Clinical Lycanthropy and Gender Order: A Personal Essay

Prompt: Discuss the gender order in which you grew up, referring to two or three of the "key concepts" listed. Consider both ideological and material factors.
Key concepts: Diversity; Gender; Biological sex; The sex/gender distinction; The West; Intersectionality; Dualism/binary; Patriarchy; Capitalism; Colonialism; Private realm and public realm; Productive labour and reproductive Labour

Mental health is a major factor in my gender and gender order. Gender encompasses a broad range of definitions, from a personal identity to roles and behaviours^[1]; "gender order" refers to the ideas and subsequent behaviours about gender that a society enforces^[2]. I have what is called clinical lycanthropy, which is a delusion in which the person believes they are an animal, or are transforming into one^[3]. Delusions are false, unsupported beliefs that cannot be swayed, no matter how strange they may be or how much evidence there is to the contrary^[4]. For me, my clinical lycanthropy presents as the belief that I am a dog, physically and mentally. My clinical lycanthropy has been significant and present long enough for it to influence, and in a sense become, the gender order I grew up under.

The intersection between being a dog and gender is interesting, because, at least by human standards and expectations, dogs don't have genders. They have no gender order. I could, and do, apply a lot of human words about gender to myself, but they are only human constructs, and don't hold any currency for dogs. When a dog meets another dog, they're not conceptualised as "male" or "female" or "other", they're "threat" or "not a threat" and "can mate with" or "cannot mate with", in that order. As a dog assigned human at birth, with a body others interact with as human, when I meet a human I conceptualise them as "threat" or "not a threat" and then as gendered, sexed, and all the other meaningful and meaningless boxes humans put themselves and others in. Dogs don't care or even know about any of these human concepts. Dogs don't divide themselves by breed or size or the colour of their coat. Gender is, after all, a social construct, not something inherent to anyone regardless of their species. The sex/gender distinction, which refers to the separation of biological sex and gender^[5], does not exist in the canine world either, because there is no concept of gender. Of course, dogs have biological sexes, but again that only is important insofar as potential threat status and potential mate status. Masculinity and femininity are not concepts that exist. Incidentally, in dog breeder organisations, their standards specify that female dogs appear feminine and male dogs are masculine. For example, the American Kennel Club breed standard for Samoyeds state that "Males should be masculine in appearance and deportment without unwarranted aggressiveness; bitches feminine without weakness of structure or apparent softness of temperament^[6]." It's interesting how gender concepts are so ingrained that we project them onto animals, including the concepts of femininity as soft and masculinity as aggressive. We even gender material items for dogs, like collars and harnesses. We could, and often do, assign human behaviours and concepts to animals. For example, we could say that a male wolf providing for his mate while she looks after their puppies is a division of productive and reproductive labour. Productive labour is any work that is valued and rewarded by capitalism, while reproductive labour is work centred around the private realm (e.g., housework, child rearing, caregiver roles)^[7]. Or we could say that female spotted hyenas being pack leaders is an example of matriarchy, the leadership by women. But I think that would be redundant and even wrong - wolves don't have any idea of capitalist value systems, or hyenas of the idea of "woman". We must try not to anthropomorphise the nonhuman.

Another aspect to my clinical lycanthropy is that I am a werewolf. Werewolves, gender and queerness have been discussed in academia, and have been seen as analogies for everything from transfeminine and transmasculine genders^[8] to menstruation ("that time of the month!")^[9]. (In regards to this latter analogy, Flaherty presents the female werewolf protagonist of the film Ginger Snaps as inherently Other, "for as a menstruating female she has always been [a] monster^[10].") Giacopasi asserts that werewolves are inherently queer: "an unusual, unfamiliar, and ambiguous creature that does not conform to the laws of beasts or men^[11]". Werewolves draw the abstract concept of "queer" into the physical realm, by presenting the binary world of man/beast with a liminal, hybrid being. We could even consider the werewolf to be a nonbinary figure. Werewolves are often presented as an entirely patriarchal concept: a man submits to his inner animal and becomes a literal beast, who is ruled by his animalistic desires to dominate - to kill and eat and to have (heterosexual) sex^[12]. On the other hand, feminist takes on werewolves often subvert the patriarchal tropes and are often written as a female werewolf getting revenge by killing the men who have wronged her (usually by sexually harassing her), though there is still the association with violence and animality^[13]. Werewolves, therefore, are both symbols of masculinity and of femininity. For my personal experience of gender order, myself as a werewolf is not linked to any particular gendered experience, but it does tie into it. For example, my father as a young man was hairy and had a tendency to get into physical fights, which lead to him getting the nickname "Wolf Man". Growing up with stories of his misdemeanours as Wolf Man sheds a stereotypically masculine light (physically violent, rugged, hairy) on my identity as a werewolf.

In this essay I have discussed my identity as a dog and a werewolf, and how both of those have their own gender order, or lack of. I have also discussed how they relate to the human gender order, and the projection of human traits (such as gender) onto nonhuman subjects. Dogs exist outside of human concepts of gender and society's gender order, though they are subject to projected gender ideals. When I consider animals' lack of gender order, and especially how dogs relate to other dogs versus how humans relate to other humans, I see a clear discrepancy. Dogs, and all animals, have no sense of gender other than what humans project upon them. Therefore, they have no gender order, and while they may have some sex-based behaviours, these are prone to anthropomorphisation. The other aspect of my clinical lycanthropy, being a werewolf, is much more subject to human interpretations, as werewolves are a human invention. Werewolves have their own sense of gender order, or more realistically, have different gendered interpretations. They are associated with masculine gender orders and feminine, depending on the interpreter: body hair, animalistic desires, violence, and the association with a (lunar) cycle can be presented as either feminine or masculine. Werewolves are also nonbinary, as hybrids who are neither man nor beast. My self as a werewolf influences the gender order I grew up in by the gendered connotations of werewolf folklore, and intersects with my self as a dog without a gender order, though with a human-projected one.

Footnotes

1. Mari Mikkola, 'Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/feminism-gender/.
2. Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelean, 'Gender Order', Key Concepts in Gender Studies, 2017, p. 60.
3. Sélim Benjamin Guessom et al., 'Clinical Lycanthropy, Neurobiology, Culture: A Systematic Review', Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2021, p. 2.
4. Lisa Bortolotti, 'Delusion', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/delusion/.
5. Mikkola, 'Feminist Perspectives'.
6. American Kennel Club, Official Standard of the Samoyed, 1993, https://images.akc.org/pdf/breeds/standards/Samoyed.pdf.
7. Ann Ferguson, Rosemary Hennessy, Mechthild Nagel, 'Feminist Perspectives on Work and Class', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-class/.
8. Caitlin B. Giacopasi, 'The Werewolf Pride Movement: A Step Back From Queer Medieval Tradition', Steton Hall University Theses, 2011, https://scholarship.shu.edu/theses/4/, p. 15.
9. Jazmina Cininas, 'Beware the Full Moon: Female Werewolves and 'That Time of the Month'', https://www.academia.edu/1241594/Beware_the_Full_Moon_female_werewolves_and_that_time_of_the_month, p. 2.
10. Erin M. Flaherty, 'Howling (and Bleeding) at the Moon: Menstruation, Monstrosity and the Double in the Ginger Snaps Werewolf Trilogy', Pforzheimer Honors College, Pace University, 2008, https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/honorscollege_theses/67/, p. 2.
11. Giacopasi, 'The Werewolf Pride Movement', p. 1.
12. Phillip A. Bernhardt-House, 'The Werewolf as Queer, the Queer as Werewolf, and Queer Werewolves', in Queering the Non/Human, eds. Noreen Griffney and Myra J. Hird, 2008, p. 163.
13. Bernhardt-House, 'The Werewolf as Queer', p. 171.

References

American Kennel Club, Official Standard of the Samoyed, 1993, https://images.akc.org/pdf/breeds/standards/Samoyed.pdf.

Bernhardt-House, Philip A., 'The Werewolf as Queer, the Queer as Werewolf, and Queer Werewolves', in Queering the Non/Human, eds. Noreen Griffney and Myra J. Hird, 2008, pp. 159-183.

Bortolotti, Lisa, 'Delusion', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/delusion/.

Cininas, Jazmina, 'Beware the Full Moon: Female Werewolves and 'That Time of the Month'', https://www.academia.edu/1241594/Beware_the_Full_Moon_female_werewolves_and_that_time_of_the_month.

Ferguson, Ann, Hennessy, Rosemary, Nagel, Mechthild, 'Feminist Perspectives on Work and Class', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-class/.

Flaherty, Erin M., 'Howling (and Bleeding) at the Moon: Menstruation, Monstrosity and the Double in the Ginger Snaps Werewolf Trilogy', Pforzheimer Honors College, Pace University, 2008, https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/honorscollege_theses/67/.

Giacopasi, Caitlin B., 'The Werewolf Pride Movement: A Step Back From Queer Medieval Tradition', Steton Hall University Theses, 2011, https://scholarship.shu.edu/theses/4/.

Guessom, Sélim Benjamin, Benoit, Laelia, Minassian, Sevan, Mallet, Jasmina, and Moro, Marie Rose, 'Clinical Lycanthropy, Neurobiology, Culture: A Systematic Review', Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2021, pp. 1-13.

Mikkola, Mari, 'Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/feminism-gender/.

Pilcher, Jane and Whelean, Imelda, 'Gender Order', Key Concepts in Gender Studies, 2017, pp. 60-62.

For Gender Studies, 2022. Grade: 64/100 | Uploaded May 2022