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November featured article

From ancient history to the present, many cultures around the world that have established gender-variant identities worldwide, some of which are accepted as an essential part of their societies. These are the gender identities and roles that Western anthropologists have called third gender, because they are different than the Western gender binary idea of cisgender, heterosexual, masculine men and feminine women. Identities that have been called "third gender" are often transgender and nonbinary, and the "third gender" label pushes that interpretation. However, many of the identities that anthropologists call third gender are not nonbinary identities. This is part of why "third gender" is a problematic colonialist label. It can also be colonialist and problematic to call these identities by outside labels such as "transgender" and "nonbinary," in cases where the people in question haven't said that they would call themselves by those words.

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