Friday 6 February 2015

'Man Up'



I went to see the musical 'The Book of Mormon' recently. It was brilliant -  I laughed virtually the whole time, until my belly hurt. At the same time as being laugh-out-loud funny, it was remarkably theologically astute and thought-provoking.

And there were several points where, as well as snorting with laughter, I was also wincing. The FGM subplot was one. The 'man up' song was another.

The song comes at the turning point in the plot - Elder Cunningham (the wet you'll-never-amount-to-anything one: 'I'm a follower!') has been deserted  by his golden boy mission companion Elder Price ('We'll do it together - but mainly me') and has to decide whether to give up his mission, or to attempt to make a difference on his own.

'What did Jesus do?' He asks himself. 'Did he give up? No - he manned up, grew a pair, and took the cross on the chin!'

The very, very funny song that followed had my sides hurting, but also made me think: 'this is what we are up against'. Because the musical doesn't really take the piss out of Mormonism per se - it holds up a mirror to, among other things, all religion; evangelistic techniques (even theories of mission); Western attitudes to Africa; Biblical exegesis and much more. It is brilliant, as I said. (How many musicals have you mentally referencing the 5 Marks of Mission and Vincent Donovan?).

The 'Man up' song was a piercing expose of a certain type of hearty Christian chauvinism - in which the answer to Christian feelings of weakness is to 'man up' and 'grow a pair' - because that is, allegedly, what Jesus did.

Where does this leave women? No wonder sexism is so engrained in the churches.

In real Mormonism, all men can be priests - and a woman has recently been excommunicated for suggesting that women might be too. But this isn't just about Mormonism - in the Roman Catholic church, too, public discussion of women's ordination is an excommunicable offence. We have only just agreed that women can be bishops in the Church of England - and even then at the price of accepting that those who don't agree with that will be officially protected from us and deliberately promoted as a 'sign of good faith'. No wonder, if the basic theology of 'man up and grow a pair' is as common, and as fundamental, as it seems to be in our society.

This obsession with testicles is fascinating. I've noticed it recently in the Apprentice - male contestants are constantly telling us they've 'got balls', which they seem to be mainly 'putting on the line'. Those who complain are told to 'grow a pair'. Nobody seems to notice that this is a metaphor that literally and deliberately excludes the women candidates. I actually shouted 'oh, shut up about your testicles!' at the TV one week. (The next week, to my joy, my 13 year old son shouted it first).

In classical culture, the balls - and the semen they contained - were not just metaphorically but also literally believed to be the seat of virility. Eunuchs had their balls cut off, of course, often as a result of losing in a war (presumably, this is what might happen to those balls 'on the line'?). But what uncastrated males did with their balls - or what they contained - was also important. One of the major arguments for celibacy was based on the belief that ejaculation - emitting your semen - literally lessening your manhood. Retaining all that precious virility-juice meant that your manliness would all stay with you.

We don't believe that now - if anything, ejaculation (preferably into a handy female, willing or unwilling, conscious or comatose) seems to be the current standard by which 'virility' is proven. Perhaps to prove that a pair have indeed been grown.

But we still seem to be obsessed with testicles as a symbol of manliness.

So what do women in the church do?

There seem to be two alternatives. One possibility is the historical solution most identified now with Roman Catholicism - men 'man up' and try to imitate Jesus, women 'woman up' and try to imitate Mary. (Interesting, though, isn't it, that 'woman up' isn't a thing.) Womanly religion becomes about being willingly receptive - literally and metaphorically - to the seed (hence no contraception, and no women teaching, are linked theologically). Women are allowed to be strong, so long as that strength is shown in patiently enduring suffering. But any form of initiative, leadership or authority is 'unnatural', because it is not 'womanly'. We don't have a pair (breasts don't seem to count in this taxonomy), and shouldn't try to grow them.

The second possibility is that we challenge this whole 'man up' paradigm. We point out it is based on faulty, medieval biology - which believed that the womb was simply a ploughed field in which the seed was planted, and knew nothing of the ovum and women's 50/50 participation in the act of conception and the child's genetic inheritance. We point out that a pair of breasts was needed for the incarnation to work (otherwise the infant Jesus wouldn't have lasted long) - whereas, at least on an orthodox understanding of the virgin birth, a pair of testicles wasn't. We can note that Jesus didn't, really, 'man up': rather he 'womaned up' on the understanding of the time, as he became passively receptive to his fate (some commentators suggest that disappointment at his lack of manning up is what led Judas to betray him). We could remind ourselves, indeed, that the male disciples waited fearfully in a locked room, while the women braved arrest and execution by going to his tomb, which they knew to be under armed guard.

We might even point out - not least to contestants on the Apprentice - that testicles are remarkably weak, vulnerable things. By contrast the breasts, ovaries and uterus are remarkably strong, resilient organs.

Oh, but if we say these things we are feminists out of control.

Which rather begs the question, Out of whose control? Sounds like a good thing to me.

4 comments:

  1. What a lovely article Miranda. It reminds me of a saying by Betty White:

    Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina...

    There does also seem to be a preoccupation with men in the Bible towards their testicles, even to the point of outlawing women grabbing and squeezing testicles in a fight between two men to stop them fighting.

    Quoted from Deuteronomy 25:11
    "If two Israelite men get into a fight and the wife of one tries to rescue her husband by grabbing the testicles of the other man, you must cut off her hand. Show her no pity."

    Luckily there is no mention against using this excellent and extremely effective technique to protect ourselves when fighting off a man.

    In fact, many women have been using this technique in recent years (now that knowledge can rapidly spread via the internet) after all women throughout the world are learning just how effective grabbing, twisting, and pulling hard on a pair of testicles and not letting go of them can be as a self-defense technique. It's being referred to as the "no-fail" self defense technique for women and girls.

    No wonder then that men have been obsessed in the past with protecting their so delicate testicles from attack from women. In todays world however, we SHOULD fight back, and continue to fight back hard against men by taking full advantage of the vulnerability of his testicles to our advantage.

    A man loses all of his strength within a matter of seconds when his testicles are forcefully squeezed, and we should ALL be made aware of that from a young age. We should spread the word that "grab, twist and pull" is a great equalizer for us in combat against a man, no matter how much bigger and stronger he is. If it takes Feminists to become out of control in spreading this invaluable advice then I'm all for it !

    Nicola x

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great read, thanks Miranda. I've always wondered about this! I don't think you can really blame Christianity too much though, because frankly most of the world has the exact same problem. Pretty much every culture is framed from a male perspective ("phallocentric" I believe the word is). It would be awesome if we could turn that around though. I have some vague ideas, although I don't think any would count as Christian. (though I do identify as Christian)

    The first thing I like the idea of is to co-opt the kind of "you've got balls" idea and apply it to motherhood instead. Given that men can't have children, and it requires a massive amount of time and struggle, I think we should start using it as a barometer for how much more women can accomplish. So if a woman has had children and still manages to out-compete a man in her career, we should frame it as something like "he just doesn't have the breasts to manage it" (in the same way as "she doesn't have the balls") or maybe "she's handled childbirth. she'll have no difficulty handling a few men."

    The other thing we can do is set practical public examples of female superiority that we can then use to push the meanings of these words towards a more feminist endpoint. My main thought is encouraging mixed-sex sports. They generally haven't done them until now because the top men are usually better than the top women. But, you can solve that issue with weight/strength categories, so that women are facing off against men of a similar capability to them. It would become a real battle of the sexes situation and be a great vehicle for us to push the "balls are weak and vulnerable" line. Just imagine a feminist commentator or headline writer describing various sporting situations like "There's only 2 minutes remaining and with that last minute goal, the women's team have delivered a debilitating boot in the testicles to the men's team. These men won't be getting back up today." or "With only 2 weeks until the end of the season and the women's team in first place, they've got their firm feminist heel on the nuts of every man in this league.". Headlines like that would be so good because I know for a certainty that every sexist or insecure guy in the world would be fuming with outrage, which of course just helps them spread.
    You basically just have to get people repeat that sort of thing constantly, and that's what slowly changes the meaning.

    Anyway, I'll stop before it becomes an essay. I'd love to know if you like any of those ideas though!

    Happy Christmas!

    Jane

    ReplyDelete