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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: a 'man-friendly Christmas'
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Passively listening to sermons is more female. Men are more kinaesthetic.
Utter nonsense.
Educational research and OFSTED observations avout learning styles are quite extensive.
All men are not identical. Neither are all women. In every physical and psychological feature (except genitalia), there is a huge variation within each sex, and a considerable overlap between the sexes.
Some women are physically stronger than some men; some have lower-pitched voices, etc.
Everyone is an individual and should be treated as such.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
Everyone is an individual and should be treated as such.
Moo
That's all very well, but unless the solution is for everyone to belong to a church of one, how can a gathered church meet the needs of a vast number of very different members and potential members?
Churchfolk mostly try to be helpful to everyone who crosses their path, but the reality is that there's a tendency in churches for particular groups to be catered for better than others. Maybe it's by default rather than design, but it still happens. Just saying we should all be treated as individuals won't change this.
[ 03. December 2015, 21:55: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Churchfolk mostly try to be helpful to everyone who crosses their path, but the reality is that there's a tendency in churches for particular groups to be catered for better than others. Maybe it's by default rather than design, but it still happens. Just saying we should all be treated as individuals won't change this.
No, but it's a mistake to assume that all men constitute one homogeneous group and all women constitute another.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
The vicar in question knows that all men are not the same. He's a man, but I suspect his intention is to reach out to men who are rather different from himself. He could probably have made this clearer in his message, though.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
No such thing as a 'male brain'....
The vicar isn't a scientist, and neither am I, but the interesting question is how we've ended up with a situation where men and women are exactly the same yet women are consistently more likely to attend church as laity and men are consistently more likely to attend as ordained clergy.
It may largely be nurture over nature but in any case, we've begun to deal with the absence or undersupply of female clergy, so I think it's only reasonable to deal with the undersupply of men among the laity too.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Rev per Minute
Shipmate
# 69
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
Everyone is an individual and should be treated as such.[/QB]
"I'm not!" is the only possible answer to that... ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
I don't think that it's possible to meet everyone's needs - just that we should realise they exist. I don't know how we solve the problem of men (not) being in church. I was told in one parish that the men send their wives to church in their place, except at Easter and Remembrance Sunday (not Christmas, apparently). I think it's more (many) churches' failure to attract anyone beyond their existing 'customers' that is the problem. It's just that the absence of men is very obvious.
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"Allons-y!" "Geronimo!" "Oh, for God's sake!" The Day of the Doctor
At the end of the day, we face our Maker alongside Jesus. RIP ken
Posts: 2696 | From: my desk (if I can find the keyboard under this mess) | Registered: May 2001
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
One reason why focusing on the spiritual nurturing of men is important is that it has an impact on faith transmission in the family in general. Parents are role models, and where only one parent is a Christian the faith is only 25% likely to be passed on. With two parents it's 50/50. A nominal Christian identity may be passed on by a non-religious parent, but this appears to be less and less likely.
Also, there seems to be a little research (not British, though) indicating that, surprisingly, fathers rather than mothers are frequently the key to successful faith transmission.
Of course, we're free to raise our children as we want, and religiously tolerant parents in our culture routinely choose not to urge their children to follow them into a particular faith tradition. We're very individualistic, and we accept that what's spiritually useful for us may not be spiritually useful for our offspring. Nevertheless, without members and attendees our churches, and consequently our religion, may have no future. If both fathers and mothers are important to transmitting faith it's important to encourage and nurture both of them, not just mothers.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
The last link I posted may be too conservatively evangelical for some tastes, but it refers to this research, which is presumably more neutral:
“The Demographic Characteristics of the Linguistic and Religious Groups in Switzerland” by Werner Haug and Phillipe Warner of the Federal Statistical Office, Neuchatel, Switzerland in Volume 2 of Population Studies No. 31.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Lay work is hard work, unglamorous work, and very often thankless work. As are nursing, caregiving, and childcare. Isn't it funny how jobs that fit this description are deemed to naturally fit woman nature?
The problem isn't gender, per se, it is the way we have attached prestige to different types of work and who has enough social capital to score the prestige work. My observation is that in churches where gender roles are reatively equal, the women in prestige positions simply start adopting the same attitudes as their male counterparts. (I speak in huge sweeping generalities, of course.)
My home church shares space with a Cantonese congregation. Theey have no lack of male participation. I wonder if that is beecause there is more of a cultural baseline of pride in what you accomplish corporately rather than what you get credit for personally. Because activity-wise, they seem to freaking move mountains.
[ 05. December 2015, 16:09: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
quote:
My observation is that in churches where gender roles are relatively equal, the women in prestige positions simply start adopting the same attitudes as their male counterparts.
In our house, someone is frequently ambitious, perhaps struggles with pride around their career / issues of recognition etc, works long hours, and as often goes with all that is sometimes absent from the lives of the children.
Someone else can struggle with pride around their sense of being overlooked and under-employed, fails in parenthood where this leads to resentment, tends to grudge-bearing about issues of time keeping, presence and absence etc etc.
These roles seem to play out effectively regardless of genitalia; unfortunately for us, 'sharing' work and childcare didn't work out.
Actually, for us I think it's better with me in the pinny - but that's irrelevant to my main point, which is that work tries to turn one into a work-wanker, and housekeeping tries to turn one into a housekeeping-wanker. I guess that's sin for you.
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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St Deird
Shipmate
# 7631
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Passively listening to sermons is more female. Men are more kinaesthetic.
Utter nonsense.
Educational research and OFSTED observations avout learning styles are quite extensive.
Just because "learning styles" are a thing, doesn't mean that "men are more kinaesthetic" are a thing.
My husband will quite happily sit still and listen to a sermon. I, meanwhile, am kinaesthetic as anything, and need to walk around the back of the church while the sermon happens - or else take my crochet. Otherwise I can't pay even the slightest bit of attention.
As Jemima the 9th says:
quote:
Different people may well have different spiritual styles, but their sex has nothing to do with it. ... When I talk to my eldest daughter about her feelings, the idiots at school* and her mental health problems, we tend to do it whilst doing aerobics or watching Sherlock, so we don't have to make eye contact.
This "men do this" "women do that" nonsense is just that, nonsense. And the danger of it is that both men and women are hurt by it because they're expected to behave in a certain way. Women who don't sit and listen passively to sermons (code for the last God knows how many years for "sit down and shut up, little woman") get into difficulties at their church because they're not behaving as they're expected to.
I can't make eye contact and talk about my feelings either. If you want to get good conversation out of me, we need to be doing something with our hands, and looking at that rather than each other.
I am thoroughly sick of people raising their eyebrows at me because I'm not a demure eye-contacty lady who can sit still during the sermon.
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They're not hobbies; they're a robust post-apocalyptic skill-set.
Posts: 319 | From: the other side of nowhere | Registered: Jun 2004
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Passively listening to sermons is more female. Men are more kinaesthetic.
Utter nonsense.
Educational research and OFSTED observations avout learning styles are quite extensive.
Umm, culture? Ever hear of that? Our culture teaches behaviour and this will influence such studies.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
My observation is that in churches where gender roles are reatively equal, the women in prestige positions simply start adopting the same attitudes as their male counterparts. (I speak in huge sweeping generalities, of course.)
Some British scholars of the psychology of religion have done some research which suggests that ministry in Anglican and Methodist churches may attract women who have personality traits that are (stereotypically) associated with men, while male clergy have more traditionally feminine characteristics. On Google I've also just come across a book which suggests that female ministers in Pentecostal churches are more 'tough-minded' than male ones.
It could be that, as with politics and big business, many women in leadership roles have to try harder than men to be taken seriously, which leaves very little space for trying to redefine what leadership is: rather, you have to show that you can match or beat the boys at their own game....
quote:
My home church shares space with a Cantonese congregation. Theey have no lack of male participation. I wonder if that is beecause there is more of a cultural baseline of pride in what you accomplish corporately rather than what you get credit for personally. Because activity-wise, they seem to freaking move mountains.
Maybe this church is fairly young and is still in the pioneer phase. I.e. it still has lots of things for more traditionally masculine men to do. Or perhaps churchgoing has a certain status in their culture. The members may want to emphasise the difference between themselves and other Cantonese immigrants, for example the Buddhists.
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Jemima the 9th
Shipmate
# 15106
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Some British scholars of the psychology of religion have done some research which suggests that ministry in Anglican and Methodist churches may attract women who have personality traits that are (stereotypically) associated with men, while male clergy have more traditionally feminine characteristics. On Google I've also just come across a book which suggests that female ministers in Pentecostal churches are more 'tough-minded' than male ones.
It could be that, as with politics and big business, many women in leadership roles have to try harder than men to be taken seriously, which leaves very little space for trying to redefine what leadership is: rather, you have to show that you can match or beat the boys at their own game....
At the risk of going on a bit, I'd suggest that whilst there are still studies looking at "male" and "female" characteristics, this isn't going to change for the better.
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
I didn't use the term 'male and female characteristics', and I doubt that the research does either.
I referred to the 'masculine' and 'feminine', which aren't the same as 'male' and 'female'. The latter are straightforwardly biological. The former are more ambiguous, and certainly have a cultural component. I was also careful to include terms such as 'stereotypically' and 'traditionally' to emphasise that I wasn't referring to some kind of innate, unchangeable way of being a man or a woman.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by St Deird:
I can't make eye contact and talk about my feelings either. If you want to get good conversation out of me, we need to be doing something with our hands, and looking at that rather than each other.
I think this is why things like quilting bees were invented.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by St Deird:
I am thoroughly sick of people raising their eyebrows at me because I'm not a demure eye-contacty lady who can sit still during the sermon.
My sister.
![[Tear]](graemlins/tear.gif)
My former pastor of Meh memory used to call out young women by name from the pulpit when he caught them whispering or fidgeting in church. Can't recall a single instance of him doing this with the guys.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
MT--
And maybe barn raisings and such, too.
[ 06. December 2015, 03:43: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
MT--
And maybe barn raisings and such, too.
Good thought. I actually thought of barn raisings after I posted that. Or guys working together on an old car, back in the day. (That day being the day in which someone could actually work on their own car without a PhD in auto mechanics computing.)
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Maybe instead of framing it as a gender thing we can think about it as a "learning style" thing. (You've all read Gardner, right? No? Tsk.)
Only a small percentage of people-- of either gender-- really learn anything efficiently by parking their butt in a pew (or a classroom) and listening to someone lecture. A smart learning experience-- religious or otherwise-- would incorporate elements that allow people of a variety of different learning styles to be engaged.
Barn raising? Hell yes. Singing and chanting? Hell yes. Tangible elements like icons and statues and sacramental objects? All these things facilitate cross-- learning style engagement.
TL;DR-- if people would just fucking listen to the educators, the world would run correctly.
( ![[Biased]](wink.gif) . Sort of.)
[ 06. December 2015, 07:20: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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St Deird
Shipmate
# 7631
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Only a small percentage of people-- of either gender-- really learn anything efficiently by parking their butt in a pew (or a classroom) and listening to someone lecture. A smart learning experience-- religious or otherwise-- would incorporate elements that allow people of a variety of different learning styles to be engaged.
*raises hand* Latin scholar right here, with your annual reminder that "sermon" originally meant "conversation". And our churches would be a darn sight more interesting if it still did.
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They're not hobbies; they're a robust post-apocalyptic skill-set.
Posts: 319 | From: the other side of nowhere | Registered: Jun 2004
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I reckon that the Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic learning styles schtick is all about making the teachers, who mostly can cope with sitting their butts on seats, listening and writing to learn, plus like the sounds of their own voices, realise that there are other ways of teaching other than chalk and talk or death by worksheet. Researchers have been saying for years they don't work, and there's a 2015 study confirming that.
There was an OU / BBC Chinese style school experiment that used chalk and talk and drilling for a class in a secondary school for four weeks. The Chinese teaching methods were very traditional and showed improvement in the students who were taught by these traditional methods compared to their peers in this very limited trial.
Howard Gardner's Learning Styles are good for mentoring - reassuring kids who are struggling in school that there are things they are good at so they can succeed, but they don't have any research proving they work either.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
Learning styles are, indeed, notorious bollocks. Doesn't stop charlatans trying to inflict them on teachers and students, of course.
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Jemima the 9th
Shipmate
# 15106
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I didn't use the term 'male and female characteristics', and I doubt that the research does either.
I referred to the 'masculine' and 'feminine', which aren't the same as 'male' and 'female'. The latter are straightforwardly biological. The former are more ambiguous, and certainly have a cultural component. I was also careful to include terms such as 'stereotypically' and 'traditionally' to emphasise that I wasn't referring to some kind of innate, unchangeable way of being a man or a woman.
Yes, my apologies, I was being sloppy with language.
The title of the research talks about "feminine men and masculine women". I think this is profoundly unhelpful.
The character traits they describe will be familiar to psychologists, but may mean different things to the lay reader (just as a nutritional paper on binge eating will use descriptors which would be different to the understanding of binge eating that a lay reader might have).
So a neurotic type tends to overreact, experiences emotional reactions out of proportion to the situation, and is moody. These are not characteristics I would wish to have in my rector. But they are not feminine characteristics. They are personality traits. They may be more common in the female half of the population, but being female doesn't make you neurotic - either in psychological research terms, on in colloquial terms. And it's the persistence of this idea that women are like this and men are like that which leads to the other problems you describe - women feeling they have to act in a certain way to be "one of the boys".
Posts: 801 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2009
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
I think the title is unhelpful if readers immediately assume that 'feminine' and 'masculine' means 'male' and 'female'. I doubt that trained psychologists are likely to make such an assumption - and of course, this is an academic article meant for specialists.
However, we can complain about gender stereotyping all we like, but unless we're seriously going to devote ourselves to overturning expectations (and not just in the sense of encouraging more female ministers) then our churches will continue to be dominated by the same kinds of people. There won't be a lot of balance.
We may prefer our churches to stay more or less the same in terms of demographics and personality types. If so, we need to be honest about that. I suppose that from a moderate mainstream perspective having more 'masculine' men in church is undesirable because they'll disrupt things. Or, unless they're the bossy evangelical bishop that everyone has to tolerate occasionally, they simply won't fit in. The Oxford vicar should bear in mind that some churches are happy to meet the needs of a particular group of people, and churches that try to appeal to everyone are rarely successful.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
quote:
I suppose that from a moderate mainstream perspective having more 'masculine' men in church is undesirable because they'll disrupt things.
Lol, thank you. That provided me with a well needed laugh this morning.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
On a serious note, it has been said that many church splits have been caused because men in the pews have felt deprived of influence and unable to make a contribution. The clergy wouldn't listen to them or take on board their concerns. This seems to have happened several times in the history of British Methodism, for example.
So, we could say that one advantage of having fewer men of this type in the pews, especially in the pews of mainstream churches, is that there's more church unity, less open conflict with the clergy, and fewer breakaway congregations and movements.
[ 06. December 2015, 12:44: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
ken might not be here, but there was research published on 30 November this year based on MRI scans of 1400 people that showed there is no such thing as a male or female brain. All the brains had a mixture of functions identified as male or female.
And that thing where a woman makes a comment and is not noticed strikes again.
[ 06. December 2015, 14:15: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
There was an OU / BBC Chinese style school experiment that used chalk and talk and drilling for a class in a secondary school for four weeks. The Chinese teaching methods were very traditional and showed improvement in the students who were taught by these traditional methods compared to their peers in this very limited trial.
It depends what you mean by 'improvement'. If you mean passing tests that require rergurgitartion then maybe. Chinese education socialises people into being conformist.
Education in the UK is/should be about thinking for oneself, questioning, evaluating.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
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Jemima the 9th
Shipmate
# 15106
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
On a serious note, it has been said that many church splits have been caused because men in the pews have felt deprived of influence and unable to make a contribution. The clergy wouldn't listen to them or take on board their concerns. This seems to have happened several times in the history of British Methodism, for example.
But here's the thing - were the ideas these men were bringing good for the church overall? If not, it doesn't matter who brought them.
Posts: 801 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2009
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Jemima the 9th
Shipmate
# 15106
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
But the male/female thing isn't just about brain wiring. It's about socialisation.
Given the brain wiring differences don't seem to exist, do you think the socialisation is positive or negative?
Posts: 801 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2009
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
On a serious note, it has been said that many church splits have been caused because men in the pews have felt deprived of influence and unable to make a contribution. The clergy wouldn't listen to them or take on board their concerns. This seems to have happened several times in the history of British Methodism, for example.
I have just read an account of how a group of British Methodists broke away in the nineteenth century to form the Primitive Methodists.
The Methodists had been providing Sunday Schools where children who worked in factories could learn to read and write. A decision was made that it was all right to teach them to read so they could read the Bible, but they shouldn't be taught to write. A group who became the Primitive Methodists objected strongly to this new policy, and they broke away.
They didn't break away because men in the pews felt ignored; they broke away on a matter of principle.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
Posted by Leo:
quote:
Chinese education socialises people into being conformist.
That statement encapsulates in a nutshell why some westerners will never understand the east and why some westerners would have benefited from a better, broader education.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
Posted by Svitlana:
quote:
You doing your 'irony' again?
No I wasn't being ironic. I just found your idiotic statement to be so utterly and hopelessly idiotic that it made me laugh out loud.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Posted by Svitlana:
quote:
You doing your 'irony' again?
No I wasn't being ironic. I just found your idiotic statement to be so utterly and hopelessly idiotic that it made me laugh out loud.
OK, fair enough. I think you probably live in a more balanced and harmonious church universe than I do, which is a good thing. If all churches were like yours we'd be better off, wouldn't we? Not much to change, and few challenges for the future.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jemima the 9th:
But here's the thing - were the ideas these men were bringing good for the church overall? If not, it doesn't matter who brought them.
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
[...]
They didn't break away because men in the pews felt ignored; they broke away on a matter of principle.
Moo
I don't think it's a case of petulant men on the one hand and matters of principle on the other. The point is that people couldn't get things done where they were, because their contributions weren't valued and obstacles were placed in their way.
Whether those specific contributions were good or bad is less important for the purposes of this thread than whether church leaders were able to value their members and put their energy and engagement to good use.
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
There was an OU / BBC Chinese style school experiment that used chalk and talk and drilling for a class in a secondary school for four weeks. The Chinese teaching methods were very traditional and showed improvement in the students who were taught by these traditional methods compared to their peers in this very limited trial.
It depends what you mean by 'improvement'. If you mean passing tests that require rergurgitartion then maybe. Chinese education socialises people into being conformist.
Education in the UK is/should be about thinking for oneself, questioning, evaluating.
On the one hand education is also about acquiring skills and on another it isn't just education that makes people in China (and many other Eastern societies) more conformist: most aspects of society and culture have done so, for millennia.
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
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Posted
Posted by Svitlana:
quote:
If all churches were like yours we'd be better off, wouldn't we? Not much to change, and few challenges for the future.
Can you give an example of where masculine men came into your church and acted all disruptive (preferably without unfactual and frankly incorrect references to the Methodists, or any other denomination for that matter)? And just for the sake of balance: can you also give an example of where feminine men also came in and provided disruption (or are they incapable of such things)?
[ 06. December 2015, 21:19: Message edited by: fletcher christian ]
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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Jemima the 9th
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# 15106
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I don't think it's a case of petulant men on the one hand and matters of principle on the other. The point is that people couldn't get things done where they were, because their contributions weren't valued and obstacles were placed in their way.
Whether those specific contributions were good or bad is less important for the purposes of this thread than whether church leaders were able to value their members and put their energy and engagement to good use.
Yes, people in the church being valued and able to contribute is important. But I don't think their sex has anything to do with that.
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SvitlanaV2
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# 16967
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Posted
fltcher christian
Since you find my comments so hopeless and inaccurate I'm not sure how much effort I should put into looking for information that you'll only find hilarious. It would probably be more interesting for you to tell us how well the churches you know incorporate people of all kinds and all sexes. I wouldn't laugh; I'd find it useful. I've been in positions of lay church leadership (in the Methodist Church) and may be again.
Nevertheless, I'll try to find a few references to illuminate what I'm trying to say.
[ 06. December 2015, 21:33: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
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SvitlanaV2
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# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jemima the 9th:
Yes, people in the church being valued and able to contribute is important. But I don't think their sex has anything to do with that.
Maybe it shouldn't have anything to do with it, but if so why are lay churchgoers consistently more likely to be women? Why are women members more active in the church? It may be nurture not nature, but what should we do about that? Or are we not supposed to care one way or the other? In which case, why do we care so much about having female clergy?
It's not that I think de-sexualising the discussion is bad, but on the ground I think it helps to be honest about what the results might be if certain things are changed. There might well be more men here if we do such and such; are we as a church ready to contemplate that? Of course, the happy outcome might also mean more women, which is great!
Good practice helps everyone, but in the wider society it's usual to have a particular group in mind when seeking to broaden participation, e.g. encouraging more BME, LGBT, youth or women to get involved. Some schools and projects have been aimed at raising the achievement of black Caribbean boys. If that's acceptable, why can't churches consider raising the spiritual engagement and growth of men?
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Jemima the 9th
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# 15106
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Posted
The approach I would rather have taken is about removing discrimination and allowing equality of opportunity (yuk! Hate that phrase) rather than targeted outreach. Wider society is ahead of the church there, in many ways. Women have been barred from ministry until relatively recently because of our innate characteristics. Gay people, in some situations, likewise. I don't work in education, but thinking about the news story a few weeks back about discrimination at job selection against people with "foreign sounding" names - that's innate characteristics too.
There's nothing innate about being a man which prevents them from coming to church. Just as there's nothing innate about being a man which prevents them from being a stay at home dad whilst mum goes out to work. Or that stops them being primary carer for an older relative.
I think we should stop patronising these grown men by thinking they need special outreach. So many of the items listed in the OP are actually sensible for anyone at church with small children, as we're likely to be at Christmas - the short sermons etc.
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Liopleurodon
Mighty sea creature
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Posted
There's a lot of stuff about "girls are better at sitting still and concentrating than boys" and it's impossible to know to what extent that is because adult expect and reward these different behaviours. My suspicion is that that's the main difference - or even just that it's what adults expect to see so it's what they report seeing, even when the evidence in front of them is saying something completely different. My suspicion is that girls are used to being told off for fidgeting whereas adults have more of a "boys will be boys" attitude towards boys causing havoc.
That's irrelevant here. Even if some researchers have found that boys learn better when they're bouncing off the walls (and I would want to know exactly what studies have been done and the methodology of them, because there is an unbelievable amount of junk science that takes place in the field of Getting Children To Pass Tests. Simply saying "research" or even, God-help-us, citing Ofsted like it's some kind of all-knowing objective being with no agenda) and girls can sit nicely and be ladylike - that proves exactly nothing about adult men and women. I've changed since I was five years old. My being female is not the most important thing about me.
Furthermore, it's a bad idea to call any psychological traits "feminine" or "masculine". Really bad idea. Even if women are, on average, more likely to do X. Still a bad idea. I doubt that any of these traits have as close a correlation to sex as height does, and yet we manage to use "tall" and "short" when discussing that. Somehow we've managed to grasp that a six foot woman, while statistically unusual, is not less female for being tall. Why the hell we can't do that for psychological traits which are dubiously gendered at best, is beyond me. Don't even get me started on the bullshit "extreme male brain" hypothesis of autism, which has probably done more to ensure that autistic girls are not recognised as such and fail to get the support they need, than any other believe about ASD.
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Soror Magna
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
There's a lot of stuff about "girls are better at sitting still and concentrating than boys" and it's impossible to know to what extent that is because adult expect and reward these different behaviours. My suspicion is that that's the main difference - or even just that it's what adults expect to see so it's what they report seeing, even when the evidence in front of them is saying something completely different. My suspicion is that girls are used to being told off for fidgeting whereas adults have more of a "boys will be boys" attitude towards boys causing havoc.. ...
Absolutely. I've seen parents allow a little boy to climb on the furniture in a restaurant, while repeatedly telling his sister to stop doing the same thing and grabbing and forcing her into a chair when she didn't. The lesson for the girl: your brother is free do to whatever the fuck he wants, even if there's risk of damage or injury, but you'll be physically restrained if you try to do the same thing.
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
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Jane R
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# 331
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Posted
Jemima: quote:
Given the brain wiring differences don't seem to exist, do you think the socialisation is positive or negative?
If differences in brain wiring do exist they are probably caused by socialization.
Brains can rewire themselves anyway - see the Wikipedia article on neuroplasticity for more details.
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Jemima the 9th
Shipmate
# 15106
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Posted
Yep - and the New Scientist report Penny linked to was conducted on people aged teens-80s, so plenty of time for changes to be made. I'm cautious about the interpretations people sometimes make of scans, though - for example, extrapolating from the lack of growth shown in a scan of a child suffering severe neglect to "If you ever leave a child to cry its brain will not grow!" That sort of thing.
Thanks for the link.
My question was to leo, really - I was digging to see what his opinion on supposed masculine feminine aspects of church might be, especially in the light of the negative experiences of the social expectations of some of us wee girlies.
[ 07. December 2015, 19:01: Message edited by: Jemima the 9th ]
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