Ritual Forms of Gender Identification in Children

Abstract

Among the eastern Slavs, as among many peoples, a child is regarded as something of a genderless being until a certain age. Gender-neutral terms (such as ditia relative to infants), or collective ones (such as meloct'[small change], tvarnia[stuff], blaznota[blessed bunch], and others) were used relative to infants. Indicating the uncompletedness of their status is, for example, the Russian custom of calling an infant a boy, regardless of its gender, as recorded by D. K. Zelenin.1 Specific local traditions (often quite different from one another) have established their own timetables for when it becomes necessary to give the existing"natural" attributes of gender the qualitatively new status of"cultural" attributes. Until such a transformation took place, natural gender differences had no meaning. Only with the help of special ritual operations did they acquire"true" significance and receive a distinctive sanctioning of their existence.