The Woman with the Zebra's Penis: Gender, Mutability and Performance

In certain African hunter-gatherer cultures (the Khoisan and Hadza), gender appears mutable and paradoxical with respect to sex. During initiation ritual, girls acquire `masculine' characteristics, such as penises and hunting weapons; boys are treated as menstruants. Anthropological models of a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Vol. 3; no. 3; pp. 537 - 560
Main Authors Power, Camilla, Watts, Ian
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 01.09.1997
Blackwell Publishing
Royal Anthropological Institute
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Subjects
Africa
Animal behavior
Anthropology
Art history
Culture
Earths Moon
Ethnology
Gender performativity
Hunter gatherers
Hunting
Male animals
Meats
Men
Religion, magic, witchcraft
Religions, beliefs, worships
Rites, ceremonies
Rituals
Sexes
Women
Southern Africa
East Africa
Tanzania
Symbolic inversion
Adolescence
Puberty
Sexual role
Menstruation
Anthropology of gender
Genital organ
Moon
Gender relation
Opposition
Ritual
Sexual taboo
Rite of passage
Structuralism
Gender
Ritual inversion
Transsexuality
Khoisan
Rain
Penis
Virginity
Sexual identity
Initiation
Circumcision
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Summary:In certain African hunter-gatherer cultures (the Khoisan and Hadza), gender appears mutable and paradoxical with respect to sex. During initiation ritual, girls acquire `masculine' characteristics, such as penises and hunting weapons; boys are treated as menstruants. Anthropological models of a hierarchized `masculine' v. `feminine' correlated with biological sex, would not predict such reversals. Alternative models of `multiple' genders fail to account for the structural similarities between female and male initiations, which tend to unify gender irrespective of sex. Using data on Khoisan and Hadza ritual and myth, with illustrations from southern African rock art, a `native model' of gendered symbolic oppositions is presented. This indigenous model represents gender as mutable through time, and as correlated with ritual potency, not with biological sex; the model thereby supports predictions made by the `sex-strike' theory of the origins of symbolic culture.
ISSN:1359-0987
1467-9655
DOI:10.2307/3034766