Left - HANDED BEARS & ANDROGYNOUS CASSOWARIES

Whole Earth, Spring, 2000 by Bruce Bagemihl

THE AMBIGOUS CASSOWARY

Not all this attention to sexual and gender variability is confined to North America. Various animals are symbolically and ceremonially associated with homosexuality in the cultures of New Guinea and Melanesia. Among the Sambia, for instance, boys and adolescents wear the plumes of several birds, including the Raggiana's bird of paradise and the kalanga parrot, to mark their various stages of homosexual initiation. (All males undergo a period of homosexual initiation from pre-puberty to young adulthood: semen from adult men is considered to be a vital substance for "masculinizing" boys, and therefore adults "inseminate" younger males through oral or anal intercourse.) Among the Ai'i people, two men publicize their homosexual bond by sharing a bird of paradise totem, which also connotes the joint land-holding rights of the male couple.

Perhaps the most extraordinary example of beliefs about ambiguous or variable genders in animals concerns the cassowary. A large, flightless, ostrich-like bird of New Guinea and northern Australia, the cassowary is considered by many New Guinean peoples to be an androgynous or gender-mixing creature. This bird possesses many of the physical attributes of strength, audacity, and ferocity traditionally considered masculine. Yet numerous New Guinean cultures also consider the cassowary to be an all-female species (or each bird to be simultaneously male and female), and often associate them with culturally feminine elements.

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). Over a dozen cultures elevate the cassowary to a preeminent position as a generative figure, a powerful female creator of food and human life. And in a striking parallel to the gender-mixed bear figure of some Native American cultures, the androgynous cassowary is also considered to be an intermediary of sorts, between the animal and human worlds.

The gender-mixing cassowary reaches its greatest elaboration among the Bimin-Kuskusmin people. In this remote tribe of the central New Guinea highlands, the cassowary presides over an entire pantheon of androgynous and sex-transforming animals. At the pinnacle stands the creator Afek, the masculinized female cassowary, and her brother/son/consort Yomnok, a feminized male fruit bat or echidna (a spiny anteater, an egg-laying mammal related to the platypus). Both 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 Bimin-Kuskusmin elect certain people to become the sacred representatives of these primordial creatures, ritually re-enacting and displaying the intersexuality of their animal ancestors for the duration of their lives. Two post-menopausal female elders are chosen to represent Afek: they undergo male scarification rituals, experience symbolic veiling or dissolution of their marriages and separation from their children, adhere to combined male and female food taboos, receive male names, and are given both males' and females' hunting and gardening tools. During ceremonies--in which they are sometimes referred to as "male mothers"--they ornament themselves with cassowary plumes and often cross-dress in male regalia or wear exaggerated breasts combined with an erect penis-clitoris made of red pandanus fruit. Actual 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.