draw parallels between the two deities, depicting Apollo as the masculine force and Dionysus as the feminine force. Notably among the ranks of those scholars who have endeavored to transpose the image of the feminine onto Dionysus, was Bachofen, a contemporary of Nietzsche himself. Bachofen associates Dionysus with potent male sexuality inseparable from the earth, and thus with the first (tellurian) and the second (which he designates matriarchal) stages of existence because written and iconographical evidence links the god to woman: “The phallic god [Dionysus] cannot be thought of separately from feminine materiality.”
Though at first this overlaying of gender onto the two male gods may seem absurd, it is no more so than some of the dualistic notions that have been previously expressed in modern discussions of gender. The word itself, gender, is firstly by way of explanation, an artificial construct. The gender of a body may or may not be an exact match for the sex of a body. Gender can therefore be explained as an expression of sexuality, rather than that of the biological sex. Given the binary nature of the sexes, it is completely erroneous to approach the topic of sex or gender without adopting a dualistic approach to doing so. Such ideas of duality have their ideological roots as far back as 1974 when Ortner wrote “Is female to nature what male is to culture?” The context of this work was based on an assumption that the category female is metaphorically connected to nature while that of male is connected to culture. The logic of this notion rests on the basis that women as reproducers remain bound to nature, while men, who cannot reproduce, produce and are therefore bound to culture. In terms of taking the