Left - HANDED BEARS & ANDROGYNOUS CASSOWARIES

Whole Earth, Spring, 2000 by Bruce Bagemihl

Female cassowaries mate, lay eggs, defecate, and urinate all through the same orifice, the cloaca (as in all other female birds)--but the cloaca is exceptionally large in this species, being capable of passing eggs weighing up to 1-1/2 pounds. Most amazingly, all female cassowaries also possess a phallus, which is essentially identical to the male's in structure but smaller. The "female phallus" is sometimes referred to as a clitoris, but it would be equally valid to speak of a "male clitoris," since the male cassowary's "penis" is not an ejaculatory organ. Thus, from the human point of view, the cassowary's genital anatomy exhibits a bewildering juxtaposition of "masculine" and "feminine" traits: both males and females possess a penis/clitoris, and both sexes also possess another genital orifice that doubles as an anus. Indigenous beliefs about masculinized female cassowaries, the bird's penis-clitoris, anal birth, and women with phalluses being transformed into cassowaries are not nearly as outlandish as they might sound.

AN ALL-ENCOMPASSING VISION

If the Western world is to finally appreciate indigenous perspectives, then it must do so fully, including views on homosexual/transgender occurrences. It cannot simply pick and choose among aboriginal beliefs, salvaging only those it is most comfortable with while rejecting those that challenge its prejudices. For too long, many indigenous views have been sanitized to make them palatable to nonindigenous people.

Darwin concerned himself only with the paradigm that heterosexual courtship and mating were "real," serving the purpose of more offspring and survival for the fittest. His followers--Lorenz, Tinbergen, E.O. Wilson, and most contemporary zoologists--similarly perceive homosexual/transgender sexuality in nonhumans as aberrant, "unfit," not "genuine" sexuality, or merely behavior that ultimately serves heterosexuality and reproduction. But some indigenous peoples' views challenge the "heterosexual paradigm" and offer an alternative view of nature to current biologists.

Consider the cosmology of the Bedamini people of New Guinea, which seems to turn conventional ideas about the natural world upside down:

   It is believed that homosexual activities promote growth throughout nature
   ... while excessive heterosexual activities lead to decay in nature.... The
   balance of these forces is dependent on human action.... The Bedamini do
   not ... experience any inconsistency in the cosmic equation of
   homosexuality with growth and heterosexuality with decay.

   --Arve Sorum. (From Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, Gilbert H.
   Herdt, ed. University of California Press, 1984.)

Rather than being seen as "barren" or counterproductive, then, homosexuality, transgender, and nonbreeding are considered by some indigenous people to be essential for the ecology of life. Among the peoples cited and others, this is the fundamental "paradox" at the heart of their thinking on alternate genders and sexualities--thoughts that are not, of course, really considered paradoxical in their worldviews.