THE DANGER OF OVERPLAYING DIFFERENCE

'People say to me, "Men are different from women." Yes, but I have never met any differences so great as the differences between some men and other men.'

Theodore Roosevelt in Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, p.237.

TRUE COMPLEMENTARIANISM?

'Any human endeavor done without the input, support, and cooperation of both sexes is not a fully human endeavor.'

Zachary Wagner, Non-Toxic Masculinity: recovering healthy male sexuality, p.180.

THE LIMITS TO CONSENT

'I don't believe that we can ever leave power behind in sex, that we can enter a zone blissfully free of inequality. I don't believe that consent miraculously displaces the imbalances of power that operate on our every interaction. 'Tomorrow sex will be good again,' says Foucault, wryly, playfully; that's the ideal, and that's the delusion. The negotiation of imbalances in power between men and women, between all of us, occurs minute by minute, second by second. And there is no realm, whether sexual or otherwise, in which that act of negotiation is no longer necessary. Whatever we do, in sex and elsewhere, we calibrate our desires with those of the the other, and try to understand what it is that we want. But we don't simply work out what we want and then act on that knowledge. Working out what we want is a life's work, and it has to be done over and over and over. The joy may lie in it never being done.'

Katherine Angel, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and desire in the age of consent, p.114.

THE NEW SEXUAL TECHNOLOGY WE NEED

'The task for practically minded feminists, then, is to deter men from the cad mode. Our current sexual culture does not do that, but it could. In order to change the incentive structure, we would need a technology that discourages short-termism in male sexual behavior, protects the economic interests of mothers, and creates a stable environment for the raising of children. And we do already have such a technology, even if it is old, clunky and prone to periodic failure. It's called monogamous marriage.'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.181.

THE CENTRAL FEMINIST QUESTION WHEN IT COMES TO SEXUALITY

'...the central feminist question ought not to be "How can we all be free?" but, rather, "How can we best promote the wellbeing of both men and women, given that these two groups have different sets of interests, which are sometimes in tension?"'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.35.

HOW THE "SEXUAL REVOLUTION" HAS FAILED WOMEN

'Women are learning to have sex like men. But peel back the layers, and it becomes obvious that this transition is not a reflection of their power but of their subjugation to men's interests. If women were more in charge of how their relationships transpired - more in charge of the "pricing" negotiations around sex - we would be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts by men, fewer hookups, fewer pre-marital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on (and perhaps even at a slightly earlier age too). In other words the "price" of sex would be higher: it would cost men more to access it. Instead, none of these things are occurring.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex, p.214.

HOW GENDER EFFECTS SAME-SEX SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS

'Men and women tend to conduct their relationships differently and exhibit different preferences in their relationships. When the partnership diverges from sexual complementarity - that is, a man and a woman in relationship - decidedly sex-typed preferences are consolidated, not moderated. It means that same-sex couple are ironically more subject to deep-rooted gendered patterns and habits, their stated egalitarian attitudes aside. There is nothing political about this; it is just the empirical reality, one that sexual economics make ready sense of. If the sexes were a simple social construction, utterly malleable, we should see very little distinction in how men and women pursue relationships, how they act within them, how they act apart from them, what they prioritize about them and how they conclude them. But we see all of that.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex, p.158. 

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU DESTROY

'If you destroy the ideal of the "gentle man" and remove from men all expectations of courtesy and consideration towards women and children, you have prepare the way for an epidemic of rape and abuse. If you depreciate the sanctity and solemnity of marriage, not just as a bond between these two people but as a bond between these two people and their forbears, their children, and their neighbors, then you have prepared the way for an epidemic of divorce, child neglect, community ruin, and loneliness. If you destroy the economies of household and community, then you destroy the bonds of mutual usefulness and practical dependence without which the other bonds will not hold.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.125.

CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP IS MORE FEMALE THAN MALE?

'Paul notably finds that women provide a better model for apostolic leadership than the typical male model of leadership in the Greco-Roman culture, which he indicates is characterized by flattery, greed, people-pleasing, and a lack of gentleness.'

Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ, p.222.

ARE WE ALL TRANSGENDER?

'To the question, 'is gender binary?' the answer is, biologically, yes. The minute percentage of intersex conditions are errors in the generic code. But psychosocially, the answer is an emphatic no. We all share stereotypically male and female qualities, that's a fact. It might just turn out that we are all transgender, if that means a mismatch between social script and biological body. It's just that some of us take gender more seriously than others, and decide to do something about it.'

Olivia Fane, Why Sex Doesn't Matter, p.62. 

THE DAMAGE WE'VE CAUSED

'...we caused transgenderism, we as a society set up the circumstances which made it inevitable. We gave the genders these absurd roles, because our appetite for sex demanded super-male men and super-female women. But human beings don't fit snugly into the binary categories we have set up for them. Our genders have been artificially exaggerated, and the contrary reactions - both transgenderism and the refusal to acknowledge as more than a social construct - are both the consequence of that. Yet the truth of the matter is surely this: we have significantly more in common with a person who shares our background in interests and outlook, than with a person who happens to share the same XX/XY chromosome. Men and women really aren't that different from each other.' 

Olivia Fane, Why Sex Doesn't Matter, p.xiii.

A FACT OF GAY LIFE?

'...all of the successful, happy gay couples I know, the ones who show an enviable depth of emotional commitment have one thing in common, and that is that they look for, and find, sex outside their loving relationship. This is a fact of gay life. I do not think that this vitiates the quality of their commitment in any way whatsoever. It merely suggests what is obvious about gay men - and therefore, of men in general, since gay culture is nothing if not a laboratory in which to see what masculinity does without the restraints imposed by women: that sex for men is, finally, separable from affect.'  

Daniel Mendelsohn, The Elusive Embrace, p.82. 

THE LIMITS OF CHANGE

'Nobody in the history of human kind has changed from a true man to a true woman, if we class a man or woman purely by physical concepts.' 

Jan Morris, Conundrum, p.90. 

CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIPS BETWEEN THE SEXES

'Our call to Christian love and fellowship as brothers and sisters doesn't call us to the "false modesty of the prude" but to a "humble sincerity." Of course we promote one another's holiness, take sin seriously, and realise that we can easily fall into it. We don't think of a bunch of reasons to be alone with the other sex, we don't naively assume that everyone is safe, and we don't overestimate our own virtue. But, rather than creating extrabiblical rules, we are to do the hard work of rightly orientating our affections and exercising wisdom and discernment with others. We live before God in every situation. And in this manner, we will be able to perform ordinary acts of kindness and business without scandal.' 

Aimee Byrd, Why Can't We Be Friends? p.77. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF DIFFERENCE FOR SEX

'A beautiful, potent body engaged in hot sex with the beautiful body of an idealized stranger is what all men, but particularly gay men, have been acculturated to believe is the definition of "good sex." Long-term partners usually know way too much about each other - and each other's imperfect bodies - for either to buy the "I'm hot, you're hot, let's fuck" approach that characterizes most gay adolescent, and much adult singles, sex. When the male sensibility cannot make any transition from pure sport sex to relationship sex, both gay and straight couples experience a "loss of sexual interest." Against this loss, straight couples often have an advantage: they have some measure of feminine sensibility in the game, a sensibility much more attuned to emotional expression.
Among gay men I have worked with in therapy, those with no previous sexual experience with women almost invariably have more difficulty in understanding the idea of relationship sex.'
Walt Odets, Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives, p.239. 

THE INTIMATE FRIENDSHIP OFFERED BY JESUS

'By promoting emotional and spiritual intimacy amongst men, John may find himself in conflict with modern stereotypes. The physical intimacy he depicts between himself and Jesus may also be something some contemporary men  might find awkward. This is probably the most counter-cultural aspect of John's exploration of Jesus and ancient sexuality. Within our highly sexualised cultures, enjoying and expressing that kind of soul kinship and intimate friendship comes across to many as repressed homosexuality. But for John, it seems, too many men experience repressed friendship. So he runs the risk of misunderstanding, and depicts his close friendship with Jesus unashamedly because he wants to encourage others to experience and share the intimate and life-giving love of God.' 

Andy Angel, Intimate Jesus, p.100. 

UNHELPFUL GENDER STEREOTYPES

'Being aware of the juxtaposition of power and vulnerability in the lives of the men closet to me, the stereotypes of masculinity that I have read in so many books have always left me unimpressed. In my experience as in the experience of so many others, it has simply not been true that it is always men who are strong, logical and self-sufficient; or that women are weaker, more emotional and in greater need of protection. Indeed as I have gone through life I have met many men who are very emotionally dependent on others whilst many women I know are temperamentally strong as well as analytically competent. I have listened as publically adequate men have privately crumbled without affirmation and constant support, yet have encountered women who battle alone against considerable odds.'  

Elaine Storkey, The Search for Intimacy, p.118. 

MALE HEADSHIP GONE WRONG

'I have listened to many women married to men who have absorbed all the ideas of headship and authority, but who have never been given any help or advice on how to express and develop their feelings, or to allow other people to get close. Consequently, some women find that though these men may make authoritative pronouncements, and perform well publicly, at home they are effectively emotional cripples. This often has to be masked by assertion, or distance. In some cases the closer the woman becomes and the more aware of his weakness the greater the retreat from the husband. So the relationship deteriorates and the man is unable to seek help. For he is a man, and called not to be weak but authoritative, and for him it is a sign of weakness to admit there are deep emotional problems in his life.'

Elaine Storkey, The Search for Intimacy, p.74. 

COUNTER-CULTURAL LOVE STORIES

'Romantic love does not have a monopoly on all deep love stories between men and women.' 

Dan Brennan, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, p.20. 

MEN & WOMEN

'She told us that men were rarely truly
kind, but they were often funny, which
is better. "You would do well to prepare
yourselves for disappointment" she said,
"in your dealings with men. Women are on
the whole much stronger, usually cleverer"
she said, "but less funny which is a shame..."
Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, p.33.