Reinterpretation of Torah for GLBTQ and Gender Fluidity

Genesis 1:26

ויאמר אלהים, נעשה אדם בצלמנו כדמותנו

Classic Translation: God said, let us make man in Our image according to Our likeness.  

Genesis 1:27

ויברא אלהים את-האדם בצלמו, בצלם אלהים ברא אתו:  זכר ונקבה, ברא אתם

Classic Translation: God created man in His image, in the image of God he created him: Male and Female he created them.

Basically, my idea goes like this.  My thinking has been cultivated in context of today's social and intellectual notions especially common among young people, artists, and thinkers, and also in context of my own blend of mysticism and philosophy (including significant doses of sufism, kabbalah, postmodernism, integral theory, and psilocybin).  It is thus based upon the following axioms:

1) A human is a human.  Thus men and women are only different, not distinct.  They are Human first.

2) "Identity" is at once fluid and essential.  Hence identity of all kinds - national, sexual, religious, ethnic, social - has both empirical and constructed aspects.

3) Divine Nature manifests itself in our reality in dialectically balanced ways, that is, in dichotomies.  e.g. Internal/External, Positive/Negative, Left/Right, Heaven/Hell.  This is innate and extensively evident in ancient culture, language, physics, and philosophy.

Those are my premises.  Now, my line of thinking develops something like this:

1) All humans have within them a mix of feminine and masculine energy to some kind of balance.  This balance may not mean "half and half", but means some kind of equilibrium point for any given individual.  You have butch lesbians, manly men, feminine androgynous, and everything in between.

2) Feminine energy has certain traits, Masculine energy has certain traits.  I differ from postmodern gender theory by arguing that these traits are not "socially constructed", but are part of the natural spiritual makeup of reality.

3) Each human has at once an essential identity which is biological – male, female, or ambiguous – and on top of that has an fluid identity which is psychological and composed of a balanced mix of the two basic essences – predominantly male, predominantly female, or ambiguous.  Perhaps we might add "sexual preference" as a different axis altogether. This means any given human could be: "feminine female", "masculine male", "feminine ambiguous", "ambiguous female", "masculine female", "feminine male", etc.  9 types total.  If we include sexual preference as part of identity: "feminine man who loves women", "masculine ambiguous who loves men".


Graph
Biological (what you "have"): Male, Female, Androgynous
Psychological (what you "feel/express"): Masculine, Feminine, Mixed
Sexual (what you are "attracted to"): Homosexual, Heterosexual, Bi/polysexual


Multiply it out: 3*3*3 = 27 possible identities.

So, HOW in the WORLD do we account for all that from the TORAH, the supposed ROOT of all "conservative", "intolerant" view on gender and sexuality?!

Very simple.

Genesis 1:27

ויברא אלהים את-האדם בצלמו, בצלם אלהים ברא אתו:  זכר ונקבה, ברא אתם

My Translation: God created a Human in God's image, in the image of Godself God created it: Male and Female God created them.

-the original human is just "human", not "man" or "woman"

-and finally, the best of all:  "male and female God created them".




male AND female.

thus


each of one us

is


male

AND

female


!


:)






p.s.


So actually, the way you would interpret is as follows: this text can be interpreted in two ways.  The first way, each human is "either" male or female.  The second way, each human is to some extent "both" male and female.  Remember, my axioms were that identity is both essential and fluid.  Hence, these two interpretations are both correct!  Which is an even better layered, high-level way of looking at the text, which is at least on my view, Divine, Infinite, and hence flexible to multiple and complex meanings!


זכר     נקבה
female    male
 阴              阳
ying       yang
jamal      jalal


http://www.scribd.com/doc/21254123/Al-Jalal-Wa-Al-Jamal-Ibnu-Arabi-English
http://anab-whitehouse.blogspot.com/2006/12/jamaljalal.html
http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Islam-Sourcebook-Relationships-Islamic/dp/0791409147