day no. 15,579: gender is a reality

"Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear, but the hands of the other were open, with the palms towards him. But I don’t know that any of these attempts has helped me much. At all events what Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and others feminine.  What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees? ... Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse. Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. " -- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

In our minds maleness is the objective reality and masculinity is the subjective projection, but Lewis here proposes that masculinity is the reality and maleness is the projection. Maleness is the shadow cast by masculinity. Because maleness is more immediately obvious and easier to define, it is assumed to be foundational. Yet Lewis argues here that masculinity is less obvious and harder to define because it is more real, not less. Mountains in their majesty are inherently masculine. We do not see their strength and sturdiness and high, treacherous peaks and project masculine essence on to them. Rather their strength, sturdiness, and treacherous lofty danger are produced by their masculinity. In other words, mountains are not masculine because they are tall, rather they are tall because they are masculine.