Chapter 44: Be a Real Woman
BE A REAL WOMAN
THE second thing that makes marriage work, the most explosively dangerous element in our human nature, the source of the greatest earthly pleasure —even, if you ask me, of the greatest fun —the thing you’ve been wondering when I’d get around to discussing, is sex.
What a real woman wants is a real man. What a real man wants is a real woman. It is masculinity that appeals to a woman. It is femininity that appeals to a man. The more womanly you are, the more manly your husband will want to be. The Russian philosopher Berdyaev said, “The idea of woman’s emancipation is based upon a profound enmity between the sexes, upon envy and imitation. Woman becomes a mere caricature, a pseudo-being.”
For the Christian who understands God’s purpose, there cannot possibly be any enmity, envy, or desire for imitation. Both men and women accept fully their being as the being God created when He made man in His image, male and female. Some lamentably confused people have objected to the use of the word man to include male and female, but the most superficial study of the language would relieve them of the suspicion that this is a “sexist” bias. Man is both man and woman, his humanity expressed under two separate modalities, and each must recognize and accept the fullness of his humanity under his assigned modality. We are not required somehow to “overcome” our sexuality. We affirm it. We rejoice in it. We seek to be faithful to it as we seek to use it as a gift of God. Unfaithfulness to one’s sex is unfaithfulness to everybody, for a woman must be a woman both in her relationship to men and to other women. A man must be wholly a man in his relationship to women and to other men. The husband who is not faithful to his masculinity defrauds his wife, and the reverse is equally true. This faithfulness that I speak of is our answer to the call of God. One, called to be a man, and another, called to be a woman, become one flesh in which, as one flesh, they become one with God.
In every society there have been expectations which have been understood to apply to each sex. Of course these expectations may vary from time to time and from place to place, but the distinctiveness of maleness and femaleness has throughout history been a constant. It is only in our society that there is an attempt to erase this distinctiveness, to encourage women to do what men do. Man’s work, no matter how boring, unpleasant, or difficult, is generally regarded as of more value than women’s. “Equal opportunity” nearly always implies that women want to do what men do, not that men want to do what women do, which indicates that prestige is attached to men’s work but not to women’s. Women’s work, particularly the task assigned by Creation exclusively to women, that of bearing and nurturing children, is regarded not only as of lesser value but even degrading and “animal-like.” This is a hideous distortion of the truth, and an attempt to judge women by the criteria of men, to force them into an alien mold, to rob them of the very gifts that make them what they were meant to be. To subject femininity to the criteria of masculinity is as foolish as it would be to judge meat by the standards of potatoes. Meat would fail every test. For women to assume an ersatz masculinity means that they will always lose.
You are, Valerie, by the grace of God, a woman. This means you have responsibilities. You are fully a woman, and this means you have privileges. You are only a woman, which means you have limitations. Walt is a man, he is fully a man, and he is only a man. Thank God for this, and live it to the hilt!