Gender-variant identities worldwide: Difference between revisions
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In the Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiian) and Maohi (Tahitian) cultures, the māhū is a traditional gender role outside of the Western concept of gender roles. It is made of people who may have been [[Sexes#Assigned gender at birth|assigned either male or female at birth]]. This tradition existed before Western invaders.<ref name="tate">''[http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/men-women-pacific The men-women of the Pacific]'', tate.org.uk/Tate Britain, [http://www.webcitation.org/6WpIsllud archive URL] 6 March 2015.</ref> The first published description of māhū is from 1789.<ref>William Bligh. Bounty Logbook. Thursday, January 15, 1789.</ref> From 1820 onward, Westerners stigmatized and criminalized māhū.<ref>Aleardo Zanghellini. "Sodomy Laws and Gender Variance in Tahiti and Hawai'i." ''Laws'' Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2013), p. 51–68 doi: 10.3390/laws2020051</ref> Māhū still exist today,<ref name="tate" /> and play an important role in preserving and reviving Polynesian culture.<ref name=UHP95>Besnier, Niko, Alexeyeff, Kalissa. ''Gender on the edge : transgender, gay, and other Pacific islanders.'' Honolulu, 2014 isbn=9780824840198</ref><ref name=Robinson>Carol E. Robertson. 1989 "The Māhū of Hawai'i." ''Feminist Studies.'' volume 15, issue 2, pages=318. doi=10.2307/3177791 issn=0046-3663 jstor=3177791</ref | In the Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiian) and Maohi (Tahitian) cultures, the māhū is a traditional gender role outside of the Western concept of gender roles. It is made of people who may have been [[Sexes#Assigned gender at birth|assigned either male or female at birth]]. This tradition existed before Western invaders.<ref name="tate">''[http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/men-women-pacific The men-women of the Pacific]'', tate.org.uk/Tate Britain, [http://www.webcitation.org/6WpIsllud archive URL] 6 March 2015.</ref> The first published description of māhū is from 1789.<ref>William Bligh. Bounty Logbook. Thursday, January 15, 1789.</ref> From 1820 onward, Westerners stigmatized and criminalized māhū.<ref>Aleardo Zanghellini. "Sodomy Laws and Gender Variance in Tahiti and Hawai'i." ''Laws'' Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2013), p. 51–68 doi: 10.3390/laws2020051</ref> Māhū still exist today,<ref name="tate" /> and play an important role in preserving and reviving Polynesian culture.<ref name=UHP95>Besnier, Niko, Alexeyeff, Kalissa. ''Gender on the edge : transgender, gay, and other Pacific islanders.'' Honolulu, 2014 isbn=9780824840198</ref><ref name=Robinson>Carol E. Robertson. 1989 "The Māhū of Hawai'i." ''Feminist Studies.'' volume 15, issue 2, pages=318. doi=10.2307/3177791 issn=0046-3663 jstor=3177791</ref> | ||
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==See also== <!--T: | ===Enarees=== <!--T:141--> | ||
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* '''Name of identity:''' Enarees, Enareis, or Anarieis (ἐναρής).<ref name="enarees phillips">Phillips, E. D. “The Scythian Domination in Western Asia: Its Record in History, Scripture and Archaeology.” World Archaeology, vol. 4, no. 2, 1972, pp. 129–130. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/123971. Accessed 13 Jan. 2020.</ref> The ancient Greek historian Herodotus said this means "men-women" or "effeminates."<ref name="enarees phillips" /> Some modern historians notice that it does not look like a Scythian word, but seems to have been from Greek for "Accursed."<ref name="enarees west">West, Stephanie. “Introducing the Scythians: Herodotus on Koumiss (4.2).” ''Museum Helveticum'', vol. 56, no. 2, 1999, pp. 83. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24821090. Accessed 13 Jan. 2020.</ref> It is not known today what the Scythians themselves called the Enarees. | |||
* '''Culture:''' The Scythians, who where Eurasian nomadic horseriders who lived in regions that are now the modern-day countries of Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Egypt, and neighboring countries. | |||
* '''Era:''' As far back as the 7th century BCE, to as late as the 3rd century CE | |||
* '''Description of sex/gender:''' AMAB and feminine | |||
* '''Role in society:''' Priests of the goddess Artimpasa, also called Argimpasa, who the Greeks thought correlated with their goddess Aphrodite. Artimpasa also had AFAB priestesses.<ref name="enarees cassells">Conner, Sparks, and Sparks. ''Cassell's Encyclopedia of queer myth, symbol, and spirit, covering gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender lore.'' 1997. P. 70. </ref> The enarees told the future, and did women's work.<ref name="enarees phillips" /> | |||
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The Enarees were gender-variant priests of the ancient Scythian people. The 5th century Greek medical anthology, "Hippocratic Corpus," said that the Enarees wore women's styles of clothing, used feminine mannerisms in their speech, and did women's work.<ref name="enarees phillips" /> Pseudo-Hippocrates said the Scythians believe the cause of their femininity is divine, but he theorized that they became so due to injuring their genitals from continous horse riding,<ref>{{cite wikisource |author=Hippocrates |title=On Airs, Waters, Places |wslink=On Airs, Waters, Places#Part XXII |at=Part XXII}}</ref> and from the un-Greek practice of wearing trousers.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Chiasson|first=Charles|date=2001|title=Scythian Androgyny and Environmental Determinism in Herodotus and the Hippocratic πϵρὶ ἀϵ́ρων ὑδάτων τóπων|journal=Syllecta Classica|language=en|volume=12|issue=1|pages=33–73|doi=10.1353/syl.2001.0007|issn=2160-5157}}</ref> <ref>{{Cite book|last=Minns|first=Ellis|title=Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1913|isbn=9781108024877|location=|pages=45–6}}</ref> Archaeologist Ellis Minns (1874 - 1953) said Ovid may be partly right, because bareback horse riding has been known to cause damage to the testicles resulting in loss of the ability to have an erection or ejaculate, even for modern-day riders.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Minns|first=Ellis|title=Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1913|isbn=9781108024877|location=|pages=45–6}}</ref> However, riding injures alone do not account for the femininity of Enarees, which seem to be part of the cross-cultural tradition of cross-dressing shamans.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/148/abstract/neither-men-nor-women-failure-western-binary-systems|title=(N)either Men (n)or Women? The Failure of Western Binary Systems|last=Hart|first=Rachel|date=|website=Society for Classical Studies|url-status=live|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2020-01-28}}</ref> | |||
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In her PhD thesis about trans history and spirituality, trans woman Helen Savage noted another way that the importance of horses in Scythian culture may have led to the Enarees' discovery of another method of gender transition: "The Roman poet Ovid, who was exiled to the borders of the Scythian steppe in the first century BC, provides a tantalising hint of the practice there of drinking mare's urine, a substance so high in oestrogens that it is still used as the source of a proprietary drug, 'premarin', widely used still for hormone replacement therapy -- and to feminise male-to-female transsexuals."<ref name="enarees savage 74">Helen Savage. (2006) "Changing sex? : transsexuality and Christian theology." Doctoral thesis, Durham University. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3364/</ref> The Enarees may have practiced the world's earliest-known hormone therapy for trans-feminine people. They may also have used ancient herbal knowledge for transition. Present-day intersex trans man and shaman Raven Kaldera notes that the Enarees "ate a lot of licorice root - so popular among them that the Greeks to whom they exported it referred to it as 'the Scythian root' - which is also an anti-androgen."<ref name="enarees kaldera">Raven Kaldera. "Ergi: The Way of the Third." ''Northern-Tradition Shamanism.'' https://web.archive.org/web/20130501152328/http://www.northernshamanism.org/shamanic-techniques/gender-sexuality/ergi-the-way-of-the-third.html</ref> | |||
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According to Herodotus, outsiders said that in the 7th century BCE, a band of Scythians had plundered a temple to Aphrodite Urania, a Greek goddess born from the severed genitals of the god Uranus. As punishment, that goddess had cursed the Enarees with "a female disease," that is, that the Enarees wanted to become women. Other parts of Herodotus's description do not support this, so it seems the Scythians themselves did not tell this legend, and did not see the Enarees' condition as punishment.<ref name="enarees phillips" /> Herodotus described the method of fortune-telling that the Enarees practiced: | |||
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There are many diviners among the Scythians, who divine by means of many willow wands as I will show. They bring great bundles of wands, which they lay on the ground and unfasten, and utter their divinations as they lay the rods down one by one; and while still speaking, they gather up the rods once more and place them together again; this manner of divination is hereditary among them. The Enarees, who are hermaphrodites [sic, this does not necessarily mean intersex, as it is a common mistranslation for words about all kinds of gender variance], say that Aphrodite [that is, Artimpasa] gave them the art of divination, which they practise by means of lime-tree bark. They cut this bark into three portions, and prophesy while they braid and unbraid these in their fingers.<ref>Herodotus, ''The Histories'' [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hdt.%204.67&lang=original IV. 67]</ref> | |||
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Further details about how to practice divination in the above method are lost to history. However, some of the above description of the Enarees' divination method sounds similar to the process of I Ching divination in China by means of casting fifty yarrow stalks. The diviner picks up the stalks and puts them between certain fingers. This process generates random numbers, just as casting dice does. These numbers are then used to look up a divinatory meaning. The I Ching comes from between the 10th and 4th centuries BCE,<ref>{{cite book|last=Nylan|first=Michael|title=The Five "Confucian" Classics|date=2001|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|isbn=0-300-13033-3}}</ref> the same period the Enarees lived. The Scythians were connected to China via the Silk Road,<ref name="Beckwith58">{{harvnb|Beckwith|2009|pp=58–70}}</ref> so it's possible that these two similar divinatory systems could have involved some contact between these cultures. | |||
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Though Enarees are the best-known example, Scythians accepted a wide range of gender variance other than these priests. Some Scythians were masculine warriors who were AFAB. Archaeologists have found Scythian burials that may be Enarees, or other gender variant people from their culture. Some from the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE in Sibera are remains of what are thought to be AMAB people with female decorations and utensils.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Ustinova|first=Yulia|url=https://books.google.ca/books?id=ARyeneZne9gC|title=The Supreme Gods of the Bosporan Kingdom: Celestial Aphrodite and the Most High God|publisher=Brill|year=1999|isbn=978-90-04-11231-5|location=|pages=78|language=en}}</ref> The grave of a Scythian priestess near the Bug River in eastern Europe could be an Enaree. The grave includes what are typically women's grave goods. Archaeologists differ about whether the remains are that of an AMAB or AFAB person, which is not always clear from skeletal structure alone.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Taylor|first=Timothy|title=The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture|publisher=Bantam Books|year=1997|isbn=978-0553375275|location=|pages=214}}</ref> | |||
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==See also== <!--T:149--> | |||
*[[Nonbinary gender outside of the transgender community]] | *[[Nonbinary gender outside of the transgender community]] | ||
*[[List of nonbinary identities]] | *[[List of nonbinary identities]] | ||
*[[Gender variance in spirituality]] | *[[Gender variance in spirituality]] | ||
==External links== <!--T: | ==External links== <!--T:150--> | ||
* [http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/two-spirits/map.html PBS: A Map of Gender-Diverse Cultures]. This is an interactive world map showing the locations of dozens of cultures that recognize nonbinary genders. | * [http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/two-spirits/map.html PBS: A Map of Gender-Diverse Cultures]. This is an interactive world map showing the locations of dozens of cultures that recognize nonbinary genders. | ||
* [[Wikipedia:Third gender|Wikipedia's Third gender article]] | * [[Wikipedia:Third gender|Wikipedia's Third gender article]] | ||
==Further reading== <!--T: | ==Further reading== <!--T:151--> | ||
* Herdt, Gilbert H. ''Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History''. New York: Zone Books, 1994. Print. | * Herdt, Gilbert H. ''Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History''. New York: Zone Books, 1994. Print. | ||
* Nanda, Serena. ''Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations''. Prospect Heights, Ill: Waveland Press, 2000. Print. | * Nanda, Serena. ''Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations''. Prospect Heights, Ill: Waveland Press, 2000. Print. | ||
==References== <!--T: | ==References== <!--T:152--> | ||
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[[Category:Gender-variant identities worldwide]][[Category:Spirituality]] | [[Category:Gender-variant identities worldwide]][[Category:Spirituality]] | ||