How many sexes? Genders?

Native American Berdache
Two Spirit People

Gender Does Not Determine Sexuality

 

 

Spinning off from Martha's EQ SQ blog, where she presented us with an informative blog about the Bugis who have five genders: 
    makkuntai - feminine woman
    oroane - masculine man
    calalai - masculine female - a female who feels "largely male."
    calabai - feminine male - a male who feels "largely female."
    bissu - transgender shaman

I have included more information about how many sexes and/or genders we have.

People from the U.S. are taught to see two sex categories; female and male, a sexual dichotomy which is assumed to be biologicallly determined, permanent, universal, exhaustive,  and mutually exclusive.  Our entire culture is built around this notion of two sexes with separate clothing and accessories, toys, hygienic products, restrooms, behaviors, etc.

Intersexuals (or hermaphrodites) have incomplete or ambigous sexual anatomy and are considered by biologists as defective rather than another unique category.  Newborns are "assigned" a sex, usually female as the surgery is considered easier, and undergo the surgical procedure to enable consistency with the social label and the anatomy . Instead of leaving intersexuals alone, the U.S. society "must" label people in one of the two categories, to not do so would undermine the whole cultural concept of sex. 
 
But that is not the case for all cultures.

Many Native American peoples have three sexes and/or genders: female, male, and two-spirited people, once called Berdache (a term given by anthropologists and considered offensive by the Native Peoples) and the Lakota winkte who are both male and female and considered more complete than either male or female.  Two-spirited people were considered a normal third sex until Europeans came to the Americas and whose way of thinking became dominant.

The Navajo culture has a third sex called nadle, where people are born with ambiguous sexual organs, or are born with "normal" anatomy and choose to be nadle.  A nadle can take up both roles of male and female.

In the Chuckchi of Eastern Siberia a man with feminine traits gradually transforms into a "soft  man" and the hijras of India, born as men, may by choice may have their genitals surgically removed.  Both the "soft man" and the hijras live as women. 

Another interesting site.


Perhaps the concept of two sexes and genders is limiting.