Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes, pp. 131-57; Gardner, D. S. (1984) “A Note on the Androgynous Qualities of the Cassowary: Or Why the Mianmin Say It Is Not a Bird,” Oceania 55:137-45; Bulmer, R. N. H. (1967) “Why Is the Cassowary Not a Bird? A Problem of Zoological Taxonomy Among the Karam of the New Guinea Highlands,” Man 2:5-25; Juillerat, B., ed., (1992) Shooting the Sun: Ritual and Meaning in West Sepik, pp. 65, 282 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press); Feld, Sound and Sentiment, pp. 68-71; Tuzin, D. (1997) The Cassowary’s Revenge: The Life and Death of Masculinity in a New Guinea Society, pp. 80-82, 94, 209-10 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Some Australian Aboriginal peoples hold parallel beliefs about a related bird, the Emu, being all-female or having ambiguous or simultaneous genders (Maddock, K. [1975] “The Emu Anomaly,” pp. 112-13, 118, 121, in L. R. Hiatt, ed., Australian Aboriginal Mythology, pp. 102-22 [Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies]).

31

Gell, A. (1975) Metamorphosis of the Cassowaries: Umeda Society, Language, and Ritual, pp. 180, 182, 184, 225-26, 233-34, 239-40, 250, L.S.E. Monographs on Social Anthropology no. 51 (London: Athlone Press); Gell, A. (1971) “Penis Sheathing and Ritual Status in a West Sepik Village,” pp. 174-75, Man 6:165-81.

32

These individuals are “born with labial folds, reared as girls, and then recognized as being the descendants of Yomnok when distinctive but diminutive male genitalia descend into view on the eve of puberty.” This type of intersexuality (known medically as 5-alpha reductase male pseudo-hermaphroditism) also occurs fairly frequently among the Sambia, where it is recognized as a “third sex” (Poole, “The Procreative and Ritual Constitution of Female, Male, and Other,” pp. 209, 218; Herdt, “Mistaken Sex”). The species of echidna referred to is probably the long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus bruijni; for more on indigenous views of echidnas in New Guinea, see Jorgensen, D. (1991) “Echidna and Kuyaam: Classification and Anomalous Animals in Telefolmin,” Journal of the Polynesian Society 100:365-80.

33

Poole, “The Procreative and Ritual Constitution of Female, Male, and Other,” pp. 197, 203-5, 209-10, 216-17; Poole, F. J. P. (1981) “Transforming ‘Natural’ Woman: Female Ritual Leaders and Gender Ideology Among Bimin-Kuskusmin,” pp. 117, 120, 153-60, in S. B. Ortner and H. Whitehead, eds., Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality, pp. 116-65 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Poole, F. J. P. (1982) “The Ritual Forging of Identity: Aspects of Person and Self in Bimin-Kuskusmin Male Initiation, pp. 125-31, in G.H. Herdt, ed., Rituals of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guinea, pp. 99-154 (Berkeley: University of California Press).

34

Layard, J. (1942) Stone Men of Malekula, especially pp. 482-94 (London: Chatto and Windus); Allen, M. (1981) “Innovation, Inversion, and Revolution as Political Tactics in West Aoba,” in M. Allen, ed., Vanuatu: Politics, Economics, and Ritual in Island Melanesia, pp. 105-34 (Sydney: Academic Press); Allen, M. R. (1984) “Ritualized Homosexuality, Male Power, and Political Organization in North Vanuatu: A Comparative Analysis,” in Herdt, Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 83-126; Battaglia, D. (1991) “Punishing the Yams: Leadership and Gender Ambivalence on Sabarl Island,” p. 94, in M. Godelier and M. Strathern, eds., Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in Melanesia, pp. 83-96 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

35