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 PrintableVersion Men and Women, Created or Constructed - the Great Gender DebateMEN AND WOMEN, CREATED OR CONSTRUCTED: The Great Gender Debate In what ways are women and men different? This question is on the back cover of this book and sets out the theme well. I like to know where a book is going. Scientific journals often give a synopsis at the beginning for this purpose. Here the aim is on the back cover and in the final chapter. It was a help to me when I realised this. The theme of the book is the old clash between nature and nurture in a new guise. In the past when the sociologists argued as to whether the Houlighans were antisocial because of their inheritance or whether it was because of their upbringing in the East End (or New York according to which source you read), then the nature was agreed to be God-given vitiated by the Fall and the nurture was social deprivation. Pre and post . . .In contrast, the current argument about women has no place for God. Nature is represented by chance of genes or whatever, while nurture is a construct or metanarrative or other semantic coinings depending on power, hierarchies, etc. The author sets these out under the categories of pre-modernism, modernism and post-modernism. The book is based on a series of lectures and the author points out that she has not got all the pictures, jokes and asides that enlivened their delivery. Enlivened I am sure they were. I have a great admiration for Elaine's lucidity and skills as a communicator, but confess that I found this book hard going. I am an essentialistLet me set out my own preconceptions. As a medical student I was expected to be given a piece of the human skeleton and say whether I thought it was male and female and why. Later in life, in paediatric surgery I was faced occasionally with those rare instances of pseudo-hermaphroditism when some one genetically of one sex looked like a member of the other. A study of embryology and the development of the urogenital tract helped one work out how and why it had happened. Therefore, I am by training one of those whom the book styles 'essentialists'. I had to ask myself whether I was one of those who, on page 75, are de-scribed as among those who 'rehash old ideas based on biological essentialism plus gender stereotypes, but support this by quotations from the Bible'? While advancing beyond the frogs and snails and puppy dogs' tails, I do indeed see male and female as different, but sharing the same basic anatomy and physiology with a spectrum of hormonal development which allows unfortunate overlap and muddle in an imperfect world. For whom?Who then is this book for? I think for academics. Those who want to know why the small boys in a class always find the chink in the armour of preparation that leads them into mischief and sometimes disaster while the girls are neat and well behaved will find no help here. This is for academics who want to know how far the latest argument of the male/ female discussion has got at the moment. The author's previous book is to be revised and reissued and that may be a good place to start rather than here. It does raise for me another general issue. As the Christian scholar, whether in this discipline or another descends into the dust of the arena to battle for Christian principles, he/she finds themselves having to fight the issue on the opponent's ground. On this ground there is no consideration of Scriptural principles. The Christian may win the argument purely on other academic grounds, but is in danger of losing some of his contact with God's thoughts and plans. The danger is greatest for academic theologians. We ought to remember that those who fight intellectual battles in which we ourselves are not involved need our prayerful support. Difficult languageI found the post-modern arguments for the priority of nurture talking in a language that I have always found difficult and hard going, but someone has to deal with them and this book does open the door to the problems. On a lighter level, I would like to hear a seminar on the theme 'How do you cope in Christian families with the truth of the proverb 'the grey mare is a better horse'?' Or, 'Discuss the effect that the wives and mistresses of Kings and Prime Ministers have had on British foreign policy with particular reference to the Stuarts'. John Marsh,
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