REJANG DANCER AND GENDER (EIT)

1. To be able to understand the meaning of the very specific choice

of dancers for temple dance, we have to analyze the groups of
participants from two different perspectives; biological fact and
social fact (the cultural interpretation of gender which judges the
biological fact).
2. In the following paragraphs, I will describe the interpretation of
the female sex from a religious perspective, while using the groups
of rejang dancer as a concrete example.
3. The child. As a pan-cultural symbol, the child represents purity,
innocence, a human being still free of sexual drive and passion.
4. With the child, the heritage of established (traditional) concept
from the past is associated with the potency of future possibilities.
The biological fact is that the children eventually grow up. They
represent an enormous powerful reservoir of life and growth.
5. According to the Balinese world view, the first life period starts
with the birth and last until sexual maturity. During this time, the
children are considered to be ritual pure and still free from human
passion. From the beginning of the second dentition, the children
can be entrusted with special ritual tasks, for which an adult is not
suitable, or rather has to undergo special purifying rituals
beforehand.
6. The Virgin. The state of virginity for both male and female means
that they have had no sexual intercourse. However, in the context
of the demanded hetero sexual continence before marriage, this
social biological fact becomes a symbolically charged social fact.
7. In Bali, women as well as men are not regarded full members of
society until married and after the birth of the first child. In many
 societies, the virginal purity or girls and woman is interpreted as
the symbol of the purity of the groups.
8. Although the unsullied state refers also to the male sex, especially
the female virgin is regarded as a medium between the sphere of
the human and non-human.