emmanuel reynaud holy virility the social construction of masculinity

The first version presents the creation of a human being which
could just as easily he male as female: «So God created man in
his own image; in the image of God he created him: male and
female he created them» (Genesis Ι:27; all quotations from the
Bible are taken from the New English Bible, 1970.) Some
commentators have interpreted this to mean that the 'first'
human being was androgynous, but the plural pronoun in 'He
created them' dispels any confusion: it is certainly about human
beings as they actually are, that is, comprising a male sex and a
female sex. The god himself is in their image and has nothing to
do with a Fathet-Creator. However, if the differentiation
according to sex criteria does not imply any hierarchy here, it is
still made, and points to what is to follow. Indeed, why
differentiate if it is not to form a hierarchy?
The second version states matters clearly. Delivered by a
different narrator, it consists of a fresh account: this time the
'first' human being is created from 'the dust of the ground' (ΙΙ:7)
and, as we discover a few verses later, is no longer made up of
a male and female; now he is alone. «Then the Lord God said: It
is not good for the man to be alone. I will provide a partner for
him.»(ΙΙ: 18) This description attempts to suggest a poor male
lost in the wilderness without his traditional submissive and
devoted companion. But if we do not allow the author to
bamboozle us but follow the text, we see that this first 'man' is
neither man nor woman, 'he' represents the human being not
divided into sexes. Moreover, the allusion to the absence of a
partner leads up to the need for this division which is soon
presented quite specifically:
«And so the Lord God put the man into a trance, and while
he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh over
the place. The Lord God then built up the rib, which he had
taken out of the man, into a woman. He brought her to the
man and said: ’Now this at last ―bone from my bones,
flesh from my flesh!― this should be called woman, for
from man was this taken.’ »(ΙΙ: 21-23)
This creation could appear at first to be only that of 'woman';
but on closer examination, reading between the lines, it is also
the creation of 'man'. In fact, the way the separation is
described, if the woman is only a 'rib' of a human, man himself
is only a human missing a 'rib'. This new understanding of the
text sheds a different light on the division of the sexes.
[11 / Introduction]
The creation of 'man' and of ’woman’ appears to be the result of
an unequal but complementary mutilation of the human being
depending on his or her sex: minus a 'rib' for one of them,
minus everything except a 'rib' for the other. The individual with
either the smaller or greater part of him or herself thus
amputated, is subsequently supposed to retrieve his or her
integrity thanks to complementarity: «That is why a man leaves
his father and mother and is united to his wife, and the two
become one flesh». (ΙΙ:24) The text comes the full circle: man