Once in a while, a label appears that truly fits the phenomenon. Someone coins a word that immediately illuminates the meaning of what is going on, at once recognizable and usable. Such a word has arrived to describe a grave condition of Western culture. The word is important to you, whether you are single or married with, or expecting to be with, children. It is:
heteropessimism
If you haven’t come across that word, I recommend the thought-provoking primer provided by Caitlin McCaffrey at Harvest USA. She explains Asa Seresin’s term, used in 2019, as
a pessimistic outlook on…the unfortunate state of…heterosexual attractions. [Heteropessimists] bemoan not being in the queer community and feel they’re relegated to…“the prison of being attracted to men.”
This description captures the cynicism of many young people that I meet regarding intergendered relationships. One can look at poling. A 2023 Pew Research pole found that among American high school seniors, only 67% of the girls say they’ll likely choose to get married someday, a precipitous drop over the previous thirty years. And among those who may get married, barely half very likely expect to stay married to the same person. But you don’t need the statistics to notice how hard it is today for young people to get together in dating relationships that lead to marriage. It has gone beyond the feeling that being in a “straight” union is not as cool as being involved with a gay or trans partner. Or the justifiable grief of an abusive relationship. It is an anger with the opposite sex as the problem.
Although McCaffrey focusses on women, she correctly notes the pessimism has its brother in the manosphere. The other side is the evil so any attraction you feel towards them, and any vulnerability that that attraction calls forth in you, is a dangerous deficiency.
The temptation to this bitterness, this dividing wall, has always been with us. But it is especially pronounced in many circles today emanating from the academy. To want a man as a woman, or a woman as a man, is an awful condition about yourself that is, at best, embarrassing and, at worst, needs to be hated and suppressed. In the past falling in love with a specific other-person often overcame it. But that can never be a possibility if you are too deeply embittered to be open to, much less preparing for, love. And in this environment, of course, any talk of gender complementarity makes women feel something is being taken away from them.
You may feel like this is not an important word for you. In your church-going circles, you and your friends are all for marriage of man and woman. But McCaffrey’s skillful treatment employs questions to diagnose this bitterness, in milder terms, creeping into even Christian folk. It becomes an obstacle to the stuff of the Christian life. And a condition must be named to be addressed.
The vulnerability to this condition is why the Bible takes time, over and over, to show us the meaning, the beauty, the glory of intergendered love. It is not just right there in the middle, in the Song of Songs. It is woven throughout the stories, commands and poetry of the biblical books. They teach us again and again to grieve and learn when romances go wrong, in an Abraham and Sarah, or a Michal and David, and to glory in the joys when they go right, in an Achsah and Othniel, or an Aquila and Priscilla. They picture the very story of human redemption as a marriage and, if we are paying attention, direct us to the headwaters of masculine-feminine complementarity in the Triune God Themself. The Holy Writ casts an unrelenting vision for woman with man and man toward woman.
It is to the display of this vision that I have come to devote my meager life. I figure, if I can show a few of generation alpha, or beta, or what comes after, the beauty of God’s gift, which really is the beauty of God, they can reconcile with each other.
The Bridegroom Himself holds the key.