Saturday, February 28, 2009

Gendered flaws

In the Gospels, there are two kinds of outcasts that get particular attention from Jesus, tax-collectors and prostitutes. These strike me as classically gendered ways of falling out of the community.

In first century Palestine, occupied by Rome, local men, Jews, would purchase tax contracts from the government and then use that authority to collect taxes from their fellows. Of course, they collected more than was required. So not only were they seen as traitors but as thieves.

Women were not eligible for this kind of activity, so prostitution was the status that made them outcasts.

Jesus pointed out the particularly gendered way in which males and females became pariahs to their communities and included these groups in his mission.

I am considerable less Christian than Jesus, so my sense of gendered flaws is not about find a way to reconcile them, but simply to point out the different ways in which males and females can be obnoxious or worse.

As much as I am a fan of the male animal, there is one set of classical male behaviors which, even if they are evolutionarily comprehensible, I find morally reprehensible: men in a group, ganging up on a weaker individual. To me it is irredeemably cowardly, the worst behavior of the gender. They deserve a humiliating corporal punishment that matches their foulness.

What I find most obnoxious in women is when they use the cover of their gender, with the permission they have to be irrationally emotional, temperamental and superficial, and nowadays the cache of victimism, to terrorize those around them while they seek out some kind of gratification. An example? The narcissistic cow called the bridezilla and her typological sisters and cousins. (Talk about moments when heterosexuality is utterly incomprehensible to me!)

Just sayin.

___________________

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...