Two questions for SSM supporters
Comments1. You obviously feel that gender matters, or else lesbians could be attracted to men and gay men could be attracted to women; both genders have hands and faces and hearts and can kiss and hug and be aroused and love. If gender didn’t matter, we’d all be bisexual, right? So if gender matters in selecting a partner, shouldn’t it matter in parenting, too?
2. If a child’s parents died, all else being equal, would you rather she was raised by an aunt and an uncle or two aunts (sisters)? Would it matter? Why or why not?
David, you might want to consider that LOVE comes about in many ways. And then you should also consider attraction, more specifically sexual attraction. For some, a woman (0r even a man) can develop very deep feelings for a person of their same gender, but there may be no sexual attraction. Romantic LOVE usually is defined as a stirring of the ‘heart strings’ in one person for another. When this Romantic LOVE is mutual, more often than not, coupling occurs. Sometimes, like in your case in claiming bisexuality, some folk can develop deep feelings (including sexual feelings) for both genders. Then there are folk who are only attracted ‘romantically’ to their opposite gender. People fall in love with People.
Some men (straight men) watch women engaged in same-gender sexual pairing purely for sexual arosal. and there are women who watch men in similar pairings. Yet this does not dictate or define their sexual orientation or preference.
As far as parenting goes, children need to feel secure, receive love, attention and patient understanding and hopefully are provided a reasonable amount of stability. Parents (and their supportive members of their village) help provide the opportunity for a child to develop healthy sense of being and a sense of belonging. Parents also help to build self-esteem and encourage self-actualization. MASLOW.
It would be nice to have the Cleaver Family model. But if you take a closer look at family life, very few families come close. Instead, you have the Waltons, an intergenerational model that is slowly coming about as (grand)parents return to the homes of their children rather than being institutionalized. Or like in the wonderful ‘Family Affair’ a supportive non-family member stepping in like Mr. French. Or the blended families like the Brady’s or ‘With Six you get Eggroll.’
I am wondering how you can belittle so many families with this insistent rant that Family = 1 Dad + 1 Mom + children. Families are families. Some have women ‘wearing the pants’ (and sometimes all the other hats) and raise wonderful children. It is the same for men.
Today more and more children are ending up back in the homes of their grandparent(s). And there are many two parent households. But just because one can procreate doesn’t automatically leave a certificate of being a capable and dependable parent at the doorstep.
Kudos to families where homeschooling occurs and their is a parent home to respond to their children’s requests. But KUDOS to those families, in which family and friends and teachers and caregivers work together to raise a child and their family.
With over 20 years as an early childhood specialist, famliy advocate and educator, I have seen many ‘family structures’. Some families do quite well, others seek help and become better and others dissolve.
I know wonderful LGBT famlies who have 2 moms, 1 mom, 2 dads, or 1 dad. I wish you would stop belittling and disaparaging families who don’t fall into your little ‘box’.
Most parent(s) are encouraged to select folk to take over as guardians of their children in the event of a tragedy. These parent(s) select people based on their relationships with those folk.
David,
You raise an excellent question. It is probably deserving of an entire book in itself. I will try to answer it but I believe there are many others more well-versed in gender theory than I am who could do a better job.
Generally, I believe that men and women as biological sexes are not all that different. There are hormonal and anatomical differences, but I don’t think these differences warrant the huge differences in societal roles that advocates of “traditional gender roles” say they do. Gender, I believe, is separate from sex and is mostly a performance that we are taught by society, teachers, family, etc. Girls in our society, for instance, have traditionally been taught to be emotional, weak, frail, and passive. Boys have been taught to be un-emotional, strong, resilient, and active. What being a lesbian means to me (and I’m speaking only for myself) is a rejection of the gender role of traditional “wife” to a husband and a rejection of the “husband” as my romantic partner.
I believe that such gender roles are limiting and artificial and I want no part of trying to fit into what is unnatural for me to fit into. And, when it comes to parenting, I think it’s good to have parents who are well-rounded and capable of expressing the gamut of human emotion and experience no matter what biological sex they are. Because I believe that boys are artificially taught “masculinity” and girls are taught “femininity” I think that biological sex of matters only inasmuch as parents want their children to learn to fit into “traditional gender roles.”
I hope that makes sense.
But Fannie, what about Femme Dykes and Masculine Queers. I have many lesbians who fall into the LIPSTICK column and many gay men who fall into the masculine/butch column.
Gender is still an issue, and in some cases the gender roles of the hetero world are also adopted, implanted and played out. . .
I agree that gender roles are reinforced, but I also believe there are many folk who either adopt or even develop . . . the queer fairies drag queens and the lesbian-chewin’ tabaccci girlz
ciao
Fannie, if gender is the real issue, and not sex (i.e. man and woman), then, instead of reading,
“gender matters, or else lesbians could be attracted to men and gay men could be attracted to women”
read,
“sex matters, or else lesbians could be attracted to men and gay men could be attracted to women.”
That very thing is not so uncommon, anyway. The exclusively this or that concept is largely a myth.
I’ll agree with your first premise: most people are attracted to one sex or the other. Despite the claims offered in the 70s, most people are not bisexual.
That sex matters in partner choice doesn’t apply everywhere. You’re offering the same fallacy as:
So if gender matters in selecting a partner, shouldn’t it matter in being a doctor, too?
Ah, but we’ve already drop laws preventing women from being in the professions.
Your next premise doesn’t follow logically, but needs to be examined on its own.
Does gender matter in parenting? What I’ve read on the subject suggests not. Okay, men can’t breast feed. That’s the only difference I can think of. Studies have suggested that children do best with two adults in a stable relationship. Single parents have to do the work of two. “Mommy” and “daddy” aren’t job descriptions, just relationship descriptions.
Second question: If a child parents died, I would prefer she or he be raised by relatives. Do I care if that’s Uncle Bill and Aunt Sue, Uncle Tim and Uncle Rob, or Aunt Sara and Aunt Mary? Not at all. Why would I?
John D, when you say “two adults in a stable relationship”, are you referring to a sexual type of relationship?
Or is the sexual aspect of the parental relationship entirely irrelevant to the outcomes for children?
The available social scientific data does not suggest what you said in your comment above. The key is the integration of husband and wife, as man and woman, not as androgenous asexual abstract parental units.
Now, I don’t expect you meant the latter, hence the question about the sexual aspect in the context of the sexual embodiment:
David: So if gender matters in selecting a partner, shouldn’t it matter in parenting, too?
* * *
Parenting is not role playing. But fatherhood and motherhood are united, as per the nature of human generativity and human community, and anyone who says society ought to turn a blind eye — a gender-neutral eye — to such unity ought to make the case for dropping the societal preference for the integration of fatherhood and motherhood. And for abolishing the legal presumption that the husband is the father of the children born to his wife during their marriage.
DB: “So if gender matters in selecting a partner, shouldn’t it matter in parenting, too?”
A priori it might or it might not. It probably did up until 50 or so years ago, when almost all jobs and other roles were gender specific. Now not so much.
Every single one of us — without exception — is the result of the union of one man and one woman. Much as some may try to avoid this obvious fact, it is universally true.
This has nothing to do with “traditional gender roles” and everything to do with sex. Mother Nature is heterosexist. Your rejection of “gender roles” and rage against “the patriarchy” changes nothing.
Anyway traditional gender roles are dead. Stay at home dads are nearly as commonplace as working mothers. And sexual “orientation” has no effect on the heterosexual nature of humanity.
Yes Marty, I applaud your knowledge of rudimentary biology. Although, to be more specific, each one of us is the product of a sperm and an egg. I urge you to read and then re-read my comment and you might find that we don’t disagree as much as your knee-jerk reaction would tell you.
Calm down there, buddy. Nowhere did I argue that Mother Nature was “heterosexist.” I’m well aware of how babies are made. David, you will notice, asked a specific question about gender, not biological sex. I urge you to learn the difference if you do not already know.
In a nutshell, I’m glad you agree with me that “traditional gender roles are dead.” That sort of proves my point. LOL. If traditional gender roles are “dead,” that suggests that these gender roles are artificial and that the gender roles of “motherhood” and “fatherhood” aren’t as concrete as some people claim they are.
You speak with a lot of anger, Marty, which I notice you have projected onto me. If you could halt that strong emotion for a few moments, I think you could better understand the argument I’m making.
Fannie, please explain your view of the difference — the non-political difference — between gender and sex. Thanks.
Do you truly believe that motherhood and fatherhood are mere roles that people play or costumes that they put on?
In an Ontario court case, a judge ordered tri=partite parenting. That is, a child’s mother and father each retained full parental status while a third person, the mother’s lesbian partner in the child’s household, was added with equal parental status. The father is married and has children with his wife. Both lesbian women, and the father, agreed that the father was vitally important to his child’s well-being and education. Since these adults agreed, the court agreed and made the unprecedented order.
When discussing so-called same-sex parenting (which has come to mean parenting by men or women who are in a same-sexed sexual relationship of some kind rather than, say, a mother-daughter team which is far more common) I am often confronted with the anecdotal example of the lesbian twosome who include one or more “male role models” in the raising of their children. Usually the male person is not treated on par as a father would be, but somehow the mere presence of a male neighbour or friend is supposed to compensate for the lack of the father. Or, if the father is known (as in nonanonymous sperm “donation”) he is marginalized. Almost as often the anecdotal example is of television or movie “male role models” — strangers who the children never actually meet.
These anedotes come up without much prompting.
On the other hand, the first principle of responsible procreation is that each of us, as part of a procreative duo (necessarily both-sexed), is directly responsible for the well-being and the education of our children, barring dire circumstances or tragedy.
The parental role is not about donning a costume and reading a script. It is about taking responsiblity for one’s sexual embodiment and the “same-sex parenting” advocates tend to deeply discount, to trivialize, the principled basis for the conjugal relationship. Segregation of fatherhood and motherhood is not a good thing for children.
Neither is it a good thing for a mom-dad duo to behave as if they were actors on a stage. Responsible procreation is far more demanding than that.
Chairm, we have a history of talking past one another so I’m glad you are at least asking questions this time. I’m going to state this simply:
Aside from making a contribution of sperm to procreation, no one has thus far been able to adequately explain what it is that a male father can do that a woman cannot do when it comes to parenthood. David has claimed that while a lesbian can be a good mother to a child, she cannot be a good “father”?
Why? I’m not talking about procreation here, I’m talking about actually raising a child. What is it that it’s inherent in “fatherhood” that makes it impossible for a woman to fulfill this role? Like, what are the actual specific characteristics?
Exploring this question might give you better insight into the distinction between sex and gender. Sex, to me, is the biological and anatomical sex we are born as. Gender is the “role” that society tells us we have to perform based on which sex we are.
Fannie, I usually do ask for clarifications and in your case that is the standard approach I’ve taken.
For what purpose would a mother seperate the “contribution of sperm” from fatherhood such that the father is rendered irrelevant to raising his children?
And, of course, vice versa, for what purpose what would a father seperate the “contribution of ova and gestation” from motherhood such that the mother is rendered irrelevant to raising her children?
Both mother and father are responsible for the children they create together, barring dire circumstances or tragedy.
If gender is merely a role, then, a woman may play the part of a father, yes? And a man may play the part of a mother, yes?
And yet this is unrealistic, given that it takes both to create children and to stick around to be more than a mere contributor of ova or sperm. Raising children is not an abstract role assigned by intention alone.
Chairm, I think all of us here understand reproductive biology. I believe you’re missing my point.
It might be easier for you to understand if you just, for a moment, consider the case of adoption. Aside from contribution of sperm, what is it that’s inherent in “fatherhood” that makes a woman incapable of fulfilling this role for a baby that she adopts either as a single woman or with her same-sex partner?
Okay, we can put aside the first principle of responsible procreation and look at adoption instead.
Can you please cite the social-scientific evidence that children in adoptive homes have the same outcomes as children in intact married homes with low-conflict?
Then please cite the evidence for children in adoptive homes that lack fathers.
Thanks.
Chairm, answering my question by asking me another question is not a real answer. It’s been my experience that this Wise Socratic Question Master act is the shtick that many of you Opiners pull, but I’m really just trying to get a straight answer out of you.
You’d do better to emulate David, who is very good at giving straight answers.
Actually, Fannie, I deferred to your default position that there is nothing “that a male father can do that a woman cannot do when it comes to parenthood”.
One place you could begin is with the available social-scientific evidence. You emphasized adoption as one means for attaining children.
By the way, a tiny minority of children in same-sex households were attained via adoption (see Gates’ estimate).
Meanwhile most children in such households, by far, have a great deal of significant factors in common with children raised in blended families.
Perhaps you think there is evidence that blended families headed by lesbians, for example, are superior to those led by cohabitating or married both-sexed couples?
Also, children raised in the absence of either mom or dad are not residing exclusively in households of lesbians and gay men. In fact, there are more children in nonsexualized households (for example, mother-daughter arrangements) than in same-sex sexualized households. Perhaps you think there is evidence that the sexualization is the basis for producing better outcomes?
Anyway, you pointed to adoption. I deferred to your default position and asked for the evidence that might have convinced you of your position.
My view of the available evidence, across cultures, is that whether or not the influence of sex differentiation is merely a social construct (you still owe a nonpolitical explanation of the actual difference between gender and sex), a cultural adaptation to human physiology, or some combination of nature and nurture, the outcomes are different for children when raised by their biological parents in a married household.
As I said earlier, social science is limited to measuring what is measurable. So we miss lots. We do have a given that is the norm for humankind: children are born of men and women, not of some asexual phenomena. From this we also see sex differentiation and its influence, one way or another, even where we compare lesbian co-parenting and gay co-parenting.
We see lesbian women acknowleding the importance of “male role models” even as they deeply discount the participation of their child’s father as part of united mom-dad duo. There is a sense, even there, that sex-segregation is not a good thing when it comes to raising children. The nature of human community is both-sexed, afterall.
Fannie, why do you so deeply disdain the both-sexed nature of human generativity. I don’t think you have clearly stated your main point, in fact.
You said dismissively: ” I think all of us here understand reproductive biology. I believe you’re missing my point.”
Implicit in your default position is that women can imitate fathers well enough that children will not be adversely influenced by the lack of a father.
How does a woman know what to imitate if she has not some concept of fatherhood? In other words, is she merely to behave as an asexual parental unit with no concept of the unity of fatherhood and motherhood? Or is your point, your bedrock point, something else entirely?
I asked a very. simple. question. Chairm. Yet instead of answering you have, again, barraged me with a series of your own questions. I have to say that this is becoming very entertaining in a waste-of-time sort of way.
My purpose here is not to have a general discussion of the merits same-sex parenting, least of all with you. David asked two specific questions of “SSM supporters” and I answered him. Read and re-read my comments if you don’t understand something, but I have no interest in voluntarily subjecting myself to your condescending Socratic Question Master routine and I certainly have no interest in your paranoid accusations.
For, I think it’s strange that, in the middle of a civil conversation, you accuse me of having deep “disdain” for the “both-sexed nature of human generativity” of reproduction. You have little understanding of my position if you think that’s how I feel.
So, sorry man, I just do not have time for you. You’ve proven time and time again that it’s virtually impossible to get a single straight answer out of you and that, in the process, my presence whenever you guys are around necessarily involves being met with all sorts of defensive accusations.
Fannie, you have a default position on this topic. You can’t back it up with evidence. Okay, got that much.
No accusations have been made. No “SQM” routine.
You expressed disdain when for the both-sexed nature of human generativity when you said: ” I think all of us here understand reproductive biology. I believe you’re missing my point.” And then refused to make your point clear even when asked for clarification.
Sex differentiation manifests itself in social, cultural, as well as human biological and physiological ways. It is the height of naivete to take the default position that you do, that sex differentiation is irrelevant to parenting, especially in light of the social socientific evidence regarding outcomes based on family structure.
Asking the questions I asked, and your giving the nonanswers you have given, demonstrates that you have different standards for yourself than you have for others in this discussion.
Fathers, far more than mothers, directly influence the psycho-sexual development of their daughters. Fathers, much more than mothers, directly influence the development of restraint in the expression of aggressiveness. There are many other such noted differences. There are obvious overlaps which I guess do not fit your expectation for absolutes from those who recognize the value of integrated fatherhood and motherhood.
The influence of fathers on sons extends beyond childhood and reaches into the parenting their sons provide the next generation. At the same time, the maternal influence is not an isolated influenced, set apart from that of her husband’s, but one which complements the paternal impact on boys becoming men.
Now, sure, if you are determined to neutralize the very idea of “boys becoming men”, based on some ideological hostility toward sex differentation, then, as you have in regard to both-sexed nature of human generativity, you might indulge in over-estimating your ideology and under-estimating the lived fact of integrated fatherhood and motherhood. Afterall, single mothers raise good children, too, right?
But having exprienced firsthand the corruptive influence of identity politics in a totalitrian society, I can attest to the fact that even children deprived for the basics can rise above their disadvantages and become wonderful adults — provided that they have learned the hard lessons of their experience. Sadly, when deprived, human beings more often regress to a pre-civlized condition. And, so, as much as single mothers are true heroes for doing all that they can, and the best that they can, the lack of a father does adversely impact their children. That some turn out very well, is a testament to something other than the identity politics that runs through your various blogposts on your blog and in your comments here and elsewhere.
Sex differentation is influential — as I said, this is observed whether it is due to culture, social factors, or some balance of nature/nuture. It is not a fact that parenthing is sex-netural. That’s why I return to the fundamentals of the way humankind is designed to create new human beings through the combination of the sexes. More than that, civilization itself is founded on the unity of fatherhood and motherhood. Where there is increased sex segregation, there is increased instability socially, culturally, and even in terms of the continued vitality of a given social system.
So look to the measured outcomes of child well-being. This ought to give you some pause since the lack of either moms or dads does have a measurablely adverse impact. As does the attempt to blend families. Some people can rise above those disadvantages but I don’t think that adding disadvantages is the wonderful thing that you do when you take the default position that fathers are irrelevant so long as there is a mother, or more than one mother, and some vague “male role model” in a child’s life. Note that fathers who acts as vague male role models are a disadvantage, as well.
To reiterate an important point: most children living in same-sex households were created in previously procreative relationships (usually marriages).
Fannie, you dismissed this as getting in the way of the point you were supposedly making on the topic of parenting.
So we can also dismiss, I suppose, third party procreation since for the same-sex scenario this would require segregating either mom or dad from the family circle. Your emphasis is on child-raising rather than responsible procreation.
So you looked to adoption as a framework for discussing sex differentation and parenting.
The adoptive homes that do best, in terms of outcomes for the children, are those which are comprised of husband, wife, and children of their marriage. Adding adopted children to such a family has proven to be the best way to makeup for the shortfall experienced by children in need of parents. This cuts across ages and other differences based on hardships experienced by the adopted children.
Our society has not done enough to recruit more of these kinds of families. We put obstacles in the way. So we broaded the pool from which to recruit prospective adoptors.
The next best scenario is the married man and woman who have experienced infertility. Interstingly, such families often eventually adopt multiple times and, almost as often, also procreate. The key is the stability and so when a couple has suffered greatly due to extended efforts to overcome infertility there can be problems to overcome within the marriage.
Now, the best we can do is act on the available evidence without automatically lowering our standards for the sake of satisifying needy adults by assinging them children in need. This goes for the prioritization of types of adoptors as well as for the evidence of stability on a case-by-case basis. So, of course, there are no truly hard and fast rules when it comes to meeting the best interests of a given child.
The presence of a second adult in a home is not automatically an advantage. This is so whether or not that second adult is of the opposite sex of the first adult. Yet this is too often deeply discounted by those who advocate for ’same-sex parenting” in the name of gays and lesbians. In fact, such advocates often cross the line in asserting an adult right to adopt. No such right exists.
How children are attained is no trivial matter. The both-sexed basis of human generativity is what gives special meaning to David’s question: “So if gender matters in selecting a partner, shouldn’t it matter in parenting, too?”
It adds meaning to his second set of questions: “If a child’s parents died, all else being equal, would you rather she was raised by an aunt and an uncle or two aunts (sisters)? Would it matter? Why or why not?”
If the same-sex scenario is not superior due to the sexualized aspect of a lesbian or a gay arrangement, then, should we not be looking at outcomes where children have been raised by nonsexualized same-sex arrangements, such as mother-daughter combinations?
And we might also compare with arrangements in which a mother-father have combined with either a son or a daughter to raise children. These are often very stable arrangements, but not always. And, despite the mother and father being married, the children of their daughter or their son do experience outcomes that are substandard — because the children lack either a mother or father.
The point I made about most of the children raised in same-sex households having migrated from the previously procreative relationships is that these children have lots in common with those in blended families. And those in single-parent households. They are seperated, for whatever reason, from one of their parents.
Now, if one takes the view that a parent is the person raising the child, then, I guess, the nonresident father or mother would counts less. But the experience of children says otherwise.
Cut the crap Chairm. My refusal to engage with you does not mean that I lack “evidence” for anything. I have explained quite clearly why I am not interested in conversation with you or your fellow Opine bloggers. I’d hope you could respect that rather than declare your usual victory from silence.
Although it funny that for all the claims you’ve made in your previous comments, you didn’t actually provide citations. I’ll just take your word on everything though, don’t worry.
You refuse to engage in the actual disagreement, Fannie. You provide no evidence for your default position.
There is no need for you to try to make this personal nor to disparage other bloggers who have not commented here.
I sought clarification. I gave clarification. If you wish to swap citations, we can do that, too. But you appear to wish to disengage in the substantive discussion of the very questions that started the conversation.
According to Gates only about 5% of children in same-sex households were attained via adoption, yet you suggested focussing on that tiny segment of that particular child population.
Please explain how the sexualized component of a lesbian pair makes their parenting superior to that of the parenting of a mother-daughter household. Both lack fathers in the raising of their children.
As I said, even where a mother-daughter household includes the daughter’s father, married to her mother, the outcomes are not on par with the intact married household. In such a scenario there is an intimately familiar “male role model” in the household, not just a neighbor down the street or an occassionally visiting male friend. You might hope to discount this, Fannie, by mere assertion of your default position, however, you still need to explain the basis, apart from some political notion of a divide between gender and sex, that convinced you of your position in the first place.
Fannie and Chairm-
I think this thread has begun to shed more heat than light. I suggest the two of you move on.
-Your humble administrator