За мъжеството на жената (В търсене на антропологични, социокултурни и библейски основания)
On the Manhood of Women (In Search of Anthropological, Sociocultural, and Biblical Foundations)

Summary/Abstract: The following article – “On Woman’s Masculinity: In Search of Anthropological, Socio-Cultural and Biblical Grounds of it” – shares the author’s own thoughts and deliberations on the manhood of woman that come to mind in relation to contempo-rary sexual education of adolescents mainly in the light of their perception of sexuality both anthropologically and psycho-logically. Such raucous issues turn even more acute in high profile cases about the admissibility in trying to introduce new conceptions of the so called “traditional sexuality”. The debate on the Istanbul convention in 2018 and the subsequent deci-sion of the Bulgarian National Assembly as of Aug. 7th, 2024 on amendments in the Preschool and School Education Act (art. 11, para 2), banning the teaching about and/or propagating, promoting and endorsing alternative sexual orientation and/or gender identity, other than the proper biological one, in official school curricula is indicative of how important it is to ade-quately comprehend the topic. It is a prerequisite for attentively rethinking of the contents and the subsequent messages affecting children on the road to getting aware of their natural sexuality in line with their true biological affiliation.Negative international impact of the Summer Olympic Games Opening in Paris also provoked the author to muse on the issue. It was incited not so much because of the hysterical outbursts about the scandalous interpretation of Leonardo’s “Last Supper” (which actually turned out to be an artists’ sketch on Jan Hermans van Beilert’s “The Feast of Gods”), but rather because by aiming to impose a tendency of merging and mixing up gender identity and sexual at-traction as natural, in the author’s view, is false. That is, in other words, the concept that anthropological, meaning sex, characteristics are not delib-erative and hence optional for an individual’s sexuality, and hence is rendering sexuality a matter of choice.An answer to the issue of sexuality as a conservative or liberal conception of the biological norm is being discussed in this article from an anthropological, socio-cultural, and finally a biblical point of view. These are also the theoretical grounds for determining the concepts of “masculinity” and “femininity” (as by the method of Geert Hofstede’s socio-logical analysis), but also of masculinity as a quality assessment of will. The focus is put on the masculinity of the woman in light of the most immaculate of all women, that is the mother of God. At the day of celebrating The Assumption, Aug. 15th (by the Orthodox calendar of festivities), such a topic should not be deemed unacceptable to the memory of the Blessed Virgin, but rather should be a reason to reflect on the difference between masculinity and manhood, having in mind the exceptional merits of this blessed woman (see Luca 1:28).

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