Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union 9811906947, 9789811906947

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Konstantin S. Sharov

Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union

Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union

Konstantin S. Sharov

Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union

Konstantin S. Sharov Koltzov Institute of Developmental Biology of Russian Academy of Sciences Moscow, Russia

ISBN 978-981-19-0694-7 ISBN 978-981-19-0695-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

For several decades now, not only the topic of racism but also the topic of gender justice has been gaining more and more space in the “West”. This applies in the scientific field as well as to politics. It permeates everyday life even more. In the virtual world of media, especially in advertising, the design of idols and their presentation play a central role. Such “idols” are always endowed with attributes that emphasize their affiliation to genders particularly simply and clearly. For me, all of these are indications of the increasing loss of the individual in an ever-increasing number of people. The questions: Who am I?—Do I mean something?—How do I measure myself? lead us to what one describes as a competition. This competition, the desire to rise above others is a fundamental need of every individual. This is not only evident in the animal kingdom, but the magnificent feathers of a male peacock are an example of this. It is astonishing that “Western” women in order to “attract attention” use the very fashion tools that they complain of elsewhere as “sexist”. Looking back, there is a fundamental difference between the basic philosophical positions of the Orient and Occident. It concerns the self-image of the individual, regardless of whether female or male. Very simply, it consists of the following. A typical Westerner believes: I will because I am. The exact opposite runs through the Far Eastern schools of thought: I am because I am. In other words, for the Orient, the way is the goal, as long as this Orient was not influenced by Western ideas. If one abstracts from the individual case, there are two contradicting views of female and male as between the Orient and the Occident. Only female beings produce “fruits”, i.e., gives birth to children. We could say it is so because they are evolutionarily made with their fruits. In mammals, especially in humans, the male beings generally ensure another, equally important condition of reproduction so that the offspring, especially not their own, actually have a future. They become fathers and later patriarchs acting according to the principle “You can defend yourself and your family”.

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Foreword

Mentally, a human child is only fully developed at around 3 years old. In contrast to other mammals of this age, it is far from being able to survive independently. In order to become culturally viable, a development phase is required that extends far beyond biological reproductive capacity. In these special development phases, boys and girls, men and women, fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers have very different roles—both biological and social. Their mutual relationship changes fundamentally. I certainly do not need to explain this further. It becomes visible from such a cross-generational perspective, which, unlike the gender science provisions, is not a snapshot: the function of male and female changes in the transmission of life over longer periods of time. Changing types and forms of division of labour between men and women are required in this dynamic process. The change from hunting and collecting societies to agricultural societies, in particular the development of advanced cultures, especially the process of mechanization, industrialization and above all mass urbanization, has had a decisive influence on this division of roles more than ever—and this is almost becoming completely overlooked. A statistically shaped description of “male beings” between 1 year and almost 100 years old can no more be understood by “man” than it is by the equivalent of “woman”. Were there not the legendary Queen of Sheba, the pharaoh Hatshepsut, later Cleopatra, finally Queen Elizabeth I, who had Maria Stuart executed, Empress Maria Theresa, Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria? In the modern sense, women naturally rule over men: Margaret Thatcher levered out the male-dominated unions with the help of the military and waged the Falklands War. Christine Lagarde, Ursula von der Leyen and Angela Merkel were forming a power cartel. They formed a veritable “triumvirginate”, similar to that triumvirate with which Pompeius, Crassus and Caesar once fundamentally changed the political structures of ancient Rome and formed an empire out of a kind of democracy. At that time the Consul Bibulus opposed this in vain. Today Emmanuel Macron seems to be doing the same in Europe. So what is the struggle for the equality of “women” other than one of those narratives with which people of both sexes can be brought together to form a kind of movement, a sect, whose “activists” later receive power, influence and money? What used to be called patriarchy has now mutated into the phenomenon of a “caring state” in the European Union. In social communities, not only today but always women determined what their “protégés” were allowed to do and what not. There were Queens, Empresses and meanwhile Presidents and Chancellors. To accuse those persons of dominance today would then, in the understanding of gender movements, “to revolt against the constitution”. The modern welfare state— the EU’s ideal—has no gender; it has become a blind Juggernaut who claims the children for themselves, who prescribes how they are brought up and who includes them in “generational contracts” without even asking them about them.

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Dr. Konstantin Sharov’s new book says much about it. I am honoured to write a Foreword to it, as I am convinced that this book’s contribution to the field of gender studies is substantial, as the book goes much beyond the common idle twaddle on gender equality and the necessity to liberate every human being sexually and mentally, spoken and accepted mainly because of political competition and a wish to gain additional support of electorate. Thiersee, Austria 27 July 2021

Wolfgang Sassin

Wolfgang Sassin Formerly Senior Scientist of International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Lecturer of Technical University Vienna. His other teaching, research, advisory activities and affiliations included the Research Centre Jülich (Germany), the International Panel on Climate Change IPCC, the UN Program Habitat, the Directorate General on Research and Innovation of the European Commission (Belgium), and OEMs in the German automobile industry on man–machine interfaces.

Preface

The European Union has been constructing gender ideology during the last twenty— twenty five years. This process was accompanied by a drastic change in individual and collective gender stereotypes and behavioural patterns. This change was planned and not spontaneous. We live in an era when gender as a social determinant is undergoing profound alterations in European societies. Gender becomes more and more separated from the once predetermined biological sex and political actors may already construct it almost voluntarily. In the West, biotechnological progress made it possible to play with our own body biologically according to our wishes, preferences, moods and political state of affairs. At the same time, people are also now given the right to choose their gender identity in cultural and social way. Moreover, in modern times in many European countries gender begins to invade the biological space and problematize the very notion of biological sex, i.e., the sexual dichotomy of male/female. In the entire system of a person’s identification, gender has probably become one of the least understandable and at the same time the most fluid determinants. This may be evidenced by the fact that at the time of writing this book in a number of EU member countries, in addition to male and female traditional genders, 20 (!) non-traditional genders have received legal recognition. Once again, gender is gradually becoming a political vehicle: different persons, parties and other entities use it in political competition and election platforms at an ever-increasing rate. It seems that artificial creating and launching new genders in the EU is limited merely by imagination of politicians, social actors and social activists. Moreover, in the modern EU gender is largely ideologized. The EU’s advising agencies develop one type of ideology, while traditionalists in diasporas the opposite. Gender is obviously a something beyond the ideologically neutral way of a person’s existence. It may become a political technology, whose purposes may be different. They may span from constructing certain gender stereotypes, social relations, models of behaviour and perceptions of reality, to rallying people around common social and political ideals and beliefs. These ideals may be democratization, liberalization, emancipation, and strife for equality. They may also be depriving of freedom, political pressure, strict social control, dehumanization, isolationism, creating boundaries, and fundamentalism. Gender behavioural patterns of individuals in the European ix

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Union begin to form not spontaneously, but purposefully, by means of functioning of ideological mechanisms, social policies and activities of social organizations. An impartial observer may be rather puzzled why the notions of gender, race, ethnicity and religion become highly ideologized and interconnected in the modern EU. They are “toxic”, as these topics are gradually transforming to the sets of prescribed ideas and recipes restricted for public discussion and even tabooed. In fact, most of the recent EU’s initiatives in gender, race/ethnic and religious policies have one thing in common: they emphasize the trend of EU’s ruling structures to forswear what comprised Europe for about two-and-a-half thousand years, from the Roman times up to now. The rejection of male/female dichotomy, refusal of Christianity, legal and administrative encouraging ever-increasing hordes of the impoverished persons from the Near/Middle East and the Mediterranean that are to live at the expense of raising taxation of the title European nationalities (especially the Germans), forgetting the European historical past (e.g., destroying monuments of the former politicians or military leaders that allegedly used slave labour force or were “intolerant”), scary though it may seem, these are the links of one chain, the selfrepudiation of the European identity, the policy that seems to be the main trend of the current EU’s political elites which are mainly comprised of leftists and globalists. There is an important moment to think about. The values of internationalism, welcoming refugees, tolerance and religious freedom are not at all bad in themselves. However, if they are made the inviolable principles of discriminating the majority of population residing in the EU in favour of a few social groups not numerous in quantity, they may cause disasters. And if they are made the basis of self-repudiation of the European identity, they may be risky for the overall future existence of Europe as a historically conditioned unity of individuals and cultures, that is, dangerous for the whole European civilization which was once built upon the Germanic, Celtic, Roman and Finno-Ugric heritage. Now an open and free discussion of gender questions in academic or political circles in the member countries of the EU is almost impossible, especially in West Europe. The only way for scientists to gain financial support for their research programmes and for politicians to gain electoral support is to declare themselves “gender tolerable”, i.e., to reject gender biological dichotomy (male/female) and accept norms and principles of the EU’s “gender equality programme” that multiply genders in almost geometric progression. To survive and develop in the EU as a researcher, politician, social activist, film actor, musician, or any other public figure, you must be “gender tolerable” or at least you must keep silence if you think differently. This is unacceptable for members of many diasporas living in the EU. The European Union has now become a new home for millions of citizens of another ethnic origin (expatriates and working migrants) and for people who were forced to abandon their native countries in Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Near and Middle East (refugees). They have different gender stereotypes and behavioural patterns quite dissimilar to the West European ones. They also have different religious beliefs. In 2010, we witnessed many cases of diasporas leaders’ using gender to isolate traditionalist parts of the diasporas from the title nationalities of the countries where these diasporas lived and oppose them to the title nationalities. In the decades

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to come, there are all reasons to believe that political, religious, financial and business leaders of diasporas will always utilize gender to gain popularity and electoral support of diaspora members. The book I am modestly presenting is the outcome of my sociological and political research work performed in 2005–2021 in different countries of the European Union. It is aimed at understanding, systematizing and sorting the types of reaction of ethnic/religious diaspora members to the EU’s gender policies. The major object of my research is the reception of the EU’s “gender equality programme” by members of different diasporas. My interviewing in focus groups showed that the main points of concern of members of diasporas may be roughly categorized as follows. 1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Issues related to political correctness standards, e.g., naming mother and father as parent no. 1 and parent no. 2. Issues of gender education and social control, e.g., juvenile justice; compulsory school education of sexuality; or educating children of such gender that may be chosen or changed at any time. Issues of classical social institutes of marriage and family that are problematized in the societies which have accepted the EU’s “gender equality programme” long ago. Non-classical models of gender behaviour, e.g., patterns of extimity (extimacy).1 New demographic preferences in favour of one child or refuse to have children at all (child-free behaviour). Wide use of assisted reproductive technologies. Incompatibility of the “gender equality programme” with traditional cultures. Incompatibility of the “gender equality programme” with many religious norms. The EU’s bureaucrats cannot believe that multiplication of genders or Church weddings of homosexuals are pure satanism for Christians, Jews or Muslims and at least look absurd for Confucians or Hindus.

I use the term “gender behaviour” throughout the book. I suggest it as a collective name for (1) love/intimacy preferences; (2) gender social and personal identification; (3) gender socialization; (4) reproductive behaviour; and (5) marital behaviour. I studied the following diasporas living in the EU. 1.

2. 3.

4.

1

Chinese diasporas (the ethnic Chinese born in PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). Religions: Cult of the Heaven, Confucianism, Buddhism and traditional Chinese beliefs. Indian diasporas (non-resident Indians (NRIs) or persons of Indian origin (PIOs)). Religions: Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. Muslim diasporas: Afghani; Algerian; Egyptian; Iraqi; Iranian; Kurdish; Libyan; Moroccan; Pakistani; Saudi Arabian; Syrian; Tunisian and Turkish. Religion: Islam. Latin American diasporas: Argentinian; Brazilian; Mexican. Religion: Christianity, mainly Roman Catholicism.

The term will be explained and discussed in Chap. 4.

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5. 6.

Preface

Central and West African ethnic groups. Religion: Christianity, Islam. Jewish diaspora. Religion: Judaism.

Besides diasporas, I researched social attitudes of several title nationalities of the EU member countries in regard to gender: British (before the Brexit); Danish; Dutch; French; German; Irish; Italian; Polish; Portuguese; Spanish and Swedish. In the book I describe several sociological surveys, analyse the results and make provisional conclusions. Will gender be a unifying force for the European Union or a centrifugal power that will distance the title nationalities and diaspora societies living in Europe, from each other, and disarray the very EU? Moscow, Russia

Konstantin S. Sharov

Contents

Part I 1

2

Political Correctness and Gender Behavioural Patterns: Incongruence of West European Title Nationalities and Diasporas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acceptance of Political Correctness in EU’ Title Nationalities and Diasporas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender Education for Secondary School: Perplexities in Diasporas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender Behavioural Models of the Youth, Their Demographic Preferences and Accepting the Norms of Political Correctness . . . . . . . . Reaction of Parents to School Gender Education in Diasporas . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Part II 3

EU’s Gender Ideology in Politics and Society: Tasks and Reception

3 3 5 13 14 17 17 18 21 25 25

Administering Gender Social Institutes and Relations

Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types of Demographic Behaviour: EU’s Title Nationalities Versus Diasporas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Survey Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Calculation Routine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Using Assisted Reproduction Technologies as a Gender Behavioural Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29 29 30 32 46

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Contents

Neo-Liberal Gender Behavioural Models in EU’s Title Nationalities and Diasporas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Gender Extimity as a Psychological Technique of EU’s Democratizing Its Population: Efforts and Reaction of Diasporas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Female Accessibility as a Visual Token . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Making Psychological Personality Transparent in Gender Equality Programme by Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Industry of Entertainment and EU’s Gender Equality Programme . . . . . Extimity as an Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cinema as a Means of Spreading Extimity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Extimity as Interpellation of Erotic Desire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49 52 53

55 55 56 57 58 60 61 64 66 67

Part III Creating and Modifying Gender Stereotypes 5

6

Gender Communicative and Behavioural Stereotypes: Case of the Indian Diaspora in the EU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sociological Study Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender Communicative Stereotypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Classifying the Stereotypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analytical Deductions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fashion in Clothes as a Political Instrument of (Re)Shaping Gender Social Roles: Reaction of Muslim Diasporas to the EU’s Initiatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Muslims’ Reluctance to Abandon Female Traditional Clothing in Diasporas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fashion in Clothes as a Social Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two Types of Fashion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Haut Couture Fashion Designers and Creation of Female Modus Artificialis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The “Equal Style” of Fashion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mass Fashion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fashion and Sexual Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fashion Versus Clothes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Irreducibility of Feminine Fashion to Costume Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Female Nudity as a Visual Semiotic System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71 71 73 74 74 78 79 79

81 82 82 83 86 89 91 93 95 97 99

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An Approach to the Classification of Feminine Fashion Signs . . . . . . . . Levels of Semiotic Chains of Female Fashion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

103 106 112 112

Part IV Constructing “Gender-Neutral” and “Inoffensive” Religion 7

8

Genderizing the Christian Bible: Towards a Unified and Artificial EU’s Religion? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender-Inclusive Translations of the Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Substitution of Personal and Possessive Pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eliminating the Word Man and Patriarchal Familial Allusions . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

117 118 118 120 121 124 126

Towards a New Gender-Neutral Deity? Resistance of Jewish Diaspora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Names of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

127 127 128 132 133

Part V 9

Melting Gender with Culture

Rethinking Female Roles in Christian Culture: A Case of Latin American Diasporas in the EU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpreting Social Contexts of Christ’s Preaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Female Society in Jesus’s Environment and Female Disciples . . . . . . . . . Gospel: Social Sketches or Photographs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gospel: Gender Distortion of Social Meaning Through Translation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10 Reception of EU’s Ideology of Gender Equality by Chinese Diaspora in Europe: Gender and Confucianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sociological Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender and Confucianism: Complicated Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Widespread Belief About Oppressing Women in Traditional Chinese Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Woman in European and Chinese Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . View of Confucian Classics on Social Roles of Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Later Confucianism: Opposing Gender Equality? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

139 139 140 142 143 144 146 147 149 150 150 151 152 156 159 163

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Contents

Was the Woman Humiliated in Imperial China? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chinese Women and Voting Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

164 165 170 173

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Appendix A: Feminine Social Power in Ancient Rome: The Concept of “Mothers of Cities” and “Patronesses of Cities” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Appendix B: Gender, Music and Nation in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Appendix C: Tradition of Courtly Love in European Culture . . . . . . . . . . 205 Appendix D: Gender in Ancient Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

About the Author

Konstantin S. Sharov Dr. Habil, Doctor of Theological Science, Ph.D., ThM, ThB, M.Sc., B.Sc. is a Russian chemist, sociologist, political scientist, lay theologian and poet. Currently he holds the positions of Senior Scientist at the Koltzov Institute of Developmental Biology of Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia). He is also Professor of the Department of Theology of Chernovtsi Orthodox Theological Institute (Chernovtsi, Ukraine). He is the author and co-editor of several books, including SARS-CoV-2 and Coronacrisis: Epidemiological Challenges, Social Policies and Administrative Strategies (Singapore, Springer, 2021) https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-981-16-2605-0, and around 150 scientific articles in periodicals. He has been studying gender issues in the European Union, Russia, China, India and the rest of Asia since 2005.

xvii

Part I

EU’s Gender Ideology in Politics and Society: Tasks and Reception

Chapter 1

Political Correctness and Gender Behavioural Patterns: Incongruence of West European Title Nationalities and Diasporas

Abstract Political correctness as a part of the EU’s “gender equality programme” is a concept that describes language, ideas, policies, behaviour allegedly aimed at minimizing social and/or institutional abuse in professional life, gender, race, culture, sexual orientation, religious belief, disability, or age. Political correctness is a concept that is aimed at reconstructing language and way of thinking. These assumptions are poorly accepted in diaspora societies with different attitude towards gender, social justice and political rights. In the chapter, I describe my sociological research of accepting norms of political correctness by the Western societies and diasporas living in the EU. One can arrange the societies in the following row: Muslim diasporas → Chinese diaspora → Indian diaspora → Western-type societies, according to the decrease in intensity of rejection/unacceptance of political correctness standards. The less the acceptance of political correctness standards, the less political correctness influences gender behavioural patterns in the society. Gender behaviour is weakly correlated with political correctness or uncorrelated at all in Asian / African ethnic and religious diasporas living in the EU. Members of the Chinese, Indian and different Muslim diasporas tend to reject political correctness, whereas the title West European nationalities mainly agree with its norms. Therefore, we may make two conclusions. 1. The EU’s gender equality programme that contains a set of political correctness standards is problematized in the three diasporas studied, especially in different Muslim diasporas. 2. To incorporate these diasporas in the EU’s unified society and avoid their forming internal boundaries (ideological, geographical, financial, business, etc.) within the EU, imposing the norms of political correctness on the members of these diasporas in politics, business, social life or any other activity by the EU’s ruling bodies is strongly discouraged.

Introduction Political correctness is a style of public communication in which the rights of minorities (religious, cultural, sexual, racial or ethnic, etc.) of equal participation in the life of society are properly ensured. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_1

3

4

1 Political Correctness and Gender Behavioural Patterns …

The EU’s gender equality programme includes political correctness as a constituent (McConell-Ginet 1978; Voevoda 2015a, b, 2016, 2018; Voevoda and Belogurov 2018; Volkogonova 2005). In turn, political correctness in speech deals much with gender (Miller and Swift 1988). Political correctness began to develop in societies of the West since late 1980s but its surge was observed in 2010s, especially in the US and EU (Kravchenko 2018; Kravchenko and Kononov 2017; Kravchenko and Podberezkin 2017). This trend in political (and more broadly any public) communication is deemed to ensure democratic rights of every person in the EU (Moeser 2018). Besides, the EU ruling bodies would be satisfied if political correctness may act as a centripetal force for consolidating different member countries and non-EU citizens (Harris and McDade 2018; Katernyi 2019; Voevoda 2015c). Political correctness is based on the following assumptions. Axiom 1. The dominance of patriarchy in society and the patriarchal model of power relations is a starting point. Patriarchy understood as male domination in social and family life, is declared to be the main target of linguistic and legal amendment (Kirichenko 2011; Moeser 2018; Zuikova and Eruslanova 2004). Axiom 2. The psychological profile of a modern person, regardless of his / her gender, is saturated with the ideas and values of male ideology with its priority of the masculine principle, logic, rationality and the objectivity of women and gender minorities (Browner et al. 2009). A woman and gender minorities are seen as derivatives of a white man in biological and sociocultural aspects. Axiom 3. Deconstructing political, media and legal texts, the image of a woman as an “Other” is formed, that was allegedly ousted from the discourse (Brandt 2004; Bongaarts and Sobotka 2012; Tisdall 2020). Axiom 4. Though is not separable from body and does not exist independently of it. Language as an attribute and integral part of thinking is perceived as a kind of body language with the help of which one can speak, write, and represent his/her bodily experiences (Kostromina and Grishina 2018, 2019). Axiom 5. An individual’s consciousness depends on the stereotypes of the language he/she speaks. A certain set of texts is socially imprinted that determine a person’s attitude to reality and his / her social behaviour. Language of communication is given exceptional importance to ensure democracy (Brown 2019; Kramer 2016). Axiom 6. Language is a product of society and a direct tool for displaying social transformations (Kondratyeva and Kloytsina 2018). Axiom 7. Language is seen as an expression of norms and values of the mainly patriarchal society. Texts, linguistic structures and speech practices impose on individuals the discourses of the exclusively male society. Patriarchal stereotypes conveys a certain picture of the world in which women and gender minorities are given secondary roles and negative attributes (Miller and Swift 1988; Klyotsina 2009a, 2009b, 2013, 2017; Klyotsina and Ioffe 2016). Axiom 8. Women are equalled to gender minorities as social actors deprived of their rights in many areas of social and political life (Breslauer 2002). This provision may be too far-fetched (see Appendix A). These assumptions are well understood in the Western society but much poorly accepted in other societies with different attitude towards gender, social justice and

Introduction

5

political rights (Bakhareva and Noskova 2017; Noskova 2012a, b, c, 2013a, b, 2014; Noskova et al. 2016). This may be the reason for questioning and even rejecting political correctness approach in many ethnic and religious diasporas living in the EU (Sassin et al. 2018).

Acceptance of Political Correctness in EU’ Title Nationalities and Diasporas A sociological multifactor survey (poll with questionnaire) was conducted to reveal the difference in accepting norms of political correctness in the EU’s title nationalities and diasporas. The audience of respondents was composed of residents of the West European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,1 and the Netherlands). Citizens of the EU member states are best suited to study the influence of politically correct linguistic discourse on gender behaviour and demographic expectations, since by 2020 this discourse had been actively spreading in Europe for at least 30 years (about 2 generations) (Grant and Hoorens 2007; Lomazzi and Crespi 2019). In this context, it would be a priori ineffective to conduct such a study in East European countries with a more traditional attitude to gender, e.g. Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, or Romania. Title nationalities and members of diasporas were surveyed. The latter were comprised of the Chinese, Indian, and several Muslim diasporas. The time of research was 2014–2019. The respondents were female volunteers who agreed to fill out the questionnaire. They were surveyed at railway stations and airport terminals. The survey was anonymous. Only women were selected as the audience, since the hypothesis underlying the survey is the assumption of greater impact of political correctness on women than on men. This may result from the this discourse aiming primarily on women (including feminist discourse). Besides, it can be assumed that the transformation of models of gender behaviour has a more significant impact on the female part of society, since women were the party that was historically more responsible for reproductive behaviour of a society (Bakhareva and Noskova 2017; Klyotsina and Ioffe 2016; Kondratieva and Klyotsina 2018). My working hypotheses underlying the study are as follows. 1. The respondents’ responses to questions regarding their accepting the norms of politically correct language correspond to the social effect of political correctness. 2. The EU’s title societies and diaspora members show statistically different attitudes towards political correctness. The former primarily accept them, while the latter reject. In order to reduce the factor of potential distortion of answers due to hyperrationalization when answering the questions of the questionnaire, some questions

1

Sweden is geographically a part of North Europe, but I included it in the West European countries, as gender behavioural patterns and general agreement with political correctness in Sweden is very similar with the West European models.

6

1 Political Correctness and Gender Behavioural Patterns …

that related to linguistic gender political correctness were not formulated as a test, but required the respondent to enter the answer in an empty field (Kolk et al. 2014). The age of the respondents indicated in the questionnaire served as one of the markers of the inclusion of data in the studied population. Only data corresponding to a specified age of less than or equal to 40 years (near the upper fertility threshold for women in Europe) were examined. Questionnaires with ages outside the scope, and those where no age was specified, were discarded. Incompletely filled questionnaires were also discarded, as well as those where the data were illegible. The number of selected questionnaires for a particular society (Western society/Chinese diaspora/Indian diaspora/Muslim diasporas) was set at about 4,000. The total number of questionnaires suitable for research was 8,988, and the total number of all questionnaires was 16,336, which gives an average of 55% of suitable questionnaires, i.e. about half of the questionnaires were discarded due to failure to pass formal criteria (respondents did not cope with their task in some way or another). The composition of the questionnaire was as follows: ***************************************************************** 1. 2.

Age: _________. A block of questions related to the language norms of political correctness (6 questions). Your preferred age of marriage if you are not married (or the age when you got married if you are married): _________. Your preferred age for the birth of your first child (or the age when you gave birth to it): _________. What is more priority for you: work or family? (circle the number you want) −3 − 2 − 1 0 +3 + 2 + 1

3. 4. 5.

only work balance only family How many children would you like to have? _________ A block of questions related to attitudes towards non-traditional gender behaviour and LGBTQ identities.

6. 7.

***************************************************************** Description of the block of questions related to linguistic political correctness (point no. 2 in the questionnaire): (A) (B) (C)

(D)

If a woman presides over the meeting, you will name her _________________________________________. If a woman works in the police, then you will name her _________________________________________. If a woman works as a member of an aircraft crew performing passenger service functions, you will name her _________________________________________. If you are expecting a baby, how would you prefer to be named? (underline only one answer) – pregnant woman,

Acceptance of Political Correctness in EU’ Title Nationalities and Diasporas

7

– pregnant person. (E)

If you have a kid, how would you prefer to be identified on your kid’s documents? (underline only one answer) – as “mother”; – as “parent number 1 (or 2).”

Description of the block of questions related to gender stereotypes related to non-traditional gender behaviour: (A)

Would you like to be a child-free woman, i.e. do you want to deliberately and voluntarily refuse the opportunity to have children ever? (underline only one answer) – yes – no – maybe, but at this stage of my life I find it difficult to answer

(B)

Would you like to try the experience of swingers (exchanging sexual partners for a while with your friend) to spice up your own relationship? (underline only one answer) – if my partner agrees, then I’m ready – never, it will be treason – maybe, but at this stage of my life I find it difficult to answer.

(C)

Are you ready to take part in group sex from time to time? (underline only one answer) – – – –

(D)

I participate all the time, it is so exciting! I will try with great desire, it sounds tempting! it is a new experience, why not try it?.. it’s disgusting, definitely not and never!

How do you feel about the “Swedish family” experience? (underline only one answer) – loyal: I would agree to it myself – neutral: if someone likes it, then let them do it – negatively: it is immoral

(E)

Suppose you find out that your husband, real or potential, cheated on you. What will you do? (underline only one answer) – I will definitely repay the same out of a sense of revenge – maybe I will repay the same if I meet a right person – I will never render treason for treason.

(F)

Suppose that there is a lesbian among your friends, and one of your mutual acquaintances would call her a “pervert” in front of you. How would you react? ___________________________________.

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1 Political Correctness and Gender Behavioural Patterns …

The aim of the study was to find the correlation between: (1) (2)

the level of accepting the norms of politically correct language by the respondents, or at least agreement with them; and indicators of changes in their gender behavior and preferences.

The data were entered into the module for processing statistical data in the Origin 6.0 program. The input arrays were collections of discrete natural values: 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The sum of points characterizing the willingness of a respondent to use politically correct language and/or agreement with the norms of politically correct language. A natural number from 0 (not included in the discourse of political correctness) to 9 (uses as much as possible), inclusive. Preferred age of marriage. Natural number. Preferred age of first birth. Natural number. Family/professional preference. A natural number from 0 to 6 inclusive (shift of the semantic differential obtained in the questionnaire by +3). Desired number of children. An integer greater than or equal to 0. The sum of points for tolerance and liberalism in gender behavior. A natural number from 0 to 28.

The calculation of the two following indicators was used as a methodology for finding the correlation: (1) Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient; and (2) Kendall’s correlation coefficient. Calculation of the usual Pearson linear correlation coefficient in our case is impossible, since the data sets contain discrete values. Both Spearman’s coefficient and Kendall’s coefficient are real numbers in the range [–1; +1]. A value of –1 corresponds to an inverse linear functional relationship between two statistical variables; 0 corresponds to no correlation between the two values; +1 speaks of a direct linear functional relationship. The functional dependence (–1 or +1) differs from the correlation (number in the interval (–1; +1)) in that it is absolutely rigid, i.e. each change in one quantity will only correspond to a definite change in the other in 100% of cases. We are interested in the correlation relations between the six values obtained in the opinion poll (there are no functional dependencies between them). If the correlation coefficient by absolute value: more than 0.7, it is considered that the correlation is strong; between 0.5 and 0.7, then the correlation is average; from 0.2 to 0.5: values are weakly correlated; less than 0.2, then they are extremely weakly correlated (almost no correlation). In this case, not only the value of the correlation coefficient is important, but also the ratio of its error to its absolute value. With a large sample, the error of the correlation coefficient is calculated as follows: 1 − r2 , r = √ n−1

Acceptance of Political Correctness in EU’ Title Nationalities and Diasporas

9

where r is the correlation coefficient; r its error; n the amount of data in the sample. From a statistical point of view, it will be meaningless to analyze the correlation coefficient which is comparable in magnitude with its error. Cases when the error is equal to or greater than 1/3 of the absolute value of the coefficient are unrepresentative. But, as we will see below, in our situation there will be no such cases. The calculation of the coefficients gives the following correlation values Table 1.1 for the combined Western society of the title nationalities listed above; Table 1.2 for the Chinese diaspora; Table 1.3 for the Indian diaspora; and Table 1.4 for different Muslim diasporas. Average correlation values are given in normal font, and the cases of strong correlation in bold. Table 1.1 The correlation between different indicators of political correctness and neo-liberal gender behaviour for the combined Western society. The level of significance is 0.05 everywhere Combined western society

Accepting norms of political correctness Increase in the age of marriage Increase in the age of first birth The preference of family over the professional field The desire for large families Accepting neo-liberal values, denying traditional values

Accepting norms of political correctness

Increase in the age of marriage

Increase in The The desire the age of preference of for large first birth family over families the professional field

Accepting neo-liberal values, denying traditional values of gender behaviour

0.614 (0.643)

0.548 (0.504)

−0.733 (−0.775)

−0.262 (−0.203)

0.782 (0.841)

0.712 (0.757)

−0.801 (−0.816)

−0.278 (−0.190)

0.762 (0.793)

−0.872 (−0.935)

−0.310 (−0.182)

0.798 (0.730)

0.244 (0.306)

−0.664 (−0.728)

−0.331 (−0.357)

10

1 Political Correctness and Gender Behavioural Patterns …

Table 1.2 The correlation between different indicators of political correctness and neo-liberal gender behaviour for the Chinese diaspora living in the EU. The level of significance is 0.05 everywhere Chinese Diaspora

Accepting norms of political correctness Increase in the age of marriage Increase in the age of first birth The preference of family over the professional field The desire for large families

Accepting norms of political correctness

Increase in the age of marriage

Increase in The The desire the age of preference of for large first birth family over families the professional field

Accepting neo-liberal values, denying traditional values of gender behaviour

0.202 (0.226)

0.234 (0.250)

−0.115 (−0.132)

−0.072 (−0.118)

0.225 (0.190)

0.873 (0.905)

−0.969 (−0.977)

−0.860 (−0.915)

0.428 (0.416)

−0.936 (−0.964)

−0.794 (−0.825)

0.360 (0.411)

0.895 (0.920)

−0.839 (−0.810)

−0.824 (−0.880)

Accepting neo-liberal values, denying traditional values

The table contains a matrix of correlation of all indicators with each other, therefore, one can find data not only on the main problem of interest to us, the influence of the linguistic discourse of political correctness on various components of demographic behavior (the first row), but also to assess the correlation of all the indicators studied. The table in its complete form is mirror-symmetric with respect to the main diagonal, so I only give the values above it (in the cells on it, all the values are equal to 1, which is obvious). I do not give the values of the errors of the correlation coefficients, since they are negligible in comparison with the absolute values of the coefficients. Indeed, it is easy to verify this by substituting the smallest value of a coefficient absolute value into the above formula. For the minimum value of

Acceptance of Political Correctness in EU’ Title Nationalities and Diasporas

11

Table 1.3 The correlation between different indicators of political correctness and neo-liberal gender behaviour for the Indian diaspora living in the EU. The level of significance is 0.05 everywhere Indian Diaspora

Accepting norms of political correctness Increase in the age of marriage Increase in the age of first birth The preference of family over the professional field The desire for large families

Accepting norms of political correctness

Increase in the age of marriage

Increase in The The desire the age of preference of for large first birth family over families the professional field

Accepting neo-liberal values, denying traditional values of gender behaviour

0.248 (0.281)

0.293 (0.342)

−0.160 (−0.180)

−0.162 (−0.144)

0.281 (0.317)

0.924 (0.931)

−0.878 (−0.921)

−0.613 (−0.675)

0.540 (0.592)

−0.891 (−0.927)

−0.674 (−0.662)

0.583 (0.518)

0.427 (0.449)

−0.686 (−0.690)

−0.571 (−0.555)

Accepting neo-liberal values, denying traditional values

the coefficient in table 0.190, the error value will be 0.028%, i.e. be about 15% of the absolute value of the coefficient, which gives a completely representative picture even for the minimal coefficient, not to mention large coefficients greater than 0.5. It is the presence of a large set of data that makes it possible to neglect the values of the error in calculating the correlation coefficients. In Tables 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 Kendall correlation coefficients are provided above, and Spearman correlation coefficients below in parentheses. The calculated values of τ-Kendall coefficient is less susceptible to dispersion and less volatile than the Spearman coefficient (in most cases, they are smaller in absolute value).

12

1 Political Correctness and Gender Behavioural Patterns …

Table 1.4 The correlation between different indicators of political correctness and neo-liberal gender behaviour for the combined Muslim diaspora living in the EU. The level of significance is 0.05 everywhere Combined Muslim Diaspora

Accepting norms of political correctness Increase in the age of marriage Increase in the age of first birth The preference of family over the professional field The desire for large families

Accepting norms of political correctness

Increase in the age of marriage

Increase in The The desire the age of preference of for large first birth family over families the professional field

Accepting neo-liberal values, denying traditional values of gender behaviour

0.042 (0.028)

0.060 (0.042)

−0.086 (−0.055)

−0.005 (−0.005)

0.120 (0.080)

0.414 (0.470)

−0.632 (−0.683)

−0.690 (−0.640)

0.237 (0.215)

−0.674 (−0.688)

−0.527 (−0.590)

0.420 (0.442)

0.530 (0.595)

−0.741 (−0.630)

−0.710 (−0.756)

Accepting neo-liberal values, denying traditional values

The difference in absolute values of percentage of respondents concordant with adhering to political correctness standards is demonstrated in Fig. 1.1.

Conclusions

13

Fig. 1.1 The difference in accepting norms of political correctness by the Western societies and diasporas living in the EU

Conclusions From Tables 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 and Fig. 1.1 one can arrange the societies in the following row: Muslim diasporas → Chinese diaspora → Indian diaspora → Western-type societies, according to the decrease in intensity of rejection/unacceptance of political correctness standards. The less the acceptance of political correctness standards, the less political correctness influences gender behavioural patterns in the society. In Tables 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 it may be clearly seen that the first green line (political correctness) contains large numbers in absolute values for the combined Western society, whereas there is no correlation between gender behavioural patterns and accepting political correctness standards in the diasporas (absolute values are much lower). We see that the gender behaviour is weakly correlated with political correctness or uncorrelated at all in ethnic and religious diasporas living in the EU. Members of the Chinese, Indian and different Muslim diasporas tend to reject political correctness, whereas the title West European nationalities mainly agree with its norms. Therefore, we may make two conclusions. 1. The EU’s gender equality programme that contains many political correctness standards is problematized in the three diasporas studied, especially in different Muslim diasporas. 2. To incorporate these diasporas in the EU’s unified society and avoid their forming internal boundaries within the

14

1 Political Correctness and Gender Behavioural Patterns …

EU, imposing the norms of political correctness on the members of these diasporas in politics, business, social life or any other activity by the EU’s ruling bodies is strongly discouraged. In the EU’s ruling bodies, they still do not understand that squeezing diasporas in the Procrustean bed of the EU’s gender ideology may be a shot in the foot for the whole EU.

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Kondratyeva A. V., I. S. Kloytsina. 2018. Adherence to gender norms and patterns of behavior in the framework of the paternal and maternal roles among representatives of different generations. Topical issues of psychology in the research of undergraduate and graduate students: a collection of scientific articles, 62–70. St Petersburg: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet im. A. I. Gertsena Press. Kostromina, S.N., and N.V. Grishina. 2019. The dynamic personality: ‘continuity amid change.’ Psychology in Russia: State of the Art 12 (2): 33–44. Kostromina, S.N., and N.V. Grishina. 2018. The future of personality theory: A processual approach. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 52 (2): 296–306. Kramer, E. 2016. Feminist linguistics and linguistic feminisms. In Mapping Feminist Anthropology in the Twenty-First Century, ed. E. Lewin and L.M. Silverstein, 65–83. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kravchenko, S.A. 2018. Risks of the Future: Demand for Nonlinear Humanistic Knowledge. Nauka. Kul’tura. Obshchestvo 1: 20–33. Kravchenko S. A., and V. I. Kononov. 2017. (Not) the creation of Europe (ahead of the 13th conference of the European Sociological Association). POISK: Politika. Obshchestvovedenie. Iskusstvo. Sotsiologiya. Kul’tura, no. 1 (60): 51–59. Kravchenko, S.A., and A.I. Podberezkin. 2017. The Complicated Dynamics of Political Interests: Challenges for Russia’s National Security. Observer 10 (333): 25–41. Lomazzi, V., and I. Crespi. 2019. Gender mainstreaming in Europe: legislation and cultural changes. In Gender mainstreaming and gender equality in Europe: Policies, culture and public opinion, 31–46, Bristol: Bristol University Press. McConell-Ginet, S. 1978. Intonation in a Man’s World. Sign 3 (2): 541–559. Miller, C., and K. Swift. 1988. The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing. New York: Lippincott. Moeser, C. 2018. Sex Wars and the Contemporary French Moral Panic: The Productivity and Pitfalls of Feminist Conflicts. Meridians 16 (1): 79–111. Noskova, A.V. 2012. Family topics in European sociology. Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya, 3 (335): 21–27. Noskova, A.V. 2012. Social aspects of solving the demographic problem of low fertility. Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya, 8 (340): 60–71. Noskova, A.V. 2012. What hinders and what can contribute to solving the demographic problem in Russia. Sotsial’naya Pedagogika, 2: 25–28. Noskova, A.V. 2013. Family in the face of the challenges of a globalizing world. Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya 5 (349): 147–149. Noskova, A.V. 2013. The Evolution of Family Policy in Europe: Changing Issues, Priorities and Practices. Vestnik MGIMO Universiteta, 4 (31): 291–301. Noskova A. V. 2014. Family politics in Europe: evolution of models, discourses, practices. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, no. № 5 (361): 56–67. Noskova A. V., Kuzmina E. I., Malysheva A. E. 2016. Changes and continuity in children’s play practices. Sotsial’naya politika i sotsiologiya 15, no. 3 (116): 116–123. Sassin, W., O. Donskikh, A. Gnes, S. Komissarov, Liu Depei. 2018. Evolutionary Environments. Homo Sapiens – an Endangered Species? Innsbruck: Studia Universitätsverlag. Tisdall, L. 2020. A progressive education?: How childhood changed in mid-twentieth-century English and Welsh schools. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Voevoda, E.V. 2015a. From intercultural communication to linguocultural aggression. Srednee Professional’noe Obrazovanie 10: 47–52. Voevoda, E.V. 2015b. Globalization, national interests and intercultural communication. Research and Development. Modern Communication Science 4 (6): 67–68. Voevoda, E.V. 2015c. Linguistic mediating role in the dialogue of cultures. Vestnik MGIMO Universiteta 3 (42): 239–243. Voevoda, E.V. 2016. Intercultural communication in a multi-ethnic educational space. Research and Development. Modern Communication Science 5 (3): 24–28.

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Voevoda, E.V. 2018. Women diplomats in Russia: On the issue of gender imbalance. Zhenshchina v Rossiiskom Obshchestve, 4 (89): 24–35. Voevoda, E.V., and A.Y. Belogurov. 2018. The axiology of education in the discourse of modern politics. Polis 6: 172–179. Volkogonova, O.D. 2005. Intimacy in the runaway world. Cosmopolis, 1 (11): 154–160. Zuikova, E.M., and R.I. Eruslanova. 2004. Feminology and Gender Policy. Moscow: Sovremennyi gumanitarnyi universitet.

Chapter 2

Gender Education for Secondary School: Perplexities in Diasporas

Abstract During 2000–2010s, many EU member countries (primarily West European countries) have been actively adopting gender educational programmes for secondary school as a constituent of democratization and the EU’s “gender equality programme”. These educational programmes are based on the second demographic transition model and they are evolutionarily connected to feminist ideas of 1980– 1990s. However, I argue that gender education as an important part of the EU’s gender ideology is now seriously undermined in ethnic and religious Asian / African diasporas. In this chapter, I describe two my sociological surveys that prove it. The first was a survey of secondary school students of age 15–18 years old. The research was made in schools of four EU member countries (Denmark, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands). The diasporas studied were the Chinese diaspora, the Indian diaspora, different Muslim diasporas, and different Latin American diasporas. The second survey was targeted at parents of pupils under the age 11 years old. The main results of the focus group discussions with parents are as follows: 1. In Asian/African diasporas, parents mainly oppose to introducing gender education in schools. The greatest resistance to gender education is observed in different Muslim diasporas. 2. Parents’ professional affiliation and income level almost does not affect their opinions regarding gender education in school. 3. The introduction of sexuality educational programmes for youngest pupils has seriously undermined the legitimacy of different European school gender educational programmes in general. 4. The greatest social activity of parents in prohibiting gender education is observed in Muslim diasporas, the Indian diaspora and Ireland. 5. On the contrary, the most positive attitude towards gender education programmes is observed among parents of title nationalities in Denmark and the Netherlands.

Introduction During 2000–2010s, many EU member countries (primarily West European countries) have been actively adopting gender educational programmes for secondary school (Gershenson and Holt 2015; Tisdall 2020; Votava 2011). These programmes © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_2

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are based on the second demographic transition model (Van de Kaa 1987; Perlitz et al. 2010) and they are evolutionarily connected to feminist studies of 1980–1990s (Dryler 1998; Samel 1995; Weedon 1987). This trend was met with distrust and sometimes devoted rejection in the majority of Asian and African diasporas. The primary points of objection are as follows. 1. The idea that a child may choose his/her gender identity during education and this choice is free. Most of them adhere to the principle of gender dichotomy (Stockley and Campbell 2013). 2. Traditional societies may have low tolerance to non-traditional gender identities and the parents mainly do not wish their children to be taught this tolerance in school (Christensen 2019; Qin 2019; Weinberg 2009). 3. Some parents believe that gender education will prematurely exploit the children’s sexuality (Kotzeva 2011). 4. Many members of diasporas do not use politically correct language and do not want their children’s accepting the norms of political correctness (Lockerbie 2014). 5. In some diasporas, a considerable part of parents desires their children’s early marrying and having large family. Gender education is considered an obstacle for this goal by them (Haberland 2015; Ross 2018). In the chapter, I describe two sociological surveys that I performed in 2014–2019 with schoolchildren and their parents to understand the grounds for rejection.

Gender Behavioural Models of the Youth, Their Demographic Preferences and Accepting the Norms of Political Correctness The sociological research was carried out in schools of four EU member countries (Denmark, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands). The diasporas studied were the Chinese diaspora, the Indian diaspora, different Muslim diasporas, and different Latin American diasporas. The study was conducted in the form of interviews with student volunteers assisted by school teachers. All permissions from the school authorities and parents were obtained in advance in due order. Time of study was 2014–2019. The audience of the respondents was made up of secondary school students of both genders of age 15–18 years old. This age makes it possible to assess the strength of the impact of neo-liberal educational technologies that spread the ideas of political correctness and the second demographic transition on adolescents, as well as the change in gender patterns of behaviour that occurs due to the transformation of gender communicative competencies. Ten high school volunteers were selected for interviews from each school. Ten public schools per country from different parts of the country were selected for the study. Thus, there were one hundred respondents for each country (boys and girls were represented approximately in equal proportions). Only public schools were included in the survey. Private schools were not chosen in order to achieve greater representation of social strata and classes in the audience of respondents.

Gender Behavioural Models of the Youth, Their Demographic …

19

The aim of the study is (1) to evaluate the resistance of schoolchildren of families from ethnic diasporas to the ideologies of political correctness and the second demographic transition; and (2) to compare this resistance with gender behavioural stereotypes of the schoolchildren. The questions in the interview for girls were as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Suppose you have a daughter in the future. How will you teach your daughter, why a girl should not repay the boy who hit her? Or you disagree? In which words would you ask her to clean the house? How many children should parents have in an ideal family, from your point of view? Suppose two of your classmates become lesbians and want to marry each other in the future. How will you feel about this? What is the easiest thing to do for two people of the same sex to have a baby? Block of political correctness related queries.

The interview questions for boys were as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Suppose you have a son in the future. How will you teach your son why a boy should not have fights with girls? Or you disagree? In which words would you ask him to clean the house? How many children should parents have in an ideal family, from your point of view? Suppose two of your classmates become homosexuals in the future and want to marry each other. How will you feel about this? What is the easiest thing to do for two people of the same sex to have a baby? Block of political correctness related queries.

The explanation on the content and structure of the interview is the following. The answer to question no. 2 shows such a gender feature as soft/strong orders and instructions, i.e. a call to action or order in the literal sense. Question 3 aims at identifying such components of demographic preferences as the desire to have children and the propensity/unwillingness to have many children. The answers to questions 1, 4 and 5 show the level of involvement of school gender education in the ideologies of neoliberalsim, i.e. they demonstrate how the ideologies of political correctness and the second demographic transition have affected the sphere of school education. I will present the results in the form of “gender perception scores,” calculated for a society. A more detailed description of scoring: Question 1. The answer related to the fact that girls (and / or women) should not be beaten, since they are girls (that is, for reasons related to the direct reflection of the sociocultural archetype)—10 points. The answer, motivated by anything else, not related to considerations of the girl’s femininity, e.g., by the fact that civilized people do not do this—0 points. For questions 1, 4 and 5, the value of 10 points follows from the normalization for the convenience of subsequent comparison with the sociolinguistic score of the use of gender.

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Question 4. If during the interview a respondent behaves unusual, e.g., shows embarrassment, awkwardness, discomfort, hesitation, any other negative emotions, or on the contrary, replies quickly, abruptly and hastily—10 points. If he /she gives an answer in which censure sounds, then another 10 points. If a respondent answers with absolutely normal intonations AND gives any answer in a positive, approving way, then 0 points. The maximum score is 20, the minimum is 0. Question 5. The same logic applies to the answers to question no. 5. Answers related to the adoption of a child by a homosexual couple, gender reassignment, reproductive technologies or any other liberal gender manipulation—0 points AND the clarity of the answer—0 points. Hesitation, withdrawal into emotionality when answering—10 points. Answers related to the impossibility of such a step—another 10 points. The maximum score is 20, the minimum is 0. The total maximum score for the three questions (Nos. 1, 4 and 5) is 60 for an individual. Question 2. The answer of men associated with a hard indication, and women— with a soft indication—1 point. Other options—0 points. Question 3. Each child—10 points. There is potentially no upper limit for a society, but theoretically it could hardly be more than 20,000 (if each respondent names “20 children”). The value of 10 points for each child can be derived from the normalization for the convenience of subsequent comparison with the sociolinguistic score for Question 6. The results of the poll were processed in the OriginPro 8.1 program. A comparison of the societies studied is shown in Fig. 2.1. We see a clear correlation of the three indicators studied. This allows us to make a number of conclusions:

Fig. 2.1 Comparison of stereotypes of gender behaviour, reproductive ideals (demographical preferences) and accepting/rejecting the standards of political correctness. Significance level 0.05

Gender Behavioural Models of the Youth, Their Demographic …

1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

21

The studied EU title societies radically differ from the studied diasporas in all three factors (gender behavioural patters; accepting / rejecting political correctness standards; and demographic preferences). In West European title nationalities, there are parallel processes of wide accepting the norms of political correctness; the refusal of young people to have a large traditional family as an ideal; and adopting new gender behavioural patterns. In the diasporas studied, there is a traditional attitude of young people to gender with sociocultural rejection or little acceptance of neo-liberal stereotypes and models of gender behavior. This is accompanied by readiness to have many children and simultaneous opposition to political correctness. The most liberal societies studied are the Danish and Dutch societies. The average rate of the ideal of reproductive behaviour in Denmark and the Netherlands is less than one child per nuclear family. This may be explained by the fact that a number of respondents in these countries noted a family without children as an ideal. In Muslim diasporas, the demographic ideal of the youth is almost seven children per family. In the Chinese and Indian diasporas, the ideal of reproductive behaviour is the number of children slightly greater than or equal to the number of children per family approved or recommended by the state authorities (public policy): approximately 2.2 children per family in China and 1.8 in India. It should be emphasized that the number of Indian respondents included only people who practiced Hinduism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, or Buddhism (pre-filter). In the case of Indian Muslims, this number would be much higher. The greater similarity of the Latin America diasporas with West European societies can be accounted for by the colonial past of their native countries, coupled with the fact that the majority of their population is Roman Catholic.

The correlation analysis results are given in Table 2.1. The coefficients show the presence of a medium-strong correlation between all parameters. Calculation of partial correlation coefficients (within the sample corresponding to each country) also shows the relatively strong correlation between traditional character of gender behavior; rejecting political correctness; and readiness to have family with many kids. Partial τ-Kendall coefficients for each society are demonstrated in Fig. 2.2.

Reaction of Parents to School Gender Education in Diasporas School gender education is an integral concept that includes far more than teaching students making love (Dumais 2002; Thompson 2003). In the broadest sense, gender educational programmes are aimed at developing certain gender patterns of

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Table 2.1 General coefficients of correlation of gender behaviour, reproductive ideals and accepting political correctness. Table contains the τ—Kendall coefficient and the Spearman rank correlation coefficient (in parentheses). Significance level is 0.05 Traditional gender behavioural patterns Traditional gender behavioural patterns Accepting standards of political correctness

Accepting standards of political correctness

Multi-children reproductive ideals / intentions

−0.66 ± 0.26 (−0.72 ± 0.22)

0.78 ± 0.22 (0.83 ± 0.12) −0.72 ± 0.28 (−0.76 ± 0.22)

Multi-children reproductive ideals/intentions

Fig. 2.2 General correlation coefficients of gender behaviour, reproductive ideals and rejecting political correctness. τ-Kendall coefficient and Spearman rank correlation coefficient (in parentheses) are given. The significance level is 0.05

Reaction of Parents to School Gender Education in Diasporas

23

behaviour, as they provide information on gender identification, sexuality, intimacy relationships, non-traditional gender identities, gender-related political correctness etc. (Kuschel 2017; Psaki et al. 2018). In 2018 in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Scandinavian countries, a number of schools have attempted introducing educational “contact lessons” programmes for children of 6–10 years old, in which children were taught independent “in-depth self-exploration of their sexuality” (Santelli et al 2018). These attempts to introduce new methods into the programmes of teaching younger pupils sexuality received a wide public response and caused numerous scandals both in the school environment and at the administrative / government levels. These innovative educational technologies have spread the concept of gender education from secondary school to primary school. An especially strong resistance was observed in parental circles of ethnic diasporas. In 2014–2019, I carried out a sociological study in Denmark, Ireland, France, and the Netherlands. It was designed to show the attitude of parents in the title nationalities and diasporas to school gender education in general. The type of research was discussion in focus groups of 12 people plus a questionnaire survey. Discussion language: English. The audience of focus groups was made up of parents of elementary school students (under 11 years old) studying only in public schools. The number of interviewed parents was approximately 120 per society. Schools were selected from a variety of public schools by territorial randomization. Focus groups were selected in such a way that they included representatives of various religious denominations, professions and social strata. The focus group view was simple with one moderator. After the discussion, focus group participants were asked to answer the questionnaire orally. The starting questions for the focus group discussion and questionnaire were as follows: 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

How do you feel about the idea of introducing educational programmes of gender behaviour, gender identity, sexual practices and sexual orientation, into secondary school education? Is it acceptable, from your point of view, to spread the teaching of gender models of behaviour onto the lower grades (primary school, or children under 11 years old)? Do you consider it correct to teach your children non-traditional gender models of behaviour, e.g., the possibility of non-traditional gender identification? How do you assess teaching youngest pupils sexuality? Will you take socially active steps and work to ensure that gender education programmes are excluded from the school system (or, conversely, are included in it)?

The main results are presented in Fig. 2.3. Based on the results of focus group discussions, various trends were identified, which, despite the difference in individual opinions of parents, can be well correlated with the situation in different societies. The main results of the focus group discussions are as follows:

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Fig. 2.3 The attitude of parents to the school programmes of gender education of their children in different societies

Reaction of Parents to School Gender Education in Diasporas

1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

25

In diasporas, parents mainly oppose to introducing gender education in schools. The greatest resistance to gender education is observed in different Muslim diasporas. Parents’ professional affiliation and income level almost does not affect their opinions regarding gender education in school. The introduction of sexuality educational programmes for youngest pupils has seriously undermined the legitimacy of school gender education in general. The greatest social activity of parents in prohibiting gender education is observed in Muslim diasporas, the Indian diaspora and Ireland. On the contrary, the most positive attitude towards gender education programmes is observed among parents of title nationalities in Denmark and the Netherlands.

Conclusions Gender education as an important part of the EU’s gender ideology is now seriously undermined in ethnic and religious Asian/African diasporas. It would be wise to make allowances for ethnic/cultural/religious traditions and permit those parents who oppose gender education to choose curriculum for their children, even in public schools, without squeezing them into “universal” educational standards. Uncritical following the same line in spreading new educational standards for every inhabitant of the EU may easily transform education into centrifugal and destabilizing force for the EU.

References Christensen, K. 2019. Containing Voices of Memory: Lesbianism, Second-Wave Feminism, and the Queer Mnemonic Voice-Outtake in MAKERS: The Women Who Make America. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 6(1): 48–71. Dryler, H. 1998. Parental Role Models, Gender and Educational Choice. The British Journal of Sociology 49 (3): 375–398. Dumais, S. 2002. Cultural Capital, Gender, and School Success: The Role of Habitus. Sociology of Education 75 (1): 44–68. Gershenson, S., and S.B. Holt. 2015. Gender Gaps in High School Students’ Homework Time. Educational Researcher 44 (8): 432–441. Haberland, N.A. 2015. The Case for Addressing Gender and Power in Sexuality and HIV Education: A Comprehensive Review of Evaluation Studies. International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 41 (1): 31–42. Kotzeva, T. 2011. Public Discourses, Social Policies and Gender Arrangements in the Post-Socialist Context of Low Fertility in Bulgaria. In Engendering Transformation: Post-socialist Experiences on Work, Politics, and Culture, ed. Heike Kahlert and Sabine Schäfer, 107–124. Stuttgart: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Kuschel, K. 2017. The Work-family Field: Gaps and Missing Links as Opportunities for Future Research. Innovar: Revista de ciencias administrativas y sociales 27(66): 57–74.

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Lockerbie, S. 2014. Infertility, Adoption and Metaphorical Pregnancies. Anthropologica 56 (2): 463–471. Perlitz, M., L. Schulze, and C.B. Wilke. 2010. The demographic and Economic Transition in Central and Eastern Europe—Management Implications. Journal of East European Management Studies 15 (2): 149–176. Psaki, S.R., K.J. McCarthy, and B.S. Mensch. 2018. Measuring Gender Equality in Education: Lessons from Trends in 43 Countries. Population and Development Review 44 (1): 117–142. Qin, Q. 2019. A Waning Queerscape: The Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Journal of Film and Video 71 (3): 35–49. Ross, J. 2018. The search for certainty: A pragmatist critique of society’s focus on biological childbearing. The Pluralist 13 (2): 96–108. Samel, I. 1995. Einführung in die feministische Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Santelli, J. S, S.A. Grilo, T.H. Choo, G. Diaz, K. Walsh, M. Wall, J.S. Hirsch, P.A. Wilson, L. Gilbert, S. Khan, and C.A. Mellins. 2018. Does sex education before college protect students from sexual assault in college? PLoS One 13(11): e0205951. Stockley, P., and A. Campbell. 2013. Introduction: Female competition and aggression: Interdisciplinary perspectives. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences 368 (1631): 1–11. Thompson, A. 2003. Caring in Context: Four Feminist Theories on Gender and Education. Curriculum Inquiry 33 (1): 9–65. Tisdall, L. 2020. A progressive education?: How childhood changed in mid-twentieth-century English and Welsh schools. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Van de Kaa, D.J. 1987. Europe’s second demographic transition. Population Bulletin 42 (1): 1–59. Votava, J. 2011. The Voice That Will Drown All the City: Un-Gendering Noise in the Roaring Girl. Renaissance Drama, New Series 39: 69–95. Weedon, C. 1987. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. New York: ABC Books. Weinberg, M. 2009. LGBT-Inclusive Language. The English Journal 98 (4): 50–51.

Part II

Administering Gender Social Institutes and Relations

Chapter 3

Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types of Demographic Behaviour: EU’s Title Nationalities Versus Diasporas

Abstract In the chapter, I study the dependence of the probability of marriage on the duration of pre-marital “trial” cohabitation. I show that it has universally Weibull or at least pseudo-Weibull character (in the extreme case exponential-hyperbolic decline). There is no unity across the EU regarding gender behaviour (social approbation of pre-marital cohabitation) and necessity of marriage. West Europe differs from East Europe considerably (the attitude towards marriage is quite different in Germany/Sweden and Poland). In the diasporas one may find quite different gender behaviour than in the West. The societies studied may be arranged in the row of accepting the neoliberal models of behaviour where marriage may be regarded as an unnecessary social institution: Muslim diasporas → Chinese diaspora → Poland → Indian diaspora → Germany → Sweden). In the West, it became common that marriage is preceded by a “trial” cohabitation. For some people, there is even substitution of marriage with the ever-lasting cohabitation, i.e. these persons opt not to engage in marriage throughout their lives and this does not seem strange in Western Europe. However, in such more traditional societies as the Polish one or Asian/African diasporas marriage is still considered as a social norm of gender behaviour. Building the EU’s gender equality programme around the indifference towards marriage may create two types of internal social and behavioural borders in the EU that would prevent processes of euro-integration: (1) Western—Eastern members of the EU; and (2) EU—Asian/African diasporas that mainly correspond with the circles of Muslim, Confucian and Hindu believers. Finally, I study new demographic behavioural patterns in a separate sociological survey.

Introduction The EU’s gender equality programme keeps silence about marriage. However, it implies post-familial relationships and, therefore, social institute of marriage becomes voluntary to choose. In this chapter, I analyze the difference in stability of marriage in the EU’s title nationalities and diasporas. The following factors will

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_3

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be taken into account: (1) difference between West and East Europe; and (2) difference between European societies and diasporas. Finally, I shall demonstrate that accepting the EU’s gender equality programme by state government sometimes means radical opposition in the society with strong traditions of marriage. The EU’s gender ideology eliminates the sign of logical consequence between marriage and family. On the contrary, more traditional societies (East Europe and diasporas) still have strong belief in the identity of marriage and family. The radical transformation of gender behaviour models caused by wide adoption of the EU’s gender equality programme shifts social attitude towards marriage (Bernatonite 2017; Katerny 2019: 113; Klyotsina 2009, 2013; Noskova 2013a, b, 2014; Sinelnikov 2018a, b). For many couples, marriage begins to be replaced by temporary or nearly constant (very long) civil cohabitation, or civil partnerships, colloquially called “civil marriage”. This type of gender behaviour is widely accepted in West Europe (Noskova 2013a, b, 2014) and is likely to spread all over the EU. In East Europe (Poland, Baltic States, Hungary), many people still adhere to Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christian culture. According to it, such “trial” pre-marriage cohabitation is not only considered socially insecure and religiously unnatural (Protopopova and Garadja 2018: 428) but also a mortal sin, an attempt to vindicate fornication (Calvo 2018: 371; Dillon 2017: 326; Donskikh 2018: 417; Kernberg 1988: 184). On the contrary, in the West marriage without “trial” cohabitation already became rare (Sinelnikov 2016: 111). In different ethnic and religious diasporas living in Europe, the situation is ambiguous. On the one hand, there is traditionalist majority, especially in Muslim diasporas. On the other hand, in recent years there has been a tendency of Christian, Hindu, Parsian, Buddhist and Confucian diasporas to appropriate West European stereotypes towards marriage (Kravchenko 2018; Mokhovaya 2015; Murtazina 2011; Sinelnikov 2018a). Some sociologists argue that the motivation of the majority of women in diasporas who accede to unregistered form of coexistence with a partner can be psychological uncertainty that men propose to them one day (Chew n.d.). The period of cohabitation may be a way to “shotgun marriage” or another form of female strict request (Khitruk 2017; Malinova 2017; Sinelnikov 2016, 2018a). A number of women in diasporas agree to continue “trial marriages,” or rather, the experience of living together without legal legalization, for a long time. Alexander Sinelnikov stresses that the experience of such civil partnerships shows that in fact the male marriage intentions usually does not depend on the duration of an unregistered cohabitation (Sinelnikov 2015). We can hypothesize that with increasing duration of cohabitation probability of marriage will not rise. To prove this hypothesis, I designed and carried out the following sociological survey.

Survey Design The study was conducted as a poll in 2014–2019. Germany and Sweden was chosen as a country of the West European type of society, Poland as the East European type. The following diasporas were investigated: Chinese, Indian, Muslim. The poll was

Survey Design

31

carried out in railway stations and airports in Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The audience was represented by women aged 18–40 years. Questionnaire composition: Question 1. Please indicate your marital status (underline): • Married • Civil partnership • Single Question 2. If you are married now, how long did you live together with your husband before marriage? ____________ (years or months). Question 3. If you are married now, did you have previous negative experience of living together with a man, which did not lead to marriage? If yes, how much time did you live together with this man before parting? (The longest negative experience). No/Yes ____________ (some years or months). Question 4: If you are single now, how long did you live with your civil partner? ____________ (years or months). Question 5: If you are single now, did you have negative experience of living together with a man, which did not lead to marriage? If yes, how much time did you live together with this man before parting? (The longest negative experience). No/Yes ____________ (some years or months). Despite the simplicity of the questionnaire composition, these questions allow to receive interesting results. The idea underlying the survey is trivial. If we take all cases of negative female experience of trial cohabitation, which did not lead to marriage, they can be sorted according to the length of cohabitation (number of years), and then for each nominal length of the interval we will calculate the probability of marriage. In spite of the simplicity of the primary data and their collection, calculation of the probability of marriage for each age is not obvious, so I will describe the calculation in detail. It is clear that global scenarios of trial cohabitation (for those respondents who replied that they are or were in a state of trial cohabitation) may be just three: (1) (2) (3)

negative experience is present (there was a period of cohabitation that did not end in marriage); only positive experience is present (marriage concluded after the first cohabitation); experience is uncertain (at the moment a woman is in a civil partnership, and she cannot speculate about prospects of marriage).

Let us divide the timeline into discrete intervals, as we can only work with discrete time variable, and choose their mean values, which will be used as input parameters. The analysis of responses demonstrates that the period up to one year should be

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divided into smaller segments in ¼ of the year. The periods over one year were divided as follows (according to their occurrence in the results): 1.5 years, 2 years, 2.5 years, 3 years, … 10 years. Only 43 respondents out of 1,552 respondents in Indian diaspora said that they have been living with a man for ten years (or previously lived for more than ten years) (approximately 2.8% of the sample). Thus, we have the following discrete values of duration (in years): • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

0.1 (approximately 1 month); 0.25 (3 months); 0.5 (half a year); 0.75; one year; 1.5; 2; 2.5; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10 years.

Calculation Routine Now to calculate the probability of marriage we shall use the following procedure. We divide the results available for groups corresponding to the discrete values selected. We will count the number of positive outcomes (marriage) and all outcomes. The probability of the marriage can be calculated by the formula p=

n positive_outcomes . n any_outcomes_ possible_ f or _this_scenario

Let us take a group of 0.1 years (approximately 1 month). Of all possible outcomes, the positive outcomes (marriage) will be cases of marriage entered into after 1 month of trial cohabitation npositive_outcomes = nmarriage_0.1 . But apart from that the number of positive outcomes, the denominator will include all cases of negative outcomes (relationship broken up) corresponding to 1 month and all longer times, as well as all cases of uncertain outcomes (cohabitation continues without offer of marriage). Then the probability of marriage after 1 month will be pmarriage_0.1 =

n marriage_0.1 +

10 j=0.1

n marriage_0.1 n negative_outcomes +

10 k=0.1

n inde f inite_outcomes

,

Calculation Routine

33

where j and k are variables of summing. The designation from 0.1 to 10 in the sign of the sum should be treated in a discrete sense, as the variables are discrete and run through a discrete set of values (see the list above). In order to calculate pmarriage_0.1 , we use nbpak_0.1 determined in the survey. The denominator will be n marriage_0.1 + (n separation_0.1 + n separation_0.25 + n separation_0.5 + ... + n separation_10 ) +(n uncer tainty_0.1 + n uncer tainty_0.25 + n uncer tainty_0.5 + ... + n uncer tainty_10 ). All cases of uncertainty should be regarded as potentially negative outcomes. They will give their contribution to the total number of outcomes in the denominator along with the negative outcomes (separations). Indeed, if a woman lives with a man for at least 1 month, it means he did not make an offer of marriage during the first month after the start of the trial cohabitation. Next, we apply an iterative technique. Having dealt with the case of 1 month, we proceed to the calculation of the probability of marriage if the duration of trial cohabitation is 0.25 years (3 months): pmarriage_0.25 =

n marriage_0.25 +

10

n marriage_0.25

j=0.25 n negative_outcomes +

10

k=0.1 n inde f inite_outcomes

. We have to take into account that in the sum in the denominator (the total number of events), we shall not count negative outcomes for 1 month (they are already out of the sample). This is easily to understand: if the relationship is broken up after 1 month, this case is excluded from the sample and does not participate in the subsequent calculations. However, we continue to take into account the uncertain outcome for 1 month or longer times. Then the iterations will be: pmarriage_0.5 =

n marriage_0.5 +

10

n marriage_0.5

j=0.5 n negative_outcomes +

10

k=0.1 n inde f inite_outcomes

.

.............................................................................., n marriage_10 . pmarriage_10 =  n marriage_10 + n negative_outcomes_10 + 10 k=0.1 n inde f inite_outcomes

The probabilities of marriage are provided in Table 3.1. The maximal probability is achieved at one year, but it is not large, only 47%. This means that more than half of all couples in Indian diaspora living in the EU is now parting. Construction of a plot with logarithmic x-axis (time), given in Fig. 3.1 shows a spiked extreme dependence on the logarithm of time. This type of dependence suggests that, most likely, the probability of marriage has the Weibull character (approximated by a Weibull function), i.e. its shape is a wave-like fade. Indeed, as shown in Fig. 3.2, the approximation by a Weibull function is satisfactory according to statistical parameters. The approximation was made independently by Statistica 13 software and OriginPro 8.1 and gave very similar results.

0.1

11

Duration of cohabitation (years)

Probability of entering into marriage, %

18

0.25 31

0.5 42

0.75 47

1 45

1.5 29

2 22

2.5 20

3

12

4

5

5

3

6

1.5

7

Table 3.1 Probability of marriage, depending on the duration of trial cohabitation (respondents from the Indian diaspora in the EU) 1.1

8

0.8

9

0.6

10

34 3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

Calculation Routine

35

Fig. 3.1 The estimated probability of a couple’s entering into marriage, depending on the duration of “trial” pre-marital cohabitation. The respondents are from Indian diaspora living in the EU. Time scale is logarithmic

Fig. 3.2 The estimated probability of a couple’s entering into marriage, depending on the duration of the “trial” cohabitation. The respondents belong to the Indian diaspora living in the EU

Accuracy and quality of approximations may be estimated by means of the following values: • diminished weighted mean square deviation χ dim. 2 = = 0.00107 and 2 • adjusted coefficient of determination Radj. 2 = 0.95882, where Rad j = 1 − (1−R 2 )(n−1) , n−k−1

36

3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

and where R is coefficient of correlation between the experimental values and the values of the approximating function, n is the number of points in the approximated set (in our case 16), and k is the number of independent variables (regressors) in the model (in our case one). High value of Radj. 2 (in our case approximately 95%) proves that we have a good approximation. Reduced (diminished) weighted mean square deviation is calculated as the standard deviation divided by the number of degrees of freedom: 2 χdim . =

χ2 . n−1

where χ 2 is the weighted mean square deviation, calculated as the sum of deviations for each point: χ2 =

 (xi − Ci )2 . σ2 i

x i are our calculated values of the probability of marriage, C i are the calculated values of the approximating function in every point, and σ2 is the dispersion of the values x i we obtained: 

m σ = 2

q=1

xq − x

2

m

where m is the number of our points, i.e. sixteen. Values less than 1% show that our function over-approximate the set of values. The analysis demonstrates that the value of the probability of marriage p depends on the duration of cohabitation t as follows: pmarriage_I ndian_diaspora = 0.03 + 0.432(t − 0.19)0.53 e−( 3.595 ) , t−0.19 1.53

or in canonical form: pmarriage_I ndian_diaspora = 0.03 +

  1.53 t − 0.19 1.53−1 −( t−0.19 )1.53 e 2×1.80 . 1.80 2 × 1.80

The approximation errors of the individual parameters are shown in Table 3.2. Table 3.2 Individual coefficients and error of the approximation by a Weibull function. Respondents are from the Indian diaspora living in the EU. Significance level is 0.05 Basic level p0

Expansion a

Peak shape b

Displacement u

0.03 ± 0.01

1.80 ± 0.08

1.53 ± 0.01

0.19 ± 0.05

Calculation Routine

37

A number of consequences arises. The residual probability of 0.03 (3%) corresponds to 2.8% of the respondents, who are willing to wait for marriage proposals indefinitely. In this group, there are those who would like to get married and are willing to wait for an indefinite period of time, and a certain percentage of those women from the Indian diaspora in the EU, who do not have any wish for marriage. The data obtained allow to suggest that approximately 3% of women in Indian diaspora, that live in civil partnerships and do not care about the family, may wait for marriage offers at an undefined time in the future. The fade of probability of marriage from the maximum that is reached at around one year to the minimum occurs by a combined power-exponential function (a Weibull function). In reality it means that the decline is rapid. Even after three years of trial cohabitation in modern Indian diaspora in the EU, the chance to marry the man with whom a woman cohabits is less than 1/5 (about 20 out of 100), and after five years of cohabitation only 5% of women (5 out of 100 cases of civil partnerships). Let us turn to an East European example. Table 3.3 provides values of the probability of marriage depending on the cohabitation duration for Poland. Figure 3.3 demonstrates the probability of marriage with logarithmic time axis. The plot shows the strongly stretched left shoulder, i.e. it is more bell-shaped than for the Indian diaspora, and therefore, the peak is symmetrical on a plot with linear time axis. The plot in linear coordinates and its approximation is shown in Fig. 3.4. The quality of approximation in this case can be estimated as follows: • χ dim. 2 = 0.0021 and • Radj. 2 = 0.91420. The quality of approximation of for Poland by a Weibull function is worse than for the Indian diasporain the EU. Moreover, it should be noted that to achieve this level of approximation the Weibull function had to be multiplied by the correction factor 1.38, i.e. in fact, we do not approximate by a true Weibull function, but by a modified pseudo-Weibull function. Approximating function is as follows: pmarriage_Poland = 0.35 + 0.14(t − 0.20)0.83 e−(

) .

t−0.20 1.83 7.08

or in canonical form: 

pmarriage_Poland

  1.83 t − 0.20 1.83−1 −( t−0.20 )1.83 = 1.38 × 0.25 + e 2×3.54 . 3.54 2 × 3.54

the individual error parameters are presented in Table 3.4. If we compare the dependencies for the Indian diaspora and Poland, we can come to several observations:

0.1 27

Duration of cohabitation (years)

Probability of entering into marriage (%)

33

0.25 40

0.5 53

0.75 55

1 62

1.5 63

2 64

2.5 63

3

60

4

54

5

48

6

39

7

Table 3.3 Probability of marriage, depending on the duration of the trial cohabitation, for respondents of title nationality from Poland 36

8

31

9

33

10

38 3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

Calculation Routine

39

Fig. 3.3 The estimated probability of a couple’s entering into marriage, depending on the duration of “trial” pre-marital cohabitation. The respondents are Polish women living in Poland. Time scale is logarithmic

Fig. 3.4 The estimated probability of a couple’s entering into marriage, depending on the duration of the “trial” cohabitation. The respondents are Polish women living in Poland Table 3.4 Individual coefficients and error of the approximation by a Weibull function. Respondents are from Poland. Significance level is 0.05 Basic level p0

Expansion a

Peak shape b

Displacement u

0.25 ± 0.04

3.54 ± 0.06

1.83 ± 0.07

0.20 ± 0.08

40

(1) (2) (3) (4)

3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

the base level of probability of marriage for Poland is higher than for the Indian diaspora in the EU (0.35 against 0.03 for Russian); the expansion of approximating function a is almost 2 times higher (3.54 for Poland vs. 1.80 for the Indian diaspora); the peak shape is slightly higher (1.83 vs. 1.53 for the Indian diaspora); the displacement is almost the same (0.20 and 0.19).

The base level is the vertical level of the plots. To understand the meaning of the base level is easy enough. It is the value of the approximating function when either the time is equal to the displacement u, or when the time is very long (over 10 years). The plot for Poland is located in higher probabilities, i.e. our data suggest that the probability of marriage, regardless of the trial period of cohabitation, in Poland is higher than in the Indian diaspora in the EU. The maximal value of the probability of marriage for Poland is achieved when the duration of cohabitation is 2.5 years and it is almost equal to 2/3, while the maximum value for the Indian diaspora is achieved when the length of cohabitation is one year and it is less than 0.5. This means that in Poland, two of the three cohabitations have a chance to end in marriage, if the marriage is concluded around 2.5 years of co-existence. In the Indian diaspora the marriage can be concluded in around 2 of 5 cases after one year-long cohabitation, and in only 1 out of 5 cohabitations after 2.5 years. This demonstrates that in the modern Indian diaspora living in the EU the social institute of marriage is in greater danger than in the Polish society. The expansion of Weibull function a is a parameter that affects the peak width. The higher the expansion, the greater “vagueness” of the peak. The peak for Poland is about twice wider. This means that for Poland the right shoulder of the approximating function is lighter than for the Indian diaspora, i.e. the plot is more stretched towards higher time values of the co-existence. The peak shape b characterizes the kind of peak. The closer to 1 the value of b, the more the peak resembles a burst wave. When the peak shape is 1 or less, the peak represents a very sharp rise (left arm) and long damped fade. If b is equal to 2, the peak has a smoother rise and smoother descent. If b is equal to 3, the peak is almost symmetrical and it is almost an exponential extremum. For values of b larger than 3 the peak receives an inverted form, i.e. the rise (left shoulder) becomes smooth, and but the fade (right shoulder) steep. The higher the value b, the higher and righter the peak. For Poland this parameter is 1.83 versus 1.53 for the Indian diaspora. This difference in the parameters of approximating function for Poland and the Indian diaspora is not difficult to explain. The Polish society began to accept neoliberal gender behavioural patterns before the Indian diaspora. People got accustomed to the standard of unregistered co-existence (often without having children), with the idea of marriage still important for both societies and not fully rejected. During long cohabitation, the probability of entering into marriage is still high for both Poland and the Indian diaspora. After ten years, the value is approximately 35%, i.e. about 1/3 of the pairs living together potentially register their relationship (broad peak, and decline smooth). For the Indian diaspora the 10-year period of cohabitation corresponds to 0.6% of marriages, i.e. it is a negligibly small value.

Calculation Routine

41

All this leads to the conclusion that, in general, in the Indian diaspora the social institution of marriage is in a state of crisis deeper than in Poland, although the neoliberal patterns of gender behaviour penetrated the Indian society later than the Polish one. In the Polish society, the appropriation of neoliberal norms and demographic behavioural patterns started earlier than in the Indian diaspora. However, the Polish society is strongly influenced by Roman Catholicism and, therefore, it could find more or less stable norms of gender behaviour, non-destructive (or, at least, not as destructive) towards classic marriage. In the Indian society living in diaspora, however, no such models are still developed. Most cohabiting couples break up, and trial cohabitation do not lead to marriage. Separate data have been collected for the Chinese diaspora, Muslim diaspora, Germany and Sweden in order to build such dependencies, as is done for Poland and the Indian diaspora. In order to achieve a significance level of 0.05 in Sweden it was enough to get and process 450 questionnaires, in Germany 620, in different Muslim diasporas 5,800 profiles, and in the Chinese diaspora 5,300 profiles (the number obtained a posteriori in an iterative way: at first 500 profiles have been received and processed for every society, and later, after finding amounts of profiles corresponding to each age interval, and taking into account (1) the significance level of 0.05 and (2) the approximate number of acceptable profiles corresponding to the transformed model of gender behaviour, for each age interval, the necessary quantities of profiles for each country were estimated separately). Figure 3.5 shows the dependence of the probability of marriage for the Chinese diaspora.

Fig. 3.5 The estimated probability of a couple’s entering into marriage, depending on the duration of “trial” pre-marital cohabitation. The respondents belong to the Chinese diaspora in the EU. Time scale is logarithmic

42

3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

Fig. 3.6 The estimated probability of a couple’s entering into marriage, depending on the duration of the “trial” cohabitation. The respondents belong to the Chinese diaspora

The right shoulder is well approximated by a straight line. That means the fade close to exponential (Fig. 3.6). The quality of the Weibull approximation for the Chinese diaspora can be estimated from the following: • χ dim. 2 = 0.0039 and • Radj. 2 = 0.82647. Approximating function for the Chinese diaspora is as follows: pmarriage_Chinese_diaspora = 0.024 +

0.014 t−0.10 0.79 e−( 10.56 ) . 0.21 (t − 0.10)

or in canonical form: pmarriage_Chinese_diaspora

  0.79 t − 0.10 0.79−1 −( t−0.10 )0.79 = 0.024 + e 2×5.28 . 5.28 2 × 5.28

The individual error parameters are presented in Table 3.5. Table 3.5 Individual coefficients and error of the approximation by a Weibull function. Respondents are from the Chinese diaspora. Significance level is 0.05 Basic level p0

Expansion a

Peak shape b

Displacement u

0.024 ± 0,010

5.28 ± 2.73

0.79 ± 0.15

0.10 ± 0.06

Calculation Routine

43

The approximation results for the individual parameters are significantly worse than for Poland or Indian diaspora; sometimes they reach half of the module, in spite of a much larger number of processed questionnaires. How can this be explained? I believe that the individual variation in the responses of the Chinese and Muslim respondents is quite large. The “trial partnership” gender behaviour is unusual for contemporary Chinese and Muslim societies, while for Poland or Indian society it is more common. The accumulation of substantial individual variation in the responses leads to accumulating the error and the relationship starts to be poorly approximated by a continuous and smooth exponential function. For the Chinese diaspora and the set of Muslim diasporas in the EU the Weibull function is different from the approximation for Poland, Germany, Sweden or Indian diaspora. This type of dependence may be an example of the initial stage of transforming gender behavioural patterns, i.e. the very first stage of the destruction of the traditional views on the institution of marriage and the transition to a Western neoliberal type of relationship. Table 3.6 summarizes the parameters. For the Chinese diaspora and different Muslim diasporas peak shape b is low (0.79 and 0.65). That leads to a sharp extremum, which is in the neighbourhood of the approximating function loses its sense. Here we have an exponentially-hyperbolic decline, not a wave. In reality the dependence does not have pricked points, but the dependence means that near the maximum of probability the values become unreliable, while the maximum probability may be any value between 0.15 and 0.45. To calculate this value with reasonable accuracy at a significance level of 0.05 is impossible. On average, it may span from 1/8 to 1/2. It is significantly less than the maximum probability for the Indian diaspora. It turns out, that 1 of 2 possible marriages (a more positive scenario) to 7 of 8 possible marriages (a worse scenario) in the Chinese diaspora may not be entered into, if in their gender behaviour couples follow the Western standard and do not follow own Confucian cultural traditions. The large value of the expansion a (5.28 and 5.76 for Chinese diaspora and Muslim diasporas) is not sufficient to compensate for the very rapid decay of the functions at time values larger than the extreme value. After one year of cohabitation, the probability of marriage does not exceed 17% and 6% for the Chinese diaspora and Muslim diasporas, respectively. The analysis of the probability of marriage on the duration of “trial” partnership for the Chinese and Muslim diasporas in the EU shows the following: Table 3.6 Individual values of the coefficients and the Weibull function approximation error for the respondents from Chinese diaspora, Muslim diasporas, Germany and Sweden. The significance level is 0.05 Society

Basic level p0

Chinese diaspora

0.024 ± 0.010

Different Muslim diasporas 0.0065 ± 0.0030 Germany

0.14 ± 0.03

Sweden

0.015 ± 0.005

Expansion a

Peak shape b Displacement u

5.28 ± 2.73 0.79 ± 0.15

0.10 ± 0.06

5.76 ± 2.41 0.65 ± 0.24

0.25 ± 0.08

4.66 ± 0.15 1.97 ± 0.42

0.15 ± 0.05

14.78 ± 1.16 4.96 ± 0.34

−0.50 ± 0.04

44

(1)

(2) (3)

3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

the stability of the Chinese and Muslim traditionalism in the marriage behaviour of people, lack of desire of the Chinese and Muslim societies to follow the Western models in contrast to the Indian diaspora, where some Western norms of gender behaviour are already accepted; incompatibility of the globalization-vectored EU’s gender ideology with the cultural and religious traditionalism; social rejection and condemnation of those couples in diasporas that chose the Western models for their gender behaviour.

Finally, I present data for Sweden and Germany. The Swedish society is very significant, as it can be considered the most neoliberal society in the whole EU. The plot in logarithmic coordinates (Fig. 3.7) straight line and sharp increase, approaching the mark of ten years. Building in linear coordinates and approximating by a Weibull function give results that confirm the smooth exponential growth from 5 to 10 years of cohabitation. This dependence is different from all the others. It has been suggested that the possibility cannot grow up to 100%, which means that depending on the maximum should be. It took a certain amount of additional data for Sweden to reach the level of significance of 0.05 for time values greater than 10 years. Figure 3.8 shows dependence and approximating function for a period of less than 10 years, and Fig. 3.9 for the full time period of 20 years. As one can see, our assumption that a maximum for values of t larger than 10 years, was just. For Sweden, the maximum was observed at about 14 years of cohabitation, followed by a sharp decline (right shoulder). Calculation in OriginPro 8.1 software gives the following indicators of approximation quality:

Fig. 3.7 The estimated probability of a couple’s entering into marriage, depending on the duration of “trial” pre-marital cohabitation. The respondents are from Sweden. Time scale is logarithmic

Calculation Routine

45

Fig. 3.8 The estimated probability of a couple’s entering into marriage, depending on the duration of the “trial” cohabitation for Sweden (up to 10 years)

Fig. 3.9 The estimated probability of a couple’s entering into marriage, depending on the duration of the “trial” cohabitation for Sweden (up to 20 years)

• χ dim. 2 = 0.0033 and • Radj. 2 = 0.88150, which corresponds to acceptable approximation results. Approximating function constructed for Sweden is as follows: pmarriage_Sweden = 0.022 + 7.18 · 10−7 (t + 0.50)3.96 e−( 29.56 ) . t+0.50 4.96

46

3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

Fig. 3.10 The calculated probability of marriage for the societies studied

or in canonical form: 

pmarriage_Sweden

  4.96 t + 0.50 4.96−1 −( t+0.50 )4.96 = 1.43 × 0.015 + e 2×14.78 . 14.78 2 × 14.78

We see that for the Swedish society the maximum probability of marriage is achieved in about 14 years of living together and the value is about 20%. Figure 3.10 demonstrates the assembled picture for all the societies studied.

Using Assisted Reproduction Technologies as a Gender Behavioural Pattern Surrogacy is an assisted reproductive technology (ART) that is being used in modern societies more an more. I put forward a hypothesis that the use of surrogacy can become a widespread pattern of gender behaviour, and thereby it becomes akin to the child-free model of demographic behaviour. A simple sociological survey was conducted with the use of questionnaire. The audience of respondents was made up of adult women of fertile age (18–40 years old). The survey was conducted separately in Denmark, Russian (non-EU state, used for comparison), Sweden, and the United Kingdom in 2012–2015, for title nationalities and members of Indian, Chinese, Muslim and Buddhist diasporas. The number of respondents was at least 250 for each society. The survey was conducted at rail stations and airport terminals. It is a pilot poll. The questionnaire contained there questions:

Using Assisted Reproduction Technologies as a Gender …

47

Question 1. Would you agree to use surrogacy services if you had problems with pregnancy? YES/NO. Question 2. Would you agree to use the services of surrogate motherhood just not to experience for professional/comfort considerations? YES/NO. Question 3. Are you ready to become a child-free woman, i.e. are you ready to refuse future childbirth deliberately and permanently? YES/NO. Figure 3.11 shows the results. We may make several conclusions from the figure. 1.

2.

3.

The level of use and willingness to use surrogacy technologies, as well as the propensity of women towards child-free models of demographic behaviour in title European nationalities is several times (approximately 3 to 9 times) higher than in diasporas. The greatest readiness to resort to surrogacy in case of health problems was found for the Swedish society (82–92% of the respondents). The greatest desire to become child-free women was in Denmark (39%). The least desire to use surrogacy is observed among the members of Buddhist Indian diasporas (only 8% of the respondents). This can be explained by the fact that in Buddhism, this technology and all the accompanying medical infrastructure are dubious from the viewpoint of religion. The least desire to switch to a child-free model of demographic behaviour is observed in the Indian (Hindu, Jain, Parsee) and Muslim diasporas (complete absence—0 respondents out of more than 250 in both cases).

Fig. 3.11 Readiness of fertile women to use surrogacy or become child-free

48

3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

4.

As expected a priori, before the survey, ARTs, surrogacy in particular, are involved in the discourse of neoliberalism and can become socio-medical tools for transforming demographic preferences and plans of people. We see that along with the willingness of women to use surrogate technologies in cases when they are motivated by the inability to bear children or problems with bearing and childbirth, another tendency is observed. It is associated with the desire and readiness to resort to the services of surrogate mothers by those women who, having biological and medical ability for the birth of a child, nevertheless do not want to take such a step. They do it mainly for professional or comfort reasons. Russia is in an intermediate position between countries of both types. 38%, i.e. more than a third of the women surveyed are ready to use surrogate technologies in case of impossibility for various medical reasons to give birth to a child themselves. The level of popularity of child-free behaviour in Russia is much higher than in ethnic/religious diasporas living in the EU and is close to that in Great Britain. 18.5%, i.e. almost 1/5 of Russian respondents are ready to become child-free women. This can be explained by the fact that in Russian society, people for the most part do not yet really understand the specifics of ARTs. In the Indian diaspora, during the survey period, there was a rather high level of willingness to resort to surrogacy (22%), but a very low level of desire to use surrogacy to avoid pregnancy and childbirth deliberately (only 2%). The level of popularity of the child-free model is 0. This can be explained by the fact that at the time of the survey, India was practically the world’s leading “factory of surrogacy.” However, in 2018, surrogacy was allowed only for Indian nationals. In the PRC, surrogate motherhood is not prohibited, but it is not regulated by law, which is somehow reflected by the results of a survey of the Chinese respondents living in the EU (15% are ready to use surrogate technologies in the case of medical indicators). The child-free model is extremely unpopular in the Chinese diaspora (1.5% of the respondents). In Muslim diasporas, some women become surrogate mothers. They relocate to their home countries and participate in surrogacy contracts. However, Muslim culture forbids becoming customers for surrogate technologies, and even more so using them for cases of demographic behaviour similar to the child-free scenario. The popularity level of the child-free model is 0.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

Neo-Liberal Gender Behavioural Models in EU’s Title …

49

Neo-Liberal Gender Behavioural Models in EU’s Title Nationalities and Diasporas In order to identify and describe several contemporary changes in gender behavior patterns, a sociological study was conducted. The audience of respondents was made up of women aged 18–40 years, i.e. middle-aged fertile women with or without children. The type of research was surveying with questionnaire. The time was 2014– 2019. The societies studies were the Swedes, French, Chinese diaspora, Indian diaspora, and different Muslim diasporas living in the EU. The number of respondents was selected so that after the rejection of spoiled questionnaires, there were approximately 1,000 questionnaires suitable for processing per society. The total number of questionnaires was 5,836. The total number of questionnaires suitable for processing was 5,208, i.e. 89% of the total number. The venues of performing the survey were railway stations and airport terminals. The composition of the questionnaire was as follows: Question 1. Do you perceive yourself as a child? YES/NO. Question 2. Do you think that a trial cohabitation of partners is necessary before marriage? If so, about how long? NO/YES: ____________________________________ months/years. Question 3. What is your preferred age for marriage (if you are not married): _______ or the age when you got married? ______. Question 4. What is your preferred age for having your first child (if you are not a mother yet) _______ or the age at which you gave birth to your firstborn child? ______. Question 5. Do you think that it is ever necessary to register a relationship with a partner officially? NO/YES. The results are shown in Fig. 3.12. As we can see, the responses of the French and Swedish audiences resemble each other to a considerable degree. The responses of members of Muslim and Chinese diasporas differ from them significantly. The responses of the Indian diaspora are in between. Although the society of Indian diaspora may be regarded more traditional than the title EU’s “Western” nationalities, it is currently strongly influenced by the social, economic and cultural influence of the title nationalities. This explains the higher rates than for the Chinese or Muslim diasporas. Figure 3.13 demonstrates the dependence of the preferable period of premarital trial cohabitation on the age of the respondents for Sweden and the Indian diaspora. Figure 3.14 shows age distribution of women psychologically regarding themselves infantile. The analysis indicates that the level of infantilism among the Indian women up to 35 years old is extremely high, and this figure is statistically indistinguishable among women 34 and 24 years. Given the average value of the minimum age threshold for the onset of fertility 13.5 years, it can be assumed that the difference between biological

50

3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

Fig. 3.12 Demographic expectations and markers of demographic behaviour of women aged 18– 40 years in the given societies

Neo-Liberal Gender Behavioural Models in EU’s Title …

51

Fig. 3.13 The ideal duration of a trial pre-marital co-habitation disclosed by the respondents from the Swedish society and the Indian diaspora in the EU, depending on their age

52

3 Classical Social Institute of Marriage and New Types …

Fig. 3.14 The subjective feeling of infantilism (identification of oneself with a child) of the Indian female respondents living in the EU

maturation and psychological readiness for adult life (psychological maturation) of women in Indian diaspora is more than 20 years, and between age and psychological readiness for adult life about 17 years. The socio-psychological model of behaviour associated with infantilism often include the involvement of women in the culture of nightclubs, karaoke, striptease bars, as well as the reluctance of many Indian women to follow the traditional gender behavioural patterns that they must have abidden by if they lived in India.

Conclusions The dependence of the probability of marriage on the duration of cohabitation has universally Weibull or at least pseudo-Weibull character (in the extreme case exponential-hyperbolic decline). What does this mean? Weibull function generally describes probability of population survival in an environment, failure of the weakest link in the chain in electrical engineering, in extreme value theory in mathematical analysis, mechanical resistance, etc. Collective behaviour described by the Weibull function, testifies the similarity of gender behaviour of the human population with mating behaviour of populations of many gregarious creatures such as deers, gulls, fulmars, or swallows (Sornette 2004: 336–337). In fact, the transformation in the collective understanding of marriage, in which it is regarded not as one of the major social institutions, but as a social

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rudiment,1 brings behaviour of a group to the logic of naturalism. And this logic opens the way for potentially effective social management of the collective unconscious through gender patterns of behaviour. The EU’s gender ideology is built upon the assumption that Western behavioural patterns must become global. That assumption may cost much to the stability of the EU. By examining Fig. 3.10, it is possible to trace the evolution and dynamics of the gender behaviour in different societies. There is no unity across the EU and West Europe differs from East Europe considerably (the attitude towards marriage is quite different in Germany/Sweden and Poland). The societies studied may be arranged in the row of accepting the neoliberal models of behaviour: Muslim diasporas → Chinese diaspora → Poland → Indian diaspora → Germany → Sweden). In the West, it became common that marriage is preceded by a “trial” cohabitation. For some people, there is even substitution of marriage with the ever-lasting cohabitation, i.e. these persons opt not to engage in marriage throughout their lives and this does not seem strange in Western Europe. However, in such more traditional societies as the Polish one or Asian-African diasporas marriage is still considered as a social norm of gender behaviour. Building the EU’s gender equality programme around the indifference towards marriage may create two types of internal borders in the EU that would prevent processes of euro-integration: (1) Western—Eastern members of the EU; and (2) EU—Asian-African diasporas that mainly correspond to circles of Muslim, Confucian and Hindu believers.

References Bernatonite, A.K. 2017. The semantics of family members images in their relationships with a guest in the script and P. P. Pasolini’s movie ‘theorem’. Praxema. Journal of Visual Semiotics 2(12): 125–145. Calvo, J.M.Z. 2018. The Christ-Logos question in Amelius. Schole. Ancient Philosophy and Classical Tradition. 12 (2): 365–379. Chew, P.G. n. d. Blazing a trail: the fight for women’s rights in Singapore. Biblioasia. http://www. nlb.gov.sg/biblioasia/2018/10/16/blazing-a-trail-the-fight-for-womens-rights-in-singapore/#sth ash.ePhCvUWb.dpbs. Dillon, J. 2017. Paideia Platonikê: Does the later Platonist programme of education retain any validity today? Schole Ancient Philosophy and Classical Tradition 11 (2): 321–332. Donskikh, O.A. 2018. Splitting concepts: Steps of reflection. Schole. Journal of Visual Semiotics 12(2): 402–425. Katerny, I.V. 2019. Gender-sexual transmobility as a normative challenge in a posthuman world. Tomsk State University Journal of Philosophy. Sociology and Political Science 48: 112–125. Kernberg, O. 1998. Love relations. Normality and pathology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Khitruk, E.B. 2017. ’Masculine question’ in the Art of Andrey Tarkovsky. Praxema. 4 (2): 146–154. https://doi.org/10.23951/2312-7899-2017-2-146-154.

1

In common parlance, this corresponds to the stereotype of “marriage is just a stamp in the passport.”.

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Klyotsina, I.S. 2009. Paternity in analytical approaches to the study of masculinity. Woman in Russian Society 3: 29–41. Klyotsina, I.S. 2013. The current state and prospects of research of gender relations in the field of sociological and psychological knowledge. Woman in Russian Society 2 (67): 3–13. Kravchenko, S.A. 2018. The development of non-linear knowledge: New risks, vulnerabilities, and hopes. RUDN Journal of Sociology 18 (2): 195–207. Malinova, A.G. 2017. Family law and pseudo-gender ideology. Electronic Annex to the Russian Legal Journal 4: 102–110. Mokhovaya, T.A. 2015. The origins and trends of family and marriage: the evolution of family and marriage relations. Polytopic Network Electronic Scientific Journal of the Kuban State Agrarian University (Scientific Journal Kubgau) 8 (112): 1793–1803. http://www.ej.kubagro.ru/2015/08/ pdf/130.pdf. Murtazina, L.R. 2011. Legitimating “civil marriage” in public opinion as a new phenomenon of Russian society. Teoriya i Praktika Obshchestvennogo Razvitiya 4: 68–71. Noskova, A.V. 2013a. Evolution of family policy in Europe: Changing problems, priorities and practices. Bulletin of MGIMO University 4 (31): 291–301. Noskova, A.V. 2013b. Family in the face of challenges of the globalizing world. Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniia 5 (349): 147–149. Noskova, A.V. 2014. Family policy in Europe: Evolution of models, discourses, practices. Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniia 5 (361): 56–67. Protopopova, I., and Garadja, A. 2018. Reading a woman (Rep. 454d). Schole Ancient Philosophy and Classical Tradition 12(2): 426–432. Sinelnikov, A.B. 2015. Matrimony, fatherhood and motherhood in Russian society. Sotsiologicheskiy Zhurnal. 21 (4): 132–148. Sinelnikov, A.B. 2016. Is there an alternative to legal marriage? Bulletin of Moscow University. Series 18 Sociology and Political Science 3: 109–126. Sinelnikov, A.B. 2018a. Family and marriage: Crisis or modernization. Sotsiologicheskiy Zhurnal. 24 (1): 95–113. Sinelnikov, A.B. 2018b. Family values as a goal in life for legal spouses and cohabitants. Narodonaselenie. 21 (2): 46–59. Sornette, D. 2004. Critical phenomena in natural sciences: Chaos, fractals, selforganization and disorder: Concepts and tools. Berlin: Springer.

Chapter 4

Gender Extimity as a Psychological Technique of EU’s Democratizing Its Population: Efforts and Reaction of Diasporas

Abstract The EU’s “gender equality programme” is built upon the right of every human to be ever free in his/her choices of gender/sexual behaviour. That is commendable and liberal but not every society is ready to accept such an approach. Traditional societies of diasporas mainly reject this equality, as the members of diasporas are afraid that it may destroy the classical social institutes of family and marriage. In the chapter, I introduce the concept of gender social extimity. It is related to the psychoanalytical extimity described by Jacques Lacan and JacquesAllain Miller as a part of psychological triangle Intimacy–Extimity–Self-esteem. Then I study media industry of entertainment as two powerful means of distributing gender behavioural models typical for extimity. In my research of US, European, Chinese and Indian cinema of the last fifty years I analyze the evolution of standards of neo-liberal gender behavioural patterns that were coined in cinematography. The concept of gender social extimity may help to understand the results of incongruence of the Western title nationalities and Asian/African ethnic diasporas in relation to marriage and classical family.

Introduction Today’s “gender equality programme” of the European Union tries to address new, post-familial type of personal relationships, when the traditional social institution of family finds itself in a state of crisis and many European couples already reject it as rudimentary (Rebreyend 2014). Here I have no intention to discuss whether it is good or bad. In this chapter, I focus on some basic peculiarities of how the EU’s gender equality programme addresses the new type of relationships so popular in title European nationalities (especially in Western Europe) and how it fails to incorporate familial relationships that is still strong in Muslim, Confucian and Hindu diasporas. In these diasporas, even now, in the 2020s, the family continues to be primarily classic (Goodman and Schimmelfennig 2020). According to Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory, gender intimacy in the post-familial era becomes so-called gender “extimity” (Lacan 2006: 249–253). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_4

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Following Jean Baudrillard, it results from personal sphere’s transforming to the sphere of simulation practices, open and accessible to everybody (Baudrillard 1980: Chap. 1). In the chapter, I use the term “extimity” not quite in the Lacanian sense. In Jacques Lacan and Jacques-Alain Miller’s works, extimity is “the unconscious of the outside,” an intersubjective socio-psychological relationship that reflect personal intimate experiences (Lacan 2006: 255; Lacan 1977: 13; Miller 1986: 2–5, 47). In the original Lacanian sense, extimity is one of the vertices of the psychological triangle Extimity–Intimacy–Self-Esteem (Lacan 2006). I propose to use the term in a broader sense, as a set of social and political practices to involve intimate relationships in the realm of the gender equality programme. I shall demonstrate that it includes the scope visually accessible and deliberately demonstrated. I propose to understand how the love intimacy is transformed, being brought beyond the area of the Lacanian fundamental psychological triangle and immersed in the EU’s leading gender ideologies.

Female Accessibility as a Visual Token Many members of ethnic and religious diasporas living in the EU oppose the intervention of the EU’s gender equality programme in the area of female traditional clothing. That is often regarded as violation of religious and cultural heritage (Muxel 2015). I performed several expert interviews with high-rank representatives of religious communities in diasporas. On the basis of these interviews, I found that the fears about standardization of female clothing to the Western models are mainly caused by the belief that it is a synonym of nudity, vulgarity, and profanity by the most orthodox members of the diasporas. A slightly revised definition of the Lacanian term described above, becomes more understandable, if we remember that some of the famous ethnologists Claude LéviStrauss (Lévi-Strauss 2001), Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (Lévy-Bruhl 2010) and George Peter Murdock (Murdock 1965) point out in their works that among all the tribes and ethnic groups they have studied, even those with the most traditional way of lifeusually tend to hide the members’ nudity: Even in the jungles of central India, where some Indians devote themselves to naked occupations and philosophical studies and do not count clothes as a value (which is why they are called gymnosophists), it is customary to wear belts and loincloths, although all other parts of the body remain bare (Barry and Schlegel 1984: 322).

On the contrary, in contemporary “post-familial” Western societies that are taken as the standard for the EU’s gender equality programme, nudity is codified as a permanent simulacrum of sexuality (Baudrillard 1978). Due to the fact that after the Sexual Revolution, in the Western societies nudity is understood as a garment, it becomes a true simulacrum, which is a reference to a missing reality. This simulacrum is fully integrated into the symbolic system of the new “extimity,” not as a tool for arousal of sexual desire, but as a codified manifestation of achievements of the

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EU’s gender ideology. The logic is simple: if the traditional, familial way of life is strongly associated with modest behaviour, then nudity should represent sexual emancipation and uncontrolled intimate relationships. The Sexual Revolution of the 1970s was grounded upon it. Thus, we have an indirect semiotic chain “the family—the lifestyle—the dress style (or, respectively, the refusal of clothing).” Humanity has repeatedly faced the positioning of nudity as a cultural sign (Vincent 2002). One of the proofs may be the description of a number of pagan cults. Here the famous cults of the ancient times may be recalled: the Bacchanals of the Greeks, the Taoist Saturnalia, the Indian erotic cults, the Jewish “heights” in Topheth, the voodoo cult and other well-known examples (Lévi-Strauss 2002: Chap. 1). The best result of the symbolic use of nudity has been achieved by the gender equality ideology when nudity as the referent of democracy is opposed to traditional female clothes as symbol of authoritarianism.

Making Psychological Personality Transparent in Gender Equality Programme by Media In many contemporary media, as in the ancient pagan Roman temple of Celeste, symbolic space of post-familial intimacy is created. The very intimacy now becomes “extimity” and love relationships become the most appropriate basis for TV and billboard advertisement. The Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues that the social becomes absorbed by the private, the agora turns into oikos (Bauman 2001: Chap. 15), and reflects the transformation of social reality. In the sphere of intimate relationships, a double substitution of meaning occurs: first, the traditional structure of gender relationships in diasporas are questioned by the EU’s gender equality programme, and second, personal life ceases to be truly personal. It is exposed to public and involved in the area of social visualization (Baudrillard 1976: Chap. 1). In the gender equality ideology, the area of the personal enters the visual domain accessible to everybody. However, this visual domain is not the social in the traditional sense (Lacan 2012: 121). It is a pseudo-social intimacy that deprives a person the possibility of hiding himself or herself from prying eyes. THEY become dominate over I, reshaping MY identity. Already, it is not WE who desire, but THEY desire for US. Therefore, it is not WE who choose our gender preferences, because WE have been deprived of the right and possibility of loving according to our wishes (SacherMasoch 1960). The EU’s gender equality algorithm implies that someone will choose our partners for us. This intrusion in the traditional gender relationships characteristic for many diaspora members cannot be but rejected by them. It seems that we are making our own choice, but we do not realize that the choice is made under the influence of the mock intimacy created by means of media. In his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault notes that the structure of sexual desire is historically constructed with the help of social power and it is represented through the unconscious (Foucault 1994: 118). Our actions in the sphere of intimacy, according to him,

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are constructed by historical reality using discursive matrices, as is the social attitude towards madness (Foucault 1976: Chap. 4). These discourses do not multiply outside power relationships. Such “fuzzy” and decentralized social power is good to be reflected in and taught by media. In the end, this power transforms intimacy into extimity. The simulacra of this extimity are constructed anti-historically and infinitely. All sexual desire of the EU’s inhabitants becomes codified by means of the ideologically correct media; all desire is made almost entirely manageable and controlled. Our actions, affects, passions, emotions, gender preferences, behavioural patterns are “tamed” in advance by outside forces. Finally, we are offered a set of generalized and timeless “revelations” which educate us as for the structure of our sensuality and sexuality.

Industry of Entertainment and EU’s Gender Equality Programme If we want to hide from the eyes of others in the realm of our feelings and love experiences, then we are unlikely to be successful if we follow the new EU’s gender equality programme, because we will not be allowed to do so. The majority will be said to be our Big Brother (Huxley 2017). The very private sphere, which was traditionally opposed to the social or public sphere, in the contemporary situation, is becoming deliberately visualized. Let us remember in this context the Hollywood science fiction film The Circle (2017). The heroine played by Emma Watson, initiates a social reform of “full openness.” A video camera is placed on any person, which sends real-time images over the Internet of everything that happens to him or her. This social movement is reflected in the film as an unconditional good, which may help people to overcome their vices and diseases of society: crimes, injustice, lies, omission of information, scams and frauds. The antagonist played by Tom Hanks hides important information about the private lives of others from people. The message of the film (more than the message of the Dave Eggers’s novel on which the film is based), is the essence of the EU’s gender ideology. If all people will be involved in the sphere of extimity, they will cease to have their own personal space, inaccessible to others. This will help to build a truly democratical, just and healthy society in the borders of the EU. Video games also offer some instructive examples of the extimity’s use in the gender equality programme. In these video games, gender ideology comes to the forefront: a gamer MUST choose sexual orientation of his/her character in the game space and sexual preferences. To be representatives of non-traditional gender identities in the virtual gaming world becomes prestigious and profitable in terms of the game encouragement. The stereotype reproducible by game-creating media is also straightforward: there is no private space, closed from the eyes of the outsiders. We may observe the private life of the others, giving others the right to watch us. There

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are no more visual taboos and prohibitions, but the primacy of individual desire is codified as a part of social welfare. The situation in classical European music is described in Appendix B. The days are gone when a virtual hero from video games (console or PC-based) was just walking and shooting, now he or she loves too. Many players recognize that they are extremely excited by the prospect of experiencing new sexual orientation in the virtual world, which they cannot afford or are afraid of in the real world. Of course, simulated sexual intercourse in video games, just like in the gender equality programme, reproduces fragility of romantic relationships. If in a video game of the early 2000s, love scenes were not represented overtly, but disguised or rendered off-screen, now game developers offer animated videos to gamers. They are totally open and they leave no room for our imagination. Here we have the presence of the symbolic space of striptease, male and female nudity, as well as softcore and hardcore sex scenes in deep and meticulous detail (Baudrillard 1980: Chap. 1). In media that conveys the EU’s gender ideology, the stereoscopy and polyphony of semiotic pornography, with all the classic pornographic videos and audio attributes, becomes a “sign of quality.” Along with cinema and video game industry, a similar situation may be also traced on television in various TV talk shows. We are witnessing how the society transforms into the most powerful controlling force of our love preferences. Our feelings begin to be dictated to us by the fender ideology, our choice is made for us, our sexuality is codified and legalized in a number of prescriptions. Apparently, the rules are not obligatory for the execution, but at the same time, it is highly desirable in the new society that is deemed to transform once to a homogenous EU society. Some religious diaspora members begin to question such universal an ideology. Human has always had his “Holy of holies,” like the Jewish Covenant Tabernacle, i.e. his home, his alcove, his bed. Many diaspora members are accustomed to such status quo and it is clear why they treat new gender ideology as a threat. Several expert interviews helped me to detect constituents of this threat. Not only physiological relationships between a man and woman (or any other representatives of gender identities), but the whole sphere of privacy becomes imported into the visually open space, created with the help of media. Shattering motherhood as one of the main components of the family is also treated negatively by fundamentalist groups and orthodox believers. In his book De la seduction Jean Baudrillard argued that in our culture, in sexuality, we try to make everything be involved in the scope of desire (Baudrillard 1980: Chap. 5). Roland Barthes added that sexuality was present everywhere, but not where it should be; but where it should be, there was only the a mere illusion of desire (Barthes 1976: 138). In media, the idea is persistent that we have no image of privacy, and that we need to clarify everything in detail, to “compartmentalize” everything in the private space.

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Extimity as an Instrument Around 78% of 5,630 French, German, Italian and Scandinavian men surveyed preferred their partners to have an intimate relationship before them, and around 40% of male respondents said that they will have no objections if their partner has another partner (partners) next to them. In the Muslim, Confucian and Hindu diasporas, of 5,864 men only 0.3% gave the similar response. Many Westerners perceive men and women that did not have previous relationships as “cold,” “inexperienced,” “frigid,” and “inaccessible.” In the 2010s, sociologists found that about 70% of relationships broke down because of women’s insistent demands for marriage, which men rejected (Bendriss 2014: 247–250). In the Western Europe that is taken as a standard for the gender equality programme, we can now observe the intensification of using extimity (Vincent 2002: Chaps. 1.8 and 1.9). In his book Transformation of Intimacy Anthony Giddens remains silent on the incredible personal indeterminacy of contemporary intimacy. Not man, not woman, but a partner for a date, whom we even may not respect—that situation is the situation of extimity. Only gender identity and sexual preferences play role. As a classics remark, true love always has a dark shadow following it all the time, jealousy; and the more a person loves, the more jealous he or she becomes (Giddens 1993: 142). But jealousy can be easily eliminated by extimity as an instrument of social control. According to Lacan, a sign of classical intimacy is recognizing oneself in the Other (Lacan 2006). Mladen Dolar noted that in true intimacy there is always the discourse of the first meeting: “life had no meaning before, but now a person suddenly finds it” (Dolar 1996a: 134), “a fortuitous encounter has miraculous consequences, it becomes a fundamental moment, which can completely change the person” (Dolar 1996b: 132). In extimity as an ideological instrument, such recognition of individuality is impossible, therefore, the understanding of love in the traditional sense is also denied, while the existence of jealousy is problematized. Jealousy, as the English psychoanalyst Dinora Pines noted, may be recognized as a value only in sacrificing love (Pines 2010: 43, 74–76). An example of gender social extimity before our times is the European cultural tradition of courtly love (Appendix C). An important peculiarity of post-familial extimity is its core instability. For centuries people have sought firm and stable marital relations, but now the situation is fundamentally different, as we wilfully pay the price of this determinism of intimate relationships to have the opportunity to stop them at any time. A. Giddens calls it “runaway intimacy” (Giddens 2002) but in fact he writes about extimity. In new gender relationships, we desire, we receive and give pleasure, but we give up mutual obligations and, therefore, persistence, jealousy, strength and stability of relationships. The science fiction film Zoe (2018) describes the image of our society in which there is total anomie, which arose from psychological dissatisfaction of totally unstable love relationships. In this film humanity seeks solace in the creation of humanoid robots that can serve as psychological (see, e.g., Lecercle 1997: 91 and then) and sexual partners who will never leave a person and will not betray. This

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is probably more than the creation of sex toys; people, in the form of domesticated robots, compensate for deficiencies of new extimity.

Cinema as a Means of Spreading Extimity I performed a content analysis of films produced in the USA, European countries, India and China. The films are completely dissimilar in genre classification. I analyzed the motion films (excluding TV series and television films) over the past 50 years. I come to a conclusion that cinema as a part of media is widely used for creating and broadcasting new gender models of behaviour specific for extimity. Besides, cinema transmits a stereotype of the crisis of marriage and family in the West. The movies made in the US and Europe prove this. In Indian and Chinese films there is a contrary tendency, marriage and family are ideologically shown as the most correct forms of demographic behaviour. For this reason, cinema can be considered an important media tool for the dissemination of new patterns of gender behaviour. As Felix Sharkov noted, “we live in an era when the value of data, images and ideologies exceeds the value of material acquisitions and physical space” (Sharkov 2018: 161). In cinematography, all three components of the discourse described by Felix Sharkov, are present: the data, images and ideologies. My content analysis of the films is designed to reveal the features of these components. The movies were selected in a random manner from the following genres: • • • • • • • • • •

drama, comedy, blockbuster, melodrama, thriller, science fiction/ fantasy, detective, historical film, disaster film, horror.

Three US, three European, one Indian and one Chinese films were selected per genre per year in the interval 1970–2019, with substitutions made if there was no film of a definite genre in a given year. The total number of the films analysed was 1,500 US films; 1,500 European films; 500 Indian films and 500 Chinese films. The results of the content analysis prove that, in contrast to the cinema of the Hays code era (mid-1930s–late 1960s), the modern Western cinema (since the 1970s) broadcasts the following gender behavioural stereotypes: (1)

weakening, destruction and meaninglessness of marriage (the main character is either divorced, or his marriage is in deep crisis);

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(2) (3)

(4)

(5) (6)

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crisis of family, understanding childbirth as a burden for personal and career growth (all kinds of existential and social problems); increase in societal inclination towards free intimacy unrelated to marriage (the heroes are in unregistered relationships, which is broadcast as a sociocultural norm); involvement of gender relations in the sphere of public and consciously visualized social discourse (public discussion by the heroes of their intimate life); increase in total gender tolerance (the emergence of heroes of non-traditional gender identities); negative, sometimes dismissive attitude towards religious gender prescriptions (cases of demonstrated negativism in relation to religious faith, religious organizations, rituals and traditions).

In the content analysis, each significant case of audio-visual demonstration of the points given in the list above was taken into account. The results of the content analysis are broken down by five-year segments and are shown in Figs. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6 separately for American and European films. The value of the indicator can be more than 250 in 5 years. I did not include Indian and Chinese movies in the plots, as in the interval discussed they did not contain cases described in the list.

Fig. 4.1 Formation of the cinematographic stereotype of meaninglessness and fragility of marriage in the Western societies. The figure shows the number of cases demonstrating the heroes in the divorce state or with desperate situations in marriage, or those which will inevitably lead to divorce

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Fig. 4.2 Formation of cinematographic stereotype of the uselessness of the family institute in the Western societies. The figure shows the number of cases that demonstrate the situations with family problems, and those that make it difficult to an hero’s career or personal development

Fig. 4.3 Formation of cinematographic stereotype of free intimacy in the Western societies. The figure shows the number of cases of demonstration of unregistered cohabitation characters (not just a one-off meetings and long coexistence)

The results obtained allow us to say that in the last 50 years in the US and European filmmaking studios there was a growing trend of sustaining and spreading extimity. There were no such trends in Indian and Chinese cinema up to now.

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Fig. 4.4 Formation of cinematographic stereotype of visual openness of intimate relationships (deconstruction of intimacy) in the Western societies. The figure shows the number of characters of the discussions of their personal, intimate life with strangers

Fig. 4.5 Formation of gender tolerance in Western cinema. The figure shows the number of primary and/or secondary characters with non-traditional sexual orientation revealed directly or indirectly

Extimity as Interpellation of Erotic Desire Transformation of intimacy to extimity leads to the situation where every minute trait of intimate life can become a topic for endless discussions in Internet chats and forums, on TV talk shows, and serve as a basis for shooting films. Cinema and video game production provides means for distributing extimity as a part of neoliberalism. These discussions are non-heuristic (Luhmann 2000: 71–75). The spectators who come to the show do not think of acquiring new knowledge (Rushkoff

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Fig. 4.6 Formation of cinematographic indifference to religious norms in gender relations and the negative attitude to religious organisations in the Western societies. The figure shows the number of situations creating an image of evil believers, clergy and religious organisations

2010: Chap. 7). Moreover, in the gender equality programme, women are ideologically taught to demand and receive their pleasure along with their independence of familial relationships. For this reason, extimity as an ideological vehicle of the EU’s new gender paradigm is destructive for both women and men in diasporas. The Western societies accept extimity for the most part positively (Van Hooff 2018). Pursuit for extimity may cause a situation where pleasure will take the form of urgent need, the first of all human rights. To contradict the principle of desire is not only becoming more and more ridiculous, but already almost politically incorrect. This pleasure is imposed as a permanent count, as a management of desire and control. This management cannot be simply ignored or refused. We must not forget, how Louis Althusser wrote about himself, that after the murder of his wife Hélène, he ran into the street and started calling the police, shouting at all passers-by, that it was he who was guilty, and that his conscience did not allow him to continue living with the burden of such guilt (Althusser 2007: 205 and then). This police call is a strange reversal of the interpellant reaction, which is described in his Ideology (Althusser 1970: 31–38). Without dwelling on the thinker’s biography and the significance of this episode in his later life, I stress the importance of his thoughts on the connection between feelings of guilt and the transformation of intimacy to extimity. What is happening in new post-familial extimity? Its ideological mechanisms force the person to live all the time in the state of feeling his or her “guilt” to the minorities and those who is discriminated.

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Conclusion The EU’s “gender equality programme” is built upon the right of every human to be ever free in his/her choices of gender/sexual behaviour. That is commendable and liberal but not every society is ready to accept such an approach. Traditional societies of diasporas mainly reject this equality, as the members of diasporas are afraid that it will destroy the classical social institute of family. Besides, there are many psychological fears. Uncertainty, the historic symbol of love, is eliminated if we accept extimity. As Jean Baudrillard said, no uncertainty, no mystery, no fog of true privacy, but everything is prescribed and written like for hopeless sick patients. The gender equality is associated with recorded desire and frenzied outpouring of physiological activity (Baudrillard 1980) by Muslims, Confucians and Hindu, to the less degree Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christian. Will this be love or its sham? Some Eastern Orthodox in the EU believe that a social situation is created on accepting extimity which resembles the prediction of the gospel of Jesus Christ: “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (Mt. 24:12). Mladen Dolar noted that the sign of true intimacy is “phonocentrism” (Dolar 1996a: 24). Extimity leads to logocentrism, the final victory of recorded pleasure over enigma and mystery of love. The imperative of extimity is: “Love faster and more, otherwise you will be left behind and you will be deprived of your piece of cake of universal pleasure!”. According to the remark of Slavoj Žižek, the fundamental principle of contemporary extimity is “the more you give, the more you owe,” or what is the same thing, “the more desire you have, the more you lack it” (Žižek 2000: 48–50). Žižek points out that in the space of the Wagner’s world Elsa cannot love Lohengrin, because he had revealed his name to her. He cannot love and she cannot love, when they have nothing to know about them and their feelings become known to all (Žižek 1996: 243). Likewise, the contemporary EU’s gender equality programme is mainly rejected by diaspora members, because when intimacy transforms to extimity, when the private sphere becomes the public sphere, when the individual does not have a place to hide from the eyes of the Other, classical love relationships are thwarted. This links extimity to Western-style consumerism and that is another psychological reason of rejecting the EU’s gender equality programme by religious diaspora members. After all, extimity is perhaps no other than an opposition to love, of which Shakespeare once said, My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite (Shakespeare 2018: act 2, scene 2).

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References Althusser, Louis Pierre. 1970. Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’État. La Pensée 151: 6–64. Althusser, Louis Pierre. 2007. L’avenir dure longtemps: Suivi de Les Faits. Paris: Stock. Barry, H., and A. Schlegel. 1984. Measurements of adolescent sexual behavior in the standard sample of societies. Ethnology 23: 315–329. Barthes, Roland. 1976. S/Z. Paris: Seuil. Baudrillard, Jean. 1976. L’échange symbolique et la mort. Paris: Gallimard. Baudrillard, Jean. 1978. Le système des objets. Paris: Gallimard. Baudrillard, Jean. 1980. De la seduction : L’horizon sacré des apparences. Paris: Galilée. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2001. The individualized society. Cambridge: Polity. Bendriss, Naïma. 2014. Les mariages forcés au Canada: une question en émergence. In Responsabilités et violences envers les femmes, edited by Katja Smedslund and David Risse. Montreal: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Dolar, Mladen. 1996a. At first sight. In Gaze and voice as love objects (Series: SIC 1), eds. Renata Saleci and Slavoj Žižek, 129–153. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Dolar, Mladen. 1996b. The object voice. In Gaze and voice as love objects (Series: SIC 1), eds. Renata Saleci and Slavoj Žižek, 7–31. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1976. Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, Michel. 1994. Histoire de la sexualité. Tome 1. Volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. Giddens, Anthony. 1993. The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love, and eroticism in modern societies. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Giddens, Anthony. 2002. Runaway world: How globalization is reshaping our lives. London: Routledge. Goodman, Sarah W., and Frank Schimmelfennig. 2020. Migration: A step too far for the contemporary global order? Journal of European Public Policy 27 (7): 1103–1113. https://doi.org/10. 1080/13501763.2019.1678664. Huxley, Aldous. 2017. Le meilleur des mondes. Paris: Pocket. Lacan, Jacques. 1977. Desire and the interpretation of desire in Hamlet. In Literature and psychoanalysis: The question of reading: Otherwise, 11–52. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lacan, Jacques. 2012. Le Séminaire, Livre VI : Le Désir et son interpretation. Paris: La Martinière. Lacan, Jacques. 2006. Le Séminaire, Livre XVI. : D’un autre à l’Autre. Paris: Seuil. Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. 1997. Frankenstein : Mythe et Philosophie, Presses Universitaires de France. Paris: Seuil. Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien. 2010. La mentalité primitive. Paris: Flammarion. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 2002. Les structures élémentaires de la parenté. Paris: De Gryuter Mouton. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 2001. Triste tropiques. Paris: Terre humaine. Luhmann, Niklas. 2000. The reality of the mass media. CambridgeL Polity. Miller, Jacques-Alain. 1985–1986. Extimité. Le Séminaire. Paris, sans l’éditeur. http://www.jonath anleroy.be/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/1985-1986-Extimit%C3%A9-JA-Miller.pdf. Muxel, Anne. 2015. Le pluralisme politique à l’épreuve de la vie privée : Entre normes et pratiques. Revue Française De Sociologie 56 (4): 735–769. Murdock, George Peter. 1965. Social structure. New York: Free Press. Pines, Dinora. 2010. A woman’s unconscious use of her body. Oxford: Routledge. Rebreyend, Anne-Claire. 2014. Les métamorphoses de l’intimité: Adultère, sentiment amoureux et conjugalité (1945–1960), Vingtième Siècle. Revue D’histoire 123: 117–128. Rushkoff, Douglas. 2010. Media virus! : Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture. New York. Sacher-Masoch, Leopold. 1960. Grausame Frauen. Bonn: Gerhard Dithmar. Shakespeare, William. 2018. Romeo and Juliet. London: Benediction Classics. Sharkov, Felix I., and V.A. Potapchuk. 2018. Mass culture and mass information within the space of modern media. Communicology 6 (3): 161.

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Hooff, Van, and Jenny. 2018. Modern couples?: Continuity and change in heterosexual relationships. London: Routledge. Vincent, Thierry. 2002. L’Indifférence des sexes: Critique psychanalytique de Bourdieu et de l’idée de domination masculine. Paris: Erès – Arcanes. Žižek, Slavoj. 2000. The fragile absolute: Or, why the Christian legacy is worth fighting For. New York: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj. 1996.There is no sexual relationship. In Gaze and voice as love objects (Series: SIC 1), eds. Renata Saleci and Slavoj Žižek, 208–250, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Part III

Creating and Modifying Gender Stereotypes

Chapter 5

Gender Communicative and Behavioural Stereotypes: Case of the Indian Diaspora in the EU

Abstract Gender behavioural and communicative stereotypes are important, as they make a “portrait” of a society. They demonstrate expectations of gender behaviour: of the same sex and the opposite sex. Traditional societies have gender behavioural stereotypes different from the West European ones, because their representative have different behavioural patterns. In this chapter, I focus on the investigation of gender communicative stereotypes in the Indian diaspora living in the EU. The audience was comprised by Indian students living and studying in European universities (18– 28 years). The hypothesis used in the chapter is that differences between gender behavioural stereotypes in the Indian diaspora and those of the West European societies are statistically significant. That may make the Indian diaspora as a traditional society different from the West European stereotypes. One may pay attention to the statistical similarity of gender communicative stereotypes of Indian student society in different countries (e.g. in the UK when it belonged to the EU and the continental part of EU). Additionally, the results obtained make one doubt a patriarchal sociological viewpoint expressed by some authors that the female subculture in traditional societies is secondary and historically derived from the male subculture. The most important thing is the difference in sets of gender stereotypes in the Indian diaspora and the West European title nationalities where these students were studying. If young population demonstrates considerable difference, then more aged part of the Indian diaspora will definitely demonstrate it. That means that despite strong cultural and social involvement of the Indian diaspora in the European societies, there is true variance in gender behavioural stereotypes between the EU’s title nationalities and members of diasporas.

Introduction Gender behavioural and communicative stereotypes are important, as they make a “portrait” of a society. They demonstrate expectation of gender behaviour: of the same sex and the opposite sex. Traditional societies have gender behavioural stereotypes different from the West European ones, because their representative have different © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_5

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behavioural patterns. Sociological works demonstrate that there are many distinct gender differences in behaviour (Ferguson 1987: 346; Irigaray 1984: 81; Kreidlin and Krongauz 1997: 25–28; Moltmann-Wendel 1991: 95–96). However, patterns and stereotypes of nonverbal gender communication are still poorly understood in modern sociological thought. There were some attempts to describe them in a qualitative way, but mostly without reliable statistical data (Grigoryeva et al. 2001; Kreidlin 2004, 2005; Wiener et al. 1972). In this chapter, I focus on the investigation of gender communicative stereotypes in the Indian diaspora living in the EU. The audience is comprised by Indian students living and studying in European universities (18–28 years). The hypothesis used in the chapter is that differences between gender behavioural stereotypes in the Indian diaspora and those of the West European societies are statistically significant. That may make the Indian diaspora as a traditional society different from the West European stereotypes (Bouchara 2021). The research methodology is sociological survey with preliminary pilot studies in small groups. The methodology was initially probated by me on the Russian audience in early 2010s (Sharov 2013a; 2013b). The survey was performed in writing, in groups of students, containing no more than 50 people in each group. Age range of respondents was from 18 to 28 years, i.e. the respondents formed a group of young people in the phase of active gender and social identification (for the majority of respondents before and at the start of professional activity). The filters of disposition, temper and social status were not applied. The social inclusiveness and equal abilities policy were ensured by an inclusion of disabled students. The sociological survey was carried out anonymously, without disclosing names or other identifying information. The questionnaire contained 26 questions about behavioural expectations for representatives of their own gender (to identify autostereotypes) and the opposite gender (to identify heterostereotypes). The questionnaire questions were composed on the basis of the pilot studies data analysis. Communicative and behavioural stereotypes can be divided into auto- (shared by their own group) and hetero- (shared by the other group) stereotypes. In our case, auto- and hetero-stereotypes refer to two genders. As noted by Olga Shaburova, The representation of certain gender images encodes them as gender stereotypes... and through showing, learning, repetition, control they are assimilated in the process of socialisation. Gender stereotypes set life paths and lifestyle standards (Shaburova 1998: 184).

The survey was performed in 2015–2019. It is interesting to note that in this study in some cases gender auto- and heterostereotypes are almost the same in relation to a particular gender, but in other cases they may be very different, which to some extent corresponds to the results obtained in some studies of this kind (Costa et al. 2001; Eagly 1995; Ufimtseva 1996; Wiener et al. 1972; Zuykova and Eruslanova 2004).

Sociological Study Description

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Sociological Study Description A socio-semiotic approach of Maksim Krongauz and Grigory Kreidlin was used as the theoretical foundation of the research (Kreidlin 2004, 2005; Kreidlin and Krongauz 1997). In this approach, the main sociological concepts of studying the gender communicative and behavioural stereotypes, are summarised. The practical methodology of the sociological research was composed in the form of a two-level combination of a pilot study and a sociological survey itself, including a method of measuring social attitudes. All components were carried out at different target audiences, which provides a higher degree of objectivity of the data. The methodological scheme of the analysis was as follows: 1.

2.

3.

4. 5.

1

Pilot studies. The identification of the most significant gender communicative and behavioural stereotypes was based on a survey of a small group (950 people in total). The pilot study demonstrated that there were no statistically significant differences between responses of Indian students studying in different EU member countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom1 ). Therefore, in the main study I combined all the target audiences together and treated the results as belonging to one set of data. The main survey and measurement of social attitudes. The study the opinions of the respondents (12,250 persons: 6,030 men and 6,220 women) was carried out based on the seven-point Likert scales constructed according to the pilot study results using the method of semantic differentials of Osgood (Yadov 1987: 102–105). The number of respondents. Why did I choose such number of respondents? This number was calculated theoretically as the minimum in order to obtain statistically significant difference for the selected confidence probability (95%) and the data array of 26 different groups (the questionnaires contained 26 questions), subject to the Student’s distribution, if it really existed, i.e. to minimise the confidence interval and, accordingly, the variance of the results. In the case of significant differences, we would be able to say that the numerical data obtained in the processing of the results (the values of the Likert functions) do or do not differ, and the matches/differences cannot be attributed just to the statistical error of the results. Audience composition. The survey was performed in writing, in student groups of no more than 50 people. High school students represented the target audience. Questionnaire composition. In the questionnaires, the respondents were asked to indicate their gender and age, which served as the basis for the subsequent division of stereotypes into auto- (group response about itself) and hetero- (group

The survey of British universities contained maximal number of Indian students (around 55%). The survey in the UK was performed in 2015–2016, i.e. before the Brexit.

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response about the other group) stereotypes. The survey was conducted anonymously, without collecting respondents’ names or other identifying information. The questionnaire contained 26 questions about behavioural expectations of members of their own gender and the opposite gender. The value of Likert function was an integer, enclosed in the range from −3 to + 3: −3 −2 −1 0 +1 +2 +3 ,

6.

with the boundaries of the band representing the ultimate values that correspond to semantic differentials. The respondents were asked to circle only one of the integer values within the specified interval, so the completed questionnaires were a matrix of a series of integers. The survey data were statistically processed. The confidence probability was 0.95. It is a standard level of probability for obtaining practically significant results.

Gender Communicative Stereotypes The results of the survey are excessive in figures and are not provided in the chapter in full. Anyone interested in the exact numbers or step-by-step methodology of conducting the survey, please contact the author via the e-mail address specified in the article, and I shall be glad to provide the received quantitative data in full. In the text of the chapter, I shall rather focus on the discussion of the results obtained in the survey. Below in the table, I am providing the main gender communicative and behavioural stereotypes that were proved in the survey to be indicative for understanding the gender fields of consciousness (Table 5.1).

Classifying the Stereotypes All analysed gender stereotypes are divided into three large groups. The first group. These are partially symmetrical stereotypes in which Indian women and men evaluate each other in an opposite manner and almost equally in the intensity of their opinion (the value of the Likert function sometimes tends to extreme values). In this group, there are several stereotypes: (1)

Tendency to a vain and idle chatter: Men with a high degree of belief think that the women is too talkative and says everything idly and out of business, while the women think neutrally about themselves.

Classifying the Stereotypes

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Table 5.1 The main gender communicative and behavioural stereotypes Stereotype/pattern

Semantic oppositions

1. Rationality

Inclination to logical thinking [+3]—the absence of inclination to emotional, affective, associative thinking [−3]

2. Spontaneity of feelings demonstration

Serene, judicious [+3]—affective, easily irritable [−3]

3. Tears and crying

Disposition to express emotions in tears [+3]—the absence of such a disposition [−3]

4. Communicative susceptibility

Less susceptible to resentment and other adverse effects [+3]—more susceptible to resentment and other adverse effects [−3]

5. Norm of linguistic behaviour

Eloquence, inclination to rhetoric [+3]—silence [−3]

6. Imperative of linguistic behaviour

The virtue is eloquence [+3]—the virtue is silence [−3]

7. Reaction to offence in a conversation

Active and an aggressive response to any offence [+3]—pliability, yielding behaviour [−3]

8. Attitude towards gossip

Gossip spreader [+3]—not inclined to transfer gossips [−3]

9. Chatter

Propensity towards vain and idle chatter [+3]—the absence of such a propensity [−3]

10. Expressiveness and psychologism of behaviour

Open and spontaneous expression of feelings in a conversation [+3]—restraint and reticence [−3]

11. Intuition, insight and sub-consciousness participation in communication

Predominance of intuition and insight [+3]—the predominance of scepticism in relation to the intuition [–3]

12. Visual attention to interlocutor

The prevalence of perception of visual codes [+3] – the prevalence of perception of speech, mimic and tactile codes [-3]

13. Propensity to self-assertion

Tendency to self-assertion [+3]—the absence of such a tendency [−3]

14. Social orientation in communication

The communicative attitude is more focused on socially significant problems [+3]—focused on individual, personal issues [−3]

15. Empathy

Propensity to solidarity and sympathy in a conversation [+3]—the absence of such a propensity [−3]

16. Demonstrations of suspicion

Inclination to shew suspicion [+3]—the absence of such an inclination [−3]

17. Tendency to spontaneous flirtation

Disposition to lure and seduce of simple interest [+3]—the absence of disposition to such a behaviour, the presence of more serious conduct, care about consequences [−3] (continued)

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Table 5.1 (continued) Stereotype/pattern

Semantic oppositions

18. Analysis of the situation

Inclination to realistically explain their failures [+3]—inclination to see just circumstances [−3]

19. Inclination to use gestures

Tendency to gesticulate in a communication [+3]—the absence of such a tendency to gestures [−3]

20. Tactile manifestation of feelings and emotions

Prone to tactile expressions of emotions and feelings [+3]—not inclined to such expressions [−3]

21. Common vigilance, watchfulness and suspiciousness

Disposition to caution and alertness in communication [+3]—more freely flowing conversation with little vigilance [−3]

22. The desire to give pleasure to the interlocutor

Focus on bringing pleasure to their interlocutors [+3]—focus on self-pleasuring in a conversation [−3]

23. Inclination to fidelity

The principle statement that the representatives of a gender are true and righteous [+3]—the statement that they are mainly sinful and depraved [−3]

24. Ethical evaluation of the temper

Representatives of a gender have a docile nature [+3]—they have a bad character [−3]

25. Presence of cunning and guile

Representatives of a gender are sly and cunning [+3]—they are not so [−3]

26. Demonstration of vanity

Representatives of a gender tend to popularity and vanity [+3]—the absence of such a tendency [−3]

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

The presence of an insight, intuition and subconscious behavioural stereotypes: Women evaluate men as basically not inclined to intuitive thinking and insight, while the men consider themselves as rather perspicacious. Social attitude towards communication: From the female point of view, the women are moderately socially oriented communicants, and men are not inclined to be thought of as persons positioning themselves well in social processes. However, the point of view of men is diametrically opposite—they consider women to be individualised and unsocial communicants limited to their personal / family problems, and this opinion is very strong. Inclination towards the situation analysis in the communication: Both women and men tend to consider themselves as sober-minded, and representatives of the opposite sex as unable to recognise their own mistakes. Tactile expression of feelings: In the eyes of women, men tend to express their feelings in a tactile way (touching, hugging, kissing, etc.), while men regard women as touchy persons,

Classifying the Stereotypes

(6)

77

although women propound a different opinion about themselves! Women like to be touched, but men think that they do not. Fidelity: Perhaps, maintaining fidelity is the most indicative almost fully symmetric gender stereotype. Women consider men to be complete traitors, and themselves to be particularly faithful, while men believe that loyalty is a virtue of the male gender, and women are entirely deceivers. It is noteworthy that the values of the Likert function in all four combinations are extreme, which indicates the permanence, strength and stability of this communicative social stereotype.

The second group. The second group of stereotypes consists of asymmetric stereotypes, in which female assessment of men and male assessment of women is different, i.e. the sign of the Likert function is different, but the module is different too in contrast to partially symmetrical stereotypes. Here are the following stereotypes: (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

Rationality: A common view shared by men is that women are very emotional and imaginative and that they themselves have logical and rational thinking. The opinion of women is the opposite, but not extreme. Spontaneity of feelings expression: This notwithstanding, women perceive themselves as more judicious and coldblooded creatures, and men as affective and less emotionally stable. Eloquence and keeping silence in the communication: Women believe that they are more silent and pliant than talkative and assertive men, but the imperative from a female point of view is contrary: women should be more eloquent, and men should be more silent. Visual attention: In the female eyes, men are more able to perceive speech, facial and tactile codes, and the women themselves pay more attention to visual images. Empathy: Men regard women mainly as self-loving egoistic persons who, if they allow sympathy, then do that only in relation to themselves. Women, on the contrary, regard men egocentric, selfish and basically incapable of expressing sympathy. The desire to give pleasure to the interlocutor: Men do not want to give pleasure to their interlocutors – that is the opinion of women, but men themselves hold a slightly different point of view. Ethic valuation of temper: Women and men usually regard ill-tempered each other, women evaluate themselves in a neutral way, and the men evaluate themselves less critically. Open demonstration of vanity, snobbery: Women recognise a strong vanity in themselves, but in men they find even greater manifestations of this deficiency, while men, finding it in women, do not find any snobbery in themselves.

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The third group. The third group consists of stereotypes in which men and women have similar opinions about each other. These stereotypes may be partially coincident or non-coincident in modulus and coincident in sign. This group includes stereotypes with the following bases: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

expression of feelings in tears and crying, communicative sensitivity, reaction to harassment, attitude to gossips, expressiveness and psychologism of behaviour, propensity to self-assertion, open demonstration of suspicion, spontaneous flirtation, excessive gesticulation, alertness and watchfulness, suspiciousness manifestations of cunning and guile.

Analytical Deductions After the analysis of the results of the survey has been done, we can make some further analytical deductions. A. B. C.

D. E.

F G.

H. I.

Indian men, to a much lesser extent than women, are characterised by frankness and self-criticism, especially with regard to their own gender. Male self-esteem in gender communication is well ahead of the female. Men’s judgments in gender stereotypes often tend to be extreme, mainly in assessing their own positive and female negative qualities; women’s opinions are more moderate and practically deviate from the median much less. Women try to assess the situation in the field of gender communication more soberly. They tend to mystify and mythologise the situation less than men. In the pilot study, women mostly chose stereotypes associated with the game spheres and symbolic communication, and men with the formalised logical and material spheres. n many stereotypes (both similar and symmetrical) women tend to be more compliant and yielding than men. Men are more devoted bearers of persistent gender myths concerning both the personal characteristics of gender representatives and the distribution of gender social roles. Women, on the contrary, tend to challenge and destroy myths and things that they regard as existing misconceptions. That may be an indirect evidence of a broader worldview of women. Women are more protective of men than men are of women. Women are often inclined to regard men as the “weaker” gender, as well as “adult children”. The confidence interval of the female respondents is usually narrower than the intervals calculated on the responses of men. The convergence of the results

Analytical Deductions

79

in the former case is higher; this fact suggests that women generally agree with each other to a larger extent than men with each other in assessing gender characteristics. All this enables us to think of female communicative stereotypes in the Indian diaspora as more social-oriented and empathic.

Conclusion The results of such quantitative a research describe the gender fields of consciousness of young representatives of the Indian diaspora living in the EU. Of course, the results obtained describe the situation merely in the Indian diaspora, not in all ethnic diasporas in the EU, and should not be overestimated. However, despite the fact that the analysis of respondents’ answers did not use filters on temper, disposition of character, and social status, the results can be considered some objective markers of gender communicative expectations of the modern Indian youth living in Europe at the age of active gender identification. One may pay attention to the statistical similarity of gender communicative stereotypes of Indian student society in different countries (e.g. in the UK when it belonged to the EU and the continental part of EU). Additionally, the results obtained make one doubt a patriarchal sociological viewpoint expressed by some authors that the female subculture in traditional societies is secondary and historically derived from the male subculture (Bakhtin 1979; Cassirer 1998; Horney 1993; Firestone 1972; Frye 1983; Gabrielyan 1996; Irigaray 1984; Lacan 2005: 74, 78). The most important thing is the difference in sets of gender stereotypes in the Indian diaspora and the West European title nationalities where these students were studying. Even young population demonstrates considerable difference, say nothing of more aged part of the Indian diaspora. The conclusions seem to be more or less the same for other ethnic diasporas living in the EU. That means true variance in gender behavioural stereotypes between the EU’s title nationalities and members of diasporas.

References Bakhtin, M. 1979. The Aesthetics of Verbal Art. Moscow: Iskusstvo. Bouchara, A. 2021. Taboos as a Cultural Cleavage Between Muslim Immigrants and Secular Western Publics: Bridging the Gaps by Viewing Integration as a Two-Way Process. Islamophobia Studies Journal 6 (2): 228–245. Cassirer, E. 1998. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 4. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Costa, P.T., A. Terraciano, and R.P. McCrae. 2001. Gender differences in personality trait across cultures: Robust and surprising findings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2): 322–331.

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Eagly, A.H. 1995. The science and politics of comparing women and men. American Psychologist 38: 971–981. Ferguson, A. 1987. A feminist aspect theory of the Self. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 13: 339–356. Firestone, S. 1972. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York: Bantam Books. Frye, M. 1983. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. New York: Crossing Press. Gabrielyan, N. 1996. Eva means life. Voprosy Literatury, 4: 32–43. Grigoryeva, S.A., N.V. Grigoryev, and G.E. Kreidlin. 2001. The Dictionary of Language of Russian Gestures. Moscow: Yazyki russkoy kultury. Horney, K. 1993. Feminine Psychology. New York: W. W. Morton & Co. Irigaray, L. 1984. Ethique de la différence sexuelle. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Kreidlin, G.E., and M.A. Krongauz. 1997. Semiotics, or the ABC of Communication. Moscow: MIROS. Kreidlin, G.E. 2005. Men and Women in Nonverbal Communication. Moscow: Yazyki russkoy kultury. Kreidlin, G.E. 2004. Nonverbal Semiotics. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. Lacan, J. 2005. Des Noms-du-Père. Paris: Le Seuil. Moltmann-Wendel, E. 1991. And so God created man and woman. Voprosy Filosofii, 3: 93–98. Shaburova, O. V. 1998. “Gender technologies.” In Modern Philosophic Dictionary, ed. By V. E. Kemerov, 183–186, London: Panprint. Sharov, K. S. 2013a. Gender communicative strategies: Male utilitarianism versus female game. Part 1. Idei i idealy 2(16), part 1: 109–122. Sharov, K. S. 2013b. Gender communicative strategies: Male utilitarianism versus female game. Part 2. Idei i idealy 3(17), part 1: 78–90. Ufimtseva, N.V. 1996. Ethno-cultural specificity of linguistic consciousness. Moscow: Praksis. Wiener, M., S. Devoe, S. Rubinow, and J. Geller. 1972. Nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication. Psychological Review 79: 185–214. Yadov, V.A. 1987. Sociological study: methodology, programmes, techniques. Moscow: Mir. Zuykova, E.M., and R.I. Eruslanova. 2004. Feminine studies and gender politics. Moscow: Sovremennyi gumanitarnyi universitet.

Chapter 6

Fashion in Clothes as a Political Instrument of (Re)Shaping Gender Social Roles: Reaction of Muslim Diasporas to the EU’s Initiatives

Abstract The more migrants and refugees arrive to the EU, the more obvious the problem of national outfit and its irreducibility to the European-style clothes. In the 2010s, France, Germany, Italy and several other EU member countries were shaken by constant protests of the Muslim diaspora. In 2017 the Court of Justice of the European Union approved the right of business entities to fire employees on the grounds of non-compliance in abandoning ethnic or religious outfit. Christian crosses, Muslim hijabs or tarbooshes, Arabian keffiyehs, Jewish kippahs, Sikh turbans, Hindu tilakas and bindis, or Buddhist chaplets may be now reasons for the new European oppression of diaspora members. The French government’s requirement for Muslim women to abandon wearing hijabs (headscarves) led to mass disobedience, street fights, opposing the police and making many Muslim women literally sit home, i.e. become housewives or charladies. In short, requirements of fashion may lead to a new type of social tensions in the EU. On the deep psychological level, the opposition of diaspora members is even higher. In the chapter, I consider fashion in clothes as an instrument of creating or changing gender social roles. Perhaps, if we assume that fashion may be a vehicle of gender ideology (no matter, the EU’s neoliberal ideology or the gender ideology of diaspora traditionalists), we may understand the reasons for mass protests and civil disobedience of the Muslim migrants. In my research I surveyed the following Muslim diasporas in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden: Afghan, Algerian, Chechen, Iranian, Kurdish, Malay, Pakistani, and Turkish. 78% of women and 92% of men from the Muslim diasporas do not accede to the requirements of the French government to abandon wearing hijab and/or other traditional outfit. I perform an analysis of different types of fashion in different societies to understand such large figures.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_6

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The Muslims’ Reluctance to Abandon Female Traditional Clothing in Diasporas The more migrants and refugees arrive to the EU, the more obvious the problem of national outfit and its irreducibility to the European-style clothes. In the 2010s, France, Germany, Italy and several other EU member countries were shaken by constant protests of the Muslim diaspora. The French government’s requirement for Muslim women to abandon wearing hijabs led to mass disobedience, street fights and opposing the police. On the deep psychological level, the opposition is even higher. In the chapter, I consider fashion in clothes as an instrument of creating or changing gender social roles. Perhaps, if we assume that fashion may be a vehicle of gender ideology (no matter, the EU’s neoliberal ideology or the gender ideology of diaspora traditionalists), we may understand the reasons for mass protests and civil disobedience of the Muslim migrants. In my research I surveyed the following Muslim diasporas in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden: Afghan, Algerian, Chechen, Iranian, Kurdish, Malay, Pakistani, and Turkish. The total number of respondents was 8,117, of which 3,976 were men and 4,141 were women. The questionnaire contained only one question: Will you voluntarily agree to abandon wearing hijab and/or other traditional outfit, if the secular government asks you to do so? (without compulsion) [for women] or Will you voluntarily agree that your spouse abandons wearing hijab and/or other traditional outfit, if the secular government asks you to do so? (without compulsion) [for men]. 78% of women and 92% of men from the Muslim diasporas gave the answer NO. That are very large numbers. Why do Muslims stick so much to female traditional clothes as to engage in social tensions with power authorities in the countries they live in?

Fashion in Clothes as a Social Phenomenon As a social phenomenon fashion is consistent and absurd at the same time. It is deeply rational, because it encourages people to engage in the scope of very high profits. At the same time it is senseless: it is fashion that made the French Empress Eugenie to take 250 dresses for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. In the nineteenth century it was not uncommon if twenty–thirty fashion designers and seamstresses sewed ball gowns from some one hundred metres of fabric during several months. In the broadest sense fashion is a way of life, customs, serving and table manners, cars, clothing widespread in a certain period and generally accepted by the population (Encyclopedia Britannica n.d.). Fashion can involve all aspects of human life and social activities (Ivanov 2015). However, when I speak fashion, I shall refer to fashion in clothes. The historical development of human clothing is inextricably linked to fashion. Alexander Hoffman (2004) noted that the structure of fashion is as follows:

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(1) (2) (3) (4)

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fashionable standards, fashion objects, fashion values, behaviour component of fashion.

In this section, I shall use this taxonomy Hoffman’s fashion. Why is fashion so much related to clothes? Why did it put between a suit and a person that uses it, a complex network of words, social images, symbols and myths? Is the reason only economic (Barthes 2014). Or it lies deeper in the structure of fashion as an instrument of social transformations? The existence of fashionable clothing, as well as any fashion at all, is based on the inequality of social goals of a maker and consumer of fashionable items. The latter is fully controlled by the first. But then one might suspect that such control is not limited to the economic sphere, but goes into the cultural, social and political areas. In the semantic aspect fashion not only reflects cultural and psychological expectation of society, but generates them (Sharov 2006). Jean Stoetzel noted that fashion forms a type of collective behaviour (Stoetzel 1963) and Jacques Lacan treated it as a manifestation of the collective unconscious (Lacan 1992). I think that it may be understood as the collective imaginary (Sharov 2008). With this social imaginary, new gender behavioural patterns may be created and changed. Semiotic analysis may be applied to fashion as an instrument of transforming gender social roles. On the basis of signifying patterns I analyze the effects in gender behavioural patterns. The purpose of the chapter is to demonstrate that fashion can be involved in the ideology of neo-liberalism, and that it can (re-)construct certain gender social scenarios, which would involve the transformation of gender social roles and gender behavioural patterns.

Two Types of Fashion In the chapter, I will talk about two fundamentally different types of fashion: modus naturalis (natural fashion) and modus artificialis (artificial fashion). Let us give the initial definitions. Throughout the history of its development up to now, when the concept of “unisex” clothing appeared, female and male fashions were very different. Women’s fashion of the historical past was a special type of fashion, which strove for atemporality, eliminating the insane change of models that exist only in the present. Let us conditionally call this type of fashion modus naturalis, “natural” style, or natural fashion. We will call modern fashion modus artificialis, artificial style. If modus naturalis characterized by memory time (Barthes 2014: 330), is based on the process of collecting and includes it as an immediate component of its structure, then modus artificialis, which does not correspond to either historical memory or the continuity of styles, fundamentally does not accept any collections. In the artificial style, the new fashion

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cancels the old one after a certain period of time according to the principle of “vendetta,” in order to give way soon to a next round of fashion in a non-dialectical manner (Perrot 1961). The modern consumer of artificial fashion does not need to remember the fashion of the previous time period, moreover, if he/she remembers this, he/she will seem to everyone (and will be declared) a retrograde and conservative. Most often temporality of modus artificialis corresponds to the time interval of one year, or shorter duration (a season), while the natural fashion changes less frequently (tens, hundreds and sometimes even thousands of years). This explains the paradox that the fashions of previous historical periods are subject to the time of conditioning (at least within a certain period) and modern Western fashion cannot be deduced from previous European clothes styles. The famous sociologist of fashion A. Kroeber argued that the history of society does not influence the process of fashion, except that it slightly accelerates some changes in the event of major historical upheavals (Kröber and Richardson 1940). I believe that such a statement is true, but the backward influence of fashion on society can be also profound. E.g., modus naturalis has always been directly related to the social: the cloth designers constructed women’s and men’s fashion. In the historical past of almost any society in the world it was female fashion that represented the natural direction, while male fashion represented modus artificialis. This state of affairs, too painful for the male sex, had to come to an end one day and a gender revolution in the field of fashion was necessary, which would overthrow the woman from her pedestal of permanent ideologue and fashion designer. The gradual completion of the described state marked the second half of the 19th—the beginning of the twentieth century, the period when the man directed natural women’s fashion into an artificial channel and made it a kind of new gender policy. This policy paved the way for the cultural and social foundations of the postmodern revolution in fashion, a radical change in the direction of gender behaviour. This transition from one type of fashion to another did not strike anyone’s eye and did not shock any of the women-designers, since it was carried out smoothly and gradually. First of all, the man, using cloth design technologies, created the opposition between a fashionable and unfashionable woman, the confrontation that in the future was supposed to eliminate some of female privileges in European culture. Before men invented and developed the feminine modus artificialis, sophistication meant much more to a woman than her commitment to fashionable lifestyle. An exquisite woman has always been able to use semiotic methods, modest in volume, but possessing great power, to stand out from the crowd, to become a bright individual. For a refined woman, her lifestyle was both social and ethical in nature (Chombart de Lauwe 1956: 38), and created the dualism of the vulgar and the sublime, correlating the former with the mass, and the latter with herself. For a woman, refined individuality was not an abstract idea, but a completely concrete realization of her own personality, liberated from comparison with anyone else. A refined woman from upper classes presented her costume not to the public, but mainly to her class, making herself a kind of semiotic mirror. Addressing female clothes is connected with the phenomenon of a woman’s sophistication. I think it is possible to rethink the long-standing idea about the

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addressees of pre-postmodern women’s fashion. The question is: for whom did a European woman dress up earlier? In modern times, when gender differences in clothes are mainly eliminated, it becomes quite difficult to answer this question. Feminism does not improve the situation. Feminist researchers only admit that a woman dresses, but the fact that she can still dress up for someone else, that is, use fashion purely semiotically, is of no interest to feminist discourse. If a woman makes herself dressed up, then from the point of view of feminism this potentially throws her to the stage of patriarchy (Zherebkina 2001) (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1 Charles Edmund Brock. “The luxury of a… frightened imagination over the pages of Udolpho.”

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Jane Austen raised this problem in her Northanger Abbey when she described the outfits of her protagonist, Catherine Morland: She went home very happy. The morning had answered all her hopes, and the evening of the following day was now the object of expectation, the future good. What gown and what headdress she should wear on the occasion became her chief concern. She cannot be justified in it. Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim. Catherine knew all this very well; her great aunt had read her a lecture on the subject only the Christmas before; and yet she lay awake ten minutes on Wednesday night debating between her spotted and her tamboured muslin, and nothing but the shortness of the time prevented her buying a new one for the evening. This would have been an error in judgment, great though not uncommon, from which one of the other sex rather than her own, a brother rather than a great aunt, might have warned her, for man only can be aware of the insensibility of man towards a new gown. It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire; how little it is biased by the texture of their muslin, and how unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged, the mull, or the jackonet. Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter. But not one of these grave reflections troubled the tranquillity of Catherine (Austen 2017: Chap. 10).

Jane Austen argued, as we can see from this passage, that a woman dresses up only for herself, for her own personality and for her own pleasure and this is where the sophistication of a woman is hidden. Honore de Balzac is in line with Austen’s logic in his La femme abandonnée (The abandoned woman): “the highest coquetry is not to flaunt either your outfit or your mind” (Balsac 2014: 45). The fact that his main heroine, Viscountess de Beauséant, before meeting with Gaston, “also instinctively introduced a special sophistication to her dress,” may confirm female fashion’s being directed at the woman. Claire did not dress for Gaston de Nueil, but for herself (Fig. 6.2). This is directly confirmed by Balzac: “while carefully styling her hair, she made excuses to herself that there was no need to be a scarecrow” (Balsac 2014: 45). It was justified, since it apparently deviated from the European tradition of female not dressing up for men.

Haut Couture Fashion Designers and Creation of Female Modus Artificialis The activity of male fashion designers, which originated in the second half of the nineteenth century, formed a new image of a fashionable woman, imagined and desired by a man. Gender behavioural roles have changed. Before, it was mainly the woman who designed men’s fashion in accordance with her aesthetic and social needs. Now the man forced the woman to adapt to his own needs. The first step for men was creating of haute couture (“high couture”). The concept of haute couture appeared in the 60 s of the nineteenth century, when the first fashion

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Fig. 6.2 Édouard Louis Dubufe. Portrait of the Countess Hallez Clapared. Dubufe painted this portrait as an illustration for Balzac’s The Abandoned Woman and the Countess acted as the prototype of Viscountess Claire de Beauséant

salons were opened and the first male fashion designers appeared. It is no coincidence that the first fashion designers focussed primarily on high-ranking ladies. These women, due to their high economic, social and political status in European countries, became excellent consumers and further distributors of the female modus artificialis. As soon as the French Empress Eugénie became a client of the fashion designer Worth, most of the aristocratic women, not only in France, but throughout Europe, moved to the new fashion standards with amazing readiness (Saunders 1955: 148) (Fig. 6.3). Worth’s activity in redesigning the system of women’s fashion was perceived by women as a kind of gift. After 30 years everything unfashionable (in the sense of not belonging to the modus artificialis strategies) already began to be ridiculed by women. The European man began to construct sexist social reality with the help

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Fig. 6.3 Empress Eugénie’s 1865 tulle ball gown, costing over 100 m of tulle, sewn by Charles Worth. A photo of a figurine with a mini-copy of the dress at the Worth Museum in Paris

of fashion. If a woman did not buy new models of dresses from the couturier, the man put a sign of the unfashionable on her. The radical change in gender roles happened in this period is evidenced by the accelerating pace of fashion. The haute couture fashion is characterized by temporality associated with the entry into the market and the institutionalization of new agents of artificial fashion, the male couturier, while for natural women’s fashion the circulation period was much longer (Bourdieu 1975: 10–11). In the history of haute couture, among Charles Worth’s models, an evening tulle dress has survived, which was sewn of 100 m of fabric. Despite such obvious pretentiousness, which has always been the antipode of refined taste, Parisians of the world did not hesitate to declare it “a miracle of sophistication, grace and refinement” (Saunders 1955: 198). Worth began constructing female fashion on the principle of dictate, blindness and irrationality. Worth specially designed a dress for Empress Eugénie, about which he wrote in Parisian Life:

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I have introduced a new style of dress for the Empress. A dress of royal beauty, at the same time serious and light, majestic and modest: a skirt made of purple taffeta, with pleats connected by purple and white ruffles (Lyman 1972: 74).

Having analyzed this passage linguistically and semantically, it is impossible not to admit that Charles Worth was the first man to destroy the feminine tradition in fashion. Worth has designed the dress. Never before had a woman allowed a man to design fashion for her. The workers of the sewing workshops could be men, but they never were fashion designers. The fact that a man designed a model of a woman’s dress on his own initiative was a blow to the semiotic force of women. Worth was also the first to introduce the fashion-descriptive toolkit. If earlier, at the time of modus naturalis, fashion was present only in the form of a visual image, but Worth and Empress Eugenie opened a completely new era of fashion semantics. A new semantic level, the level of language, was necessary to fix a woman’s attention on the couturier’s models, to emphasize them emphatically and, thereby, to control the minds and wishes of women. There is a profound anthropological difference between processes of looking and reading. The verbal constructions, which began to be used in numerous fashion magazines, freed clothing from any visual load, as in the fashion-description, the principle of the game is eliminated (Barthes 2014).

The “Equal Style” of Fashion To weaken the semiotic position of the feminine further, male couturiers have introduced a new type of fashion, pret-a-porter (“ready to wear”). At the beginning of the twentieth century, this fashion designing trend was headed by Paul Poiret, whose fashion received the name “new look.” The following phrase of the designer is interesting: “The suffragist movement is fighting for freedom, and I strive to give women freedom of movement” (White 1973: 164). Poiret reflected the true essence of his fashion: the pret-a-porter fashion made it impossible for women to be the first in the semiotic sphere of fashion. If Worth designed clothes for aristocrats, Poiret was no longer ashamed to say openly that he gave women something (Parpoil 2013: 81). This is a kind of social imperative of power and gender domination of men. The concept of favour and neglect may be analytically derived from the word “to give,” from which gender inequality is further deduced. The developed model can either be accepted or not accepted and the right to refuse haute couture was always retained. But what is given must always be taken. A woman has already been deprived of not only the privilege of making men’s fashion standards, but also the ability to request something for herself in fashion. Now she was given everything she needs, and her occupation was only to obey male fashion strategies. Once a queen in designing fashion, the woman must have been now content with the position of a subordinate person, for

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which everything is decided without her participation. The fashion of Poiret and his followers represents a new kind of artificial fashion, which I would call modus aequalis, i.e. “equal style”, a style equal to all women, from a queen to a drudge (Fig. 6.4). Poiret’s models were not intended for high society and they could be bought by anyone who could afford it. But more importantly, with a change in the targeting

Fig. 6.4 A Poiret’s model. A 1919 photo

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of fashion, the semantic implications of the visual image were also transformed. A dress made of purple taffeta with flounces for Empress Eugénie, which took 100 m of tulle, was aristocratic (in Lyon, weavers made a proposal to the mayor to erect a monument to Worth during his lifetime). On the contrary, the pret-a-porter models made by Poiret were different. His fashion was expressly egalitarian.

Mass Fashion Introducing a new round of modus artificialis into social life was made by Coco Chanel, who, according to Jean Lemarie, “guessed the desires of women for almost half a century” (Lemarie 1987: 5). In the 1920s, she forced women to dress in ordinary dresses and sweaters, pullovers, trousers and cardigans, straight skirts without bustle and trim and simple “sailor-type” blouses, as well as decorate themselves with fake jewellery (bijouterie). She designed calico dresses for aristocrats, which until then were a distinctive feature of the costumes of maidservants. Only a century and a half ago, Princess Emilie de Conti publicly claimed that she would rather hang than be dressed in a gown of a maid. But at the time of Coco Chanel Princess Marie Bonaparte, the famous patient of Freud, dresses in this gown happily under the guidance of Coco Chanel. Fake jewellery is a special sign of Chanel’s fashion. She insisted that all women, even those who had the means to wear real jewellery, should switch to bijouterie. In earlier epochs of natural fashion, artificial jewellery was considered a sign of humiliation of female dignity. In the notorious Case of the Necklace, associated with a grandiose scandal in high society during the time of Louis XVI, there is an interesting detail. The diamond necklace featured in the case was made by jewellers much earlier than the scandalous story and it was offered for purchase to Marie Antoinette. She immediately agreed and demanded payment from the state treasury. When Louis XVI expressed timid doubts about the necessity of this step, taking into account the fabulous cost of the necklace of 1,800,000 livres, the queen said: “But these are real diamonds. And when I put them on, they will mean that I am a real queen, a real Frenchwoman and a real woman” (Lever 2008: 74). The fake jewellery-signs implanted by Chanel and called by her “bijouterie,” in no case should have imitated the real ones (Fig. 6.5). The integration of fashion and mass culture, carried out by Coco Chanel, has created a fundamentally new type of fashion. I propose to call it conditionally modus vulgaris, “fashion of the masses,” “fashion for everyone.” When fashion becomes the lot of the masses, it is threatened with destruction. There is still sense of grace in Poiret’s modus aequalis that stressed respect that must have been paid to women in the society. But modus vulgaris understood as the fashion of the masses, implemented the male policy of vulgarizing women by means of clothing. Indeed, modus vulgaris is a collective feminine imitation of regularly emerging clothing innovations and is, by its very nature, a mass phenomenon. Fashion has become the business (and destiny) of each and every one. This may be confirmed by

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Fig. 6.5 Coco Chanel in her own gown. A photo by Man Ray

the appearance and wide circulation of the special women’s press devoted to fashion between the two world wars (Baudrillard 1976, 1980, 1997). Whichever of the famous fashion designers of this time we took, be it Elsa Schiaparelli or Madame Vionet, Jean Patou or Edward Molino, their strategies involved women in the sphere of mass culture more and more. The sensational robesac, i.e. Schiaparelli’s sack dress, developed by her together with the surrealists Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali, does not in the least contradict the strategy of Coco Chanel. Chanel introduced fake jewellery, whereas Schiaparelli suggested using door locks and aspirin tablets as jewellery.

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Fashion and Sexual Revolution In 1964, André Courreges and Mary Quant created miniskirts, initiating the sexual revolution in culture. I propose to name a new postmodern type of women’s fashion modus indelicatus, “indelicate style.” I use this term tentatively, without any moralizing. New fashion dictated new rules for wearing clothes; naked female legs came into view (Fig. 6.6). The style of wearing clothes has radically changed, and the rules by which fashion was constructed have also changed. Clothing has become one of the forms of the policy of manipulating the masses and, on the other hand, one of the forms of political protest of the masses. For example, the style of resistance to the French government in the 1960s was characterized by a combination of irreducible elements. The wearing of

Fig. 6.6 A 1964 miniskirt model designed by Mary Quant and André Courreges

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Fig. 6.7 Simulacra of female gowns. Models designed by Valeska Jasso Collado

such clothes was extremely widely practiced by French youth who protested against de Gaulle’s regime (Lacouture 1986: v. 3, 502) (Fig. 6.7). The appearance of miniskirts and the exposure of women’s legs may seem like a reference to freed sexuality and women’s liberation, the result of a long struggle of women for equal rights. However, the situation is more complex. The socio-political principles presented as the immutable truths that are dubious. In fashion, after the sexual revolution, a special, directive and codified sexuality operated, initially imposed on the woman by the man. In accordance with a common view, we must believe that with the help of miniskirts women received emancipation, liberation from patriarchal oppression, self-realization, equal rights with men in all areas. If we accept this point of view, then how can one explain that by the end of the 70 s the models of “midi” and “maxi” skirts have replaced the “minis”? Table 6.1 demonstrates different types of fashion. Modus indelicatus was a transgression of fashion that did not happen spontaneously and was not a female gender-social strategy. This strategy was inspired by men, fashion professionals, business and store owners, advertising and public relations specialists, journalists, etc. It was a means of discrimination. However, it was not understood in such a way by the majority of European population. Moreover, now when the authorities make members of Muslim diasporas wear such clothes and abandon their traditional outfits, the Western ideologues do not wish to accept the fundamental irreducibility of the two types of fashion I described. Figure 6.8 demonstrates Afghan niqabs and Fig. 6.9 a typical outfit of Muslim women living in

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Table 6.1 The comparison of some semiotic gender and social characteristics of various types of fashion Engineering Direct of gender request fashion

Construction Mimicry of code

Idioadaptation

Modus naturalis

Women’s Women’s Women’s Men in → women’s → men’s the code → Women’s only Female world strategies → men’s

Modus Modus artificialis particularis (Haute couture)

Men’s → men’s; → Women’s → women’s (elite)

Men’s → women’s

Men in Men in the world of the women’s men world (anti-dandism); Women in the world of women

Modus Men’s → aequalis men’s (Pret-a-porter)

Men’s → women’s

Men in the world of men; Women in the world of men

Men’s → men’s; → Women’s → women’s (mass)

Men’s → women’s

Modus vulgaris

Modus indelicatus

? → the code → men’s; ? → the code → women’s

Men in the wmen’s world

Men in the world of men (mass); women in the world of women (mass)

Women in the world of men

An individual in the world of individuals (regardless of gender)

An individual in the world of individuals (regardless of gender)

France. The French governments do not make difference between them in its political decisions regarding the fashion.

Fashion Versus Clothes Famous American nominalist Nelson Goodman, giving his lectures on æsthetics at the University of Massachusetts, proposed to supersede an essentialist problem in aesthetics “what is art?” by an intentional question “when is art?” (Goodman 1972: 35). The same question can be rightfully asked in semiotics: when is the sign? and

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Fig. 6.8 Women in niqabs in Afghanistan. A photo by Reuters

Fig. 6.9 Female protesters in France. A photo by The Guardian

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when is the message? When does an object or act become meaningful and not just natural or functional? When does a thing start to mean something? This problem is extremely important in visual semiotics of clothing and fashion, and it is no coincidence. Most theorists agree that fashion differs from simple costume design primarily in its semiotic nature (Barthes 2003; Bourdieu 1975; Eco 1998). The ancient Greeks coloring human and god’s statues may be regarded as putting the vestimentary signs to the art, as Anna Afonasina argues (Afonasina 2014: 32; Afonasina 2018: 281, 284). Timothey Myakin points out the significance of vestimentary signs and codes interpretation in the Greek mythology (Myakin 2018: 355; Myakin 2019: 161). Irina Protopopova and Alexey Garadja (2018), Meeusen (2018), Panagiotarakou (2019) draw one’s attention to the fact that in Ancient Greece theatre, art and poetry often considered vest codes as main structural elements of a work of art. Vedeshkin (2018) and Sharov (2019) underline the same tendency in the Ancient Roman culture. Demonstrating different types of clothes fashion in cinematography has obviously semiotic goals, as several researchers prove in their works (Bernatonite 2016, 2017; Dogo 2015; Dulgheru 2014; Khitruk 2017). Sergey Avanesov (2018) shews that visual semiotics in iconography deals mainly with clothing. Fashion is a semiotic social system, while clothing refers only to the phænomenal world. A study of fashion, i. e. phænomenon represented (and sometimes imagined) and constructed at the strategic and tactical levels of clothing, gives a direct methodological advantage over an analysis of real phænomenological clothing. In contrast to the semiotic structure of clothing-image and linguistic structure of clothing-description (fashion elements), the structure of real clothing can be merely technological, which was noted by Trubetzkoy (1949) in one of the chapters of his work on phonology, devoted to a semantic analysis of real clothing. Units of symbolic clothing-image belong to sphere of signs and visual forms, while units of clothing-description to sphere of words. Units of real clothing cannot refer to language, because language is not a semantic representation of phænomenal reality, nor to signs and visualization, because the “visibility” of a real thing does not exhaust its reality, and even more so its structure (Barthes 1975: 71; Martinet 1960: 21, 85–86). To analyze a real detail of clothing in a fairly formal concepts, it is necessary to turn to the actions that determined its manufacturing, cutting and sewing technologies, which, of course, goes beyond purely sociological discourse entering psychology. Although both fashion and costume design are art, real clothing is involved in the art of technology, and fashion in the art of imagination.

Irreducibility of Feminine Fashion to Costume Design If a fundamental difference between costume design and fashion consists precisely in this fact, then fashion can be derived from the phænomenology of clothing neither deductively nor historically. Answering the question posed at the very beginning of the chapter, I can say that a detail of the costume begins to mean something only when it becomes a part of fashion, moving into it from a phænomenal reality located

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in a much narrower hermeneutic horizon. At the same time, fashion is not constructed on the basis of real clothes as a higher system in the semantic aspect, but it is initially created as an ideal visual semiotic space. This space (a kind of Hyperuranion of signs) is not a copy of reality, but it structures, constructs and imagines reality and a set of meanings in completely different parts of social life. Most often, researchers of culture of fashion ask essentialist questions “when was fashion born?”, “how to develop fashion?”, “how to predict the change of styles in fashion?” etc. In their research, fashion is almost never considered as a tool of social transformation carried out through the semiotic sphere. A main task of a designerartist is announced as “to predict constantly emerging novel things that can be already felt in the air, but have not yet found their embodiments” (Obraztsov 1978: 53), but the researchers and analysts never thought of a costume designer as of a semiotic planner and, additionally, a social planner. Intentional questions are rarely asked such as “who, how, when and why organizes the system of fashion?” It is in responses to them that an adequate understanding of fashion hides as a visual semiotic system. A typical example of an evolutionary-historical and at the same time deductive approach to the analysis of fashion can be found in a study of the real costume performed by E. V. Kireeva. She distinguishes four historical stages of evolution of human clothing: (1) (2) (3) (4)

the stage of semi-wild nudity, the stage of purely functional clothing, the stage of clothing design and the stage of fashion itself

(Kireeva 1976: 13–32). This evolution, according to another Russian researcher (Zborovsky 1998), led to a gradual process of development of the socio-economic base of the primitive society. Trying to determine the time frame of each stage, Kireeva and Zborovsky seem to face a serious problem: when can a period of fashion itself be found? The author’s delusion, in my opinion, is obvious. It comes from an attempt to introduce a universal temporal logic in diachronic variations of fashion. All studies based on the principle of deduction of fashion from diachronic changes in clothing styles appear to fail sooner or later. But what if we consider fashion in the synchronic aspect and do not connect its transformation with the socially determined needs of real clothes? What if not society primarily influences fashion, but fashion influences society? Indeed, Roland Barthes noted that synchrony of fashion within a certain time interval (for Barthes it is, for example, a year, although this period may be different) is absolute and even unique, and such synchrony does not occur in linguistic (natural) languages (Barthes 2003, 41). During this period, fashion is stable and open to semiotic analysis much better than some natural language open to linguistics. On the other hand, if fashion is indeed deduced, albeit indirectly, by the logic of pragmatism from the systems of phænomenological clothing, how can we explain that the “rude and ignorant” primitive man suddenly began to use semiotic codes instead of primitive

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utilitarianism? The irreducibility of fashion to a purely rational and material world denies the deduction of fashion from clothing in itself. Real clothing, conditioned by its goals and purposes, does not mean anything. Fashion means and represents; it is, in fact, serves exactly for these purposes. But it also encrypts and transposes the meanings. It denotes and connotes the meanings. It simulates symbolic and social reality and builds a new world of the imaginary, drawing horizons of appearances and undermining the semantic foundations of the phænomenology of clothing. Fashion is as complicated and confusing as the real clothes is simple. And this intricate system has historically been unevenly distributed between the sexes. Gender equality in dress styles began and ended in Paradise when God banished a man and a woman for their fall.

Female Nudity as a Visual Semiotic System After the expulsion of the men from Paradise, the fate of clothes as a sign underwent a radical gender transformation. The man, having forgotten or not understood correctly a symbolic meaning of clothes, began to consider them exclusively as an object of use and need. But the woman who possibly became increasingly aware of the value of net significance of clothing, were able to establish a system of fashion. However, the importance and significance of the female as a sign-generating and sign-ordering force in the contemporary academic research, remains often blurred by considerations of anatomy and physiology. Benhabib (2002: 100–103), a modern American sociologist, in her 2002 work notes that “women… mediate between nature… to which we all belong, and a symbolic order that transforms us into cultural beings”, but makes an amendment fatal for a woman: “just because of her ability to bear children.” So, it turns out that the anatomy is a fate, as Sigmund Freud claimed? The fatality that destined a woman to be only a female, albeit partially “cultured”, a female mediator between culture and the animal world? Fashion can serve some refutation to this Freud’s concept. In this regard, women’s fashion should be understood as a primordial and almost perennial phænomenon that did not arise in a certain historical period as a result of the inclusion of costume design to semiotic scope. At the same time, men’s fashion is also a direct or indirect product of the female. By and large, were it not for women, there would be no fashion as a semiotic system. Being engaged in the construction of visual signs of her costume, the woman was able to create such semiological tricks that provided her with a real “antidote” against the vicious and sinful meaning of nudity. The woman started to use the very nudity in the sense of semiotic “second skin”. Unlike the man whose body, according to a witty remark of Baudrillard, is a “cemetery of signs” (Baudrillard 1976: 192), the woman made her body a field of signs. She transformed the semiotic system associated with

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her naked body into a limitless connotation1 and transposed it into the realm of a myth (this will be described in more detail below). Because of this, all the depravity signified by the men, corresponding to the sign of nudity of the female body, was stolen by super-connotative sign of a higher order. So we may hardly complain like feminist author Irigaray (1984: 18) does: “the feminine remains the place deprived of its place… This ethical question defines the point of view on nudity and depravity related to it. When a woman is naked, she is deprived of a place, her own place.” A man could not deprive a woman of her place in visual semiotics of fashion throughout the history of human society. The woman completely eliminated the very depravity of her nakedness, while the man tried constantly to read this depravity there. Moreover, he tried to impose on the woman herself a reflexive sense of her nudity, which, however, he never managed to implement. At the Renaissance period, which brought back to life and renewed the culture of the body, the symbolic interactionism of the female body was used to make it an object of art, while the image of the male body remained on the periphery of art. Paintings by Raphael and Botticelli, sculptures by Donatello and Michelangelo depict not just the naked body of a woman, but its sign. In this respect, the most revealing masters of the late Renaissance, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Bassano whose paintings that embodied scenes of ancient life and included elements of female (but not male) nudity, are the most difficult in terms of semiotic analysis. “The birth of Venus” of Sandro Botticelli may give us an example: not Venus-debauchery, but modest Venus whose body is just a sign of pure art that completely eliminates any eroticism from the visual sign. The Renaissance masters neither created, nor opened, but merely demonstrated the symbolic nature of the myth of female nudity. Elevated to the rank of a myth of the void, the endless symbolic connotation of female nudity did not identify itself with enticement and desire. It was in ancient times that clothing appeared, now called nude-look, i.e. simulating nudity, aimed precisely at such a denotation. Female clothing, even a la negligée, can be denoted in some way (for example, denoted by eroticism), but nudity never.2 The latter entered the category of myth, while the former remains a sign intended for men. It is no coincidence that in Ovid’s “Art of love” the expressions “to be almost naked”, “in some clothes to be more naked than without them”, etc. appear, indicating that just with the aid of the myth of nudity it is impossible to achieve the semiotic completeness of specific discrete signifieds (Martindale 1990). Horace’s Sub clara nuda lucerna3 is about the same thing. This sense of clothing a la negligée is remarkably well conveyed by Victor Hugo in his L’Homme qui rit (Man Who Laughes):

1

According to Louis Hjelmslev, connotation is a transformation of the sign, in which a new sign system is built. Its plan of expression forms another sign system (Hjelmslev 1959: 283–312). This definition reflects the semantic meaning of the connotation. 2 We are talking about how the woman imply certain meanings, using a symbolic pair “clothes – nudity”, and not about how the man treats her nudity in a utilitarian way. 3 A naked woman near a bright lamp (Latin).

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Fig. 6.10 Two cinematographic performances of Duchess Josiane of Hugo’s L’Homme qui rit: by Russian-American actress Olga Baklanova, 1928 US movie The man who laughs (in the left), and French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, 2012 French movie L’Homme qui rit (in the right).

Nue à la lettre, non. Cette femme était vêtue. Et vêtue de la tête aux pieds. Le vêtement était une chemise, très longue, comme les robes d’anges dans les tableaux de sainteté, mais si fine qu’elle semblait mouillée. De là un à peu près de femme nue, plus traître et plus périlleux que la nudité franche. L’histoire a enregistré des processions de princesses et de grandes dames entre deux files de moines, où, sous prétexte de pieds nus et d’humilité, la duchesse de Montpensier se montrait ainsi à tout Paris dans une chemise de dentelle. Correctif: un cierge à la main (Hugo 2002: 525). [As a matter of fact, she wasn’t completely nude. The woman was dressed. Dressed from head to toe. She was wearing a very long shirt, like those clothes angels are depicted in, but it was so thin that it seemed wet. This half-nudity is more seductive and more dangerous than outright nudity. From the history, we know that princesses and noble ladies took part in the processes of repentance, which took place between two rows of monks; in one of these processions, the Duchess of Montpensier, under the pretext of self-abasement, demonstrated herself being clothed just in a lace shirt to the whole Paris. However, the Duchess was barefoot and with a candle in her hand].4

Moreover, the sign of nakedness, which a woman constructs for a man with the help of such tricks, does not carry a directive meaning: it is not an imperative sign, but a sign-cipher, just more emphatically modulated than, for example, the cleavage. “Who is she?” asked himself Gwynplaine, the main character of Hugo’s novel, looking at sleeping Josiane. “A fallen woman or virgin?” Hugo replies to him: “both, because a smile of Messalina lurking in her was combined with an alertness of Diana” (Hugo 2002: 526) (Fig. 6.10). 4

The translation in English is mine.

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But this is already a game. Where else, in addition to the game and mythology, can a woman semiotically appear both lecherous and innocent? In Roman heathen religion, Venus acted in the role of a chaste marriage’s keeper, and simultaneously in the role of a lewd heroine, enticing all Olympus indiscriminately. On the other hand, in a game in which she beat herself, Rebecca Sharp of Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” managed to combine a caring mother, passionate mistress, devoted wife and femme fatale all in one during some time. “I am innocent! Tell him, I am innocent!”, Rebecca shouted to Marquess Steyne, with whom her husband Rawdon Crawley found her, urging her lover to confirm her innocence to her husband (Thackeray 1992: 303). The paradox is that it was true, at least a part of the truth, if we ignore all the gifts of Marquess Steyne, made in the form of an advance in the hope of a worthy reward. The sign of a negligée means little for a man in itself; the man is more interested in a motive that guided the woman dressed in such clothes. What for men is a subject of desire, for women a subject of fun more often than seduction. Even orthodox Freudian Jacques Lacan recognised it (Lacan 1953). As an illustration of this game and fun we may recall the same excerpt from Hugo’s masterpiece, more precisely, an excerpt that describes the strategy of Duchess Josiane, who created a certain look for herself: Il y avait sur cette beauté la clarté de l’inaccessible. Pas de pureté comparable à cette forme chaste et altière. Certaines neiges qui n’ont jamais été touches sont reconnaissables. Les blancheurs sacrées de la Yungfrau, cette femme les avait. Ce qui se dégageait de ce front inconscient, de cette vermeille chevelure éparse, de ces cils abaissés, de ces veines bleues vaguement visibles, de ces rondeurs sculpturales des seins, des hanches et des genoux modelant les affleurements roses de la chemise, c’était la divinité d’un sommeil auguste. Cette impudeur se dissolvait en rayonnement. Cette créature était nue avec autant de calme que si elle avait droit au cynisme divin, elle avait la sécurité d’une olympienne qui se fait fille du gouffre, et qui peut dire à l’océan: Père! (Hugo 2002: 528). [Something invulnerable was present in her brilliant beauty. Nothing could be compared in purity to the chastely strict forms of her body. Snow, which was never trampled by a man’s foot, can be recognised immediately. This woman shone with the sacred whiteness of the Jungfrau peak. From her patient’s brow, from the scattered golden hair, from lowered lashes, from the barely visible bluish veins, from the curves of her breasts worthy of the chisel of a sculptor, from hips and knees, looking pink through her diaphanous shirt, the magnificence of a sleeping goddess could be felt. Her shamelessness dissolved in the light. She was lying almost naked so calmly, accurately entitled to this divine cynicism; the self-confidence of an Olympic goddess was felt in her, which, plunging into an ocean wave, can say to the ocean, “Father!”].5

Gorgeous, unattainable Josiane offered herself to all looks, all desires, all dreams, all madness, proudly resting on this bed. In the denotation of her nakedness, specifically designed for prying eyes (although she was asleep), Duchess Josiane is far superior to Venus emerging from the shell in Botticelli’s famous painting in the field of practically implemented visual semiotics. In the painting, there is a vestimentary myth, denying the slightest meaning of the vice. Here, in Hugo’s novel, there is an 5

The translation is also mine.

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Fig. 6.11 Botticelli’s Venus and Olga Baklanova as Duchess Josiane. A semiotic comparison

embodied and demonstrated moral corruption, but the corruption played on the forefront of splendour and radiance. Not without reason Hugo’s main character could not understand by such extravagant appearance, if the Duchess is pious or sinful (Fig. 6.11). The man of European culture could never forgive the woman for her capability to transform her body into a visual sign,6 and his own inability to carry out such semiotic transformations of his nudity. Where possible, he tried to correlate a lot of various negative signifieds artificially created by him, with the sign of the naked female body. Historically everything was present here: corruption, enticement, temptation, seduction, radicalised sexuality, as well as more negative lust, depravity, obscenity, vulgarity, tendency to orgies, embodied striptease and pornography… Apparently, the Man could not give up the idea that the woman’s nakedness covered with clothes, functions as a secret, ambivalent semiotic reality. A non-European man, a representative of some traditional community, who adopted, despite the seeming absurdity of such a statement, much more from a woman in terms of semiotics, is even closer to the semiotic abilities of the woman, clothed in a symbolic shell. This man is a savage, as Jean Baudrillard mentions, for many centuries trying to make his naked body a sign that means face (Baudrillard 1980: 76–78). He tries to represent his nudity not as an opposition to the face, but as its component. Therefore, nudity cannot seem obscene, i.e. the body cannot purposely seem naked, as in European culture a face cannot seem naked, that is already a symbolic veil in itself.

An Approach to the Classification of Feminine Fashion Signs Unlike male clothing and male fashion, whose vestimentary codes are always clearly defined (by men themselves or by the other sex, it does not matter), the semiotics 6

It is no accident that Claude Lévi-Strauss noted that “the female body is a cultural and symbolic board on which human societies write their moral codes” [Lévi-Strauss 2002].

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of women’s fashion is sometimes rather confusing and requires a comprehensive analysis. In this discourse, objects of our attention will be the signs of female prepostmodern fashion. In women’s fashion and in the particular case of its manifestations, an individual dress, the semantic signs are interwoven with the signs-ciphers, developing a unified picture. However, the signs-ciphers, or cryptographic elements of the female vestimentary fashion, are not all homogeneous in their denotation. Some of them exist only to hide and make the semantic equivalent of the visual image of a woman obscure. These ones include, for example, a veil that, closing (covering or hiding) the face at a phænomenal level, hides the nature of a women at the semiotic level. However, we should not assume that only the elements of clothing that hide the body parts on the material level are signs-ciphers in the semiotic horizon. In this category, there would be, for example, short veils, gloves for standard applications (i.e. those that do not have a special purpose), the crinoline, bustle, bodice of a dress of Empire style with a high waist, corsage of “sagdso” type—with flaps at the chest, long sleeves and short tails on the back, everyday coif, cap with a narrow crown, etc. Despite the apparent difference, these vestimentary elements have something in common: they are not codes of directive messages, nor do they allow a variety of explicit meanings (implicit meanings, however, can be contained in these cryptograms in any amounts and, moreover, they may form a continuum). To put it in other words, purely cryptographic signs immediately cause surprise: it is completely unclear why they are introduced into the dress. Another kind of signs-ciphers does not generate signifieds-secrets whose meanings you need to seek out. These signs correspond to empty meanings, or simulative similarity, and the signs themselves, thus, go into the category of simulacra. We have already considered one vivid example of a cipher-simulacrum I mean cleavage. Examples of other simulacra of this type may be, for example, a scarf, pulled over her eyes hat, shawl, coiffure, pleated skirt of late Baroque, etc. All simulacra of female fashion allow variable diversity of explications (at zero degree of presence of the implications). A commoner treats all those things as signs indicating the signifieds of convenience, purpose and benefit, the ladies of the society often treat with simulative meaning. For example, linen shirts of a female peasant testify their practicality, strength and long-term use. Linen bottom skirts of a noble woman simulate durability and strength (is it possible to talk about the real reference, when some female Parisians of the times of Louis the Sixteenth got rid of their lower linen skirts after a week of wear?). The variety of simulative semiotic technologies of female fashion is inexhaustible and limitless: high heels simulate long legs when a woman sits, and high height when she stands, high hairstyle simulates big height when she stands, and long upper part of her body when she sits. However, neither high hair, nor high heels are mandatory and, thus, they are not meaningful signs. The woman does not force anyone to consider her tall just because she raised her hair or preferred longer spike heels (Fig. 6.12). On the other hand, female fashion visual signs can be static (fixed) and dynamic (movable). Static signs are present as devoid of independent visual movement in a fixed coordinate system of a dress, while dynamic signs also have a movement. As

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Fig. 6.12 All types of feminine fashion signs are present in this Diego Velazquez’ portrait of Maria Anna of Spain

examples of purely dynamic signs a train of dress, fan, shawl, female watch on a chain attached to the corsage, can serve. Dynamic signs are additional elements to increase the concentration of attention of people around the woman. In addition, a group of static-dynamic signs may be added to them, which act alternately as static or dynamic elements. An example is a woman’s hairstyle. It is static in the sense that makes the hair immobile and eliminates their looseness. But if the woman with the laid hair sits, for example, in the nature, and the wind waves only one her hair strand near her temple, the coiffure becomes a dynamic sign. Other examples of ambivalent signs are the bracelet (sometimes motionless, sometimes sliding on the hand), earrings,7 gloves (removed and being put on in public), underskirt, scarf, etc.

7

Remember what a wonderful effect Scarlett O’Hara from Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone with the wind” achieved, shaking her earrings.

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Fig. 6.13 The schematics of semiotic chains of the three levels

Levels of Semiotic Chains of Female Fashion In addition to the two axes of classification of women’s fashion signs, there is a third one, the level of the semiological system, at which a particular fashion sign operates (Eco 2006). There is not a single detail of the toilet of a woman of society, which could be interpreted only from the viewpoint of pragmatism and utilitarianism. The interpretation of such signs always requires certain semantic mediations. Such details build a primary semiotic chain (denotative semiotic chain) (Fig. 6.13). However, for representatives of other strata of the population who do not have a position in the society high enough so that they can afford the luxury of mediating any costume, considerations of benefit, purpose and convenience occupy the main place in the formation of the outfit. Elements of their clothing can be interpreted from the point view of “common sense” (functionality), and thus they create semiotic chains of zero level (pre-denotative semiotic chains). These are complete semiological systems, since they have (1) signifiers, (2) signifieds and (3) signs, but the signs themselves do not refer to the semiotic level of signifiers, but to the order below. For example, take the oilcloth apron of a drudge. Here is a signifier (apron), signified of the purpose (not to spoil the clothes), but the sign does not apply to the washing of the floors, but directly to the woman involved in this action. If washing the floors is the first semantic level, then drudge herself represents a zero level,8 so we are not talking “an apron for washing floors” but “a drudge’s apron”. Quite another thing is when such an apron was worn by Madame de Polignac, the first chambermaid of Marie Antoinette. She worn aprons to introduce a new fashion for egalitarianism in the high society, and the usual apron became a signifying detail of clothes, not purely functional. Such a detail of the costume already requires building a semiotic chain of the first level (denotative chain) and definite semantic mediating conclusions. The apron in question is just one of many examples. Wherever the phænomenology of utilitarianism is introduced into the semiotic scheme, its level automatically 8

This difference between the semiotic levels of the subject and the object is explained in detail in the Barthes’s book (Barthes 2003).

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Fig. 6.14 Denotative (level 1) and pre-denotative (level 0) semantic levels in a semiotic chain of female fashion (the signifier is a drudge’s overall)

becomes zero, because, in fact, this semiotic chain becomes broken, or at least consists of clearly separated signifiers and signs (Fig. 6.14). There are also higher than the first, semiotic levels of fashion. In chains of the second level the woman uses not a detail of her toilet as a signifier, but the sign itself, and, thereby, the connotation of a sign begins (connotative semiotic chain). Let us take a pair of customary women’s glove for casual occasions. They can be included only in the semiotic chains of the first level. Ordinary gloves can act as a denotative sign, i.e. a sign referring to the visual sign itself. But if it is a long, rising up above the elbow, white ball gloves, they immediately go to the category of a connotative sign, i.e. as a signifier they rise to the second semiological level. The meaning begins to flow, to be “drawn” into the connotative sign-parasite of long ball gloves from the primary denotative sign of gloves. In this case, the quasi-sign has more meaning than a sign of costume items. In the secondary semiotic chain, the signifier is the sign of the gloves (but not the gloves themselves!), the signified is the presence of a woman at the ball (or other ceremony), and the sign of the second level is the figure of the dance (it is in the dance that ballroom gloves and the meaning of the ball combine). In other words, one sign once and for all is put to another sign by the identical semantic correspondence. Wearing a hat in the premises by women also forms a semiotic system of the second level. We may devise many such examples, and all of them will talk about a certain visual, symbolic ritual tradition created by woman (Fig. 6.15). In the secondary semiotic chains, a woman, with the help of fashion explicating herself into the outside world, takes part in the process of transforming reality, which

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Fig. 6.15 The connotation of vestimentary signs in feminine fashion in this example of long female gloves

is usually described in terms of ideological alienation.9 We face an example of constructing social reality with the help of fashion. In a symbolic tradition, ordinary signifieds become some immutable entities: once named ritual, ball, reception by the king, a walk through the Park of Versailles, an evening of comic theatre make some idols. Not only these semiotic “deities” are wonderfully created by feminine fashion, but they also create it themselves. They are created by the secondary semiotic schemes of fashion, and create primary ones. Instead of an arbitrary symbolic relationship between two signs of different levels, a mutually reversible inextricable relationship is established. With the help of fashion, the semiotics of reality is being built (the signs of the ball, the Royal reception, etc.), that captures the semiotics of fashion. In the semiotics of female vestimentary fashion, there is no phænomenological sense. It is impossible to understand why a woman in early Baroque era appeared at Royal receptions in outfits in which it was almost impossible to move, but it is easy to imagine, envisage or fancy. The construction of secondary semiotic correspondences suggests that signs-connotators (signs-signifiers linking the two semiotic chains) are ephemeral, but at the same time eternal, whimsical, but not absurd. With the help of connotation, female fashion carries out the secular sacralisation of society. If a woman makes a sign of the second level (let us call it the sign of a symbolic tradition) a signifier an even more complex system, then she gets the third semiotic level, the level of myth (Barthes 2003: 239). By Barthes’s remark, where the sense ends, there begins the myth (Barthes 2003: 248). So, in reality, few items of dress and other attributes of the image of women may act as constituent parts of the myth. 9

Claude Lévi-Strauss describes this process precisely in such terms (Lévi-Strauss 2003: 308–311).

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Myth is a higher level than symbolic tradition, its influence is deeper and stronger. The fashion myth, by and large, symbolises nothing directly, and represents a field for symbolical games. A good example is a white wedding dress (or veil). It does not mean directly the chastity and virginity of the bride, as these qualities simply may not exist. It shews only the possibility of signs and meanings game: the bride must be a virgin, when she stands at the altar. Because this myth was quite permanent before the postmodernity, women wishing to marry for the second time, were forbidden to wear a white dress at the wedding in the church both in Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions (Fig. 6.16). The myth of female fashion represents absolute connotation, or complete “pulling” the meaning of the primary sign, in which the signifier of the primary sign ceases to interest anyone. The wedding dress ceases to be a sign of the wedding ceremony (the first level) and marriage (the second level) and becomes a connotative sign-fetish of uniqueness and non-recurrence of the event associated with it in the life of a woman. The stability of the semiotic myth (the third level of semiotic chain) can be illustrated by an interesting fact. Today in Western Europe, white wedding dress is used on average in 30–35% of weddings, but in Russia its use has almost no alternative. We may hypothesise that the more highly mythologised consciousness of the Russians does not allow the elimination of the myth of the white wedding dress, that existed for centuries, from the culture. This is the case, in spite of the fact that according to sociological research performed in 2001–2002 in Russia, about half of the brides during the wedding were pregnant and about 80% of the brides answered

Fig. 6.16 Denotative (level 1) and connotative (level 2) semantic levels in a semiotic chain of female fashion (the initial signifier is a hat)

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in the poll bulletins that they were not virgins by the time of the wedding ceremony (Arkhangelskaya 2002). Just because of the absolute mythological nature of the signified and extreme connotativity of the sign, a wedding dress, which is sometimes more expensive than the sum of the woman’s outfits of five years, is forced to gather dust in a dark closet throughout the future life of a woman. At the utmost, it will find a second connotative and nostalgic life at the marriage of the woman’s daughter. Interestingly, in India, where wedding clothing is not mythologised, red wedding saree is used by women on special occasions throughout her whole life. Even in Europe at the time of Burgundy fashion, a woman, not mythologizing her luxurious wedding dress and leaving it at the ritual level, shewed it to admiring gazes of her guests and relatives at least once every two months (Fig. 6.17). Due to the presence of tertiary semiological schemes, the woman feels herself an absolute signifier in any clothing. The modesty of the dress or, on the contrary, even its absence does not prevent a woman to mythologise herself. Even the nudity becomes a mythical garment that was mentioned above. The cross-exchange between the denotative reality of the world and the connotative unreality of the fashion myth corresponds to an inversion of the fashion sign, its transformation into a rational equivalent. Obviously, it is a most important operation carried out by the female semiotics of her fashion-myth. Since the male suit embodies the “naturalist” vision of the clothing, men’s understanding the reality is far from mythologizing the fashion.

Fig. 6.17 With a white wedding dress, the European woman creates mythological semiotic system where the meaning is completely absorbed by the connotative signified of the non-recurrence of the event in question associated with the sign itself in the life of the woman. A red Indian wedding saree as a fashion sign does not reach the level of fashion mythology because it is often worn by the woman throughout her life after the marriage, e.g. at the celebrations, during meetings with her and her husband’s relations, at religious processions etc. I acknowledge websites http://www.ellisbrid als.co.uk and https://www.stylesgap.com for the illustrations provided. These websites retain full copyright for these images, therefore these images cannot be farther reproduced or copied in any form

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The connotation of fashion managing by the woman, i.e. creating a pure myth (the fashion of the mythological contents and form) leads to an extreme imbalance between the number of signifiers of fashion and its signifieds. The signifieds are invented by the woman, and their number is precisely calibrated and calculated, while there is the huge number of signifiers, they are all kinds and variations of clothing, an abundance of fashion features. We witness a mechanism of infinite metaphor of female meta-language, freely varying signifiers with limited amount of signifieds. Of course, it is important that this imbalance is formed in favour of the signifier: any vestimentary system, which has few signifiers and a lot of signifieds (for example, female nudity), generates anxiety, as each of its signs can be read in a different way. On the contrary, the fashion system with the reverse construction (with a large number of signifiers and a small number of signifieds) causes male euphoria, which is required for women to control the behaviour of the opposite sex, to please men, to turn their heads and in every possible way to increase their own chances of success. The greater the imbalance of the fashion-myth, the stronger the male euphoria. These are lists of metaphors with one signified the soothing poetry is based upon (for example, in litanies). Thus, according to its semiological structure, the metaphor of women’s mythological fashion acts as a “soothing” operator, and since feminine fashion in most cases is metaphorical, it turns out to be a euphoric object, despite the supposedly arbitrary laws and rules by which it is created. We found out the semiotic properties of female mythological fashion concerning the number of signs of fashion. Another important universal characteristic of women’s mythological fashion is the mirror symmetry of signifieds and signifiers in the categories of quality of fashion features. The system of mythological fashion is, in fact, tautological: female fashion can be determined only by itself, since fashion starts its existence, after all, just from the existence of some clothes. Fashionable clothing is exactly what women declare with the help of the fashion system. Thus, a pure mutual reflection exists between the signifiers and the signifieds in the semiotic system of female fashion. In this process, the signified seems to be emptied of all its content, but at the same time does not lose its power of designation. Through this process, a thing becomes a signifier of something that actually is the very fact of its own formation. Or, if we describe this phænomenon even more precisely, in the female vestimentary fashion the signifier (that is, a non-verbal semiotic statement of the woman) constantly spreads the meaning through the whole sign structure, but ultimately this meaning is nothing but the very same signifier! Therefore, fashion presented in the form of the female myth-making, acts as a paradoxical artefact phænomenon, a semantic system whose only purpose is the evasiveness of its sense. This system does not refuse a visual embodiment, a sort of spectacle, of a symbolic process. Such reflexive myth-making an activity of women has a mental model, it is mathematical (but in no way formal) logic (Protopopova and Garadja 2018). Like Boolean logic, women’s mythological fashion is characterised as an infinite variation of the same theme; like this logic, it seeks to establish a relationship of equivalence, validity, supra-segmentation, negation, etc., but not the deep truth. Finally, like mathematical logic, female semiotic fashion-myth has a rather modest content, although it is not in the least meaningless.

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The comparison of female fashion system with Boolean logic suggests serious reflections that definitely go beyond the scope of this study. Can female fashion mythmaking act as a valid explicit marker of the existence of a special “female logic” that does not obey the rules of formal Aristotelian and Kantian logic, which is by far the pinnacle of the development of “male logic”? Can we speculate about two types of gender logic just on the basis of the unique logical structure of female fashion? Does such “female logic” of connoted meanings and fluid semiotic correspondences, really exist? One theorises a lot about a special female logic, but no one knows what it is. The study of such a question is obviously beyond the scope of this work, but it may be of enough philosophical interest to become a subject of a separate study.

Conclusion The traditional clothing belongs to the natural fashion that was not strongly influenced by the European influence, while the modern Western standards of outfit imposed on the Muslims belong to the artificial fashion. In the West, as Jacques Lacan noted, the subject of the unconscious became included in the mechanism of the body as a link (Lacan 1974: 11). In many Asian and African communities that now constitute the majority of the Muslim diasporas in the EU, there was no such a process. Perhaps, it may be one of the reasons of wide opposition of the members of Muslim diasporas to the French and other initiatives in gender secular standardization of modern female clothes. One way or another, fashion in clothes is used as a means of creating internal borders in the EU.

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Bernatonite, A.K. 2016. Andrzej Wajda and screen adaptation of Russian classics. Praxema 4 (10): 93–108. Bernatonite, A. K. 2017. The semantics of the images of family members in their relations with the guest in the text of P. P. Pasolini’s script and in his film “Teorema”. Praxema 2(12): 125–145. Bourdieu, P. 1975. Le couturier et sa griffe: contributions à une théorie de la magie. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 1: 7–34. Chombart de Lauwe, P.H. 1956. La vie quotidienne des familles ouvrières. Paris: CNRS. Dogo, D. 2015. Building the image of Russian political conspirators in early Soviet cinematography. Praxema, 2 (4): 69–81. Dulgheru, E. 2014. The sacred in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky. The archetype of the house. Praxema 2(2): 88–100. Eco, U. 2006. La Struttura assente: introduzione alla ricerca semiologica. Transl. into Russian. St. Petersburg: Strata. Encyclopedia Britannica. n.d. http://www.eb.com:253/int/fashion Goodman, N. 1972. Problems and projects. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Hjelmslev, L. 1959. Essais linguistiques. Copenhagen: Nordisk Sprog-og Kulturforlag. Hoffman, A.B. 2004. Fashion and people. A new theory of fashion and fashionable behaviour. Moscow: Peter. Hugo, vol,. 2002. L’Homme qui rit. Paris: Gallimard. Irigaray, L. 1984. Etique de la Différence Sexuelle. Paris: Seuil. Ivanov, D. V. 2015. Glam capitalism. World Brands, Trends and Trash. St Petersburg: Strata. Khitruk, E.B. 2017. “Male issue” in the works of Andrei Tarkovsky. Praxema 2 (12): 146–154. Kireeva, E.V. 1976. The history of costume. Moscow: Nauka. Kröber, A.L., and J. Richardson. 1940. Three centuries of women’s dress fashion. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Lacan, J. 1953. Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse. Rapport du Congrès de Rome tenu à l’Istituto di Psicologia della Universitá di Roma les 26 et 27 septembre 1953. http://aejcpp.free.fr/lacan/1953-09-26b.htm. Lacan, J. 1974. Télévision. Paris: Éd. de Seuil. Lacan, J. 1992. The ethics of psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Lacouture, J. 1986. De Gaulle. Tome 3: Le Souverain. Paris: Éd. de Seuil. Lemarie, J. 1987. Chanel. London: Routledge. Lever, E. 2008. Marie-Antoinette: Le triomphe de l’élégance et du luxe. Paris: Beaux Arts. Lévi-Strauss, C. 2002. Les structures élémentaires de la parenté. Paris: Flammarion. Lévi-Strauss, C. 2003. Anthropologie structural. Paris: Flammarion. Lyman, R. 1972. Couture. New York: Garland. Martindale, C., ed. 1990. Ovid Renewed: Ovidian influence on literature and art from the middle ages to the twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martinet, A. 1960. Eléments de linguistique générale. Paris: Seuil. Meeusen, M. 2018. Aristotelian natural problems and imperial culture: selective readings. Schole 12 (1): 28–47. Myakin, T.G. 2018. De poetis Lesbiorum, de herma, deo fertilitatis, et de mysteriis Artemidis apud Mytilenaeos olim celebratis. Schole 12 (2): 349–364. Myakin, T.G. 2019. The goddess Venus in Lucretius’ poem “De rerum natura.” Schole 13 (1): 153–179. Obraztsov, S.V. 1978. Relay race of art. Moscow: Nauka. Panagiotarakou, E. 2019. Rational actors? Hippias and Aristogeiton. Schole 13(1): 19–31. Parpoil, C. 2013. Paul Poiret, couturier-parfumeur. Paris:Somogy Ed. d’Art. Perrot, M. 1961. Le Mode de vie des familles bourgeoises, 1873–1953. Paris: Armand Colin. Protopopova, I. A., and Garadja A. V. 2018. Reading a woman. Schole 12(2): 433–443. Saunders, E. 1955. The age of worth—couturier to the empress eugenie. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Sharov, K.S. 2006. Faberge eggs as a phenomenon. Bulletin of Analytics 23 (1): 62–66.

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Sharov, K.S. 2008. Female fashion and gender mythologies. Human Llustrated Journal of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences 4: 88–106. Sharov, K. S. 2019. Ancient Rome and female administrators. Schole 13(1): 106–114. Stoetzel, J. 1963. La psychologie sociale. Paris: Flammarion. Thackeray, W.M. 1992. Vanity fair. London: Wordsworth Editions. Troubetzkoy, N.S., and Prince. 1949. Principes de phonologie. Paris: Gallimard. Vedeshkin, M.A. 2018. Bribe and punishment: to the question of persistence of pagan cults in late antiquity. Schole 12 (1): 259–275. White, P. 1973. Poiret. New York: Clarkson Potter. Zborovsky, E.M. 1998. According to the laws of beauty. Moscow: Nauka. Zherebkina, I.A. 2001. Passion. The female body and female sexuality in Russia. St. Petersburg: Aleteya.

Part IV

Constructing “Gender-Neutral” and “Inoffensive” Religion

Chapter 7

Genderizing the Christian Bible: Towards a Unified and Artificial EU’s Religion?

Abstract Historically Europe—the material basis for the EU—was Christian. There are clear political and social trends of renunciating Christianity by the ever-growing number of EU’s advising committees, ruling bodies and public figures. On the other hand, the EU is using new gender ideology to strengthen its unity. It is probably for this reason that the EU’s “gender equality programme” includes rethinking Christianity in terms of “gender equality”. A renovated and patched Christianity, ultratolerant, liberal and “democratic”, with a new deity that has little in common with the Christian Trinity, may become a new common EU’s religion. A gender-inclusive Bible may become the first step towards it. Therefore, this new artificial EU’s religion may be an additional unifying force for the EU that contains too many discrepant parts, both in member states and diasporas. However, I found out in my surveys that there is strong opposition of population and clergy in Eastern Europe (Croatia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary) and Latin American Christian diasporas living in the EU to making the Bible gender-inclusive and creating a new artificial Christianity. Around 85% of the men of cloth and 68% of general population in these countries and Latin American diasporas (the overall numbers) do not regard genderizing the Bible and inventing gender-neutral Christianity possible and/or necessary. In the chapter, I study possible reasons for this on the basis of my interviewing seventeen modern Christian theologians, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican. Rewriting the Bible by means of gender-inclusive language is a convenient tool for implementing many of the strategies of political correctness that are still unreasonably deemed to be a good centripetal force for consolidating the EU and introducing new platforms of “European solidarity”. But the most important thing is whether this rewriting will be a true strengthening force for the EU or its contrary.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_7

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Introduction We are always told that the EU’s gender equality programme implies gender equality and democratic values in all areas of human existence, including religion. Historically Europe—the material basis for the EU—was Christian. However, we are told farther, Christianity can hardly be called a gender-equal religion, as it contains a lot of masculine-oriented provisions, texts, rituals and customs. It is for this reason that the EU’s gender equality programme includes rethinking Christianity in terms of gender equality. A renovated and patched Christianity, liberal and democratic, as some public figures in the EU’s ruling bodies claim, may become a new common EU’s religion. A gender-inclusive Bible may be the first step towards it. Therefore, this new religion may become an additional unifying force for the Union that contains too many discrepant parts, both member states and diasporas. This is a brave plan. What do we have in real life? I found out in my surveys that there is strong opposition of population and clergy in Eastern Europe (Croatia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary) and Latin American Christian diasporas living in the EU to making the Bible gender-inclusive. Around 85% of the men of cloth and 68% of general population in these countries and Latin American diasporas (the overall numbers) do not regard genderizing the Bible possible and/or necessary. In the chapter, I study possible reasons for this on the basis of my interviewing seventeen modern Christian theologians, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican. I investigate the attempts of rewriting the Christian Bible in a genderneutral way within the EU’s gender democratizing ideology. I focus here on Protestantism, as representatives of Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism mainly oppose such endeavours. Besides, I primarily use English translations of the Bible. Why do I merely stick to English translations? 1. In the EU they are the most widespread. 2. They are most often used by representatives of ethnic and religious diasporas. 3. Gender inclusiveness tendencies may be most clearly seen in English translations. 4. English translations may be examples of what we can anticipate in translations of the sacred books (the Bible and beyond) approved for using in the EU in the future. Until now, the humanity does not have gender-inclusive Quran, Tanakh or the Vedas. Gender-inclusive Bible may be, therefore, be a religious visit card of the EU’s gender equality programme.

Gender-Inclusive Translations of the Bible In modern times, there is no single “correct” or “authorized” version of the English Bible, something like the Wycliffe Bible (fourteenth century) or the King James Bible (seventeenth century). In parallel with traditional English versions of Biblical texts, innovative versions of the English Bible exist and are widely used. Gender-inclusive Bibles are now being widely adopted as politically correct.

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What are these translations like? Inclusive (gender-inclusive, gender-neutral, or gender-universal) term refers to a translation of the Bible into English that, to a greater or lesser extent, uses and implements the principles of political correctness and gender-neutral language. Political correctness as a part of the EU’s gender equality programme is a concept that describes language, ideas, policies, behaviour aimed at minimizing social and/or institutional abuse in professional life, gender, race, culture, sexual orientation, religious belief, disability, or age. However, it may turn out a means of unifying people without their wish (Sharov 2010: 31–32). The first attempt to make a gender-inclusive version of the sacred text is Inclusive Psalter for Christian Nations published in 1979 in Arizona (Lathrop and Ramshaw 1993). Ron Minton (Minton 2003: 144–145) provides the following list of widely used gender-inclusive English versions of the Bible in the EU as of 2003: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

An Inclusive Language Lectionary (National Council of Churches, 1983). New Jerusalem Bible (NJB, 1985). New Century Version (NCV, 1986, 1987, 1988). New American Bible (NAB, 1988 and 1990). Revised English Bible (REB, 1989). New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, 1989). Good News Bible (GNB, 1992). The Message (1993). The New International Reader’s Version (1994, 1996, 1998). The Inclusive New Testament (Priests for Equality, 1994). Contemporary English Version (CEV, 1995). God’s Word (GW, 1995). New International Version Inclusive Language Edition (NIVI, 1995; printed only in the UK). New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version (Oxford University, 1979). New Living Translation (NLT, 1996). New English Translation (NET Bible, 1998). Today’s New International Version (2001, gender-inclusive NIV).

This list is impressive, especially taking into account that since 2003 to 2022 it was supplemented by at least fourteen items. As the authors of the 2009 Inclusive Bible write, compiling any version of a gender-inclusive Bible has basically two purposes: (1) to redefine how we understand God and (2) how we treat each other (The Inclusive Bible 2009: VI). Most likely, the key word here is to “revise.” Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel believes that it is necessary to revise the stereotypes of male domination that have been enshrined in sacred texts for centuries (Moltmann-Wendel 1991: 95–96). Olga Voronina similarly argues that the language of the Bible and modern Christian preaching has led to the displacement of ideas about the Mother Goddess and their replacement by the patriarchal figure of God the Father, and, therefore, needs revision and gender correction (Voronina 2007: 58, 61).

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The main areas of linguistic and stylistic revisiting the Scriptures are feminism and LGBT discourse. The main task of compiling and distributing new gender-inclusive Bibles across Christian Churches in the EU, according to their authors, is. ... achieving maximum equality, non-discrimination and removing eternal patriarchal injustice enshrined in the traditional Bible... indicating to everyone that true Christianity accepts any believer... expanding our horizons of understanding Deities, rejection of the implanted concept of God as the patriarchal father of the family, as the king of believers who control their destinies (Ward 1994: 320).

Substitution of Personal and Possessive Pronouns Reverend Ken Collins (n.d.) points out that the cases of use of gender-inclusive language to eliminate masculinity of grammatical gender in possessive pronouns in sacred texts can be roughly divided into two groups: 1.

2.

when we want to generalize natural gender (biological sex) and this does not cause a change in the semantics of a phrase. E.g., in the phrase “a member of the Church and his participation in its life” we can replace the pronoun his with their. This would automatically include women as Church members in the context. Since this situation is real and does not contradict the logic of the Scriptures, as Collins believes, such a linguistic substitution may be fully justified. when, contrary to the laws of logic, we put a female possessive pronoun in correspondence with a certain male person in order to fight against grammatical gender. E.g., we may say “Moses and her rod.” According to Collins, purely feminist arbitrariness is taking place here, which cannot be justified by anything.

The latter is, to be sure, a linguistic nonsense, which, however, is implemented in a number of highly inclusive translations, such as, e.g. The Queen James Bible for LGBTQ. Its authors argue: …since even in relation to God, we should not be sure that He does not have the appearance of a black woman... then in relation to the characters of the Bible even more so... Moses could be a black woman as now there are many black Jews… this may have been was artificially obscured by masculine Hebrews (Ringer n.d.).

The first version of the correction is not so radical, although not so simple. In the second half of the 1980s, the Ecumenical World Council of Churches decided that a new English gender-inclusive version of the Bible was needed because. ... masculine grammatical tendency which, in the case of the Bible, often made it difficult to understand or obscured the meaning of an original text (Ringer n.d.).

This Church organization ordered the publication of the so-called New Revised Standard Bible NRSV, which was published in 1989. This version implemented the first of the approaches we have considered. E.g., the phrase from Proverbs “He who walks in uprightness fears the Lord” was rewritten as “Those who walk in uprightness fear the Lord” (Proverbs 14: 2).

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Such a change does not introduce new meanings into the text in English and does not remove the existing meanings, since the grammatical masculine gender here is a general gender that has no connection with the natural gender (the sex of a person). Let us carry out a more thorough semantic analysis. In many places in the Bible, we are not talking about a multitude of people, but about one person, e.g., when the Bible speaks of loneliness that persecutes or overtakes a person. The NRSV version of the Bible summarizes all such cases without making a distinction between them and thus generating new meanings not implied by the biblical authors. So, in the 39th Psalm in the King James Bible of 1611 reads: “Surely euery man walketh in a vaine shew … he heapeth vp riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them” (Ps. 39: 7), and the NRSV Bible uses the pronouns they and their. It is clear that here the author of the psalm, King of Israel David, emphasizes the anger and sad loneliness of a person who collects treasures only for himself and does not even think about sharing them. If we say they and their (people walk, collect their treasures…), we destroy the context of loneliness. In the Contemporary English Version CEV, the substitution of pronouns and a number of other words in this quote changes the meaning quite seriously: “And it disappears like a shadow. Our struggles are senseless; we store up more and more, without ever knowing who will get it all.” Sometimes the use of the singular number is intended to emphasize the peculiarity of an individual person, its irreducibility to the mass of people, to the crowd. A contemporary American theologian Pastor Wayne Grudem, criticizing the modern EU’s strategies of gender inclusiveness in the text of the Bible, argues that the gospel verse John 14:23 is precisely such a place where the substitution of the plural for the singular grammatical number will change the whole meaning of the verse. Jesus answered and said to him: if anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him (John 14:23).

Grudem points out that, most likely, in this phrase the Christ wanted to emphasize that He and the Father will come and make the soul of an individual, a given person, their home and dwelling, since it is this person who is worthy of such an honour. His neighbour, perhaps, will be never honored in such a way. A gender-inclusive version of the phrase “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them” removes the meaning of the individual mystery of the descent of divine grace on a human (Grudem 1998: 271).

Eliminating the Word Man and Patriarchal Familial Allusions In the New Revised Standard Bible NRSV, the words “son,” “brother,” “father” are removed from the text, wherever possible, since its compilers considered that.

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…the representation of ancient patriarchal relations in the Jewish society should not distort liberal and tolerant attitude of modern believers in Christ towards discriminated groups of people, primarily women (Fuchs 2008: 47).

An instructive example of this strategy is rewriting the following verse from Ezekiel’ prophecy. Bible verse of King James “And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feete, and I will speake unto thee” (Ezek. 2: 1) became “O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you” in NRSV. The address “Son of man” disappeared, and the meaning of the phrase began to drift from the conversation of God with the Old Testament prophet to the pagan greetings that were typical for many ethnic groups of antiquity. The address to a person “O mortal!” not just emphasizes the immortality of the speaker, but draws an insurmountable line between the mortal state of a person and the immortal existence of the one who is addressing. In the Homeric epic, in Virgil, in the Icelandic sagas, in the Old English poems, everywhere we meet this address used in a pagan context (Calvo 2018). This pagan context emphasizes the fragility of human life and the overwhelming power of pagan deities, from the Olympic inhabitants to Odin (Wotan). Everywhere, when a certain pagan deity addresses a person in this way, it belittles human nature, wants to crush a human as a personality, or less often to laugh at a person (as, e.g., in the Odyssey). Let us recall how the immortal Valkyrie Brünnhilde, the heroine of the Germanic-Scandinavian epic, was welcoming Sigmund. She began conversation with the words “O mortal, rise up and I will tell you your fate!” Brunhilde ceased calling him mortal when he challenges her power. Similarly, in Ancient Rome in the second-third centuries many Roman emperors often addressed to their subjects “O mortal!” (Sharov 2019). Is it appropriate to use the appeal “O mortal!” for contexts like the mentioned passage from Ezekiel’s prophecy? First, even in the Old Testament times, God left man with hope for salvation; He could not draw an insurmountable line between human mortality, which was the result of original sin, and His immortal state. We may recollect the well-known words from the same book of Ezekiel: “Haue I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord God? And not that he should returne from his wayes, and liue?” (Ezekiel 18: 23). Secondly, God does not in any way laugh at man, let alone a prophet. As John Chrysostom says, laughter and mockery of a person are the lot of other forces, satan and fallen demons. But both of these incorrect meanings will be learned by those who will study Christian religion from such English translations of the Holy Scriptures as the NRSV or CEV Bibles. In the elimination of the words “son” and “man” there is another point that is dubious from the point of view of traditional Christian theology: the address “Son of man” is extremely often used in biblical books, both Old Testament and New Testament, including the Apocalypse. Jesus Christ called Himself the Son of Man many times. Thus, in trying to find substitutes for this address, we are probably distorting the words of Christ (Grudem 1998). Sometimes gender-inclusive translations of the English Bible use “someone,” “some,” “anyone,” “any,” “one” instead of “man.” The Christ may be even called “someone of humankind.”

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In this case, the word “son” is replaced by “child”, and “Son of God” is transformed into “child of God”. But the Son of God and the child of God are not at all the same. This is where the gender-inclusive newspeak is striking out ancient meaning. In the ancient East, only a son could perform certain socially significant actions on behalf of his father, i.e. could act as a proxy. When the sacred texts say “son” or “sons,” it means responsibility before God, and when they say “child,” “children,” it means the desperate love of God for people (Bernatonite 2017). If we throw out all the uses of the word “son,” then at the same time we throw out the sense of responsibility that God has placed on us, and readers of such versions of the Bible will not even suspect that God not only pampers us, cherishes and rocks us in a cradle like unreasonable babies, but also expects a high degree of meaningful self-sacrifice, in order to fulfil the will of God, in other words, maturity in thoughts and actions. David Neff raises the question, if the first Christians believed that the Son of God would save them, then do not the new Protestant Christians of the twenty-first century believe that “someone from the human race, the Child of Father-Mother God” saves their lives and souls? (Neff 1995: 19). Likewise, the words “brethren” and “father” have been removed from the English gender-inclusive Bibles. “Brothers and sisters” are substituted for “brethren,” while “ancestor” (“progenitor”) for “father.” The logic is as follows. In Ancient Greek, ´ If (e.g., in the Epistles of the Apostles) brothers are αδελϕ´oι, and sisters are αδελϕαι. it is said about brothers and sisters at the same time, then according to the rules of Ancient Greek grammar there will be only a masculine plural. However, since in English the feminine form is not grammatically included in the concept of “brethren,” it is necessary to say “brothers and sisters”, the address not included in the King James 1611 Bible and any previous English Bibles. To whom did the apostles address when they wrote αδελϕ´oι? We know well that the Apostle Paul opposed against women’s right to speak in Church meetings. Speaking about women attending Church evenings held in remembrance of the Savior’s suffering, he said: ...Let the woman learne in silence with all subiection: But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to vsurpe authoritie ouer the man, but to be in silence (1 Tim. 2: 11-12) and ...Let your women keepe silence in the Churches, for it is not permitted vnto them to speake; but they are commanded to bee vnder obedience: as also saith the Law. And if they will learne any thing, let them aske their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speake in the Church (1 Cor. 14: 34-35).

Did the apostles see women as direct addressees of messages that were read at meetings of Church members, or did they acknowledge that it would be better for women to discuss the issues raised at home, in the family circle? In this case, it turns ´ Then out that the Greek αδελϕ´oι is precisely αδελϕ´oι, and not αδελϕ´oι + αδελϕαι. the word “brethren” used in the King James Bible would appear to be an appropriate translation, not an anachronism. In addition, the word “brethren,” which goes back to Old English br¯oþru, was in many cases used in Old and Middle English as a collective term for both men and women, which means that it does not differ in meaning from αδελϕ´oι.

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The most surprising gender-inclusive elimination of masculine signifiers from the Bible is the replacement of “father” with “ancestor” or “forebear.” The intention seems to be the least justified here. Let us imagine: if in an ordinary, everyday situation (and by no means kidding), instead of “dad,” “daddy,” “papa,” we say to our father in the conversation “my ancestor” or “my forebear,” would not this be an offense or at least oddity on our side? Some gender-inclusive Bibles suggest saying “our ancestor up above” instead of “our Father in the Heaven.” The logic here is as follows. We cannot be sure that God exists exactly in the place that is called Heaven. Besides, it is also wrong to call Him Father following the patriarchal model. Some English gender-inclusive translations suggest the following: “our God Mother and Father up above!”. It is difficult to disagree with the doctors of theology Wayne Grudem and Grant Osborne, who, criticizing such gender-inclusive corrections of Scripture, argue that as a result, not only heretical expressions appear in a sacred text, but its original meaning disappears completely. A person is likely to think that we are talking about the deceased parents, who, as he or she hopes, are now in heaven (Grudem and Osborne 1997: 31). These Anglican theologians point out that they see no problems for women if the pronouns “he,” “him,” “himself” and “his” when we speak about God.

Conclusion The supporters of introducing a new gender-neutral Christianity and rewriting the Bible on the basis of the requirements of the EU’s “gender equality programme” appeal to the fact that language changes over time, reflecting changes in our society. Therefore, the books of the Old and New Testaments should be rewritten so that they should correspond to the new linguistic norms. However, by no means can we consider new, gender-inclusive English translations of the Bible to be authentic texts that preserve the original message of the original. Many gender-inclusive translations of the Christian Bible and “politically correct” Christian sermons based on them have already moved far from the original Christian meanings embedded in the sacred text. From the point of view of traditional theology, even Protestant theology, the New Testament is not a reflection of how we understand God, but the living word of God. An attempt to rewrite the Bible for the sake of today’s political and social interests of a social group in the EU is an evidence of either doubt that the Holy Scriptures are inspired by God, or a complete rejection of Christianity. A number of passages in both the Old and New Testaments emphasize that not only the design and structure of the Bible, but the specific words can be the result of divine revelation (e.g., Jer. 30: 2, 2 Pet. 1: 19–21, 1 Cor. 2: 9 –13, 2 Tim. 3:16). In some cases, God did not merely send a vision or give a lesson to the prophet, but indicated the exact words that the prophet should write down. Some of the theologians interviewed by me believe that this is why some texts of Scripture are composed as if they were dictated by God himself and the prophet and his disciples

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performed only the function of scribes, or stenographers ( e.g., Isa. 8:16, Jer. 36: 4, 36:32, 3 Ezra 14: 37–48). Compiling “gender-inclusive” versions of the Bible is not very productive for the EU unity from a pragmatic point of view. The concept of gender identity is constantly “drifting.” The EU’s gender ideology makes everything according to the West European standards, but this may be a rash attitude. In Western neo-liberal political thought, new gender identities are being introduced constantly since 1990s. The legislation aimed at political correctness, which provides rights to representatives of new gender identities, is also “drifting.” If today’s ideologists of gender equality find it appropriate to rewrite the Bible under the rights of women and LGBTQ+ representatives, then tomorrow the Scripture will need to be redone for protecting rights of other discriminated groups. In addition, the transformation of the Bible and Christian preaching may be a centrifugal factor for the EU, as traditionalist Roman Catholic and Orthodox diasporas as well as East European societies are sceptic about any necessity to have a unified politically-correct religion with gender-inclusive Bible as its core sacred text. These critics of gender-inclusive rewriting the Bible regard it as an attempt to reject a whole cultural layer. From my interviewing them, I found the following. They argue, we do not rewrite the immortal works of Virgil, Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Pushkin in a “non-offensive” gender-neutral language. In essence, it would be the same, an attempt to convey the heritage of antiquity to a modern inhabitant of the EU in a “non-offensive” language. In every great work of art or religion, there are many examples of politically incorrect language and even outright linguistic offence. Moreover, it is difficult to remember examples where the offensive language was not present. Besides, the ideologues of political correctness and the use of “genderinclusive” language often argue that the language of the Bible is the language of the patriarchal society of ancient times and we are free to reason about God in terms of our own culture and universal egalitarianism. But, as many modern theologians suppose, we will have to abandon what is called divine revelation. If we, as the Christians, want to talk about God, who reveals Himself and His will to human in His deeds and words, then we can hardly believe that the language of the Bible is just a reflection of cultural, gender, national, racial, sexual or any other inequality of the corresponding historical epoch. If we want to argue only about historical inequality, then such new EU’s religion can scarcely be named Christianity. Obviously, any translations of the Bible, including gender-inclusive ones, will convey some religious meaning to the reader, but we cannot be sure that the meaning conveyed by them will be the authentic meaning of the Biblical message. It should be noted that there are many editions of the King James Bible, in which modern spelling is used (there are no dumb final e, modern prepositions are used, double consonants are removed and there is no v/u inversion), and this spelling is understandable even to a child. As I have already noted in the introduction, the English versions of the Bible and, accordingly, the language of preaching in English are subject to the greatest degree

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of genderization. Alexander Gomola, a Polish sociologist and researcher of genderinclusive language in theology, at the end of his paper expresses the hope that in the near future. ...both inclusive and feminist translations of the Bible will become the norm not only in English and German, but also, for example, in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or Polish (Gomola 2010: 206).

In fact, rewriting the Bible into a gender-inclusive language is a convenient tool for implementing many of the strategies of political correctness that are recklessly deemed to be a good centripetal force for consolidating the EU. But the most important thing is whether this rewriting will be a true strengthening force for the EU or its contrary.

References Bernatonite, Ada K. 2017. The semantics of family members images in their relationships with a guest in the script and P. P. Pasolini’s movie ‘Theorem.’ Praxema 2 (12): 125–145. Calvo, José M. Z. 2018. The Christ-Logos question in Amelius. Schole 12 (2): 365–379. Collins, Ken, rev. n.d. The problem with inclusive-language Bible translations. Ken Collins Website. http://www.kencollins.com/bible/bible-t6.htm Fuchs, Esther. 2008. Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible for women: the neoliberal turn in contemporary feminist scholarship. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24 (2): 45–65. Gomola, Alexander. 2010. Feminist thought in Bible translations. Przekładaniec. A Journal of Literary Translations 24: 193–208. Grudem, Wayne. 1998. A response to Mark Strauss’ evaluation of the Colorado Springs translation guidelines. The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 41 (6): 263–286. Grudem, Wayne, and Grant Osborne. 1997. Do Inclusive-Language Bibles Distort Scripture? Yes/No. Christianity Today, 10: 26–39. Lathrop, Gordon, and Gail Ramshaw. 1993. Psalter for the Christian People: An Inclusive Language ReVision of the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer 1979. Tucson, AZ: Pueblo Books. Minton, Ron. 2003. Gender-inclusive Bible translations. Chafer Theological Seminary Journal 9 (1): 141–146. Moltmann-Wendel, Elisabeth. 1991. And God Created Man and Wife (Feminist Theology and Human Identity). Voprosy Filosofii, 1: 91–104. Neff, David. 1995. Lost in the translation: Can the New Inclusive Bible’s Human One, Child of Father-Mother God, save us? Christianity Today 39 (2): 19. Ringer, Wesley. n.d. “What are the Biblical Translation Issues Raised by the Gender-Inclusive Debate?” Evidence for God. http://www.godandscience.org/doctrine/gender.html Sharov, Konstantin S. 2019. Ancient Rome and female administrators. Schole 13 (1): 106–114. Sharov, Konstantin S. 2010. On the dark side of political correctness: gender-neutral new language. Voprosy Filosofii, 3: 30–43. Voronina, Olga A. 2007. Matter and spirit opposition: gender aspect. Voprosy Filosofii, 2: 56–65. Ward, Graham. 1994. In the name of the father and of the mother. Literature and Theology 8 (3): 311–327.

Chapter 8

Towards a New Gender-Neutral Deity? Resistance of Jewish Diaspora

Abstract The ideologists and supporters of the EU’s gender equality programme, no matter how democratic it may seem for everyday life or political discourse, have no serious reason to rethink Scriptures (the Bible, the Tanakh or the Quran) from a linguistic point of view, because the sacred texts written several thousand years ago cannot contain the modern political and social meanings of discrimination of women. If God is understood as God (Judaism, Islam), or God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Christianity), and not as God the Mother or Daughter, or a gender Couple, this does not eliminate contemporary political and social rights of women in the EU, the society that is built around historical Europe that was once based on Christian values, beliefs and traditions but now forswears them. The feminist discourse becomes excessive in rethinking the essence of God. I study the resistance of the Jewish diaspora living in the EU to this feminist discourse.

Introduction The authors of EU’s gender equality programme insist that women must be given equal rights in religious services and preaching. Moreover, the very notion of God in monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) may become unsolid and not well defined in a society that accepts the EU’s gender ideology. Is it possible to interpret the Bible, Torah or Quran in a feminine sense, and how will our understanding of God change in this case? At the same time, how adequate will such a new understanding of the nature of the divine, and how far can we and are ready to move away from the traditional interpretation of God? The rethinking of sacred texts concerns, for the most part, the Christian Gospel and the Jewish Tanakh (including the Torah and Talmud). There are fewer attempts to introduce feminine meanings in the Quran (e.g., Barlas 2001; Hammer 2012; Roded 2015).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_8

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Within the EU’s gender equality programme, an attempt is made to reinterpret the ideas embodied in the sacred texts in order to combine our understanding of divinity and political programme [4–9]. By introducing a number of new ideas into the sacred texts and excluding other ideas from it, ideologists of gender equality primarily criticize of the patriarchal descriptive language used to describe the biblical names and properties of God (De Troyer 2005; Hess 2005; Kittel and Friedrich 2003; Korsak 1993, 2002, 2010; Kettemann and Marko 2005; Tate 2006; Pearson 2003; Metzger 2001; Brenner and Fontaine 2001; Gruber 1983; Meyers 2014). In the chapter, I study the opposition of the Jewish diaspora in the EU, including Jewish theologians and rabbis, to the attempts of feminization of God. The gender equality programme advances an idea that the texts of Tanakh convey not a literal meaning, but an approximate one. What approximation are we talking about here? This is not an allegorical understanding of the Scriptures, nor is it a metaphorical one. Some thinkers believe that the Tanakh (as well as the Bible and Quran) conveys not exact descriptions of events, but only approximate ones. An opinion is expressed that the authors of the ancient sacred books did it in the same way as people do it now in ordinary life, when from memory they talk about their impressions about the past (Tate 2006: 27). No one can describe the fullness of what he saw, so each person uses his own set of denoters and semiotic chains to recreate the picture of what he saw or heard (Pearson 2003: 208). Therefore, when we read the texts of the Tanakh, as these authors believe, we see not some kind of linguistic “photographs” or “daguerreotypes” of events, that captured a situation, message and its context, but just imperfect sketches of what happened. These sketches may have been made by imperfect people of a patriarchal Israel and Judea society (Metzger 2001: 8). An idea is proposed that the authors of the sacred books used patriarchal language to depict historical events and divine messages to people, and this led to ousting women and feminine meanings from the Tanakh (Fontaine 2001: 47–48; Gruber 1983: 352; Meyers 2014: 18).

Names of God A number of researchers argue that the masculine meaning of the nature of God was artificially inserted into the biblical story by ancient authors who, using linguistic techniques, relayed the patriarchal stereotypes of their era from social processes and institutions dominated by men to the concept of God, i.e. they constructed a masculine understanding of God artificially (Haugerud 1977; Pattemore 2007). Johnson argues that instead of calling God the Father, we can also call Him God the Mother (Johnson 1999: 24, 28). Megan Walker, like Vasily Rozanov a hundred years ago, believes that one can talk about God as a Divine couple (Walker 1989: 7). Stanton has a similar point of view (Stanton 2003: 35); she believes that the masculine meaning of God, the concept of God as the Father, came into society through linguistics, and penetrated there from the patriarchal cultural traditions of the ancient world (Stanton 2003). Details of the linguistic representation of God in

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the form of a “heavenly Mother” or “Mother-Father pair” are set out in a critical work by David Neff (1995). One of the first authors to talk about the possibility of a feminist, anti-patriarchal reading of passages concerning the names of God in the Old Testament was Letty Russell (1976: 50). From her point of view, Moses incorrectly conveyed to Israel, awaiting him at Mount Sinai, the content of his communication with God, including using masculine language constructions where he could have used the feminine gender or the plural number. She believes that the misconception of patriarchal God was codified in Judaism in such a way. Taking into account a very strong opposition of the Jewish diaspora to such attempts, let us try to figure out whether such assumptions are possible. Can we really talk about God not as a Father, but as a Mother in Heaven or a gender Divine couple? Was there voluntarism in Moses’s account of God, which he brought to the Jews? When Moses asked God from the burning thorn bush how to call God before the Jews, God replied that His name is ‘I am I’ (‘From the beginning I am’) (Ex. 3:14). Here and below, quotes in Hebrew are given by Leningrad Code:

In this Hebrew phrase, our attention can be drawn to the construction ehyeh asher ehyeh, ‘I am who I am’. Further, in Ex. 3:15 God commands Moses to keep His name forever:

And God said moreouer vnto Moses, Thus shalt thou say vnto the children of Israel; The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Iacob hath sent me vnto you: this is my name for euer, and this is my memoriall vnto all generations. first appears, which This is where the tetragrammaton ‘Yahweh’ (‘Jehovah’) is the correct imperfect form of ‘to be’ in binyan pa’al in the third person masculine singular. A number of modern researchers propose to interpret the tetragrammaton as a form of the verb in binyan hiph’il, and then the meaning of the name of God will change to ‘He who calls to life’. However, this interpretation is not considered a norm by any of the great commentators of the Torah and Tanakh. Neither Maimonides, nor Rashi, nor Adret, nor Bertinoro, will we find an opportunity to interpret the Sinai name of God as ‘He Who calls to life’. In fact, the name ‘Jehovah’, which God indicated to Moses, does not reveal the characteristics of God, it simply postulates the eternal self-identical nature of God, but with a substantial connotation: ‘God the Father is God the Father’, and not otherwise, not God -Mother, and not God is a pair of Gods. In English, the meaning of the tetragrammaton is best represented as I ≡ I.

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In a more precise form, that would be (He) is from the beginning and will be till the end ≡ ≡ (He) is from the beginning and will be till the end. In Ex. 3:15 Moses uses two names for God. When he says “God said to Moses,” the prophet uses the word Elohim (‘God’). He then repeats it several times after the (‘God of Abraham’), (‘God of the fathers’), Tetragrammaton: (’and the God of Jacob’). Anyway, in this (‘The God of Isaac’), (‘sent me’) (Ex. phrase the masculine grammatical gender is used in the verb: 3:15). Moreover, throughout the Bible and beyond this original phrase, all verbs are always used with the subject Jehovah only in the masculine gender: for example, raah (‘appeared to me’, ‘appeared to you’) (Ex. 3:16, Ex. 4: 1,5), qarah eyamar (‘and said to him’) (Ex. 4: 6), etc. (‘called us’) (Ex. 3:18), ‘Jehovah’ is a grammatical derivative of the verb haya The very name (‘to be, to appear, to become’); as we can see, the tetragrammaton was originally a verbal form, but in the context of the biblical narrative it became a noun. This name, more precisely, His self-designation was given to Moses by God in the form of a . However, this construcself-identical logical–linguistic construction tion uses the masculine gender, not the feminine and not the feminine plural. Some authors, e.g., Mollenkott (1994) and O’Day (1996), propose to rewrite this phrase in English in order to remove the masculine gender from it. However, this can be regarded as voluntarism, since Moses emphasized in the Torah that this was the direct speech of God, and not the transmission of the words of God by the imperfect words of Moses. The same logic applies to other names for God used in the Tanakh. The common El, a word for ‘god’ as well as ‘God’ in Hebrew and all Aramaic languages is masculine noun. In the case of the true God, rather than one of the many pagan Elohim (‘God’, plural deities, the most commonly used word in the Bible is of ‘God’). Elohim, a masculine plural noun, has always been used with singular conjugations since Genesis. A number of Christian theologians believe that this is linguistic evidence of the Old Testament concept of the Trinity, i.e. the Trinity of God (Freedman 1986). Elohim is literally ‘Gods’, but actually ‘God’. Also in the Tanakh Adonai, Sabaoth, Yahu texts one can find such names (names) of God as and others, all representing masculine grammatical nouns, singular or plural (Biblical Revelation 1998: 9–13). Nathan Eubank (2007), trying to analyze the possibility of feminist interpretations of the names of God in Judaism, believes that we can think of God not always as Father, but sometimes also as Mother, since in rabbinic literature Shekhinah is widely used for God. Indeed, and Kabbalah, the feminine word Shekhina is a feminine noun, but still I believe that this linguistic circumstance is not enough to talk about God not as a Father, but as a Mother in Heaven. In the sacred texts of the Tanakh, this word is never used as a synonym for God, and late Renaissance rabbinic sources, together with Kabbalah, cannot serve as authentic texts for understanding the correct name of God.

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Jewish theologians of the Talmudic tradition, not distorted by occult Kabbalism, e.g. Maimonides, Adret or Rashi, all emphasized the importance of the book of the prophet Daniel for our understanding of at least some of the properties of God. The Christian theologians think that in the book of the prophet Daniel in a definite place there is a simultaneous mention of God the Father and God the Son (Aramaic): I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the sonne of man, came with the clouds of heauen, and came to the Ancient of daies, and they brought him neere before him (Dan. 7:13).

Here, in all parts of the verse we see the use of the masculine grammatical gender: Bar-enash (‘Son of Man’), where both nouns making up the anthroponym are athah (‘went’) is the masculine past form of the verb in binyana pu’al; masculine. havah ad Attiyq-yom metah (‘was [so] until the Ancient of qodam qereib (‘was Days’). The verbs and participles are masculine; brought before [Him]’, but it can be translated and ‘was sacrificed before [Him]’). Again, the verb qereib in binyan huph’al (passive form) is used in masculine form. Whatever names of God are used in the Tanakh, they still remain the names of the Father, but not the Mother; any verb forms and adjectives used with them are always masculine (Biblical Revelation 1998: 12). The verb forms most often used in conjunction with the tetragrammaton are pa’al perfect, participle pa’al, niph’al perfect. In Old Testament texts, other Hebrew verb forms are sometimes used along with the name ‘Jehovah’ (in other binyanim), although much less frequently. Such researchers as Hardesty, Harrelson, Jacobs and Scholz believe that this is nothing more than a grammatical circumstance, and such agreement of grammatical gender does not reflect the natural gender of the referent (Hardesty 1988; Harrelson 1991; Jacobs 2001; Scholz 2010). But most Jewish theologians argue in the opposite way. God is outside the realm of gender. The Tanakh repeatedly emphasizes that God cannot be thought in human categories that provide for the sexual dichotomy (Poythress 1998: 244–246). My argumentation is more concerned with those assumptions, according to which God is a couple, a combination of male and female, as, e.g., Schroer and Bietenhard (2003) believe. Assuming that, perhaps, the grammatical agreement of adjectives and names of God according to the masculine rules in the Hebrew language does not reflect natural gender, I still want to emphasize that in no place of Scripture in relation to God the pronoun ‘She’ is used, only ‘ He’. If the masculine grammatical gender of nouns may not reflect the natural gender of the referent (natural gender), then the grammatical gender of pronouns cannot but reflect the gender of the referent in reality (even if it is a conditional gender, as in the case of reasoning about God). Besides, I want to stress that I am far from thinking that God is portrayed as a human-like male being in Tanakh. If we believe that God created man in His own image and likeness (Gen. 1: 26–27), we must not think that God is corporeal and He has the same body as a man.

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As I noted just above, on Mount Sinai, God wanted to reveal part of His nature to Moses, and he called Himself by the name of eternal and permanent self-identity, but Identity in the masculine gender (tetragrammaton ‘Jehovah’). I think that God wanted to inform people that He is God the Father, and He cannot be considered either a certain metaphorical Mother, as a number of authors believe (Cosgrove 1993; Falk 1990; Flotow 1991), or some Divine couple, as Vasily V. Rozanov (1991) thought, nor Sophia, the Wisdom of God revealed as a mysterious woman, as Vladimir S. Solovoyv (1991) believed. In the books of the Old Testament in relation to God, hu (‘He’) is used, as, for either the third person singular masculine pronoun example, in the verse of Deut. 4:35:

“thou mightest know, that the Lord hee is God; there is none else besides him”, or attah (‘You’), as, e.g., in a verse the second person singular masculine pronoun from the book of Isaiah (Isa. 63:16), where this pronoun is used twice:

“Doubtlesse thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of vs, and Israel acknowledge vs not: thou, O Lord art our Father, our Redeemer”. There is no full equivalent in English, because in English ‘You’ can be of any gender. In Hebrew, ‘You’ might be masculine and feminine. Quite indicative are phrases from prophetic texts that use a language construction ‘I (masculine) is He’ or ‘You (masculine) is He’. E.g., Jer. 14:22 reads

“Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause raine? or can the heauens giue showres, Art not thou he, O Lord our God? therefore we will waite vpon thee: for thou hast made all these things”. The construction ‘You (masculine) is He’ is used here: lo attah hu Yehovah Elohim.

Conclusion The ideologists and supporters of the EU’s gender equality programme, no matter how democratic it may seem for everyday life or political discourse, have no serious reason to rethink Scriptures (the Bible, Tanakh or Quran) from a linguistic point of view, because the sacred texts written several thousand years ago cannot contain the modern meanings of discrimination of women. If God is understood as God

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(Judaism, Islam), or God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Christianity), and not as “God the Mother” or Daughter, or a gender Couple, this cannot eliminate contemporary political and social rights of women in the EU, the society that is built around historical Europe that was once based on Christian values, beliefs and traditions. The feminist discourse becomes excessive in rethinking the essence of God. The opposition of fundamentalist Jewish groups (e.g., the Hasidim) living in the EU to the EU’s gender equality programme is very well understandable. For a Jew, such interpretations are blasphemous.

References Biblical Revelation and Inclusive Language. 1998. A report of the commission on theology and church relations of the lutheran church—missouri synod. Kansas City, MO: Episcopal Church Synod Press. https://www.lcms.org/Document.fdoc?src=lcm&id=314 (date of access 25.12.2018). Bibel in gerechter Sprache. 2006. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus. Barlas, A. 2001. The Qur’an and Hermeneutics: reading the Qur’an’s opposition to Patriarchy. Journal of Qur’anic Studies 3 (2): 15–38. Brenner, A., Fontaine, C. 2001. A feminist companion to reading the Bible: approaches, methods and strategies. London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. Cosgrove, C.H. 1993. The first attempt to use gender-inclusive language in English Bible translation. Journal of Ecumenical Studies 30, no. 2: 263–268. De Troyer, K. 2005. The names of God: their pronunciation and their translation: a digital tour of some of the main witnesses. Lectio Difficilior: European Electronic Journal for Feminist Exegesis 2. http://www.lectio.unibe.ch/05_2/troyer_names_of_god.htm Ellis, E.E. 2003. Dynamic equivalence theory, feminist ideology, and three recent Bible translations. Expository times 115, no. 1: 7–12. Eubank, N. 2007. Review of the contemporary Torah: a gender-sensitive adaptation of the JPS translation by David E.S. Stein (ed.) Bible and Critical Theory 3, no. 3: 421–424. Falk, M. 1990. The song of songs: a new translation and interpretation. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Flotow, L. von. 1991. Feminist translation: contexts, practices and theories. TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction 4, no. 2: 69–84. Freedman, D. N. 1986. YHWH. In: G. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.). Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, v. 4, 500–521, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. Gold, V.R., et al. 1983. An Inclusive Language Lectionary, in 3 vols. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press. Gruber, M.I. 1983. The motherhood of God in second Isaiah. Revue Biblique 90: 351–359. Hammer, J. 2012. American muslim women, religious authority, and activism. Austin. TX: University of Texas Press. Hardesty, N.A. 1988. ‘Whosoever Surely Meaneth Me’: inclusive language and the Gospel. Christian Scholar’s Review 17, no. 3: 231–240. Harrelson, W. 1991. Inclusive language in the new revised standard version. In: B. M. Metzger, R. C. Dentan, W. Harrelson (eds.). The making of the new revised standard version of the Bible, 120–144, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Haugerud, J. 1977. The word for us: Gospels of John and Mark, epistles to the romans and the galatians. Seattle, WA: Coalition on Women and Religion.

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Hess, R.S. 2005. Adam, Father, He: gender issues in Hebrew translation. The Bible Translator 56, no. 3: 144–153. Jacobs, M.M. 2001. Feminist scholarship, biblical scholarship and the Bible. Neotestamentica 35 (1/2): 81–94. Johnson, E. 1999. She who is: the mystery of god in feminist theological discourse. New York: Crossroad. Kettemann, B., Marko, G. 2005. But what does the Bible really say? A critical analysis of fundamentalist discourse. AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 30, no. ½: 201–225. Kittel, G., Friedrich, G. 2003. Theological dictionary of the new testament. Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans. Korsak, M. P. 1993. At the start... genesis made new. New York: Doubleday. Korsak, M.P. 2010. Glad news from mark: a translation of the Greek text. Other Words: The Journal for Literary Translators 35: 45–56. Korsak, M. P. 2002. Translating the Bible: Bible translations and gender issues. In: A. Brenner, J. van Henten (eds.). Bible Translation on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century. Authority, Reception, Culture and Religion, 132–146, London: Sheffield Academic Press. Martin, C.J. 1990. Womanist interpretations of the new testament: the quest for holistic and inclusive translation and interpretation. 6, no. 2: 41–61. Metzger, B. 2001. The Bible in translation: ancient and english versions. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Meyers, C.L. 2014. Was ancient Israel a patriarchal society? Journal of Biblical Literature 133, no. 1: 8–27. Mollenkott, V. 1994. The divine feminine: the biblical imagery of god as female. New York: Crossroad Publication. Neff, D. 1995. Lost in the translation: Can the new inclusive Bible’s human one, child of fathermother God, Save Us? Christianity Today 39, no. 2: 19. O’Day, G.R. 1996. Probing an inclusive scripture. Christian century 2: 692–694. Pattemore, S. 2007. Framing Nida: the relevance of translation theory in the United Bible societies. In A History of Bible Translation, ed. Ph.A. Noss, 218–263. Rome: Edizioni de storia e letteratura. Pearson, R.D. 2003. Parental love as Metaphor for divine-human love. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46, no. 2: 205–216. Poythress, V.S. 1998. Gender in Bible translation: exploring a connection with male representatives. Westminster Theological Journal 60: 225–253. Roded, R. 2015. Jewish and Islamic religious feminist exegesis of the sacred books: Adam, Woman and Gender. Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 29: 56–80. Rozanov, V.V. 1991. Family as a religion. In Russian Eros, or Philosophy of Love in Russia, ed. V. Shestakova, 120–139. Moscow: Progress. Russell, L.M. 1976. The liberating word: a guide to nonsexist interpretation of the Bible. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press. Scholz, S. 2010. The Bible as “Men’s World”? feminism and the translation of the Hebrew Bible/Old testament. lectio difficilior 1: 1–43. Schroer, S., and S. Bietenhard. 2003. Feminist interpretation of the Bible and the Hermeneutics of liberation. London: Sheffield Academic Press. Solovyov, V. S. 1991. The meaning of love. In Shestakova, V. (ed.): Russian Eros, or Philosophy of Love in Russia, 19–77, Moscow: Progress. Spencer, A.B. 1997. Power play: gender confusion and the NIV. Christian Century 114, no. 20: 618–619. Stanton, E.C. 2003. The woman’s Bible: a classic feminist perspective. Mineola, NY: Dover. Tate, W. R. 2006. Interpreting the Bible: a handbook of terms and methods. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

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Walker, M. 1989. The challenge of feminism to the Christian concept of God. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 66: 4–20. Walsh, M.P. 1999. Feminism and Christian tradition. an annotated bibliography and critical introduction to the literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Part V

Melting Gender with Culture

Chapter 9

Rethinking Female Roles in Christian Culture: A Case of Latin American Diasporas in the EU

Abstract Female representatives of Christian diasporas living in the EU recognize the EU’s initiatives in remaking Christianity according to the gender equality programme much more positively than female members of other religious diasporas. What is met with ease and eagerness in Latin American diasporas may be questioned and rejected in Muslim, Confucian or Hindu diasporas. In the chapter I focus on studying how women of Latin American diasporas living in the EU construct their cultural identity in communication with Roman Catholic clergy in France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. While female parishioners from Latin American diasporas incline towards gender inclusiveness in the life of the Church, they do not regard themselves oppressed or discriminated, as they are mainly satisfied with the female roles in Christian culture.

Introduction The basis of this chapter came first into my mind in 2013, when I was visiting my Brazilian friend Kurt Guillerme Agricola in Copenhagen. The idea that initially inspired me during my chat with Kurt gradually led to 214 interviews with female Latin American parishioners in France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The topic of our discourse was as follows. Many Roman Catholic priests in the EU related a feminist controversy in their everyday Church practices, including Christian sermons. That polemics arose from attempts to include gender-inclusive language in the texts of their sermons and to re-think the character of Christian sermon, to make it more attractive for women of the modern EU. During the last decade, in the wake of feminist thought development and struggle of women for equality in Europe, more and more female Christian parishioners have been constantly asking the clergy to include feminine narrations and senses into their sermons. One of the major questions that interested female Church goers was concerned with the character of Jesus Christ’s sermon. Did Christ address primarily men (a standard viewpoint reflected in the Roma Catholic sermons) or do we have to re-think the nature and essence of His preaching to adjust today’s Roma Catholic © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_9

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Church practices of preaching, in order that they should be more attractive and appropriate for female parishioners? Today’s Latin American women living in the EU seem to exhibit the same thirst for gender inclusiveness of preaching. My 44 men of the cloth interviewees (different country members of the EU, interviews performed in 2015–2019) demonstrated that the Roman Catholic clergy’s views are dual and ambivalent. A part of the male European clergymen is inclining towards the inclusion of female constituent into their sermons about Christ’s words while the other is hesitating. At the same time, 168 of 214 women from Latin American diasporas interviewed by me, replied that they would approve if the priests altered the content of their Sunday sermons, so that it should also contain narrations about Christ’s addressing women; special words that the Master used in conversation with women; and the special ways of addressing the female social problems and concerns. A few priests and female parishioners asked me to formulate my opinion on the subject matter: if the character and nature of Jesus’ preaching was masculine or gender-neutral. This chapter is an attempt of addressing their ask. I shall try to answer the question if, in my opinion, the clergy of Roman Catholic Church should re-consider the common stylistic practice and content of the everyday sermons to make them more female-inclusive. The areas of analysis were chosen after processing the interview results. The main points of feminine controversies in the Gospel were isolated on the basis of the words and opinions of the female respondents of Latin American diasporas. The object of the study is the Old Greek original text of the four Gospels as well as King James’ Bible English text (KJV) of 1611 (a representative English standard). The subject of the study is the content and linguistic practices of the Christ’s preaching. The purpose of the chapter is to find out if there is any need to accommodate the social content of common texts of everyday sermons in Roman Catholic Church, in accordance with the contemporary EU’s gender equality programme.

Interpreting Social Contexts of Christ’s Preaching What can we say about the New Testament Christian message, from a viewpoint of gender equality? Are the texts of the four canonical Gospels a literal transmission of the Saviour’s social message (so-called ipsissima verba) or do they convey to us only common social meanings, being recorded versions of what the apostles of Jesus Christ were able to recall many years after their conversations with the Master took place (so-called ipsissima vox)? Thomas argues that both approaches are present in the sociological thought (Thomas 2004: 194–195). From the point of view of some supporters of the post-modern sociological approach to reading the Bible, the texts of the canonical Gospels are rather the second (Bullard 1998; Flotow 2000). Other sociologists believe that the Christ’s disciples as men distorted the meaning of Jesus’ words—deliberately or unintentionally. There is

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a view that the male apostles may have introduced their own chauvinist and patriarchal meanings into the sermon of Jesus and removed women from the sphere of the original Christian community; while the Lord placed the gender-neutral content in His sermons and wanted to actively involve women in the life of the primitive Christian community (Dart 2002; Munday 2001; Noss 2007; Scholz 2010). According to some sociologists, the organisation of the modern Lutheran church comes as close as possible to the desire of Christ, where women and representatives of sexual minorities community may not only serve at the altar, but also lead the church (Johnson 1999: 34). According to R. A. Guelich, the Gospel’s story is a creation of an image of God in the flesh, which has a didactic and moralising significance, but does not correspond to the life and preaching of the historical Jesus (Guelich 1982: 25). A similar point of view is held by Bock, Blomberg and Hagner. Darrell Bock believes that the Gospels contain only the essence of what Jesus said and did (Bock 1995: 85–88). On the other hand, in the New Testament there are only sporadical references to female disciples of Christ, but in fuzzy terms and without giving any specific details. From this, the researcher concludes that the authors of the Gospels deliberately eliminated women from the social context of Jesus’ preaching, and gave the Messiah’s teaching a completely different, men-oriented meaning (Bock 1995: 92). In his other work, Bock is trying to find confirmation of his point of view in the very text of the Gospels. He states since the apostles who wrote the Gospels often made notes that what was written was only a small part of the words of the Saviour; and if everything Jesus ever said had been recorded, the whole world would not have been big enough to contain such books, then we should recognise that female sense could have probably been ousted from the social context of the Lord’s preaching (cf, e. g. John 21:25) (Bock 2002: 661–663). Craig Blomberg argues that the Gospel story is not a social narration in the literal sense of the word, since any historical chronicle implies a diachronic approach to the turnover of the events, while in the Gospels one-time, instant, synchronic descriptions of the what happened, are used (Blomberg 2005: 200–202). According to this sociologist, the Gospel can be compared in structure to ancient epics and myths, but one cannot believe that the Gospel story is a reliable historical source (Blomberg 1987: 8–10). Consequently, we know nothing about the real attitude of God’s Word regarding women; and the apostles in the other texts of the New Testament were likely to remove gender equality from Christian social doctrine (Blomberg 1987: 12). Finally, Donald Hagner speaks of the “sketch” character of the Gospels, in which we cannot find clarity and lucidity of social descriptions; and he points to the ambiguity of the gender component of the message of our Lord Jesus Christ (Hagner 1981: 25; Hagner 2012: part 2, ch. 6). The works cited does not in the least exhaust the fullness of post-modern criticism regarding the authenticity of gender equality in the text of the Gospel, but they outline some basic frame of reference. There is a much more radical feminist interpretation of events connected with Christ, and, accordingly, a more radical criticism of the language of the Gospel and the New Testament, on the whole. E.g., F. Halligan believes that there were women among the apostles of Christ, but male disciples

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deliberately excluded them from the context in order to seize power in the future Christian Church; they may have expelled women from the priesthood at the altar as well (Halligan 1990: 386). S. Kimbrough believes that Christ lived the life of an ordinary earthly man and did not avoid women at all, and Mary Magdalene was his co-habitation partner1 (Kimbrough 1989: 198). Mary-Paula Walsh is trying to ‘justify’ Jesus Christ by arguing that He gave people a completely politically correct sermon that included the whole range of gender identities. However, as she continues, His male apostles created an atmosphere of gender and social intolerance by using certain phrases and linguistic expressions that they attributed to Christ, but which He may have never used (Walsh 1999: 47). So, let us try to analyse the set of sociological assumptions in understanding the social contexts of the Lord’s preaching, that arise from the modern EU’s gender equality programme.

Female Society in Jesus’s Environment and Female Disciples In many places in the Gospels, we see that the apostles describe in detail the relation of Jesus to women; they also describe the fact that many women served Christ with their possessions (Lk. 8:2) and joined the male disciples to follow the Master in His travels around Galilee and Judea. The hypothesis that the apostles in the Gospel artificially threw out all the historical events connected with Christ’s communion with women deserves a careful sociological check. Can we say that the preaching of Christ had an anti-feminine social meaning? There are numerous Gospel mentions of women and the fact that the Teacher did not stand away from talking with female society in His surroundings, did not despise women, did not eschew them, but perceived them as worthy listeners of His word. We may mention that Christ did not send female disciples to preach, heal, and cast out demons from people ‘two by two’, as he sent the male disciples (Lk. 9:1–6, 10:1). However, this may indicate not His possible discrimination of women, but the prudence of the Son of God. It is unlikely that someone in the patriarchal society of Judea of the first century would have even listened to a single woman, or two women, preaching something and moving from city to city without being accompanied by men. The best possible outcome is that they would have been ignored; and at worst, they could have been considered harlots and therefore stoned. The Christ, sending His male apostles far away, wisely did not let His female disciples go to long journeys. The reason may lie in His providence. Our Messiah seemed to have tolerant communication with women from His environment. I shall now mention several well-known gospel descriptions of His friendly, indulgent and tolerant relation to women.

1

E.g., my students do not doubt it after reading the ‘spiritual’ fiction writings of Dan Brown The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, Angels and Demons and Inferno.

Female Society in Jesus’s Environment and Female Disciples

1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

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The Saviour’s friendship with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead before His entry into Jerusalem (Lk. 10:38–42). Mary sat and listened to the Lord’s sermon, while Martha was preparing a feast, and Apostle Luke makes it clear that Christ not only did not push her away, but also told Martha that Mary had chosen a better part than her sister. The expulsion of unclean spirits from Mary Magdalene (Lk. 8:2) and her forgiveness when Jesus told the crowd of the Jews: “Hee that is without sinne among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:3–11). The coming of Mary, the sister of Lazarus, and the anointing of the feet of Jesus with precious ointment during the Holy Week (John 12:1–8). The ‘spontaneous’ healing of a woman who suffered from bleeding when Jesus was going to the house of the ruler of the synagogue (Matt. 9:20–22). Jesus did not hate to speak openly with the Samaritan woman (John 4:7–26) and the Canaan woman (Matt. 15:22–28), while even the apostles condemned Him in their hearts for this—they would have never condescended to such communication themselves. Moreover, Jesus sent the Samaritan woman to preach His word to Sychar, the city where she was born and living (John 4:27–42). On the Road of Sorrows, Christ was addressing women, not men: But Iesus turning vnto them, said, Daughters of Hierusalem, weepe not for me, but weepe for your selues, and for your children. For beholde, the dayes are comming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that neuer bare, and the paps which neuer gaue sucke (Lk. 23:28–29).

7.

8.

Here we witness that Jesus is even coming into the particulars of female anatomy and physiology. Christ is not considering this as an inappropriate matter for His sermon. At the Cross, just women were standing around the Saviour, and He was also addressing them as the ultimately truthful disciples while all male apostles except John had already abandoned their Master by that moment: “Now there stood by the crosse of Iesus, his mother, and his mothers sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25). After the Resurrection, Jesus made Himself apparent, first of all, to the women from His nearest circle, not the men. As the Holy Tradition says, the first woman Christ came in front of after His Resurrection, was His Mother. We know from the texts of Gospels that then Mary Magdalene was the second woman He appeared before. After that, the rest of Anointment women comprised the third group. And only after that, Christ appeared before his male disciples.

Gospel: Social Sketches or Photographs? Some sociologists believe that the Gospels themselves cannot authentically convey the thoughts and words of Christ because they are not ‘linguistic photographs’ of events related to the real earth life of Jesus, but ‘linguistic sketches’, possibly beautiful sketches with poetic parties, but still sketches (Adams 2006: 90). A number of these

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authors go further and argue that this may be a sufficient evidence of the male chauvinist conspiracy of the apostles. The apostles may have decided to write down the message of Jesus with the help of masculine language techniques and chiefly masculine content, in order to include masculine patriarchal meanings in their text and throw away all undesired references to women and their possibly privileged position (because we remember that Christ spoke of women in positive intonations in His sermon) (Scholz 2010). Let us examine this sociological hypothesis in more detail. Typically, some feminist authors point to an important linguistic circumstance that may serve as evidence of the fact that the apostles did not write the true and exact words of Christ. They continue there may be a possible masculine gender distortion of His sermon, conscious or unconscious, made at the level of a planned plot or linguistic representation of the social cultural code of that time.

Gospel: Gender Distortion of Social Meaning Through Translation? Because all the four canonical Gospels were written by the apostles in Old Greek; and Christ, as we know, was talking to people in Aramaic (Biblical Revelation and Inclusive Language 1998), the record of the Gospel directly translated from the Aramaic into Greek could have automatically created a distortion of the meaning of the Saviour’s voice. All the four canonical Gospels are written in Old Greek – that is the fact. But whether they are a translation of the words of the Son of God or mainly His original words, is a subject of a discussion. We used to think that Jesus spoke with the people in Aramaic and only in Aramaic, since this was the most common language of everyday communication in Judea in the first century. In reality, it is completely unknown if this was the case, i.e. if Christ really communicated with people mostly in Aramaic. From the linguistic contexts of evangelical narratives, as well as historical and archaeological findings concerning Palestine of that time, we can assume that Christ could use Greek much more often than it is normally believed. What sociological arguments can be advanced to support this point of view? 1.

2.

Greek language was then the lingua franca of the most educated part of the Jewish society of the first century A.D.: doctors, philosophers, scribes, orators, historians, sophists widely used Greek in their activity. Old Greek has been successfully co-existing in Palestine with the Hebrew and Aramaic languages for more than three centuries (starting from the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C.) up to the beginning of the Saviour’s preaching. Even not very much educated people could, in general, understand Greek and communicate tolerably well in it.

Gospel: Gender Distortion of Social Meaning Through Translation?

3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

2

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Many supposedly original Hebrew terms are actually traces of Greek words; e.g. the word ‘Sanhedrim’ is in reality a trace from Greek συνšδριoν (gathering, meeting, mutual session of the society). Many of the Hebrew anthroponymic names during the Saviour’s sermon were in fact Greek, e.g. Alexander, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew.2 Jesus, giving the new name to Simon, called him at the same time Peter and Cefas,3 i.e. He used both Greek and Aramaic equivalents in the conversation. During his earth preaching, Christ often had to communicate not only with the Jews, but also with pagans from other countries. E.g. he had to do that with Roman centurions, officers, military and social leaders. In Aramaic, such communication would have been extremely difficult, if possible at all, because the Romans for the most part, despising the Jewish society of Palestine, preferred not to learn Aramaic, but did speak Old Greek (Barrick 2004: 197–198). A thorough linguistic analysis hints that the conversation between Christ and Pilate, and Pilate with the Jewish crowd, most likely was in Greek. Latin at those time was rejected by the chief of Jewish society as the language of the aggressors. Most likely, Pilate did say ’Iδo` Ð ¥νθρωπoς, not Ecce homo, when he brought the Messiah to the crowd, as the Gospel of John conveys ´ (John 19:5): “™ξÁλθεν oâν Ð ’Iησoàς ξω ϕoρîν τ`oν ¢κανθινoν στšϕανoν ´ κα`ι τ`o πoρϕυρoàν ƒματιoν κα`ι λšγει αÙτo‹ς Ἴδε Ð ¥νθ ρωπ oς ”4 (“Then came Iesus forth, wearing the crowne of thornes, and the purple robe: and Pilate saith vnto them, Behold the man”). In the text of the Gospels, some Hebrew/Aramaic words are given in the form of Old Greek transliteration. E.g. we see such Hebrew/Aramaic insertions in the Old Greek text as Rabbi, Rabboni that are used many times5 by the apostles in the text instead of the Greek word διδασκαλ´oς6 (teacher). Further, on the cross, as it is written, the Christ is exclaiming in Old Hebrew “Elohim, Elohim” (My God, My God), then ‘lamasabachthani’ (why didst thou forsake me): “κα`ι ´ ´ τÍ éρ τÍ ™ννατ ™β´oησεν Ð ’Iησoàς ϕωνÍ μεγαλ λšγων Eλωι ελωι λαμμα˜ σ αβαχ θ ανι Ó ™στιν μεθερμηνευ´oμενoν ’O θε´oς μoυ Ð θε´oς μoυ ε„ς τ´ι με ™γκατšλιπšς” (“And at the ninth houre, Iesus cryed with a loude voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lamasabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”) (Mk. 15:34).

Bartholomew was an Aramaic trace Bar-ptolomeos, where Bar means ‘son’ in Aramaic, but Ptolomeos is Ptolemy, a Greek male anthroponym. 3 Both names mean ‘stone’. King James’ Bible reads “And he brought him to Iesus. And when Iesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the sonne of Iona, thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone” (John 1:42). 4 Hereinafter the Old Greek Gospel original in Stephanus Textus Receptus collection of 1550 is used. 5 They are used 15 times in the Gospels. 6 This word is used 35 times in the Gospels. See (Biblical Revelation and Inclusive Language 1998: 28).

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Jesus also says “Talitha cumi”, the dead daughter of Jairus (damsel, I am telling ´ you, rise!): “κα`ι κρατησας τÁς χειρ`oς τoà παιδ´ιoυ λšγει αÙτÍ Tαλιθ α ´ ιoν σ oι` λšγ ω γ ειραι” (“And κ oàμι Ó ™στιν μεθερμηνευ´oμενoν T`o κ oρ ασ he tooke the damosell by the hand, and said vnto her, Talitha cumi, which is, being interpreted, Damosell (I say vnto thee) Arise”) (Mk. 5:41). If the text of the Gospels highlights the use of Aramaic and Hebrew words by the Son of God, this indicates that these cases were unusual, which means that Christ was reasonably competent in his communication with people in Old Greek. The apostles often use, quoting the speech of Christ, many Greek synonyms; but if the Christ spoke those words in Aramaic, it is not clear why the apostles should have used many different Greek equivalents for one Aramaic word.

We see that an usual post-modern sociological statement that the Son of God did not use Greek at all in his sermons and conversations with people; and the texts of Gospels, therefore, are an inaccurate translation of His words, most likely need be revised or more carefully applied. I believe that the social content of the Christ’s preaching fixed in the texts of Gospels, should not be regarded as a mere linguistic translation that incorporates the patriarchal social stereotypes of the Jewish society of the first century. Therefore, I am advancing a sociological hypothesis that the social content of the Christ’s sermon was very much woman-oriented since it was unlikely to be artificially distorted by His male disciples. We have all considerations to believe that the texts of canonical Gospels represent the exact female-related content of the speech of Jesus. A more detailed analysis of the epistles of the Apostle Paul is provided in Appendix 4.

Conclusion It seems to me doubtful that there existed a kind of universal chauvinist social “conspiracy” of the male apostles to discriminate female Christ’s disciples and push them out of the primitive Christian Church. If this were so, in some historical sources, women’s attempts to reclaim their rightful place, which the Master had given them and men had allegedly taken away afterwards, would have surely manifested themselves in some way or another. Considering that the male apostles may have staged a masculine plot to chauvinistically distort the message of Christ and forcibly cast women off from the emerging Church hierarchy, we must also agree that people who were completely unfamiliar with the apostles should have also participated in this alleged global plot to confirm the male apostles’ version of the evangelical events. E.g. Roman historians Tacitus, Seneca, Appian, Suetonius and Plutarch, in whose descriptions an important place is given to the descriptions of Judea and the Jewish society, should have corroborated that there was a social struggle between male and female disciples. But we have no

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such historical evidence. I doubt the presence of an anti-feminine plot like this in the preaching practice of the primitive Christian Church of the first century AD. Therefore, it seems to me that today’s Christian preaching in West European Roman Catholic parishes may easily use texts of the New Testament as genderinclusive, as these texts really are. The modern everyday Roman Catholic preaching that is usually formed on the basis of Gospel verses, scarcely need be constructed in any other way to include feminine senses. The written four Gospels hardly contain global anti-feminine meanings, as I tried to demonstrate in the chapter. However, my opinion is that the Roman Catholic clergy should try to broaden the feminist interpretation of the Gospel verses. We need not forget that Jesus message was addressed to every human being, man and woman on an equal basis. Any attempts to expel female problems and concerns from the social interpretation of the Christ’s word in the modern Christian Church preaching would be a distortion of our Master’s will. I am an Orthodox Christian myself; and I should like to witness that Christianity as a religion will demonstrate a most tolerant attitude to feminine issues and tasks, and take an active part in the socialisation of the modern woman from a Christian diaspora living in the EU. We see that female representatives of Roman Catholic Latin American diasporas living in the EU recognize the EU’s initiatives in remaking Christianity according to the gender equality programme much more positively than female members of other religious diasporas. What is met with ease and eagerness in Latin American diasporas may be questioned and rejected in Muslim, Confucian, Jewish or Hindu diasporas.

References Adams, R.M. 2006. How Can I Give You Up, O Ephraim? Theology Today 63 (1): 88–93. Biblical Revelation and Inclusive Language. A Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. Kansas City, MO: Episcopal Church Synod Press, 1998. https://www.lcms.org/Document.fdoc?src=lcm&id=314. Barrick, W.D. 2004. The Necessity of Scripture. The Masters Seminary Journal 15 (2): 151–164. Blomberg, C.L. 1987. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity. Blomberg, C.L. 2005. Today’s New International Version: The Untold Story of a Good Translation. The Bible Translator 56 (3): 187–211. Bock, D.L. 2002. Do Gender-Sensitive Translations Distort Scripture? Not Necessarily. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45 (4): 651–669. Bock, D.L. 1995. “The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex?” In Jesus under Fire, ed. M.J. Wilkins and J.P. Moreland, 73–99, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Bullard, R.A. 1998. Review of The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version by Thomas L. Hoyt et al. Encounter 57 (3): 285–287. Dart, J. 2002. Gender and the Bible: Evangelical Wrangle Over New Translation. Christian Century 119 (14): 11–13. Flotow, L. von. 2000. Women, Bibles, Ideologies. TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction 13, (1): 9–20. Guelich, R.A. 1982. The Sermon on the Mount, A Foundation for Understanding. Waco, TX: Word.

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Hagner, D.A. 1981. Interpreting the Gospels: The Landscape and the Quest. Journal of Evangelical Theological Society 24 (2): 23–37. Hagner, D.A. 2012. The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Publ. Halligan, F. 1990. WomanChurch: Toward a New Psychology of Feminine Spirituality. Pastoral Care 44 (4): 379–389. Johnson, E. 1999. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York: Crossroad. Kimbrough, S.T. 1989. Theological Table-Talk: Bible Translation and the Gender of God. Theology Today 46 (2): 195–202. Munday, J. 2001. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London: Routledge. Noss, Ph.A. 2007. A History of Bible Translation. Rome: Edizioni de storia e letteratura. Scholz, S. 2010. The Bible as ‘Men’s World’? Feminism and the translation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Lectio Difficilior, 1: 1–43. Thomas, R.L. 2004. The rationality, meaningfulness, and precision of Scripture. The Masters Seminary Journal 15 (2): 175–207. Walsh, M.P. 1999. Feminism and Christian Tradition. An Annotated Bibliography and Critical Introduction to the Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Chapter 10

Reception of EU’s Ideology of Gender Equality by Chinese Diaspora in Europe: Gender and Confucianism

Abstract The EU’s ideology of gender equality comprises a hypothesis about feminism as a political trend, an indispensable mark of a democratic society. More broadly, the supporters of neoliberal values and style of life in modern Western Europe have been usually marked as supporters of democracy in media and political discourse since mid-1990s. On the contrary, those ethnic diasporas in Europe whose mainland countries are deemed to be ruled by authoritarian political parties and persons (e.g. Chinese, Indian, Iranian, Turkish, Algerian, etc.), are often understood by a number of left EU political parties as societies who must be coercively taught the gender equality programme for their smoother and faster democratization. Another link that is for the most part incorrectly made is the connection of religion (or culture) and acceptance of gender neoliberal norms. Understanding gender equality as an unequivocal marker of democratic society is not always correct. In the chapter, I focus on the Chinese diaspora in the EU to demonstrate that religious and cultural Confucian traditions observed by the majority of the diaspora members, have been incorporating elaborated norms of gender stratification for at least two and a half thousand years. However, those norms were different from the contemporary EU’s norms of gender equality. Attempts to spread the modern EU’s gender ideology to the Chinese diaspora may be a difficult, vain and even dangerous political undertaking. In the chapter, I demonstrate that we cannot regard the situation of women in imperial China as a direct abuse by men. The situation is more complex. Of course, there was no gender equality in China of Zhou to Qing dynasties, if we understand it in the modern European sense. However, there was also no direct abasement of women in Zhou–Qing imperial China, if we speak of abasement in terms of political or social dependence, i.e. in the feminist terms. As well, in the chapter I compare the modern EU’s gender equality programme with the Confucian Chinese ideology of gender stratification.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4_10

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Introduction The EU’s ideology of gender equality comprises a hypothesis about feminism as a political trend being an indispensable mark of a democratic society. More broadly, the supporters of neoliberal values and style of life in modern Western Europe have been usually marked as supporters of democracy in media and political discourse since mid-1990s. On the contrary, those ethnic diasporas in Europe whose mainland countries are deemed to be ruled by authoritarian political parties and persons (e.g. Chinese, Indian, Iranian, Turkish, Algerian, etc.), are often understood by a number of left EU political parties as societies who must be coercively taught the gender equality programme for their smoother and faster democratization. Another link that is for the most part incorrectly made is the connection of religion (culture) and acceptance of gender neoliberal norms. Understanding gender equality as an unequivocal marker of democratic society is not always correct. In the chapter, I focus on the Chinese diaspora in the EU to demonstrate that religious and cultural Confucian traditions observed by the majority of the diaspora members, have been incorporating elaborated norms of gender stratification for at least two and a half thousand years. However, those norms were different from the contemporary EU’s norms of gender equality. Attempts to spread the modern EU’s gender ideology to the Chinese diaspora may be a difficult political undertaking. In the chapter, I demonstrate that we cannot regard the situation of women in imperial China as a direct abuse by men. The situation is more complex. Of course, there was no gender equality in China of Zhou to Qing dynasties, if we understand it in the modern European sense. However, there was also no direct abasement of women in Zhou–Qing imperial China, if we speak of abasement in terms of political or social dependence (in the feminist terms). As well, in the chapter I compare the modern European ideology of gender equality with the Confucian Chinese ideology of gender stratification. I show that in Confucian imperial China, the social roles of women in the family were much more prestigious than in modern Europe.

Sociological Survey I analysed responses of members of the Chinese diaspora in Europe to the following questionnaire: 1. 2. 3.

4.

Do you believe the Confucian cultural and social norms violate gender equality? Do you think the EU’s gender equality political programmes are in accordance with your own understanding of gender justice? Do you approve the EU’s ideological norms of gender equality becoming so widespread and almost compulsory for acceptance in the West, including the Chinese diaspora? Do you suppose the EU’s understanding of gender equality may sustain democracy in the Chinese diaspora in Europe?

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The number of participants (all majors, 22 ≤ age ≤ 81 years, at least one parent of the Chinese ethnic origin) was 4,823, of whom 2,511 were women. The survey was performed in 2018–2019 in Czech Republic, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain (airports, train stations and bus stations). The results are as follows. The number of questionnaires suitable for treatment was 4,627. The response YES was given: 1. 2. 3. 4.

27.4% (males); 41.2% (females). 11.7% (males); 12.3% (females). 8.2% (males); 10.1% (females). 6.6% (males); 10.3% (females).

The results contain relatively low numbers, with females regarding Confucianism norms sexist and/or unjust more often than men. To understand these results, we have to analyse the relationship between gender and Confucianism.

Gender and Confucianism: Complicated Relationship I analyse female social roles and statuses in the Confucian culture of Chinese Empire since Zhou dynasty to the end of the Empire in 1912. The Confucian tradition is commonly accused in legitimating the suppression of women. The renowned Confucian philosophers of the twentieth century Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan and Liang Shuming remain silent on Confucian gender social attitudes. So, I undertook this research to enlighten the Confucian understanding of place and role of women in the Chinese imperial society as well. In the writings of Confucius himself and renowned Confucian scholars Mengzi, Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu, Zhu Xi, and Cheng Yi, a woman is considered as an equal human being with a man, but with a predisposition to highly emotional reactions to her surroundings. It led many Confucian masters of later historical epochs to deny female ability to occupy political offices in imperial China. This notwithstanding, classical and medieval (late) Confucianism is a doctrine that does defend gender justice. In the writings of classical Confucian authorities and later Confucians, we can find almost nowhere the patriarchal and sexist claims against women, nor the legitimisation of women suppression by men. The Confucian culture treated a woman as a noble human being equal to a man. But in Confucian culture, a woman may have been easily socially discriminated by another women, e.g. if they belonged to one kin, and the woman in question was the youngest in the family. Many Confucian norms fixed in Li Ji and other classical writings, protected the right of elder women to manipulate younger women’s social roles. Women in China were often oppressed by their husbands, and this behaviour was severely criticised by Confucian traditions. They could be also very strongly oppressed by other older or more authoritative women (most often by their mothersin-law, sometimes other elder female relatives), and this was not regarded as a cultural crime in Confucian culture but a proper social norm. Separate living for young

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families has never been typical in imperial China, because Chinese families were for the most part traditional. In these families, the head was the eldest widow. Therefore, it is easy to imagine the social difficulties faced by young daughters-in-law. The highest social statuses were occupied by widows, who could treat younger women with utmost cruelty and prescribe lower and less honourable social roles for younger women; it was a common thing in the Confucian society. However, women were not outside the Confucian culture as some authors argue, but on the contrary, equally to men they were keepers of this cultural tradition, passing it on to the future generations through child education. E.g. female Confucian master Ban Zhao during her lifetime enjoyed popularity comparable to such outstanding and authoritative Confucian male masters as, e.g. Xunzi. Most women in imperial China did not claim higher social statuses that they normally had since they were the transmitters of Confucian culture. However, in comparison with modern European society, Chinese women enjoyed an access to a wider circle of social roles. They could be writers, actresses, warriors, chief military commanders (including highest ranks of generals), philosophers, musicians, historians, poetesses, Confucian professors without any loss of social reputation.

Widespread Belief About Oppressing Women in Traditional Chinese Culture Many researchers dealing with Chinese culture emphasize the oppressed status of women in imperial China. In such cases, the mutilation of children’s feet in shoe trees, the killing of newborn girls, the forced marriage of girls, the concubinage, countless deprivations of widows and other alleged social injustice (Bernhardt 1999, 35–37; Lee 1994, 15; Theiss 2004, 22, 28–30) reports. The Confucian school thinkers are most often accused of such crimes that supposedly legitimized this injustice and gave them the character of long-lived traditions. For example, Julia Ching, a famous modern researcher of Confucianism, says the following: Confucius was perhaps a revolutionary thinker in some specific respects. But in others he was also an extreme traditionalist who legitimized the order of the Zhou Dynasty and, to a certain extent, the cornerstones of earlier eras. One of the areas in which Confucianism shows its power and patriarchal orientation concerns the role of women... Confucius supported, all in all, always the patriarchal nature of ancient Chinese society (Ching 1994, 260–261).

Such studies often parallelize the oppression of women in pre-Confucian times, the patriarchal degradation of their social role and abuse during very early Chinese history (Shang-Yin times), and the lawful inheritance of old traditions by Confucius and his students. As a result of the dissemination of these ideas in many studies by the authors of the twentieth century, the idea that Confucius saw women as subordinate and inferior beings in his teaching has now become a widespread belief. I will show that such allegations are not always correct.

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Confucius represented the idea of gender equality and gender equality in the context of understanding human nature. Confucianism cannot be criticized for legitimizing anti-feminist traditions. Although the whole Confucian tradition is wrongly accused of the oppression of women, the modern Confucians remain often silent and in no way explain the subtleties of their gender social thinking to the general population, just as they did 150 years ago. The most important Confucian philosophers of the twentieth century, Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan and Liang Shuming, did not address the issue of gender relations in their works. In contemporary scientific conferences on Confucianism, which have enjoyed a certain regularity since the 1990s, questions are often heard from the audience thataddress the attitude of Confucians to women’s rights and obligations (Chu 2007, 4–5). These questions are almost never answered satisfactorily, which further complicates the already difficult situation. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there was a strange situation: the relationship between Confucianism and feminism in the past 150 years has focused exclusively on the one-sided allegations on the part of women’s rights activists against Confucian teaching. But are such allegations justified? We know that many women were famous in Imperial Chinese society, such as, e.g., Four Beauties of ancient China (Figs. 10.1, 10.2) or Sun Shang Xiang, a heroine of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Figs. 10.3, 10.4). Now-a-days radical women’s rights activists in the Chinese diaspora in Europe do not tend to have a constructive dialogue with Confucian traditions observers. This is likely to affect adversely the dialogue of the EU and Chinese diaspora’s political and financial leaders.

Fig. 10.1 Four beauties of the ancient China, a postage stamp. © www.supchina.com

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Fig. 10.2 Four beauties of the ancient China, a miniature. © www.findart.com.cn

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Fig. 10.3 Sun Shang Xiang, or Sun Ren, a heroine of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. A, B: Lady Sun’s images in Zhou Yue school’s Illustrated Romance of the Three Kingdoms of the sixteenth century. C: Actress Zhao Wei as Lady Sun in Red Cliff film (2008). © www.supchina.com; IMDb

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Fig. 10.4 Lady Sun wants to kill Cao Cao. An illustration in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. © Romance of the Three Kingdoms informational resource. www.threekingdoms.wikia.org

Woman in European and Chinese Cultures Before suffragist movement and especially before the appearance of the first feminist works in the late nineteenth—early twentieth centuries, a human was understood in Europe primarily as a man with all of the following consequences: the true human virtues were male virtues (Bennett 1984; Bouchard 1981). In this regard, the five-hundred-year-old dispute between European scholastic thinkers over whether a woman can be considered a human is extremely instructive. Their final conclusion was that it was possible, but with a large number of reservation clauses, i.e. in fact it was impossible (Blainey 2011, 25–26). According to Bernard de Clairvaux, women have no positive male qualities, so they cannot be considered as fully emancipated people (Bernard de Clairvaux 1992, 420–424). Since the woman is inadequate and not fully-fledged, it is difficult to recognize her as a personality, according to Guillaume de Champeaux. This view is no other than a medieval paraphrase of Aristotelian reasoning about the human soul: ... whether they (the women) have virtues, whether the woman is humble, courageous and just?.. If both beings have perfection, why is it that one of them is called, all at once and forever to rule and the other to stand under him? This deviation cannot be based on a greater or lesser degree of perfection, which is inherent in one or the other being, because the terms “to subordinate” and “to rule” differ from each other in qualitative and quantitative terms (Aristotle 2017, 21–22 ).

According to Pierre Abelard, irrationality, a strong emotional character element, unpredictable and inexplicable logical impulses characterize women as unsuitable for serious professional occupations (Fig. 10.5). Deviating from these medieval considerations of European thinkers, we find another definition of human beings in early Confucianism: “All human beings, as emancipated beings, have all abilities for well-being” (Mencius n.d., book 6, part 1). It should be remembered that the Chinese term “personality” is not male, nor female (Sharov 2012, 149). The hieroglyph ren 人 is symmetrical about the central plane, which emphasizes the absence of a gender that could be compared to a grammatical one. The adjective “personal” 个人 的 is again a very symmetrical structure,

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Fig. 10.5 Angelika Kauffmann (1741–1807). The Farewell of Abelard and Héloïse

with the exception of the third letter. The term “nobleness” (“humanity,” or “generosity”) is represented as 仁 (ren) and it is made up of distorted symbol 人 and two lines, which means two people connected in harmonic unity. The adjective “noble” is represented as 仁慈 的 (literally “possessing a kind of nobility”). Menzi points out that “humanity is a quality of being a personality.” Nowhere does the term “male” come into being, so there is no reflections of patriarchy of the Chinese society in language. Confucius, Mengzi, and Xunzi advocated the idea that human nature is designed to develop all the skills and characteristics that can be found in a noble person. Confucian ideas about junzi (the noble man) do not contradict the recognition of gender stratification of the Chinese society. E.g., Mengzi’s example proves that women could be the Confucian masters in imperial China, as Mengzi was taught the basics of Confucianism by his mother Meng Zhang (Fig. 10.6).

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Fig. 10.6 Mencius in his childhood and his mother, two miniatures. © Angelo Ancheta; www.tul ay.ph; Nishikie Sh¯ushindan; www.myjapanesehanga.com

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View of Confucian Classics on Social Roles of Women The most exact analogy of junzi for women in the Confucian texts is 对妇女的尊称 (a lady, a noble woman), a more complex six-letter word. The last two characters in this term mean “honourable,” “respectful,” “worthy high salutation. It turns out that women are respected for their personal characteristics, and men are respected when they respect traditions and honour their ancestors. Confucianism is a complicated term that has many meanings. First of all, it must be emphasized that there is no only one comprehensive word in Chinese. If Confucianism is to be understood as a tradition of classic Confucian thinking, the term is triple: 儒家 old (classic) Confucianism, 漢儒 Confucianism from the Han period; 宋明儒 Song-Ming Confucianism. After the Ming period, the Confucian tradition developed as a set of non-classical teachings (Kelleher 1987, 144). In the discussion of the sources of classic Confucianism 儒家, it must be stress that all three classics, Confucius, Mengzi and Xunzi, neither wrote nor spoke about the disqualification of women, nor did they emphasize their alleged inferiority. They mostly talked about their social roles as mothers and daughters and very rarely as wives or free women. Confucius describes his view of the leadership qualities of women only once: King Wu (Fig. 10.7) said: “I had ten qualified ministers…” Among the ministers of King Wu there was a woman and the King had only nine men… (Confucius n.d., 8:20).

Does Confucius deny that women can be good leaders? Why does he do this and how does he base his point of view? Perhaps, Confucius refers here to the emotionality of women in assessments and inconsistency in considerations, which he discusses quite extensively in other places. If this is the case, these characteristics would be very disadvantageous for a senior minister. However, one can hardly assume that Confucius wanted to say in this place that the right place for women is the house and not the area of political activity (Kam 2002, 128) or that female viewpoints in politics should be neglected (Min 1995, 235–236). A certain vagueness of the interpretation of the above-mentioned passage diminishes, if one reads from another passage from Lun Yu: Confucius came to a certain Nandzi. Zilu didn’t like that. Confucius swore an oath: “If my behaviour is unworthy, heaven should reject me (Confucius n.d., 6:28).

Nandzi was a highly praised woman, the wife of the ruler Lin of Wei. Most of the time, Zilu argued with the teacher over political issues, because he was aware of Confucius’s open-mindedness in politics and tried to protect him from Lin’s political enemies. Therefore, one may conclude that Confucius went to Nandzi to influence Lin’s decisions. If so, it is obvious that Confucius saw women as having great skills in the fields of politics and diplomacy and recognized their role in the political life of the Zhou Chinese society. If not, the great master would have hardly jeopardized his reputation by visiting Lin’s wife and not Lin himself. The most contradictory passage on gender issues in Confucius’s writings is probably the following:

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Fig. 10.7 King Wu, the founder of Zhou dynasty. An illustration of Ma Lin

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It is difficult to teach only nuzi and people of lower origin. If you approach them, they will behave inappropriately. If you move away from them, they will feel offended (Confucius n.d., 17:23).

The master used the term nuzi 女子 in this passage. Whom does he mean by nuzi? Women in general, like Mengzi after him? Then in his conclusions he would be too hasty in his opinion. But the most likely interpretation is not “woman” but “little girl.” Many ancient Chinese writers agreed with each other that girls were unruly, wilful, capricious and they might get offended because of lack of attention for them. My conclusion agrees with the considerations of Wang Li 王力 (1900–1986), an expert in ancient Chinese dialects (Wang 1981, 31). My point of view is also reinforced by the fact that in almost all passages of Lun Yu in which Confucius wrote about women in general, he used the term fu 妇, for matrons qi 妻, for girls in the social status of brides 未婚妻, for recently-married women 已婚 妇女, for mothers 母亲, for daughters 女 or 女儿. A woman is never called 女子, as Mengzi or Xunzi (especially the former) did after Confucius. If Confucius made reference to women in general (which seems unlikely), there is some ironical meaning here. How exactly would Confucius have expressed himself if he had given his passage the tint of biting irony about self-willed wives? Anyway, Confucius certainly did not disparage women, but he probably noticed alleged unpleasant peculiarities of “traditionally female” behaviour. I think only here we can find sexism in Lun Yu. It was always assumed that Confucianism later legitimized the difference in the social roles of men and women, namely: the area of men is public activity, while the area of women is household and family. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that this is not a Confucian viewpoint. Is is mainly contained in the works of nonConfucian thinkers Mozi 墨子 (the original name Mo Di 墨翟) and Zhuang Zhou 莊周. Mengzi wrote the following passage on gender social roles: The mother teaches the daughters to be good wives, while the father teaches the sons to become good men. When the mother sends her daughter to the wedding ceremony, she has to say to her, “You have to behave decently and reservedly after the wedding, and think about your dignity... You must not expressly act against your husband’s will” (Mengzi n.d., book 3, part 2, 3B: 2).

Mengzi did not call on woman to act always according to her husband’s will. On the contrary, he told her to value her dignity, and to avoid public and open confrontation. We cannot confirm that the teachings of Confucius and Mengzi are oppressive to women’s rights. In fact, Mengzi recognized the fundamental difference in the social roles of men and women (gender social stratification). This can be read particularly well in the passage on five interrelationships of Confucianism: The love between a father and a son, duties between a ruler and a subordinate, the difference between a man and a woman, superiority of the elder over the younger and trust between friends (Mengzi n.d, book 5, part 2, 3A: 4).

This passage tells us about the difference between men and women, but in no way about the regular humiliation of women by men.

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Murray Hunter (2012) from the University of Malaysia Perlis assumes that five Confucianism relationships still influence business relationships in Chinese companies in the Chinese diaspora in Europe (Fig. 10.8).

Fig. 10.8 Five Relationships in classical Confucianism and modern Chinese business. A comparison diagram. © China Weebly; Murray Hunter (2012)

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Xunzi, the Confucian skeptic, does not legitimize the violation of women’s rights anywhere. In his opinion, both men and women are inherently unruly and unconventional, prone to disorganization. It is always necessary to manage them through the family and state authority in order to fix them (Xunzi n.d.). Still, women are more predictable in Xunzi’s teachings. The master argues as follows: the woman is inherently less obedient than a man according to her nature.

Later Confucianism: Opposing Gender Equality? Modern women’s rights activists often mention the Confucian master Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (179–104 BC) from the Han period as an example of an extremely sexist author. He is known for incorporating many elements of Taoism and ancient shamanism into the Confucian teachings, including the teachings of the Yang and Yin couple and the hexagrammatical idea of five elements. In his book 春秋繁露 (Detailed Book of Spring and Autumn) he explains at the beginning: Yin and Yang controlled the universe... Yang better and Yin worse... The man always stands for Yang, even if he comes from a disadvantaged family, and the woman is always Yin, even if she is of high origin (Dong 2015, 84).

However, Dong Zhongshu also writes the following: But it is always the noble woman’s fault that she became the wife of a contemptible man. No daughter can sacrifice herself for her father or mother with her personal honour, no matter how much they induced her to do so. It is a shame for women of high origin to marry the basest of men (Ibid, 86).

Dong Zhongshu’s statement, which was not taken out of context, conveys a completely different meaning. A woman is entitled to choose who she would like to have as her husband, although she has to take advice from her parents and some older relatives on moral grounds. A woman who marries an unworthy man bears an eyesore because she no longer has rights to claim Yang status after the marriage. As an embodiment of Yin, she has to submit to the oppression of her unfit husband, whom she married with open eyes. The representative of later Confucianism Zhu Xi朱熹 (1130–1200) tries to rethink the views of the classics of Confucianism in a legist way. He represents the idea of three connections: (1) the ruler has full and incontestable power over the minister; (2) the father over the son; and (3) the husband over the wife. A subordinate has no right to ask for the meaning of commands, he or she only has to follow them. In the event of refusal, it is legal to use violence and exile. However, it should not be forgotten that Zhu Xi is not an Orthodox Confucian representative, but a reformer of teaching, and his views have never dominated the academic school of Confucianism. The foundations of Confucianism established the right of subordinates, younger or weaker, to advise the ruler, father or husband (albeit in an appropriate manner) (Nylan 2000, 213). If the ruler behaved unworthily, he could be excluded from the

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rule in extreme cases. The undignified behaviour of the husband leads to a general condemnation of the family and kin. And only the old father, who has lost his mind, should be honoured throughout the family in any case and, as far as possible, enjoy their good attitude. The predecessor of Zhu Xi Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107) insisted that if a man is willing to take on such a responsibility, he has to take care of a related widow so that his conscience is not burdened. At the same time, as far as possible, he should not marry her to maintain his integrity. Some authors treat this “integrity” as a nonmixing of the male I with the memory of the deceased former husband (Paderni 1999, 264), others as a beneficial lack of legal relationships with the family of their former husband, e.g. non-participation in the division of wealth (Levy 1964, 80–92). Modern researchers who criticize Confucianism from the gender equality programme perspective, usually assume that this passage had a fundamentally different meaning: the woman should rather die of hunger rather than lose her integrity by entering into a new marriage and this was allegedly legitimized by Cheng Yi in the context of Confucian teachings (Gernant 1995, 102). With a brief overview of the viewpoints of various Confucians who have great influence in the Confucian academic environment, we can therefore conclude that Confucianism is a teaching that legitimized gender stratification on the basis of gender justice principles, even if it does not support gender equality in the modern EU’s sense. Among all the passages discussed above, we can find almost nowhere patriarchal-sexist statements about women from Confucians, nor the legitimation of suppression of woman in the Chinese society. On the contrary, many of Confucians postulated the free choice of women as their undeniable right to be a noble person.

Was the Woman Humiliated in Imperial China? However, the real issue is more complex. On the wave of the development of feminism at the beginning of the twentieth century, a concept emerged according to which women in China were cruelly held down by men throughout Chinese history. One of the most instructive examples of such a point of view is the book The Wife of Xianlin by the famous Chinese writer Lu Xun (1881–1936). The content of the fable is straightforward. An unhappy woman who does not even have her own name goes through all difficulties, hardships and bitterness. She falls victim to all injustices. In the end, no one even feels addressed by the story of her unimaginable suffering and torment (Lu 1969, vol. 1, 87–201). A model of oppression of women in imperial China is unable to explain the enormous political, social, cultural and economic influence of women on the development of imperial Chinese civilization in Han-Qing periods, especially since the Tang time. A simple assessment of women as passive victims of male chauvinism, as speechless things that were presumably subjugated by the authority of Confucian teachings, diminishes the true role of women in Chinese society.

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The belief that Chinese women were enormously subdued is probably based on a long-lasting view that there is a fundamental, indelible difference between mind capability of men and women. The Confucian thinker Zhu Xi mentioned above claimed that the husband’s legal sphere was outside the home, while the wife’s rights were focused on housekeeping. This division does not indicate that women’s rights have been compromised, but the division of the work areas is obvious, although the Zhu Xi’s version of this sexism does not claim that the sphere outside home is better than the domestic, family sphere. One of the most influential Chinese political scientists of the twentieth century, Lin Yutang 林語堂 (1895–1976), argued that social-gender division in the tradition of Confucianism was seen throughout the centuries of Chinese history as ensuring harmony in social life. Confucianism legally established the positions of men and women as equivalent to an abstract ideal of humanity. From the point of view of Confucians, the task of men and women is not mutual competition, but the endeavour to achieve this humane ideal. Men and women have equal opportunities for the training of real humane personal qualities (Lin 1935, 55–58). In addition, the social status of mothers was always regarded as extremely high and automatically placed the woman on a high podium, regardless of which social functions her husband performed and which position he held in society, e.g. whether he performed honourable or lowpaid work. A woman who became the mother often had a higher social status her husband in their household.

Chinese Women and Voting Rights Some EU’s activists argue that the modern Chinese women living in Europe should be taught to withstand their pitiful situation in the diaspora, as many of them do not have voting rights and nobody could hear their wishes and know their political preferences (Wolf 1968, 55). However, it is known that women in China, beginning with the southern Song dynasty, could speak openly at public meetings or express themselves in writing without any violation of their social rights (Ebrey 1993, 47–48). There is no evidence of women’s complaints about their situation, either written or spoken. Should it be possible that all these complaints were all artificially removed from the archives by men? Regarding women from high-ranking families who were married to influential officials, it is unlikely that such women did not understand the benefits of their situation. Their husbands were often used as a weapon to achieve important political goals in the dynastical struggle. As for women of lower social strata, they often did not possess literacy or skills to appear in public or to describe their suffering in common language (Waltner 1990, 114–117). But they had the opportunity to tell their mighty female protectors in detail about their fate. These protectors could describe some facts in their personal diary entries or books.

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The archival documents handed down from the middle dynasties tell in great detail about social and interpersonal relationships, including gender. But we cannot draw any conclusions from these documents about alleged permanent discrimination against women by men. From the description of disputes, intrigues, enmity and malice it can be seen that they were only of personal nature. On the whole, voting was not in the least common in the imperial Chinese society. Women were as much deprived of the possibility to elect anyone to a political tenure as men. Most of the political offices were appointed by higher officials or imperial court. However, women may hold important political posts. In the modern Chinese diaspora in EU, all members are endowed with voting rights according to their immigration status to an EU member country, independently of their gender. Within the diaspora, there are few claims of women about their coercive deprivation of voting rights by men on the grounds of Confucianism. There were several cases in the last twenty-five years, hardly more than one hundred. In the Chinese history, instructive examples of women with political power were so-called empress widows, or dowager empresses 皇太后. Although this term is similar to grammatically and legally analogous terms in the Holy Roman Empire, there is actually no social analogy between them. The Chinese dowager empresses always had enormous power, while the German empress widows usually contented themselves with mundane roles as guardians and educators of their sons that would be future emperors. When the sons took over the crown, the role of mothers continued to decline. One almost always remembers Empress Wu Zetian, one of the most famous dowager empresses (Jiang 1998), who founded her own dynasty (Fig. 10.9). In the history of China there were a few dozen such empresses, although they did not create their dynasties. In is instructive that Wu Zetian preferred to be called the Emperor, not Empress. The pattern of the rule of a dowager empress was as follows. During the life of her husband, an Emperor, a woman with strong will and passion for political power ousted his concubines (co-wives) and official younger spouses. Often all available means from deportation to detention, kidnapping, mutilating and murdering were used. After the Emperor’s death, his “main” widow massacred other widows and the groups in the palace that supported them. In case of a minor son, this was followed by a period of undivided power of the dowager empress as a ruler of the empire. Over time, the son grew up to be an adult and the mother has to to hand over the reins of the imperial government to him and gave him step-by-step instructions in the art of the state government. Such an apprenticeship often took many decades until the empress dowager reached old age and her son became an older person or a coup d’etat took place. Few of the imperial widows agreed to voluntarily give up undivided power. Sometimes (not to say very often) the son died earlier than the mother because the princes of many dynasties were in poor health. Then another successor was appointed and the widow continued to rule and enjoy undivided power. The late prince’s wife also became empress widow and the mother acquired the status of great empress widow. In fact, she retained all powers and the daughter-in-law contented herself with the

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Fig. 10.9 Wu Zetian, the only woman that proclaimed herself an Emperor, not Empress of China. She ruled in 690–705. © www.nipic.com

role of the walking girl. She could not even enjoy the honorary title niang-niang 娘娘, for which there is no analogy in the German court ceremony. This term is literally translated as “mother-mother”, but when used formally outside the home it meant a lot of respect for the person of the female sex and became something like “the greatest woman.” The adult princes were often forced to rebellion against their mothers in order to limit their power and to take up the position intended for them from birth (Zang 2003, 128). There were bloody mutinies and coups. To avoid this, the mothers, who anticipated such a turn of events, tried to raise their sons without will and weak

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Fig. 10.10 Empress Lü Zhi, the first Empress of Han dynasty, one of the most bloody female rulers in the history of China. © projects. leadr.msu.edu

character, so that they did not dare to oppose the mother. Impressive examples are the empress widows Lü Zhi 呂雉 (Fig. 10.10), Bo Ji 薄 姬, Zhao Feiyan 趙飛燕, Fu Yao 傅昭儀, Wang Zhengjun 王政 君 and many others. The empresses like Dou, who combined great wisdom and good personality, who brought up their children as worthy successors to their husbands, were rare. The Empress Dowager was broadly a woman eager for power and despotic, or a capricious and bizarre tyrant who became angry every time her son did not submit (Chen 1994, 80–81). So the empress widows ruled the nation while the emperor may or may not be alive. The role of women in the family has always been comparable to the role of the empress widow in society. In China, it was considered a social sin on such a scale to rebel against the mother’s will that the whole family could approach a loved one who had dared to do so. In the traditional Chinese family, the relationships between husband, wife and daughter-in-law were a source of constant conflict, while the relationships between children and parents (e.g. father-son or daughter-mother) often gave the appearance of harmony. No conflicts between daughters and fathers were recorded in historical archive documents or in literary works. However, the relationship between the son and mother was anything but explosive and unpredictable. For the Chinese mother, it was the norm to consider her child as an infant forever.

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The man could not independently choose a woman without direct interference from his mother, who was both consenting to the election and rejecting it. It is evident that the women in China were not held down by the men, but it was often done by older or more influential women (mostly mother-in-law, rarer by other relatives). The main thing for women was to separate from the huge family and form their own motherhood circle, where they could act towards their daughters-in-law just as their mothers-in-law did towards them. Recalling the enormous role that the family played in the life of traditional Confucian society, we can come to conclusions that the life of imperial Chinese society was determined by women in the scope of family and the women were not mere puppets in the hands of their husbands, fathers and sons. From the height of her matriarchal “throne,” the woman ruled her children and grandchildren in the family, chose family couples and occupations for them. A simpler role was meant for men in the household. Some traditions allow us to see the homage that women in China enjoyed during the imperial era (until 1912). If the father of a civil servant, also of high rank, dies and the son wants to take care of the widowed mother, the government did not prevent him from voluntarily leaving, but he was given a very generous pension. When a friend of the son, who cared for the widowed mother, came to his home, he had to perform a ritual kou tou in front of the mother (first a compliment with the hands ordered to hug, then a prostration). In other cases and in public places, this ritual was performed only in front of the emperor and members of his family. When a widowed mother publicly complained against her son to a magistrate, the son usually received the shameful public punishment. Women mentioned in historical archive documents or in poetic-literary works are usually divided into several groups: • • • • •

only the name and (sometimes) the social position is mentioned; social figures, reformers; writers, musicians, historians; well-known courtesans; women who have gone down in history mainly because of their extraordinary beauty; • military superiors, army commander, martial arts experts; • women who hold a very high rank and have the highest social status (empresses, widows of the empress, consorts, princesses) (Sharov 2012). This list itself shows that women held a completely different position in China than in Europe. It is difficult to imagine, for example, a woman as a knight who took part in the crusades or a writer at the time of scholasticism who dealt with scientists, professors, male and female ministers.

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Conclusion Women’s position in Confucian China cannot simply be called humiliation and oppression on the part of men. The situation is much more complex. Once cannot deny that women often became a simple toy in the hands of men, a political pawn that could easily be sacrificed to achieve men’s personal goal. The women could also play the role of a soulless gift from one ruler to another, the contribution. The women in the palace were forced to content themselves with the position of concubines and were often subjected to physical violence by men. Nevertheless, based on historical data, the Confucian ideal of an obedient daughter, faithful wife and mother who sacrifices their wellbeing can simply be supplemented by the opposite ideal of an obedient son, a faithful husband and the sacrificing father. In fact, this was expected and sought after by Chinese women, and it was legitimized by great Confucian masters. Women were not outside the sphere of Confucianism, as some modern authors try to prove; on the contrary, they were equal keepers of this tradition, which they carried on to future generations. It is enough to remember the examples of female Confucian teachers. Master Ban Zhao enjoyed popularity during her lifetime and she is comparable to such outstanding and respected Confucian men like Xunzi. Shangguan Wan’er (Figs. 10.11 and 10.12) was one of the most talented Chinese

Fig. 10.11 Shangguan Wan’er, the prime minister during Wu Zetian reign. Her poems were published in the eighth century as a 20-volume collection of works. She is recognised as one of the most talented Chinese poets. © China Daily

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Fig. 10.12 The imperial court of Wu Zetian, a miniature. She reads the Shangguan Wan’er ‘s poetry. Shangguan Wan’er is clothed in red, she stands second from the right. © cchatty.com

poets, Confucian masters and at the same time Prime Minister under Wu Zetian. This was by no means uncommon in China. Examples of the empresses Lü Zhi 呂雉, Wu Zetian 武則天 or Cixi 慈禧 show that if a woman held a political office, her leadership could be even stronger and more effective than that of the men in those years. Monuments and memorials have been erected to commemorate many Chinese women, e.g. Wang Zhao Jun 王昭君 (Figs. 10.13 and 10.14). According

Fig. 10.13 Wang Zhao Jun’s memorial in Inner Mongolia. © China Daily

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Fig. 10.14 Shangguan Wan’er and Wang Zhao Jun in one miniature. They both sacrificed themselves for the prosperity and stability of China. © Baike BAIDU

to the historical chronicle, she was one of the Four Beauties of ancient China and sacrificed herself for the nation. A major problem of the modern EU’s gender equality programme is that it tries to use the same global instruments to teach the Chinese diaspora members its norms.

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Imperial China cannot be measured by the standards of gender widely adopted now in Germany or Sweden. The traditional Chinese model of society involved reverence for women. The participation of women in social and political life was determined by factors such as social status, the complex network of social roles, activities, and individual personal characteristics. Viewing imperial-era Chinese women as humiliated and oppressed creatures is hardly a correct attitude. It has double roots. On the one hand, the image of a Chinese woman as a soulless and intimidated victim became very popular during the first years after the fall of the Chinese Empire. The new government created many stories about the plight of women in earlier eras to legitimize their own social reforms. On the other hand, neoliberal EU’s reforms in gender cannot be coercively imposed on the members of the modern Chinese diaspora in Europe. Confucian cultural and religious tradition is a thousand-year old alternative to the modern EU’s notion of gender. Too hard pressure on the members of the Chinese diaspora may alienate them from their seamless integration into the modern European society, in politics, economy, finance, business and everyday life.

References Aristotle. 2017. Politics. A New Translation. Trans. by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company Inc. Bennett, Judith M. 1984. The tie that binds: Peasant marriages and families in late medieval England. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 15 (1): 111–129. Bernard de Clairvaux. 1992. Histoire, mentalités, spiritualité: colloque de Lyon-Cîteaux-Dijon (Sources chrétiennes). Lyon: Cerf. In French. Bernhardt, Kathryn. 1999. Women and Property in China, 960–1949. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Blainey, Geoffrey. 2011. A Short History of Christianity. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bouchard, Constance B. 1981. Consanguinity and noble marriages in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Speculum 56 (2): 268–287. Chen, Jo Shui. 1994. Empress Wu and proto-feminist sentiments in T’ang China. In Imperial Rulership and Cultural Change in Traditional China, edited by Brandauer, Frederick P., and Chun Chieh Huang, 77–116, Seattle, WA: University of Washington. Ching, Julia. 1994. Sung Philosophers on Women. Monumenta Serica 42: 259–274. Confucius. n.d. The Analects. https://ctext.org/analects. Dong, Zhongshu. 2015. Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn. Trans. by Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major. New York: Columbia University Press. Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. 1993. The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gernant, Karen. 1995. Imagining Women: Fujian Folk Tales. New York: Interlink Books. Hunter, Murray. 2012. Do Confucian Principled Businesses Exist in Asia?” In Orbus. http://www. orbus.be/info/important_news_july_extra_020-2012.htm. Jiang, Cheng An. 1998. Empress of China: Wu Ze Tian. Monterey, CA: Victory Press. Kam, Louie. 2002. Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Kelleher, Theresa. 1987. Confucianism. In Women in World Religions, edited by Arvind Sharma, 135–159, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Lee, Lily Xiao Hong. 1994. The Virtue of Yin: Studies on Chinese Women. Broadway: Wild Peony. Levy, Howard S. 1964. Warm-soft Village. Tokyo: Dai Nippon Insatsu. Lin, Yutang. 1935. My Country and My People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. Lu, Xun. 1969. Selected Works in 4 vols. Hong Kong: Wencai. Mencius. n.d. The Works of Mencius. Trans. By James Legge. https://www.hinduwebsite.com/sac redscripts/mencius.asp. Mengzi. Works. https://ctext.org/mengzi. Min, Jiayin, ed. 1995. The Chalice and the Blade in Chinese Culture: Gender Relations and Social Models. Beijing: China Social Sciences Publishing House. Nylan, Michael. 2000. Golden spindles and axes: Elite women in the Achaemenid and Han Empires. In The Sage and the Second Sex, edited by Chenyang Li, 199–222, Chicago, IL: Open Court. Paderni, Paola. 1999. Between constraints and opportunities: Widows, witches, and shrews in eighteenth century China. In Chinese Women in the Imperial Past: New Perspectives, Harriet Zurndorfer, 258–275, Leiden: Brill. Sharov, Konstantin S. 2012. Women in the Confucian tradition. Chelovek 4: 148–163 In Russian. Theiss, Janet M. 2004. Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-century China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Waltner, Ann. 1990. Getting an Heir: Adoption and the Construction of Kinship in Late Imperial China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Wang, Li. 1981. Ancient Chinese. Beijing: China Books. Wolf, Margery. 1968. The House of Lim: A Study of a Chinese Farming Family. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. Xunzi. n.d. Powerful State. https://ctext.org/xunzi/qiang-guo. Zang, Jian. 2003. Women and the transmission of Confucian culture in Song China. In Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan, edited by Ko, Dorothy, Haboush, Hajyun Kim, and Joan R. Piggott, 123–141, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Epilogue

My comparative research of the patterns of gender behaviour shows that gender is not only a component, an isolated part, or an insignificant variation of the social behaviour of an individual. It is also not an accidental foundation for acquiring his or her social or political status. Gender is a most important component of the social status. In the book, I claimed several times that gender may be a political instrument. Gender has the deepest influence on the entire life of a person, because its influence may be traced in every human action, whether biological, social, or cultural. In the modern European societies, gender is one of the key concepts used to interpret the social identification of a person, similar to such “classical” social determinants as, e.g., ethnicity, race, class or strata, with similar ideological emphasis. The transition from cultural implications of gender to (re)forming systems of specific gender models of behaviour, to understanding gender as a part of politics is a key element of the contemporary gender ideology that is being developed by several advising committees of the European Union’s ruling organizations. This EU’ gender ideology is partly aimed at “liberalization” and “democratization” of different societies living within the EU’s borders. However, the ideology’s being built around primarily West European values and social attitudes makes it difficult to accept in many East European societies (e.g., Baltic states, Hungary, Poland) and ethnic/religious diasporas living in any part of the EU. As a result, the EU’s “gender equality programme” that is called to reflect this ideology may be a threat to the EU’s stability, which is already endangered by forming new internal gender-related boundaries, be they social, geographical, cultural, religious, mental, behavioural, financial, business-related or any other else. It is obvious in 2022 that the EU is cracking at the joints and there is a constant search for ideological and propagandist instruments that may help to sustain its integrity. Gender ideology is an important constituent of ideological work with the European population, including migrants and diaspora members. It is planned to strengthen the EU, but in real life it turns out to be a destructive force for the EU.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4

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My research demonstrated that members of Asian and African diasporas (especially those who belong to Confucianism, Hinduism or Islam) strongly oppose introducing the uniform principles of “gender equality programme” across the EU. The major reasons for their rejection are as follows. 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

With accepting provisions of the EU’s gender ideology, there may be an increase in the age of marriage (the trend clearly observed in West European title nationalities) that is unacceptable for many traditional communities. There may be an increase in the age of birth of the first child, which in West Europe is often approaching the upper limit of female fertile age (around forty years old as of 2022). They oppose tendencies of substitution of marriage by unregistered civil partnerships. The social institutions of marriage and the classical family are losing social and psychological attractiveness for many people in the EU’s member countries, primarily in West Europe, and an increasing part of West European societies is beginning to perceive marriage as an unnecessary or even atavistic simulacrum. The societies of diasporas are mainly traditional and they do not accept such an attitude. In the West, more women are resorting to the use of assisted reproductive technologies that is unacceptable in many diasporas for considerations of religion and traditional culture.

Thus far, the EU’s universal approach was to gather different societies around the same standardized principles, eliminating difference in cultures and values. Though the principles of liberalization, democratization, respect for minorities, equal rights and equal choices are exceptionally good, they may be often awkward to apply in diasporas living in the EU. According to Lady Cecily Grey, Usually Western media and a well-known cohort of European politicians criticise Eurasian authoritarianism devotedly and severely. I do not think that we should consider authoritarian forms of government in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and many other Eurasian countries as a priori false and incorrect political systems that need to be “amended” or “corrected” by patching their historically determined political canvas, through which the sun of democracy is about to appear and warm everyone… Despite what the official “unifying” ideology of the modern European Union implies, “democracy” that is used as a political label, is obviously not a panacea for all woes at all, but only one of the forms of government. Speaking in favour of authoritarianism in Russia, China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and many other Asian countries as an historically predetermined form of governance, I am far from criticising true democracy. Real democracy is exceptionally hard to achieve but is worthy to strive for. The largest part of Eurasia was and is governed in an authoritarian way, and we have to accept this truth. We just have to understand what is good and works effectively in one place, turns out to be absolutely clumsy and inapplicable in the other.1

1

Grey, Cecily, Lady. 2020. “Battle for Eurasia and Failure of Vladimir Putin as an Eurasian Leader.” Eur Crossrd 1, 010,210,003. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12656/eurcrossrd.1.010210003.

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A dangerous tendency in the development of the European Union in 2010s was merging the left-wing political ideals and the very foundations of the EU existence. That led to the rapid increase in ideological abyss between the “officially approved” gender ideology of the EU and the real gender behaviour in ethnic/religious diasporas, the abyss that became even deeper after the refugee crisis of 2015–2016. The European Union is now threatened by various centrifugal trends, with the Brexit being the most obvious example. Put it very simply, people usually do not want to be taught gender attitudes and behaviour by any Big Brothers (representatives of the EU agencies and governing bodies), nor by media gurus or prophets. Squeezing members of diasporas who are traditionalists or even fundamentalists into the Procrustean bed of the EU’s unifying and unified ideologies of trans-humanism and globalized homo sapiens, including the notorious “gender equality programme” as its indispensable part, is scarcely a good way of consolidating the societies living in the EU, and strengthening the EU as a political alliance. In fact, this “gender equality” does not make members of diasporas equal to the title nationalities. It is a mere ideological force—rather blunt, to be sure. The current difficulties in spreading this ideology across all EU members are not in the last turn caused by governments. These left-wing governments are to a large extent comprised of the people who fought for their leftist ideals in the late 1960s and see their contemporary role in wide spreading these ideals. Some other European politicians were raised with the belief that Europe may continue to preach its truths and “enlighten” the rest of the world, as it did in the colonialism era. But such propagandist approaches rarely work and we see that they are not working now-adays, when discrepancies between Asian/African diasporas and the West European countries where they live, only grow. The EU was initially devised to be a solid political, geographical and economic union independently of what political parties are currently holding power in the majority of member states, whether left, right or centrist. But what we see in the EU’s gender ideology, is a completely different story. Until now, the EU’s “gender equality programme” was successfully used by several diaspora’s social, political and religious leaders as a tool for making new internal boundaries in the EU. The derogatory treatment of traditional gender behavioural patterns by the ever-increasing number of European bureaucrats was one of the major reasons for that. The EU’s “gender equality programme” is an awkward political tool in clumsy hands of the European bureaucrats. Any true equality, if it is real and not ostentatious, must attract people. According to some Eurocentric media, in 2000–2010s the EU’s “gender equality” allegedly gave everybody a feeling of protection of his or her personal freedom of biological and social self-expression. However, for a large part of new European population that is coming to Europe as a Promised Land, a real freedom of gender behaviour is needed that would not be shackled by the universal, global and rigid neo-liberal gender ideology. Frankly, the Author.

Appendix A

Feminine Social Power in Ancient Rome: The Concept of “Mothers of Cities” and “Patronesses of Cities”

Introduction Currently, many researchers describe the situation of women in ancient Rome as completely or almost completely deprived of civil rights (Sharov 2019). Mark Cartwright says that the role of women in the Roman society was extremely low, outside the family almost close to nothingness (Cartwright 2014). John Simkin, echoing him, claims that Rome was dominated by men to the extent that in the Roman Republic a husband could legally kill his wife or daughter if they doubted his authority (Simkin 2014). Professor Gregory Aldrete believes that Roman women did not have any emancipated legal status and, in fact, were just alive things transferred from a man to a man, e.g. from a father of the family (pater familias) to an husband or guardian (Aldrete n.d.). Moya Mason questions if we can trust any Roman historical sources describing women and their social situation at all, as they were all written by men and therefore potentially discriminate women (Mason 2018). Perhaps, in some academic sources like those described there is some truth. However, we cannot agree with most of them. It is well known from the history of law that Roman women along with Roman men were full-right subjects of Roman law, except the lack of voting rights and the possibility of holding political office (Thomas 1992: 100–101). Roman women were quite emancipated citizens (Frier, McGinn 2004: 32; Sherwin-White 1979: 211). The fact that women in the Roman society were involved in social life and could have a serious impact on the systems of power relations, is indirectly confirmed by linguistic considerations. Even if we put the history of Roman women written by men, in doubt, as Moya Mason proposes, and accept a priori a view that women in the Roman Empire could not have a significant influence on real politics, we shall not be able to elaborate a convincing explanation why terms “mother of the city”, “city patroness”, “mother of armies”, “mother of the country”, “mother of the state”, “mother of the Fatherland”, etc. appeared. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4

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In this paper, I shall briefly analyse in which way women’s titles “mother of city” and “city patroness” are related to the system of gender power relations in the Roman Empire and the structure of gender social statuses. The purpose of the work is to find out how Roman women of this period could enter the system of municipal government in the Roman Empire. This topic is relevant because it clarifies the gender specificity of power relations of the Roman Empire. The methods and principles of narrative, biographical, systemic and structural methods of historical research, were used in the analysis of the problem. Both the titles, “mother of city” and “patroness of city”, often overlap in their sense. Nevertheless, we should not forget that in the Roman Empire, there were much more “patronesses of cities” than “mothers of cities”. Title “patroness of city” was awarded by the council of city elders or local senate quite easily even for the small merits of a woman in view of the city and/or Empire. On the contrary, title “mother of the city” could be only granted to a Roman female citizen of exceptional merits, the highest moral qualities and absolutely unsullied reputation both in personal life and in civic duty, women which made an exceptional contribution to the life and well-being of city dwellers or Roman citizens (Bauman 1994: 44; Rawson 2010: 327). Thus, “mothers of cities” are in fact the most renowned “city patronesses”.

The Role of “Mother of City” Duthoy believes that the main reason why patrician women became patronesses of cities, was the yearning for honour, social respect and high social status acquired by a woman on awarding this honorary title to her (Duthoy 1984). Moreover, one of the most prominent scholars who has been investigating ancient Roman women and their role in the Roman society already for many decades, Hollander Emily Hemelrijk argues that Roman women sought to become patronesses of cities to a much greater extent than men wanted to be city patrons. The researcher explains this fact by sociopsychological factors: the female desire for active social activity compensated the situation of female dependence on men in the family, where a woman was sometimes to accept this full dependence; in addition, social activities brought prestige and high social status to Roman matrons (Hemelrijk 2004). Both these authors are undoubtedly right. But I think the situation here is even deeper than they suppose. Of course, the reasons for increasing women’s social status and prestige in the eyes of people through the protection of a city cannot be discounted. However, the burden of responsibility to protect the city, born by these women, already burdened with their family duties, children and households (MacMullen 1986), would have likely discouraged them from accepting the titles and outweighed all the motivations of purely psychological prestige. Among other things, from a “mother of city”, the urban citizens who awarded a woman such honorary a title, expected not only vigilant care about their needs and administrative work, but also generous financial injections into the treasury of the city. The example provided by Vincent Hunink in his article “The Enigmatic

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Lady Pudentilla” is rather interesting and simultaneously instructive. When famous Roman historian and poet Apuleius married Æmilia Pudentilla, who was a “mother of city”, he could not even hold their wedding celebration in the city under her care, as the residents would have considered it a waste of money made by their “mother”. It would have been considered as some sort of civil offence, a kind of waste of funds that she could otherwise have donated to the city (Hunink 1998). Besides, Pudentilla’s wards requested from their mother a gift of 50 thousand sesterces on the occasion of her eldest son Sicinius Pontianus’ wedding (Hemelrijk 2004: 232). A little later they requested a new gift of another 50 thousand sesterces from her in the form of an ultimatum on another plausible pretext of the maturing holiday of her younger son Sicinius Pudens (Schlam 1992). One hundred thousand sesterces: is it a big or small sum of money? On average, in the middle of the 2nd century AD, one Roman sesterce was equal to about 12 US dollars in modern costs, and a Roman legionary soldier received a salary of about 120–150 sesterces a month at those times. So, Æmilia Pudentilla, the “mother of city” had to donate some 1 200 000 dollars in modern prices to her foster “children” just after their requirement. That sum of money was enough for the monthly allowance of four Roman legions! It is interesting that Pudentilla, all in all, could not refuse the request of the city residents; perhaps, in case of refusal, she would have lost her honorific title. As we can observe, in the financial regard, the role of “mother of city” could be very, very disadvantageous. Then the question arises: what are the benefits, opportunities and incentives received by a “mother of city”, if they outweighed the considerations of so serious financial troubles? Did only prestige and high social status influence these women and sustain their desire to retain their role of the “mother of city”? I trow several factors were of importance here. First, in the Roman Empire, the concept of a good citizen included the voluntary dedication of volunteering to help a client,2 social group, collegia, city, etc. (Erkelenz 2001). At the same time, apparently, many women aspired to be good and respectable Roman citizens whom their social activities enabled to prove themselves true patriots of their homeland, outside the context of the activities of their husbands. Second, in the Roman Empire, especially among members of patrician families with ancient, more than a century old traditions, there was a strong sense of responsibility, sense of duty (Rawson 1986: 54). If a person was financially well-to-do and could afford a lot, then a most correct and proper deed for him, from the viewpoint of Roman ethics, was not to spend extra money for his own well-being, having fun and buying another set of unnecessary trifles, but to help his not so rich neighbours. This social tradition became especially expressed in the Roman Empire in the third century, and some researchers attribute this to the fact that among the Roman aristocrats of this era, many women were secret Christians (e.g. Rüpke 2008). These Christian women regarded social activities of “mothers of cities” as their potential or 2

In ancient Rome, by the term “client” they called a patronised person who entered into a legal relationship with his patron (benefactor).

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real duty to God, the burden of important responsibility given them by Jesus Christ Himself who said: “Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth, For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”.3 (Lk. 12: 33–34). And the third reason for women to become “mothers of cities”, is probably the inability of Roman women to make a political career in the structure of political power. Correspondingly, they substituted impossible for them political power by social power implemented through administrative social activities.

“Mothers of Cities” and “Patronesses of Cities” What kind of women were “mothers of cities”? What are their psychological profile and social status? What administrative duties did they perform, if any? From the previous example, it becomes clear that these were women with considerable wealth; only such women could be interesting for the city council as future donors and patrons. Further, they always came from respected and honourable families who have been known to the people for generations for their infallible qualities. At the same time, the “patronesses” (“protectresses”) of the cities, who occupied a social status a step below the “mothers”, were traditionally not required to have a large financial fortune; they only had to prove their good genealogy and shew practical intelligence. Under “good genealogy”, first of all, not great consequence, not relatives with ties or wealth were meant, and not even belonging to the patrician stratum. When urban citizens inquired into a woman’s genealogy, they searched for her relations and predecessors respected and approved in the eyes of law, public opinion and tradition. If a “mother of city” had to originate from a family of a senator or at least equestrian, a “patroness” was not required to demonstrate such a lineage (Kajava 1990; Nichols 1989). The highest degree of trust and respect for the “mother” or “patroness” from urban citizens was the erection of her statue in the city in her honour, sometimes even during her life (Hemelrijk 2012). The relationship between the “mother” and the city people were more close than that of a “patroness”, I dare say, even intimate. “Patronesses” of many provincial towns could live in other cities, even in Rome, while “mothers” never. Therefore it is possible to assume that “patroness of city” is a title more formal than substantial. A patroness could dispense alms and make benevolence to her city, staying many hundred leagues away from it. She corresponded with the head of the city (urban magistrate) and city council, sometimes the proconsul and senators of the local senate, and could rarely attend the city, because her presence was not required even at important city events. At the same time, a “mother of city” often played a role of mayor, or city governess. Such a role was played by such “mothers of cities”

3

In Anglican King James Bible 1611 version.

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as, e.g. Cæsia Sabina, Cantia Saturnina, Avidia Tertullia, Lucia Fonteia Concordia (Cenerini 2013). How seriously did “mothers” and “protectresses” treat their responsibilities in regard to their cities? How seriously did they care for their duties? If we talk about the “patronesses”, their role was much easier and it corresponded, apparently, to a role played by honorary chairmen of various meetings, scientific, artistic and religious societies of our time. For example, in modern England, it is now a tradition to invite a representative of few remaining peers and their wives to such honorific positions. In fact, all the practical work is done by executive directors and real organisers of the event instead of these honorific persons. They merely decorate the society or college they head. There is every reason to believe that in many (but, of course, not all) cases, the “patronesses of cities” performed approximately the same functions and duties as modern honorary chairperson. For a small provincial town of Hellas, Mesia or Dalmatia, to have a rich lady of consequence, sometimes even a member of the ruling circles in Rome, as its patroness, was not only financially profitable, but also strategically advisable. It is no secret that there were many coups d’etats in the Empire in the 1st–3rd centuries, and the emperors were sometimes replaced with the rate of entry and exit from the imperial palace. In addition, there was often a situation of dual power, when the nominal emperor in Rome did not decide anything, and military cohorts led by a man aspiring to imperial power, could plunder and even destroy many cities on their way. Finally, many emperors were mentally insane, and their wrath could turn upon the city that only yesterday was considered by them to be their bastion of power; there are plenty of examples of this (Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla). The 2nd–3rd centuries AD represent the period of large and serious unrest and turmoil in the Roman Empire. “Patronesses of cities”, while remaining equally wealthy and influential under the change of imperial power or at the outbreaks of uncontrollable anger of an emperor, were always able to stand for “their” cities and their inhabitants, who could intentionally or inadvertently fall into disgrace before the existing imperial government. Let us not forget that many times such women’s mediation saved the population of hundreds of cities from repression, deprivation of civil rights and even execution by central government of military cohorts. Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla, an ideological ancestor of Roman emperors, the man who ordered to write on his epitaph “here lies a man who, more than any of the other mortals, did good to his friends and evil to his enemies” (“Nullus amicus melior nullus inimicus peior”), is known by the fact that when he came to power, he often executed a whole city for slightest sins of its inhabitants. E.g. he may have destroyed a city for the fact that there lived a woman who once preferred another man to him, or a man, who publicly did not greet him in response to his greeting and thus insulted him, or a person who ever slandered him, or made a public libel (Telford 2004). Knowing Sulla’s tremendous social activity, his weakness for women and incredible ability to acquire envious enemies from his very childhood, we should not be surprised that in the Roman Republic there were not so many cities that the dictator would have liked to spare. Were it not for his wife Cæcilia Metella Dalmatica whose intercession saved tens of thousands of people across the Roman Republic,

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many people would not have saved their lives.4 Although at the turn of the 2nd-1st centuries BC when Metella lived, the titles “mother of city” and “patroness of city” were not yet in use, this lady can be considered a direct predecessor of a “patroness” of the imperial times of the 2nd–3rd centuries AD. A “mother of city” unlike a “patroness”, took a most active part in life of the urban citizens and administration of the city under her protection and command. As it is argued by Mary Boatwright, the city population constantly expected her to solve a large list of their current problems: laying pipelines and aqueducts, the organisation of garbage collection, erection of statues, installation of urban parks, control of tax collection, fighting urban poverty, ensuring the functioning of the courts to solve civil and criminal lawsuits, and perform similar duties (Boatwright 1991). Therefore, we can assume that a “mother of city”, in fact, played the role of the city governess, or, in modern terms, the mayor of the city. Remembering the famous American 1944 movie “Together Again”, it is difficult to understand how Mayor Anne Crandall, the heroine played by Irene Dunne, managed to cope simultaneously with the construction of her late husband’s statue, acquisition of the latest medical equipment for the city hospital, solution of city garbage dump problem, repair of sewage and registering a marriage. There is every reason to believe that Roman “mothers of cities” found themselves in a similar situation very often. However, did they consider themselves to perform such duties as a burden, a heavy load?

A Defiance to the Tradition of in Accordance with the Tradition? It is interesting to find out if feminine administering the cities in the position of “mothers” and “patronesses” challenged the Roman cultural tradition or fit it well? At the first glance, we can assume that the traditional patriarchal Roman society of the 2nd-3rd centuries may have perceived such female activities negatively or at least cautiously. After all, the traditionalist social foundations of Cato the Elder were still strong at that time, who said that an active role of women in politics and society was unacceptable (Livius 2006: 182). However, if Cato complained in the Roman Senate, as Titus Livius writes, that women in his time became too emancipated and allow themselves such unacceptable things as to interfere in the life of the country (Livius 2006: 181), it means that even then, in the days of the Republic, in the early 2nd century BC when Cato lived, the Roman women managed to take an active part in the life of their society, bypassing masculine legislative prohibitions. If we turn to 4

During the siege of Athens by Sulla’s troops, the Athenians from the city walls reviled at and disgraced Metella. Because of their words, Sulla after the capture of the city ordered to execute the entire population, including children, women and the elderly. That would be a precedent, because none of the Roman commanders dared such a step before him. However, at Metella’s request, who stood up for the city that dishonoured her, Sulla ordered to execute only 5,000 of the strongest Athenian soldiers instead of the entire population (Keaveney 2005).

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the 2nd-3rd centuries AD when the social concept of “mothers” and “patronesses” of cities reached its climax, the Roman society was much less traditionalist than in the Republican times of Cato the Elder. The Roman women were much more emancipated both legally and socially. They felt much easier and were much more assured in their rights in everyday life (Gardner 2004). It should be noted that during the imperial era, Roman women were strongly involved in the business sphere: along with men, they could manage estates, own lands and palaces, lend and borrow huge funds, buy and sell slaves, be the owners of sewing, dyeing, weaving workshops, bakeries and wineries, brick factories, including those that served the army. Under Roman law, a woman could equally with man to own and dispose the property without any violation of her civil rights. If at the time of the Republic women from the glorified ancient families generally limited themselves to the possession of land, then at the time of Claudius the legislation was changed in such a way that women were not just given the right of any commercial and financial activity, but such activity was encouraged in every possible way (Shelton 1998: 202). All this put the Roman women in a completely different position compared to women of the Germanic tribes or Eastern States of the third century, such as the Bosporan Kingdom, Armenia or Sasanian Empire (Boatwright et al. 2013: 172). For this reason, it can be assumed that the occupying and holding administrative positions by women and the acquisition of the corresponding titles, including “mothers of cities” and “patronesses of cities”, was not perceived by the Roman society of 2nd–3rd centuries as a challenge to Roman cultural foundations and traditions, nor as an attempt of radical gender emancipation and confrontation with men. Female carrying out their social duties under their titles was honourable and socially attractive, elevated such a woman in the eyes of men and, whatever her pedigree, gave her an opportunity to marry a senator, equestrian or even imperial dignitary (Abbott 1963, 97–99). Here we need a reservation that the title of “mother of city” (sometimes even “city patroness”) could be assigned only to Roman matrons (married women or widows), and never to young girls. Old maidens of impeccable reputation could occupy such administrative municipal positions, but usually only at the age of about 40 years (Hallett 1984).

Political Status of Mothers and Patronesses of Cities I believe that the “mothers of cities” not only did not suffer from the fulfilment of their social duties, but also did their best to occupy such a position. So, we may say that “patroness of city” is rather a title, “mother of city” is an office. Roman women were legally prohibited from making a career in the sphere of politics, but by obtaining titles of “mother of city” and “city patroness” and occupying the corresponding offices, the Roman women became actors of social power. For many women it was an opportunity to establish themselves psychologically, for some an excellent social elevator. Children of a “mother” and even “patroness”

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usually became famous in the city run by their mother or under her patronage and could also expect social respect, vertical social mobility and a good career in the city. Performing their administrative functions, the women of the Empire became subjects of power relations in the ancient Roman society. The social power whose system they were building, should not be treated as a rigidly-hierarchical, vertical analogy of quasi-imperial power at the local place. Feminine power was concentrated rather horizontally; it was decentralised and sometimes implicit, as in the case of many “city patronesses”. The concept of power relations developed by French thinker Michel Foucault helps to understand properly the system of social power of Roman women, which is closely connected with the Roman municipal administration. Contrasting his dynamic understanding of power with classical static theories in which power appears to be a rigid vertical structure, Michel Foucault writes: “Power simply does not exist. I want to say that the idea that somewhere in a certain place, or emanating from a certain point, there is something that is power, is based on some false analysis and in any case does not take into account a significant number of phenomena” (Foucault 1994: v. 1, 365). Foucault proves that power is a relation, a bundle of relations, more or less organised, more or less pyramidal, more or less flat, more or less consistent. Being at the intersection of power relations connected with “their” city, Rome, Roman military camps and garrisons near the city, and in case of borders of the Empire, with the German and Celtic tribes, Roman women performed their functions as municipal administrators in a not worse way than men. The social power possessed by “mother of cities” and “city patronesses”, was implicit and not hierarchical; a “mother of city” cannot be regarded as a small local mini-empress. For women and also for men, this power was based on financial position, connections, origin, nobility and similar factors, but, unlike male power, the female power was not connected with a political career. The relationship of the female administrator with her city was mutual: for the woman it was a social elevator, for the city residents it was a reliable source of funding, administering and mediating, and in case of civil unrest, protection. On erecting a statue of a Roman matron, the inhabitants of the city, on the one hand, expected a decent response from the matron. On the other hand, they demonstrated their prestige to the central government, proconsuls and local army commanders, the prestige that they possessed through the patronage and administration of a person of the highest moral qualities and great consequence within the highest Roman political society. Carrying out their duties in positions of city governesses gave Roman women the opportunity to take an active part not only in shaping the administrative system of the Roman Empire, but largely to implement their own feminine strategies of social power.

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References Abbott, F. F. 1963. Society and Politics in Ancient Rome: Essays and Sketches. New York: BiblioMoser. Aldrete, G. S. n.d. The Role of Women in Ancient Rome – Piecing Together a Historical Picture. https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/role-of-women-in-ancient-rome/ Bauman, R. A. 1994. Women and Politics in Ancient Rome. London: Routledge. Boatwright, M. T. 1991. The imperial women of the early second century A.D. American Journal of Philology 112: 513–540. Boatwright, M. T., Gargola, D. J., Lenski, N., Talbert, R. J. A. 2013. A Brief History of the Romans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cartwright, M. 2014. The Role of Women in the Roman World. https://www.ancient.eu/article/659/ the-role-of-women-in-the-roman-world/ Cenerini, F. 2013. The role of women as municipal matres. In Emily Hemelrijk and Greg Woolf, eds. Women and the Roman City in the Latin West, 9–22, Leiden: Brill. Duthoy, R. 1984. Sens et function du patronat municipal durant le principat. L’Antiquité Classique Année 53: 145–156. Erkelenz, D. 2001. Patria, civis, condecurio. Zur Identifizierung der Herkunft von Rittern und Senatoren in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 137: 271–279. Foucault, M. 1994. Histoire de la sexualité. Tome 1. Volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. Frier, B. W., McGinn, T. A. J. 2004. A Casebook on Roman Family Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gardner, J. F. 2004. Family and Familia in Roman Law and Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hallett, J. P. 1984. Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hemelrijk, E. A. 2004. City patronesses in the Roman Empire. Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 53 (2): 209–245. Hemelrijk, E. A. 2012. Fictive motherhood and female authority in Roman cities. European Network on Gender Studies in Antiquity, 2: 201–220. Hunink, V. 1998. The Enigmatic Lady Pudentilla. The American Journal of Philology 119 (2): 275–291. Kajava, M. 1990. A new city patroness? Tyche 5: 27–36. Keaveney, A. 2005. Sulla: The Last Republican. London: Routledge. Livius, T. 2006. A History of Rome, in 5 vols. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. MacMullen, R. 1986. Women’s Power in the Principate 68: 434–443. Mason, M. K. 2018. Ancient Roman Women: A Look at Their Lives. http://www.moyak.com/pap ers/roman-women.html Nichols, J. 1989. Patrona civitatis: Gender and Civic Patronage. In Deroux C., ed. Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, 117–142, Brussels: Crux. Rawson, B., ed. 1986. The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rawson, B. 2010. Finding Roman Women. In Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morsten-Marx, eds. A Companion to the Roman Republic, 324–342, London: Blackwell. Rüpke, J. 2008. Fasti sacerdotum: A Prosopography of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian Religious Officials in the City of Rome, 300 BCE to CE 499. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schlam, C. C. 1992. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius: On Making an Ass of Oneself . London, Chapel Hill, NC: Unc Press Enduring Editions. Sharov, K. 2019. Ancient Rome and Female Administrators. Schole 13 (1): 106–114. Shelton, J.-A. 1998. As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sherwin-White, A. N. 1979. Roman Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simkin, J. 2014. Women in the Roman Empire. http://spartacus-educational.com/ROMwomen.htm Telford, L. 2014. Sulla: A Dictator Reconsidered. Barnsley: Pen and Sword.

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Thomas, Y. 1992. The Division of the Sexes in Roman Law. In Pauline Schmitt Pantel, ed. A History of Women in the West. Vol. 1. From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, 83–138, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Appendix B

Gender, Music and Nation in Europe

Introduction Romantic opera is an operatic genre whose emergence and development coincided with the active processes of building a national picture of Europe (Sharov 2006; 2019). A very well known example of nationalist usage of Romantic opera genre is the performance of D. F. E. Auber’s opera «The dumb lady from Portici» (Slatin 1979: 46). On the other hand, German conductor and scholar Hermann Dechant emphasises that Romantic operas began to exploit the gender theme (Dechant 1985: 103). Theodor Adorno points out that Giuseppe Verdi composed his Attila, Nabucco and Ernani as symbols of the freedom so necessary to the Italian people, but he could not foresee that his operatic works would become the cultural basis of the whole programme of Italian national identification of the mid-nineteenth century (Adorno 1982). Adorno demonstrates the correspondence of Romanticism with national ideology demands: «the music of Romanticism has turned into a political ideology since the mid-nineteenth century due to the fact that it brought national features to the fore scene, acted as a representative of a nation and affirmed the national {my stress} principle everywhere» (Adorno 1997). At the first glance, the surprising and inexplicable coincidence of the abrupt change in the periods of Classicism and Romanticism in all arts, including music, with the beginning of the era of national construction and the surge of European nationalist programmes, has been attracting the attention of public thought for a long time. Romantic philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder was inclined to attribute some sacred meaning to this «supernatural» circumstance (Herder 1997), and Italian intellectual Mazzini saw it as a very timely and useful social coincidence (Acton 2002). However, both of them seem to agree with each other that the transition from the Classical to the Romantic era in culture, made it possible to carry out and theoretically justify the struggle for national independence. Otto Bauer noted that thinkers of the Romantic period were generally inclined to © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4

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see a possibility of the origin of «national spirit» in the global cultural paradigms change; and this «spirit» later allegedly began to control all of the rights, actions and destinies of the people (Bauer 2002). The purpose of my paper is to find out the possibilities of musical genre of grand Romantic opera and the peculiarities of its use by Romanticist composers for the creation of national gender narratives; we shall make it on the basis of musicological analysis of a set of Italian and German Romantic operas. Since human societies began to show tendencies to principal (kinship, national, ethnic, etc.) self-identification in the differentiating world, the representation of position of women, and also the rituals connected with marriage, birth and death, began to occupy a special place in scenic music performances in the first half of the nineteenth century (Benhabib 2002: 105). The processes of national identification and constructing national world are no exception, despite the fact that early gender studies seemed to have little interest in the problems of ethnic and national identification (Smith 2004: 373). None the less, even in a book of classical pioneer of gender studies Simon de Beauvoir, it is noted that the role of women as intermediaries between nature and culture and, accordingly, as objects of desire and fear, aspiration and repulsion, is very important; and the importance of the gender aspect in the formation of ethnic and national identities, should be recognized (Beauvoir 1949: 306–314). The field of «gender-nation» affects a huge number of socio-cultural factors, thereby becoming one of the most attractive, appealing and persistent narratives of cultural national identification and, at the same time, one of the most effective means of influencing the social consciousness designed to become national (Smith 1991: 62). The main reason for this was indicated by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his «Elementary structures of kinship»: «the female sex… is a cultural-symbolic “board” on which a society writes a set of principles of their moral code» (Lévi-Strauss 1969: 388). The national concept as a direct social embodiment of such principles, is thus becoming inseparably connected with gender issues. Musical works whose creation had a social goal of building national communities, very often (e. g., in the tradition of Wagnerism) actively involved (1) the gender factor and (2) use of the philosophical principles of gender theories. Various eras of music development, reflecting the respective periods in the development of national identities, influenced the development of gender themes using the apparatus of musical expression. Classicism (the era before active national construction) pays almost no attention to gender issues, except Gluck’s operas Orphée et Eurydice, Iphigénie en Aulide and Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte—but in these operas the female moment and national idea are connected very loosely and indirectly (Stumpfl 1936: 204). Romanticism superseded Classicism; coinciding with the period of building a national picture of Europe and the two Americas, it demonstrates a significant shift in the global paradigm of gender relations. From the periphery of the ethnic musical culture, in the era of Romanticism, gender is becoming one of the main topics of discourse within the national culture (Boorstin 1966: 30). Romanticism, first of all, put the musical culture of those national groups to the first plan that were remaining in a lagging position in relation to the nations already

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formed by the beginning of the nineteenth century, namely the nations of the Italians and Germans (Sharov 2005). The first example of using a Romantic opera for national construction was creating Belgian nation in 1830 with the strong cultural support created by Auber’s opera La muette de Portici («The dumb lady from Portici») [I]. Therefore, the main musical traditions that assisted in the national construction, were the Romantic Italian and German operas (Magee 1988). These musical trends (Italian and German Romanticist operas) represent a frame of reference in which other Romantic operatic traditions find their place in the mid-nineteenth century, and which has the creation of a nation as its immediate objective. Each of these music schools important for national identification, has created its own vision of the dialogue «gender-nation»; now we shall discuss them in details.

Methodology/Theoretical Foundations The methodology used in the work includes the musicological method, technique of historical reconstruction, psychoanalytic approach, structural procedure of analysis of historical narrative and communication, semiotic means of cultural symbols analysis, method of abstraction, philosophical method of analysis and synthesis. The great romantic opera is a bright example of musical genres which were instruments of the implementation of national identification strategies. One of the main approaches was the creation of gender national narratives, and their coining in the mass consciousness as cultural stereotypes. Italian and German romantic operas of the nineteenth century analyzed in the article, are cultural means of narrating national gender stories that delimited one national community from another. The field of gender which includes narratives of love, intimacy, family, home life, household things, childhood and motherhood, allowed many romantic composers, first of all, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Weber, Wagner to include women along with men into their social and political programmes of national identification, and to speak in a verbal and musical language understandable to women sometimes even to a larger extent than men. The paper fixes and examines three distinct types of creating gender national narratives within large romantic operatic genre of the nineteenth century, and emphasizes that the programmes of national identification in Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century were elaborated as feminine social and cultural projects as well as masculine ones and thus provided an extremely broad public support for those national elites who led the process of national construction in these countries.

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Results and Discussion Italian Model of Gender National Space Created Within Romantic Opera The traditional development of the national ideology of home, family, and marriage, is reflected in the tradition of Italian Romantic opera in detail. However, this trend of musical art does not usually go beyond the idealisation of the female abstract image as some ethnosymbolic primordial thing frozen in its unattainable greatness, and acting not as a direct participant in the creation of a nation but rather as an invaluable reward to a male patriot. A woman in operatic works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and early Verdi is drawn, first, as a biological reproducer of the members of the national community, second, as a reproducer of national borders, and third, as a symbolic Keeper of identity and honour of the national community. The Romantic Italian operatic interpretation of gender is consistent with the basic nationalist idea of «house». According to it, in a housephold, gender relations represent the fundamental ideological «essence» of the national culture; this essence should be considered as an intergenerational way of life including such moments as private (family) and public (inter-family) but not as an aggregate of legal, economic, political, and other social relations (Yuval-Davis 1997). Peter Stamatov calls the creation of the national communicative space in Verdi’s operas «interpretive activism» (Stamatov 2002). However, we are to clarify that the Italian opera depicts hegemonic nationalist symbols and narratives that proclaim a man a true Creator of the Italian nation, and a woman just a carrier of national «purity». Italian female characters of operas persuade men to sacrifice themselves for these women and their children so that these women could pronounce worthy eulogies in honour of the dead. Moreover, the destinies of women themselves as a part of the national narrative, are coloured by very dark and pessimistic tinctures. Almost always in a tragic Italian opera, the main heroines go crazy or die, which should emphasise the «sublime» national gender qualities: vulnerability, fragility, frailty and general weakness of women. Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor [II, p. 141] main female characters and Imogena from Bellini’s Il pirata [III, p. 212], all become mad within operatic timeline due to their grief and sufferings, hence they must cause compassion as gentle and loving women, meek mothers, fallen victims of jealousy and abuse (Simon 1998). In Lucia, the solo clarinet melody is a symbol of a mad operatic heroine that is an innocent victim of the whole opera’s narration. In Il pirata, Imogena’s aria is by far regarded as a symbol of meek, mild, gentle, frail and tractable Italian women got mad due to their tremendous sufferings. The solo part is performed by an English horn. The initial national identity of an heroine of an Italian opera was always overwritten by new Italian identity acquired by this heroine via her new Italian name. Thus, Lucy of Lammermoor became Lucia di Lammermoor; Anne Boleyn transformed to Anna Bolena; Mary Stuart changed to Maria Stuarda. In a similar way, Gaul druid priestess received traditional Italian name Norma in the renowned Bellini’s

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opera Norma. Moreover, Gioacchino Rossini tended to give Italian names to Oriental heroes, e. g. Mustafa in L’Italiana in Algeri receives «honourable» title pappataci which initially had no linguistic meaning but sounded quite Italian; later in the opera, this word was given a meaning of an utmost dolt. Although the Italian opera often portrays an Italian woman as a really weak creature not inclined to participation in politics, this creature is greatly idolised in the Romantic opera. The symbolic amount of feminine power remains the same: what a woman loses in the social space, she acquires in the psychological scope. The pinnacle of the gender interpretation in the national Italian concept is equalising a woman with a deity that can (and very often must) completely substitute the faith in God in the heart of a man, and replace it with an idolatrous symbolic worship of an eternal womanhood. This is confirmed by the finales of many Italian operas where the main character finds himself in a situation of moral duty to commit suicide after the death of his belovéd/bride/wife. The suicide in the name of the beloved woman, either as a response to her death, or as a reluctance to belong to another, is considered as a truly laudable act when it is understood as a national feature. The suicidal actions of Romeo (I Capuletti ed I Montecchi), Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) and Manrico (Il trovatore) that at all times were considered as the utmost sin, in the narratives of these operas became a monument erected in honour of the Italian nation; these actions drown in the glitter and radiance of the eternal greatness and forgiveness in the name of passionate feelings for a woman and love for the nation. The Romantic Italian opera gives us an example of an «idealising» gender tradition in music. Despite the serious ideological successes of such national an approach compared to the pre-national era of national Italian political movements, it is still an extensive path of evolution of gender relations in national programmes. In the Italian tradition, a woman does not become a symbol of a national leader nor an individual with an access to the creation of national political programmes or cultural strategies. In the name of the proper social order, in the musical culture of Italy, male national designers sent women out from public life where these women had previously partly entered during Napoléonic wars, back to the private sphere as the wives of patriots and mothers of citizens, as advised J.-J. Rousseau (Sluga 1998). The main nationalist theorist of Italian Risorgimento Giuseppe Mazzini fully approved such gender a structure of the emerging national musical art (Stasov 1974: 128). Joan Landes notes that Mazzini used the image of a patriarchal family with a severe father as its head, as a natural unit to maintain the legitimacy of a fraternal nation state, and gave a clear preference to a male citizen as an active and militant patriot. Having admired the operatic masterpieces of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi, Mazzini recognised that their main function in relation to women was to draw the symbolic boundaries between the public and private spheres, which should remain insurmountable for women (Landes 1988: 89).

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«Gender-Nation» Concept in C. M. von Weber’s German Romantic Operas A completely different approach is built in the German Romantic opera and, namely, works of one of its main representatives, Baron Carl Maria von Weber. His first major operatic chef d’œuvre Der Freischütz has already incorporated the gender ideas that would later lead Richard Wagner to create a true full-fledged gender national space in the Romantic opera. The main female character Agathe not only does not require any worship or death in her honour but she is desirous to sacrifice her own social position, peace of mind and, perhaps, even her life for the sake of the main male character of the opera, her belovéd and betrothéd Max. Agathe is a transitional link between the Italian women clothed in an halo of weakness, and Wagnerian women unattainable in their strength and courage. Agathe has not yet challenged the social order of the nation being formed, the order which is subject to the principles of male hegemony, but has already expressed public condemnation of this state of affairs. It is Agathe who acts as a logical female antipode to the absurd cultural tradition depicted in the opera, that forced a woman to marry a winner of a shooting competition, a custom that really existed in many German lands for more than seven centuries, as noted by Friedrich Kind, the author of Der Freischütz libretto [IV, S. 24]. In the grand aria of his heroine from the second act Leise, leise, fromme Weise («Peaceful, peaceful saint melody») [V, S. 37], Weber stresses the urgent need for a gender consensus, equality and dialogue in the German national state. The tranquility and stability heard in the melody are opposed by Weber to Max’s aria from act 1. Listening to this aria, we can guess why Agathe has some suspicion in Max behaviour; it is a symbolic reply to Max’s aria Durch die Wälder, durch die Auen («Through the woods, through the fields») from the first act [V, S. 23]. In Max’s aria, we can see how evil spirit Samiel’s diminished seventh chord with timpani in A strokes leitmotif is intruding the musical fabric of the aria during Max’s words Hat den der Himmel mich verlassen? («But did not Heaven abandon me?»). But at the beginning of Andante con moto, the light major melody of the aria is returning with the staccato of flutes and oboes. In the new German national state, according to the composer, unlike the dispersed German ethnic groups of the former centuries, the principles of national equality should be fully distributed between the two sexes; and the formation of national culture is entrusted to the women to the equal extent as to the men. Agathe’s aria is calm and bright at the beginning, whilst it expresses true and strong happiness at its E-dur ending. Max’s aria is quite opposite: it is fragmentary, with different changes of mood and gloomy insertions of Samiel’s appearances with his renowned leitmotif of several timpani’s strokes on the background of diminished seventh chord. The narration of female strength is opposed in the opera to the story of male indistinctness; in the new national project, according to Weber, the female narrative should be heard and got used of (Adorno 1997).

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The fact that Agathe is expressed in the opera as a dramatic and serious heroine of a future national narrative, is additionally stressed by the presence her young friend Ännchen. In Ännchen’s operatic cues, there are incessant signals of playfulness and comic elements, behind which there is an hidden idea of women’s leadership in the establishment of a national matrimonial programmes. It is so skillfully masked by Weber in a cheerful arietta Komm ein schlanker Bursch gegangen [V, S. 33–36], as well as a number of other numbers of the opera, that, of course, none of the Saxon Royal censors understood the implicit meaning of the Ännchen’s song: it was an acquaintance of a city boy and village girl that transformed into a gender national dialogue urgently needed in the German society. Moreover, the very name of Ännchen, the diminutive version of Anne, is an obvious Weber’s gender defiance to the old German cultural traditions; earlier it was impossible to name an operatic heroine by her diminutive name, especially in the operatic agenda (Adorno 1997: 55). The national cultural programme of Der Freischütz is thus largely expressed by means of the refractive prism of the social role of women in the new German national world. Weber’s last opera Euryanthe provides one of the most outstanding examples of musical gender narrative of the Romantic era. Euryanthe is one of the best German Romantic operas, it is an opera with the most subtle and elegant elaboration of the musical fabric (Adorno 1997). However, just after the premiere it immediately ceased to attract the affection of the German and Austrian public and was soon excluded from the repertoire. One of the reasons of this was the general public’s reluctance to recognise the legal rights of women in the new German national state being formed. As a result, the fate of Euryanthe remained pretty sad up to the open recognition of its undeniable merits by Wagner and Liszt, who gave it a clear preference to Der Freischütz, and Oberon; it was because of the Weber’s development of the gender problem (Warrack 1968). Under the Weber’s hand, heroine Euryanthe not only acquires the features of a female German patriot herself, although she is called «of the Savoy» (it would have been really absurd to place the opera’s action in Germany and name the character, for example, «of the Saxon», given the utmost patriarchal ethnic specificity of the German States in the post-Napoléonic era). Through her sufferings, humiliation, and deprivation of civil rights caused by men, the main heroine is portrayed as a pure and decent embodiment of the construction of national legal relations, the legitimation of women’s rights in the social institutions of family and marriage. In this context, her husband count Adolar, a «positive hero», represents no less social injustice than «villainous» seducer and wanton count Lysiart. Through the prism of gender relations, the image of Lysiart becomes even more positively coloured than that of Adolar: starting with the desire to seduce and thereby permanently discredit Euryanthe, the former ends in love for her, while the latter, despite his ardent romantic feelings, condemns Euryante to death. With this play of operatic images in Euryanthe, Weber and his librettist female counterparty Wilhelmine von Chézy embody the idea of the urgent need to understand the inequality of the gender roles and possibilities in German national culture; and, consequently, to review the role of women in a purely masculine nationalist project: what was a rule for different

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dispersed German ethnic groups, should have been re-considered in the new unified German national project. Euryante’s kind and forgiving attitude towards her husband crowns the gender theme of the opera; and this theme was so successfully implemented as a cultural programme not only thanks to Weber, but also thanks to the librettist, German poet Wilhelmine Christiane von Chézy who was the first woman in German poetry to develop the «women’s question». It was she who insisted on including the aria Zu ihm! [VI, S. 129–130] in the opera, the symbol of female forgiveness, which was the direct source for Wagner’s Zu ihr! in his Tannhäuser [VII, S. 69–70]. Euryanthe’s aria is a cultural symbol of female forgiveness granted to any male’s injustice on her part. Here Euryanthe is eager to forgive her husband Adolar completely who condemned her to a solitary death of starvation and wild animals in the wilderness. The phrase of Tannhäuser Zu ihr! («To her [Elisabeth]!») from the dialogue of Tannhäuser with the minstrels from the 1st act of Wagner’s Tannhäuser is an illustration of male passionate feeling for home, nation and Fatherland. Wagner recognised that his musical phrase Zu ihr! was inspired by Weber’s idea of Zu ihm! In addition, Mme von Chézy clearly articulated a comprehensive gender principle in the first verses of Euryanthe (in No. 1, the words of women are «long live peace and order!»; they are almost completely identical to the words of the male knights «long live the women!»); thus the librettist summarised the development of gender themes in German Romantic opera of the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Semantics of Wagner’s Representation of Gender in the German National Context Finally, in his national concept, Richard Wagner created a new, complete and the most convincing version of the gender national narrative within Romantic operatic tradition. All Wagner’s great works from Der Fliegende Holländer to Der Ring tetralogy are building a mosaic in the gender field of fragments exactly matching each other, forming a gender cultural structure, encompassing almost all the arts and areas of socio-cultural activities. Wagner drew our attention to the key idea: a nation cannot be created at all without the equal participation of women along with men; and the very nature of cultural national projects should be directly connected with the gender equality. Before Wagner, in many cultures, there was a symbolic relationship between the figure of mother and the concept of ethnic Fatherland which gave rise to such cultural symbols as «Mother Russia», «Mother Ireland», etc. Wagner created a different gender symbolic construction, namely «nation–wife», most often manifested in his own works in the form of a symbolic pair «Germany–lover». Here, the composer drew a brilliant parallel between the essence of marriage and the transformation of the ethnic group into a nation: when a man is leaving his parents, his entire new

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nature connects with his wife, and when a citizen is leaving dispersed ethnic groups, he must fully bind himself to the ideology of the nation being formed (Wagner 1996, 331). Thus, even the external features of national development receive gender symbolisation on Wagner’s part. Therefore, the female images in his operas are created within the narrative of the unconditional superiority of women over men in almost all social spheres, including in the sphere of national identification. The disclosure of the theme of gender national space occupies an important place in almost every Wagner’s opera. Now we shall investigate the development of gender national topic in Wagner’s operas on the basis of opera Der Fliegende Holländer («The Flying Dutchman»). Senta, the main opera’s heroine, is inseparable from the Dutchman’s 400-year old dream of Heimatland, the concept used by Wagner in Der Fliegende Holländer in the sense of 1) national Fatherland as well as 2) national citizenship. The ethnicity of the Hollander may be analytically derived from his name, but the captain could not belong to any nation by virtue of his plight. It reveals the deep implicit meaning of the opera: a person cannot exist without voluntary national self-identification so as not to condemn himself to the eternal suffering similar to the suffering of the Dutchman. Cosmopolitism is an obvious evil for Wagner. This national identification, in turn, becomes possible only through the involvement of men in the system of women’s symbolic power and through this power in national cultural strategies. The torments of the Dutchman are beyond any description; Wagner created the image an eternal wanderer (seafarer) who is doomed not to be socialised until the end of the time because of the absence of a woman who would love him and give him the home, nation and Fatherland. Let us remember the musical passage, when after another seven years of wandering in the seas, the Dutchman is descending to the land from his ship, the passage at the beginning of the famous Hollander’s aria, where two French horns with two bassoons perform Hollander wanderings’ leitmotif: only two notes on the background of decreasing harmonies of trombones and strings. The scene where the Hollander is descending to the land from his ship after another seven years of torments in the seas. We may see the Hollander wanderings’ leitmotif performed by two French horns and two bassoons and consisting of two notes g–fis on the background of trombones and strings harmonies [VIII, S. 76]. Do not you hear in these two notes the incredible sadness and melancholy, reproducing the constancy of the Dutchman grievous wanderings? Just two notes, but what hopelessness we are facing [VIII, S. 76]! For the Dutchman, Senta’s love for him is no longer just the satisfaction of his egoism, but an urgent need; without her love, he would not be able to live. In a symbolic way, Wagner describes this as the Dutchman’s decision to go to the sea forever after Senta’s unfaithfulness disclosure; and forget about God’s forgiveness forever, never meet death and thus repulse any possibility of liberation from his acute sufferings. It is important that in the opera dissimilar with the legend, the Captain’s meeting Senta is his last chance. Wagner argues that in a broader sense, for the nation to be healthy, for every man there should be only one woman as well as for every

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woman only one man; the mere question is whether they will meet and understand each other, join their lives or will have to suffer far from each other (Wagner 1996). Senta’s character symbolises the female willingness to help a man to socialise and fully self-identify as a member of a national community. Her feeling for the Dutchman is extremely symbolic and does not look like an ordinary love or passion. How can she love a Dutchman if she saw him a few minutes ago for the first time in her life? It is no coincidence that Wagner says about the fact that Senta «loved» the Dutchman during all her life on the basis of a sooted picture of the legendary Seafarer hanging on a wall. Thus, Wagner reproduces Lacanian triple psychological structure (Lacan 1998: 132–135): (1) (2)

(3)

a portrait of the Dutchman as the Lacanian Symbolic awakens Senta’s truly female nature; Senta’s and Dutchman’s first meeting occurred as the Lacanian Imaginary of the Dutchman; it conveys his willingness to obey Senta, to receive her gift of an ordinary earthly life and death, to get rid of the hell of immortality in the ocean, the dramatic opera’s ending as the Lacanian Real speaks of a paradoxical resolution of the conflict between Senta and the Dutchman; Senta’s suicide emphasises her loyalty to the Dutchman zum Tod, «to the end», the loyalty which she swore to him at their betrothal. This makes the Dutchman’s salvation possible.

Senta has her own fiancé before meeting the Dutchman, hunter Eric, whose figure is important in the opera. Eric reproduces the object of egoistic female love: Senta knows that he does not seek to submit to her power and love her to the oblivion of himself, in life and death, as it would do the Hollander. This notwithstanding, Wagner does not reduce Senta’s choice just to flirtation and play with the hearts of men, as well as to any mercantile considerations. If she cared just for material welfare, she would be obviously guided not by thoughts of sacrifice to the suffering man, but would follow her father’s advice, agreeing to «make love» for the Dutchman as disguise, but really to take possession of his immense treasures. Senta’s choice was clearly predetermined in advance; in this regard, it was not a real choice, but it a priori contained death as a willingness to sacrifice herself for the man. Senta wanted to be for a belovéd man nothing but a guide, a governor; in her love and offering of woman’s power she manifests her desire to sacrifice her life stability, but to achieve full self-identification of the Dutchman. When Senta points Erik to the portrait of the Dutchman in Act 2, she says: Fühlst du den Schmerz, den tiefen Gram, mit dem herab auf mich er sieht? Ach, was die Ruhe für ewig ihm nahm, wie schneidend Weh’ durch’s Herz mir zieht! [IX] (Do you feel the grief, the deep sorrow, with which he looks down at me?

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Ah, how that which deprived him of peace for ever sends a pang of woe through my heart!) [X]

So, we face Senta’s desire to be understood by the man whom she has not known yet but meeting with whom she is anticipating. The Dutchman is the cultural image of a man who gives himself into the hands of his belovéd who, by including him in the system of her symbolic power, would make him a full participant in the symbolic exchange of national narrative. His submission to Senta is absolute; watching her with Erik, the Hollander founds himself before a choice: to leave Senta, i. e. to abandon his last hope of salvation in the name of absolute passionate attachment to her, or to inflict curse and death upon her, giving himself another opportunity of salvation which may be realised in the next seven years. If he is saved, she will inevitably be cursed: all the women who swore allegiance to him and violated their oath, died in torments and were condemned to hell; and he has no doubt that the one for whom he was going to live, would also die. The Dutchman makes his choice: Wohl hast du Treue mir gelobt, doch vor. dem Ewigen noch nicht; dies rettet dich! Denn wiss’, Unsel’ge, welches das Geschick, das jene trifft, die mir die Treue brechen: ew’ge Verdammnis ist ihr Los! Zahllose Opfer fielen diesem Spruch durch mich! du aber sollst gerettet sein! Leb’ wohl! Bahr’ him, mein Heil, in Ewigkeit! [IX]. (You plighted your troth to me, but not. before Almighty God: this saves you! For know, unhappy maid, what is the fate. awaiting those who break their vow to me: eternal damnation is their lot! Countless victims have suffered this sentence. through me; but you shall escape. Farewell! All hope be lost for ever!) [X].

So, despite Senta swore allegiance to the Hollander, he releases her oath. With the loss of his betrothed bride, he loses his national identification in project and new Fatherland. This is the ideal of man’s love, love-in-obedience to the belovéd, love for which one can agree to refuse his national identification; a sign of complete subordination of man, the willingness to give up his Ego in the name of the Super-Ego to be built by a woman within his project. Wagner told Liszt and his other friends about the figure of the Dutchman that the characteristic of a man in its very general meaning is a passionate desire for peace, peace of the national determination given by a woman, his mother or wife,

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covering the soul among everyday adversities. But at the same time, a part of the man disappears, and maybe all the man, the willingness to connect himself with the woman gives nation and home, but takes away his freedom, and changes his psychics (Wagner 1995: 87). Wagner finds the expression of this male desire for national identification and home in the legend of Odysseus who for many years wandered through the seas, sighing at his people, his homeland and his faithful Penelope (Wagner 1995: 88). In this context, it is significant to recall the words of the Dutchman at the end of his famous aria in the first act: Ihr Welten, endet eure Lauf! Ew’ge Vernichtung, nimm mich auf! [VIII, S. 96] I am specifically citing the words in German because of the ambiguity of an English translation. We may say: «Society (you people), leave your laughter! Eternal Nothing, devour me, take me away from here!» But it can also be translated as «You, the worlds», «You, the planets», «You, all the things», «You, being», «You, life», etc. The Dutchman wants to meet his death, his life without the end is much worse; but he understands that death is impossible without dedication to a woman and new home, new Fatherland, new nation. The music of the finale of the Dutchman aria from the first act conveys the described meaning even better than the words. With the words Ihr Welten, endet eure Lauf , i.e. in the exposition of the phrase which carries only the horror of aimless wandering through life, life without end (in stringendo), chromatically increasing in each measure sharp passages of the strings say that the denouement is close: either the final defeat of the man as a social being without nation, or the final victory and receiving a national identity. At the word nimm that precedes the resolution of a musical phrase, we see the diminished seventh chord h–d-f-as, which as any diminished seventh chord sounds ominous in itself, regardless of the melody. Finally, we face the resolved finale that is clear and positive: the c-moll aria ends in C-dur chord: E flat turns into E. Let us pay attention, in the vocal part of the Dutchman, the last note is not C, i.e. the basis of the tonic chord, but this E, the third step of the new C major tonality! So, the dark aria ends with a light chord: this is a prototype of the fact that the possibility of a dark life of a cosmopolite man without nation should give way to the reality of a light new national existence received with the aid of a woman and family. After the last chord of the aria itself, the leitmotif of the ship (flute, piccolo, trumpet in F and cello) sounds for the last time very loudly in the subdominant F-dur, it hints that the wandering terrible past of the Dutchman will not come back again [VIII, S. 97]; and in this case, the Dutchman will lose a part of his Ego (symbolic death of the Hollander at the land with new nation and family instead of his symbolic immortality at the sea, i. e. in the situation of his cosmopolitism) due to his national super motivation. And then, once again we hear the ship leitmotif resolution into the C-dur chord of the full orchestra. Then the Hollander’s phrase is repeated piano in E-dur by all of his men-sailors; this reflects the transition from the reality of the individual psychics to the social national reality. In four bars, the passages of the violins again turn into c-moll, the main tonality of Hollander’s aria; this reflects some sadness over lost opportunities of a man without family and national identification. At least, there are the final barely audible timpani tremolo at the first step of the tonic and the leitmotif of the

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ship (ritenuto) performed by a natural trumpet in C, but, which is very significant, without the third step E flat. So, the ending of the whole operatic number is light and positive. In a series of Wagner’s works, Senta is the first woman to sacrifice herself to the man and the nation that the Dutchman receives only with Senta’s death: when Senta plunges into the sea, she clearly sees that his salvation is in obtaining his new national identity by him, and this salvation is impossible without her sacrifice.

Conclusion The female question began to be seriously regarded and practically addressed only in the 1920-1930s when the Romantic and Postromantic musical traditions that led to the development of European national communities, had been basically formed. However, this problem first became extremely important and actual in the middle of the nineteenth century, at the time of the greatest rise of national consciousness of the Italians and Germans. The classic example of the ultimate success of the use of Romantic opera for the national identity programme is Auber’s La muette de Portici that on 25 August 1830 led to the formation of the new Belgian nation. While recognising this example as indisputable and relevant, this article focuses on the less obvious traditions of Romantic opera which demonstrated no less impressive results: Italian Romantic opera (Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi) and German Romantic opera in the traditions of C. M. von Weber and R. Wagner. In the article, the close attention is paid to the analysis of operas I Capuletti ed I Montecchi, Il pirata, Anna Bolena, Lucia di Lammermoor, Maria Stuarda, Attila, Nabucco, Ernani, Il trovatore, Tannhäuser and especially, Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, and Der Fliegende Holländer. Romantic operas addressed emotional sphere much more than rational; for this reason they were greatly accepted and understood by women. These women became active in the processes of nation building inspired by political elites. Using Romantic operas as one of the cultural mechanisms of national construction, politicians and national theoreticians of emerging nations in the mid-19th century, namely German and Italian nations, were able to include women in the processes of nation formation along with men, thus making their political strategies more effective in the society.

Musical Sources I. II. III.

Auber, Damiel F. E. La muette de Portici. Leipzig: H. A. Probst, n. d. 208 pp. Donizetti, Gaetano. Lucia di Lammermoor. Dramma tragico in tre atti di Salvadore Cammarano. Milano: G. Ricordi, n. d. 180 p. Bellini, Vincenzo. Il pirata. A melodrama in 2 acts with Italian text. Calmus Vocal Scores 9401. Melville, N. Y.: Belwin Mills, n. d. 224 p.

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IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX.

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Kind, Friedrich. Freischütz-Buch. Der Freischütz und andere Werken. Leipzig: Göschensche Verlagshandlung, 1843. 420 S. Weber, Carl Maria von. Der Freischütz. Romantische Oper in drei Aufzügen. Dichtung von Fr. Kind. Wolfenbüttel: Verlag von Dolle, n. d. 86 S. Weber, Carl Maria von. Euryanthe. Leipzig: C. F. Peters, 1871. 202 S. Wagner, Richard. Tannhäuser. Romantische Oper in drei Akten. Dresden: C. F. Meser, 1846. 542 S. Wagner, Richard. Der Fliegende Holländer. Romantische Oper in drei Akten. Berlin: Adolph Fürstner, 1887. 414 S. Wagner, Richard. Der Fliegende Holländer. [Electronic resource.] Available at: http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libwagfli_e.htm, retrieved on 12.06.2018. Wagner, Richard. The Flying Dutchman. [Electronic resource.] Available at: http://www.opera-guide.ch/opera.php?id=409&uilang=de, retrieved on 14.06.2018.

References Acton, J., Baron. 2002. The Principle of national self-identification. In Nations and Nationalism, ed. by G. Balakrishnan, 26–51, Moscow: Praksis. Adorno, T. W. 1982. On the Problem of Musical Analysis. Music Analysis 1 (2): 32–45. Adorno, T. W. 1997. Introduction to the Sociology of Music. San Francisco, CA: Continuum. Bauer, O. National problem and social democracy. In Nations and Nationalism, ed. by G. Balakrishnan, 52–120, Moscow: Praksis. Beauvoir, S. de. 1949. Le Deuxième Sexe. Paris: Gallimard. Benhabib, S. 2002. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Boorstin, D. J. 1966. The Americans: The National Experience. New York: Random House. Dechant, H. 1985. Dirigieren: Zur Theorie und Praxis der Musikinterpretation. Wien: Herder. Herder, J. G. 1997. On World History. London: M. E. Sharpe. Lacan, J. 1998. Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton. Landes, J. 1988. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1969. Elementary Structures of Kinship. New York: Beacon Press. Magee, B. 1988. Aspects of Wagner. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharov, K. S. 2005. The invention of national traditions by classic composers of the 19th century. Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Seriya Filosofia (4): 58–75. Sharov, K. S. 2006. Simulation-game of distinct national features in music. Voprosy filosofii (7): 45–56. Sharov, K. S. 2019. Philosophy of romantic opera, women problem and European nation formation in the nineteenth century. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Philosophy and Psychology (1): 64–73. Simon, H. W. 1998. 100 Great Operas. Moscow: Kron-Press. Slatin, S. 1979. Opera and Revolution: La Muette de Portici and the Belgian Revolution of 1830 Revisited. Journal of Musicological Research (3): 45–62. Sluga, G. 1998. Identity, gender and the history of European nations and nationalisms. Nations and Nationalism 4 (1): 87–111. Smith, A. D. 1991. National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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Smith, A. D. 2004. Nationalism and Modernity. Moscow: Praksis. Stamatov, P. 2002. Interpretive activism and the political uses of Verdi’s operas in the 1840s. American Sociological Review 67 (3): 345–366. Stasov, V. V. 1974. Stat’i po muzyke. Moscow: Muzykal’naya literature. Stumpfl, R. 1936. Kultspiele der Germanen als Ursprung des Mittelalterlichen Dramas. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt. Wagner, R. 1996. Art and Politics. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Wagner, R. 1995. Opera and Drama. Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press. Warrack, J. 1968. Carl Maria von Weber. London: Hamish Hamilton. Yuval-Davis, N. 1997. Gender and Nation. London: Sage.

Appendix C

Tradition of Courtly Love in European Culture

Introduction The tradition of courtly love is associated with a psychological denial of the family. Why so? The concept of a “normal” family (a family of the classical type) is closely related to the idea of the primacy, fundamental nature and insurmountable character of gender division in society (Sharov 2020). This topic was developed in detail in Russian philosophy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Nikolay Berdyaev in his famous work The Metaphysics of Sex and Love wrote: There is no complete human individuality until the sex is overcome... A man himself is not only not a “normal” type of human, but in general he is not even a human, a person, or an individuality without love... And a woman’s sex is also a part... With regard to a woman, this is sufficiently recognized in society, but the way out of this state is often seen in turning a woman into a man (Berdyaev 1991: 252).

In this regard, Berdyaev criticized representatives of the suffragist movement, who saw their task in the complete equalization of the position of men and women in society, since he was convinced that the assertion of asexuality, the elimination of sexual polarity is a destructive tendency for society. For the realization of a true personality, according to Berdyaev, it is necessary not to equalize man and woman and not to liken a woman to a man, but on the contrary, in every possible way to assert the principles of femininity, which a man would worship. Berdyaev believed that the family should not be the fiefdom of a woman, as well as the basic space for a woman to build power relations in society. According to him, the family is always just a yoke, oppressing a woman and killing the image of the Beautiful Lady. He noted:

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4

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A family-tribal view of woman recognizes the uniqueness of woman, but is always hostile to the personal principle in woman. It always oppresses and enslaves the woman’s personality (Berdyaev 1991: 252)… A woman gives birth in pain and becomes a slave as an impersonal clan element. She is pressed by the social institution of family (Berdyaev 1991: 252). What social alternative did Berdyaev offer for a woman if she must reject the family as such an untenable element of her life? He argued that the individual vocation of a woman is in the affirmation of the “metaphysical principle of the Eternal Femininity.” The purpose of individual femininity is to concretely embody Eternal Femininity in the world, that is, “one of the sides of the divine nature”, and in this way lead the world to loving harmony, to beauty and freedom. Berdyaev reveals his thoughts further: A woman should be a work of art, an example of God’s creativity, a force that inspires courageous creativity. To be Dante is a high calling, but no less high calling is to be Beatrice; Beatrice is equal to Dante in the greatness of her vocation in the world, she is needed no less than Dante for the supreme goal of life (Berdyaev 1991: 254).

Vladimir Soloviev (1991) and Vasily Rozanov (1990), along with Berdyaev, conceptually formulated the metaphysical foundations of the symbolic images of the Beautiful Lady and Eternal Femininity that have existed in Western European culture since the Middle Ages and the European cultural tradition of courtly love (Fig. C.1). This tradition was reproduced by minstrels and troubadours mainly in the 10th– 13th centuries, and its peak fell on the era of the Crusades (Schultz 2006). Nandini Pandey (2018) noted the connection of this symbolic tradition with the ancient tradition of gender fetishism, immortalized by Ovid, and Tarek Shamma (2017) drew a parallel between the tradition of courtly love and the representation of the gender status of women in Arab fairy tales. Initially, this tradition developed within the culture of knight tournaments. Its origins go back to the spread of the Arthurian epic throughout continental Europe (Lupack 2005), but later it was widely adapted to the needs and requirements of broad strata of the population of Western Europe and thus transformed into a significant cultural layer (Moore 1979). The famous Swiss cultural scholar Denis de Rougemont (2001) showed that with the development of the tradition of courtly love, an integral part of which was the worship of the Beautiful Lady, the spread and reproduction of the signs of this tradition was equalized between the sexes: by the end of the 12th century, many female troubairises (female counterpart of troubadour) appeared, and the Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II, brought the troubadour culture from Burgundy and France to England, thereby making it universal for West Europeand culture. By the middle of the 13th century, women troubairises could already be regarded as the main ideologists and carriers of the culture of courtly love (Bogin 1980). The Russian thinker Nikolay G. Chernyshevsky in his novel What has to be done? from the standpoint of both art critic and social philosopher analyzed this symbolic tradition (Chernyshevsky 2011). Chernyshevsky in his version sets out the plot of F. Schiller’s romantic ballad Knight of Toggenburg, in which he criticizes the worship

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Fig. C.1 Medieval illustration for the first edition of The Novel of the Pear by the French Troubadour Thibault (13th century). A knight gives a Lady his heart

of the Beautiful Lady as a mythological symbolic and cultural ideal. In the story of Chernyshevsky, symbolic social reality appears in a metaphorical form. Toggenburg fights with rivals for the hand of a certain lady. But this lady does not give herself to him just like that: “Knight, I love you as a sister. Do not ask for other love. My heart does not beat when you come, nor does it beat when you leave.” Then the transgressive mechanism of the formation of his psychological portrait begins to work for the knight. He gets sick with Dante’s syndrome. He sails to Palestine and crushes the infidels, but “he cannot live without seeing the queen of his soul.” He comes home, but a tub of cold water is poured over his head: “Do not knock, knight, she is in the monastery” (Chernyshevsky 2011: 309).

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Fig. C.2 Herbert James Draper (1863–1920). Tristan and Iseult

Tradition of Worshipping the Beautiful Lady’s Image and Familial Relationships Outside family, in the presence of only courtly male worship of a woman—in the implementation of that ideal of intimate relationships, about which N. Berdyaev, V. Soloviev, and V. Rozanov wrote so much—a woman will most likely remain psychologically indifferent to a man who deifies her (Harris and McDade 2018). Therefore, the cultural tradition that these prominent Russian philosophers described in their writings threatened to degenerate into the erosion of the structure of genderpower relations in society. A good example is the story of Tristan and Iseult or Lancelot and Guinevere (Figs. C.2, C.3 and C.4). The French historian-medievalist Georges Duby emphasized that the image of the Beautiful Lady was fundamentally incompatible with the image of a wife and a woman-mother. It did not fit into the concept of a classical medieval family (Duby 1990: 93). Francis Newman, confirming the Chernyshevsky’s idea, argued that courtly love could easily turn into domestic violence when an ideal woman got married and thereby lost the symbolic halo of a deity, which did not allow in the period before marriage to consider her as ordinary a person who can be subjected to physical beatings (Newman 1968: 54).

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Fig. C.3 John Duncan (1866–1945). Tristan and Isolde

Fig. C.4 Herbert James Draper. Lancelot and Guinevere

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Gender Relations in the Traditions of Courtly Love The medieval facets of courtly love are associated with a masochistic psychological syndrome (Baudrillard 2000; Ross 2018; D’Albis et al. 2017; Marcuse 2003; Bauman 2002; Stockdill 2018; Volkogonova 2005; Sacher-Masoch 2012; Kuschel 2017; Duits 2000; Strizoe, Khrapova 2018; Deleuze 1992; Bront 2010). The following diagram may be suggested: loosening the classic family ← transformation of gender social roles in medieval society ← masochist syndrome ← tradition of worshiping the Beautiful Lady ← cultural narrative of courtly love. The tradition of courtly love is closely related to the tradition of female bestowing knighthood on a man (Fig. C.5). As Hutton (2018) emphasized, similar psychological situations are also described in many English romantic and Victorian novels, especially the Gothic ones, which often reproduce medieval cultural stereotypes and traditions, including the traditions of courtly love.

Psychological Basis of the Courtly Love Tradition Sacher-Masoch’s heroines Wanda von Dunajew and Nadeschda Baragreff emphasize the tradition of worshiping the Beautiful Lady. The elder Bront, drawing Shirley Kildare, describes a woman whose power would be more destructive to herself than to those around her; the opposite can be found in the stories and stories of Leopold von Sacher-Mahoch. Wanda von Dunajew, the main character of Venus in Furs, openly declares to Severin von Kusiemski, who confessed his love to her, her slave (Sacher-Masoch 2012: 40–41). Otherwise, von Dunajew would have destroyed everything around her, the external, destroyed the psyche of the men who got in her way. The symbolic worship of von Dunajew as the Beautiful Lady leads exclusively to masochistic syndrome. A similar psychological situation is depicted by Sir Francis Dicksee in his picture The end of the quest (Fig. C.6). Oddly enough, the European cultural tradition of worshiping the Beautiful Lady, embodied in the works of medieval troubadours and conceptually formulated in Russian philosophical and religious thought, is very close in a symbolic context to the Masoch’s stories. A woman despises a man, and here and there a man adores an inaccessible beauty. It’s just that Sacher-Masoch has brought the matter to its logical conclusion: his hero Severin translates the phenomenon of his adoration into the physiological-bodily plane, demetaphorizing Berdyaev’s statements about “torment”, “slavery”, “suffering” in love for an unattainable woman. “To be a slave of a woman, a beautiful woman whom I love, whom I adore!..” In this phrase, Severin is still a psychologically healthy person, but further worship leads him with relentlessness to the following words that speak of his psychological deviations: “who me binds and whips, tramples me with his feet, while surrendering to another.” The agreement between Wanda von Dunajew and Severin von Kusiemski stipulates that the latter undertakes “by the word of honor of a man and a nobleman to be a

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Fig. C.5 Edmund Blair Leighton (1852–1922). The accolade

slave of Wanda until she herself returns his freedom” (Sacher-Masoch 2012: 117). That is, Severin is transformed into a double of the Knight of Toggenburg, captured by psychological slavery as part of the worship of his Beautiful Lady. Russian thinkers came close in their reasoning to the psychoanalytic understanding of the perversion of the male psyche: the medieval tradition of courtly love and worship of the Beautiful Lady in the style of Knight of Toggenburg is a

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Fig. C.6 Sir Francis Dicksee (1853–1928). The end of the quest

symbolization of masochism as a psychological state. Masoch puts just words into Wanda’s speech: I am excited by the very thought of seeing such a person at my feet, so selflessly, so enthusiastically surrendered to me ... But how long will this last? A woman can love a man, but she humiliates a slave and finally throws him away from her with her foot (Sacher-Masoch 2012: 92).

According to Gilles Deleuze, a masochist is an idealist and an extreme dreamer in essence, who in his fantasies “rejects” reality in the name of his own dreams. According to the Deleuze’s concept, the masochist makes the idea of law and contract, as it developed in society, and, accordingly, power relations, an object

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Fig. C.7 A chivalric tournament. A miniature from a book of the 15th century. To the left hand of the French King, the ladies are sitting, in whose honour the knights must win the tournament

of ridicule (Deleuze 1992: 246). The knights who promised beautiful ladies, bearers of the Eternal Feminine image, to win the tournament in their honor, were symbolic masochists, for whom the purely semiotic simply had not yet formed a complete psychological type. Deleuze argued, if sadism destroys the Enlightenment, then masochism is a modernist discourse of socially stable institutions (Deleuze 1992: 245). It is very interesting that Sacher-Masoch in his Demonic Women, a collection of stories about women very greedy for power, the men are all weak-willed, and women are tyrants. The peasants Fedora (Fedora) and Matryona (The Living Bench), the red-haired planter (Red Hair), the wealthy Italian princess Leonida (The Demonic Woman), the Russian circus performer Asma (Asma), the Galician Countess Bernardina (Second Youth), the Russian landowner Olga (The Moonlit Night) and Fraulein Vlasta von Milovitz (Vlasta), despite the dissimilarity of their characters, have much in common. It is not clear what they crave more: love or death of a lover who deifies them as the Beautiful Lady, unable to challenge them psychologically (SacherMasoch 2008). The apex of masochist tendency in the tradition of courtly love is knight tournament in the name of a lady (Fig. C.7).

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Conclusion In this Appendix, I tried to show a synchronic and psychological connection between the development of the chivalrous cultural tradition of worshiping the Beautiful Lady and masochism. Both Russian philosophers Berdyaev, Soloviev, Rozanov, and Denis de Rougemont paid attention to the synchronic nature of the connection. The presence of a psychoanalytic foundation in the similarity of the knightly complex and the masochistic syndrome was noted by Marcuse and Sacher-Masoch. In this appendix, I have combined the logic of the cultural and psychoanalytic approaches, expanding the areas of application of both. In the tradition of worshiping the Beautiful Lady within the courtly culture of the late Middle Ages, marriage was denied as a natural embodiment of Love, understood as a sacred-mystical correlate of European culture. This denial was typical both for the bearers of courtly culture, bards, minstrels, troubadours, and for the recipients of this cultural message, the knights themselves. Denis de Rougemont (1991) in the chapter “To marry Isolde” of his monumental work Love and the West noted that Isolde is only so long desirable for Tristan, as long as she is married to another. While a Beautiful Lady is inaccessible to a knight, she is the object of all his aspirations and his worship. But as soon as she becomes his property (and this is how, in most cases, a married woman was understood within the framework of knightly culture), she not only loses the divine halo of the Beautiful Lady; she becomes the antagonist of Love-Eros, transforming into an element of everyday life. To marry Isolde means to discredit her; the image of the Beautiful Lady is the image of a woman from whom the male knight is symbolically separated: as soon as she becomes his wife, he loses her. The connection between the knightly erotic worship of the Beautiful Lady and the masochistic syndrome, illustrated in the article with some non-standard examples, is partly due to the psychological complex of guilt of the male psyche, which developed as an archetypal leitmotif about one hundred to one hundred and fifty years after the start of the Crusades. This complex, in turn, found expression in such permanent themes of the knightly epic as the Chevalier’s trips to distant countries, participation in the Crusades, participation in tournaments and knightly duels, battles with giants and other monsters, sacrificing himself and his life to his beloved Dame (as in the case of the Knight of Toggenburg described by Nikolay Chernyshevsky in his novel What has to be Done?). The masochist syndrome of knightly culture is the ultimate, final stage of worshiping the Beautiful Lady, when the very suffering of a man seems the highest good for him, the suffering of a slave in psychological dependence following his unattainable idol. Of course, marriage and family in masochistic relationships are problematic. As we remember, in Venus in Furs Sacher-Masoch describes that his hero Severin von Kusiemski signed a contract with Wanda von Dunajew, which gave Wanda the exclusive right to enslave him. The prototype of this was the writer’s own relationship with Baroness Fanny Pistor, in which a contract was signed between them, giving Fanny the right to “undivided ownership” of Leopold Masoch for six months from the date of the signature.

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We come to the other side of the knightly culture, the social institution of family. Family was a part of everyday life, which means it was a part of the dichotomy Love—Everyday life, which Roman Jakobson (1985: 111–132) discusses in his work “On the generation that wasted its poets.” Jacobson wrote, everyday life is a something that absorbs sublime Love, love as a mystery, love as desire, love as a drama, love as a passionate impulse. Jacobson, using paraphrases of quotes from Vladimir Mayakovsky, used terms such as “old”, “mossy”, “moldy”, “motionless”, “habitual”, “uninteresting”, “boring”, “pretty the same” (Jakobson 1985: 114–115). Family life in medieval courtly culture began to be associated with the direct antithesis of passionate Love-Eros, which has a colossal transformative power, sometimes creative, sometimes destructive, but always enormous. Courtly love is inseparable from the vagueness of the outcome of the love game, from the potential inaccessibility of the lady, from the balancing of the man on the verge of female rejection and is directly opposite to family love, clothed in the clothes of Love-everyday life. In The Story of My Disasters Pierre Abelard emphasized many times that Eloise was, of course, the ideal of the Lady and the ideal of love, but only before marriage and outside family. As a lover, Abelard easily imagined himself to be the bearer of knightly culture, but he could not imagine himself in the role of a husband listening to the cries of babies and constantly bumping into the linen hanging in the yard. In the culture of knightly tournaments and courtly love, the lady ruled and adopted the laws, she was worshiped and extolled as the object of the highest desire of the male knight. But in the family, the woman was deprived of all rights and severely discriminated.

References Baudrillard, J. 2000. Symbolic Exchange and Death. Moscow: Sabashnikovy Press. Bauman, Z. 2002. Individualized society. Moscow: Eksmo. Berdyaev, N. A. 1991. Metaphysics of sex and love. In Russian Eros, or Philosophy of Love in Russia, comp. by V. P. Shestakov, 232–265, Moscow: Mir. Bogin, M. 1980. The Women Troubadours. New York: Garland. Bront, C. 2010. Shirley. Moscow: AST. Chernyshevsky, N. G. 2011. What Has To Be Done? Moscow: Eksmo. D’Albis, H., Greulich, A., Ponthière, G. 2017. Education, labour, and the demographic consequences of birth postponement in Europe. Demographic Research 36 (1): 691–728. Deleuze, J. 1992. The introduction of Sacher-Masoch. In L. von Sacher-Masoch. Venus in furs, 240–256, St Petersburg: Strata. Duby, G. 1990. Courtly love and the changes in female situation in France of the twelfth century. In Odysseus. A Man in History, ed. by E. Y. Simakov, 90–96, Moscow: Progress. Duits, E. J. 2000. L’Autre désir: Du sadomasochisme à l’amour courtois. Paris: La Musardine. Harris, K. M., McDade, T. W. 2018. The Biosocial Approach to Human Development, Behavior, and Health Across the Life Course. The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4 (4): 2–26. Hutton, R. 2018. Witches and Cunning Folk in British Literature 1800–1940. Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 7 (1): 27–49.

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Jakobson, R. 1985. Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time. Ed. by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Kuschel, K. 2017. The Work-family Field: Gaps and Missing Links as Opportunities for Future Research. Innovar: Revista de ciencias administrativas y sociales 27 (66): 57–74. Lupack, A. 2005. The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marcuse, H. 2003. Eros and civilization. Moscow: Labirint. Moore, J. C. 1979. Courtly Love: A Problem of Terminology. Journal of the History of Ideas 40 (4): 621–632. Newman, F. 1968. The Meaning of Courtly Love. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Pandey, N. B. 2018. Caput mundi: Female Hair as Symbolic Vehicle of Domination in Ovidian Love Elegy. The Classical Journal 113 (4): 454–488. Ross, J. 2018. The search for certainty: A pragmatist critique of society’s focus on Biological Childbearing. The Pluralist 13 (2): 96–108. Rougemont, D. de. 2001. L’amour et l’Occident. Paris: Gallimard. Rozanov, V. V. 1990. People of the moonlight. Moscow: Druzhba Narodov. Sacher-Masoch, L. von. 2008. Demonic Women. St Petersburg: Strata. Sacher-Masoch, L. von. 2012. Venus in Furs. St Petersburg: Strata. Schultz, J. A. 2006. Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shamma, T. 2017. Women and Slaves: Gender Politics in the Arabian Nights. Marvels and Tales 31 (2): 239–260. Sharov, K. 2020. Medieval tradition of courtly love and its influence upon transforming matrimonial relations in European societies. Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Kul’turologiya i iskusstvovedeniye 38: 145–164. Soloviev, V. S. 1991. The sense of love. In Russian Eros, or Philosophy of Love in Russia, comp. by V. P. Shestakov, 19–76, Moscow: Mir. Stockdill, B. C. 2018. Love in the Time of ACT UP: Reflections on AIDS Activism, Queer Family, and Desire. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 5 (1): 48–83. Strizoe, A. L., Khrapova. V. A. 2018. Verbal and Visual in Culture: Hierarchy or Complementarity? Voprosy Philosofii, no. 6. http://vphil.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view& id=2001&Itemid=52 Volkogonova, O. D. 2005. Intimacy in the runaway world. Cosmopolis (11): 154–160.

Appendix D

Gender in Ancient Christianity

Introduction Since antiquity, Christian sermon has been built not only as an official Church sermon that may have been read in houses and temples (Sharov 2020). To the large extent, the first sermon was the lot of literature, both canonical and artistic (Svetlov 2018; 2019; Mazaev 2018; Streltsov 2018), as well as emerging icon painting (Kozhevnikov 2019, 121–122; Shestakova 2018, 266; Simsky 2018, 104– 105, 108; Zozuˇlak 2017). This tradition of artistic preaching, as well as Christian poetic and visual art would subsequently flourish in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Kukso 2019; Sazonova 2018; Borisova 2017; Rudnev 2018). In the first–third centuries AD early Christian apologists (for example, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Papias of Hierapolis, Origen) often used the method of copying in their writings the logic of the reasoning of classical ancient philosophers and often even used similar mythological subjects (Rimondi 2018; Ugolnikov 2017; Blandzi 2017; Papathomas 2019; Pružinec 2019). Most likely, this was done in order to increase the attractiveness of Christianity not only as a new religion, but also as a cultural layer of public thought, to bring Christians out of their illegal social position and to destroy the cultural image of monsters-sectarians. It is curious that in the 1st century, despite the persecution of Christians by Nero, and later by Trajan, there was still no serious conflict between the nascent Christian theology and classical ancient philosophy. Not only Christians treated the philosophers of the Greek and Roman schools with reverence, but the latter, in turn, generally did not treat the new unusual teaching with contempt, perceiving it more as a philosophical abstraction, rather than as a religion.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. S. Sharov, Gender as a Political Instrument Forming New Boundaries by Ethnic and Religious Diasporas in European Union, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0695-4

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In the appendix, I shall consider the epistles of the Apostle Paul as artistic and homiletic works. In them, the author showed himself not only as a Christian preacher, but also as a connoisseur of ancient poetry, which he rethought and adapted to the needs of his artistic preaching. In his several epistles, sometimes called “Greek” or “Hellenic” (1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus), the apostle Paul pays close attention to gender. However, in modern times, his “Greek” epistles became subject to incessant criticism (Kittredge 2012, 125). He was persistently called a chauvinist, sexist, misogynist (Richards, O’Brien 2016, 10–12, 34, 79). Some authors blame him for displacing women from the hierarchy of the emerging Christian church in antiquity (Marshall 1998, 166), and also depriving them of their right to be clergy at the altar (Kwok 2016, 17; Marshall 1998, 167–168). A number of Protestant theologians of the 21st century calls for an end to the literal interpretation of gender-related passages in his messages (Byler 2016, 61–63; Hardy 1991, 5–6). It is sometimes argued that most of his gender prescriptions (if not all) need be reconsidered in the context of the development of Christian theological thought and Christian homiletics as a literary genre (Benini 2015, 199; Mróz 2018, 164–165). The controversial passages should either be completely excluded from the practice of modern Christian preaching, or they should be quoted in quotation marks with reservations that the current Church (mainly Protestant) has a different point of view than the apostle (Schüssler Fiorenza 2014, 430). In the appendix, I analyze the gender context of the Greco-Roman non-Christian culture of Corinth, within which Paul wrote his “Greek” epistles. I adhere to the point of view that the Apostle deliberately developed the gender issue in his written sermons so that his theses and conclusions were understandable by the representatives of Hellenistic culture, first of all, to the Corinthian temple priestesses hetaeras. In Greek epistles, the pagan ancient culture is described positively, while the Jewish culture, most of whose representatives rejected the idea of their salvation through Jesus Christ, in a negative tone. We may assume that for the pagan priestesses hetaeras the Apostle could use not Christian, but pagan logic. Paul himself explains: To them that are without Law, as without Law (being not without Law to God, but vnder the Law to Christ,) that I might gaine them that are without Law. To the weake became I as weake, that I might gaine the weake: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all meanes saue some. And this I doe for the Gospels sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you. Know yee not that they which runne in a race, runne all, but one receiueth the price? So runne, that yee may obtaine. And euery man that striueth for the masterie, is temperate in all things: Now they doe it to obtaine a corruptible crowne, but we an incorruptible. I therefore so runne, not as vncertainely: so fight I, not as one that beateth the ayre: But I keepe vnder my body, and bring it into subiection: lest that by any meanes when I haue preached to others, I my selfe should be a castaway. (1 Cor. 9: 21-27).

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At the same time, I demonstrate that the controversial “feminine” passages of Paul’s sermons are not directed against the women of Corinth, but, on the contrary, they are addressed for them as one of the main addressees of the word about Jesus Christ.

Paul’s Sermon in Corith Paul settled in Corinth and preached there in the late 40s and early 50s, where he moved from Asia Minor (Hilarion 2017, ch. 1–2). I believe it was no coincidence that Paul chose Corinth as the new centre in the Roman Empire for the mass preaching and spread of Christianity. In the middle of the 1st century, unlike the old Corinth, the new Corinth became a hierotopic city (Fyodorova 1998; Nikulushkin 2017, 82; Zagraevsky 2018, 50, 52; Schlowalter 2005), as well as a centre where cultured and educated people from all over the empire gathered. The famous temple of Aphrodite again, as before the destruction, towered on the plateau of Acrocorinth, the highest point of the city (about 600 m above sea level), from whence it was seen everywhere. In the second century Pausanias testified about the new Roman temple of Aphrodite, a cult centre, thanks to which Corinth gained its great fame: ἀνελθοῦσι δὲ ἐς τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον ναός ἐστιν Ἀφροδίτης: ἀγάλματα δὲ αὐτή τε ὡπλισμένη καὶ Ἥλιος καὶ Ἔρως ἔχων τόξον. τὴν δὲ πηγήν, ἥ ἐστιν ὄπισθεν τοῦ ναοῦ, δῶρον μὲν Ἀσωποῦ λέγουσιν εἶναι, δοθῆναι δὲ Σισύφῳ.5

As one can see, there is the sacred fountain of Asopus of Phliasia, and three separate sanctuaries dedicated to Aphrodite the Armed (this was the only temple of Aphrodite in Hellas, where all her statues depicted her in full military dress and with weapons), Helios and Eros. Only a truly majestic sacred structure could fit the description of this Greek geographer, majestic in size and architecture. I believe that Roman Corinth in the 1st century was more profitable for Christian preaching than Hellenistic Corinth would have been 300 years earlier. In 146 BC the troops of the consul Lucius Mummius wiped out old Corinth from the face of the earth, putting an end to the Achaean League, and Hellas joined the Roman Republic. Severe and strict customs of the Roman Republic considered the city of pleasure as a den of debauchery, lust and worthless luxury. Cato the Elder, Scipio Africanus, Mark Livy Drusus, Emilius Scavrus, Publius Muzio Scavola, the Gracchi, all of them criticized Corinth or its memory in their political speeches. However, the eve of the empire changed everything. Guy Julius Caesar, an esthete and lover of beauty, issued an edict to restore Corinth shortly before his assassination. Temples, houses and streets were rebuilt, and the city, like the Phoenix, was literally reborn from the ashes. By the time St Paul preached, the Romans perceived Corinth as a place of elite tourism. 5

Pausan. Ἀττικά, Κορινθιακά, 5.

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In his Geography Strabo paid special attention to the temple of Aphrodite the Armed (Warrior) and her priestesses (we are talking here, of course, about the new temple of Aphrodite after its restoration by the Romans): τό τε τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἱερὸν οὕτω πλούσιον ὑπῆρξεν ὥστε πλείους ἢ χιλίας ἱεροδούλους ἐκέκτητο ἑταίρας, ἃς ἀνετίθεσαν τῇ θεῷ καὶ ἄνδρες καὶ γυναῖκες. καὶ διὰ ταύτας οὖν πολυωχλεῖτο ἡ πόλις καὶ ἐπλουτίζετο: οἱ γὰρ ναύκληροι ῥᾳδίως ἐξανηλίσκοντο, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἡ παροιμία φησίν “οὐ παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἐς Κόρινθόν ἐσθ᾽ ὁ πλοῦς”.6

One may note that Strabo calls the priestesses of love by the two terms: hierodules (ἱεροδούλους) and hetaeras, companions (ἑταίρας). Hierodules is a term traditionally interpreted in modern times as temple prostitutes (Frazer 1922: vol. 1, 285), but the literal translation, temple ministers, was used to refer to both men and women. As we saw from the passage, Strabo writes that in the Corinthian temple of Aphrodite there were a huge number of priestesses, more than a thousand hierodules (πλείους ἢ χιλίας ἱεροδούλους). Paul, who knows the Hellenistic culture well, understood that sacred prostitution is not the prostitution of women on the street, that the temple of Aphrodite is not a brothel, but the hierodules of Aphrodite are not ordinary whores giving themselves to sailors who accidentally wandered into the temple. Temple hierodules hetaeras created a real aesthetic cult of love, forcing the visitor to give not only their money, but also the body and soul to Aphrodite. The priestesses entangled the whole essence of a newcomer with their nets. The sacred connection of bodies and souls with hetaeras was the norm for both men and women. Strabo testifies that ἑταίρας, ἃς ἀνετίθεσαν τῇ θεῷ καὶ ἄνδρες καὶ γυναῖκες, and we are hardly talking only about bodily female love attention. In addition, hetaeras often had extensive knowledge not only in art and poetry, but also in sciences and medicine.

“Feminine” Excerpts in St Paul’s Sermons The fact that Paul, like most of the first apologists (Guryanov 2017; Darovskikh 2017), knew perfectly the classical Greek and Latin authors and often entered his own words into the context they created, is beyond doubt even among the rigorous feminist critics of his sermons (Buell, Hodge 2004, 236; Lamprou, Zozuˇlaková 2019). Of the most famous examples, we can recall how he quotes a line from Menander’s poem Thais: Φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρησθ ‘ὁμιλίαι κακαί (1 Cor. 15:33); a phrase from the hymns of Callimachus and Epimenides: εἶπέν τις ἐξ αὐτῶν ἴδιος αὐτῶν προφήτης Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται κακὰ θηρία γαστέρες ἀργαί; a paraphrase of Epimenides’s Ἐν αὐτῷ γὰρ ζῶμεν καὶ κινούμεθα καὶ ἐσμέν (Acts 17:28); and finally, an almost verbatim quote from the Greek poet and astronomer Aratus of Soli: ὡς καί τινες τῶν καθ ‘ὑμᾶς ποιητῶν εἰρήκασιν Τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν (Acts 17:28). When St Paul the Apostle quotes Aratus’s Phenomena, he introduces classical pagan Greek context into his homiletics. Citing the line from Aratus “we are His and 6

Strab. Geogr. 8, 6, 20.

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our generation” (Τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν), St Paul could not help but understand that when he said “His,” Aratus was writing about Zeus, although he simply spoke of “God” (Διὸς). Further we shall see that Paul could have done this on purpose, preparing a certain pagan semantic layer for his preaching of Christ to the Corinthian society. The opening lines of the pagan poem Phenomena sound unusual, if not strange, in the context of St Paul’s Christian sermon: ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα, τὸν οὐδέποτ᾽ ἄνδρες ἐῶμεν ἄρρητον: μεσταὶ δέ Διὸς πᾶσαι μὲν ἀγυιαί, πᾶσαι δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἀγοραί, μεστὴ δὲ θάλασσα καὶ λιμένες: πάντη δὲ Διὸς κεχρήμεθα πάντες. τοῦ γάρ καὶ γένος εἰμέν: ὁ δ᾽ ἤπιος ἀνθρώποισιν.7

However, St Paul goes much further and risks much more, inserting quotations from the well-known pagan ode to Zeus into the text of his epistle. In the 3rd century BC Callimachus of Cyrene wrote his Hymn to Zeus. In the first lines he discusses where Zeus was born, calls him a father, and at the end of the passage adds that “the Cretans are always liars,” since they built a tomb for Zeus, and he does not need a tomb since Zeus lives forever: πῶς καί νιν, Δικταῖον ἀείσομεν ἠὲ Λυκαῖον; ἐν δοιῇ μάλα θυμός, ἐπεὶ γένος ἀμφήριστον. Ζεῦ, σὲ μὲν Ἰδαίοισιν ἐν οὔρεσί φασι γενέσθαι, Ζεῦ, σὲ δ’ ἐν Ἀρκαδίῃ πότεροι, πάτερ, ἐψεύσαντο; ‘Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται’ καὶ γὰρ τάφον, ὦ ἄνα, σεῖο Κρῆτες ἐτεκτήναντο σὺ δ᾿ οὐ θάνες, ἐσσὶ γὰρ αἰεί.8

However, in the line about the Cretans and the tomb Callimachus uses a paraphrase on Epimenides of Knossos, who lived three centuries before him. In his own hymn to Zeus, Epimenides puts the following words into the mouth of the Cretan king Minos. This also raises the theme of the immortality of Zeus and his fictitious tomb, arranged by the Cretans: Τύμβον ἐτεκτήναντο σέθεν, κύδιστε, μέγιστε, Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται, κακὰ θηρία, γαστέρες ἀργαί, ἀλλὰ σύ γ’ οὐ θνῄσκεις, ἕστηκας γὰρ ζοὸς αἰεί, ἐν γὰρ σοὶ ζῶμεν καὶ κινύμεθ’ ἠδὲ καὶ ἐσμέν.9

The Apostle uses the lines from this hexametric quatrain of Epimenides in different contexts, and does not consider it shameful for Christian preaching. 7

Arat. Phænomena, lin. 1–5. Callim. εἰς Δία. 9 The original text of the hymn to Zeus written by Epimenides has not reached us. This text of Epimenides is a reconstruction from the Syriac language by J. Rendel Harris (1906: 305). The Syriac text is written in hexameters, so Harris’s reconstruction can be considered semantically close to the original. 8

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The most interesting thing is that St Paul the Apostle quotes Menander’s poem about the Athenian hetaera Thais for Christian homiletic purposes10 : έμοί μέν ουν άειδε τοιαύτην, θεά, θρχσεΐαν, ώραίαν δέ καί πιθανήν άμα αδικούσαν, άποκλήουσαν, αιτούσαν πυκνά, μηθενος έρώσαν, προσποΐουμένην δ’ άεί. ἅγγαρος ὄλεθρος. ἡδέως ἄν μοι δοκῶ ὅμως πεπονθὼς ταῦτα νῦν ταύτην ἔχειν. φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρησθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί.11

If St Paul was trying to enlighten the Greek priestesses of love and wanting to prove the truth of the teachings of Christ to them, then why does he quote the ode of one of their most famous representatives? Why does he, like a pagan rhetorician, insert lines from the praises of Zeus, about whom he says in another quote that Zeus is nothing, just an idol, and οὐδὲν εἴδωλον ἐν κόσμῳ καὶ ὅτι οὐδεὶς θεὸς ἕτερος εἰ μὴ εἷς (1 Cor. 8: 4)? I suspect that St Paul wants to be a co-creator of Menander, a continuer of his work in his sermon to the hetaeras of Corinth. But why? The excerpt from Menander’s poem Thais, which has come down to us, shows the poet’s ambiguous attitude towards the hetaera Thais. On the one hand, Menander clearly admires Thais, saying that she is daring, beautiful and endearing to herself; on the other hand, he blames her for luring fortunes from men, for her not loving anyone, but pretending all the time. The fifth and sixth lines of the passage are difficult to understand. I think so. The poet says that although he suffered (most likely, being hurt or rejected by Thais?), he nevertheless would prefer to have her in his arms again. Menander is not ashamed to call himself in a deteriorative way by the word ἅγγαρος, which, although literally translated as “messenger, courier,” was often used in Greek poems as a synonym for a primitive, uneducated, enslaved person who did not have and should not have had his own will, bowing to the desires of his masters. Although St Paul does not use this word to refer to himself, the context of 1 Cor. 4: 9–13 fits well into the concept of ἅγγαρος. St Paul seems to use similar logic to the hetaeras, the servants of Aphrodite, as Menander. Since the Apostle became “everything to everyone” (1 Cor. 9:22), he is not ashamed to call himself even a simple servant and debtor of hetaeras, and wants to reshape their perception of the world, making them Christians. He sees ardor, passion and sacrifice in them, but he wants that all these positive qualities should be dedicated to Christ. He sees immortal souls in the hetaeras. Then it becomes clear enough that by adding the phrase ἐκνήψατε δικαίως καὶ μὴ ἁμαρτάνετε ἀγνωσίαν γὰρ θεοῦ τινες ἔχουσιν πρὸς ἐντροπὴν ὑμῖν λέγω (1 Cor. 15:34), St Paul the Apostle is addressing not all the Corinthians, but precisely 10

The full text of Menander’s poem has not reached us; only separate fragments have survived in the Greek and Latin translations made by Plutarch, Lucius Afranius, Hipparchus and Statius Caecilius. 11 Menand. Θαΐς, lin. reliq. 1a–4a, 1b–2b, 1c.

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the refined hedonistic society, including the society of Corinthian hetaeras. If we remember that the Apostle of the pagans boldly took hymns to Zeus and quoted them for Christian preaching purposes without hesitation (this is paradoxical in itself!), St Paul as if continues to write Menander’s poem. By saying “come to your senses” (ἐκνήψατε), Paul is addressing hetaeras.

Zeus’s Authority? In this context, St Paul’s words lose their tint of misogyny, and the Apostle becomes a brave and progressive orator. He addresses, among the others, to that female stratum of Corinthian society, to which men usually turned for completely different things, for mental and physical pleasures. He does not exclude hetaeras from the addressees of his sermon; he appeals to their hearts and feelings at the same time. Knowing that the society of hetaeras is a society of priestesses of the pagan cult of Aphrodite, Paul resorts to the authority of Zeus, because the name of Christ did not have any meaning for hetaeras. Through an imaginary order, or the command of Zeus, they had to move away from serving Aphrodite to serving Jesus. That is why, I believe, St Paul included the lines from the hymns to Zeus. Paul takes the authority of Zeus to his side. And who else, if not Zeus, could, within completely understandable and culturally conditioned logic of the priestesses, order Aphrodite? St Paul was not afraid to take on titanic tasks. Having visited Athens, he set the goal of remaking the entire pagan Greek society. But after living in Corinth, the Apostle turned to an even more difficult goal, to destroying the sinful love of the priestesses of the pagan cult with the Christian love. The Christ versus Aphrodite, nothing more—nothing less. But such a formula existed only in the mind of the apostle. For the society of hetaeras, he prepared a different formula, “Zeus orders Aphrodite.” I believe that is why St Paul included pagan sacred passages in his Christian sermon.

Conclusion So, St Paul did not consider the cult ministers of love unworthy to perceive his word about Christ. On the contrary, it seems that he considered these women more willing to accept Christ than the Athenian sages, philosophers and politicians. In his sermon Paul develops the maxim of Jesus “the Publicanes and the harlots go into the kingdome of God before you” (Matt. 21:31). The domicile of hetaeras was love, sacred love. Christ, as Paul preached to the Corinthians, is the true Love. Hetaeras could understand and accept Christ with their heart and with all their being; they were part of the element that is called love; and all that was needed was a change in their understanding of love. At the same time, the Athenian philosophers of the 1st century tried to understand Christ only with their

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minds and were often defeated. I think this could be one of the reasons why Paul founded the largest Christian Church in Corinth, and not Athens. If we assume that the Apostle did not anathematize the priestesses of love, but, on the contrary, saw in them a wonderful field for sowing the Christian word, then his ideas about bodily union with the harlot and Christ acquire a new philological and theological meaning. He compares this connection in this way: οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν μέλη Χριστοῦ ἐστιν ἄρας οὖν τὰ μέλη τοῦ Χριστοῦ ποιήσω πόρνης μέλη μὴ γένοιτο. ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ὁ κολλώμενος τῇ πόρνῃ ἓν σῶμά ἐστιν Ἔσονται γάρ φησίν οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν’. ὁ δὲ κολλώμενος τῷ κυρίῳ ἓν πνεῦμά ἐστιν (1 Cor. 6:15-17).

A porna (πόρνη) is a cheap street prostitute, wench. Usually pornas was completely uneducated; often they were former slaves; they were socially censured and used by men for the most primitive purposes. A porna and a hetaera were incompatible. Could St Paul not have known that Aphrodite’s hierodules were not called pornas, since they really were not pornas? Of course he knew that. But he uses this word twice in this passage. In his sermon, Paul could pejoratively call not the collective priestess of Aphrodite, but Aphrodite herself as an idol, a false goddess. The usual Christian imagological technique is to portray Christians as “sons of light,” and “unenlightened” pagans as children of the enemy of the human race (Koroleva, Nikola 2019: 187–188; Safronova 2019: 119, 125; Sozina 2019: 217, 220; Frank 2017: 172). A similar technique in artistic homiletics is also often used to distinguish between Christians and representatives of other religions (Guzairov 2017: 65; Sarbash 2017: 151–152). But St Paul does everything differently. He called unbelieving pagans children of God. Aphrodite is an intangible invention of satan, intangible, despite the fact that in Greek culture she was understood in the material sense precisely on the basis of artistic images and statues. According to the Apostle Paul, the priestesses were to be replaced by Christ in her temple. They must have rethought the very understanding of love. In the context of my assumption, this may be a logical and appropriate idea. Let us recall that Strabo writes that “both men and women put a hetaera as an offering (sacrifice) to Aphrodite,” i.e. during physical sexual union with a hetaera priestess, a human being (man or woman) who came to the temple connected with Aphrodite at a deep level. In this sacred Bacchic mystery, the body of the priestess was not only a kind of medium, a conductor of the body and soul of those who come to Aphrodite, but also a sacrifice to Aphrodite. That is why the Apostle could tell hetaeras: “οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν μέλη Χριστοῦ ἐστιν?” (1 Cor. 6:15). He tried to show them that their bodies are the mystical body of Christ, but not Aphrodite. Hetaeras were not to desecrate their bodies, making them constant prey to the goddess-porna, the goddess-whore, who gave herself to everyone at the Olympus indiscriminately. Serving as sacrifice to the goddess of depravity, they participated in the demonic meal (οὐ δύνασθε τραπέζης δαιμονίων μετέχειν), and Paul called them to participate in the Lord’s meal, i.e. the Eucharist (τραπέζης κυρίου) (1 Cor. 10:21). Paul’s logic could be as follows: in the cult of Aphrodite, the hetaeras’ bodies served as a bloodless

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sacrifice to demons, but in the Christian church the hetaeras would participate in the bloodless sacrifice of the body of Christ, offered by a presbyter or a bishop. Did the Apostle Paul succeed? The Temple of Aphrodite and sacred prostitution continued to exist until the Edict of Milan issued by Emperor Constantine. But Dionysius the Areopagite, Eusebius of Caesarea and Tertullian gave evidence that many “fallen women” of Corinth, former priestesses of the goddess of love, became Christians under the influence of St Paul’s preaching. Later they would become the most zealous followers of Christ in the early Christian communities.

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