Another snippet on gender transcendence

[ikhet_sekhmet]

Describing Western journalists' bewilderment at Liberian rebel soldiers adopting women's dress and wigs, Mary H. Moran offers an explanation from indigenous culture. In the Glebo war dances - once performed prior to battle, now at funerals - some of the participating men would add "bras or negligees to the standard warrior dress of raffia skirt and shredded wild animal skins." This demonstrated the warriors' "transcendence of gender", says Moran; for the warriors, "power is inherent in combination, not separation, in mixing rather than purifying an essential maleness." She draws the obvious contrasts with Western-style soldiers. In the West, Moran points out, a woman entering a previously all-male space (military, police, business) will dress "like men", whereas Glebo women become warriors in certain contexts - in childbirth, in funeral war dances - without adopting male clothing. To me it was particularly interesting how Moran brought these threads together to explain one journalist's puzzlement at "Amazonian" bodyguards who were heavily armed but also wearing high heels and carrying handbags that matched their camo gear. To Westerns, Moran suggests, it's the handbags that are incongruous; to traditional Liberian eyes, it may be the guns that look out of place.

(There are Sumerian parallels to the above which I must dig out and blog.)

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Moran, Mary H. "Warriors or soldiers? Masculinity and transvestism in the Liberian civil war". in Lamphere, Louise, Helena Ragoné, and Patricia Zavella (eds). Situated lives : gender and culture in everyday life. New York ; London : Routledge, 1997.