The Masculine and Feminine of God

By Katie Skurja
Excerpt from Katie Skurja’s chapter in Jordan Peterson: Critical Responses (2021).

When our son was not quite three years old, you could almost see the thought bubbles form over his head when he was making a connection about some important concept. At times, announcing his astute observations could be socially awkward. On one such occasion, our friends Mark and Cynthia were visiting when I watched a thought bubble form in the air as we stood talking in the kitchen. I noticed he had been staring at them intently as they leaned against our counters. Suddenly, he lunged toward Cynthia with a finger pointing at her lower mid-section and proclaimed, “Lou have a china!” Turning toward Mark, he proudly said, “Lou have a penis!” (He couldn’t yet pronounce his y’s, so you became lou.) Even though our friends were both casually dressed in loose-fitting jeans and neither is a paragon of god-like sexuality, a child barely out of toddlerhood could proudly tell the difference between a man and woman. How much easier for a child to distinguish male and female when the sex-typical features are more pronounced? And yet, this is the issue at the heart of what catapulted Jordan Peterson onto the international stage.

In 2016, Peterson released a video explaining why he would refuse to comply with Canada’s proposed Bill C-16 on gender identity rights. His objection had to do with the compelled speech aspect of the law, which would require state employees to use preferred pronouns of individuals including made-up words for newly minted genders. Though his detractors accuse of him of extremist ideas, his greatest “sin” is rooted in standing for free speech and the self-evident truth of the biological differences between men and women. In doing so, he became a lightning rod in the culture wars.  

In speaking about men and women, I have heard Peterson on more than one occasion allude to the idea that to say male and female is not the same as saying masculine and feminine. What that difference is, I have not yet heard him specifically articulate. This absence of clarity from someone who can talk circles around most speaks to the complexity of the subject. It is far easier to talk about biological differences between men and women than the expressions of those differences in personality. Given a room of a hundred people, even a young child could successfully sort the males from the females. Distinguishing the difference between masculine and feminine is a bit trickier, providing fodder for confusion.

Part of the problem, I would like to suggest, is rooted in our language. By the very words, masculine is equated with male, and feminine is equated to female. In one psychology journal article from 1974, words such as compassionate, gentle, childlike, shy, and tender were used on a list to describe feminine. Included in the list was the word feminine itself, as if it was self-evident of what that means. By contrast, words used to describe masculine included leader, assertive, dominant, independent, and self-reliant.  Given this list of descriptors, a biological male who relates more to the feminine traits may feel like there is something wrong with him. In the same way, a biological female whose personality is better described as masculine might believe she is defective. Such people might even be susceptible to the idea that they were born in the wrong body.

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To get a glimpse of the brilliance of young children, check out the interview of children discussing these concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9PELJQOfXg 
Here is a shorter version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVTBnl5iEEg   
These and other teachings can be found at idmin.org.