First of all, I want to apologize for how my presentation of this series is dragging out. (Believe me, it's a lot more painful for me than it is for you.) This is a very ambitious project and unfortunately my time and energy are limited, as are the logistics of writing and being online. Thanks so much for your patience.
Second of all, I had to take Vlastos' book on Socrates back to the library and haven't had a chance to check it out again. But meanwhile, I found another book, "The Feminization of America", so I'll write about that until I can resume my commentary on Vlastos' Socratic introduction.
Written by an educational consultant and an anthropologist, both female, and published in1985, TFOA defines "feminization" as
the head-spinning changes now occurring in American life as a result of women's transitions from their historic domestic world to the public world of business, industry, and the professions...and the public world of action and achievement. (p. 1, p. 5)
This feminization entails the burgeoning (now flourishing) female presence in the work force, especially the upper echelon. It does not refer to a feminine (or feminist) takeover, however, nor a pushing-out of male presence and influence. It encourages addition of the female to a predominantly male milieu, for the purpose of bringing it legitimately to bear, not in the interest of kicking masculinity out.
(The "feminization of poverty," the earliest use of the term "feminization" that I have found, is also mentioned, on p. 100.)
It seems that those who have recently used the term "feminization" have either not use it in the manner in which it was first introduced, or have disdained such feminization, criticizing the influence which has entered society either as a result of it (both good and bad), or else have used the term to refer, not to legitimate gender (sex) traits, but to undesirable human ones. Both they and the authors of this book generalize, limit, or fail to appreciate certain traits as appearing in one sex or the other, through use of the wrong rubric.
Yet the book makes cogent observations about the necessity of the female viewpoint and presence in public (and private) life, and offers a noteworthy definition of culture (p. 6):
Culture is a way of life, transmitted from one generation to another, a collective set of agreements about how to perceive and interpret the world. It is an adaptive arrangement, consisting of solutions to common problems, with an enduring though by no means unchanging pattern. Though it is functional it is not necessarily or even largely rational. Much of culture is arbitrary, but it has the power to convince all who embrace it of its innate rightness and desirability. The better a culture functions, the less awareness its members have of its power over them, because much of it is unconscious, its dictates operating through the individual psyche...Culture is identified by what people say and do, the objects they invent, the symbols with which they present and interpret themselves, the social relationships provided for and prohibited.
The detached analysis evidenced in this definition is exactly what is necessary to evaluate any given point of culture, and the statement is dead-on about the arbitrary and largely unconscious nature of culture and its influence. So much of what we assume is "natural" to human interaction is really intricately complex and mostly learned. We must learn how to dress, how to act, and what to say in all sorts of public and private interactions. Personality and background may or may not be revealed or suppressed in such interactions, in a calculated, carefully-negotiated mien. (This is true in all relationships to varying degrees, which the book fails to acknowledge.)
The authors address social change from an anthropological and evolutionary viewpoint, expressing hope in the salvific power of female influence to overcome "the destructive, life-threatening forces of the nuclear age." (p. 2) They offer, not hope in God, but in "the human species' almost uncanny ability to save itself again and again" (p. 16), and assume that the feminine = healing and community, and the male = individualism and destruction. In doing so, however, they make arbitrary value judgments and greatly dichotomize and generalize both gender traits and history, citing anthropological (arbitrary, cultural) evidence as well as gurus of the age (such as Freud). In this they are no different than those who make a case that the modern-day church is feminized and must be de-feminized, including David Murrow, Leon Podles, and Nancy Pearcey, as I will discuss in the future.
In suggesting that the identities of both men and women be "hybridized," though, with women bringing out desirable "feminine" traits within men and vice-versa, the book does not condone the androgyny against which supporters of so-called biblical manhood and womanhood rightly speak. (There are some people who support such androgyny, yet their goal is not necessarily to erase gender traits but to protest culturally-imposed artificial gender definitions in some cases, and legitimate gender definitions in others.)
However, their case is made in the same way those supporters make their case; i.e., by attempting to define sex traits according to arbitrary gender identity rather than encouraging both men and women to live according to the New Commandment and walk in the Spirit, which is the only way both men and women can discover and live out the imago dei in all of their God-given traits.
