Third gender: Difference between revisions

'''Third gender''', or '''third sex''', is a concept in which individuals are categorized, either by themselves, by their society, or by outsiders to their society, as not fitting into the Western ideas of [[binary gender]] and heterosexual roles. The phrase "third gender" has been used for a wide variety of meanings: intersex people whose bodies do not fit outdated Western medical concepts of binary sex, hundreds of indigenous societal roles as described (and often misrepresented) by Western anthropologists (including indigenous identities such as south Asian [[hijra]]s, Hawaiian and Tahitian [[māhū]], and Native American identities now called [[Two-Spirit]]s),<ref>Julia Serano, ''Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity.'' Unpaged.</ref> transgender people who are [[nonbinary]], homosexual people even in Western societies,<ref name="Trumbach">Trumbach, Randolph. (1998) ''Sex and the Gender Revolution. Volume 1: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London''. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998. (Chicago Series on Sexuality, History & Society)</ref><ref name="The Social Studies C">{{cite book |last=Ross |first=E. Wayne |title=The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities |publisher=SUNY Press |year=2006|isbn= 978-0-7914-6909-5 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=4qFMqjxte9IC }}</ref><ref>Kennedy, Hubert C. (1980) ''The "third sex" theory of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs'', Journal of Homosexuality. 1980–1981 Fall–Winter; 6(1–2): pp. 103–1</ref> and women who were considered to be gender-nonconforming because they fought for women's rights.<ref>{{cite journal | jstor=407320 | pages=582–599 | last1=Wright | first1=B. D. | title="New Man," Eternal Woman: Expressionist Responses to German Feminism | volume=60 | issue=4 | journal=The German Quarterly | year=1987 | doi=10.2307/407320  }}</ref>

== Intersex people and third gender ==

Like non-intersex people, some intersex individuals may not identify themselves as either exclusively female or exclusively male, but most appear to be men or women.<ref name="Money">{{cite book |last=Money |first=John |author-link = John Money |author2=Ehrhardt, Anke A. |title=Man & Woman Boy & Girl. Differentiation and dimorphism of gender identity from conception to maturity |year=1972 |publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press |location=USA |isbn=978-0-8018-1405-1 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/manwomanboygirl00mone }}</ref><ref name="Dreger">{{cite book |last=Domurat Dreger |first=Alice |title=Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex |year=2001 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=USA |isbn=978-0-674-00189-3 }}</ref><ref name="maranon">{{cite book |last=Marañón |first=Gregorio |title=Los estados intersexuales en la especie humana |year=1929 |publisher=Morata |location=Madrid }}</ref> A clinical review suggests that between 8.5–20% of people with intersex conditions may experience [[gender dysphoria]],<ref name="furtado">{{cite journal | author = Furtado P. S.| year = 2012 | title = Gender dysphoria associated with disorders of sex development | url = | journal = Nat. Rev. Urol. | volume = 9 | issue = 11| pages = 620–627 | doi = 10.1038/nrurol.2012.182 |display-authors=etal | pmid=23045263}}</ref> while sociological research in Australia, a country which offers a nonbinary legal sex classification ("X"), shows that 19% of people born with atypical sex characteristics selected an "X" or "other" option, while 52% are women, 23% men and 6% unsure.<ref name="jonesbk2016">{{Cite book|publisher=Open Book Publishers |isbn=978-1-78374-208-0 |last1=Jones |first1=Tiffany |last2=Hart |first2=Bonnie |last3=Carpenter |first3=Morgan |last4=Ansara |first4=Gavi |last5=Leonard |first5=William |last6=Lucke |first6=Jayne |title=Intersex: Stories and Statistics from Australia |location=Cambridge, UK |accessdate=2016-02-02 |date=February 2016 |url=http://oii.org.au/wp-content/uploads/key/Intersex-Stories-Statistics-Australia.pdf |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160914152729/http://oii.org.au/wp-content/uploads/key/Intersex-Stories-Statistics-Australia.pdf |archivedate=2016-09-14 |df= }}</ref><ref name="oiiaudemo">{{Citation| last = Organisation Intersex International Australia| title = Demographics| date = July 28, 2016| url = https://oii.org.au/demographics/ | accessdate = 2016-09-30}}</ref> [[Alex MacFarlane]] is believed to be the first person in Australia to obtain a birth certificate recording sex as indeterminate, and the first Australian passport with an 'X' sex marker in 2003.<ref name="West Australian">[http://www.bodieslikeours.org/pdf/xmarks.pdf "X marks the spot for intersex Alex"], West Australian, via bodieslikeours.org. 11 January 2003</ref>

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* To register intersex children as females or males, with the awareness that, like all people, they may grow up to identify with a different sex or gender.

The Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions states that the legal recognition of intersex people is firstly about access to the same rights as other men and women, when assigned male or female; secondly it is about access to administrative corrections to legal documents when an original sex assignment is not appropriate; and thirdly it is not about the creation of a third sex or gender classification for intersex people as a population but it is, instead, about self-determination.<ref name="afp2016">{{Cite book| publisher = Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions| isbn = 978-0-9942513-7-4| last = Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions| title = Promoting and Protecting Human Rights in relation to Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics| date = June 2016| url = http://www.asiapacificforum.net/resources/manual-sogi-and-sex-charactersitics/}}</ref>

== Indigenous peoples and third gender ==

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."<ref>[http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue6/schmidt.html Redefining Fa'afafine: Western Discourses and the Construction of Transgenderism in Samoa Johanna Schmidt]; Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context; Issue 6, August 2001</ref>

According to Towle and Morgan:

Some writers suggest that a third gender emerged around 1700 AD in England: the male sodomite.<ref name="Trumbach">Trumbach, Randolph. (1998) ''Sex and the Gender Revolution. Volume 1: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London''. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998. (Chicago Series on Sexuality, History & Society)</ref> According to these writers, this was marked by the emergence of a subculture of effeminate males and their meeting places (molly houses), as well as a marked increase in hostility towards effeminate or homosexual males. People described themselves as members of a third sex in Europe from at least the 1860s with the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs<ref>{{cite journal | doi=10.1300/J082v06n01_10 | title=The "Third Sex" Theory of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs | year=1981 | last1=Kennedy | first1=Hubert | journal=Journal of Homosexuality | volume=6 | pages=103–111 | pmid=7042820 | issue=1–2  }}</ref> and continuing in the late nineteenth century with Magnus Hirschfeld,<ref name="Hirschfeld 1904">Magnus Hirschfeld, 1904. ''Berlins Drittes Geschlecht'' ("Berlin's Third Sex")</ref> John Addington Symonds,<ref name="Ellis 1897">Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds, 1897. ''Sexual Inversion''.</ref> Edward Carpenter,<ref name="fordham.edu">Edward Carpenter, 1908. ''[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/carpenter-is.html The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women]''.</ref> Aimée Duc<ref name="Duc, Aimée 1901">Duc, Aimée, 1901. ''Sind es Frauen? Roman über das dritte Geschlecht'' ("Are These Women? Novel about the Third Sex")</ref> and others. These writers described themselves and those like them as being of an "inverted" or "intermediate" sex and experiencing homosexual desire, and their writing argued for social acceptance of such sexual intermediates.<ref>Jones, James W. (1990). ''"We of the third sex” : homo Representations of Homosexuality in Wilhelmine Germany.'' (German Life and Civilization v. 7) New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1990. {{ISBN|0-8204-1209-0}}</ref> Many cited precedents from classical Greek and Sanskrit literature (see below).