Nature vs. Nurture

Just FYI, this post is mostly hair-splitting in an area of specifically Evangelical ethics, so those uninterested in such things may forego their usual rapt attention to every word on this blog!

Ben Whitherington reviews Rob Bell’s latest book, an explication of Evangelical sexual ethics. The reason I emphasize the Evangelical part is that although the conclusions of Bell’s book aren’t substantially different from those of other branches of Christianity, the arguments may differ wildly. But that’s beside the point.

I really have nothing much to say about the majority of the review; I haven’t read the book, but from Witherington’s description it doesn’t seem to say anything original, just repeats the over-protesting and overly-spiritualized arguments with which Evangelicals responded to the sexual revolution. I far prefer John C. Wright’s argument from the simple ethics of caring for one’s offspring. But that is also mostly beside the point.

My point is really a nitpick, but one that does have some importance for I’m guessing almost 50% of the population. Witherington says:

[Bell] makes the strong point of how our culture encourages us to objectify women, treating sexual persons as sex objects. Of course this sort of reductionism would never happen if fallen males did not lust after women’s body parts. It has gotten so bad that you can even see it in how men look at women. They tend to look at their breasts first, and then their faces, thinking of what they want, before thinking of who they want.

My objection to this is that it fails to make the distinction between the biological wiring of males and their related socialization. It seems to be a generally received idea (one that I can verify is true in at least one case!) that men are generally wired to respond sexually to visual stimuli to a higher degree than women (that is not to say that a man can’t be sexually stimulated by a woman’s brain, nor that a woman can’t be stimulated by a man’s appearance; we’re talking in terms of general trends and basic impulses).

What women simply aren’t equipped to understand is that in a man’s sensory field, women basically come pre-installed with flashing strobe lights at breast, hip and leg. It takes a considerable act of concentration to look at a woman’s face first. I would argue that this internal wiring should not, in the Christian view, be classed as an aspect of the fallenness of the world. Both men and women are wired to crave food when hungry, but civilized women and men are socialized against gluttony or theft as a response.

Therefore, what Bell or Whitherington should condemn is the cultural attitude that encourages inappropriately dwelling and acting on the impulse, rather than the impulse itself. This is a subtle point, but an important one, I think. Civilized men are socialized to at least be discreet about the impulse, and to take the time and effort to appreciate women for all their qualities. However, in moments of inattention or lowered concentration men will inevitably find their attention on women’s salient parts if they are in the vicinity. It is unfair to men to condemn them for an automatic reflex, without taking into account the level of their socialization in response to it. This sentences honourable men to a lifetime of guilt and anxiety, without affecting dishonourable men.

I was fortunate to have been brought up on the principle that it is not the impulses of the flesh that are automatically wrong, but that it is how one responds to them that matters.