Gender-variant identities worldwide: Difference between revisions

[[File:Sekhet hieroglyphs.jpg|thumb|<translate><!--T:6--> The word "sekhet" in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.</translate><ref name="Sekhet">{{cite web| title=The Third Gender in Ancient Egypt|url= http://www.gendertree.com/Egyptian%20third%20gender.htm| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200206205104/http://www.gendertree.com/Egyptian%20third%20gender.htm|date=24 December 2013|archive-date=6 February 2020}}</ref>]]

For the past six centuries, the Bugis people of Indonesia have divided their society into five separate genders. All five must harmoniously coexist. They are ''oroané'' (cisgender men), ''makkunrai'' (cisgender women), ''calabai'' (analogous to transgender women), ''calalai'' (analogous to transgender men), and ''bissu'' (all aspects of gender combined to form a whole).<ref>"Sulawesi's fifth gender" . Inside Indonesia. https://web.archive.org/web/20120728104208/http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-66-apr-jun-2001/sulawesi-s-fifth-gender-3007484 Archived from the original on 28 July 2012. Retrieved 2011-07-25.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iias.nl/iiasn/29/IIASNL29_27.pdf|title=Sex, Gender, and Priests in South Sulawesi, Indonesia|publisher=International Institute for Asian Studies}}</ref> <ref>Davies, Sharyn Graham. Gender Diversity in Indonesia: Sexuality, Islam and Queer Selves (ASAA Women in Asia Series), Routledge, 2010.</ref><ref>Davies, Sharyn Graham. Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders Among Bugis in Indonesia (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology), Wadsworth Publishing, 2006.</ref><ref>Pelras, Christian. The Bugis (The Peoples of South-East Asia and the Pacific), Wiley-Blackwell, 1997.</ref><ref name=Prezi>{{cite web |url=http://www.iias.nl/iiasn/29/IIASNL29_27.pdf |title=Sex, Gender, and Priests in South Sulawesi, Indonesia |publisher=[[International Institute for Asian Studies]] |accessdate=2011-07-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721074825/http://www.iias.nl/iiasn/29/IIASNL29_27.pdf |archive-date=21 July 2011}}</ref>  

In classical Arabic writings, people called Mukhannathun were queer people who were assigned male at birth. They were analogous to transgender women, or to very feminine gay men, depending on the individual. In Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 41, Number 4910, Mohammed said to exile a mukhannath, and said not to kill them.<ref>USC-MSA compendium of Muslim Text: Partial Translation of Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 41:General Behavior (Kitab Al-Adab), Number 4910 http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/abudawud/041.sat.html#041.4910</ref> At one point during the Umayyad dynasty, a caliph ordered that all mukhannathun should be castrated. In response to this, a group of mukhannathun are recorded as having this conversation about it: "This is simply a circumcision which we must undergo again." "Or rather the Greater Circumcision!" "With castration I have become a mukhannath in truth!" "Or rather we have become women in truth!" "We have been spared the trouble of carrying around a spout for urine." "What would we do with an unused weapon anyway?"<ref>{{cite journal|last=Rowson|first=Everett K. |date=October 1991| url=http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/The_effeminates_of_early_medina.pdf| title=The Effeminates of Early Medina|journal=Journal of the American Oriental Society 111 (4)|page= 671–693|doi=10.2307/603399 |jstor= 603399}}</ref>

* '''Description of sex/gender:''' Sistergirl is analogous to [[transfeminine]]. Brotherboy is analogous to [[transmasculine]].<ref name="atsaq">{{cite web|title=Supporting transgender and sistergirl clients|archive-date=2 September 2018|url=http://www.atsaq.com/files/Supporting Transgender and Sistergirl Web verision.pdf|publisher=Queensland Association for Healthy Communities|date=2008| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180902184546/http://www.atsaq.com/files/Supporting%20Transgender%20and%20Sistergirl%20Web%20verision.pdf</ref>

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. The practice of using mare's urine for oestrogen therapy was lost for hundreds of years, until being independently discovered by scientists in the 1930s CE.<ref name="SchachterMarrian1938">{{cite journal|last1=Schachter|first1=B.|last2=Marrian|first2=G. F.|title=The isolation of estrone sulfate from the urine of pregnant mares|journal=Journal of Biological Chemistry|volume=126|year=1938|pages=663–669}}</ref> This discovery was developed into Premarin in the 1940s, the first commercial oestrogen replacement drug in Western medicine,<ref name=MDD>Jim Kling  October 2000 [http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/mdd/v03/i08/html/kling.html The Strange Case of Premarin] Modern Drug Discovery (3):8 46–52</ref> and still one of the most widely used today. The Enarees may also have used their herbal knowledge to influence their hormone balance. 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">{{cite web|author=Raven Kaldera|title=Ergi: The Way of the Third| |work=Northern-Tradition Shamanism |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130501152328/http://www.northernshamanism.org/shamanic-techniques/gender-sexuality/ergi-the-way-of-the-third.html|url=http://www.northernshamanism.org/shamanic-techniques/gender-sexuality/ergi-the-way-of-the-third.html| archive-date=1 May 2013}}</ref> Between all these treatments, the Enarees could have had the most medically advanced physical transition in the ancient world.  

The Enarees' divination method is a form of divination by casting sticks (rhabdomancy). This sounds like it could be a description of the process of I Ching divination in China, which was done by casting fifty yarrow stalks, and methodically picking them up between the fingers. This generates random numbers, which are indexed to divinatory meanings. The I Ching dates back to 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 Scythians lived, who were connected to China via the Silk Road.<ref name="Beckwith58" /> The Scythians had other cultural practices associated with China, such as acupuncture. Archaeological evidence shows that the Scythians used the same acupuncture points as in traditional Chinese medicine, as seen in the tattoos of the "Pazyryk Warrior" mummy.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UyTkDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA202&dq=pazyryk+acupuncture+mummy+tattoo&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjWrKSx_7bsAhVCqp4KHcECDyEQ6AEwAnoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=pazyryk%20acupuncture%20mummy%20tattoo&f=false|page=202|year=2016|title=New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory}}</ref>