The Pope and the ecology of ‘man’

Lucky escape for women!
You might think I’m being facetious, but it’s actually a serious legal point. It is sloppy to say ‘ecology of man’ when implying women. It’s bad grammar and has legal repercussions. In this case, the Pope's dismissal of women demonstrates that their sexuality is functional to that of men. This has always been the case in the past. After all, being in the control of their father (and brothers) and then their husband, they couldn’t go astray. This is why lesbianism was not outlaw in Jewish law for a long time. It was simply disregarded. Bad grammar always betrays bad thinking.

The Pope’s latest statement that ‘men are men and women are women’, sums up perfectly my argument that homophobia is intrinsically linked to misogyny. Religious traditionalists and biological determinists are obsessed with nature and order. For them, men and women are created differently and with different functions. Except, it’s women who have a function: that of child-bearing and child-rearing. Society is pretty much based on the appropriation of women’s bodies, or the sexual division of labour, if you prefer. Women have been biologically and culturally reproducing a very hierarchical society. They have a specific role, which gives them power and constrains them at the same time. The by-product of this is that homosexuality has no place. It is considered disruptive of the 'order'.

The Pope is not championing love and family (which would include childless couples, homosexual couples, unmarried couples etc.); he’s championing gender roles. The Pope’s dismissal of ‘gender’, as a social construction, implies that this is the ‘natural order’ and not a product of socialisation. It is what God had in mind, not man’s construction (and I do mean man!). Pity, nature is not that ordered, but let’s not get science spoil a ‘good’ argument. This millenarian rhetoric is rather pathetic in this day and age, but there will always be people who need order and hierarchy. There will always be an audience for such nonsense. To disrupt gender roles, means dismantling hierarchies of power. It means freeing people from the invented yoke of biology to be what they wish to be, even what they are ‘called’ to be. It’s about going beyond our biology and be human, thus divine. I thought that was the story of creation was all about!

On a more 'sombre' note, as argued previously, this misappropriation of human sexuality has the harshest impact on the ‘global South’. Women are kept in ignorance and poverty, have more children than they would like, die in childbirth or see their children dying. Overpopulation means starvation and the destruction of our environmental resources. The Pope, as a head of state, ought to champion the ecology of the planet!