Tea Musings: God, Creation, and the Missing Third Gender

This time brought to you by a special blueberry/grapefruit Earl Grey blend called "Grandpa's Mix," bought as usual at Tehörnan in Umeå

I am absolutely not alone in this, I know, but I have to question, why is there an assumption that God inevitably and unquestionably has to be male? Apart from the references to God in the Bible as a male pronoun, where does the assumption come from?

The Bible is, after all, whether one believes in the message, the literal wording, or just the plain fact that the book exists, a manmade creation. Even the Bible says so. It is written by chosen people who are, in some way, conveying God's message to be spread to the people on Earth. It is easy for people to mix up pronouns. The debate around and the lack of a proper pronoun for the third gender tells us so.

In Genesis, we are told that God made us in his image. It says:

"Let us make man in our image... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

God is the Creator. God is what some people assume created Earth and everything on it. But woman is also Creator. Woman, through her possession of a womb, carries the same ability as God; she can create life. She is what nourishes, carries and sustains a life for (optimally) nine months before that child leaves the safe haven of the womb to face the world. If God is Creator and woman is Creator, then why, if God made us the image of 'him', is God referred to as a 'he'? Would it not make more sense to think of the Creator as a woman, the way she was so beautifully depicted in pagan religions? If God were a man, why did 'he' create the Paradise as a brilliant metaphor for the womb where Adam and Eve were nurtured and loved for a time before they were borne into the world?

Granted, woman needs man to create a life. Or rather, woman needs man's magic seed to create a life, but without the male species it would not be possible to create life (although science is at this very moment challenging those assumptions). Both woman and man are needed to create life. Woman and man together are the Creator. If man cannot create without woman, and woman cannot create without man, why is the Creator referred to as a 'he'? Would it not make more sense to think of God as of both genders, or perhaps genderless?

If God is omnipotent, as God is said to be, and can do everything that man and woman and all people accomplish together, would this not make God both man and woman and neither at the same time?

Religion as an institution has long discriminated against women and LGBTQ people, and even though it is getting better in some countries, it is still not good. It is far from good. The discrimination against everything but the narrow definition of male that Christianity subscribes to has its roots in history and is as such a culturally rooted phenomenon. The supremacy of the male is recorded in the Bible, but the Bible also follows the assumption that God is male, even though there is no evidence but a personal pronoun to prove this. The Bible is also written by human hands, with human minds and so also was exposed to human limits and flaws.

Human minds are limited by the language we use. If the language is not broad enough, there will be no room for interpretation or accurate definitions. Instead we are confined to the language that is at hand at the time of recording any event in history. If we think of the world in terms of two genders, it will be two genders that are present in our historical recordings. If the world today only has one country that has gone so far as to adopt a third gender, the assumption is that the world was hardly thinking in those terms at the creation of the Bible.

If God is both male and female and at the same time neither, is this discrimination against everything but the narrowly defined male a mistake due to the non-existence of the third gender at the times the Bible was written?

Tea Musings*: Bodies

Tea of the night: A berry flavoured rooibos called the Queen of the Forest, bought at Tehörnan in Umeå.

Recently I have started reflecting over something. A year or so ago I started losing weight. I found myself not to be happy with my weight or the future implications it could have on my health if I continued in the same way. I was not overweight, but my clothes did not fit as well as before and I started feeling uncomfortable in them, so I took to the gym, I started eating more healthily. I dislike diets and would not call what I did a diet, it was more of a cleaning up of my diet; less processed foods, saturated fats, junk food and snacks; more fruit, vegetables and balanced meals with less carbohydrates and more proteins, unsaturated fats, vitamins and all those other essentials that my body likes.

The change was noticeable, both in mind and in body. Clothes quickly went back to fitting well again, and after a while they were too loose; I had more energy during the day and, above all, slept better at night, which is so valuable if you are, what I call a 'stress sleeper', like me. (For some reason I have a hard time going to sleep and that is usually the time of day when I am the most stressed out, which in its turn makes me even more stressed out - vicious circle.) Other people started noticing the change too, and I got comments on how well I looked.

It is interesting how once someone starts losing weight, people immediately comment on it. It is regarded as a nice thing to do, a recognition of the supposedly hard work that someone has put in to shed those extra kilos, and people mean well while they do it. It has struck me, though, how this seems to be one of the most flattering compliments out there, and you can tell that people always take great care in conveying their noticing your weight loss to you. Don't get me wrong, it is a nice thing to compliment people, regardless on what it is on, but I think this says a lot about society.

People take such great care telling me that I look 'amazing' or something like it, that I cannot help but feel it is a way of validating me in the eyes of society. I know that these compliments are not meant in this way, but the amazement and the pat on the shoulder type comments are a way of implying that I have done well, that I am striving towards the elite of those untouchable modelesque women and men who cover the glossy magazines and enjoy higher status in the spheres of society - that superficial elite that so many people would give a limb to belong to. I have become more valid in the eyes of society, I am on my way towards becoming a person now, not one of those undefinable lumps of flesh that we see everywhere. If I just do a bit more work, put in those extra hours at the gym, I will reach that separated sphere of unrealistically thin and beautiful people and I will be someone who matters.

This whole attitude makes me confused. I am just the same as before, perhaps a bit more energetic, perhaps my mind has become a bit quicker because I feel more alert, but my personality has not changed as far as I am aware. I feel just the same, so why should I not be just the same? Or rather, why should I not be treated just the same? It is interesting, because I don't seem to be alone in this feeling of being treated differently. People who have lost more weight than me also report being treated very differently, see this forum, for instance, or this. People are friendlier, they smile, they see you, and they see you in a good way. Your existence is not nearly as provocative to people as before, or perhaps they are just more likely to notice you.

It is interesting, that. Even if it weren't so that people were provoked by anything above a size medium, what is it that justifies that people who are a medium and below deserve more attention, more smiles, more acceptance? What is it that makes them so much better than the rest of the people? A letter on a label on the inside of their clothes? Their compliance to the incredibly impossible standards of celebrities who do not even manage to look like they are represented so they have to be airbrushed into a 'better version' of themselves added onto all that expensive make up applied by professional make up artists? Whatever standard it is that validates those people is too damn hard for them to reach even for themselves. It is a twisted ideal that focuses on completely the wrong things. What have I, or anyone else, achieved from being thin? Apart from health, that is, but people that are larger than a size medium can be healthy too, and it is certainly not without risks to both mental and physical health to strive for a 'size zero'. Besides, how does any of this, in any kind of way, justify treating people differently? Hint: it doesn't.

I want to point out again that compliments are nice, and most people, including me, appreciate them, even (sometimes in other people's cases especially) when they relate to weight loss. I am not in any kind of way suggesting that people start giving less compliments to others, I am just trying to share what I have noticed. In general I am in favour of much more compliments to be distributed to other people, as long as they are honest, and perhaps relating to more things than weight or other appearance-related things. Surely there must be more things that people are good at than looking good?

* A friend of mine complained a while ago that while there is a lot of feminism in my blog, there is no tea. There is no better way to incorporate this than to show how I keep myself fuelled while writing. This is how my ideas are conceived, baked and carried out - tea is nearly always involved.