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 The phrase "third gender" has been used for a wide variety of meanings: intersex people whose bodies do not fit outdated Western medical concepts of binary sex, hundreds of indigenous societal roles as described (and often misrepresented) by Western anthropologists (including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>

The term "third gender" has been criticized by some. For example, in a 2014 thesis on Inuit gender complexity, archaeologist Meghan Walley wrote that "We must move away from interpretations that position nonbinary gender as a ''third'' element or an anomaly and instead embrace the critical and challenging work that will be necessary to construct understandings of complex gender systems that [don't] assume binary gender as a precondition for nonbinary gender."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://research.library.mun.ca/13252/1/thesis.pdf|title=Examining Precontact Inuit Gender Complexity and Its Discursive Potential for LGBTQ2S+ and Decolonization Movements|date=2014|last=Walley|first=Meghan}}</ref>