“Since they were united in the embrace, they became two no more
A pair they had become
But we cannot say if a woman or a man they were
They appear sexless
But of two sexes each all the same.”
Metamorphosis of the body and sexuality
The story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus is about Gender transition, where Salmacis, the water nymph, seeks to sleep with Hermaphroditus, to have him as her lover. She asks the Gods that the day when he will leave her, or she leaves him, may never come. The Gods grant her this wish; their bodies join and become one.
In Metamorphosis, Ovid narrates Greek and Roman myths, where all sorts of creatures transform from human form to other forms, to elements of nature or to non-living things. All these metamorphoses in Ovid’s stories are either metaphysical, interventions of the Gods or the work of fate. The metamorphosis happens by the will of nature, Gods or the prayers of the metamorphosed themselves to the Gods to do just that.
Gendered transitions and sexuality in a realist novel
In A Man of Satin, we follow in minute detail the process of transitions of gender and sexuality within the limits of political, social, cultural and artistic frames. Suhaib Ayoub builds the homosexuality of his protagonist Nabil carefully. Nabil becomes tied to political events in Tripoli, to social practice, to current cultural and artistic trends, beside of course the subjective experience of the character. The novel, of course, doesn’t document a metamorphosis from one gender to another, but it offers an apt construction of the formation of homosexuality for a person living in a patriarchal culture holding hegemony over lives, which allows for studying the factors that made together this process of formation.
Bodily and gendered metamorphasis as a choice
In his play, Rituals of Signs and Transformations, Saadallah Wannus builds the theatrical event and process according to a certain rule: all characters in the script are to pass through transformations. He wrote the play from the viewpoint of transformation for all characters, and these were not only sexual transformations, but also metamorphosing power relations, social values and transformations between sanity and insanity, between reason and frenzy.
Wannus’s play makes personal choices out of transformations, or rather presents transformations as the consequences of choices by the characters in the play. Transformation moves from being a destiny to becoming a behavioural process.
Wannus adds to the play a prologue that spells it all out: “The protagonists of this play are subjects facing stormy needs and whims. They are tired from all the choices they have. It will be a fundamental misunderstanding if we don’t understand these characters from the standpoint of being unique, each with intense internal worlds. They are not symbols of higher structures. The protagonists are not symbols, and they do not represent functional institutions or structures. They are individuals, specific selves, with differentiated and very personal modes of suffering.”
Body transformations between restrictions and freedom
The first stop on my journey is to leave behind all of your standards. I must let go of your judgements, descriptions and advice to reach myself. I must go beyond the danger of violation to meet my body, to get to know it. You built me into a vulnerable shamed body-as-flesh that can be violated with a word, a look or a gesture. We became, all, reptiles, munching with open maws at each other in a swamp of lies, façades and chains.
Aljumhuriya*
XwhY
XwhY is a reader of gender and sexuality related-content that represents the problems and challenges faced by women and LGBTQIA+ communities in Syria and the region.
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Since they were united in the embrace, they became two no more
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