Gender fluidity is ancient history, British Museum says

THE British Museum will open an exhibition tomorrow examining “feminine power” which shows debates over the definition of womanhood can be traced back six millennia.

Belinda Crerar, the exhibition’s curator, told The Daily Telegraph that it would remind visitors that ideas about gender fluidity “aren’t as new as they might seem”.

Feminine power: the Divine to the Demonic, from May 19 to Sept 25, “celebrates the power and diversity of the divine female in world culture and belief, from the ancient world to today”, according to the museum. It includes objects that are thousands of years old through to contemporary art and spans multiple cultures and continents.

Among the figures examined are Inanna, or Ishtar, a goddess worshipped in ancient Mesopotamia from at least 4000 BC, who is described in texts as both male and female.

Also featured is the Buddhist bodhisattva, an enlightened being that remains on earth to help others attain enlightenment – Avalokiteshvara. In South Asia, Avalokiteshvara is mostly depicted as a male figure, but in East Asia, he evolved into Guanyin and is usually portrayed as female.

Both figures represent the bodhisattva of compassion and, as Dr Crerar points out, “they are intrinsically viewed as genderless and able to manifest in any form”.

“Obviously today, issues of gender identity and trans identity are becoming very alive in cultural conversation,” she told The Telegraph. “So we’re trying to show that these ideas have a long history within spiritual traditions. These ideas aren’t as new as they might seem.”