Clearing Up the Gender Mess in Pursuit of Healthy Sexuality and Spirituality

It is not that complicated if we can distinguish given biology, chosen expression, and spiritual polarity

Why do human beings cling to an either/or mentality in which sex and gender are simultaneously rigidly defined, rejected, or confused? Why can’t male and female (biological sex), masculine and feminine (linguistic, emotional, and sociological norms), and the essence of Male and Female (spiritual polarity) ALL be holistically recognized, distinguished, and understood as interrelated, but DISTINCT realms? So much of our present confusion and bother over sex, gender, and polarity stems from two fundamental mistakes: 1) Sex, gender, and polarity are NOT the same things, and 2) Sex, gender, and polarity need each other in order for any of them to exist.

So let us go about discerning their differences between sex, gender, and polarity and describing their healthy symbiosis.

When I wrote my book, The Spiritually Confident Man: Pioneering a New Frontier of Co-Creative Masculinity, I purposefully chose a different symbol to indicate the connection between male and female biological realities, masculine and feminine sociological norms, and Male and Female spiritual polarities. I designed an entwined but distinct Celtic knot with the integrated symbols for male and female— a connection of unique but CO-CREATIVE forces and essences.

NOTE: If you are interested in a free electronic copy of the book, I am giving these away with a paid subscription to my Substack. Just click below, sign up, and send me an email to: zeus@citizenzeus.com. I will send you an electronic copy and a personalized response.

SPIRITUAL POLARITY

Let’s start with the last first. Spiritually, Female and Male in the Western traditions and Yin and Yang in the East, are as necessary complementing CO-CREATIVE principles or forces. The Male is the assertive and inseminating force and the Female is the receptive and birthing force. These principles are NOT identical to biological males and females. Human hormonal and body development, evolutionary roles, and sociological extensions of these realms have created some specialization in what is considered “man’s work” and “woman’s work.”

We know, however, given the historical global movement to mental labor and the reconfiguration of communal and family arrangements, that men and women can do each others work and fulfill each other’s traditional roles. Males and females can ,even seem to switch sensibilities. One can be an emotionally sensitive, receptive man or a thick-skinned, assertive women.

Human history has produced at times a fear of DOMINANCE of female by male and vice versa. This has led some to posit an inherent “battle of the sexes.” In reaction to this dubious interpretation, still others have reacted to this apparent conflict between the sexes by attempting to eliminate sex, gender, and polarity altogether. However, this shortcut extinguishes co-creativity and indeed abolishes the energetic foundation for the “synergy of the sexes”, a positive and real possibility you will not find in the common lexicon. The problem is not in embodying male and female, masculine and feminine, and Male and Female, but in how we engage these life offerings. Why, indeed, can’t these yin and yang principles have a co-creative, positive, and healthy relationship not only between us but within us!

In a section in The Spiritually Confident Man called “Sexism vs. Polarity”, I had this to say:

Without feminine polarity, there is no place toward which masculine polarity can move and create a life current. If sexism succeeds in making the feminine principle of reception and creation (embodied in the human female and feminized Nature) the inferior “Other,” then vital life is imperiled. Male and female principles together create life. Gender equality is, therefore, necessary for the highest and fullest expression of vital masculinity. Attempting to rid the world of masculinity would similarly bring self-destruction.

This positive co-creative possibility between Male and Female polarities has been aptly depicted by the historic yin-yang symbol. Yin and yang flow into each other as indicated by its commensurate, wavy line vs. a stark, straight line. Furthermore, each principle has a real presence or seed of the other principle in it; the yin is in the yang, and the yang is in the yin. They still remain distinct and polar, but COLLABORATIVE. Why is this important?

Without this polarity, there is no energy! As with batteries, there must be a positive and negative pole to create energy. As with ADP and ATP, which is the energy cycle in the human body, there must be a gradient, a difference in ions (one offering and one receiving) which is exchanged across a membrane for our very lives to be operable! High pressure and low pressure weather systems create movement and wind. All of life is difference, positive and negative, high and low, male and female necessarily interacting and EVOKING each other.

As I wrote in my book:

It is time to open and connect our spirits, our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. We can no longer deny that the Animal and the Spirit in us is inextricably bound in the Human, and that we are a beautiful and challenging hybrid of the two. On the vertical dimension of being, a vibrant reality beckons us to fully unite and express our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits. On the horizontal dimension of becoming, a new resonant possibility emerges that male and female energies, masculine and feminine polarities, can join and manifest in co-creative, deeply-honoring relationships.

This deep co-creative vertical joining of the Animal with the Spiritual, and horizontal joining of the Male and Female, can never be accomplished by either extinguishing these poles or by one pretending to be the other. “Deeply-honoring” relationship always requires respect for the uniqueness of the other pole as something IN ITSELF and as something you DO NOT AND CANNOT possess, so that you can ONLY receive the gift of the other as a kind of grace. It is offered by the world and by others to be appreciated and welcomed, NOT an entitlement to seize. Be yourself. Trust yourself as you are. Offer who you are. And let others enhance YOU by being and trusting themselves and offering you THEIR unique essences as a gift. Therefore, real spirituality is not about false righteousness or piety. It is about gratefully and lovingly sharing the unique genius within each one of us.

GENDER AS EMOTIONAL, SOCIAL, AND LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION

We all create and express, whether it be through art, or play, or social and emotional expression. Can you imagine someone saying, “You have to use my preferred adjectives and deem my painting ‘amazing’ or there is something wrong with you!”. How about if someone said, “No I really AM Spiderman, you have to really believe and call me Spiderman and honor me as a superhero!” That would be called delusional, even at ComicCon, a huge fantasy and sci-fi convention famous for it’s “cosplay” where people dress up as their favorite characters.

And yet we are currently awash in social manias where people can pretend to be whatever avatar they “choose” online. The line between real and virtual identity is blurring as people more deeply identify with their avatar and expect others to treat them AS their avatar. Increasingly this is spilling into real life, causing horrendous chaos, exploitation, and confusion. Historic rules are being flipped on their heads, as people claim to be that which they are not in real life, and yet expect the world to confirm their desires. This has led to contradictions around social and moral norms. Right now, you can’t do “black face” and try to pass yourself off as black or you are racist. However, you CAN adopt “woman face” as a transgendered male claiming to be a woman, and be honored as brave (rather than logically sexist), while your critics will be labeled “transphobic.”

I’ve explored this madness and contradiction in a past article, using novel analogies and logic to point out the absurdities. I pointed out this fantasy/reality conflation was tantamount to declaring myself Wimbledon champion and insisting on being given the prize money. This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom and expression. Legitimate freedom is NOT “freedom from” all the logical consequences or limitations of attempting to impose our desire on others, but rather co-creative “freedom with” others to develop and exchange our unique gifts and desires. You cannot simply assert whatever “you want to be.” You have to create it, work for it, share it, and learn from the authentic feedback of others.

“Create what you want to create.”

If no one wants to participate, then perhaps you are too far ahead of your time, or, perhaps more likely, what you are offering is simply not that interesting or good. People disagreeing and not liking what you are doing is part of your authentic creative development. Artificial and nonsensical value is promulgated when people are coopted out of their common sense into “I am supposed to believe or support this.” Witness this in the politically-correct spectacle of a transgendered male, Rikkie Valerie Kolle given the most recent title of Miss Netherlands. Now “Rikkie” can go on to compete in Miss Universe, which is owned by a Thai transgendered male tycoon. I wonder how that’s going to go… not that I am a big fan of beauty pageants as a fount of women’s progress!

Subjective reality is not objective reality. Personal expression and choice ought NOT be compelled by some law for any social prejudice or political fashion precisely because such a law infringes on the rights of people to authentically express themselves and participate fairly and equally in society. This is why we have laws against institutional and cultural discrimination, like Title IX legislation in the U.S., which says:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

So how logically and legally are biological males being allowed into women’s sports? Title IX explicitly says (biological) “sex” NOT GENDER. Gender is not an objectively verifiable reality. Sex is. Gender is not sex. Gender is a largely emotional and social SUBJECTIVE expression of what an individual FEELS to be masculine and feminine in interaction with a society or community. Summarized: Gendered “masculine” and “feminine” are the individually and socially interpreted SUBJECTIVE feelings, experience, expressions, and extensions of the OBJECTIVE reality of male and female. So the way to support “gender” is to allow its expression. And the way to support “sex” is to allow, sex-private spaces (sports, bathrooms, prisons, etc.) and constrain inappropriate intrusion of the gender “expression” or entitlement of one sex into the well-being of another sex.

This sexual distinction and separation has been encoded in many world languages as gendered words that have masculine or feminine designations. This can appear overly traditional or constricting in some senses, but humans have handled this, for the most part, by creating more inclusive and expansive language, rather than censoring supposedly outdated language. Even if you look at the historic use of “man” for humankind, you find ironically that the opposite of what we think it is. If you trace this word “man” back in history, ironically, you get “man” originally meaning person and “wifman” (from which “wife” comes from, and that later evolved into “woman”) and “werman” (from which the prefix for “werewolf” comes from) as meaning “female person” and “male person”! In a sexist move, the English language dropped SEXED language and transformed “werman” or “male person” into “man”!

BIOLOGICAL SEX

In the vast majority of my adult life, I have been a life-long social justice advocate for the empowerment and inclusion of girls and women. In 2002, I made a public comment in a US Department of Education town hall on Title IX and women’s sports.I called out the Bush administration’s attempt to role back protections and equality for women as kind of cowardice by men, of not liking what happens when women are given a chance to excel. I said, “Strong men need strong women,” and I criticized the weenie attempt by entitled and weak men to undermine women’s emergence.

I’ve taught also multicultural education. I have included post-modern and radical feminist theory in my doctoral dissertation. However, I am STRIDENTLY OPPOSED to what is NOW going on in the name of progressivism, social justice, the so-called “Left,” inclusion, diversity, post-modernism, and feminism, as the exact OPPOSITE of historical movements given these names. So-called feminists are now advocating for men to take over woman’s roles and roll back women’s advancements. Post-modernists have now gone beyond the project of challenging “meta-narratives” to creating their own dystopian meta-narrative absent of objective fact, truth, and reality. This has served to dismember language and reduce every question of value to mere power, which ironically empowers the very hierarchy that post-modernists initially sought to bring down!

Even anti-racism has devolved into the incitement of anti-white sentiment, which itself is not only derogatory, but racist. In short misbegotten feminists are now anti-feminists, post-modernists are not anti-post-modern, anti-racists are now racists, and anti-sexists are now sexists. I cannot find a better practical reason for why we need the reassertion of reality, fact, and objective distinction. If language is so mutable, and power so prominent, then all reality can simply be redefined as its opposite with the snap of a finger or the click of a mouse. We need to stand up for deeper, more long-standing notions of truth as distinct from falsehood, virtue as distinct from vice, and reality as distinct from fantasy.

This is where real social justice progressives can come together with conservatives. It is now a socially PROGRESSIVE project to join hands with reasonable conservatives to reassert the clear reality and desirability of sex distinction on the most basic of levels— health, pregnancy, breast feeding, rights, sport, sex-private spaces, hormones, research, emotionality, relationship, and the list goes on. Progressives want to protect healthy progress for excluded groups, and conservatives want to protect, honor, and reinvigorate the traditions based around sex. That is true inclusion, whereby we INCLUDE new groups rising to potential, without putting down or excluding those who have already enjoyed opportunity or formed their own traditions. This requires respect and desire for difference. Quintessentially, male and female are beautifully, even miraculously, different, and it is this complementary distinctness which gives rise to biological life, sociological fecundity, and spiritual co-creativity.

Why is anyone opposed to this miracle of distinction? Why is anyone attempting to sabotage polarity with oppressive transgender and trans-humanist efforts to extinguish sex and humanity altogether. We are not sexless. We are not machines. We are men and women, boys and girls. We are spirits in the material world. We need not PRETEND. We need not ABOLISH. We need to accept, explore, develop share, and celebrate our uniquenesses.

Yes, conservative Matt Walsh (author of What Is a Woman?) is correct: A woman is an “adult human female”. By extension a man is an “adult human male”, a girl is a “minor human female,” and a boy is a “minor human male”. Surgery doesn’t change this. Labels don’t change this. Desire and feeling don’t change these inalterable facts. XY (male) and XX (female) are distinct. And, yes, the small number of people who are intersex (i.e. XXY, etc.) are their own distinction, and should be respected in their own right and not be reduced surgically to one sex or the other! Following this logic, the recent intersex film Every Body advocates strongly AGAINST intersex surgery (#EndIntersexSurgery). See how that works! We are invited to BE WHO WE ARE, and ACT from who we are, not simply alter who we are to fit with a current mania or fashionable redefinition.

If you are a boy who likes dolls, then be a boy who enjoys playing with dolls! If you are a girl who likes roughhousing and dirt, then be a girl roughhousing in dirt! You have the best of both worlds— accept your body, and don’t be confined by gender roles. You can be freed from the sociological gender constraints, while being perfectly content with the body you were born with. Our bodies are a gift. Our personal interests and talents (gender-typical or not) are a gift. We are given free reign to creatively develop and express who we are, as long as we do not encroach on the free expression, consent, health, and sanctity of others.

My refusal to kowtow to your subjective preferences, sense of offense, or construal of language as “harm,” may FEEL like an encroachment, but feelings are not fact— I am not preventing you from being yourself by objecting to or critiquing what you present me. I am not canceling, censoring, or suppressing you in any direct, objective way. I do not need your alignment with my beliefs, and you ought not compel compliance with yours. Both of us should welcome equal dignity and treatment, but neither of us has the right to compel, coerce, or silence the other.

It has been DEEPLY disturbing to me that both language and law have been euphemistically mutilated to excuse monstrous moral and scientific developments “Gender reassignment surgery,” for instance, is quickly becoming a linguistic and social grooming device into regressive anti-child, anti-women, anti-parent, anti-disability, and anti-gay stances. If the miracle of birth and sex is to be altered artificially and unapologetically, without constraint or informed consent, there is no barrier or boundary that cannot be transgressed. As I have written in a previous article, a child in Oregon can consent to state-funded, sex-disfiguring surgery at the age of 15 without parental consent, but that same person cannot even get a tattoo or enter a tanning bed until he or she is 18, and cannot purchase cigarettes or alcohol until he or she is 21! Even, the compromised ”fact-check” website, Snopes admits this is true while trying to bury this fact under rhetoric and opinion.

This Oregon law is anti-child, because a fifteen-year-old cannot possibly be developmentally mature enough to understand the permanent consequences of his or her decision, manage concurrent emotions, or have the proper time and space to work out ostensible dysphoria. Think about it: If a child can consent to something so consequential and permanent as sex-change surgery. in which normal sexual satisfaction and fertility can be taken from them for the rest of their lives, what other violations may become allowable? A sexual predator could make a rather straightforward argument that the same child could consent to have sex with him or her by claiming milder, less permanent consequences than sex-altering surgery.

Sex-altering surgery is potentially anti-girl and anti-women, as well, because the overwhelming majority of current trans surgeries have flipped from male-to-female, to female-to-male, and appear to be heavily influenced by social contagion, to which girls are far more vulnerable than boys. In an excellent recent discussion on Megyn Kelly’s show, Helen Joyce referred to studies that have shown that some 90% of children simply grown out of their dysphoria. A large percentage of teens with dysphoria are actually gay. This means that by conducting sex surgery you are attempting to biologically change a gay teen into a nominally heterosexual teen. Isn’t this anti-gay? Many of these gender dysphoric girls, in particular, are autistic, so now you have a disability being exploited to top things off.

CONCLUSION

As bad a name as androgyny has gotten lately, there is a healthy androgyny embedded in this discussion. Why not honor the BEST of male and female, masculine and feminine traits as both distinct AND supremely humanly desirable? Why not cultivate and learn assertiveness AND receptiveness from each other, so that we can have a balanced yin-yang within us and within society. Why do we have to alter, abandon, or abolish what we are in order to be what we desire?

That attempt to annihilate or alter what we don’t understand or feel accord with doesn’t make sense. You do not burn a village in order to save it. We enhance ourselves first and foremost by ACCEPTING and EMBRACING who we are in all our facets. Some of who we are may feel discordant or wrong, but that in itself can be a gift to be embraced. We have something to work through and work on! We cannot do it on our own! We must invite other sexes, cultures, natures, into our lives to meet the life challenges and opportunities we cannot fully avail by ourselves.

Even in the spiritual world, we need the male and female principles to inseminate and birth, to call and respond. I am enamored of the benediction in certain liberal Christian churches to denote the “triune” God:

“In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, Mother of us all”

This is GRACE in a word. You and your difference are indispensable for me and my growth. Your well-being is necessary to mine and vice versa. I don’t need to manipulate or control you OR me. I don’t need to alter you OR me. Healthy change will come, not through my imposed control, but through voluntary mutual creativity. I need only honor myself and you, and place faith, conviction, and action at the center of this soulful human project we share.

Enough with the division and false righteousness, the pretty squabbling and the budding authoritarianism based in insecurity and fear. Let’s get honest with ourselves. There is one word for the spiritual, social, and biologically healthy person, and that word is Freedom— freedom to pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful, the loving, the just, and the creative. Let’s support each other in that endeavor in all ways! Amen.