Balancing Gender Traits

I gather that there are disagreements in the egalitarian camp on whether true gender traits exist or are only socializations. On the one hand, society creates differences like boys play with toy trucks and not dolls and girls play dress-up and not fix-it-up. Everybody had better line up and adapt. On the other hand, research says that some differences, not as many as society creates, are real and scientifically measureable. Female babies, for example, are more attracted to human faces and male babies are more attracted to objects. Nearly every sound coming out of girls’ mouths on a playground are words; only 50 percent of the sounds coming from boys on a playground are actual words. Such tests seem to be more valid (untainted by socialization) than, say, differences in math scores or writing sample comprehension scores.

The average guy and gal on the street for the most part seem to just buy both types without thinking. Of course there are differences. But egalitarians tend to argue that all the traits are just sociologically imposed. For example, Tony Campolo argues via Jung and Chinese philosophy (Speaking My Mind, pp. 47-54) that these are imposed traits and the restrictions should be fought. He posits Jesus as the perfectly balanced yin and yang person. Evangelicals should abandon stereotypical differentiations of female and male and should work toward achieving the healthy balance that goes with complete personhood.

Is the average gal and guy going to buy that approach? I wonder. The worst insult you can give a guy is to say he does something “like a girl.” Those kinds of socializations go on all the time in locker rooms. Maybe a better approach would be to help each gender to see that they already have traits of both genders within themselves, to varying degrees and that these variations are good. Where imbalance occurs and the person can see where it hinders life, then balance can be sought.

However the approach, I like Tony’s summary of this topic: “We need an alternative to both the male chauvinism that too often has expressed itself in evangelicalism and the radical feminism that, in my opinion, simply tries to imitate the imbalanced traits of yang-oriented males, which are all too evident in our society. That alternative is allowing ourselves to be transformed into what He is.” [p.54]