Third gender
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Social anthropology Cultural anthropology |
Third gender is a concept in which individuals are categorized, either by themselves or by society, as neither a man or woman. It is also a social category present in
The state of personally identifying as, or being identified by society as, a man, a woman, or other is usually also defined by the individual's gender identity and gender role in the particular culture in which they live.
Most cultures use a
While found in a number of non-Western cultures, concepts of "third", "fourth", and "fifth" gender roles are still somewhat new to mainstream Western culture and conceptual thought.[12] The concept is most likely to be embraced in the modern LGBT or queer subcultures.[citation needed] While mainstream Western scholars—notably anthropologists who have tried to write about the South Asian hijras or the Native American "gender variant" and two-spirit people—have often sought to understand the term "third gender" solely in the language of the modern LGBT community, other scholars—especially Indigenous scholars—stress that mainstream scholars' lack of cultural understanding and context has led to widespread misrepresentation of the people these scholars place in the third gender category, as well as misrepresentations of the cultures in question, including whether or not this concept actually applies to these cultures at all.[13][14][15][16]
Sex and gender
Since at least the 1970s, anthropologists have described gender categories in some cultures which they could not adequately explain using a two-gender framework.[17][pages needed] At the same time, feminists began to draw a distinction between (biological) sex and (social/psychological) gender.[18]
Anthropologist Michael G. Peletz believes our notions of different types of genders (including the attitudes toward the third gender) deeply affect our lives and reflect our values in society. In Peletz' book, "Gender, Sexuality, and Body Politics in Modern Asia", he describes:[19][pages needed]
For our purposes, the term "gender" designates the cultural categories, symbols, meanings, practices, and institutionalized arrangements bearing on at least five sets of phenomena: (1) females and femininity; (2) males and masculinity; (3) Androgynes, who are partly male and partly female in appearance or of indeterminate sex/gender, as well as intersexed individuals, also known as hermaphrodites, who to one or another degree may have both male and female sexual organs or characteristics; (4) transgender people, who engage in practices that transgress or transcend normative boundaries and are thus by definition "transgressively gendered"; and (5) neutered or unsexed/ungendered individuals such as eunuchs.
Transgender people and third gender
Gender may be recognized and organized differently in different cultures. In some non-Western cultures, gender may not be seen as binary, or people may be seen as being able to cross freely between male and female, or to exist in a state that is in-between, or neither. In some cultures, being third gender may be associated with the gift of being able to mediate between the world of the spirits and the world of humans.For cultures with these spiritual beliefs, it is generally seen as a positive thing, though some third gender people have also been accused of
The Indigenous
In some indigenous communities in Africa[vague], a woman can be recognized as a "female husband" who enjoys all the privileges of men and is recognized as such, but whose femaleness, while not openly acknowledged, is not forgotten either.[20]
The hijras of South Asia are one of the most recognized groups of third gender people. Some western commentators (Hines and Sanger) have theorized that this could be a result of the Hindu belief in reincarnation, in which gender, sex, and even species can change from lifetime to lifetime, perhaps allowing for a more fluid interpretation. There are other cultures in which the third gender is seen as an intermediate state of being rather than as a movement from one conventional sex to the other.[21]
In a study of people in the United States who thought themselves to be members of a third gender, Ingrid M. Sell found that they typically felt different from the age of 5.[22] Because of both peer and parental pressure, those growing up with the most ambiguous appearances had the most troubled childhoods and difficulties later in life. Sell also discovered similarities between the third genders of the East and those of the West. Nearly half of those interviewed were healers or in the medical profession. Many of them, again like their Eastern counterparts, were artistic, and several were able to make a living from their artistic abilities. The capacity to mediate between men and women was a common skill, and third genders were oftentimes thought to possess an unusually wide perspective and the ability to understand both sides.[22] A notable result of Sell's study is that 93% of the third genders interviewed, again like their Eastern counterparts, reported "paranormal"-type abilities.[23]
In recent years, some Western societies have begun to recognize non-binary or genderqueer identities. Some years after Alex MacFarlane, Australian Norrie May-Welby was recognized as having unspecified status.[25] In 2016, an Oregon circuit court ruled that a resident, Elisa Rae Shupe, could legally change gender to non-binary.[26]
The Open Society Foundations published a report, License to Be Yourself in May 2014, documenting "some of the world's most progressive and rights-based laws and policies that enable trans people to change their gender identity on official documents".[27] The report comments on the recognition of third classifications, stating:
From a rights-based perspective, third sex/gender options should be voluntary, providing trans people with a third choice about how to define their gender identity. Those identifying as a third sex/gender should have the same rights as those identifying as male or female.
The document also quotes
People tend to identify a third sex with freedom from the gender binary, but that is not necessarily the case. If only trans and/or intersex people can access that third category, or if they are compulsively assigned to a third sex, then the gender binary gets stronger, not weaker.
The report concludes that two or three options are insufficient: "A more inclusive approach would be to increase options for people to self-define their sex and gender identity."[27]
Third gender and sexual orientation
Before the
One such term,
According to some scholars, the West is trying to reinterpret and redefine ancient third-gender identities to fit the Western concept of
A Samoan fa'afafine said, "But I would like to pursue a master's degree with a paper on homosexuality from a Samoan perspective that would be written for educational purposes because I believe some of the stuff that has been written about us is quite wrong."[36][unreliable source?]
In How to become a Berdache: Toward a unified analysis of gender diversity, Will Roscoe, using an anthropological term Indigenous people have always found offensive,
According to Towle and Morgan:
Ethnographic examples [of ‘third genders’] can come from distinct societies located in Thailand, Polynesia, Melanesia, Native America, western Africa, and elsewhere and from any point in history, from Ancient Greece to sixteenth-century England to contemporary North America. Popular authors routinely simplify their descriptions, ignoring...or conflating dimensions that seem to them extraneous, incomprehensible, or ill-suited to the images they want to convey (484).[39]
Western scholars often do not make a distinction between people of the third gender and males; they are often lumped together. The scholars usually use gender roles as a way to explain sexual relations between the third gender and males. For example, when analyzing the non-normative sex gender categories in Theravada Buddhism, Peter A. Jackson says it appears that within early Buddhist communities, men who engaged in receptive anal sex were seen as feminized and were thought to be hermaphrodites. In contrast, men who engaged in oral sex were not seen as crossing sex/gender boundaries, but rather as engaging in abnormal sexual practices without threatening their masculine gendered existence.[40]
Some writers suggest that a third gender emerged around 1700 in England: the male
Throughout much of the twentieth century, the term "third sex" was a common descriptor for homosexuals and gender nonconformists, but after the
Third gender and feminism
feminists – both by their opponents[45] and sometimes by feminists themselves. In the 1899 novel Das dritte Geschlecht (The Third Sex) by Ernst von Wolzogen, feminists are portrayed as "neuters" with external female characteristics accompanied by a crippled male psyche .
Legal recognitionSeveral countries have adopted laws to accommodate non-binary gender identities.[citation needed] As of 2019, the state of California the United States non-binary has become an option for individuals to select the sex category on their driver's license, birth certificates, and identity cards; this all became possible with the passing of California's Gender Recognition Act (SB 179).[46] Modern societies without legal recognitionThe following gender categories have also been described as a third gender: Africa
Asia-Pacific
Europe
Latin America and the Caribbeanstreet prostitutes at a slum in Buenos Aires Province , 1989.
Middle EastNorth American indigenous culturesTwo-Spirit is a modern third-gender traditions among the over 500 living Native American communities being homogenized and misrepresented under English-language names, and widely misinterpreted by both non-Native and disconnected descendants alike.[14] "[Two-Spirit] implies that the individual is both male and female and that these aspects are intertwined within them. The term moves away from traditional Native American/First Nations cultural identities and meanings of sexuality and gender variance. It does not take into account the terms and meanings from individual nations and tribes. ... Although two-spirit implies to some a spiritual nature, that one holds the spirit of two, both male and female, traditional Native Americans/First Nations peoples view this as a Western concept."[15][16]
While some have found the new term two-spirit a useful tool for intertribal organizing, it is not based in the traditional terms, and has not met with acceptance by more traditional communities;[16][15] the tribes who have traditional ceremonial roles for gender-variant people use names in their own languages, and have generally rejected this "binary" neologism as "Western".[15][70] HistoryArabiaAbbasid caliphate, the word itself was used as a descriptor for men employed as dancers, musicians, or comedians.[74]
Mukhannathun existed in gay sexual practices, an association that has persisted into the modern day.[75] Khanith is a vernacular Arabic term used in some parts of the Arabian Peninsula to denote the gender role ascribed to males and occasionally intersex people who function sexually, and in some ways socially, as women. The term is closely related to the word mukhannath.
Early Islamic literature rarely comments upon the habits of the mukhannathun. It seems there may have been some variance in how "effeminate" they were, though there are indications that some adopted aspects of feminine dress or at least ornamentation. Some thirteenth and fourteenth-century scholars like al-Nawawi and al-Kirmani classified mukhannathun into two groups: those whose feminine traits seem unchangeable, despite the person's best efforts to stop them, and those whose traits are changeable but refuse to stop. Islamic scholars like Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani stated that all mukhannathun must make an effort to cease their feminine behavior, but if this proved impossible, they were not worthy of punishment. Those who made no effort to become less "effeminate", or seemed to "take pleasure in (his effeminacy)", were worthy of blame. By this era, mukhannath had developed its association with homosexuality, and Badr al-Din al-Ayni saw homosexuality as "a more heinous extension of takhannuth", or effeminate behavior.[71][76] One particularly prominent mukhannath with the Muslim instead. His main association with the label seems to come from his profession, as music was mainly performed by women in Arab societies.[77][78]
EgyptInscribed pottery shards from the better source needed] Sḫt is often translated as "eunuch", although there is little evidence that such individuals were castrated.[80][unreliable source? ]
Indic cultureArdhanarisvara, with a dual male and female nature. Typically, Ardhanarisvara's right side is male and left side female. This sculpture is from the Elephanta Caves near Mumbai .References to a third sex can be found throughout the texts of India's religious traditions like prakrti. These are also spelled out in the Kama Sutra (c. 4th century AD) and elsewhere as pums-prakrti (male-nature), stri-prakrti (female-nature), and tritiya-prakrti (third-nature).[83] Texts suggest that third sex individuals were well known in premodern India and included male-bodied or female-bodied[84] people as well as intersex people, and that they can often be recognised from childhood.
A third sex is discussed in ancient Manu Smriti (c. 200 BC–200 AD) explains the biological origins of the three sexes:
Indian linguist kinnars (neuter).
The two great epic poems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata,[87][88] indicates the existence of a third gender in ancient Indic society. Some versions of Ramayana tell that in one part of the story, the hero Rama heads into exile in the forest. Halfway there, he discovers that most of the people of his hometown Ayodhya were following him. He told them, "Men and women, turn back", and with that, those who were "neither men nor women" did not know what to do, so they stayed there. When Rama returned from exile years later, he discovered them still there and blessed them, saying that there will be a day when they, too, will have a share in ruling the world.[89][90][91][88]
In the Buddhist Buddha himself, there are four main sex/gender categories: males, females, ubhatobyañjanaka (people of a dual sexual nature) and paṇḍaka (people of non-normative sexual natures, perhaps originally denoting a deficiency in male sexual capacity).[82] As the Vinaya tradition developed, the term paṇḍaka came to refer to a broad third sex category which encompassed intersex, male and female-bodied people with physical or behavioural attributes that were considered inconsistent with the natural characteristics of man and woman.[92]
IsraelIn old Israel[when?] there were:
Mediterranean culture In Plato's Symposium, written around the 4th century BC, Aristophanes relates a creation myth involving three original sexes: female, male and androgynous. They are split in half by Zeus, producing four different contemporary sex/gender types which seek to be reunited with their lost other half; in this account, the modern heterosexual man and woman descend from the original androgynous sex. The myth of Hermaphroditus involves heterosexual lovers merging into their primordial androgynous sex.[95][non-primary source needed] Other creation myths around the world share a belief in three original sexes, such as those from northern Thailand.[96] Many have interpreted the " will, on the grounds that he had voluntarily mutilated himself (amputatis sui ipsius) and was neither a woman or a man (neque virorum neque mulierum numero) according to Valerius Maximus. Several scholars have argued that the eunuchs in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament were understood in their time to belong to a third gender, rather than the more recent interpretations of a kind of emasculated man, or a metaphor for chastity.[98] The early Christian theologian, Tertullian, wrote that Jesus himself was a eunuch (c. 200 AD).[99] Tertullian also noted the existence of a third sex (tertium sexus) among heathens: "a third race in sex... made of male and female in one." He may have been referring to the Galli, "eunuch" devotees of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, who were described as belonging to a third sex by several Roman writers.[100]
Mesopotamia In cuneiform names of ur.sal ("dog/man-woman") and kur.gar.ra (also described as a man-woman).[104] Modern scholars, struggling to describe them using contemporary sex/gender categories, have variously described them as "living as women", or used descriptors such as hermaphrodites, eunuchs, homosexuals, transvestites, effeminate males and a range of other terms and phrases.[105]
The AmericasMesoamericaThe ancient Maya civilization may have recognised a third gender, according to historian Matthew Looper. Looper notes the androgynous Maize Deity and masculine Moon goddess of Maya mythology, and iconography and inscriptions where rulers embody or impersonate these deities. He suggests that a Mayan third gender might also have included individuals with special roles such as healers or diviners.[106] Anthropologist and archaeologist Miranda Stockett notes that several writers have felt the need to move beyond a two-gender framework when discussing prehispanic cultures across Aztec and Maya peoples understood "more than two kinds of bodies and more than two kinds of gender." Anthropologist Rosemary Joyce agrees, writing that "gender was a fluid potential, not a fixed category before the Spaniards came to Mesoamerica. Childhood training and ritual shaped, but did not set, adult gender, which could encompass third genders and alternative sexualities as well as "male" and "female." At the height of the Classic period, Maya rulers presented themselves as embodying the entire range of gender possibilities, from the male through the female, by wearing blended costumes and playing male and female roles in state ceremonies." Joyce notes that many figures of Mesoamerican art are depicted with male genitalia and female breasts, while she suggests that other figures in which chests and waists are exposed but no sexual characteristics (primary or secondary) are marked may represent a third sex, ambiguous gender, or androgyny.[108]
IncaAndean Studies scholar Michael Horswell writes that third-gendered ritual attendants to chuqui chinchay, a Inca empire in his 1995 book "Sex and Conquest":
Indigenous North AmericansWith over 500 surviving Indigenous North American cultures, attitudes about sex and gender are diverse. Historically, some communities have had social or spiritual roles for people who in some way may manifest a third-gender, or another gender-variant way of being, at least some of the time, by their particular culture's standards. Some of these ways continue today, while others have died out due to colonialism. Some communities and individuals have adopted the pan-Indian neologism Two-spirit as a way of honoring contemporary figures and organizing intertribally.[15][14][16]
InuitInuit religion states that one of the first angakkuq was a third gender being known as Itijjuaq who discovered the first amulet.[111] Historically, Netsilik Inuit used the word kipijuituq for a similar concept.[115]
Art, literature, and media.jpg) In David Lindsay's 1920 novel A Voyage to Arcturus there is a type of being called phaen, a third gender which is attracted neither to men nor women but to "Faceny" (their name for Shaping or Crystalman, the Demiurge). The appropriate pronouns are ae and aer.[116] Mikaël, a 1924 film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, was also released as Chained: The Story of the Third Sex in the USA.[117] Literary critic Michael Maiwald identifies a "third-sex ideal" in one of the first African-American bestsellers, Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928).[118] Djuna Barnes' 1936 novel Nightwood touches on the "third sex" in the chapter Go Down, Matthew (148).[119] Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five identifies seven human sexes (not genders) in the fourth dimension required for reproduction including gay men, women over 65, and infants who died before their first birthday. The Tralfamadorian race has five sexes.[120][non-primary source needed] In In Knights of Sidonia (2014–2015), Izana Shinatose belongs to a new, nonbinary third gender that originated during the hundreds of years of human emigration into space, as first shown in the episode "Commencement."[122] Izana later turns into a girl after falling in love with Nagate Tanasake. SpiritualityIn Hinduism, Ardhnarishwara, i.e. half-male and half-female form.[123] Shiva's symbol, which is today known as Shivalinga, actually comprises a combination of a 'Yoni' (vagina) and a 'Lingam' (phallus).[124]
At the turn of the common era, male cults devoted to a goddess that flourished throughout the broad region extending from the Mediterranean to South Asia. While galli were missionizing the Roman Empire, kalū, kurgarrū, and assinnu continued to carry out ancient rites in the temples of Mesopotamia, and the third-gender predecessors of the hijra were clearly evident. It should also be mentioned of the eunuch priests of Artemis at Ephesus; the western Semitic qedeshim, the male "temple prostitutes" known from the Hebrew Bible and Ugaritic texts of the late second millennium; and the keleb, priests of Astarte at Kition and elsewhere. Beyond India, modern ethnographic literature documents gender-variant shaman-priests throughout Southeast Asia, Borneo, and Sulawesi. All these roles share the traits of devotion to a goddess, gender transgression and receptive anal sex, ecstatic ritual techniques (for healing, in the case of kalū and Mesopotamian priests, and fertility in the case of hijra), and actual (or symbolic) castration. Most, at some point in their history, were based in temples and, therefore, part of the religious-economic administration of their respective city-states.[125]
The Islamic conception of the "perfect human being" (al-Insān al-Kāmil) is, as evident from the writings of ibn Arabi, genderless, and both women and men could equally attain this stage of spiritual development,[126] which is further reflected in genderless form of the term kamāl.[127] CriticismScholars have made several criticisms of the third gender concept. These critiques regard primarily Western scholars' use of the concept to understand gender in other cultures in an ethnocentric way. Third gender has also been criticized as a reductionist "junk drawer" used for all identities beyond the Western gender binary, ignoring the nuance of various identities, histories, and practices in other cultures to situate them in a Western understanding.[citation needed] As Towle and Morgan write, "The term third gender does not disrupt gender binarism; it simply adds another category (albeit a segregated, ghettoized category) to the existing two." Towle and Morgan additionally note that Western scholars may incorrectly treat non-Western third gender examples as though they existed prior to and serve as the foundation for modern Western understandings of gender variability.[128] This implication makes it difficult for Western scholars to understand how non-Western cultures view and value sex and gender in their own societies in both the present day and historically.[129] See also
References
Further reading
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