They also tend to exasperate some supporters of women priests who consider that these kinds of utteranees are emotive, illogical and irrelevant to the issue under consideration. Those who dismiss the biological difference between men and women as irrelevant to the issue of women in the priesthood to understand its importance as a powerful argument against the ordination of women. But the strength of the argument is not in its rational appeal to observable differences between men and women,but to its subtle appeal to the antagonism which men feel towards women, and women towards men, because of their different biological functions in the reproduction of the human species. The deepest psychological roots of men's opposition to the idea of women as priests is rooted in this fundamental jealousy which many men show about women's ability to give birth to children. Therc is a very good reason for this sentiment, too.
Women have a ready made role in motherhood.
They do not need to 'do' anything in order to feel assured of their importance to society. They just have to 'be' someone, for they perpetuate themselves simply by being the mothers of the next generation. Men, on the other hand, have no such obvious part to play in creation. They have to impress themselves on history in other more external ways. From their earliest years men know that they will always have to work outside their homes, that they will have to thrust themselves forward if they are to succeed, that they will have to prove their manhood through coitus, that they will have to bury their seed in a woman's hody if they are to see its fruits in new life.