8.0 Drubbings
Last week an administrative error led to the opposition sending their u16s boys academy team to play against my daughter’s u16 county schools team. The teams decided to go ahead with the match, which was played in sporting humour. Despite some much-celebrated nutmegs, and the occasional knock down of a young man and his ego, the boys were utterly dominant. Across the pitch they were a head taller and a stone heavier. Player for player, their passing range was greater, their shots harder and their acceleration sharper. Some of the best trained girls in our county put up a brave fight, but they were no match for the academy players of a league two side…..
For some years now, UK culture has been tying itself in knots over the differences between men and women. For a while it was not OK to suggest that boys and girls were different. Every child was to be given the unbearable responsibility of choosing their gender. Now it seems that the needle is moving back towards the received wisdom and away from the extremes of trans-ideology. JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock and others have fought a costly fight to point out that men and women are factually biologically different and that the tiny proportion of the population with genuinely intersex traits distance themselves from trans ideology. The LGB alliance, formed in 2019 was based on a conscious rejection of the T activism of Stonewall’s intersectional approach to gender/orientation activism. The culture wars rage on.
Despite the contextually radical woman-affirming tone of the New Testament, Christians have had their own problems working out gender roles. Historically speaking many, but not all, Churches have bolstered societal norms of patriarchy and misogyny. Mercifully, most Western churches have slowly followed feminism in recognising the equality of men and women (in creation and in the New Testament) and are pursuing this in church and society. Some Christians interpret the bible as saying that men and women have different and complimentary roles in the home, the church and the workplace. Others interpret the bible as having a trajectory towards egalitarianism. Across these continuing divides, Christians share a common view that a binary distinction between the sexes is part of the way God made us. Created equal in his image, male and female; representing his trinitarian plurality in distinction of role and equality of dignity. Gender dysphoria and congenital adrenal hyperplasia are real conditions and those who suffer with them should be met with compassion and kindness, but their existence as conditions is an exception to the binary norms of created humanity. Consequently most Christians have been ill-at-ease with the contra-biological lurches of our education and legal system and feel a certain relief that trans-activism’s voice in our kids lives is waning.
As a Christian football parent, I tend to agree. Boys grow up to be men and girls grow up to be women. All humans are to be treated with equal respect. All are created in God’s image and belong to him. However, the idea that men and women are the same, whether it’s on the sports field or in the life of a family seems like the emperors new gender agenda to me. All of the sideline parents I’ve ever spoken to about it agree. If we pretend that men and women are the same in all respects, 8:0 drubbings will be one of the lesser complications we will face.
For more of Tom and Matt’s thoughts on Gender, listen in to episodes 13 and 47 of Two Pastors in a Pub.