Bruce Bagemihl - Biological Exuberance

The Sambia, for instance, consider all cassowaries to be “masculinized females,” that is, biologically female birds that nevertheless lack a vagina and possess masculine attributes (they’re thought to reproduce or “give birth” through the anus). Similarly, the cassowary is perceived as an androgynous figure by the Mianmin people: the bird is thought to have a penis, yet all cassowaries are considered female. One Mianmin tale actually recounts how a woman with a penis was transformed into a cassowary, and this mythological trope is found in the sacred stories of several other New Guinean peoples. Other cultures elevate the cassowary to a prominent position in their traditional cosmologies and origin myths as a generative figure, a powerful female creator of food and human life. The cassowary is believed to combine elements of femininity and masculinity in many other tribes, a number of whom also practice ritualized homosexuality, such as the Kaluli and Keraki. Finally, in a striking parallel to the cross-gendered Bear figure of many Native American cultures, the androgynous cassowary is also considered an intermediary, of sorts, between the animal and human worlds. In addition to mythic transformations and marriages between people and cassowaries, in several tribes this creature is not classified as a bird at all, but is grouped in the same category as human beings because of its size and upright, two-legged gait. Combining images of male-female and bird-mammal, the Waris and Arapesh peoples also believe that cassowaries suckle their young from their neck wattles or wing quills, which are found in both male and female birds. 30

Ritual performance of the cassowary’s gender-mixing also occurs. Among the Umeda people, for example, a central feature of the tribe’s Ida fertility rite involves two cassowary dancers whose costumes, movements, and symbolism combine both male and female elements. The dancers impersonating the birds are both men and are called by a name that refers to male cassowaries. Yet they are identified with the ancestral mothers of the tribe (who act as female tutelary spirits to the dancers), and the entire ceremony is said to have belonged in mythic times only to women and was performed without men. Each cassowary dancer also has an exaggerated phallus consisting of a large black gourd worn over the head of his penis, but the enormous mask/headdress that he carries (representing the cassowary’s plumage as well as a palm tree) is imbued with feminine symbolism (in the form of its inner layer of underbark). The dancing of the cassowary impersonators emphasizes their male sexuality: they rhythmically hop and move their hips in such a way that their penis gourds flip upward and strike their belts in a motion that imitates copulation, and their phallic organs are said to become enormously elongated during the all-night ceremony. At the same time, the two men frequently hold hands and dance as a pair, activities that are otherwise seen only in female dancers among the Umeda. 31

The figure of the gender-mixing cassowary reaches its greatest elaboration among the Bimin-Kuskusmin people. In the belief system of this remote tribe of the central New Guinea highlands, the cassowary presides over an entire pantheon of androgynous and sex-transforming animals, and it is physically embodied in the form of special human representatives that ritually enact its transgendered characteristics. In addition to the cassowary and sex-changing birds and grubs mentioned previously, numerous other creatures are believed to combine male and female attributes in the worldview and mythology of the Bimin-Kuskusmin. Several species of marsupials, a bowerbird, and a python are all considered androgynous or hermaphroditic. The wild boar is regarded as a feminized male that never breeds but instead fertilizes androgynous plants with its semen and menstrual blood. And a species of centipede is thought to be female on its left side and male on its right, using its venom to bring life to other androgynous centipedes and death to nonan-drogynous creatures.

At the pinnacle of this transgendered bestiary stands the creator figures of Afek , the masculinized female cassowary, along with her brother/son/consort Yomnok , a feminized male fruit bat or echidna (the latter being a spiny anteater, an egg-laying mammal related to the platypus). Both are descended from a powerful double-gendered monitor lizard and are believed to be hermaphrodites possessing breasts and a combined penis-clitoris. Afek gives birth through two vaginas (one in each buttock), while Yomnok gives birth through his/her penis-clitoris. The gender-mixing of these mythical figures parallels the way they straddle the categories of bird and mammal: the cassowary is a “mammallike” bird—huge, ferocious, flightless, with furlike feathers—while the echidna is a “birdlike mammal”—small, beaked, and egg-laying (the fruit bat is also birdlike, being a flying mammal).

The Bimin-Kuskusmin elect certain people in their tribe to become the sacred representatives and lifelong human embodiments of these primordial creatures: they undergo special initiations and thenceforth ritually reenact and display the intersexuality of their animal ancestors. Two postmenopausal female elders in the clan are chosen to represent Afek: they undergo male scarification rituals, experience symbolic veiling or dissolution of their marriages and children, adhere to combined male and female food taboos, receive male names, and are awarded both male and female hunting and gardening tools. During ceremonial functions—in which they are sometimes referred to as “male mothers”—they ornament themselves with cassowary plumes, often cross-dress in male regalia, or wear exaggerated breasts combined with an erect penis-clitoris made of red pandanus fruit. Physically intersexual or hermaphrodite members of the tribe are selected to be the embodiments of Yomnok . They are adorned with echidna quills or dried fruit-bat penises, wear both male and female clothing and body decorations, sport an erect penis-clitoris (made from black, salt-filled bamboo tubes) during rituals, and are lifelong celibates. 32In each case, these living human representatives of the primal animal androgynes become highly revered and powerful figures in the tribe. They apply their sacred double-gendered power in curing, divination, purification, and initiation rites and officiate at ceremonies that require the esoteric manipulation and mediation of both male and female essences. Above all, these transgendered and nonreproductive “animal-people” are symbols of fertility, fecundity, and growth—corporeal manifestations of what one cassowary man-woman calls “the hidden secret of androgyny… inside the living center of the life force.” 33

Ritualized “performances” of homosexuality combined with animal imagery are also found in the extraordinary initiation and circumcision rites of several cultures of Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides), including the Nduindui and Vao peoples. During these secret ceremonies, symbolic homosexual intercourse is enacted or implied between young male initiates and their elder initiators or ancestral male spirits. Along with other ritual inversions of everyday activities or breaking of taboos during the rites, these ceremonial homosexual activities are thought to imbue the participants with an unusually intense, dangerous, and glorious power. All of these activities coalesce around the image of the shark. The ceremonies are known as shark rites; participants wear elaborate shark headdresses; the initiators/elder partners in actual or symbolic homosexual relationships are referred to as sharks; the rituals are staged in enclosures that symbolize a shark’s mouth; and circumcision itself is likened to the bite of a shark. In some cases there is a connection to other gender-mixing creatures. During the enactment of ceremonial homosexual overtures or intercourse, for example, participants sometimes refer to hermaphrodite Pigs, and the story of one Vanuatu culture hero bearing the title of “shark” tells how his son brought intersexual Pigs to several islands. The linked themes of androgyny and Pigs also appear in narratives from outside the Vanuatu region, for example among the Sabarl people. In their tale “The Girl Who Dressed as a Boy,” a young woman adopts warrior paraphernalia—and later assumes the full garb of a man—during a heroic encounter with a giant Pig who is the offspring of an androgynous creator god. 34