Left - HANDED BEARS & ANDROGYNOUS CASSOWARIES

Whole Earth, Spring, 2000 by Bruce Bagemihl

HOMOSEXUAL/TRANSGENDERED ANIMALS AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE

In 1986, Canadian zoologist Marc Cattet made an extraordinary discovery: the presence of significant numbers of wild hermaphrodite grizzly, black, and polar bears. These "masculinized females" have the internal reproductive anatomy of a female combined with portions of the external genitals of a male, including a "penis-like" organ. As many as 10 to 20 percent of the bears in some populations may spontaneously exhibit this phenomenon. Such individuals are able to reproduce, and most adult hermaphrodite bears are actually females that successfully raise cubs. In fact, the reproductive canal in some extends through the "phallus" rather than forming a vagina, so that the female actually mates and gives birth through the tip of her "clitoris/penis." Even more remarkably, these animals seem to offer striking confirmation of a number of traditional indigenous beliefs--most notably the mythic gender-mixing "Bear Mother" that occurs in some Native American cultures.

To reflect these new observations on sexual and gender variability, new words and terms are emerging. "Transgender" refers to the combining, crossing over, or blurring of gender or sexual characteristics as defined by anatomy, physiology, or culture. Transgender phenomena include: intersexuality (in the past called "hermaphroditism," in which physiological and/or anatomical sex characteristics of both males and females are present); transsexuality (natural or willed sex change during the lifespan of an individual); transvestism (mimicry of the opposite sex in appearance or behavior); and gender mixing (the linguistic combination of gender signifiers that are "opposite" to each other).

The veritable profusion of different kinds of intersexuality has stimulated a baroque scientific terminology. Fanciful-sounding names like chimera, freemartin, mosaic, and gynandromorph are actually the technical terms used by biologists to designate animals with various types of chromosomally and anatomically mixed male and female features. One particularly astonishing type, the gynandromorph, is a creature that appears to be literally divided in half, one side (usually the right) male in appearance, the other side female, often with a sharp line of demarcation between the sides. This occurs in, among other animals, butterflies, spiders, birds, and small mammals.

Various types of sexual and gender variability have been documented in more than 470 species of animals. Yet zoologists have consistently reacted to these phenomena with a mixture of incredulity, confusion, and even outright hostility. Sexual and gender variance in animals are routinely described with words such as "aberrant," "unnatural," "bizarre," "inappropriate"--even, in extreme cases, "perverse," "immoral," or "criminal" (mirroring attitudes toward human homosexuality/transgender in the wider culture). Cattet himself characterized the intersexual bears as "abnormal," and scientists frequently attempt to pathologize homosexuality and transgender--for example, by ascribing them to the presence of "pollutants" in the environment even when there is no evidence for such.

To Western science, homosexual (used here to mean same-sex courtship and mating in both human and nonhuman animals) and transgender occurrences are above all anomalies that require some sort of "explanation" or "cause" or "rationale." In contrast, in many indigenous cultures around the world, homosexual and transgender components of both the human and nonhuman worlds are routine and expected. The sporadic attention devoted to homosexual/transgendered (H/T) animals by Western science spans a little over two centuries, while aboriginal cultures have accumulated a vast storehouse of knowledge about the natural world--including the sexual and gender systems of animals--over a period of thousands of years.

Indigenous knowledge is not a mere curiosity, nor does it represent some pristine, romanticized, "noble savage" view of nature. It is often based on systematic observation, and can serve as a genuinely useful tool for expanding our concepts of sexual and gender possibilities.

Indigenous knowledge of animal sexuality and gender is encoded:

(1) linguistically, in symbols and totemic associations of animals with homosexual/ transgendered individuals, clans, or special activities;

(2) in some stories, prayers, and songs told within the tribe, many featuring unique animal-persons as characters and divinities;

(3) in some rituals, ceremonies, and daily practices connected to fertility, growth, and the transcendence of male/female categorical differences;

(4) in observations of animals, especially by herders, hunters, and specialists in the sacred who then translate these observations into the narratives and spiritual values of the tribe.

two- SPIRITS

Many Native American tribes formally recognize homosexual and transgendered humans in the role of the "two-spirit" person (sometimes known as a "berdache"). The two-spirit is a man or woman who mixes gender categories by wearing clothes of the opposite or both sexes, doing both male and female (or primarily "opposite-gender") activities, and often engaging in same-sex relations. Two-spirit transvestite. and homosexual roles are recognized (or occurred historically) in more than 150 different tribes. When honored in these cultures, H/T individuals, two-spirit people, are frequently shamans, healers, or intermediaries in their communities, performing religious and/or mediating functions (between the sexes, or between the human, animal, and spirit realms).