Breaking Tarot Gender Norms

Do the Pages have to be boys?

And what about the Hanged Man? Could it be the Hanged One?

And the typical view of The Lovers? Any "wiggle room" there?

Is there room in the Tarot for a little variety in how gender is presented, an alternative to traditional representations?

I'm interested in if you find your relationship to Tarot Cards (any deck) consciously or unconsciously tied to gender and how you feel about that.

Hi, I think that we can use Tarots for any situation. For example, I'm a girl, if I drew The Hanged Man as representing myself, of course I cannot see it as a man or The Lovers can fit to any couple, man woman, man man, woman woman. Anything is possible, because Tarots are archetypes, symbols that we can apply to any situation and persons, they're universal.
For what concerns the Court Cards I don't usually consider their gender, because to me they just refer to personalities (when it's clear they're representing a person), for instance once I got the Queen of Cups as showing a male friend of mine, a very caring boy indeed, just like this Queen.

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My understanding is that the Pages have always been intended to be young people of either gender; the fact that they're represented as boys in many decks is in keeping with the hierarchy of the medieval noble classes. In fact, gender is an unreliable predicator for any of the court cards, especially if we see them as characteristics or attitudes of the querent and not as actual people.

There are decks that have the Hanged Man as a woman, or even a figure of indeterminate sex, and some are called "The Hanged One." Personally, I don't get hung up on gender or race in any of the cards because my approach to the archetypes has gone well beyond surface imagery. For anything but the Trumps, the only real value I can see in having figures at all is in the consideration of directionality or "facing." This is probably why the court cards in so many decks are uninspiring for me; they're paying homage to a convention and not thinking too hard about what the figures are supposed to be representing.

Barleywine said:

This is probably why the court cards in so many decks are uninspiring; they're paying homage to a convention and not thinking too hard about what the figures are supposed to be representing.

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I totally agree with this. I find the court cards infinitely more interesting when some effort or thought goes into expressing the meaning or feeling of the card by dressing them a certain way (not necessarily in royal finery) or placing them in a situation or surrounding them with interesting objects or symbols.

I like to see these figures have a bit of blood in their veins if you know what I mean.

Personally the gender of the people depicted in cards is not important to me either. I don't care if the Lovers are the same or different genders. I don't care if the Hierophant is a man or a woman. Love is Love. Justice is Justice. Pages are young people - but really could also represent the beginning of fully developing things. (Barleywine stated it better than I did, LOL)

In many ways I think human figures in tarot could be genderless or, as is the case in some of the cards in the Mary-el deck - BOTH genders.

Urban tarot is another recent deck that jumps to my mind as an example of a deck being more fluid as far as traditional images go. But there are lots of good ones out there.

VGimlet said:

Personally the gender of the people depicted in cards is not important to me either. I don't care if the Lovers are the same or different genders. I don't care if the Hierophant is a man or a woman. Love is Love. Justice is Justice. Pages are young people - but really could also represent the beginning of fully developing things. (Barleywine stated it better than I did, LOL)

In many ways I think human figures in tarot could be genderless or, as is the case in some of the cards in the Mary-el deck - BOTH genders.

Urban tarot is another recent deck that jumps to my mind as an example of a deck being more fluid as far as traditional images go. But there are lots of good ones out there.

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Genderless, yes. Just don't try to talk me into that stick-figure tarot.

There's a thread you might be interested in that has a list of decks with female pages... here. I do tend to read with these, since female pages (aka Princesses or Daughters) are important in Thoth based decks. So in that respect, yes, it's important to me, even though they don't have to refer to women in my readings.

That said, I also have the Manga Tarot (Lo Scarabeo), which switches to the opposite-from-usual gender, so it's still pretty balanced with male and female cards overall, while turning gender on its head.

And I'm looking forward to the upcoming Numinous Tarot, a gender fluid (ie non-binary) deck that "shows the beauty of diversity in the world, from body type, ability, race, to gender identity and expression."

Rose Lalonde said:

And I'm looking forward to the upcoming Numinous Tarot, a gender fluid (ie non-binary) deck that "shows the beauty of diversity in the world, from body type, ability, race, to gender identity and expression."

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Nice - thanks for the link - I like it and will be watching for it. Another example of gender fluidity in decks.

I actually liked the stick-figure tarot (long oop, lol) and it's surprisingly easy to read with.

Gernerally, I don't care about gender or race, but I do notice interesting departures from RWS. The Mucha Tarot has many cards with women where the RWS has men, especially in the Majors (Fool, Magician, Hermit, Devil, Moon) and the Wands (2, 8, 9, 10).

VGimlet said:

Nice - thanks for the link - I like it and will be watching for it. Another example of gender fluidity in decks.

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