Rachael has a BA in history from Brigham Young University, is currently slaving away working in a law office in Washington DC, and is waiting to hear back about graduate schools this Fall. This post ushers in her guest-posting stint with JI.

?Gender is a modern invention,? Kathleen Flake declared yesterday at the Crossroads conference. Any logical discussion of the question of gender in Mormon theology was therefore declared ?impossible.? At least that?s how I and dozens of others understood her response that wasn?t a response to my query on the subject.

Today at Stake Conference, Elder Scott spoke of the sanctity of womanhood, and the need for men to appreciate and affirm women who ?magnify? the divine endowment of feminine traits they have been given.

Clearly, the theological place and meaning of gender is a massively tangled bramble bush of an issue, and this post is in no way meant to resolve the question I posed to Kathleen Flake yesterday as to what exactly constitutes ?femininity? and ?masculinity? in our eternal identity, and what implications these notions can have beyond the mortal realm and particularly in exaltation. This matter, of course, also has direct bearing on the controversy surrounding traditional and same-sex marriage, and I firmly believe that the Church needs a clear explanation of what gender is and why the particular synthesis of one man and one woman is the divinely ordained model, in order to offer more compelling defenses (theologically, at least) for traditional marriage. (I won?t countenance polygamy in this discussion as a potential arrangement in the afterlife. We can argue about that premise in another post).

I want to pose a few questions and a few points to help me, at least, make more headway on this endlessly complicated issue.

First of all?is gender a meaningful term? It certainly is in Mormon theology, at least, if one takes seriously the whole temple narrative of creation, mortality, and exaltation: i.e. Adam, man, and Eve, woman, are created in God?s image [Erastus Snow?s definition of God as referring to Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother seems helpful to point out here]. They are commanded, together with all of creation, to multiply and replenish the earth and find joy in their posterity, and fulfill the measure of their creation [and even the earth?s, as DC 49:16-17 implies], ultimately as kings and queens and priests and priestesses in heaven. So, maleness and femaleness, whether you want to use the term ?gender? or ?sex? as James Talmage did before the more modern term usurped its place , is arguably the second most critical element in Mormon theology, cosmology, and eschatology (second to our identity as co-eternal intelligences, of the same essence as God).

How, then, can we define gender, or femininity and masculinity, in ways that will be relevant to both our premortal and postmortal existence? As Taylor Petrey?s relatively recent Dialogue article pointed out, modern approaches emphasize the culturally constructed nature of gender, denying its strictly sexual or biological nature. Mormonism?s position seems in obvious conflict with these reformulations?at least, Mormon theology has done little to bridge the gap with such approaches. But questions can, of course, prod us along and flag issues more urgently, and, perhaps, help us to sort out what is physiological, what is cultural, and what is eternal. Here are some of my questions to move in that direction: What were our material bodies like as premortal beings, and what will they be like in the afterlife? What role does the fall have in the way we relate to our bodies in the mortal realm? What will procreation be like in the afterlife, and what is necessary about the heterosexual pair to bring this about? (and what was it before? [I appreciate Petrey showing the glaring gaps in the creation narrative we have, with the absence of female characters?but I see it as that. An authorial gap.]) Will sexuality be relevant?

If sexuality and biology are not [as] relevant in the eternal scope of femininity and masculinity, we seem left with reducing gender to roles or character traits. (And I certainly favor finding a way to define femininity and masculinity in non-sexual and non-biological terms, since literalities can become absurdities so quickly in this discussion.) These alternatives doesn?t satisfy me either; and, while they are often employed at the pulpit in these discussions, (today, case in point: Richard G. Scott equated femininity with compassion, nurturing, and spirituality, and masculinity with coarseness), there are other statements that avoid this double-edged sword of dichotomized generalization. Bruce Hafen has made the point that the most important attributes we cultivate are gender-neutral, and that men and women have no monopoly on certain traits and virtues; even Boyd K. Packer and Dallin H. Oaks, among others, have specified that homemaking and parenting are equally the father?s and the mother?s responsibility.

So what do we have left? If character traits and roles are shared, or historically and culturally contingent, or biologically explained (and thus not necessarily relevant to the pre and post mortal scope), than to what can we reduce femininity and masculinity?

My inchoate conclusion at this point is that gender is not its own quality as much as it is a vehicle of other qualities. I cannot define masculinity and femininity in any satisfying (non biological) ways that don?t resort to attributes that are accessible to both men and women (and should ultimately be cultivated by both of them). I can, however, see that these same traits seem to emerge from men and women in different tones and colors. As a prism refracts the same source of light out into different colors, masculinity and femininity might be the faces of the prism that take the same light of the universe and reproduce them in different ways. Perhaps femininity and masculinity are irreducible conditions, and exist at an eternal, underlying level that is hard to fully extract and examine. In studying the ongoing debate throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century on the sex/lessness of the soul, I found something resonates with me in Elizabeth Cady Staunton?s idea that ?the souls of men and women are different, their complementary natures equally contribute to a kind of cosmic balance and equilibrium in the universe,? and without this balance, ?neither sex can reach the divinest heights of which s/he is capable,? and in Margaret Fuller?s belief that as a woman [and man] approach their divine potential, their femininity [and masculinity] is fulfilled, not lost.

Maybe the Mormon version of this comes from 2 Nephi: ?For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one.? Could masculinity and femininity be an irreducible otherness or opposition that prevents us from being a compound in one?

While Petrey suggested the abandonment of traditional gender notions in the service of competing versions of identity and sexuality, and Flake seemed to dismiss the discussion altogether, I want to explore ways in which gender can be more thoughtfully reconciled and articulated within our own theology.

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For Bruce Hafen, see here.

Boyd Packer: ? ?There is no task, however menial, connected with the care of babies, the nurturing of children, or with the maintenance of the home that is not his equal obligation. The tasks which come with parenthood, which many consider to be below other tasks, are simply above them.? Citation.

Dallin H. Oaks: ??Homemaking is not just baking bread or cleaning a house. Homemaking is to make the environment necessary to nurture our children toward eternal life, which is our responsibility as parents. And homemaking is as much for fathers as it is for mothers,? Citation.

And for Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Staunton?s take, see this great 2004 article by Political scientists Eileen Hunt Botting and Christine Carey: ?Wollstonecraft?s Philosophical Impact on Nineteenth-Century American Women?s Rights Advocates?