Gender is a complexity whose totality is permanently deferred, never fully what it is at any given juncture in time. An open coalition then, will affirm identities that are alternately instituted and relinquished according to the purposes at hand, it will be an open assemblage that permits multiple convergences and divergences without obedience to a normative telos of definitional closure

The Virahini is portrayed as the desiring subject and God as the desired object. The devotee longs for the divine gaze and seeks to enclose it, to ‘trap’ it to attain salvation. However, the dynamics of the gaze within the space of Viraha Bhakti is complex: the gaze of the devotee could be singular but that of God forms a matrix – for the beloved (in the case of Krishna) equally divides his attention amongst all his devotees ( the Gopis) and like the earthly husband is polygamous. In this polygamous framework, how do these Bhakti poets depict their longing to merge with God? Does Mira articulate her desire in explicitly feminine terms than Kabir who only dons a female voice?

O Ascetic, think hard
And figure it out:
Is it a male or female?

Introduction:
 
If they see
Breasts and long hair coming
They call it woman,
If beard and whiskers,
They call it man:
But look the self that hovers
In between
Is neither man
nor woman
O Ramanatha.