Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

shamans are seen by the Tsistsistas as instrumental in restoring wholeness to the world.²¹

Ritual transgender is also enacted in the Buffalo Ceremony of the Oglala Dakota, a girl’s puberty rite presided over by a shaman dressed as a Bison. During this ceremony the shaman combines attributes of both male and female Buffalo: he imitates the courting behavior of a Bison bull, but his face is painted with a pattern symbolic of a Bison cow, and he is designated with the word for a female Buffalo. Likewise in a Hopi Buffalo dance, the men portraying Bison wear some articles of women’s clothing, while female dancers also don some men’s garments. In other sacred kachina ceremonies of the Pueblo peoples, some female animal figures are impersonated by male dancers. The Hopi goddess Talatumsi, or Dawn Woman, for example, who is the mother of Bighorn Sheep-men, is portrayed by a man dressed as a female Mountain Sheep. The bawdy kachina clowns in Hopi ceremonies sometimes simulate sexual intercourse with a burro, one man pretending to be the animal while the other mounts him from behind. The Zuni animal fertility goddess Chakwena—mother of rabbits and other game animals—is also impersonated by a man: s/he performs symbolic versions of female reproductive powers, including ritual menstruation in the form of rabbit blood dripped down his/her legs, and a four-day ceremonial enactment of childbirth. Ritual animal birth can also be associated with Wintu two-spirit shamans: one man, for example, was believed to experience menstrual periods and was thought to have given birth to a pair of snakes.²²

Native American rites and beliefs about sexual and gender diversity sometimes also extend to the sphere of animal husbandry, for example among the Navajo. Consummate shepherds and goatherds, these Southwestern people have developed sophisticated animal-management techniques over the many centuries of tending their domesticated herds. Yet their practical knowledge is also informed by the Navajo recognition and honoring of gender and sexual variability in all creatures. Traditionally, hermaphrodite Sheep and Goats are considered integral and prized members of the flock, since they are thought to increase the other animals’ productivity and bring prosperity. For this reason they are never killed, and their presence is further encouraged by several ritual practices. When hunters catch an intersexual Deer, Pronghorn, or Mountain Sheep, for example, they rub its genitals on the tails of their domesticated female herd animals and on the noses of the males, as this is believed to result in more hermaphrodite Sheep and Goats being born into the flocks. In addition, rennet from the stomachs of intersexual animals is rubbed on Sheep to increase their growth and milk production. This convergent valuing of transgender in both wild and domesticated animals is reflected in Navajo mythology and cosmology: Be‘gochidi, the divine two-spirit described earlier, is regarded as the creator of both game animals and domesticated creatures. S/he is also god of the hunt and a tutelary who instructs humans in stalking techniques and hunting rituals, as well as a prankster who sneaks up on hunters and causes them to lose their aim by grabbing their testicles. Some of the hunting rituals associated with Be’gochidi also involve ceremonial reversals. For example, the skin of a slain Deer, after being removed from the animal, is repositioned with the head resting on the carcass’s rump, sometimes with the Deer’s tail placed in its own mouth.²³

NEW GUINEA: Male Mothers and the Living Secret of Androgyny

In addition to reappearing in the native cultures of North America, beliefs about animal (and human) homosexuality/transgender also feature prominently among the indigenous peoples of New Guinea and Melanesia. Homosexuality is an important aspect of human social and ceremonial interactions in many tribes, while homosexual or transgendered animals are an equally pervasive aspect of their belief systems. In a number of cultures, all males undergo a period of homosexual initiation lasting for several years (from prepuberty to young adulthood). Semen from adult men is considered a vital substance for “masculinizing” boys, and therefore adults “inseminate” younger males through oral or anal intercourse. Other forms of sexual and gender variance also exist: the Sambia and Bimin-Kuskusmin cultures, for instance, recognize a “third sex” among humans (applied to hermaphrodites or intersexed individuals), and the Sambia also have a prominent origin myth involving male parthenogenesis, in which the first people were believed to be created through homosexual fellatio. Ceremonial transvestism occurs in some New Guinean tribes as well, along with beliefs and ceremonies relating to “male menstruation” (often ritualized as bloodletting of the penis).²⁴ A number of animals are symbolically and ceremonially associated with homosexuality in these cultures as well. Among the Sambia, for example, plumes from several birds, including the Raggiana’s Bird of Paradise, the kalanga parrot, and several species of lorikeets (a type of parakeet), are ritually worn by boys and adolescents to mark their various stages of initiation and participation in homosexual activities. Homosexual bonding among the Ai’i people is emblematized by two men sharing a bird of paradise totem, which also connotes the joint land-holding rights of the male couple. And in the Marind-anim tribe, the wallaby, jabiru stork, and cassowary are symbolically associated with homosexuality.²⁵

Beliefs about variant gender systems in animals—including all-female offspring and various forms of sex change—also occur in several New Guinean cultures.²⁶ Opossums, Tree Kangaroos, and other tree- dwelling marsupials are thought by the Sambia to start out life as females, with only some individuals later becoming male once they reach adulthood.²⁷ Thus, the life cycle of these species, in the indigenous conception, involves a sort of sequential sex change for animals that end up as male. In contrast, the nungetnyu—a kind of bird of paradise or bowerbird—is thought to exist only in female form throughout its life. The Sambia liken the communal courtship dances of this species to their own dance ceremonies, except with a gender inversion (all-female bird groups versus all-male human groups).²⁸ Other birds are thought to go through multiple sex changes: they start out life as female, then some briefly become male birds as adults and develop brightly colored plumage, after which they revert back to a female form (with dull plumage) in their old age. The Bimin-Kuskusmin also believe that several species of birds of paradise go through multiple gender transformations during their lives, but with the opposite sequence: the brightly plumaged individuals are considered to be females and the drably plumaged ones to be males. Likewise, a daily oscillation between genders is attributed to a species of nightjar: these nocturnal birds are thought to be either male or female in the daytime but both male and female at night.²⁹ Parallel ideas about sex change in sago beetles and their grubs are held by the Bedamini, Onabasulu, and Bimin-Kuskusmin peoples.

Perhaps the most extraordinary example of beliefs about ambiguous or contradictory genders in animals concerns the cassowary. A large, flightless, ostrichlike bird of New Guinea and northern Australia, the cassowary is considered by many New Guinean peoples to be an androgynous or gender-mixing creature, and it often assumes a preeminent mythic status in these cultures. The cassowary possesses many of the physical attributes of strength, audacity, and ferocity that are traditionally considered masculine in these cultures. It has powerful legs, feet, and razor-sharp claws (capable of inflicting serious, even lethal, injuries to people); a dinosaur-like bony helmet or “casque” (used for crashing through the jungle); dangerously sharp spines or quills in place of wing feathers; booming calls (described as “warlike trumpet barks”); bright blue and red neck skin with pendulous, fleshy wattles; and an imposing size (over five feet tall and 100 pounds in some species). Yet numerous New Guinean peoples also regard the cassowary to be an all-female species (or for each bird to be simultaneously male and female) and often associate them with culturally feminine elements.

The cassowary is considered a powerfully androgynous creature by many indigenous New Guinean peoples. This is the one-wattled cassowary (Casuarius unappendiculatus).

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