Third gender

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 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 hijras, Hawaiian and Tahitian māhū, and Indigenous identities now called Two-Spirits), transgender people who are nonbinary, homosexual people even in Western societies, and women who were considered to be gender-nonconforming because they fought for women's rights.

A significant number of nonbinary people have adopted "third gender" to describe themselves. In the 2019 Worldwide Gender Census, 2.17% (244) of the 11,242 respondents called themselves third gender. In a 2015 survey of non-cis people in the USA, 4% of respondents (about 1,108 people) called themselves third gender.

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."

Intersex people and third gender

See main article: intersex

Intersex people are born with sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, gonads, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies". A sex and gender distinction is not universal, and Peletz's description of gender as designating biological variations as well as cultural practices is not unique. In a study of arguments that intersex people fit into a third gender classification, intersex scholar Morgan Holmes argues that much analysis of a third sex or third gender is simplistic:

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much of the existing work on cultural systems that incorporate a 'third sex' portray simplistic visions in which societies with more than two sex/gender categories are cast as superior to those that divide the world into just two. I argue that to understand whether a system is more or less oppressive than another we have to understand how it treats its various members, not only its 'thirds'.

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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. A clinical review suggests that between 8.5–20% of people with intersex conditions may experience gender dysphoria, 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. 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.

The third International Intersex Forum, held in November/December 2013, made statements for the first time on sex and gender registration:

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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. To ensure that sex or gender classifications are amendable through a simple administrative procedure at the request of the individuals concerned. All adults and capable minors should be able to choose between female (F), male (M), non-binary or multiple options. In the future, as with race or religion, sex or gender should not be a category on birth certificates or identification documents for anybody.

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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.

In March 2017, an Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand community statement called for an end to legal classification of sex, stating that legal third classifications, like binary classifications, were based on structural violence and failed to respect diversity and a "right to self-determination". It also called for the criminalization of deferrable intersex medical interventions.

Indigenous peoples and third gender

See main article: gender-variant identities worldwide

Some anthropologists and sociologists describe what they call third, fourth, fifth, and "some" genders. Not all cultures have strictly defined gender roles.

Other scholars—especially Indigenous scholars—stress that mainstream scholars' lack of cultural understanding and context has led to widespread misrepresentation of third gender people, as well as misrepresentations of the cultures in question, including whether or not this concept actually applies to these cultures at all.

Gender can be recognized and organized differently in different cultures. In some non-Western cultures, gender may not be seen as binary, or people may be seen as being able to cross freely between male and female, or to exist in a state that is in-between, or neither. In some cultures being third gender may be associated with the gift of being able to mediate between the world of the spirits and world of humans. For cultures with these spiritual beliefs, it is generally seen as a positive thing, though some third gender people have also been accused of witchcraft and persecuted. In most western cultures, people who do not conform to heteronormative ideals are often seen as sick, disordered, or insufficiently formed.

The Indigenous māhū of Hawaii are seen as embodying an intermediate state between man and woman, or as people "of indeterminate gender", while some traditional Diné of the Southwestern US recognize a spectrum of four genders: feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, masculine man. The term "third gender" has also been used to describe the hijras of South Asia, the fa'afafine of Polynesia, and the Albanian sworn virgins.

Transgender people and third gender

Aktion Standesamt 2018, a protest in support of a third gender, in front of the chancellery in Berlin. Marchers hold signs about intersex rights, transgender and nonbinary identity, and a legal third gender option.

In a study of people in the United States who thought themselves to be members of a third gender, Ingrid M. Sell found that they typically felt different from the age of 5. Because of both peer and parental pressure, those growing up with the most ambiguous appearances had the most troubled childhoods and difficulties later in life. Sell also discovered similarities between the third genders of the East and those of the West. Nearly half of those interviewed were healers or in the medical profession. A majority of them, again like their Eastern counterparts, were artistic enough to make a living from their abilities. The capacity to mediate between men and women was a common skill, and third genders were oftentimes thought to possess an unusually wide perspective and the ability to understand both sides.