Translations:Gender-variant identities worldwide/20/en

In Mexico, the Zapotec people recognize the muxe, who are assigned male at birth, and prefer to wear traditional women's styles of clothing and fashionable make-up. Muxes are thought to be usually attracted to men, though some muxes marry women. Muxes may consider themselves homosexual, heterosexual, or asexual. (Men who are not muxe, and who have relationships with muxe, are called mayetes, and are not socially thought of as gay for doing so. Muxes themselves have various opinions about whether such men are really gay or straight.) A person recognizes from early childhood that they want to be a muxe, based on their own natural instincts. They usually do not seek gender-affirming surgery. Today, muxe are accepted and integrated in society, whereas gay men and trans women are not accepted as much, though this varies by the amount of Westernization in a given community. One muxe named Gala who was interviewed in 2015 explained, "We are not men or women [...] We are a third gender. Men are men and women are women— and muxes are muxes. Is that simple." Much the same definition was given in a 2018 BBC interview with another muxe named Felina, who runs a group for muxe founded in the 1970s, Las Auténticas Intrepidas Buscadoras del Peligro (The Authentic Intrepid Danger Seekers). Another muxe, performance artist Lukas Avendaño;, explained in a 2017 interview that not all muxe identify the same way, and some muxe do identify as women. In the Zapotec language, there is no grammatical gender, which makes it easier. The Spanish language has only masculine and feminine, so muxe have to choose one, even though many muxe do not feel like either. In recent years, muxe have campaigned for the right to use the restroom of their preference: some muxe (gunaa muxe, who think of themselves as like trans women) feel safer in the women's restroom, whereas other muxe (nguiiu muxe, who think of themselves as like feminine gay men) prefer the men's restroom. One study estimates that 6% of people assigned male at birth in an Isthmus Zapotec community in the early 1970s were muxe. Notable muxes include human rights activist Amaranta Gómez Regalado (b. 1977), who gained international prominence as the first trans candidate of Mexico, in the 2003 Oaxaca state elections; and food vendor Marven, Lady Tacos de Canasta, who became famous in a viral video taken while she was selling food at a pride parade in 2016, and has been featured on multiple media outlets since.