The fight for women’s “equality” has been one of the most persistent social and political issues of the past century or more. In American expression, this has been a long, messy, and incomplete process of realizing the Declaration’s promise that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” “All men,” we have come rightly to insist, must also mean “all women.” This is both a matter of the gender-inclusive use of the word man, as well as a philosophically and theologically necessary implication of the original Lockean ethics enshrined in the Declaration.
Still, many of us feel – now a quarter century into the 21st century and a quarter millennium into the American experiment – that all is not well with our ideas about “equality” between the sexes. I want to suggest in this article, with some help from author and essayist Wendell Berry, that this intuition is correct.
Since reading Berry’s most recent nonfiction book, The Need to Be Whole, there is a single passage1 that has stuck with me more than any other. Though Berry’s wider discussion includes additional categories, this section is particularly relevant for issues related to sex and gender. The text is worth working through at some length, so bear with me as I offer, unpack, and expand upon several long-ish quotes in the first half of this article.
The principle of equality or ‘equality before the law,’ as we have taken it from the Declaration of Independence, and elaborated it in the Constitution and in legislation, is a principle first and last. It is a legal and therefore a general safeguard against prejudice, which is always a generalization. To deny a legally established right to persons or groups because of their category is an offense against the law of the land, and the much older spirit of the law. For those of us kindly disposed toward democracy and our species, the principle of equality, thus far, presents no problem. We approve of it and we accept it.
Equality in this sense is a cherished principle of classical Western liberalism. To Berry’s sense of legal equality we could also add theological equality as an inheritance of the Christian tradition. Though it admittedly took some time for emerging Christianity to shake off the pagan, Aristotelian norms of the day, the church has come (more or less universally) to affirm that men and women are equal before God. Women, like men, are created in the image of God and, in Christ, “there is no longer male nor female” (Gal 3:28). Likewise, wives/women are spoken of in scripture as co-heirs of life with their husbands/men (1 Pet 3:7). This theological principle is the foundation of the Declaration’s legal principle. All humans are endowed by their creator with equal dignity and value as persons.
As it relates to sex and gender, legal justice and divine righteousness require holding this equality ever before our eyes: no woman should be seen as unequal in status to any man by virtue of her being a woman. However, Berry argues, this equality is not the only thing to be kept in mind in human relationships and communities. He goes on:
[W]hen we carry this principle [of equality] home among our families and our neighbors, where ordinarily and fortunately we are beyond the law, we are immediately confronted with a multiplicity of inequalities––of intelligence, appearance, health, age, strength, education, wealth, talent, fate or fortune, and so on.
Berry suggests that, in our everyday lives, away from the abstractions of theology and law, acknowledgement of various types of inequality is also essential to the carrying out of justice and impartiality.
We realize that to treat all persons as equal, ignoring their differences, is at best inconsiderate, at worst foolishness or cruelty. Because people individually are not equal to one another, we need discernment, patience, and good manners: ways of enacting respect or courtesy or kindness or compassion for those we perceive as better off or worse off than ourselves. Our neighbors are not effectively our equals unless we treat them as equally entitled to our regard in spite of the inevitable differences.
As important as equality between men and women – and between any two classes of humans – is as a principle, that principle can be unhelpfully extended to erase important differences in patterns of being, embodiment, and circumstance. Berry continues:
The principle of equality becomes seriously troublesome, I think, when it obscures really significant differences… This blunted egalitarianism, I think, is as troubling in the politics of sex as in the politics of race. Women are as human as men (if I dared, I would say more so), and they ought not to be denied any civil right. They ought to receive equal pay for equal work. But to say that women and men are equally human is not to say that they are the same, or that they are in all ways ‘like’ each other.
Equality, Berry reminds us, does not equal sameness.
He continues by listing some generalized differences ending with, what I think is really the crux of this discussion, namely, that “most women are physically smaller than most men.” Overlooking this clear inequality between women and men, Berry argues, is a serious mistake.
In our self-consciously modernizing and improving way, the combination of the movement for women’s rights with ‘sexual liberation’ has encouraged both women and men to regard these inequalities as insignificant or as virtually nonexistent. We are encouraged to think that these differences are excuses for, if they are not part of, a ‘patriarchal’ oppression of women. As a consequence, the forms of a special respect and regard and helpfulness, that women often expected of men and that men often gave, have fallen into disuse, even as the need for them has fairly demonstrably increased.
[…]
The trouble and the harm occur in situations, very common now, in which the sexes are, in the most insistently practical sense of the term, not equal. A woman at her job, confronting her would-be seducer who is her boss, with her livelihood at stake, is not his equal. Nor is a 120-pound girl the equal of a 200-pound boy in the twilight or darkness of a fraternity party.
Power is a multi-faceted concept and certainly not limited to physical strength. And, frankly, physical size and strength is not the only type of power where men tend to start well ahead of the curve compared to women. However, physical strength is surely the most pervasive and unassailable inequality between the sexes. And this inequality is one that (in certain circles) is unfashionable even to name. But just because this power disparity makes us uneasy does not make it any less a fact of our existence as men and women.
To note that men are (in general) physically larger, stronger, and faster than women is not to adopt some patriarchal or sexist perspective. It’s simply to describe created reality. Sexism and injustice emerge based on the “so what” that comes after this observation. (More on this below.)
Still, the uncomfortable reality is that it is very often within men’s (physical) power to use and abuse women at their whim, to build a world characterized by their absolute rule and domination of the female sex. In many times and places, this is more or less exactly what has happened. Because of their physical power advantages, men often have done (and continue to do) what they want – and there is often little women can do to stop them. This is not to imply that women are power-less, just decidedly less power-ful on this score.2
Despite all the historic and ongoing injustices suffered by women – the utter dystopian, male-dominated world I’ve just described is not the world that we live in. And to the extent that it’s not, it’s important to ask why this is the case.
I want to suggest that a key reason is this: male virtue. Moreover, the extent to which we have neglected the importance of male virtue formation – as Berry points out – we risk slipping toward that dystopian reality.
In Search of a Positive Vision for the Male-Female Power Imbalance
The #MeToo movement shone a light on the pervasiveness of male violence against women, as well as the unequal and unjust application of the law and of social power to these evils. But, as Berry argues, there is an incompleteness to #MeToo as a social movement, and the very need for the movement suggests that something deeper had gone badly wrong in our gender relations in the preceding decades.3 Berry is far from the only voice in recent years to re-highlight the physical power disparity between men and women. For instance, journalist and author Louise Perry argues in her The Case Against the Sexual Revolution that sexual violence is more or less an unavoidable evolutionary instinct of a certain percentage of men. Furthermore, she argues that the cultural technology of monogamous marriage and Christian sexual ethics have done well to curtail this instinct and safeguard women’s well-being and promote their flourishing. Along a similar line, Christian Emba argues in Rethinking Sex that the “consent only” sexual ethic obscures the moral urgency of creating value judgments about the moral goodness of certain sexual desires. It also obscures the relative sexual vulnerability of most women compared to most men. In language even more jarring than Berry’s, she writes:
The majority of men could likely kill a woman with their bare hands. Hence the mental calculus that women face whenever they want to reject a man’s sexual advances: Will he hurt me?4
Surely this inequality extends far beyond the sexual realm. But since most sexual situations arise in private, it is here that we see this power imbalance most starkly.
Again, this is an uncomfortable thing to talk about. What is more, the bare fact of this inequality between men and women cannot be changed by the law or even by social norms. It can only be accounted for. But in accounting for such inequality, laws and social pressure campaigns will only accomplish so much. Additionally and more fundamentally, moral formation is necessary – specifically that of men and boys.
But this is far more than the moral formation of restraint (e.g. “teach men not to rape”), though it certainly includes this as a bare minimum. It is not enough to view male strength as a liability for evil and harm. (And it is here I quibble a bit with Berry’s and others’ framing.) If we affirm the unique goodness of male embodiment – not just human embodiment, male embodiment – then there must be a positive vocation for the unique qualities of physical strength.
And there is. In a word: Service.
Our modernist egalitarian sensibilities might make some of us wary of any type of vocation emerging from the power imbalance between men and women. A male vocation of “service” feels only a hair’s breadth removed from the misogynistic excess and traditionalism for traditionalism’s sake – patronizing at best, patriarchal and oppressive at worst.
But what’s the alternative?
The fact remains that many men have a surplus of strength relative to women. As Berry notes, it won’t do to minimize or deny the existence of this inequality. To do so risks neglect, even cruelty. This is the ideological ditch, it seems to me, cultural progressives are likely to fall into on sex and gender. In decrying the harms perpetrated by men against women (nevermind the even higher cost of injury and death suffered by men and boys from male violence!), there is left no positive vocation for men’s strength surplus. Don’t hit your kids. Don’t intimidate others. Don’t manipulate. Don’t rape. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
On the flip side of the cultural divide, we find the patriarchalists of one form or another. Here there is a positive (or, at least, active) vision for male strength relative to women. Because men are stronger, the explicit or implicit logic goes, men are to lead or otherwise be in charge of human society, communities, families, churches, etc. Power is given to men (by God), so that they can fulfill their “role” as leaders. Or, flipped around the other way, because men have been given physical power, it is right that they exercise this power relative to women.
Surely there is also a ditch we can fall into for those of this ideological persuasion. Namely, I would argue there is an often unstated threat of violence in this patriarchal logic. It goes like this:
I’m stronger than you, so you need to respect me (or I will hurt you).
We’re stronger than you, so you need to obey us (or we will make you obey).
He’s stronger than you, so you need to submit to his leadership (or he will use his strength against you).
As Thucydides famously put it, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
However, it does not follow that a physical power advantage of men relative to women prescribes male domination, the primacy of male vocation, or even the evangelical/complementarian buzz word “leadership.”5
There is an ocean of difference between noting or acknowledging one’s relative physical strength and then saying, “Therefore, I should be in charge, and you need to submit to me” versus asking, “How can I use what strength I have to serve you?”
On Cruciform Masculinity
This emphasis on service is, of course, modeled by Jesus in the New Testament. In his teaching he draws contrast between two models of power. Greatness in his kingdom is not like greatness in the kingdoms of this world. Among the pagans, rulers “lord it over” and officials “exercise authority” over those weaker than them (Matt 20:25). Not so for Jesus followers. For them, whoever would be great must be a servant––“Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” (20:28).
A couple decades after Jesus’ resurrection, Paul writes in Philippians 2:
6b [Jesus], being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (NIV)
In both cases, Jesus shows us how Christians ought to use power: namely, to serve others. Power for the pagans (both in the first century and today) means power over others. Power for the Christian means power for others.
Jesus surely has a surplus of power relative to other humans and relative to the church. But his power is the power of a servant, not of a despot.
The analogy isn’t perfect, but we have biblical warrant for applying the principle of others-serving love to male-female relationships, specifically with husbands and wives (Eph 5:25). What is more, I don’t see a reason why this cannot extend, in principle, as a vocational expression of what to do about/with the male-female power differential.
A vision of masculinity focused on “lording over” and “exercising authority” is much more pagan than it is Christian.
At the same time, the model of using our strength to serve others has implications for how all of us (men and women) use our surplus of power – social, sexual, economic, ecclesial, political, etc. The strength and size advantage that men have over women is so immediate, so pervasive that it serves as a helpful illustration on the properly Christian use of all forms of power. All of us learn something about what it means to be human and what it means to follow Jesus by watching virtuous men use their strength in service of others.
To sum up, we have three choices as it relates to the inequality (such as it is) between men and women.
We can minimize or ignore it, arguing there is no distinct vocation for male identity or masculinity flowing out of this power differential.
We can double down on it for self-serving or self-aggrandizing ends, reading the male power surplus as a prescription for male rule, domination, or leadership of one kind or another.
We can accept it as a good part of God’s creation, an opportunity for men to exercise, in a unique way, the vocation of service and love for others.
The High Stakes of Male Virtue Formation
To conclude, let’s go back to Wendell Berry. Surely women and men are (or ought to be) equal in many ways. We often fall short of this ideal. We are confronted regularly with ways that women are unjustly treated unequally, denigrated in their intelligence, dismissed in their opinions, disbelieved when they say they have been wronged, and denied opportunities that should rightly be theirs.
At the same time, there is a pronounced inequality between men and women that is unassailably woven into the fabric of what it means to be human: their disparity in size and physical strength. No matter the qualifiers, no matter the exceptions to the rule, males outclass females as a rule on this most insistent and fundamental form of power. There is no direct value judgment to be made against men or injustice implied in noting this fact.6 It just is.
Berry reminds us that this inequality must be “regarded” and accounted for with “respect” and “courtesy” vis à vis men and women. A failure to do this can – and tragically often does – lead to great suffering for women, told and untold.
A final word then, from Berry, on the insufficiency of legal recourse and of the #MeToo movement:
In the absence apparently of all cultural restraints, women who have been assaulted or raped have no recourse but the courts of law or, by way of scandal, the news. Having been exploited by men, they then must exploit themselves by making their private humiliation public. A woman too poor to pay a lawyer, and so unfortunate as to have been abused by nobody famous, has no recourse at all. In the news and commentary I have read on sexual abuses by men and the Me Too movement, I have seen no suggestion that the abusive men ought to have been taught decent manners and a proper sense of responsibility when they were boys.
What men do with this power has enormous implications for the well-being of others. Will they view this power as right to rule or as a conduit for blessing others? This is why the formation of character is of such importance for boys and for men. Unchaste, unrestrained, unvirtuous men have a great capacity to do harm to others. So we must make it our collective mission to cultivate in ourselves and the boys and men in our lives virtues of restraint: self-control, patience, gentleness, peace, etc. At the same time, godly, selfless, and noble men have a great capacity to bless and serve others. So we must likewise work to grow in them virtues of empathy and action: courage, diligence, kindness, and, above all, love.
This is far more than a matter of good manners. It is a matter of seeing and receiving the goodness of both female and male embodiment, all while imitating Christ by using whatever strength has been given us as a means to serve others.
All quotes in this article come from Wendell Berry, The Need To Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice, 30–33.
Women have also consistently used what power they have (linguistic, relational, procreational, emotional, etc.) to counteract men’s physical power advantages.
This is not to imply that no “progress” (a dubious term) had been made in gender relations in the preceding decades. The sexual revolution was a decidedly mixed bag, in my view.
Christine Emba, Rethinking Sex: A Provocation, 70.
Some complementarians reading may point out that I’ve created a false dichotomy between leadership and service. Surely, they might protest, the best forms of complementarianism as an “-ism” insist that men lead by serving. Fair enough. It’s not my intent in this post to argue directly against complementarianism as an interpretive framework for the biblical text. This has been done to death in both directions, and I’m not sure I have much to add. I find the binary between so-called egalitarianism and complementarianism pretty unhelpful, to be honest, and I consider myself a conscientious objector to the culture wars on this point.
Except, perhaps, in terms of its implications for theodicy, a question that might be worth exploring in a future post.
Trying to restack and having trouble. But this quote gets right to the heart:
“A vision of masculinity focused on “lording over” and “exercising authority” is much more pagan than it is Christian.”
Listened to this three times while going about my errands today. Your arguments are clarifying and resonate with thoughts I’ve been wrestling through in conversations with my 23 and 22 y/o sons.