Gender diversity in the ancestral narratives: Encountering Sarah & Esau through a hermeneutics of cispicion

The Hermeneutics of Cispicion is an attempt to challenge cisnormative presuppositions that shape and, at times, occlude the variations in gender and sex exhibited by key characters in the ancestral narrative of Genesis 12–50. It draws inspiration from Jack [Judith] Halberstam and Marcella Althaus-Reid, along with trans theorists Julia Serano, Viviane Namaste, and Jay Prosser. This facilitates a critique of Deryn Guest’s work on hetero-suspicion, before showing the importance of reading beyond the presuppositions that hetero-suspicion is most attuned to challenge. These emerge in a cisnormative assumption that any character encountered is likely to be fixed and binary in their gender and sex, and that is consistent with the sex assigned at birth. Yet the case studies demonstrate that preconception is flawed. The initial case study addresses the figure of Sarah, who is the proto-matriarch of the ancestral narratives in Genesis. Masculinities contrast with femininities, and Sarah’s own agency makes the picture of a single consistent gender hard to identify. By closely reading the text, different facets of Sarah’s story emerge to emphasise how much the narrative directs the reader towards a cisnormative reading. However, Chapter 3 shows that it is not the only images of Sarah as feminine woman and mother that remain visible. The subject of the second case study, Esau, is regularly judged to be a hypermasculine character due to his bodily appearance, but repeatedly fails to fulfil expectations related to that appearance. Though often condemned as a poor example of (hyper)masculinity, a cispicious reading identifies a richer and more nuanced figure. Attending to Esau’s actions, one sees his rejection of the gendered expectations as intentional, allowing him to settle more comfortably into his own identity. This project advocates for, and demonstrates the value of, creative, indecently whimsical interpretations that challenge both malestream and feminist gender assumptions.