Going Down

Abstract

In “The Dogma of Gender,” Patricia Berry explores the pleasures and restrictions of gender categories, and the comparatively confused “polymorphous” state of the “pre-gender” realm—the eroticism that exists in early childhood before we have learned our gender roles (39). Berry posits that primal sexual feeling comes with an attendant sense of inferiority. Gender is constructed to protect us from this feeling, and the pre-gender realm, from which the feeling arises, is labeled dark, chaotic, and dangerous. And yet, Berry finds that this realm is constantly seeking to “work on” itself, “defining, refining and recombining its pleasures” (51). She concludes that “the polymorphous underrealm has form and logos within it”—that it is not dark and chaotic as we fear but in fact has its own structure, and even its own light (50). She suggests that we cannot remain like Pentheus of The Bacchae, “superior to it all, looking down”: if we don’t dive deep sometimes, we may end up trapped within the “dogma” she speaks of (51). Indeed, diving deep may create the power to set us free.