Friday, March 25, 2011

Male and female created He them

The more I look around the more true this seems to me:

Males are hunters, creatures of rank. But through rank they create affiliation.
Females are gatherers, creatures of affiliation. But through affiliation they create rank.

The first sentences of each line I partly owe to Jungian analyst Anthony Stevens.
The ascription of rank and affiliation to the opposite sexes.
The addition of hunters and gatherers and the second sentences are Ex Cathedra's corollary.

These are general and typical statements, not universals. 

The famous/infamous berdache of the North American Indian tribes was a person who desired to live the life of the opposite sex. Some tribes accomodated this by creating a status for them. What the sexual component was is unclear, but what is clear is that, aside from clothing, sex was hugely defined in terms of activity: men's work vs women's work. A male berdache dressed like a woman and did women's work. The rarer female berdache became a hunter and warrior. They are much less like our "gay" status and actually more like the "transgender" status, but without the surgery and the hormones.

I read a PC description of Plains Indians berdaches. While taking every opportunity to trash narrow colonial European categories of sexual identity, the author then celebrates the very European value of openness to a variety of expressions. It was on the Daily Kos, so no surprise.

In a description of these folks among the Blackfoot, for example, there is both a kind of acceptance and also a lot of less than reverent humor about them, a laughing behind the back which, it seems to me, is classic for tribal societies.

There have always been minorities of men and women drawn to aspects of the opposite sex's life. Very little in human life is 100% airtight. But the massive and rapid shift in male and female roles in the last 50 years seems without precedent. Such a dislocation is bound to have problematic outcomes. And has.


Anonymous said...

»A gatherer without a hunter is like a fish without a bicycle.« Gloria Steinem (attributed)

Anonymous said...

P.S. Re "These are general and typical statements, not universals." Do you mean it would be unjust to judge hunters by the idea of hunter (and this illumined by the Good) and gatherers by the idea of gatherer (and this illumined by the idea of the Good)?

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