     Is it wrong to say that some women are doing the career as a form of resistance?  Does it empower some women to go through life working a job that most would deem out of the cisgender norm? Here, Patricia Buzzanell reminds us, “focus more on the ways that people incorporate resistant thinking and behaving into their identities and interactions.  Resistance takes many forms.” (DeFranscisco and Palczewski, 2014. p.4725).   So really, people have a hard enough time dealing with women and their roles in the military; so this job, which is in close relation, in theory, is pretty close to that feeling where women just don’t belong.  A problem that occurs in these occupations is how management goes about meeting the quota for diversity in gender employment.  Since people feel that there must be a fair representation of the female gender, management goes about filling the void with an attitude and aura that says that women are just needed for that sole reason, to fill the quota, not that they would be a good addition to the team; at the same time, sometimes a woman is hired to has very masculine traits and is more like one of the guys, this allowing the team to feel more aligned with safety, as the more masculine female could probably manage to do better work than a more feminine counterpart.  The way that communication goes, people are unknowingly being guilty of becoming a hostile work environment, this is because of the perceived coercive action in that these women have to play the role they were hired for.  So when it comes to communicating, a lot of women in the field feel that they are trapped into playing this role they are hired into.  Often, a more feminine woman in the field would be a victim of girl watching, a trivial thing to men, but a real form of sexual harassment for women, objectifying them in every way.  Since the woman is viewed as a “game piece or object” instead of an integral role in the field.  I posit that, as the book says, norms can be altered, and they change over time, but what’s slower to change is our view on the binary; how different sexes can adapt to a job can be just as inflammatory and hard to swallow in our society as any other issues we have been brainwashed into holding as our own thinking or the “way it should be”.  For some women to come in and intentionally change the way we look at some careers, like these brave female firefighters, we should try to spread the knowledge that any gender is more than capable of stepping out of their societal norms and being able to possibly have a hugely positive influence on very tough jobs.  Women don’t need to become more masculine to do a job, this is society, women who stick to who they are can change the way things are done, for the better, because of fresh thinking, a lot of good can happen.  The reward that a female can get from doing a great job as a firefighter is cut short by them having to play a role, now, doesn’t that sound really wrong?  

1)  Why do we feel that certain jobs don't allow multiple genders to partake?

2)   Heroism, is it masculine?  Why do we feel so aligned with a masculine view of heroism?

3)  Sexual harassment, is unspoken harassment worse than the plainly obvious verbal harassment?