When gays and lesbians decided to forge an alliance in their struggle to achieve public acceptance, somebody thought of adding bisexuals (probably a sizable group). More recently transgender persons were also added to form the acronym LGBT—that is to say, individuals who actually seek to reconstruct their physical male or female constitution (not to be confused with transvestites, who dress and behave in ways traditionally assigned to a gender other than their own). This group cannot be very large. It has gained public attention by demands for separate bathrooms and for recognition of sex changes in official records. I have long been interested in the ideological uses and mutations of language: “Gender” is a grammatical term without reference to biology—“sun” has a masculine gender in French (le soleil), a feminine one in German (die Sonne). By contrast, the term “sex change” is clearly appropriate to an individual whose genitalia have been altered by surgery or medication. [Let me not delve into the curious move of lesbians having moved from second to first place in the LGBT acronym – a curious reincarnation of the old maxim “Ladies first?” Or the recent (occasional) addition of the letter “Q” to the LGBT acronym, which, I understand, stands for “queer”—the old pejorative adjective for gays now referring to individuals who don’t want to be put in any gender-specific box or who still freely roam in the wide field of erotic esoterica.] Be this as it may, it strikes me that the adjective “transgender” could have a broader meaning than individuals changing their physical equipment from male to female or vice versa (for which “trans-sexual” would be the more logical adjective). Rather, it could well describe an age in which all the boundaries between men and women have become fluid and open to redefinition.
“Warrior” and “nurse” are two occupational terms that, even today, evoke gender-specific associations—warriors are thought of, at least at first, as macho men, nurses as gently nurturing women. In our “transgender” world, some women want to be warriors, others are content to perform the traditional role of gentle care-givers. Two stories (one, two) in The New York Times, on July 13, 2015, placed side by side (perhaps coincidentally), nicely illustrate the two possibilities.
On June 30, 2015, Lieutenant-Colonel Kate Germano was removed from her position as commander of the all-female boot camp of the Marine Corps at Parris Island, North Carolina. She had taken over as commander last year after repeated failure by female recruits to match the performance record of their male counterparts. Her approach was described as “an aggressive drive for parity”. She instituted a ruthless training program, driving her charges to the limit of their endurance. Apparently this had the desired result: The performance of her recruits markedly improved. So did their resentment: Some of them complained of maltreatment. She also irritated her superiors, by badgering them for additional staff and equipment; if they did not give her what she wanted, she would go over their heads up the chain of command. After several internal investigations Brigadier General Terry Williams, the commander of Parris Island, said that he had lost confidence in her ability to lead, and fired her. She denied the charges, and claimed in an interview that her superior officer had created for her “a toxic work environment”, a standard charge in complaints of gender discrimination. (And a bit off under the circumstances: are Marines not supposed to thrive in hostile environments?) Of course an outsider cannot assess the validity of charges and countercharges in this case. The Marine Corps, which has a considerably lower percentage of female soldiers than the other branches of the military, has been under great pressure from a mandate by the Pentagon for the integration of women into all combat units by 2016. As far as I know, there was resentment of the policy of gender integration in all services, but not surprisingly it was strongest in elite combat units such as the Army’s Special Forces and the Navy Seals—and especially the Marine Corps, which has prided itself for its tradition of ferocious combat almost from the beginning of the country, “from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” Almost by definition, such a tradition is based on strong male bonding, not easily accommodating to the inclusion of women.
The other Times story deals with yet another episode in the litigation over the requirement under Obamacare that all employers include contraception in the health plans offered to employees. It provided from the start a “religious exemption” for religious institutions centered on worship (such as a Roman Catholic or Baptist church), but not for religiously defined organizations providing larger services (such as a Catholic hospital or a Baptist college). In the face of strong legal challenges, mostly by Catholic or Evangelical organizations, the Obama administration has retreated step by step by widening the scope of the “religious exemption”. The latest accommodation, which has mustered the scrutiny of some federal courts, has been to grant the exemption to organizations that declare that their objection is on religious grounds, in which case the contraception coverage will be paid for by the insurance company or the government. That is not good enough for some, who claim that despite this evasion they are still “complicit” in providing a service their religion considers illicit. All of this (fascinating though it is) does not concern me here. Rather, I am intrigued by one (Catholic) organization that has gone to court rejecting the proffered accommodation. It is The Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of nuns that live out in a pristine form the traditional role of women as givers of comfort and care to the needy.
The order of The Little Sisters of the Poor was founded in France in the 1830s by Jeanne Jugan (1792-1879), who grew up in bitter poverty and worked for years as a kitchen maid for wealthy families. Her life changed when she found a destitute blind old woman abandoned on the street. She invited the woman to sleep in her own bed. With the help of some other young women she took care of a growing number of similarly destitute old people. This became the nucleus of a monastic order recognized as such by Pope Pius XI in 1854. Jeanne Jugan was canonized as a saint by Benedict XVI in 2009. The order she founded has now spread to many countries (including the U.S.) and has over 2000 sisters. The order practices a combination of contemplative prayer with what they call “hospitality” – providing care and homes for people (mostly old and poor) whom nobody wants. The Little Sisters stand in a long tradition of Christian nursing (mostly done by women) going back to the earliest Christian communities, through the Middle Ages (the Poor Clares founded in 1212 by Francis of Assisi), into recent times—the Little Sisters of Jesus (founded by Charles de Foucauld, 1858-1916, the “Martyr of the Sahara)—and most famously the Missionaries of Charity (founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, 1910-1997).
Thus one may counterpose two contrary figures—the male warrior, a killer by profession, and the super-feminine nurse, whose profession is care-giving. Is this a division of labor based in biology (“sex”)? Or is this division of labor simply based on social constructions that are freely variable (“gender”)? Clearly biology sets some limits to the range of imaginable constructions. For example, if one decided, on the ideological ground of “equality”, to give the right to vote and run for office to four-year olds, a political system based on this principle would quickly disintegrate into chaos. Is there a biological foundation to the above counterposition? It is plausible that the evolutionary process has produced some such foundations: After all, men have greater upper-body strength, and women have breasts that give milk to the newly born. A society that leaves the care of new infants only to men, and to women only the task of hunting buffalos to provide supper, has poor chances of surviving. I don’t think that we know enough to draw exact boundaries between biological limits and social choices. Let us stipulate that women can be warriors (Kate Germano and a politically savvy Pentagon are betting on this). Some tough men can be very gentle with babies or fragile patients. Some human actions “come naturally”; yet socialization can modify or even defy the programs of nature (though defiance probably comes at a cost). I don’t know whether there really were Amazons, but is interesting that the mythical ones had to cut off one breast. (One might call this an anticipation of transgender surgery).
Let me speculate for a moment: Suppose that the extreme “constructivists” are right, and that there are no biological reasons why women cannot be trained to crawl into an enemy camp with knives held by their teeth and to cut the throat of the enemy commander. (Call their unit the Daughters of Delilah.) But could one not think of cultural reasons why killing should be, in the main, left to men, and nursing to women? Would one perhaps prefer to live in a society where such gender discrimination prevails, rather than in a society in which women and men are equally ferocious? On balance, I think I would. If only because in the other case much of world literature would become incomprehensible.