Auguste Rodin, "The hand of God" (1898)
The theory of "gender" denies humanity is differentiated between men and women
Chasing utopia of equality
The University of Navarra (Spain) took place from 9 to 11 February I International Congress of gender ideology . Here is the address-on the historical and cultural context in which it was born the theory of "gender" - that one of the invited speakers has been synthesized for our newspaper.
Lucetta Scaraffia [ Universita degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza (Italy)]
In the last decades of the twentieth century have seen in Western countries to a conceptual revolution based on manipulations of language, ie , replacing the concept of sexual difference in gender indefinite term. In substance, some intellectuals and politicians have tried to make concrete and shared the statement the famous book by Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex: "Women are not born, it is."
The reasons that have allowed and encouraged the emergence of this new ideology are many and of different nature. On the one hand, the fall of the Berlin Wall, which followed a few years after the severe global economic downturn, put in crisis all the ideological apparatuses that had woven the political life: falling in fact all types of communist and socialist ideology, and then also capitalist liberalism. In this vacuum, the hunt for new values \u200b\u200bto justify the policy options has led to a kind of "deification" human rights as an objective that societies should raise, became undisputed guiding values, although often manipulated, undergoing an expansion and transformation. The utopia of equality, which had encouraged the political struggle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is reborn in previously marginal areas, such as feminism, which thus becomes a central ideological form capable of filling the void left by the collapse of communist ideology . To reinforce, feminism was established as utopian ideology which referred to the utopia of equality and should have a confirmation "scientific", as Marx's communism had self-declared "scientific socialism."
gender theory background is a utopian ideology based on the idea, and own socio-communist ideology and failed miserably, that equality is the royal road to the attainment of happiness. To deny that humanity is divided between men and women found a way to ensure more complete and absolute equality "and therefore possibility of happiness to all human beings.
For the theory of gender , the negative side, constituted by the denial of sexual difference, was accompanied by a positive: total freedom of individual choice, basic myth of modern society that can even remove what was considered, until recently, a finding of unavoidable natural constriction. Here
gender theory includes a political dimension (the achievement of equal opportunity and individual choice without limits), a socio-historical aspect (justification post the end of the female role in Western societies ), and a philosophical-anthropological look more generally, that is, the definition of human being and the relationship between it and nature.
The ideology of gender is therefore one of the many excesses of the utopia of equality. In fact, writes Michael Walzer "root, the meaning of equality is negative", is aimed at eliminating not all differences, but a particular set of differences that vary by time and place.
current social transformation is moving toward the elimination of all differences, also of that, central to all cultures, men and women, with a rate that has accelerated more and more after the release of chemical contraceptives the sixties. Indeed, the separation between sexuality and reproduction allowed women adopt a male-type sexual behavior-which may not suit the female nature and thus probably does not increase the happiness of women, although this is another issue, and therefore play male roles canceling any obstacle also abolished maternity.
The separation between sexuality and procreation resulted in a separation between procreation and marriage, and therefore between sexuality and marriage, we can see here the conditions for asserting "rights" to marriage and child filed by homosexual groups and closely linked to the idea of \u200b\u200bgender , that is, denial sexual identity "natural."
As evidenced by the French philosopher Marcel Gauchet , these changes have profound consequences on the social level: if sexuality is no longer a collective problem linked to the survival of human groups in time, and becomes a private matter and expression of individuality, it follows obviously a crisis of the family institution and change the status of homosexuality. While previously it was the family that produced the obvious child as a result of the sexual activity of the spouses, is now increasingly common for the wanted child is the one that created the family. And you can consider that any family who wants a child.
Some fifty years after Simone de Beauvoir write that sentence, the idea seemed to finally succeed. If sexual identities are only cultural constructions, it is possible to deconstruct them, and that is what they propose to do feminist and gay movements.
The key to the revolution of gender is language, as they have understood certain jurisdictions, changing such a term - "parent" instead of "mother" and "father", "parenting" instead of "family "- thus eliminating the documents to the natural family. Artificial with another operation replacing "sex" with "sexuality" and "sexed" with "sexual" to confirm that it has no reality, only the orientation of desire. But, as noted by the scholar Xavier Lacroix , remains indispensable "to recognize the contribution that gives flesh to the symbolic and relational 'is, understanding the physical anchor of paternity in a male body and motherhood a female body is a factual irreducible and structured to be received not only as a limit, but as a source of meaning. In short, we must admit that beyond the sperm or egg someone, while the concept of homo-parenting eliminates legibility carnal origin. Different kinship systems that exist in the world have variously articulated the physical and cultural, but always articulated, as the central challenge of the family is precisely to maintain marital and parenting together.
So this is a real challenge cultural anthropological foundation not only of our society, but of all human societies, as evidenced by the criticism launched by gender theorists (for example, the American philosopher Judith Butler ) to Levi-Strauss and Freud, found to have based their systems of thought on sexual differences between women and men. And the demonization of any kind of difference is not only based on a utopia of equality proposal as a royal road to happiness, a utopia which no doubt has its origins precisely that showed his disastrous socialist achievements in the past century, but in this case goes to an extreme result of deconstructionist thought, or the denial of the existence of nature itself. If every type of dispute, culminating in a social definition, it reads like a system of power, in the wake of Foucault , you can see in each paradigm overcoming an evolutionary moment of release, according to a new form of social Darwinism. Thus the most popular modes and more easily livable emotional and sexual relations are considered as advanced, which therefore must be imposed, while the "hetero-centrism" is seen as a moment in the history of human development and inappropriate and that must overcome.
The ideology of gender was greeted with enthusiasm on all international organizations, because it is the policy of expansion of individual rights. In substance to deny that the differences between women and men are natural, and instead argue that they are culturally constructed, and therefore can be modified according to the desire individual. The adoption of a "gender perspective" was the ideological line adopted some of the major UN agencies and NGOs dealing with population control, with the support of most feminists in Western countries, but with the opposed by many advocacy groups motherhood and family.
more elegant and neutral "sex", the term gender has not only entered our language, but they are also used in the name of a lode of academic research, the Gender Studies -, often unconsciousness its revolutionary ideological and cultural significance. However, as scientific studies have shown and continue to speak of male identity and female identity in particular just makes sense from a biological standpoint. In addition to unfounded gender theory implies a political vision extremely dangerous, giving the impression that the difference amounts to discrimination. But the principle of equality requires absolutely no pretending that everyone is equal: only to the extent that the existence of the difference is recognized and considered effective, it can truly give everyone the same manner and degree, full dignity and equal rights. Nothing new, it is clear. Long time that law and philosophy are stressing that the real meaning of the principle of equality lies not in ignoring the individual characteristics, pretending that there is homogeneity, "but, rather, to give everyone the same opportunities. Norberto Bobbio Lay stated that men are born equal: it is the task of the state is in a position to be. As emphasized, among others, the Catholic Church and part of feminism, true equality is true not only when the same subjects are treated equally but also when different subjects are treated as des-alike. Gender parity certainly not achieved by women entering an abstract category of individuals (a category which, among other things, there, to be calibrated on the male model), but is reached based on the assumption that society is made up of citizens.
With the creation of utopias of equality and individual autonomy, have been constructed fictions that harm us, they are based on an ideal that presupposes independence, far from reality.
We know the Church's position on the matter, made clear in the Letter to the bishops on the collaboration between women and men the then Cardinal Ratzinger. But it is interesting to note items polemic against gender also many feminists who contribute to the creation of critical public opinion regarding the introduction of this term in public texts and laws derived from them.
Source: L'Osservatore Romano , English-language edition, number 7, page 8-9 (Sunday, 13 February 2011).
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