Talking about Gender. (and Gender Variant)

I confess my extreme attraction to etymology. I think that going back to the roots of a word is the best way to understand its original and deep meaning, and therefore be aware of the power that reside inside.

The etymological origin of Gender comes from the Latin Genus, which in turn comes from the Greek Gènos, which originally comes from the Sanskrit G'anas, with the root g'a / g'an which means produce, generate.
So, originally, gender is just a word to describe someone (or something) which is able to generate, or to be generated, someone who is born. In other words, the original meaning of gender doesn't contemplate any distinction between two or more genders, nor the existence of one gender which is considered superior or better than another.

We do know that words shape our relationships more than feelings. And since we live in a world founded (and sanctioned by the oldest known documents, such as the Bible) on the supremacy of one gender on another, it seems to me incomparable that language has been redefined on the basis of this principle, and that a discussion on the profound meaning of gender should take it into account.

Imagine we find ourselves living in the pre-patriarchal society that existed at the time of the Neolithic, as modern archaeological studies find and confirm (I recommend this book: "The cup and the sword" written by the archaeologist Riane Eisler). It was a structurally equal and communal society, where the differences in wealth and income were minimal and where there was a great mutual care between human beings, and between them and the Great Mother , generator of the whole life on the planet. Apparently there were no wars, given the total absence of walls and fortifications around the cities, nor existed the concept of supremacy of one over the others. Even the idea of a leader, understood as king or emperor, was not conceivable.

Imagine living in this gilanic society (another interesting word that arrives from Greek and means in total gender parity), and therefore a society where gender is neither classified nor celebrated. In fact, it's not important. It is likely that in this type of culture, any gender variations - omnipresent everywhere and at any time - should have been considered as part of the natural generated expression of Nature. If there is no supremacy of one kind over another, then there is not even the concept of degradation in passing from one to another. There is no notion that a male can not express the emotions of his female component, under penalty of discredit and shame, or that a female can't do it with his male component, losing her femininity.

Is famous the story that Plato tells in the Symposium of the two halves, which goes like this:

In a remote past, there were three different human kinds: the male one, originated from the Sun; the female one, originating from the Earth and the hermaphrodite one from the Moon, since it assumes both the characteristics of the Sun and the Earth, living in reflected light. The hermaphrodites were complete beings, who had both masculine and feminine qualities: the shape of the body was roundish, they had four arms and four legs, a head with two faces, four ears and two different set of genital organs: looks like the perfect examples of superhuman, for speak.
This wholeness made them feel even more powerful than the gods of Olympus. And Zeus then decided to punish them, dividing them, like an apple, into two equal parts. So it was that the hermaphrodites lost their perfection, becoming simple men and women.
From that moment on they lived in a miserable, excruciating condition, because they felt the unbearable and unsatisfactory lack of their old missing half. Each piece of apple began to look for the part that once belonged to and look after to finding it and be reunited with. The sole purpose of these scattered apples was to be together again, nothing else would be needed.

All spiritual traditions, when they speak about the soul, define it as composed of two opposing and complementary energetic principles: the positive and the negative. The active and the passive. Light and shadow. The masculine and the feminine. Carl Gustav Jung spoke of animus and anima, as the two anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind, of the abstract symbols that underlie the archetype of the Self. And yet they are unconscious and transcend the personal psyche, which means that in the unconscious of a man, the archetypal anima finds its expression as an inner feminine personality; in an equivalent way in the woman's unconscious, the archetype animus expresses itself as an inner masculine personality.

There is a fantastic science fiction novel written by the recently departed Ursula K. Le Guin, entitled "The Left Hand of Darkness", where a traveler from the Galactic Federation is sent to the frozen planet Gethen, as an explorer. The humanoid beings that inhabit it are hermaphrodites. The reason is unknown, whether it is the result of evolution or genetic manipulation that took place thousands of years before. The Ghetenians are neutral most of the time, but once every 26 days (almost a lunar month) they have a phase called kemmer (which lasts two days) in which they become either males or females, based on an exchange of pheromones with the partner. There is no choice: both partners can become active or passive and both have the chance to get pregnant. This is true equality, I have to say.

So, what I mean is that the concept of gender is an absolutely cultural concept, and that stigmatizing or preventing a natural expression of human experience is only an operation of ignorant violence, a bit like the mortal bloodletting that in the past centuries were used to the sick ones to free them from impure blood, which was thought to cause the disease.
No doctor today could propose a remedy of this type without being lynched.

And so it will also happen for all the words and deeds that are still used against the free expression of Self: in a future, not so far, they will be seen as products of a narrow and conservative vision, a reductionist and reactionary drift born within of a patriarchal society, which has so much responsibility in the production of pain and human despair for everybody.

Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way

(Ursula K. Le Guin "The Left Hand of Darkness)