16 IntroductionA Note on Gender and Sexuality
It is hardly necessary to state that the Yogi is, essentially by default, male.
Historically, descriptive texts speak of Yogis as male and prescriptive manuals
almost uniformly assume a male body. The female counterpart of the Yogi does
exist of course. She is the yoginī. However, unlike the Yogi who literally embodies
the bridge from human to superhuman, she is almost always more of a mythologi-
cal creature, sometimes with animalistic features, than she is a human woman.^30
Although there is a small but dense body of scholarship on the roles that women
have played (and not played) in yoga practice,^31 the fact remains that until very
recently yoga has been a man’s world. For our purpose, it can be safely stated that
virtually all the images of Yogis that found their way into the West leading up to
the twentieth century were images of men. To be more specific, they tended to be
highly crafted images of racialized men.
The Indian Yogi also finds himself at the center of a complex web of sexual-
ity. In some cases, it is a ritualized sexuality that essentially defines him as a Yogi,
insomuch as certain systems of medieval tantric practice were based on the trans-
mutation of sexual fluids into the elixir of immortality by virtue of which the Yogi
ascended to his superhuman status.^32 More broadly, the Yogi’s presumed celibacy
was often seen to be a contributing factor to his superpowers, insomuch as many
Indian systems of thought associate seminal retention with energetic potency. In
reconciling the Yogi’s sexuality, as Alter has noted, it would be quite convenient
to simply state that “yoga is as Maha Yogi does”^33 and conclude that the Yogi’s
sexuality is easily resolved in the paradox embodied by Śiva, the paradigmatic
divine Yogi and the famous erotic ascetic.^34 In real life, however, human Yogis are
not always as proficient at embodying the perfect tension of the paradox as their
divine model. Indeed, many Indian narratives turn on the character of the licen-
tious Yogi or the superpowerful Yogi tempted by women both human and divine.
Thus, even when not typologized as “sexy” by conventional standards— a distinct
point of divergence between perceptions of pre- modern Yogis and modern- day
yoga practitioners— it appears that, throughout his history, the Yogi has inevi-
tably possessed a sexual potency that both makes him imposing and occasionally
gets him into trouble.
Unsurprisingly, this becomes an issue for turn- of- the- century Euro- American
sensibilities. Robert G. Lee has argued, though referring primarily to East Asians,
that amidst the Victorian calcification of dimorphic gender, “Oriental sexual-
ity was construed as ambiguous, inscrutable, and hermaphroditic; the Oriental
(male or female) was construed as a ‘third sex.’ ”^35 This is to a large extent true
insomuch as Yogi- figures are often portrayed in popular discourse in a rather
paradoxical fashion as being interchangeably feminine and hyper- masculine.