On Gender Diversifying Our Spaces

Commitment to the gender diversification of Muslim quarters appears to be inching towards a regional ijma‘ in the West. Popular personalities occupying Muslim spaces have formally pledged to participate only in those programs where female representation meets a certain threshold (itself increasingly demanding), with specific attention being given to the composition of panels. The remaining holdouts who have yet to publicly pledge to the integration regime — few that they are — are dropping like flies, with an ever narrowing group largely flying under the radar. For many, the outrage over panel exclusion is self-evidently justified. The absence of female voices, it is alleged, renders invisible important forms of female scholarship while concurrently disempowering female voices as religiously authoritative.

Accompanying these concerns has been a larger dialogue on gender in Islam, with efforts underway to explain (and, at times, explain away) Sharia gender distinction and the relationship between gender as articulated in revelation, on the one hand, and gender constructionism as a presupposition underlying gender discourse in the modern West, on the other. In an effort to address what I consider a critical component of gender conception that is seldom taken seriously, I authored a lengthy piece critiquing this constructionist take. The current article follows from that by offering a set of ruminations on female participation on panels and gender diversification in Muslim life more generally.

1. Muslim communal concerns over #allmalepanels are of a relatively recent vintage, dating back, at most, a decade. A number of the chief exponents responsible for mainstreaming this dialectic among Muslims are academics, as sustained exclusion from academic conferences and panels can serve to marginalize young (academic) scholars aspiring for recognition. A female PhD applicant for professorship will include as part of her academic resume the various panels and conferences she has spoken at, and by having one’s academic work subject to specialist consideration, engagement, and review, the possibility of collaborating in future projects with established scholars, receiving senior scholarly endorsements, and building a career network with colleagues on equal footing materializes.

By way of comparison, no such stakes exist in confessional spaces. A Muslim sister’s presence or absence on a panel does not assist in advancing any greater career objective. Short of wanting to enter the “speaker circuit,” which can in fact be quite lucrative (often for a select few), there is far less to be gained (and thus less to be lost) by not being invited to participate in a panel.

2. The integration of the sexes in social and vocational settings is a radical departure from much of human history. This is important to understand as the social developments and conditions that currently define our cultural moment are far too often assumed to represent value neutral parameters spanning time and place. For the vast majority of human history, men and women occupied different spheres of life, spheres that were derivative of innate differences. Men went into combat, toiled in manually intensive labor, and traveled along dangerous trade routes to provide for their households and support the broader tribal contexts within which they were situated. Women complemented this external vocation by maintaining the interiority of communal life. Absent household technologies (refrigerators, dishwashers, etc.), baby formula, and related developments, the tasks of domestic labor and child-rearing could not so easily be outsourced.

Advancements in the means of production and labor have upended these prior norms, inaugurating an age of integrated pedagogical, social, and vocational spaces. Consequently, our world has shifted to one increasingly defined by gender egalitarian interests and expectations, with a broader presumption that working environments, schools, and religious spaces are all, or at least should be, necessarily gender neutral. Reorganizing social settings and placing men and women in close proximity for prolonged periods of time in the name of egalitarianism has not, however, vitiated our gendered nature. Accordingly, much tension remains in settings where men and women participate closely, and our differential forms of sociality can contribute to conflict where women feel ostracized, alienated, and devalued due to confines that appear ill suited for female residence, while men feel similarly out of place, resentful, and frustrated by encumbrances that prevent them from expressing their innate virility. Domesticated employees conditioned to behave mechanically find work vacuous and personally unfulfilling. Meanwhile, unnatural forms of gender interaction yield individuals who feel anxious at the slightest misstep, with many struggling to compartmentalize their personalities and behaviors.

3. An unbridled program of gender integration has given rise to a paradoxical growth in single-sex “virtual spaces.” Men and women today often commiserate and socialize with one another in private gender-specific groups on WhatsApp, Facebook, and other communication media. It is often within these spaces that men and women manifest their distinctive interests and forms of sociality. Studies on Facebook socialization report significant gender difference in how men and women use the platform, with women more likely to share personal anecdotes (family, anniversaries, etc.) and men exhibiting greater interest in topics of debate(politics, sports, religion, etc.). Women also tend to participate more actively on platforms that are tailored to interests like crafts, fashion, and cooking such as Pinterest, which is overwhelmingly female in user composition, while men disproportionately debate on topic-dominant (and frequently combative) forums like reddit.

These studies support substantial differentiation in interests, behaviors, and dialogical habits between men and women. Male assertiveness and penchant for hostile posturing are often on prominent display on social media, as men are prone to antagonisms and “calling one another out” in combative moments. When interacting with women, men are reticent to display this same aggressiveness, partly because of their instinctive tendency to protect women and view in them fragility. This can complicate conversations in which both men and women participate, as male hostilities often escalate quickly when a man interprets another man’s remarks directed towards women as unbecoming.

The elimination of single-sex spaces also has the effect of disorienting us from the nurturing spaces we need to discover who we are. Some of our most profound interpersonal experiences occur in settings where we are surrounded by members of the same sex. Bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood, fraternal and sororal camaraderie, and the healthy cultivating of masculine and feminine behaviors are allowed space to form and flourish when we can participate with one another in gender-specific community. The religious ministry of many scholars and speakers maligns the very existence of such spaces and implicates them for harming women or carrying on archaic formalities rather than appreciating the need for sex-specific community to socialize, build bonds, and grow.

4. Rather than empowering women, the forceful diversification of panels and programs can serve to disempower female voices by calling into question their individual achievements and retrenching stigmas surrounding female competency. Muslim women today being propped up as speakers deserve to be treated on the basis of their accomplishments, intelligence, and distinctive contributions, not insultingly pursued by institutions eager to ward off social media scandal or earn a few brownie points with those reducing the legitimacy of Muslim programs to gender diversity reviews. Anecdotally, a number of Muslim females in the speaking circuit have picked up on the tendency of organizations to request their presence on purely “tokenized” terms, wherein they make for a good female name on a flier and voice at a program, but not as someone to be taken seriously or held in any particular measure of esteem.

Similar critiques have often been made of affirmative action programs and racial preferencing. In one such critique, Jennifer Gratz writes, describing an African-American woman named Ashley:

Ashley graduated from high school at 16 years of age with a 4.3 GPA and scored a 32 on the ACT. She was active in numerous extracurricular activities and, not surprisingly, was accepted into every college to which she applied. Ashley did not want racial admissions boosts, and she did not need them. She knew, however, that she would get them anyway because she happened to be black. Despite her hard work and impressive accomplishments, she feared ever having a bad day or getting an answer wrong in class lest her peers think she got accepted only because of her skin color.

The use of race-conscious admissions policies at her university saddled Ashley with an unwanted stigma based on her skin color. It reinforced stereotypes of inequality and special treatment, forcing her constantly to feel the need to prove that she deserved to be in the classroom. Rather than helping Ashley, racial preferences obscured the legitimacy of her achievements. She wanted to be judged as an individual; instead, she worked twice as hard to overcome being judged for her skin color.

5. Women ushered into male spaces in the name of equality can often find themselves in spaces that are alienating and unsuitable for feminine residence. In corporate settings, existing cultures have often been tailored to satisfy male needs and promote male forms of behavior while disfavoring or, at a minimum overlooking, female needs and modes of working. Consequently, women often experience acute forms of anomie, as studies have shown that workplaces feel isolating to women, with an increasing number of millennial women opting to leave corporate life altogether.

Calls for the immediate integration of Muslim spaces have not taken into consideration the varying ways in which such spaces are inhospitable to Muslim women (particularly in speaking capacities), as well as the ways in which participation in those spaces may contribute to female alienation, isolation, and anxiety. Instead of attempting to think through the implications of onboarding Muslim women into these settings and considering more fully how their institutional cultures may need to adjust to accommodate positive forms of female inclusion, Muslim organizations have instead virtue signaled their female speaking representation as an achievement deserving of unending accolades.

Existing male-specific expectations can weigh heavily on women coached into seeing fulfillment and value by playing to men’s strengths, with dysfunctional outcomes that can at times border on the bizarre. One example is that of disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who quickly rose to fame and celebrity following her founding of Theranos, a company which promised to deliver mechanisms for conducting blood tests with mere drops, rather than vials, of blood. Holmes deliberately copied Steve Jobs’ fashion style by frequently donning an all-black turtleneck, thus furthering her visionary persona. Holmes was quickly inaugurated into high-profile celebrity circuits and received the public support of influential figures including Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, George Shultz, James Mattis, and Betsy DeVos. After a few years, the absence of any material progress led to investigations that revealed “massive fraud” and grossly exaggerated claims by Holmes concerning the substantive state of Theranos’ underlying technology and product development. Theranos has since dissolved, and Holmes has been indicted on criminal charges of wire fraud.

Perhaps the most fascinating and peculiar revelation following investigations into Holmes was her allegedly deliberate deepening of her voice. The tone of her voice was dubbed “baritone” for its generally husky and idiosyncratic pitch, and Holmes’ voice often added to her mystery given its aesthetic discordance with her otherwise feminine figure. It was only after the collapse of Theranos that former co-workers mentioned hearing Holmes occasionally “fall out of character” in which her real, higher voice was exposed. A number of these incidents were once on YouTube, though the majority have since been taken down and only a few brief recordings remain.

The question of why Holmes would impersonate a voice that is not her own has been batted around by journalists and curious commentators, with most concluding Holmes’ desire to communicate an image of authority and vision. Holmes masqueraded as something she was not in order to become something that she knew no other way of becoming.

Although the example of Holmes may seem an exceedingly abnormal one, it should be expected that the repeated praise of women fulfilling occupations and roles that play to male strengths will result in similar, if milder, forms of dysfunctional performativity.

6. The stubborn facts of life are such that many eminently qualified women in the Muslim community are also mothers. Although much of our public discourse deplores the existence of gender distinction as oppressive to women, mothers are unlike fathers, and it is not so easy for mothers to leave their children behind to support extracurricular activities like national conferences and panels, especially those in far-flung locations. A mother’s prolonged absence from the home is far more difficult to deal with, not to mention the impact of her absence on children. For most families, a mother taking time out to speak at a conference may be accommodated on rare occasion, and even then with considerable difficulty. The last thing we should want is to grant implicit encouragement to the regularizing of absent motherhood, and our inability to find female participants for some conference or another is far less important than the maintenance of strong, robust homes and the emotional, social, and spiritual stability of the sisters being asked to sacrifice in the name of gender diversity.

From an Islamic point of view, there is no figure more essential to the cohesion of the household than the mother, the umm. Allah praises and sanctifies the mother unlike anyone else, and the term umm in Arabic carries a connotation of superlativity. Mecca is the umm of the towns (qura), the brain the umm of the head (ra’s), and the most difficult of deserts is the umm (umm al-tana’if). A number of Qur’anic verses explicitly honor the mother or mention the act of childbirth as a distinctively miraculous event, one so awe-inspiring as to remind one of God. It is in this vein that the renowned Companion Ibn ‘Abbas said, “I know of no act closer to God, Exalted and Majestic, than dutifulness to the mother.”

If Muslim organizations want to make a habit of inviting mothers to speak at conferences, they should be prepared minimally to provide accommodations for their families to come along as well. Although such a prospect may pose financial difficulties, asking a married woman with children to leave her family behind and travel alone for speaking engagements is a request that lacks in moral concern for the one being invited and is certainly not in keeping with the type of ethic we should want to cultivate as a community committed to embodying the teachings of Islam.

7. Studies have shown that women prefer smaller settings (Tannen 1990:89–90). They also show greater interest in topics revolving around people, whereas men favor discussions of things. For these and other reasons, many women do not desire the limelight and do not find intriguing subjects that are “thing-focused” (which can comprise a majority of topics in a common Muslim program). Women who have expressed reservations over program participation for these (and other) reasons have been repeatedly encouraged and at times guilted into feeling that they are letting down the umma for not overcoming their apprehensions and traveling to events to show critics that knowledgeable women exist. Is it fair to place this type of pressure on sisters who do not desire publicity and have eschewed the spotlight? I, for one, think not.

8. It goes without saying that one of the most significant distinctions between men and women is the relative sexual virility inherent in each gender. Male sex drive is considerably higher than female sex drive. Although the distinction in gender-specific libido has been challenged in recent years by gender theorists, the relationship between testosterone and sexual urge is certainly a correspondence that is becoming far more difficult to deny, particularly when one takes into account testimonies of women who undergo testosterone treatments as part of “gender transition” therapy. Although many can be found online, a few include this (“My sex drive skyrocketed”) and this (“It was like being in a pornographic movie house in my mind. And I couldn’t turn it off. I could not turn it off. Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned to sex”). Meanwhile, males who undergo hormone therapy to “transition” female report the reverse (“Prior to transition, my sex drive didn’t have an off switch,” “I am no longer a slave to testosterone”). Beyond this, 72% of all porn viewers are men, 80% of the worlds prostitutes are female, the percentage of men paying for sex in the world ranges between 7 and 80% depending on country (no comparable statistics exist for women, and most crime reports do not control for sex in reporting prostitution arrests given that they are universally male solicitors), female nudity is far more likely in films, female activists occasionally call for “sex strikes” which involves depriving men of sex in order to force their hand on a particular cause (I have yet to hear of male “sex strikes” and suspect they would have little effect), prominent men lead by a large margin sexual scandals and not infrequently succumb to sexual infidelity in spite of the stakes and consequences of exposure, and men think about sex far more often than women.

Given the respective libido that each gender has and the variation in gender-specific behaviors as an outgrowth of their disparate sexualities, the need for guardrails between the genders is important. The promotion of women and men to positions of spiritual authority without giving due consideration to the guardrails and boundaries required to avoid falling prey to sexual transgression — or becoming a victim of sexual aggression — is a recipe for disaster. This is rather evident in the case of charismatic male speakers who establish connections with female students and followers while providing spiritual counsel or theological instruction. It is easy for young and impressionable female followers to lionize male religious icons, and when the genders are mixed in these settings, such exaltation can contain subtle forms of erotic interest. The more popular the speaker, the larger the base of admirers. Temptations arising out of spiritual authority can be formidable, and this is more so for preachers and teachers who are unaccustomed to receiving female attention, struggle with a fractured family life, or, in a fit of weakness, succumb to desire.

Women assuming similarly authoritative positions will undoubtedly be subject to similar, if not more public and suggestive, forms of attention from male admirers. It is conventional wisdom in many feminist corners that such concerns are offset when women are promoted to positions of authority, as women bearing authority communicate a certain feminine power under which men learn subservience. However, this particular proposition is poorly supported and is, in fact, contradicted by studies showing that certain forms of female authority actually increase women’s harassment.

Young Muslim women being repeatedly paraded in front of male audiences and used as part of promotional material are acutely vulnerable to the unwanted advances of strange men. Scholars and teachers serving as mentors to these sisters do them no favors by promoting them simply because “we need more women” without so much as informing them of the potential consequences of establishing a life in the public domain within this capacity. The larger the profile, the higher the likelihood of obsessive attention from otherwise maladjusted, weak, and morally compromised men.

9. A common retort to (8) is one of individual responsibility. Men should simply lower their gaze and behave responsibly; suggesting otherwise is taken as blaming the victim. But it seems to me that such a narrative fundamentally misunderstands what is, in fact, being asserted. Far from assigning blame, such counsel is anchored in a pragmatic comprehension of male and female behavior in varying circumstances, much like the instruction of Allah to the Prophet’s wives to “be not soft in speech, lest he in whose heart is a disease lust (after you).” Although men are undoubtedly called upon (as women are) to comport themselves with dignity and moral probity, sexual failings are among the most common, and this is especially so for men, who have been left “no test greater than women.” To continue to operate under a presumption of absolute male virtue is to set women and men up for disappointment and potentially damaging encounters.

10. Cognate to (9) is a need to adjust our common understanding of piety. Viewing piety as responding virtuously to situations in which one is tried is an exclusively positive vision of piety. Though this is undoubtedly important and essential to pious living, it overlooks the many negative dimensions of piety, ones that ask us to evaluate our weaknesses as well as the situations we need to avoid. Understanding human frailties and abstaining from putting them to the test is as much a part of piety as when, due to certain circumstances, we must exhibit resolve and overcome them.

Much of the American Muslim discourse surrounding gender integration relies on a general neglect of the many difficulties that young men and women experience when they are placed in close personal contact and relies instead on an exceedingly Pollyannaish view of positive piety. When one considers the scale of porn use, porn addiction, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and other forms of sexual transgression, the reflexive, categorical, and unflinching denial of any boundary whatsoever between men and women in religious settings seems a rather incoherent conclusion to draw, and one based far more on egalitarian ideology than anything resembling prudential consideration or, more seriously, the best interest of Muslim men and women.

11. A steady diet of rhetoric opposing older “formalisms” by certain American Muslim speakers has fomented more than a little overconfidence in followers who grossly overestimate their self-discipline and ability to resist temptation. The vast majority of American Muslims who attend masjids, are active in MSAs, and participate in the confessional life of Islam watch the same debaucherous, libertine, and hypersexualized content as their non-Muslim counterparts. The general overconfidence of religious followers, combined with teachings that encourage abandoning gender boundaries or viewing gender boundaries as strictly cultural formulations, intensifies personal dissonance and often serves to provide cover for sinful indulgences and a willingness to preoccupy oneself with the lowliness of this world rather than aspire to lives of piety, nobility, and virtue.

The persistent discarding of traditional norms by Western scholars is now an old canard, though its mileage seems never-ending to a crowd eager for brazen dismissal of social conventions. It is a rather peculiar thing to me to find certain Muslim speakers actually appealing to obscene shows in the name of greater relevance or relatability. This is a marked departure from sages and scholars of old who viewed renunciation as a moral responsibility concomitant with their role as exemplars. These scholars often spoke in ways that strike us today as dogmatic, implausible, and excessively prudent, though there is no denying that they understood all too well the consequences of forgetting God, gratifying oneself through entertainment, and yielding to one’s sexual appetite.

The reality is that we live in a society where premarital sex is ubiquitous — in a 2002 study, 95% of Americans aged 44 responded as having had premarital sex. Roughly half of all pregnancies occur outside marital bonds and the vast majority of pregnancies aborted draw from the same population. Pornography is a ubiquitous pastime and addiction. Extramarital affairs are commonplace and the majority of them take place at work or other confines where men and women find themselves in close company with one another. Somehow, the prevailing wisdom has been to view these realities as ones simply requiring greater gender integration in Muslim-only spaces. Our sacred spaces here are seen as outdated if they do not conform to the rest of society, and the strangeness of a facility that does not immediately yield to demands for gender integration is seen as oppressive.

To be clear, the above points are not making any specific contention about the permissibility of qualified women teaching and preaching to men (or vice versa). There are, of course, examples of pious and religiously qualified women serving in pedagogical capacities (our mother A’isha being the most prominent), though all took very seriously the question of boundaries and enforced a number of them to uphold mutual respect and maintain appropriate emotional and physical distance.

The aggressive pursuit of gender diversification today has little to do with restoring spiritually rigorous pedagogical settings and far more to do with reconciling Islam with liberal social norms. There are many explanations for the rise of these norms in American Muslim circles (political, social, etc. circumstances), and to date the efforts to mainstream them have been largely unopposed while receiving support from many influential speakers and leaders. However, it is past time that we revive common-sense gender boundaries, ones that recognize that men and women can’t be friends, that the avoidance of khalwa must be upheld (especially in virtual settings), and that some separation between genders is not repression but, in fact, the very definition of piety and is firmly supported in any fair and honest examination of revelation and the tradition that has emerged from it.

Other thoughts:

A recent interview with Brother Yousef on same-sex attraction. It is in full 24 minutes and worth listening to as he does a wonderful job articulating the vexing issue of identity and why it is critical not to form a self-definition on the basis of sexual interest.

The Trump administration has blacklisted 28 Chinese companies supporting Xinjiang camps. Let us hope the pressure continues to pick up and that, importantly, China relents and backs off its current program of indoctrination and brutalization. May Allah bring aid and assistance to our brothers and sisters in China expeditiously. Ameen.

The Supreme Court is currently deliberating whether Title VII employment protections extend to gay and transgender persons. The current law prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex, and the question before the court is whether sexual orientation and gender identity qualify as types of “sex” such that they would be protected by Title VII employer obligations.

This is the latest in a long line of legislative debates that have risen in recent years concerning public accommodations for gay and transgender persons. In addition to legislative changes, the cultural and pedagogical program of LGBT advancement is as aggressive as ever. Currently, both New Jersey and California have passed bills mandating the incorporation of LGBT teachings as part of the public school curriculum. George Packer’s recent Atlantic piece entitled “When the Culture War Comes for the Kids” shines light on the current frontiers of this movement with a chronicle of his experiences with New York City’s public school system. Packer’s child was in elementary school when a second grade girl decided to transition male and go by the name Q. Q also began using the boys bathroom which, as you can imagine, created more than a few problems for the other boys discomfited by Q’s presence. Did the school decide to let Q use a separate single-use bathroom? Nope. In response to the situation, the administration decided to get rid of boys and girls bathrooms altogether. Here’s a quote from the piece:

Within two years, almost every bathroom in the school, from kindergarten through fifth grade, had become gender-neutral. Where signs had once said boys and girls, they now said students. Kids would be conditioned to the new norm at such a young age that they would become the first cohort in history for whom gender had nothing to do with whether they sat or stood to pee. All that biology entailed — curiosity, fear, shame, aggression, pubescence, the thing between the legs — was erased or wished away.

The school didn’t inform parents of this sudden end to an age-old custom, as if there were nothing to discuss. Parents only heard about it when children started arriving home desperate to get to the bathroom after holding it in all day. Girls told their parents mortifying stories of having a boy kick open their stall door. Boys described being afraid to use the urinals. Our son reported that his classmates, without any collective decision, had simply gone back to the old system, regardless of the new signage: Boys were using the former boys’ rooms, girls the former girls’ rooms. This return to the familiar was what politicians call a “commonsense solution.” It was also kind of heartbreaking.

And the complexity of the problem is not localized to the US. In Canada, a resident trans rabble-rouser named Jessican Yaniv (a “trans woman”) reached out to about a dozen female beauticians to receive a Brazilian wax. Once these beauticians came to realize that providing the wax meant waxing male genitalia, they steadfastly refused service. Yaniv has since filed a grievance with the Human Rights Tribune of British Columbia, arguing that the refusal to provide him waxing service is a violation of his human rights and discrimination. The women Yaniv is targeting are largely immigrants, and a number have been racked with anxiety with one beautician’s attorney stating that his client has been unable to sleep since the incident. One of the targeted beauticians has already decided to close shop, and it is likely that a few others will follow suit.

A non-trans case in Alberta depicts yet another dimension of this complexity: a father of two named Todd and mother of three named Danielle are being sued by James Cyrynowski, 28, for violating his rights on the basis of age and gender discrimination for having declined his babysitting service. James, as you might surmise from his name, is male. He is also single and makes money babysitting. Danielle and Todd did not want a single man to babysit their children. They preferred instead a woman and someone older with a more settled personal life. Although a similar case in 2014 brought by Cyrynowski to the Alberta Human Rights Commission was rejected and not granted a hearing, the current charge is being processed and it is unclear what the outcome will be.

Yaniv and Cyrynowski are trolls, yes. But their provocations test the limits of our legal regime, and question the extent to which individuals are able to live with a commonsense pluralism that realizes sexual orientation and gender identity are not the same as race, and that plenty of situations sensibly will demand a legal tolerance for judgment that would, in other contexts, be discriminatory. Insisting otherwise is foolish, and capitulating to the madness of the unending LGBT parade is to hand over our society to the private fantasies of the dysfunctional.

Unabated, in a few years it is not at all fantastical to think that every state in this country will hold LGBT studies as part of their core curriculum. Whether opting out for students will remain a possibility is itself unclear, and I suspect whatever starts out elective will end up mandatory soon enough. Employment discrimination will extend to the farthest reaches of moral negotiations, ones that impinge on the decisions of people of conscience. Can pediatricians refuse to prescribe puberty suppression to pre-adolescent children expressing gender dysphoria? What about hormone therapy? Can surgeons recuse themselves from sex change operations? What about a tenant who doesn’t want a gay or trans person as a renter of his basement or apartment roommate? Or an employer who simply lacks the capacity to accommodate the bathroom and other HR demands of a trans candidate?

A rhetoric of justice, constantly ratcheted up and unwilling to brook opposition or countervailing thought will not allow for such deliberations, let alone the possibility that this movement has long ago passed the point of necessary legal accommodations (or, as the recent Democratic LGBT Town Hall showed us, sanity). Hopefully the Supreme Court will see that as well.

And Allah knows best.