sexes, the

84:6.6Men and women need each other in their mor­ontial and spir­i­tual as well as in their mor­tal ca­reers. The dif­fer­ences in view­point be­tween male and fe­male per­sist even be­yond the first life and through­out the lo­cal and super­uni­verse as­cen­sions. And even in Ha­vona, the pil­grims who were once men and women will still be aid­ing each other in the Par­a­dise as­cent. Never, even in the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity, will the crea­ture meta­mor­phose so far as to oblit­er­ate the per­son­al­ity trends that hu­mans call male and fe­male; al­ways will these two ba­sic vari­a­tions of hu­mankind con­tinue to in­trigue, stim­u­late, en­cour­age, and as­sist each other; al­ways will they be mu­tu­ally de­pen­dent on co-op­er­a­tion in the so­lu­tion of per­plex­ing uni­verse prob­lems and in the over­com­ing of man­i­fold cos­mic dif­fi­cul­ties.

84:6.7While the sexes never can hope fully to un­der­stand each other, they are ef­fec­tively com­ple­men­tary, and though co-op­er­a­tion is of­ten more or less per­son­ally an­tag­o­nis­tic, it is ca­pa­ble of main­tain­ing and re­pro­duc­ing so­ci­ety. Mar­riage is an in­sti­tu­tion de­signed to com­pose sex dif­fer­ences, mean­while ef­fect­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of civ­i­liza­tion and in­sur­ing the re­pro­duc­tion of the race.

84:6.5The dif­fer­ences of na­ture, re­ac­tion, view­point, and think­ing be­tween men and women, far from oc­ca­sion­ing con­cern, should be re­garded as highly ben­e­fi­cial to man­kind, both in­di­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively. Many or­ders of uni­verse crea­tures are cre­ated in dual phases of per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion. Among mor­tals, Ma­te­rial Sons, and mid­soniters, this dif­fer­ence is de­scribed as male and fe­male; among ser­a­phim, cheru­bim, and Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions, it has been de­nom­i­nated pos­i­tive or ag­gres­sive and neg­a­tive or re­tir­ing. Such dual as­so­ci­a­tions greatly mul­ti­ply ver­sa­til­ity and over­come in­her­ent lim­i­ta­tions, even as do cer­tain tri­une as­so­ci­a­tions in the Par­a­dise-Ha­vona sys­tem.

• in mind and spirit endowment
• prevails on all advanced worlds

49:4.4Young are usu­ally born singly, mul­ti­ple births be­ing the ex­cep­tion, and the fam­ily life is fairly uni­form on all types of plan­ets. Sex equal­ity pre­vails on all ad­vanced worlds; male and fe­male are equal in mind en­dow­ment and spir­i­tual sta­tus. We do not re­gard a planet as hav­ing emerged from bar­barism so long as one sex seeks to tyr­an­nize over the other. This fea­ture of crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence is al­ways greatly im­proved af­ter the ar­rival of a Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter.

• usually realized in post-Planetary Prince era

52:2.7This is the dis­pen­sa­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of sex equal­ity. On some plan­ets the male may rule the fe­male; on oth­ers the re­verse pre­vails. Dur­ing this age nor­mal worlds es­tab­lish full equal­ity of the sexes, this be­ing pre­lim­i­nary to the fuller re­al­iza­tion of the ide­als of home life. This is the dawn of the golden age of the home. The idea of tribal rule grad­u­ally gives way to the dual con­cept of na­tional life and fam­ily life.

• men and women jointly hold posts in light and life

55:3.9The ma­jor­ity of so­cial and ad­min­is­tra­tive posts were held jointly by men and women. Most of the teach­ing was also done jointly; like­wise all ju­di­cial trusts were dis­charged by sim­i­lar as­so­ci­ated cou­ples.

• prevails on all advanced worlds

71:8.108. The due rec­og­ni­tion of sex equal­ity and the co-or­di­nated func­tion­ing of men and women in the home, school, and church, with spe­cial­ized ser­vice of women in in­dus­try and gov­ern­ment.

• Adam endeavored to teach equality

74:3.5On the fourth day Adam and Eve ad­dressed the Gar­den as­sem­bly. From the in­au­gu­ral mount they spoke to the peo­ple con­cern­ing their plans for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the world and out­lined the meth­ods whereby they would seek to re­deem the so­cial cul­ture of Uran­tia from the low lev­els to which it had fallen as a re­sult of sin and re­bel­lion. This was a great day, and it closed with a feast for the coun­cil of men and women who had been se­lected to as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the new ad­min­is­tra­tion of world af­fairs. Take note! women as well as men were in this group, and that was the first time such a thing had oc­curred on earth since the days of Dala­ma­tia. It was an as­tound­ing in­no­va­tion to be­hold Eve, a woman, shar­ing the hon­ors and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of world af­fairs with a man. And thus ended the fourth day on earth.

• Adam endeavored to teach equality

74:7.22Adam en­deav­ored to teach the races sex equal­ity. The way Eve worked by the side of her hus­band made a pro­found im­pres­sion upon all dwellers in the Gar­den. Adam def­i­nitely taught them that the woman, equally with the man, con­tributes those life fac­tors which unite to form a new be­ing. Thereto­fore, man­kind had pre­sumed that all pro­cre­ation resided in the “loins of the fa­ther.” They had looked upon the mother as be­ing merely a pro­vi­sion for nur­tur­ing the un­born and nurs­ing the new­born.

• not found in nature

84:5.3The mod­ern idea of sex equal­ity is beau­ti­ful and wor­thy of an ex­pand­ing civ­i­liza­tion, but it is not found in na­ture. When might is right, man lords it over woman; when more jus­tice, peace, and fair­ness pre­vail, she grad­u­ally emerges from slav­ery and ob­scu­rity. Woman’s so­cial po­si­tion has gen­er­ally var­ied in­versely with the de­gree of mil­i­tarism in any na­tion or age.

• each sex has distinctive sphere

84:5.11Woman is man’s equal part­ner in race re­pro­duc­tion, hence just as im­por­tant in the un­fold­ing of racial evo­lu­tion; there­fore has evo­lu­tion in­creas­ingly worked to­ward the re­al­iza­tion of women’s rights. But women’s rights are by no means men’s rights. Woman can­not thrive on man’s rights any more than man can pros­per on woman’s rights.

84:5.12Each sex has its own dis­tinc­tive sphere of ex­is­tence, to­gether with its own rights within that sphere. If woman as­pires lit­er­ally to en­joy all of man’s rights, then, sooner or later, piti­less and emo­tion­less com­pe­ti­tion will cer­tainly re­place that chivalry and spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion which many women now en­joy, and which they have so re­cently won from men.

• men and women worked side by side in the Garden

84:7.8But the home as an in­sti­tu­tion, a part­ner­ship be­tween one man and one woman, dates more specif­i­cally from the days of Dala­ma­tia, about one-half mil­lion years ago, the monog­a­mous prac­tices of An­don and his im­me­di­ate de­scen­dants hav­ing been aban­doned long be­fore. Fam­ily life, how­ever, was not much to boast of be­fore the days of the Nod­ites and the later Adamites. Adam and Eve ex­erted a last­ing in­flu­ence on all man­kind; for the first time in the his­tory of the world men and women were ob­served work­ing side by side in the Gar­den. The Edenic ideal, the whole fam­ily as gar­den­ers, was a new idea on Uran­tia.

• Jesus taught equality

133:2.2And then, in bid­ding him farewell, Je­sus said: “My brother, al­ways re­mem­ber that man has no right­ful au­thor­ity over woman un­less the woman has will­ingly and vol­un­tar­ily given him such au­thor­ity. Your wife has en­gaged to go through life with you, to help you fight its bat­tles, and to as­sume the far greater share of the bur­den of bear­ing and rear­ing your chil­dren; and in re­turn for this spe­cial ser­vice it is only fair that she re­ceive from you that spe­cial pro­tec­tion which man can give to woman as the part­ner who must carry, bear, and nur­ture the chil­dren. The lov­ing care and con­sid­er­a­tion which a man is will­ing to be­stow upon his wife and their chil­dren are the mea­sure of that man’s at­tain­ment of the higher lev­els of cre­ative and spir­i­tual self-con­scious­ness. Do you not know that men and women are part­ners with God in that they co-op­er­ate to cre­ate be­ings who grow up to pos­sess them­selves of the po­ten­tial of im­mor­tal souls? The Fa­ther in heaven treats the Spirit Mother of the chil­dren of the uni­verse as one equal to him­self. It is God­like to share your life and all that re­lates thereto on equal terms with the mother part­ner who so fully shares with you that di­vine ex­pe­ri­ence of re­pro­duc­ing your­selves in the lives of your chil­dren. If you can only love your chil­dren as God loves you, you will love and cher­ish your wife as the Fa­ther in heaven hon­ors and ex­alts the In­fi­nite Spirit, the mother of all the spirit chil­dren of a vast uni­verse.”

• Jesus taught equality

138:8.11The apos­tles were at first shocked by, but early be­came ac­cus­tomed to, Je­sus’ treat­ment of women; he made it very clear to them that women were to be ac­corded equal rights with men in the king­dom.

• Jesus taught equality

149:2.8The most as­ton­ish­ing and the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary fea­ture of Mi­chael’s mis­sion on earth was his at­ti­tude to­ward women. In a day and gen­er­a­tion when a man was not sup­posed to salute even his own wife in a pub­lic place, Je­sus dared to take women along as teach­ers of the gospel in con­nec­tion with his third tour of Gal­i­lee. And he had the con­sum­mate cour­age to do this in the face of the rab­binic teach­ing which de­clared that it was “bet­ter that the words of the law should be burned than de­liv­ered to women.”

149:2.9In one gen­er­a­tion Je­sus lifted women out of the dis­re­spect­ful obliv­ion and the slav­ish drudgery of the ages. And it is the one shame­ful thing about the re­li­gion that pre­sumed to take Je­sus’ name that it lacked the moral cour­age to fol­low this no­ble ex­am­ple in its sub­se­quent at­ti­tude to­ward women.

• Jesus taught equality

150:1.3It was most as­tound­ing in that day, when women were not even al­lowed on the main floor of the syn­a­gogue (be­ing con­fined to the women’s gallery), to be­hold them be­ing rec­og­nized as au­tho­rized teach­ers of the new gospel of the king­dom. The charge which Je­sus gave these ten women as he set them apart for gospel teach­ing and min­istry was the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion which set free all women and for all time; no more was man to look upon woman as his spir­i­tual in­fe­rior. This was a de­cided shock to even the twelve apos­tles. Not­with­stand­ing they had many times heard the Mas­ter say that “in the king­dom of heaven there is nei­ther rich nor poor, free nor bond, male nor fe­male, all are equally the sons and daugh­ters of God,” they were lit­er­ally stunned when he pro­posed for­mally to com­mis­sion these ten women as re­li­gious teach­ers and even to per­mit their trav­el­ing about with them. The whole coun­try was stirred up by this pro­ceed­ing, the en­e­mies of Je­sus mak­ing great cap­i­tal out of this move, but ev­ery­where the women be­liev­ers in the good news stood stanchly be­hind their cho­sen sis­ters and voiced no un­cer­tain ap­proval of this tardy ac­knowl­edg­ment of woman’s place in re­li­gious work. And this lib­er­a­tion of women, giv­ing them due rec­og­ni­tion, was prac­ticed by the apos­tles im­me­di­ately af­ter the Mas­ter’s de­par­ture, al­beit they fell back to the olden cus­toms in sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions. Through­out the early days of the Chris­tian church women teach­ers and min­is­ters were called dea­conesses and were ac­corded gen­eral rec­og­ni­tion. But Paul, de­spite the fact that he con­ceded all this in the­ory, never re­ally in­cor­po­rated it into his own at­ti­tude and per­son­ally found it dif­fi­cult to carry out in prac­tice.

• Jesus taught equality

167:5.4The Phar­isees had even gone so far as to teach that di­vorce of this easy va­ri­ety was a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion granted the Jew­ish peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly the Phar­isees. And so, while Je­sus re­fused to make pro­nounce­ments deal­ing with mar­riage and di­vorce, he did most bit­terly de­nounce these shame­ful flout­ings of the mar­riage re­la­tion­ship and pointed out their in­jus­tice to women and chil­dren. He never sanc­tioned any di­vorce prac­tice which gave man any ad­van­tage over woman; the Mas­ter coun­te­nanced only those teach­ings which ac­corded women equal­ity with men.

• Jesus taught equality

194:3.14Be­fore the teach­ings of Je­sus which cul­mi­nated in Pen­te­cost, women had lit­tle or no spir­i­tual stand­ing in the tenets of the older re­li­gions. Af­ter Pen­te­cost, in the broth­er­hood of the king­dom woman stood be­fore God on an equal­ity with man. Among the one hun­dred and twenty who re­ceived this spe­cial vis­i­ta­tion of the spirit were many of the women dis­ci­ples, and they shared these bless­ings equally with the men be­liev­ers. No longer can man pre­sume to mo­nop­o­lize the min­istry of re­li­gious ser­vice. The Phar­isee might go on thank­ing God that he was “not born a woman, a leper, or a gen­tile,” but among the fol­low­ers of Je­sus woman has been for­ever set free from all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tions based on sex. Pen­te­cost oblit­er­ated all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion founded on racial dis­tinc­tion, cul­tural dif­fer­ences, so­cial caste, or sex prej­u­dice. No won­der these be­liev­ers in the new re­li­gion would cry out, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.”

108:1.7With these facts be­fore them, it is our be­lief that the Mon­i­tors freely vol­un­teer for as­sign­ment. Prob­a­bly more than one Ad­juster vol­un­teers; per­haps the super­vis­ing per­son­al­ized or­ders se­lect from this group of vol­un­teer­ing Ad­justers the one best suited to the task of spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing and eter­nal­iz­ing the per­son­al­ity of the mor­tal can­di­date. (In the as­sign­ment and ser­vice of the Ad­justers the sex of the crea­ture is of no con­sid­er­a­tion.)

69:3.3All down through the ages the taboos have op­er­ated to keep woman strictly in her own field. Man has most self­ishly cho­sen the more agree­able work, leav­ing the rou­tine drudgery to woman. Man has al­ways been ashamed to do woman’s work, but woman has never shown any re­luc­tance to do­ing man’s work. But strange to re­cord, both men and women have al­ways worked to­gether in build­ing and fur­nish­ing the home.

84:3.6The herds­man looked to his flocks for sus­te­nance, but through­out these pas­toral ages woman must still pro­vide the veg­etable food. Prim­i­tive man shunned the soil; it was al­to­gether too peace­ful, too un­ad­ven­ture­some. There was also an old su­per­sti­tion that women could raise bet­ter plants; they were moth­ers. In many back­ward tribes to­day, the men cook the meat, the women the veg­eta­bles, and when the prim­i­tive tribes of Aus­tralia are on the march, the women never at­tack game, while a man would not stoop to dig a root.

84:3.7Woman has al­ways had to work; at least right up to mod­ern times the fe­male has been a real pro­ducer. Man has usu­ally cho­sen the eas­ier path, and this in­equal­ity has ex­isted through­out the en­tire his­tory of the hu­man race. Woman has al­ways been the bur­den bearer, car­ry­ing the fam­ily prop­erty and tend­ing the chil­dren, thus leav­ing the man’s hands free for fight­ing or hunt­ing.

84:3.10De­creas­ing prim­i­tive war­fare greatly less­ened the dis­par­ity be­tween the di­vi­sion of la­bor based on sex. But women still had to do the real work while men did picket duty. No camp or vil­lage could be left un­guarded day or night, but even this task was al­le­vi­ated by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of the dog. In gen­eral, the com­ing of agri­cul­ture has en­hanced woman’s pres­tige and so­cial stand­ing; at least this was true up to the time man him­self turned agri­cul­tur­ist. And as soon as man ad­dressed him­self to the till­ing of the soil, there im­me­di­ately en­sued great im­prove­ment in meth­ods of agri­cul­ture, ex­tend­ing on down through suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. In hunt­ing and war man had learned the value of or­ga­ni­za­tion, and he in­tro­duced these tech­niques into in­dus­try and later, when tak­ing over much of woman’s work, greatly im­proved on her loose meth­ods of la­bor.

84:4.4The sexes have had great dif­fi­culty in un­der­stand­ing each other. Man found it hard to un­der­stand woman, re­gard­ing her with a strange mix­ture of ig­no­rant mis­trust and fear­ful fas­ci­na­tion, if not with sus­pi­cion and con­tempt. Many tribal and racial tra­di­tions rel­e­gate trou­ble to Eve, Pan­dora, or some other rep­re­sen­ta­tive of wom­ankind. These nar­ra­tives were al­ways dis­torted so as to make it ap­pear that the woman brought evil upon man; and all this in­di­cates the one­time uni­ver­sal dis­trust of woman. Among the rea­sons cited in sup­port of a celi­bate priest­hood, the chief was the base­ness of woman. The fact that most sup­posed witches were women did not im­prove the olden rep­u­ta­tion of the sex.

84:6.3Male and fe­male are, prac­ti­cally re­garded, two dis­tinct va­ri­eties of the same species liv­ing in close and in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion. Their view­points and en­tire life re­ac­tions are es­sen­tially dif­fer­ent; they are wholly in­ca­pable of full and real com­pre­hen­sion of each other. Com­plete un­der­stand­ing be­tween the sexes is not at­tain­able.

84:6.1The re­pro­duc­tive urge un­fail­ingly brings men and women to­gether for self-per­pet­u­a­tion but, alone, does not in­sure their re­main­ing to­gether in mu­tual co-op­er­a­tion—the found­ing of a home.

84:6.2Ev­ery suc­cess­ful hu­man in­sti­tu­tion em­braces an­tag­o­nisms of per­sonal in­ter­est which have been ad­justed to prac­ti­cal work­ing har­mony, and home­mak­ing is no ex­cep­tion. Mar­riage, the ba­sis of home build­ing, is the high­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of that an­tag­o­nis­tic co-op­er­a­tion which so of­ten char­ac­ter­izes the con­tacts of na­ture and so­ci­ety. The con­flict is in­ev­i­ta­ble. Mat­ing is in­her­ent; it is nat­u­ral. But mar­riage is not bi­o­logic; it is so­ci­o­logic. Pas­sion in­sures that man and woman will come to­gether, but the weaker pa­ren­tal in­stinct and the so­cial mores hold them to­gether.

84:6.4Women seem to have more in­tu­ition than men, but they also ap­pear to be some­what less log­i­cal. Woman, how­ever, has al­ways been the moral stan­dard-bearer and the spir­i­tual leader of man­kind. The hand that rocks the cra­dle still frat­er­nizes with des­tiny.

84:6.8Mar­riage is the mother of all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions, for it leads di­rectly to home found­ing and home main­te­nance, which is the struc­tural ba­sis of so­ci­ety. The fam­ily is vi­tally linked to the mech­a­nism of self-main­te­nance; it is the sole hope of race per­pet­u­a­tion un­der the mores of civ­i­liza­tion, while at the same time it most ef­fec­tively pro­vides cer­tain highly sat­is­fac­tory forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The fam­ily is man’s great­est purely hu­man achieve­ment, com­bin­ing as it does the evo­lu­tion of the bi­o­logic re­la­tions of male and fe­male with the so­cial re­la­tions of hus­band and wife.

68:5.8Prepas­toral so­ci­ety was one of sex co-op­er­a­tion, but the spread of an­i­mal hus­bandry re­duced women to the depths of so­cial slav­ery. In ear­lier times it was man’s duty to se­cure the an­i­mal food, woman’s busi­ness to pro­vide the veg­etable ed­i­bles. There­fore, when man en­tered the pas­toral era of his ex­is­tence, woman’s dig­nity fell greatly. She must still toil to pro­duce the veg­etable ne­ces­si­ties of life, whereas the man need only go to his herds to pro­vide an abun­dance of an­i­mal food. Man thus be­came rel­a­tively in­de­pen­dent of woman; through­out the en­tire pas­toral age woman’s sta­tus steadily de­clined. By the close of this era she had be­come scarcely more than a hu­man an­i­mal, con­signed to work and to bear hu­man off­spring, much as the an­i­mals of the herd were ex­pected to la­bor and bring forth young. The men of the pas­toral ages had great love for their cat­tle; all the more pity they could not have de­vel­oped a deeper af­fec­tion for their wives.

69:7.5When man was a hunter, he was fairly kind to woman, but af­ter the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals, cou­pled with the Cali­gas­tia con­fu­sion, many tribes shame­fully treated their women. They treated them al­to­gether too much as they treated their an­i­mals. Man’s bru­tal treat­ment of woman con­sti­tutes one of the dark­est chap­ters of hu­man his­tory.

83:0.2Mar­riage has been many times in jeop­ardy, and the mar­riage mores have drawn heav­ily on both prop­erty and re­li­gion for sup­port; but the real in­flu­ence which for­ever safe­guards mar­riage and the re­sul­tant fam­ily is the sim­ple and in­nate bi­o­logic fact that men and women pos­i­tively will not live with­out each other, be they the most prim­i­tive sav­ages or the most cul­tured mor­tals.

68:2.6Hunger, van­ity, and ghost fear were con­tin­u­ous in their so­cial pres­sure, but sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion was tran­sient and spas­modic. The sex urge alone did not im­pel prim­i­tive men and women to as­sume the heavy bur­dens of home main­te­nance. The early home was founded upon the sex rest­less­ness of the male when de­prived of fre­quent grat­i­fi­ca­tion and upon that de­voted mother love of the hu­man fe­male, which in mea­sure she shares with the fe­males of all the higher an­i­mals. The pres­ence of a help­less baby de­ter­mined the early dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of male and fe­male ac­tiv­i­ties; the woman had to main­tain a set­tled res­i­dence where she could cul­ti­vate the soil. And from ear­li­est times, where woman was has al­ways been re­garded as the home.

82:1.1Not­with­stand­ing the per­son­al­ity gulf be­tween men and women, the sex urge is suf­fi­cient to in­sure their com­ing to­gether for the re­pro­duc­tion of the species. This in­stinct op­er­ated ef­fec­tively long be­fore hu­mans ex­pe­ri­enced much of what was later called love, de­vo­tion, and mar­i­tal loy­alty. Mat­ing is an in­nate propen­sity, and mar­riage is its evo­lu­tion­ary so­cial reper­cus­sion.

84:5.13Civ­i­liza­tion never can oblit­er­ate the be­hav­ior gulf be­tween the sexes. From age to age the mores change, but in­stinct never. In­nate ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion will never per­mit eman­ci­pated woman to be­come man’s se­ri­ous ri­val in in­dus­try. For­ever each sex will re­main su­preme in its own do­main, do­mains de­ter­mined by bi­o­logic dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and by men­tal dis­sim­i­lar­ity.

69:3.21. Spe­cial­iza­tion based on sex. Woman’s work was de­rived from the se­lec­tive pres­ence of the child; women nat­u­rally love ba­bies more than men do. Thus woman be­came the rou­tine worker, while man be­came the hunter and fighter, en­gag­ing in ac­cen­tu­ated pe­ri­ods of work and rest.