Gender Ambiguity and the Mexica
The thoughts that the Aztecs, AKA the Mexica, normally evoke from my mind are those of war and attributes significant of the male gender. It never occurred to me, however, that these ideals would apply to women as well. War as a central ideology pervaded almost every aspect of their culture and daily lives. One would have to wonder how the status of women was affected in this war-driven society.
When reading the excerpt from Rosemary Joyce, I gleaned a sense of ambiguity surrounding the analysis of gender in the Meseoamerican society. From the facts discussed in class, it seems very clear that certain tasks were assigned to each sex such as women sweeping the hearth. All of these tasks, of course, in some way were significant of elements of war. So, I found this piece to be particularly confusing in what Joyce was trying to address because from my point of view, these people had separate duties and a clearly delineated sense of self.
That being said, there are a few points that I will concede to support Joyce in her general confusion. We did discuss in class the presence of male gods, female gods, and a third gender of gods. So it seems that the dichotomy of sex was not a prevailing theory for these people. To further this statement, Joyce acknowledged points of “severe ambiguity” such as images where secondary sex characteristics are absent and the discovery of women’s tools where they expected to find a man’s (5). Joyce also made a valid point when she argued that the fixed distinction of sex is intrinsic of the modern western tradition and may not have applied to other societies.
Well, maybe I can see what the debate is about then. How can we clearly understand the nature of this society’s culture and their gender roles if we cannot even discern what genders they delineated within their communities? We cannot project our own values of gender onto this ancient society lest we find artifacts of a woman where we expected to find that of a man. I suppose we’d have to clear our head of our prior assumptions of what can and cannot occur as far as ideologies in ancient societies. The struggle then lies in how to analyze the apparent power struggle between men and women in the context of the Mexica if they didn’t believe in the existence of only a man and a woman. Was there a struggle at all? Were women viewed as lesser beings? Or were they just allowed different tasks than whatever other genders existed at the time. It would be difficult for me to comprehend the Mexica men, living in a society so driven by violence and other testosterone-riddled affairs, not placing women in a position of submission. But I suppose we cannot know for certain with regards to this Mesoamerican society.
