Subject: Gender Confusions
Gender & IconographySubjects, Topics & Types:
- Description
- Study Topics:
--- Generic Iconographic Descriptions
--- Regional Aesthetics & Norms
--- Terminology/Academic Dispute
- Androgynous Gods, Gender Reversed Deities
- Lokeshvara/Tara Confusion (Yongle)
- Female Dominant Meditational Deity Couples
- Others...
Videos:
- Gender Confusions
- Male & Female: How to distinguish male from female figures
Gender confusions and ambiguity general only applies to peaceful and wrathful deities. Ambiguity is a principal characteristic in the description of peaceful and wrathful deities based on the deva and raksha figures of Indian culture. From the 17th century to the present male and female figures can generally be differentiated much more easily by the face and the hairline of the forehead.
Male and female wrathful deities are often only distinguished by hand attributes and body colour. Both male and female are based on the model of an Indian raksha figure and for the most part indistinguishable one from the other.
Maning Mahakala is sometimes in dispute as to gender. Is Maning a he, or a she, both or neither? The meditational deity Vajra Vidarana has at times in the 20th century been described as a female deity.
The greatest difficulty in separating male from female figures of a peaceful variety is with Chinese art predominantly from the Yongle period (early 15th century) through the Qianlong period (18th century). Exposed female breasts were not always culturally excepted and the artist would often compromise leaving the upper torso bare but flattening the breasts to equal the size of the male torso. The Chinese artists did not always adopt the convention of depicting an oval shaped face and forehead for the female and a square shaped forehead for the male.
Jeff Watt 7-2022
(The images below are only a selection of examples from the links above).
