What's In A Name?

Baker. Baxter. Weaver. Webster. Brewer. Brewster. These are all relatively common last names, and more than that they’re all occupational surnames. What you may be unaware of is that all the “-ster” occupational surnames in English are the feminine form. Now, look at the names. Notice anything in particular? These are occupations that are largely domestic. Which makes sense. Notice -ster surnames we don’t see? We don’t see “butchster”, for instance. Does that mean women were never engaged at butchery? Of course not. But what it probably means is that women who worked at a butchery were helpers and not the primary butcher. Why? Because butchery requires significant upper body strength, even today, let alone in the medieval world when there were no modern tools. Of course women then, as now, were cunning with a knife. But it isn’t just skill with a blade, and knowledge of the trade. To be a butcher also required strength and stamina. Now women can have all of those – except 1. Compared to men, women are weaker. This is just a fact. Women have talents and abilities men lack, but the fact is that women are, on average, about half as strong is men in the upper body, anyways.

So why do were have these occupational surnames? Because women excelled at many, many things. Not only that, but MARRIED women excelled, particularly at the above tasks. And married women who excelled at such tasks became prominent and important in their communities. So prominent, in fact, that a child would be know as “the bakster’s boy” or the “webster’s girl” – or a man might be known as “the brewster’s husband” (which isn’t a bad thing to be…amiright?)

Of course, unmarried women excelled at their work, too! Spinsters, for instance, were female spinners. But, ironically, or predictably – Spinster isn’t a last name. Spinner is. But not Spinster. Why? Because to be excellent at spinning is really hard. It requires 2 hands and also causes a good spinster to walk upwards of 20 miles a day! Which, by the way, ought to tell us how feeble and weak we are nowadays. But, the bigger point is that it’s kinda hard to raise kids and manage a household when you’re literally walking 20 miles a day. Hence, no kids who are the “Spinster’s son”.

Yet, today, we don’t use these titles. We just say “baker” for a man or a woman in the trade. And the trade is generally known as “baker”. With the rise of industrialization, domestic trades like brewing and weaving and baking went from being female dominated to male dominated. But one occupational title lingered long enough in amongst the fair sex, that, today, we use the feminine form: maltster.

Malting grain was so complex and so mysterious that men weren’t able to do it well enough on a large enough scale. And malting is a, largely, hands-off task. It’s a lot-a pot-watchin’, as it were. Women not only had the knowledge (by the way if you’ve never tried to malt grain – good luck, even with modern science and tools it’s not an easy task), but they were able to do it on a large commercial scale while still running a home. Maltster, as far as I know, is the ONLY feminine occupational title to survive industrialization. Men took over everything else, but they couldn’t crack malting.

Now, right now, you’re probably wondering what on earth this has to do with anything. Well, much in every way. Because the point I’m trying to make is this: medieval and pre-industrial England not only expected women to be engaged in some kind of trade, but they celebrated those who did to such an extent that whole families were known by the matriarch’s job. Contrast that with Victorian England, where women of good families weren’t allowed to walk about unescorted and you can begin to perceive a bit of what I mean.

Let me ask you – which is more feminine? Brewing beer or being a governess? Wearing an apron or hoop-skirt? Grasping the distaff or the parasol? Now, if you’re at all intelligent, you’ll say, “Luke that’s a ridiculous question! It’s all determined by the culture.” And you’d be right. A woman barkeep in Merry Old England was not only not scandalous, it was an honor to the family that the Brewster could make such a fine brown ale. But can you imagine Emma Woodhouse with a white towel over her shoulder listening to your problems, wrestling kegs, and brandishing a rolling pin at a drunkard who’s had two too many tankards?

The Bible gives us the command, that men should not wear women’s clothes and women shall not wear men’s. “Ok, God,” you say, “what kinds of clothes are women’s and what kind are men’s?” God doesn’t say! Why? Because God says that every culture gets to decide these things.

If I wear my kilt to show off my Scottish Pride – unless you know what a kilt is, you might think it looks pretty girly. Just as a woman wearing a men’s cut suit is pretty manly. Clothing is really culturally determined. A friend of mine was a missionary in West Africa. In the Sahara. And they couldn’t wear shorts because men in that culture think that shorts are just for little boys. Men don’t wear shorts. Men also don’t shave. In some cultures, women wear dresses, in others they wear pants.

So, what is Feminine dress? It’s the kind of clothes that women in a particular culture normally wear. Cultures create norms and make certain things normative based upon what most women in a culture do. And this goes beyond dress.

There is an anthropological crisis in Christianity right now, because some are trying desperately to come up with some universal definer of “masculinity” and “femininity” and they are doing so, largely, to combat the gender-bending degenerates who are saying that a person with a penis and testicles should be allowed to shower in with your daughter at college, or race against her at a track meet, or fight her in the ring (though I really don’t think women…or anyone…should be involved in the gladiatorial bloodsport we call MMA). Half the theologians are grasping at universals to make the case that there are traits peculiar to women and universal, beyond the biological – and they’re having a rough go at it. The other half are saying that men and women are the same – which is patently absurd.

But all this is the fruit of not using biological sex as the PRIMARY definer of what a woman is. A woman is a human with two X chromosomes, and female genitalia. It’s very easy, even without DNA sequencing and whatnot, to determine someone’s sex. If he has a penis – he’s a man. If she has a vagina – she’s a woman. So what is masculine behavior? It’s the culturally normative behavior of men. What is feminine behavior? It’s the culturally normative behavior of women.

I’m saying normative and not normal, because some things may be normal but not normative. It’s normal for a woman to have once made an apple pie. But it’s not normative. There’s no maniac out there, hunting for women who’ve never made a pie and insisting that by not making pies she’s a gender-bending disgrace. I mean, I hope not, right. Although, that might be a really fun person to interview. Or terrifying. It probably won’t be boring. Might get murdery. But, I digress.

There’s a difference between normal and normative. And yeah, most women probably own yoga pants. Does that mean that a woman isn’t feminine if she doesn’t wear yoga pants? No. She may just care too much about her friends and neighbors.

Some habits and behaviors and cultural artifacts are more important to femininity and masculinity. Now, we might not LIKE what is normative. I, personally, despise that American masculinity is largely divided in to mancavemen and metrosexuals. I want to change that and give us a BETTER cultural norm for masculinity. I, personally, don’t like where our culture is in it’s view of femininity, which is that being a woman either means being a raging lunatic man-hating feminist or being an airheaded bimbo who is treated like a sex-object from as early was we can squeeze her into a 2-piece. Just because God gives cultures the freedom to DEFINE cultural norms, doesn’t mean they choose good ones! It just means that they have that ability. Any group can choose norms. I can start a club called the “Wear A Purple Shirt Or We Cut Off Your Roast-Beef-Toe Club”. In this club, if you show up to a lodge meeting not wearing a purple shirt we’ll cut-off Roast-Beef. We’d be called the WAP-SOW-COY-RiBiT Club for short. That’s a stupid club. I mean, our fight song will be pretty sweet, and I can imagine…no, Luke, no…don’t start the club. But the point is that the WAP-SOW-COY-RiBiT Club would be stupid. Do we have the freedom to create a club with those norms – yes. Maybe. But it’s stupid and harmful. Just because we have the freedom to create a subculture with its own cultural norm doesn’t mean it’s good – not, leastways, by objective standards.

In the same way, we can say that it is culturally normative for a woman to treat herself like a piece of meat, and that to not give away the milk for free makes you a prude, or, less of a woman. We can; we do; we’ve scandalized virginity. We shame purity. And I think this is bad. Now, this is a place where the Bible confronts a cultural norm and says, “This is a bad cultural norm. Stop making it be that way.”

But by and large, the Bible and the Christian faith don’t come anywhere close to addressing these norms. Should women work? Outside the home? Proverbs 31 woman does! Should she wear dresses or pants? Crickets from the Bible. Should she get married? If she burns with lust. Should she pursue education or focus on family? What does she want to do – the Bible doesn’t care as long as she’s living for the glory of Christ. The Bible is silent on many issues because God is OK with us defining and creating these norms, as long as they aren’t obnoxious to His express Will.

Why does this matter? Because, what I hope I’ve made abundantly clear is that masculinity and femininity are really just cultural constructs defined by the normative behavior of men and women in that culture. You can’t define masculine and feminine without knowing what a man or a woman is, because masculinity and femininity are DEFINED by the behavior of men and women! Our culture elites, these educated imbeciles, who wish to pontificate and bloviate about how Gender is social construct, are actually closer to the truth that they realize. The part the miss is that it’s a construct constructed on the social behaviors of men and women. Ad Fontes! We define feminine by what women do, not vice versa! These charlatans would have you believe that behaving in a feminine way makes you a woman – or at least desiring to behave like a woman. And then they justify their lunacy by saying that a woman is someone who feels feminine. But you can’t define feminine without knowing what a woman is, and you can’t define a woman by saying she’s feminine.

That’s no different that me saying I’m the Emperor of Idaho. And people would say, “but you’re not, though, Idaho is a Sovereign State of the Union.” And I would say, “But I FEEL like the Emperor of Idaho.” And someone would say, “Well, what is an Emperor of Idaho, then?” And I’d say, “someone who feels like the Emperor!” If I tried that I’d quickly have a tete-a-tete with some burly boys in white coats.

And you wouldn’t accept that if I said to someone that I was their father or their wife! If I feel like Warren Buffett can I go to his bank and take out some monies? Of course not. But, a mentally disturbed, or exceedingly cynical high school boy can race against girls at the state track meet!

What if I REALLY FEEL like your Power of Attorney? We don’t accept this kind of asinine and childish (that’s actually unfair to children) logic in any other sphere of life? Why about sex?

Well, we accept this jackassery because most people have confused niceness with goodness – forgetting that contributing to an insane person’s delusions isn’t nice, in fact, it’s cruel and evil. We accept is because too many people have been kowtowed by the outrage-mob, these perversion hustlers who tell you that 2 and 2 make 5. We accept it because we’re forgotten very basic first principles and we’ve strayed from God’s Word. “He made them male and female.” That’s what the Bible says. God created biological sex. God commands us to not try to pervert and confuse biological sex.

Men are men and masculine things are the things men do. Women are women and feminine things are the things women do. That may not be fundamentalist enough for some Christians, and it’s certainly not woke enough for the Wokeists. But it’s a simple, biblical, anthropological statement that I defy anyone to contradict.