Touchstone Magazine – Mere Comments: All Flattened Things are Equal
In academe, it is simply assumed by almost everybody that sex differences are at most superficial. To quote a coarse and not terribly perceptive female member of the Army: “The only thing the men can do that the women can’t do is urinate through a hole in a fence.” It takes an effort of the imagination to pretend that you know nothing about men and women, and then to pay close attention to their voices, their gestures, their habits of speech (the sorts of sentences they use, for instance), what they do with their eyes while they speak, the sorts of things they speak about and how, and on and on. I know you agree with me here. I don’t think the egalitarians agree.And this thought leads me to another conclusion, parallel to what I said about powerful interpretations of Scripture: the indifferentist cannot really appreciate the beauty of woman (or of man, for that matter). There’s nothing much to say, if everything that we associate with women is merely superficial, or, if not superficial, then merely “socially constructed” and thus not essential, or, if in some way natural, not socially or anthropologically important, and thus not reaching deep into the woman’s being. Such an egalitarian destroys the very things whose equality he asserts.
Posted by: Tony Esolen | Sep 26, 2006 12:09:22 PM
TimothyOne 