Psychodynamic universals, cultural particulars in feminist anthropology: Rethinking HUB gender beliefs

This article disputes the view that, systems of gender identity are so extraordinarily variable cross-culturally as to suggest that they are wholly culturally constructed, and, therefore, not open to universal explanation. Instead, we argue, these systems are underlain by a universal unresolved tension between being masculine and being feminine. This tension can best be understood in terms of the psychoanalytic concept of splitting, as developed by Melanie Klein and extended by feminist theorists Nancy Chodorow and Jessica Benjamin. We illustrate our argument with a detailed reanalysis of ethnographic material, published by Anna Meigs, on the Hua of Papua New Guinea. Our analysis challenges anthropologist Henrietta Moore's construal of the Hua case as evidence against the cross-cultural applicability of Western categories of gender identity.