‘The divided Goddess engendered’ is part of the
Gender-Series
The Goddess. I am sure
we are all sort of familiar with the symbol of the Goddess. Of course appearing
in splendid beauty, the Goddess can symbolically denote for many properties and
characteristics in our thinking. Culture does certainly play a role in how we regard a Goddess,
as e.g. during the times that Roman Catholicism was dominant in Western culture, only the Queen of Heaven was
allowed to be worshiped; she is a guide, an admired spiritual example as well as
the Virgin that was worthy to become the blessed Mother of God, a chosen one
from amongst women.
Not being
raised in a tradition of Mary-devotion myself, I may have missed an essential
thing while growing up in an overly male accented religious group. Nevertheless,
all my live I have felt attracted to devote myself to the feminine. As bringer
and bearer of life, women are certainly sacred, but the feminine should not be
reduced to reproduction, sexuality or whatever one-sided view; in fact, I
increasingly feel inclined to see that the whole division between man and woman is
practical, but risky, as it inheres a dynamics that can be hurting to all of
us: division.
This risk
may not be obvious when you look around in Western culture that has been washed clean by three waves of feminism, but many of us still think and act as if humanity can
be regarded as existing as two species or in two forms; man and woman. We of
course would not explicitly say that either males or females are lesser, then it
is clear that having different appearances – or better perhaps instances – originate
from the wide genetic pool we all crawled out. Thus, so seen, that what we call
sex or gender is nothing as a regrouping of properties – internal, biological,
external or social. In this statistical distribution we find clusters or
properties or functions that we give names and labels to, either as a classification
deriving from our culture, or as a way of self-identification.
Freedom
of expression is one of the acknowledged human rights and living in a culture
that is rapidly opening up to more diversity with regard to gender and sex is
exciting; even when intolerance levels with regard to transgender and transsexual
persons are still high.
A look in
the dressing rooms of your local BDSM community still shows that many from us
are not always in the position to be who they are. Certainly most of us can
live with that, but it would actually be better if we had more freedom of
expression. But just like peace on earth, the Kingdom of God
On the
other hand - and that is a really positive message - we can have our sacred
places where we are one as we are; mostly in our minds or in the shelter of our
home, but increasingly in our playrooms too. Unfortunately, also there, is the
way of being sacred not always visible and are we being dragged into – not
normality – but into the dominance of gender-duality. E.g. I never encountered a
forum or a website where – in the dropdown box – one could identify as
cis-gender or state an orientation like queer (but hey, programmers think binary!).
For those
who feel, live and experience gender-duality as their reality, may feel
estranged by those with whom they cannot identify. As a matter of fact, them
being a cluster of properties too, perhaps we can and should not wish to expect
identification. Yet, support, respect and acceptance for the variance we as
humans display together should be self-evident, like St. Paul
So, now we
are very much into identifying ourselves and others being themselves too and
then acknowledging that we are different: but what is that Goddess divided?
Already as
early as in the Midrash[ii]
the original man (Adam ha-Ḳadmoni) is seen as not being man of woman, but as
being male and female equally. There are androgynous ideas to be found in all
religions, particularly in the mystical or non-dual interpretations of it. The
God or Goddess would then be identified with the dominance that female or male
properties play in the respective culture that seeks their Gods. It can therefore be argued that
calling God a Goddess might be just as arbitrary sexist as the other way around.
Nevertheless,
let us - for the sake of argument – put the whole issue of cultural and philosophical
anthropology at rest and assume that our gender-identity is indeed
‘constructed’ around concepts, properties and feelings. What we would get then
would be a theoretical distribution of un-endless little steps in graduations
of being male or female. Normality would then only be the largest clusters,
without having the claim of being exclusive, encompassing or better (I still
fail to see how numeral frequency justifies moral judgements).
This way of
thinking regarding gender-identity can be equally applied toward sexual
deviations – like BDSM and Fetish - or sexual orientation – like homo-, bi- or
transsexual. And here too, the Goddess is divided and expressed in graduations
as the (fe)male principles live in each of us.
In the
Dominion of Sir Cameron’s thoughts, a ‘female’ cross-dresser that shares a
splendid Havana with us, is neither to be labelled as a transgender, lesbian,
bi-sexual – even when he might be all of it – nor can we arrive at his sexual
preferences by her appearance, it is first and for all a person, a friend perhaps, with whom
we enjoy a good time.
Sir Cameron
sees such a person as someone exploring both the male and female principles in itself,
choosing to find a temporary foothold and from there make a valuable
experience; it is the manifestation of the divine presence of Shakti, the
Shekhinah, or the Mother Goddess, who dwells in each of us.
Labeling
everything in opposing pairs has a long tradition, just as right and wrong,
just as we and them. Yet, founding sexuality on a mere external biological base
of two different sexual organs is very limiting to humanity; humanity is not
mono, or dual, humanity is plural, rich and divers.
When we
play our roles in the scenes and rituals we perform, let us celebrate this
Goddess, in us and between us. You, us, the world; we all need this flow of
feminine energy to feel complete and maintain us as we are.
Let’s
celebrate her. And him too.
Sir Cameron
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