Divine template? No, DNA drives #metoo
When wrestling with the social issues of the day, too many of us instinctively look upward toward a divine template for explanations and direction when, in fact, the answers to our questions—if they are to be found at all—are right here in the real world.
The latest conflagration to ignite in the zeitgeist, that always-evolving spirit of the country, is the #metoo movement mainly fueled by women (but also many men) against rampant, historically endemic and mostly male sexual aggression and assault mainly against what used to be called (with a straight face, by men) “the fairer sex.”
This age-old sexual-assault crisis is a wholly material problem in which spiritual considerations are irrelevant. Due to biological equipment and instincts in both genders, natural and cultural behavior models that have evolved over thousands of years, and modern civilization’s transformative effects on male-female self-image and interaction, the so-called “battle of the sexes” is being waged on more tense, more egalitarian grounds.
Writing in The Washington Post, rabbi and author Danya Ruttenberg laments that prominent men, such as Paul Ryan, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, imply they understand the urgent need to combat sexual abuse in society because they are “fathers of daughters.” She concluded: “I only wish that these many fathers of daughters—as well as the men who are fathers of sons or not fathers at all—would instead extend themselves to regard women in their full humanity, as complex, messy, created in God’s image [my italics] and deserving of respect and rights.”
This is a fully defensible desire except for the phrase “created in God’s image.” This assertion is an imagined, invented “truth.” All evidence indicates that human beings simply reflect the imperatives of our individual DNA, not the presumed characteristics of an invisible deity. And this “image” argument also undercuts the #metoo movement by implying that women are due respect not for their inherent equality with all people plus their own special capacities, but only because they are a reflection of the divine.
This conflict will only be resolved on its own terms in the real world of biology, history and natural human behavior. Let’s not try to shoehorn it into a divine template.
