Progressives today are determined to reconstruct the concept of gender wholly on individual preferences. Conservatives, meanwhile, struggle mightily for models by which to meaningfully live out gender roles that were second nature to most of their ancestors. How have changes in technology and society conspired to make something as basic as gender such an enigma to us today? Brad Belschner and Alastair Roberts discuss in this first of a new set of Davenant Discussions videos. Watch the video below:
Notes:
00:30 – Introduction: The Challenges of Gender in the 2st Century. What’s going on?
01:09 – The technological, societal, and economic changes that reframe how we see relationships.
01:24 – The realm of the home used to be an economically productive place. Now it’s a place to sleep. We have outsourced most of domestic labor to schools, appliances, etc.
01:59 – The result: The coordinates we used to have—our framework is gone.
02:35 – Changes in how we relate and view our own bodies. The pill.
03:08 – We lose our natural bearings by being out of touch with the physical world.
03:25 – Alastair’s astronaut analogy. Muscle atrophy.
04:00 – We’ve been detached from the forces of the world that orient us. Our being was never designed to work in detachment from the world.
04:36 – We end up with the performative gender we have today. This is a problem not of the queer theorists, but amongst Christians who try to project an image of masculinity and femininity that is detached from the concrete realities of their lives. Role playing instead of actually being men and women.
05:31 – What do we do with this situation?
05:35 – Not something we can solve by ourselves.
05:38 – We think we can solve it by increasing our individual virtue; being more manly, being more feminine, but solving this issue requires communities where these roles have weight and make sense.
06:05 – we need to see what is good, what are the coordinates of our being? We cannot work towards an ideal of the past. We need to work to something that integrates our being into our reality.