Gender and all that, Part 1.5.
some thoughts and some questions for you.
Venus moves out of Leo and into Virgo next Monday. That’s not the easiest shift for her, as she tends to feel a little pinched in Virgo, the sign of her fall. As we know, Venus likes pleasure and Virgo is a place where the hard stuff gets done. What is good to remember is that pleasure often requires that the hard stuff gets done, we just tend to want to forget that hard stuff as soon as we’re at the “pleasure” stage.
It could be a good opportunity to reflect on that and consider whether or not you can reconsider the hard work as an inextricably connected step on the way to the fun and the connection that Venus so often represents.
Be honest with yourself about the stuff that’s annoying, frustrating, or depressing you. Consider what it would be like to feel good about that thing instead. For example, I’ve been meaning to clean off a windowsill and put a plant on it for weeks. Gonna get that done.
What Virgoan tasks have you been avoiding that would feel really good to accomplish? I think I discussed this when Mercury was moving into Virgo, but have you considered making your doctor appointments for the year? Get that STI test so Venus can get to doing what she wants to do.
Buy some art! Or make some art! Don’t get mass produced stuff, take the time to sift through thrift stores or walk through art fairs. This is the kind of thing that Virgo is perfect for, it’s the place where the wheat is separated from the chaff and you owe it to yourself to find yourself some wheat.
What if I said I’m still very much figuring out where to take this essay about gender and it’s a BIG bucket of ideas and we’re still at the rambling stage?
Last week I teed up the second half of an essay I’m writing about gender in the birth chart, gender in astrology, and “gender” as a concept that defines something “energetic” and inherent to something. Examples would include how the Sun is seen as masculine in astrology while the Moon is seen as feminine. This doesn’t necessarily correlate to historic definitions of “biological sex” or reproduction but also it completely does. So that’s what I wanted to start pulling apart.
I do think we started pulling it apart. You can read it, but the basic takeaway of that first half was the idea that astrology in the traditional Hellenistic tradition attempts to describe circumstance. The goal is not as personality or internally focused -- we might draw conclusions about these things based on circumstance, but it’s not where we start.
This week isn’t the second part of that essay. I’m calling it “Part 1.5”. I need to do some more reading, reflecting, and drafting to be ready to share Part 2, honestly. I thought in the meantime I might just use this week to ask some questions that I think are good and get our collective wheels turning. I’ll give you some ramblings (very unformed) and anything you’ve got to share in the comments I welcome!
When you hear that the Moon is a feminine planet, what does that evoke for you?
For me, this evokes Sailor Moon1, it evokes menstruation, it evokes the ocean, the Greek goddess Artemis, and Our Lady of Guadalupe. I have clearly got an immediate association between the “feminine” and “traditional woman-ness”. My intention and my goal is to crack that open always, but I think it’s a mistake to not acknowledge where I’m coming from.
This list is not so different from what’s evoked when considering Venus, for example, as a feminine planet, but there are some key differences. Sailor Moon looks a lot like Sailor Venus. There’s a shared girlishness. I see how I don’t really associate Venus with the ocean, and don’t associate her with Artemis or Our Lady of Guadalupe. Whatever the Venn Diagram looks like that describes the relationship between the Moon and Venus, those two don’t belong in the middle as far as I see it.
What I’m getting at here is the layer of association that makes “feminine” and “feminine” different. The same can be done for “masculine” and “masculine” of course. And in some ways it’s a waste of a mental exercise because of course we don’t expect all “feminine” astrological concepts to be identical, just to share this thing, this “femininity”. But what is that? What is it that the Moon, Venus, Mars (sort of), the Earth Signs, the Water Signs, and, in modern astrology, the asteroid goddesses have in common?
What does gender “do” in the religious tradition you were raised within?
I was raised Catholic. Catholicism obviously has a very strong anti-woman history (and present). But, in my Catholicism, the “feminine” was exceptionally present via Mary, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus.
I don’t remember if I was ever told that the Holy Spirit is a feminine concept and, since I haven’t researched it, maybe I’m speaking completely heretically here (I say in my gay astrology newsletter). But I’ve forever had the idea that that very Venusian dove carrying an olive branch was moving as a feminine spirit.
And Jesus, a man, as far as we’ve been told, but, to me, womanly, feminine. I can’t be the first person to have said this, though, again, no research today. But growing up and going to the Good Shepherd program I remember learning about his spaciousness for those in need, his attachment to the women that society won’t acknowledge, and, ultimately, his washing of his friends’ feet. This all evoked something deeply “feminine” in that archetypal sense. It was really only when he was behaving atypically, tearing down markets in the temple for example, that he felt masculine. It was when he didn’t seem to be like Jesus.
So what’s that mean, what is gender “doing” in my Catholicism? That could (and maybe will) be it’s own essay or book, but in this train of thought it makes me think about the way that gender expands my Catholicism. I love Mary, I love Our Lady of Guadalupe. She’s an entry point into Catholicism for queers that I notice the absence of in other Christian traditions. It’s not enough and the Catholic Church™ doesn’t really reflect this Catholicism that I’m describing. But it was enough for me to feel when I needed it.
I’m curious. For you, what did gender “do” in the religion of your childhood?
What’s your gender?
This is, admittedly, a clicky way to phrase this question. What I really mean is something more like, what describes gender for you, the way you feel it, the way you move in it?
This is prompted from a Kate Bornstein interview I was watching this week where they said something along the lines of “I decided at some point that my gender was ‘little old lady’ which is not to say ‘old woman’ -- I’m littler than I’ve ever been having shrunk from 6’1” to 5’8”, I’m old, can’t argue with that, and I’m a lady, because my mother taught me how.”
Kate then goes on to talk about moving through New York City where they’re treated like a little old lady because of these things, how young men hold the door for them and how people give them their seat on the subway. This is not how they were treated when they were a younger trans and non-binary person. To say they’re a woman isn’t right, but to say they’re a little old lady is accurate.
I like this because of a lot of reasons. I like this because it gets at how gender is performative and how gender can’t help but be influenced by those receiving your existence in the world. I like how Kate has a sense of humor which I think is necessary when considering gender. I like how the “little old lady” gender reminds me of a mix of Saturn, Venus, and Mercury, perhaps in Libra or Sagittarius.
I’ll unpack this more next week, but there is this idea in astrology of seeing the forest and seeing the trees at the same time. I think that’s often what we’re trying to do when describing gender, when using gender to describe. This is not easy. We have to recognize constituent parts while also seeing that which they make up. Magically, what they make up is often something much greater and much different from those parts. How do we get better at seeing all these things at once?
That’s all for today. Thanks for coming along this ride with me—I do hope to continue the conversation in the comments!
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.
The Sailor Moon to astrologer pipeline has got to be a strong one.