Love me tender, love me true… scratch that.
How about: “When a ma – an loves a wo – man …” Never mind.
Can an article exploring love between man and woman begin with anything other than clichéd lyrics? And a related question: Is there anything new to be said about love between these two? Well, let me venture something on the subject and do so by turning, strangely perhaps, to the logic of sexual difference.
Ours is a culture that celebrates difference. (Or, does it? Actually, our culture celebrates only those differences it finds compelling, which suggests that its ‘celebration of difference’ is at the same time an underhanded attempt to marginalize certain other differences. But I digress, perhaps.) In any case, notwithstanding this wider celebration of difference, past decades have seen a steady and serious erosion of respect for the notion of sexual difference.
At some level this erosion is entirely understandable. Historically, woman’s essence and identity have been defined in terms of the essence and identity of man. She is his helper, his opposite or his complement. The sexes have been defined, furthermore, according to the following logic and associations, with woman generally getting the short end of the stick:
male / female
reason / instinct
spiritual / natural
active / passive
public / private
As is apparent, this framework cuts woman off from full access to civil, political and religious contexts. It largely relegates her to the domestic sphere.
In attempting to overturn this centuries – old diminishment of woman, the logic of difference has been displaced in favour of the logic of equality. But as some have pointed out, with this emphasis on equality, women have simply exchanged being not – men for being like – men. The French feminist Luce Irigaray puts it like this: “The demand to be equal presupposes a point of comparison. To whom or what do women want to be equalized? To men? To a salary? To a public office? To what standard? Why not to themselves?”
For those who believe that the creation narratives of Genesis make some kind of authoritative statement about the human, the question of sexual difference cannot be ignored. Yet a question hangs over text and tradition: If we preserve the logic of sexual difference, won’t we inevitably take man as woman’s measure, diminishing her in the process?
Perhaps not. It turns out that the best account of sexual difference is not one that defines the distinct natures of woman and man. Rather, the best account of sexual difference is one that focuses on how woman and man relate in the face of their undefinable difference—how they relate to one another in view of the fact that each is fundamentally a mystery to the other. This brings us back to where we started since what we’re really talking about is the love expressed between (a) man and (a) woman.
This idea of sexual difference can be defended and clarified by way of appeal to Genesis 2:23. In that text the earth creature (the mud man) stands before the one just formed from his rib and makes this wondering declaration: “This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called ‘isha’ (woman) for out of ‘ish’ (man) this one was taken.”
These poetic words highlight both sameness and difference. Regarding sameness the man perceives woman as one who is suitable to him in a way that the animals were not. When the human consisted of the earth creature alone in the garden, the human was incomplete—but with the creation of woman is the creation and fullness of the human, as two. They are suitable to one another, meaning that between them is the possibility (at last!) of meaningful conversation and companionship. But notice that this emphasis on sameness doesn’t license us to say anything substantial about what it is to be man or woman.
It is equally important to notice that in Genesis 2:23 the man does not name the woman. In fact, man’s naming of woman (parallel to the naming of the animals) only happens when human self – alienation from God enters the picture and begins to be felt also in the relationship between woman and man. It is only in Genesis 3:20 that we read: “The man named his wife Eve …” Prior to human alienation, man does not define woman or determine her place. Rather, in astonished wonder he merely affirms her difference from him (he is ish, she isha), a difference that does not preclude the possibility of companionship between them.
We cannot, then, set out the substantive difference between woman and man—neither one can be finally pinned down as ‘this’ or ‘that’. Rather, sexual difference is a dynamic, relational reality that comes to expression as man and woman ‘mind the gap’—when they relate to one another in ways that acknowledge the fundamental mystery of the other.
It is helpful to bring in the notion of wonder here. In speaking of sexual difference as dynamic encounter, Irigaray writes: “This other, male or female, should surprise us again and again, appear to us as new, very different from what we knew or what we thought he or she should be.” For me (mud man version 9.23, with software glitches all his own), to encounter a woman is to encounter someone who is other than me—one who resists my every attempt to define her in terms of my ideas and identity. Before her I can only express astonished joy. The challenge is to cultivate this sense of wonder and allow it to come to expression in very concrete ways—my wife can vouch for the fact that I sometimes (often!) find this a challenge.
All of this sits fairly well within the context of the church, where we continue to wrestle with the question of what it means be woman and man—what it means to live the human as two. While we confess our unity in the Body of Christ—our oneness in Christ—this insistence on unity/oneness cannot translate into a denial of sexual difference or into an insistence on sameness (which is a refusal of God’s gift of creation). To live the reality of sexual difference in the context of the church requires an acknowledgment of the other’s mystery—it also requires a stepping back so that she is set free to become fully alive in relation to Christ, in the exercise of Spirit – given gifts, and in the shared life of the worshipping, missional community that is the church.
Micheal O’Siadhail’s poem, Roofing sounds just the right note in relation to all of this:
A roof is framing
our slanted intimacy.
Unless each of these
matching couples
Beds snugly down into
opposite walls,
The timbers sag.
Somehow we’re stronger
In separateness;
this slopping encounter
Our braced ridge,
our tie of ecstasy.
