The Genders of Waves

This short interstitial chapter examines how ocean waves have been described through gendered symbolism in Judeo-Christian thought, Enlightenment philosophy, and natural-science epistemology. These traditions have often rendered waves as witches, mothers, lovers, and agents of flux, deploying imageries of femininity that issue from masculine and patriarchal frames of reference. At the same time, such imagery has always been unstable and may be even more so now, as new feminist, queer, and trans theory reexamines and refigures how “gender” works in human realms and beyond.