Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

For overviews of ritual homosexuality and alternate gender systems in New Guinea and Melanesia, see Herdt, G. H. (1981) Guardians of the Flutes: Idioms of Masculinity (New York: McGraw-Hill); Herdt, G. H., ed., (1984) Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia (Berkeley: University of California Press). On the “third sex” category, see Herdt, G. (1994) “Mistaken Sex: Culture, Biology, and the Third Sex in New Guinea,” in G. Herdt, ed., Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, pp. 419-45 (New York: Zone Books); Poole, F. J. P. (1996) “The Procreative and Ritual Constitution of Female, Male, and Other: Androgynous Beings in the Cultural Imagination of the Bimin-Kuskusmin of Papua New Gunea,” in S. P. Ramet, ed., Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, pp. 197-218 (London: Routledge). For ceremonial transvestism and “male menstruation,” see, for example, Schwimmer, E. (1984) “Male Couples in New Guinea,” in Herdt, Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 248-91; Lutkehaus, N. C., and P. B. Roscoe, eds., (1995) Gender Rituals: Female Initiation in Melanesia, pp. 16-17, 36, 49, 69, 107, 120, 198-200, 229 (New York: Routledge); A. Strathern, in Callender and Kochems, “The North American Berdache,” p. 464.

25

Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes, p. 94; Schwimmer, “Male Couples in New Guinea,” p. 271; Van Baal, J. (1984) “The Dialectics of Sex in Marind-anim Culture,” in Herdt, Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 128-66.

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Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes, pp. 87-94; Poole, “The Procreative and Ritual Constitution of Female, Male, and Other,” pp. 205, 217; Sorum, A. (1984) “Growth and Decay: Bedamini Notions of Sexuality” in Herdt, Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 318-36; Lindenbaum, S. (1984) “Variations on a Sociosexual Theme in Melanesia,” in Herdt, Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 83-126.

27

An echo of these beliefs can also be found in native North America: the Cherokee maintain that female opossums (a North American marsupial) are essentially parthenogenetic, i.e., they reproduce without males (Fradkin, A. [1990] Cherokee Folk Zoology: The Animal World of a Native American People, 1700-1838, pp. 377-78 [New York: Garland]).

28

Herdt (Guardians of the Flutes, p. 91) tentatively identifies this as the “crested bird of paradise”; however, the description of its round display platforms (constructed of twigs and straw, with a central pole) strongly suggests that this is actually a species of bowerbird. Most likely it is MacGregor’s bowerbird (Amblyornis macgregoriae), whose “maypole” bower type matches this description, and whose orange crest also fits the description of this species provided by Herdt. For further details, see Gilliard, E. T. (1969) “MacGregor’s Gardener Bower Bird,” in Birds of Paradise and Bower Birds, pp. 300-311 (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press); Johnsgard, P. A. (1994) Arena Birds: Sexual Selection and Behavior, pp. 206, 211-12 (Washington, D.C., and London: Smithsonian Institution Press). Among the Kaluli people, the (male) Raggiana’s Bird of Paradise and other brightly colored birds are also considered female; men adorn themselves with their plumes to acquire the beauty of these supposedly feminine creatures (Feld, S. [1982] Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression, pp. 55, 65-66 [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press]).

29

Although Poole (1996:205) identifies this only as the “night bird,” it is most likely a species of nightjar (family Caprimulgidae), frogmouth (family Podargidae), or owlet-nightjar (family Aegothelidae).

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