Just a Brief Reference to Hyena Gender
Thursday, September 24, 2026 - 11:00
Blog entry form is behaving oddly. Good thing today's post is brief and not particularly relevant.
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Full citation:
DeVun, Leah. 2020. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-2311-9551-5
Chapter 3: The Hyena’s Unclean Sex—Beasts, Bestiaries, and Jewish Communities
This chapter looks at depictions in bestiaries of supposedly non-binary animals like the hyena, and how their symbolism was used to bolster anti-Jewish sentiment in the 12th and 13th centuries. As this is tangential to the themes I’m interested in, I won’t summarize it in detail, but there is a motif of comparing men who become “womanized” to the sexually ambiguous hyena, invoking concepts of “uncleanness.”
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