Sexual Symbolism, Origins, and the Ogre in Mbeere, Kenya

Abstract

SEXUAL SYMBOLS IN FOLKLORE provide a way to discover how people think about sexuality and sex roles. If we further compare the representations of men and women in verbal art with what people say is proper to do, and with what they actually do, we can appreciate the complexity of symbols. Symbols assume numerous, even contradictory meanings, sometimes discrepant with action. Through symbols, always embedded in a system of meaning, people manipulate ambivalent views of themselves in the elastic play of imagination. Recent discussions of the metaphoric dimension of sex roles have focused on a set of associations between women and nature, men and culture. The ambivalence of the symbol, however, requires interpretation of masculine and feminine terms as capable of expressing distinctive affinities to both culture and nature. Although oppositional schemes provide a useful framework for such discussions, they limit perspectives on the intricate ideas of men and women embodied in expressive behavior because binary oppositions often focus on only particular attributes of symbols.' James J. Fox notes the monotony researchers have felt with dual classifications, which seem to them a poor resort for understanding the richness of symbols.' Accordingly, the present inter-