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What Do Sex and Gender Have to Do with Religion?: Crash Course Religions #20

YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9peemRxUtkE
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MLA Full: "What Do Sex and Gender Have to Do with Religion?: Crash Course Religions #20." YouTube, uploaded by CrashCourse, 4 February 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9peemRxUtkE.
MLA Inline: (CrashCourse, 2025)
APA Full: CrashCourse. (2025, February 4). What Do Sex and Gender Have to Do with Religion?: Crash Course Religions #20 [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=9peemRxUtkE
APA Inline: (CrashCourse, 2025)
Chicago Full: CrashCourse, "What Do Sex and Gender Have to Do with Religion?: Crash Course Religions #20.", February 4, 2025, YouTube, 12:43,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9peemRxUtkE.
How many genders are there? In this episode of Crash Course Religions, we’ll learn how religious communities construct ideas about sex, gender, and sexuality, and why these concepts aren’t as timeless or unchanging as they might seem.









Introduction: Hijra 00:00




Defining Terms 0:57




Gender & Religion 1:48




Gender & Christianity 4:41




Gender & Sacred Texts 6:46




Dr. amina wadud & Muslim Prayer 8:05




Hajar 9:31




Review & Credits 11:41









https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IRPhziWfx72dIlGC1xIuEPWqb_uwnumdtYnmmsR4jto/edit?usp=sharing









***




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 (00:00) to (02:00)


John Green: Hi! I'm John Green, welcome to Crash Course: Religions. 

So for hundreds of thousands of years in South Asia, people have recognised three genders: man, woman, and Hijra, those who identify as neither male or female. 

Under both Hindu and Muslim rulers, Hijra had positions of positions of power and respect. And to this day, especially among Hindus, Hijra are thought to possess incredible abilities: powers to curse those who disrespect them, and bring blessings to newly-weds and newborns. 

But in the past 200 years, Hijra have faced discrimination and violence, been largely restricted from holding jobs or seeking education, and often been refused medical treatment at hospitals. 

So what changed?

Well, it turns out that religion, like glitter, really does get into all sorts of places, including how we think about sex, gender, and sexuality. 

[Theme music]

So listen, no matter what you've heard about denying the flesh, it's impossible to do religion without a body. 

So, without getting all Crash Course: Biology on you, let's go over some vocabulary...

...beginning with sex, the spectrum of hormonal anatomical and genetic traits that often get reduced to two boxes, male or female.

But sex isn't just an either/or thing. About 1 in every 100 people in the US are born intersex, with a combination of biological traits that don't fit neatly into either category. 

Then there's gender, which describes the roles, expectations, and power dynamics a culture reinforces about women, men, girls, boys, trans folks, and non-binary people, everyone. Those roles and expectations change with time, and shift from culture to culture. 

And then there's sexuality, who were feel attracted to, if anyone. 

So, gender is kind of like language l: we shape it, together as a society.

Like, there's nothing inherent to the English language that says when something is a little wet we should call it moist, right, like that doesn’t

 (02:00) to (04:00)


have to exist, and God willing, someday it won’t.

Similarly, the idea that men should work from nine to five and women should keep the home is not inherent to humanity. In fact, the idea of the 9-5 work week has only existed about 100 years. Gender roles have varied wildly throughout human history.

So, just like the meaning of a word can change over time, so can the ways we perceive and engage with gender. But, like language itself, gender norms are constructed. There's no reason why this color should be called blue, just like there's no reason why blue confetti should announce the birth of a boy. In fact, pink was considered a boy's color in the US from around the 1910s to the 1940s.

This is all social constructs -- ideas that communities made up and agreed to. But one thing about made up ideas is that they're still real. As one of my college professors once told me: "This table is constructed, but if I throw it at you, it will hurt."

Languages are real. The concept that people should have human rights is made up but still real. Laws are made up but still real, and so on. So, gender is a construct, but it shapes how people experience the world in profound ways, and we reinforce these ideas through things like fashion, culture, and, of course, religion.

All religions build norms around gender, sex, and sexuality. Some have practices where gender is really important. Like, in South India, it's common for Hindu girls to commemorate their first time menstruating by ceremonially wearing a sari, and in the Catholic church, only men can be ordained as priests, which, when you think about it, is also a "first time wearing a fancy outfit" ceremony.

Sometimes, religions prescribe gender roles outright. Like, in Judaism, women are traditionally responsible for lighting the Shabbat candles at home. In many typical Evangelical Christian churches, the idea of biblical womanhood assigned service roles to women and leadership roles to men, which is why you're likely to find women running Sunday school or keeping toddlers entertained in the nursery or working the church bake sale,

 (04:00) to (06:00)


but you're much less likely to find them at the pulpit leading an Evangelical service.

The point is every religion constructs and reinforces ideas about gender that can strengthen or challenge the prevailing social order's ideas about gender. But these ideas, both in secular spaces and in religious ones, are subject to change over time, including concepts of how many genders there are.

Like some indigenous communities have traditionally recognized three, four, or even five genders, and the Talmud, an ancient compilation of Jewish law, describes eight genders, including people born with a combination of male and female traits and people whose gender differs from the one assigned to them at birth. This stuff isn't new.

But, of course, one religion has had a disproportionate influence on gender norms throughout the world: Christianity. From the 15th century onward, European empires embarked on a so-called "civilizing" mission to convert to world to Christianity, bringing with it ideas about sexuality and gender. So, for example, while the term "missionary position" coming from sexual rules imposed by Christian missionaries is likely urban legend, it is true that Christian missionaries attempted to control sexual activities in colonial spaces.

And, in some places, those ideas about gender, sex, and sexuality stuck, which brings us back to the hijra. There's evidence in temple drawings, Hindu texts, and written records that this part of the world has long been home to fluid concepts of sexuality and gender, including homosexuality and the hijra community. But British officials feared their soldiers would absorb these norms, so they sought to control what they didn't understand.

And this is something really important about colonialism. Colonialism did not just shape norms and ideas in colonized communities; it also exposed colonizers to many different ways of being human and organizing human power structures. There were radically egalitarian indigenous communities that made European philosophers think more broadly about what kind of

 (06:00) to (08:00)


political structures might replace divine right monarchies, and there were forms of religious expression that challenged the Christianity soldiers and other colonizers had grown up with.

So, in the 19th century, colonial authorities created a law that criminalized "intercourse against the order of nature" -- in other words, anything that ran against Christian ideas about gender, sex, and sexuality. The law made both hijras and homosexuality illegal across the British colonies.

And even after gaining their independence, many former colonies maintained laws forbidding homosexuality. In fact, it wasn't until 2018 that India finally struck theirs down. But even so, colonization left lasting impacts on perceptions of LGBTQ people in South Asia, hijra included, who still face prejudice to this day.

So, we experience religion through our gender identity, but how we interpret the religious texts that guide these ideas of gender is crucial to how these norms manifest themselves. By pointing to old texts as the authority on what gender norms should be, religions can end up preserving certain interpretations, making them seem timeless and unchanging. But norms are always in flux, constructed by each community in a particular time and place. And texts are never neutral.

Like, according to Jewish rabbinic literature written between the 1st and 6th centuries, being a man meant having self-restraint, a virtue women supposedly lacked, although, in my contemporary context, it seems a lot of men lack self-restraint. I know, because I see their tweets.

Or, in a number of religions, it's a norm for men and women to pray separately. You'll find this practice in Orthodox synagogues, Buddhist monasteries, and many Muslim mosques. These practices construct and enforce the idea that gender is a binary, which we've already learned just isn't true, but they're also often rooted in assumptions about sexuality, namely that men would be too distracted to think about God in the presence of women.

In many mosques, for example, Muslim men sit in the front of the prayer space, women in the back. Sometimes, women and men are split

 (08:00) to (10:00)


by a curtain, and other times women and men pray in different rooms altogether. But not all Muslims interpret their traditions the same way, and, like any other community, Muslims are constantly negotiating those interpretations.

On March 18th, 2005, about 100 Muslims gathered to pray in Manhattan. Women and men knelt together side by side, and a woman, Dr. amina wadud, led them in prayer, a role typically filled by a man. But they weren't at a mosque, because none in the area would allow this kind of gathering.

Some Muslims called it blasphemous, arguing that mixed-gender, women-led public prayer was forbidden by Islamic law. Others contended that the problem wasn't a woman leading the prayer, it was that she did it in public rather than at home among other women. So instead, they hosted it all in an Episcopal church with security measures and police presence.

Despite the controversy, some Muslims felt that the gathering reflected the correct interpretation of the Quran. They argued there's nothing in the text stating that men and women can't pray together or that a woman can't lead a public prayer. And to wadud and her supporters, the goal wasn't to impose mized-gender prayer on others, but to widen the horizon of interpretations.

To this day, Muslim experts disagree on whether gender segregation is actually required by the Quran and Islamic law, but at Islam's most sacred site, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, visited by millions of Muslims every year, there's no separation by gender. Men and women worship side by side, surrounding the sacred shrine called the Kaaba.

To consider how sex and gender inform religious texts, let's consider the story of Hajar in Islam. Now, Hajar is never named in the Quran, although she is mentioned by name in the hadiths, the recording of the prophet Mohammad's thoughts, words, and actions. But her story is told in the Quran.

She was given as a slave to Sarah, who, upon realizing her infertility, gave Hajar as a wife to her husband Ibrahim, only for Ibrahim to abandon her in the desert shortly after their son was born on God's instructions.

 (10:00) to (12:00)


She had nothing but her newborn baby, a bag of dates, a pouch of water, and faith that God would provide. When the water ran out, so did Hajar's milk for her baby, so she ran frantically between two hills trying to find a well until, suddenly, an angel appeared, touched the ground, and water gushed forth -- so fast, so much that Hajar couldn't dig a basin fast enough to catch it all. She drank and was able to feed her son.

There are some who believe that the entire ummah - the Islamic community - descends from Ishmael, the son of Hajar. So, by extension, Hajar's heroic journey to seek survival for herself and her son made the Muslim community possible.

Now, from a historical perspective, this story reflects a reality experienced by many mothers at the time. If they could not find water and food, their babies would die. But it also reflects a universal dependence upon the world for sustenance. Whether you see that human dependence as being on the world or angels or God, there is no doubt that we cannot live without help -- from each other, from the Earth, from the heavens, and from our mothers.

Today, as part of the hajj - the pilgrimage every Muslim is required to make if they have the resources and opportunity - people of all genders walk between those two hills like Hajar did, embodying her experience and feeling her desperate struggle. It is a struggle both unique to motherhood and universal to humans. After all, we all want to do whatever we can to keep our kids alive, and we are all dependent upon outside forces to be able to do so.

In both the hijra and Hajar, we see the ways that gender and religion influence and reinforce each other. It's tempting to think of religion existing all by itself in its own lane, separate from how we think about our identity and our bodies, but that's an illusion. Every religious community in every time and place

 (12:00) to (12:43)


negotiates ideas about gender and sexuality. And even while those ideas seem timeless and unchanging, they're actively under construction, and each of us living right now has a say in how future generations understand gender, sex, and sexuality.

In our next episode, we'll explore the ways that religion gets into our ideas about another social construct: race. I'll see you then.

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course: Religions, which was filmed in our studio in Indianapolis, Indiana and was made with the help of all of these nice people. If you wanna help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.
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