Gender’s and My Religion

On one of the forum’s I frequent they are discussing the gender neutralization of men. One of the women pretty much mocked the men saying there was no difference between men and women besides the ability to give birth. Anything beyond that was driven by societal norms and not by any God given (or natural) mean. I really get a kick out of the idea of gender rolling. I think it’s absurd, for the most part (I do think it’s possible, but only in the extremes).

I had a daughter first, when she was a baby she was given three blankets: one pink, one orange yellow and blue and one crocheted with this IMO hideous mix of green orange and pink. She loves the crocheted one.

She wanted to mother things as soon as she could move and she now wants to be a princess more than anything in the world. Did I push this upon her? Or is it a natural?

I hardly doubt I pushed it on her, and if you know my husband and his family, you’d understand that there’s no way they did. Much to much testosterone running around in that family.

A year later I had a son. We didn’t have any boy toys when he was born, so out of curiosity I held out on buying any. His absolute favorite toy, out of all of hers, was a bright pink.... car. He carried that thing around with him everywhere until his uncle’s bought him a big tonka truck.

Now, at five, he loves to hit things (which his dad is working on.... "We don’t hit girls, son."), run around naked whenever the chance arises (includling in front of the kids who came for fast offerings, which they thought was hillarious), save his ’princess’ sister and play in anything that contains dirt.

I don’t doubt for a minute that gender has more to do with personality than our society would like to admit.

Some other differences between men and women, besides child bearing. Men are stronger and larger, they are less emotional and more able to deal with intense situations without breaking down (ie war). Then there is the BIG diff:

The Priesthood. How does anyone forget that part? Was not Jesus the most masculine of men?

I think that by destabilizing the gender roles, Satan is attacking two things: the worth of women and the Priesthood.

Have you ever read the book ’Reading Lolita in Tehran’? I would quote it for you but my friend has it... Azar Nafisi, the author, touches on this very topic, without even realizing she’s doing it.

She makes the point that in an attempt to smother womanhood they (the people of Iran) have created a situation where the slightest thing becomes alluring. A woman eating Ice Cream in public is considered erotic. The slightest whisp of hair is offensive.

Are we not doing the same thing, but in the opposite direction? Allowing ourselves to be decieved into believing that our genders are nothing more than what our society makes of them.

In my opinion, there are reasons why we are men and women, and those differences should not be smothered or neutralized. But embraced and accepted and honored.