Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives

246 Pages·1996·2.23 MB·English

by  Sabrina Petra Ramet

GENDER REVERSALS AND
GENDER CULTURES
The theme of gender reversals has occurred in all societies since the beginning
of recorded history. This volume explores some of the vast historical and
cultural range of experience of the phenomenon: from the gender crossing of
early Christian martyrs to Hindu and Buddhist beliefs in salvation through
gender modification; from the mutating gender of actors in Chinese theatre
to sacred genders in Siberia; from gender variance in North American Indian
cultures to the androgynous beings of the cultural imagination of the Bimin-
Kuskusmin of Papua New Guinea.
These original essays are written from a broad mix of perspectives. Their
common focus is the complex relation of gender reversals to taboo, and what
this tells us about particular cultures.
Sabrina Petra Ramet is Professor of International Studies at the University of
Washington. She is the author of several books, including Nationalism and
Federalism in Yugoslavia 1962–1991 (1992) and Social Currents in Eastern
Europe (1995).

GENDER REVERSALS
AND
GENDER CULTURES
Anthropological and historical
perspectives
Edited by
Sabrina Petra Ramet
London and New York
First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1996 Selection and editorial matter, Sabrina Petra Ramet;
individual chapters, © 1996 the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Gender reversals and gender cultures: anthropological and historical
perspectives/edited by Sabrina Petra Ramet.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sex role. 2. Gender identity. 3. Transvestism.
4. Transsexualism. 5. Taboo. 6. Androgyny (Psychology)
GN484.35.G46 1996 95–26198
305.3–dc20 CIP
ISBN 0-203-42893-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-73717-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-11482-9 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-11483-7 (pbk)
To all who question
society’s rules,
To all who place Natural Law
above all else,
To all who accept Rosa Luxemburg’s principle:
Freedom means nothing unless it is
the freedom to think differently.
And to Chris,
who has always had the courage
to think differently.

CONTENTS
Notes on contributors ix
Preface xii
1 GENDER REVERSALS AND GENDER CULTURES
An Introduction 1
Sabrina Petra Ramet
2 TRAVERSING GENDER 22
Cultural context and gender practices
Anne Bolin
3 SUMER 52
Gender, gender roles, gender role reversals
Judith Ochshorn
4 CROSS-DRESSING AND CROSS-PURPOSES 66
Gender possibilities in the Acts of Thecla
J.L.Welch
5 MARTYRS, ASCETICS, AND GNOSTICS 79
Gender-crossing in early Christianity
Karen Jo Torjesen
6 CROSS-DRESSING, GENDER ERRORS, AND SEXUAL
TABOOS IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE 92
Winfried Schleiner
7 ELENA ALIAS ELENO 105
Genders, sexualities, and “race” in the mirror of natural history
in sixteenth-century Spain
Israel Burshatin
8 BECOMING MALE 123
Salvation through gender modification in Hinduism and
Buddhism
Cynthia Ann Humes
vii
CONTENTS
9 GENDER, POWER, AND SPECTACLE IN LATE-
IMPERIAL CHINESE THEATER 138
Sophie Volpp
10 EROTICISM, SEXUALITY, AND GENDER REVERSAL IN
HUNGARIAN CULTURE 148
László Kürti
11 SACRED GENDERS IN SIBERIA 164
Shamans, bear festivals, and androgyny
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer
12 THERE IS MORE THAN JUST WOMEN AND MEN 183
Gender variance in North American Indian cultures
Sabine Lang
13 THE PROCREATIVE AND RITUAL CONSTITUTION OF
FEMALE, MALE, AND OTHER 197
Androgynous beings in the cultural imagination of the
Bimin-Kuskusmin of Papua New Guinea
Fitz John Porter Poole
Index 219
viii
NOTES ON
CONTRIBUTORS
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer (Ph.D., 1979) teaches in the Sociology and
Russian Area Studies departments of Georgetown University. She is editor of
the journal Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia, and of the books
Shamanism: Soviet Studies of Traditional Religion in Siberia and Central
Asia (1990); Russian Traditional Culture (1992); and Culture Incarnate:
Native Anthropology from Russia (1995). Using data from several years of
fieldwork focused on Siberia, she has written on gender, religion, and
nationalism for American Anthropologist, Slavic Review, Arctic Anthropology,
Shaman, and other journals. She is currently finishing the following books:
The Tenacity of Ethnicity and Siberian Women’s Lives: Autobiographies from
the Sakha Republic (Yakutia).
Anne Bolin received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University
of Colorado. She is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Elon College.
Her book, In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage (1988), received a
Choice Magazine Award for an Outstanding Academic Book for 1988–9.
She has co-authored a textbook on the anthropology of human sexuality,
Biocultural Perspectives in Human Sexuality (1996, in press). She is co-editor
of Athletic Intruders: Women, Culture, and Exercise (1996, forthcoming).
Her current ethnographic research is with competitive women bodybuilders
for a book entitled Elegant Ironworkers: Beauties and Beasts in Bodybuilding.
She is an active competitor in amateur women’s bodybuilding and continues
her research with the transgender community.
Israel Burshatin is a Professor of Spanish at Haverford College. He has
published numerous studies on the discourse of Orientalism in early modern
Spain, including “The Moor in the Text: Metaphor, Emblem and Silence,” in
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.), “Race,” Writing and Difference (1986), “Power,
Discourse and Metaphor in the Abencerraje,” in MLN (1984); and “Playing
the Moor: Parody and Performance in Lope de Vega’s El primer Fajardo,” in
PMLA (May 1992). He is currently working on a book-length study of the
trial of Eleno de Cespedes.
ix