Living One’s Politics in “To a Distant Friend”

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A poem by Elsa Gidlow describing the different political practices of country and rural feminists.

A poem, “To a Distant Friend,” by Elsa Gidlow, published in the 1976 issue of Country Women entitled “City~Country.” The poem discusses separations and divergences between city and country women, and the relationship between global politics and farm life.

Elsa Gidlow’s poem, “To a Distant Friend,” situated within Country Women’s 22nd edition on the divergence of the feminist movement between city and country landscapes, provides the perspective of a country feminist writing to a friend in the city. The poem discusses both the physical distance between these women, as well as their differences in values. The friend in the city is said to “write of missing the old times; / But more, of anger at the wars” (Gidlow 7). The urban friend has a clear political consciousness; their anger is so pronounced that they are corresponding with their friend in an attempt to make sense of this needless destruction. Even across the urban/rural divide, it is clear that an interest in global politics links these two women. However, the country woman seems more concerned with the natural workings of the world and partaking in a communal lifestyle: “here, from Druid Heights, / I write of pruning the apple, / Seed-planting, progress of lettuces” (Gidlow 7). Druid Heights was a poet’s commune owned by Gidlow and frequented by countercultural icons such as Allen Ginsberg and Neil Young (Silverstein). This retreat distanced Gidlow from the immediacy of anti-war efforts playing out in major cities at the time but allowed for her to remain grounded in the commune’s productive capacities. The alliteration present in these few lines suggests a methodical approach to this labor and a real connection to the land.

Gidlow writes about a fundamental linkage between the farm work that she is partaking in and the broader political landscape, asserting that “last year’s corruption feeds / This year’s harvests” (7). It is undeniable that the ramifications of U.S. global policy can be felt even in the most isolated of American communities. Climate change, megafarming, and the decimation of many rural communities in America can all be traced back to policy choices in the Capitol. The poem reaffirms the importance of the natural world to rural feminists. Gidlow ends the poem by stressing the role that communal living, working, and celebrating plays in the rural feminist’s political analysis, telling of “our festive times, / Sharing wine, fruits of our harvests” (7). It is through this communal labor that the rural feminist expresses her politics. Though a group of women farming in Northern California seems so disparate to global anti-war struggles, it is through living in cooperation and eking out a living wholly separated from state power that this rural feminist asserts her solidarity. This same idea is commented on in another article in the same issue of Country Women, with one woman proclaiming that “women’s communities can’t escape living their politics in their daily lives” (“City”). Gidlow’s poem exemplifies this idea that political meaning can come from land and labor itself. Through living and farming communally, rural feminists proclaim their independence from the capitalist, heteropatriarchal global order.

Works Cited:

“City Voices.” Country Women, no. 22, Country Women Editorial Collective, 01 Dec.                    1976, pp. 13-16.

Gidlow, Elsa. “To a Distant Friend.” Country Women, no. 22, Country Women Editorial                Collective, 01 Dec. 1976, p. 7.

Silverstein, Nikki. “Advocates Push to Preserve Historic Druid Heights Community.”                    Pacific Sun, Weeklys, 19 Jan. 2021, https://pacificsun.com/advocates-push-to-                preserve-historic-d ruid-heights-community/.

“This Distance Doesn’t Exist”: International Solidarity between Rural Women

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Rural isolation did not keep the rural feminists of the Second Wave movement from expressing solidarity with their sisters fighting American patriarchal hegemony across the globe. Country Women’s 18th issue—this edition subtitled “Politics”—is full of discussion surrounding the various socialist and decolonial insurgent movements occurring across the Global South throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The idea of a depoliticized countryside at the time becomes even more untrue when extrapolated to countries outside of the US, where many liberation struggles arise out of rural areas. One article acknowledges the distance that is easily felt between rural American radical feminists and radical women in the global “Third World,” but cautions that it is “important to remember that this distance, in actuality, doesn’t exist” as “we are women of the country, and we are women of this world” (Julie and Weed 17). It is, in some ways, their connection to the countryside that unites these women. Wars like the Vietnam War were hardly being fought in urban areas, and, thus, rural women tended to be more immediately affected by their violences. These sentiments show that not only are rural feminists capable of connecting with the broader, urban Second Wave feminist movement; they are also capable of forging a global connection among women that share their common identities and goals.

A poem entitled "Common Victories" authored by women of the Weather Underground discussing the life of Thi Binh and its feminist implications.

Originally published in a collection of poetry by women of the Weather Underground, this poem, “Common Victories,” was republished in Country Women’s “Politics” issue in 1976. The poem is accompanied by line drawings of a flowering tree branch and a woman with a bandana on.

The poem “Common Victories” chronicles the life of Thị Bình, a chief negotiator and leader on behalf of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, describing that she “came victorious / … / from prison lye, barelegged work in the deltas” (Women of the Weather Underground 35). These lines establish Thị Bình as a country woman of great merit. The title of the poem’s use of the word “common” implies that her struggles and her accomplishments can be felt and shared collectively—that it is both her hard, grueling labor and her striking successes that she holds in common with working women of the world. The poem honors the strong women that came before Thị Bình; it is stated that “she covered her mudcaked body / with crimson ao dai / dipped in / the blood of women / warriors / sacred red” (Women of the Weather Underground 35). Here, red functions as both the color of her cause, communism, and as a metaphor for the strength and the bodies of the women that allowed for Thị Bình to participate in the liberation of her lands. The evidence of her ruralness is not washed away; she remains “mudcaked” even when adorned in the áo dài. Perhaps it is her rural roots along with the support of a community of women that provides her the strength to lead a revolution. Thị Bình is portrayed as concluding that she “shall not resign [herself] to the usual lot of women” (Women of the Weather Underground 35). She refuses to accept the life that is laid out for her, refuses to perform the powerlessness that is expected of women. It is through the communal strength of the women that she has come from and that have informed her political consciousness that she is able to disobey the patriarchy and come out a potent commander.

A poem by Devi Indigo, entitled "chile as the killing begins," describing a Chilean woman's commentary on her homeland being ravished by American imperial interests.

Entitled “chile as the killing begins,” this poem, written by Devi Indigo, was published in the “Politics” issue of Country Women in 1976. A sketch of a woman gazing into the distance breaks the poem in half.

The same innate capacity for resistance is evident in Devi Indigo’s “chile as the killing begins.” The woman in the poem indicts “amerikan corporations / which steal copper off / the land she knows / belongs to her people / the people who work the land” (Indigo 18). Rural communities often feel the results of land pillaging and resource extraction more intensely, and this remains true in the coal towns of West Virginia to the copper- and lithium-rich mountains of Chile. This woman lives in the community and knows that these resources belong to the village, delineating a clear political analysis of colonial antagonisms and her place within them. This woman does not trust the men in her life to fix these large-scale problems, as she knows “too many men / have brought her promises then / carried them away in cheap caskets” (Indigo 18). Reliance upon men has only led this woman to disappointment. Some women in the country simply do not have the choice to be dependent upon men, and this can lead to various empowering experiences. This Chilean woman has a moment of reckoning with her own power as she “just sits as they pass by, / then she goes inside / to load her rifle” (Indigo 18). No longer will she sit by as her country is ravaged by imperial powers, and no longer does she trust the men to rectify this problem for her. Through loading her rifle, she is taking the power into her own hands and providing inspiration to country women suffering the effects of sexism, racism, and imperialism worldwide. Country Women’s many encounters with “Third World women” and their liberation struggles throughout the world highlight the intentional solidarity and interconnectedness between global rural women.

Works Cited:

Indigo, Devi. “chile as the killing begins.” Country Women, no. 18, Country Women                   Editorial Collective, 01 Jan. 1976, p. 18.

Julie and Weed. “Women of the World.” Country Women, no. 18, Country Women                   Editorial Collective, 01 Jan. 1976, pp. 17-18.

Women of the Weather Underground. “Common Victories.” Country Women, no. 18,               Country Women Editorial Collective, 01 Jan. 1976, p. 35.

Poems from Yamada’s Camp Notes On Internment

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A few years following the start of World War II in 1939, and just ten weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt enacted Executive Order 9066 in 1942. From 1942 to 1945, the policy authorized the U.S. government “to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded” (National Archives). That is, the Order was designed to prevent espionage on American soil. While the legislation did not explicitly describe the “persons” to be detained, the Pacific west coast at large soon became a militarized area, which contributed significantly to the forceful relocation of over 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent (including Yamada’s family) in the months following its enactment (Our Documents).

The first page of Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 (National Archives)

Yamada’s family in particular was sent to “Camp Harmony,” a euphemism for the internment camp established at an assembly center in Puyallup, Washington. Below is a curated selection of poems from Yamada’s Camp Notes and Other Poems, which includes, as the title suggests, poems in which Yamada writes of the pain-filled experiences that defined her life in internment. The succinct, honest style of her poetry beautifully captures the rawness of this pain.

Japanese American evacuees, Camp Harmony (Puyallup Assembly Center), 1942 Photo by Howard Clifford, Courtesy UW Special Collections (UW526) (Fiset)

In the poem “Evacuation,” as disturbing as it is brief, Yamada illustrates America’s disgust towards the Japanese during the World War II era. Photos taken of Japanese prisoners by the press, capturing the prisoners’ forced smiles as they boarded buses to the internment camps, were captioned: “Note smiling faces / a lesson to Tokyo” (“Evacuation” 13-14). Yamada then writes in the poem “On the Bus” how she could only watch, helpless, as her father was forcefully arrested and separated from his family by the FBI, under the suspicion of “Possible espionage or / Impossible espionage. / I forget which” (“On the Bus” 9-11). Thus, in so few lines, Yamada captures the absurd inhumanity of internment, as the U.S. government began detaining Japanese Americans, like Yamada’s father, apparently at random on the single basis of race.

In “Block 4 Barrack 4 ‘APT’ C,” Yamada depicts the dry, isolated landscape of the internment camps, through such expressive imagery as “These sinewed branches / [which] were rubbed and polished / shiny with sweat and body oil” (“Block 4 Barrack 4 ‘APT’ C” 8-10). Yamada personifies the ubiquitous, maddening despair felt in solidarity by the prisoners, writing of the screams of a pregnant woman which emanated throughout the barracks: “Lives spilled over us / through plaster walls / came mixed voices. / Bared too / a pregnant wife . . . she sobbed alone / and a barracksful / of ears shed tears” (“Block 4 Barrack 4 ‘APT’ C” 14-23).

Next, “The Night Before Good-Bye” is a deeply somber poem, depicting the internment’s barbaric separation of families and the fear it instilled in its prisoners. The night before Yamada was to be released from internment, she receives from her mother a recently mended pair of underwear. As her mother hands the garment over, she urgently whispers, “[K]eep your underwear / in good repair / in case of accident / don’t bring shame / on us” (“The Night Before Good-Bye” 18-22).

After 18 months of internment in Camp Harmony, Yamada, in her poem “Cincinnati,” writes of her first experience upon finally being released from the camp. In the urban city, she cherishes her freedom and anonymity, writing: “no one knew me” (“Cincinnati” 8). That is until a passerby spits on her, hissing “dirty jap,” after which Yamada breaks uncontrollably into tears, realizing “Everyone knew [her]” (“Cincinnati 10-11, 41).

Contextualizing one another, the above poems not only provide an excerpted view of Yamada’s life in internment, but also demonstrate the multi-faceted wounds inflicted upon internment survivors at large. During internment, Yamada — alongside the over 120,000 people of Japanese descent sent to camps across the country — was stripped of her family, her home, her language, and ultimately, her sense of self. However, refusing to submit to the inhuman, deeply racist attitudes of this time, and unwilling to let America erase the atrocities of internment, Yamada transmuted her pain into poetry, immortalizing the stories of internment survivors and their adversities.

Works Cited

“Block 4 Barrack 4 ‘Apt’ C.” Camp Notes and Other Poems, by Mitsuye Yamada, Shameless Hussy Press, 1976, p. 15.

“Cincinnati.” Camp Notes and Other Poems, by Mitsuye Yamada, Shameless Hussy Press, 1976, p. 29.

“Evacuation.” Camp Notes and Other Poems, by Mitsuye Yamada, Shameless Hussy Press, 1976, p. 10.

Executive Order 9066, February 19, 1942; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

“Executive Order 9066: Resulting in the Relocation of Japanese (1942).” Our Documents – Executive Order 9066: Resulting in the Relocation of Japanese (1942), www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=74.

Fiset, Louis. “Camp Harmony (Puyallup Assembly Center), 1942.” The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, 7 Oct. 2008, www.historylink.org/File/8748.

“The Night Before Good-Bye.” Camp Notes and Other Poems, by Mitsuye Yamada, Shameless Hussy Press, 1976, p. 28.

“On the Bus.” Camp Notes and Other Poems, by Mitsuye Yamada, Shameless Hussy Press, 1976, p. 11.

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Shirley Lim’s “Reconstructing Asian-American Poetry: A Case for Ethnopoetics”

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In her essay “Reconstructing Asian-American Poetry: A Case for Ethnopoetics,” Lim argues for an increased inclusion of ethnocentric writings in literary education, in order to offset and correct the “inherent bias of the Anglo-American mainstream” (51). As an Asian-American writer herself, Lim applies this notion to the specific context of Asian-American literature. However, she admits the paradoxical nature of exposing Asian-American writing to society: it is difficult to increase the identification of Asian-American literature and its sources, without patronizing, unintentionally or otherwise, Asian-Americans as “special;” doing so would only reaffirm existing stigmatic stereotypes (51).

What is particularly notable about Asian-American poetry, according to Lim, is its steadfast identity (52). That is, in contrast to white immigrants, Asians have not as readily assimilated into American culture (see this post, which discusses Nellie Wong’s “When I Was Growing Up,” a poem about the pressures of assimilating into white girlhood). Such cultural stubbornness is a central characteristic of Asian-American writing. But the need for incorporating Asian-American writing into the mainstream extends beyond the desire for attention to the culture’s exoticism. In fact, it is the overbearing reliance of Asian exoticism that leads to society’s patronizing views of Asian-American writing. Lim writes that the primary issue is “not whether the diction reflects an Asian-American experience but whether the sum of the poem is greater than its parts — its diction, subject, rhythms, and devices” (53). Stereotypical imagery — e.g. jade, buddha figures, bound feet —  when done in excess, misshapes the “local color” of Asian objects, trivializing them as just another cheap call for attention (53).

To avoid this travesty of Asian culture, then, these “ethnic references” must become “extra-local,” i.e. through the creative use of local imagery, a writer individually rediscovers and tells a historical perspective belonging uniquely to them (53). This extra locality is achieved only through the proper execution of the three levels of ethnopoetics. The first level regards a poem’s stylistic devices — diction, figures of speech, imagery — i.e. the elements of a poem that are easily recognizable as Asian-American (53). However, as mentioned previously, while this level is an essential component of Asian-American poetry, one must be careful not to overuse such devices, as doing so can distract from and cheapen a poem’s thematic impact.

The second level of ethnopoetics is the incorporation of diction from a non-English language, as ethnic linguistics bring the reader closer to the original source of culture. The importance of the second level, Lim explains, stems from the “linguistic survival of first language expressions, whether actual or translated into English, point[ing] to the poets’ awareness that there exists in the original language itself certain values, concepts, and cultural traits which are not discoverable in English” (54). Yamada, in her poems “Homecoming” and “I Learned to Sew,” demonstrates masterful incorporation of these first two levels, unabashedly retaining the Japanese-accented English of both her mother and grandmother, framing for these women their stories of immigrant adversity, at once relatable yet uniquely theirs.

The third and final level of effective ethnopoetics “lies in the contextual realm . . . in the area of intertextuality” (54). Lim notes that this level is of particular importance because careless execution of it is a primary cause of readers’ inability to connect with the text. Asian-American poetry is not inherently better than that of Native Americans or Black-Americans, for example, just because it is Asian-American; but it is inherently different. While that may be obvious, these differences between cultural heritage necessarily affect readers’ experiences with and their reactions to ethnopoetics. In particular, Lim clarifies, variation in cultural context creates “significant differences between readers’ expectations and authors’ intentions, between the untrained readers’ conventional, culture-bound responses and the trained readers’ ethno-sensitive interpretations” (56). That is, the reader’s own experiences meet the poem’s cultural themes and backgrounds in an act of compromise. Lim eloquently accentuates that it is exactly this intertextuality between reader and writer, through the juxtaposition of the other’s “referential field,” that gives life to the text in the reader’s imagination (56). When this intertextual bridge is broken, the referential fields lose meaning, and therefore so does the poetry.

In conjunction with one another, the three levels of ethnopoetics demonstrate that the medium is at its most effective when it includes (i) poetic devices representative of and local to the poet’s cultural background, (ii) linguistic phrases stemming from the cultural source (either in the original language, or a translation of it), demonstrating its marked distinctness from the Anglo-American mainstream, and, most importantly, (iii) an “informed socio-cultural approach which counteracts the privileging of the dominant culture” (59). Cautiously, Lim disclaims that she is not arguing that ethnic poetry possesses inherent literary value simply on the basis that it is separate from the majority culture. Rather, ethnic poetry cannot fairly be assigned meaning until the “unequal relationship between uninformed reader and informed text” is corrected (59). Thus, only through the proper execution of the three levels of ethnopoetics can the medium depart from its esoteric status and towards the unpatronizing mainstream, and thereby create an ethno-sensitive society both able and willing to engage with such literature.

Works Cited

Lim, Shirley. “Reconstructing Asian-American Poetry: A Case for Ethnopoetics.” MELUS, vol. 14, no. 2, 1987, pp. 51–63. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/467352.

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Asian-American, the Invisible Minority

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In her essay “Invisibility Is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American Woman,” Yamada addresses the frustrating lack of awareness with which the majority culture regards Asian-American oppression. Yamada, then a professor of English at Cypress College in Seattle, Washington, begins the essay with an anecdote from an Ethnic American Literature course she had taught. In the course, she introduced to her class the works of various politically active Asian-American writers, as a part of the Asian segment of the course curriculum. During one of the class discussions, Yamada recounts how several students mentioned they “were not offended by any of the Black American, Chicano or American Indian writings . . . [as] they ‘understood’ the anger expressed by the Black Americans and Chicanos and they ‘empathized’ with the frustrations and sorrow expressed by the American Indian” (30). Yet, for some reason, when it came to Asian-Americans, some students noted that they found themselves angry at the idea that Asian-Americans could even be oppressed.

Reflecting on her students’ honest, albeit ignorant, remarks, Yamada realized that the invisible condition of Asian-American oppression explained much of the (not so) casual racism she had encountered all throughout her life. She notes one particular interaction in which she was explaining to her college’s administrators how they had infringed upon her rights as a professor. In response to Yamada’s self-defense, the administrators exclaimed how uncharacteristic this was of someone “‘so polite, so obedient, so non-trouble-making’,” and furthermore, how it “undoubtedly [must have been] some of ‘those feminists’,” rather than Yamada herself, that pushed her to raise such a dispute (31). Yamada writes how she ultimately “‘let it go’,” choosing not to challenge the administrators for their racist remarks, because it would have been futile to do so with those unable to even recognize their own racist behavior (31).

Yamada then notes that Asian-American women, even more so than Asian-Americans as a whole, were especially slow to “emerg[e] as a viable minority” in American society (31). With respect to her students’ surprise that Asian-Americans were oppressed at all, Yamada explains that, ironically, Asian-American women not admitting to themselves the reality of their oppression contributes significantly to such a narrative. And herein is the crux of the Asian-American invisibility issue. Through continued dishonesty with ourselves about our experiences with oppression, Asian-Americans can only exacerbate existing stigmatic stereotypes, as Yamada herself had done, passive even in the face of such blatant racism, during the aforementioned dispute with the college administrators.

To further evidence this notion, Yamada remarks how she had, for the past eleven years, happily busied herself with the daily responsibilities as an English professor, a wife, and a mother of four children. Unwittingly, Yamada found herself contentedly fulfilling the role of the middle-class woman, who was her family’s secondary income source, “quietly fitting into the man’s world of work” (32). Thus, the duality of being a woman and Asian-American makes it doubly more difficult to remove the mainstream perception of invisibility.

Asian-Americans have been socially conditioned to expect responses which trivialize their adversity. This powerlessness, Yamada writes, results in feeling unable to make a difference to anyone or anything. If we have been trained since our childhood to allow others to redefine the extent of our adversity, then it is no wonder we feel invisible. Yamada explains that Asian-Americans’ relinquishing of power over their own experiences is due to an inability to separate opinions from their source. That is, the social apathy is viewed as something that “‘can’t be helped.’” This is what mutated Asian-American culture into one of invisibility. Therefore, to move towards visibility, Yamada advocates we must first recognize the fact that we are invisible and to “raise our voices a little more, even as they say to us ‘This is so uncharacteristic of you’” (35).

Works Cited

Yamada, Mitusye. “Invisibility Is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American Woman.” This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, by Moraga Cherríe and Anzaldúa Gloria, 4th ed., SUNY Press., 2015, pp. 30–35.

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The Asian-American Longing to be White

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Born in Kyushu, Japan to her issei (first-generation immigrant) mother Hide Shiraki Yasutake, Mitsuye Yamada lived in Japan for the first three-and-a-half years of her life, raised by a neighboring family (her mother had returned to Seattle, Washington immediately after giving birth). In fact, Yasutake herself, as the speaker of Yamada’s poem “Homecoming,” shares the profound emotional guilt she felt for leaving her daughter in Japan, and that she had done so only to care for her two sons back in Seattle, one of whom was gravely ill. Powerfully, Yasutake notes that it was the love she had for her children which allowed her to persist through such heartache. She tells her daughter that life would be too painful without such love, morbidly referencing her friend, a mother of eight, who had committed suicide by hanging: “could not know what pains to live / without love / my friend kill / herself hang / her family with eight children / don’t know / how she could / do it for good reason / I think of her often / bring me comfort” (“Homecoming” 51-61). Yamada continued moving back and forth between Kyushu and Seattle throughout her childhood, but remained in America once she began attending Cleveland High School in Beacon Hill, Seattle, a residential area known for its large Asian demographic.

Chinese-American feminist poet Nellie Wong, a contemporary of Yamada, describes in her poem “When I Was Growing Up” of her stark lack of self-acceptance (with respect to ethnicity) during childhood and of how she had desperately longed to be white. She describes the self-hatred for her dark skin: “and no matter how much I bathed, / I could not change, I could not shed / my skin in the gray water” (Wong 50-52). Furthermore, despite having grown up in America, Wong became increasingly self-conscious of her minority status, as “being Chinese was feeling foreign, was limiting, was unAmerican” (Wong 30-32).

Pressured by the profound longing to assimilate into white girlhood, Wong notes how she had even begun to “[feel] ashamed / of some yellow men, their small bones, / their frail bodies,” hoping one day to live in “purple mountains . . . uncongested with yellow people in my area / called Chinatown, in an area I later / learned was a ghetto, one of many hearts / of Asian America” (Wong 37-39, 54-60). Note therein the latter half of the quote, taken from the penultimate stanza, Wong’s subtle, positive change in tone with respect to her views of Asian-Americanness. First describing Chinatown a “ghetto,” Wong quickly appends to the city’s description its status as the “heart” of Asian America, suggesting pride and appreciation where there was once shame and disgust. The final stanza begins, “I know now that once I longed to be white,” a beautiful, succinct demonstration of Wong’s departure from her self-conscious, adolescent self (Wong 61).

Works Cited

“Homecoming.” Camp Notes and Other Poems, by Mitsuye Yamada, Shameless Hussy Press, 1976, pp. 4–5.

Wong, Nellie. “When I Was Growing Up.” This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, by Moraga Cherríe and Anzaldúa Gloria, 4th ed., SUNY Press., 2015, pp. 5–6.

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Liminality in Poetry

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“The Stranger” by Adrienne Rich

 

Rich, Adrienne, et al. Collected Poems: 1950-2012. W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.

 

Looking as I’ve looked before, straight down the heart

of the street to the river

walking the rivers of the avenues

feeling the shudder of the caves beneath the asphalt

watching the lights turn on in the towers

walking as I’ve walked before

like a man, like a woman, in the city

my visionary anger cleansing my sight

and the detailed perceptions of mercy

flowering from that anger

 

if I come into a room out of the sharp misty light

and hear them talking a dead language

if they ask me my identity

what can I say but

I am the androgyne

I am the living mind you fail to describe

in your dead language

the lost noun, the verb surviving

only in the infinitive

the letters of my name are written under the lids

of the newborn child

 

This poem, by Adrienne Rich, identifies the poet herself as “the androgyne,” describing herself as “like a man, like a woman.” This claim, along with the flowery language of the poem, pulls Rich out of the realm of the real and into the realm of the symbolic. However, as a consequence, this relegates androgyny into the realm of the artistic.

Rich enjoyed toying around with the figure of the androgyne, but this is the clearest statement of who the androgyne actually is. The language is cryptic, and statements like “the lost noun, the verb surviving / only in the infinitive” seem to mean less than they do evoke a certain incomprehensibility; in other words, they seem to be not a clue to the meaning of Rich’s androgyne, but rather confuse the reader in the way that Rich believes the androgyne would.

I find this rather uncomfortable. Rich describes the androgyne as something that can’t truly be understood in binary language (“the living mind you fail to describe / in your dead language”) but at the same time the fact that she writes this poetry implies that on some deep level she does understand the androgyne. I dislike this because it appropriates the image of the androgyne from a still-binary perspective, as Rich identified as a woman. Can androgyny be written in our dead language? Possibly more importantly, can it be written by a man or a woman?

Liminality in Pop Music

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In the 70s and 80s, around the time of the second wave, the pop-culture phenomenon of glam rock emerged. In style, this was most easily recognizable by outlandish costumes and overt campiness, often crossing over with androgyny. One of the most popular figures of glam rock was without a doubt David Bowie, famous for his gender-bending fashion.

David Bowie - The Man Who Sold the World

The Man Who Sold the World, David Bowie’s first breakthrough album, features as cover art (in most versions) Bowie reclining in a long dress; this is only the beginning of a career full of gender-bending, all the way up to his final album.

Even artists in superficially unrelated genres picked up on the popularity of this androgyny: Prince, Boy George, and Freddie Mercury are all examples of this. It is an interesting question why androgyny was so common in pop culture, but in my opinion the most natural answer is merely that it had shock value. In the same way that Bowie, Madonna, even Lindsay Lohan dabbled in Kabbalah for the trendy occultist sheen, androgyny could be used to one’s advantage in appearing uniquely avant-garde.

However, this is not to disparage the use of androgyny in pop music. Even if it was a cynical manipulation of popular tastes, the promotion of androgyny as acceptable (just think of the famous lines “You’ve got your mother in a whirl / She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl” from Rebel Rebel) should be taken as an absolute positive.

If it makes sense to argue that popular promotion of androgyny can be good regardless of ulterior motive, it makes sense to ask to what extent such pop music can be considered as feminist poetry. Through exploration of feminine identity, the glam trend naturally has feminist undertones, and music can certainly be interpreted as poetry, so it must be considered as such to some degree. However, I would argue that this argument cannot go very far, as glam undermines its own “purpose” through its celebration of superficiality and vapidity. In other words, how can glam be taken seriously when it makes a point of taking everything too lightly?

Liminality from a Global Perspective

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It is all too easy in a project on second-wave feminism to fall into the trap of focusing on too narrow a perspective, so with this segment I hope to justify the treatment of the liminal body as an object of global interest. To do this, we look to several androgynous figures in mythology around the globe.

Starting in Greece, we look to the mythological figures of Tiresias and Iphis. Tiresias, according to myth, came across a pair of snakes in coitus, upon which he beat them with a stick. As punishment, he was transformed into a woman. Living as a woman, he became a priestess and had children. After seven years, he came across another pair of snakes, and this time stepped upon them, and was transformed back into a man. According to the most popular version of the legend, he was later called by Zeus and Hera as first-hand source in a debate over whether men or women had more pleasure in sex: when he responded that women did, Hera blinded him, but Zeus gave him as apology the gift of clairvoyance. Iphis, a figure in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was born to two peasants who could not afford a dowry and so resolved to kill their child if he were not male. Iphis was born “female,” but his mother raised him as male so he would not be killed by his father. Eventually, when it came time for Iphis to marry, Isis miraculously transformed Iphis into a biological male. Both of these figures are remarkable in how they are clearly liminal figures without ever being in an androgynous state: their genders are always determined at any given moment, but are not temporally consistent.

Tiresias

Tiresias moves to strike the snakes with his wand, for which he is punished by transforming into a woman.

Iphis becomes male

“The male-looking Iphis transforms into a real male”—Isis transforms Iphis.

Next, we look to the figure of Inari (稲荷), one of the most important Shinto kami, probably best translated into English as “spirits.” Inari is the kami of foxes (among many other things), often portrayed as tricksters in Japanese mythology. Inari is variously depicted as male, female, or androgynous. Their messenger animals, foxes, are in mythology considered able to transform into human women in order to seduce men and have children.

Inari as a woman

This image shows Inari appearing as a woman to a soldier, with a white fox on their left.

There are many other examples of gender-ambiguous gods or mythological figures—for three interesting examples not covered here: the first people in the Dogon religion, the Aztec god Xochipilli, and the Sumerian Gala. However, rather than provide more examples of myths of liminality, it seems more of interest to provide examples of people actually considered to be non-male and non-female in non-binary gender systems, such as:

  • Chilean (Mapuche) Machi: these religious leaders are considered to transcend the male-female binary, channeling different identities depending on the actions they are taking;
  • Tahitian (Maohi) Māhū: this term, meaning “in the middle,” refers to assigned-male-at-birth people who act in an ambiguously feminine role;
  • The great many identities coming under the compass of “two-spirit”—a term introduced in 1990 to refer to the variety of third-gender roles in North American native cultures, such as:
    • Navajo nádleeh
    • Mohave alyha
    • Zuni lhamana
    • Lakota wínkte

Although I cannot possibly cover all of these mythological entities as well as non-binary and gender variant identities, hopefully the idea that the liminal form is not restricted to “Western culture” has been justified.

Liminality and the Inaccessible

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One of the most well-known and oft-quoted fragments of text in history must be the first three-line poem of Genesis (quoted here in two translations):

“God created humans in his image,

In his image he created him,

Male and female he created them.” (Alter translation)

 

“So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God created he him;

male and female created he them.” (King James Version)

If “male and female” were created both in God’s image, does this imply that God is a liminal form? Certainly he is not traditionally depicted as such—throughout the canon of “western art” He is shown as an old man. However, the picture gets more complicated when one considers also the traditional images of angels: neither male nor female, they are usually shown as perfectly androgynous “beautiful” forms.

Raphael's Angel

Angels in the Renaissance were usually depicted androgynously, to show their divine beauty. This may also speak to them being intermediary between humans and the divine, as the bible seems to offer evidence for a liminal perspective of God.

Through the Old Testament canon, God is usually not present as such, but rather appears as an “angel of the presence” (Isaiah 63:9). Through this insight, we see that God’s presence can be naturally interpreted as androgynous in accordance with Christian tradition.

In Jewish tradition, much more thought has been given to the liminal God. In Kabbalah, a traditional form of rabbinic esotericism, God, or “Ein Sof,” is shown as a series of 10 interconnected aspects—the Sefirot. Together, the Sephirot form a complete image of God; they are all crucial aspects of Him. It is no coincidence that roughly half of these “emanations” are considered “feminine”—most relevantly, beauty.

This gives us a very interesting look into liminality—androgyny is often seen as superhuman, divine, or perhaps indescribable beauty. Likewise, those who seek to defile this divine form are held in the lowest possible regard. For instance, Lot offers to let the men of Sodom and Gomorrah rape his two daughters in order for them not to assault the angels of the Lord. The men refuse, attracted presumably by the angels’ divine beauty. This immediately proceeds the two cities’ absolute destruction at the hands of God.

It should come as no surprise, then, that unholy beings like demons might have these traits too, seeing as such unholy beings are often seen as warped or distorted versions of holy beings. For notable examples, many demons of Abrahamic traditions are taken from idols of other cultures, such as Ba’al. Idol worship is sinful in the bible because it is treating a creature that is not God as if it were God, and thus there must be a disturbing parallel between the traits of an unholy idol and the traits of a holy being. For another example of this, look to Revelations, in which the Antichrist is mistaken for the second coming of Christ.

Esoteric faiths often borrow as higher entities such idols (or such demons, depending on one’s point of view). Thus it is only natural that esoteric higher entities often have warped versions of the features of God and His angels. In particular, for the purpose of this project, their androgyny.

Some Tarot decks, for example, adopt as its highest trump card an image very reminiscent of that of an angel, most notably the iconic Rider-Waite deck. The card is full of imagery from Revelations, so a figure representing duality unified is only natural.

The World XXI from the Rider-Waite Deck

The figure of The World, the final trump of the tarot deck, shares much of the symbolism of Baphomet. It floats in a void surrounded by the four living creatures. Upright, it represents completion, perfection; in reversal, stagnation, suspension.

For a darker example, we look to the image of the Sabbatic Goat, traditionally associated with the demon Baphomet. Originally invented as the demon the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping, Aleister Crowley’s esoteric faith took it on as a higher power. It shows a unification of beast and man, man and woman, up and down, and dissolution and reconstitution. It is in this depiction of a liminal form that we begin to see not the supposed “divine beauty” of androgyny, but rather a kind of cosmic horror and lack of understanding, reminiscent of Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones.

Baphomet as the Sabbatic Goat

Baphomet, with arms pointing up and down, angelic wings paired with demonic horns. On its arms are written the words “solve” and “coagula”—”dissolve” and “coagulate.” Baphomet is depicted with a simultaneously male and female form.

This is undeniably poetic: the physical representation of the unification of opposites itself has two opposite interpretations, one of superhuman beauty and one of grotesque unnaturality—two sides of the same coin.