Hello everyone! Hestia here with a new Megathread! Years ago, before I transitioned and when I was still in college I took an anthropology class. My favorite part of the class was when we were covering different gender customs across the globe and got to make a report on one of them. I can’t remember exactly which one I chose for that project, but what I do remember is a map with different pins scattered on it with various forms of gender-queerness. I decided to track it down and share it with you folks!
Edit: you have to open this in a browser, if you’re on a phone it will automatically try to open it in Google maps and won’t bring up the info.
This map provides a brief summary of these genders, but does not go in depth. If you find any you’re interested in, feel free to do some further research and share your findings here. I’ll pin a comment to this post you can attach them. I’m going to share a couple that I found interesting and decided to look further into myself, both of them are non-binary and native american in origin.
The first one I want to talk about is the Winkte, which is a third gender role that was particulatly notable in the Lakota tribe The Winkte are seen as half-men, half-women, and considered sacred. They are typically AMAB and historically have served unique roles in matters of romance and matchmaking and often served as intermediaries for prospecting couples and their families. They also participated in war parties, functioning primarily as witnesses to battle and as doctors to care for the injured. They were also seen as seers, able to forsee paths to victory.
https://www.sdpb.org/blogs/arts-and-culture/the-winkte-and-the-hundred-in-hand/
This next one I’m going to talk about seems mostly local to the Zuni people called the “Lhamana” and I find the Zuni culture to be particularly fascinating, even just doing a cursory glance at it.
Gender roles were well defined in Zuni culture, but the Zuni also valued the concept of a “middle” as it represented stability. This originates from their creation myth, which I won’t go in detail here because I don’t feel qualified to summarize it, but it’s in the link down below.
The Zuni culture is pretty neat and they don’t refer to gender when talking about children. They believed that gender wasn’t an inborn trait but something you acquired as you approached puberty. I wish this was the western approach, but alas.
As children approach puberty they begin to differentiate through different hair styles or clothing choices. AFAB Lhamana would grind corn and make a bowl of stew when they get their first period. There’s probably some cultural significance to this, but I’m not going to do a deep dive on it right now. AMAB Lhamana would start to wear dresses once they hit puberty and start performing women’s work. Both AMAB and AFAB Lhamana were allowed to switch between male and female gender roles as they pleased.
https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Middle-Gender-in-Zuni-Religion
That’s all for now! To wrap thing up I would like to invite yall to our public matrix server! https://matrix.to/#/#tracha:chapo.chat
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CW transphobes pretending to be feminists
Funny how the terf in the article holds up a sign saying “Women’s rights are not hateful” while having murder in her eyes and the distorted grimace of somebody who spends every waking moment hating trans people. Could it be that she simply doesn’t give the tiniest fuck about women’s rights?
The article talks about chromosomes etc but given that like 1-100 people are intersex and xx isn’t the flat standard for even cis women, any definition of women down this line will inevitably mean several of the big terf crowd will no longer be “biologically women” by their own standards and that’s kinda funny.
Terfs are 100% willing to throw intersex cis women under the bus to discriminate against trans women. They do not give the tiniest fuck if they exclude a woman who is AFAB, has spent her entire life as a woman, has raised several kids she’s born herself, doesn’t even know she’s inter and just happens to have XY chromosomes and androgen insensitivity. The same applies for endo cis women who are mistaken for trans or inter people because they just do not look steretypically feminine enough, and they demonstrably do not shy away from throwing members of their own movement under the bus. Hating trans women is literally all that matters to these people. It is worth every abject cruelty, breaking of principles and heartless sacrifice to them.
You’re not allowed to bring up PCOS when talking to TERFs, it’s too powerful lol.
There is no definition that will include who they want to include and exclude who they want to exclude on the basis of BiOlOgY because, ultimately, womanhood (or any gender) isn’t a biological category. And even “femaleness” is obviously not as clear cut as they want. I’m getting bottom surgery in a year, a couple of my coworkers have had hysterectomies qnd oophorectomies and are lamenting the lack of speed in getting HRT. In a year from now we’ll have the same set of organs, have the same complaints about getting and taking Estrogen, moan about facial hair, whine and complain about how women get treated in the workplace, etc. Like, “biologically”, what’s the big difference?