OTHER CULTURES

OTHER CULTURES/RELIGIONS/SOCIETIES WHICH FEATURE A 'TRANSSEXUAL GENDER'

“In some eras and in some cultures, cross dressing is primarily associated with homosexuality or lesbianism, while in others it is seen as both a homosexual and heterosexual phenomenon. Dress traditionally has been a ubiquitous symbol of sexual differences, emphasizing social conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Cross dressing, therefore, represents a symbolic incursion into territory that crosses gender boundaries.”

(Introduction. Page viii) ‘Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender’. Vern L. Bullough/ Bonnie Bullough. University of Pennsylvania Press. 1993.

“Some societies, perhaps influenced by the existence of hermaphrodites, believed in a third sex that combined qualities of the other two.”

(Cross Dressing in Perspective. Page 3)

“...naven rituals practised by the Iatmuls in New Guinea that when one gender found itself in a uinque circumstance that demanded behaviours of the other, they simply adopted a 'bit' of the other gender's culture. Margaret Mead suggested that cross dressing represented a mismatch between individual temperaments and socially demanded requirements of particular cultures. When bravery in warfare was expected, some by temperarment would not be able to perform, hence the berdache, the cross dresser, or similar individuals.”

(Status and the social implications of cross dressing. Page 4.)

(Hindu belief) “One such cult, the Sakhibhava.... They worship Radha, the favourite consort of Krishna, and the object of their devotion is to become a female attendant upon her. ... Male followers dress like women and affect the behaviour, movements, and habits of women, including imitation menstruation, during which they abstain from worship.”

“The technical term hijra (eunuch or transvestite) is applied to these men, and they serves an institutionalised third-gender role since they are regarded as neither male nor female. Some observers have called them homosexual, but it is probably better to regard the hijra role as asexual, even though many, if not most, engage in homosexual activity as the passive partner.”

“Hijras regard themselves as 'seperate', neither men nor women, although they recognise they were born as men. To be admitted to the sect, however, they had to be castrated, although some individuals pretend to be hijras and do not undergo castration or initiation. Hijras dress as women, wear their hair long, pluck their facial hair (they do not shave it), adopt feminine mannerisms, take women's names, and use femaile kinship terms and a special, feminised vocabulary. They demand to be seated as women in those areas reserved for women, and on one occasion they demanded to be counted as women in the census. Most hijras, however, do not necessarily pass as women, although there is great variation, and some are far more feminine than others. Many burlesque feminine behaviour and dress, doing things not considered appropriate for ordinary women. SOme hijras or hijra pretenders also act as prostitutes.”

“Some men (hijra) don women's clothing and style their hair like women in order to make their living performing as women, even though they might be married and have children of their own.”

“This difference between Hinduism and Western religions serves to emphasize that cross dressing is a much more complicated phenomenon that the diagnostic categories so favored by Western psychologists and psychiatrists.”

(cross-cultural views of gender-crossing. Page 8.)

(Islamic Oman Xaniths) “...the xanith has cultivated a careful intergender role for himself.”

“Like men and boys who used to act the female parts in Elizabethan drama because women were forbidden on the stage, these cross dressers were tolerated because men acting women's roles in public allowed the Muslims to keep women in purdah.” (Page 12)

(Mahu in Tahiti) “A mahu is a man who publicly takes on the activities and dress of a woman; that is, he performs household activities, take care of babies, and braids coconut palm leaves into thatching plaits. Each district in Tahiti has only one mahu, although every district has one. When the position becomes available, it is voluntarily filled. Mahu engage in fellatio with other men and by Western standards would be described as homosexual. Not all effeminate men, however, would be described as a mahu. Also it is possible to stop being a mahu and adopt a male role again.”

“On Madagascar, some parents in the past raised boys as girls. Among the Hovas, one of the island tribes, such children were called sekrata. They were biological males who came to be treated as females because they were regarded as too gentle and weak to be men. One observer reported that 'autosuggestion' was so effective that the sekrata reached the point where they considered themselves women, totally forgetting their 'true' sex.” (Page 14)

“Most of the societies they studied were considerably more tolerant of such cross-gendered behavious than had usually been the case in the United States. They reported that in Latin America, attitudes toward cross-dressing homosexuals were similar to the attitudes towards prostitutes, that is, they were part of ordinary social reality. Similarly in the Phillippines parents openly acknowledge that one's child may be bayot, or a cross-dressing homosexual.” (page 15)

(acault in Burmease Buddhism)  “The men who have sexual encounters with an acault, however, are not regarded as homosexual because of the spiritual connotation of the acault.” (Page 16)

“...the indigenous Australian tribes. They make a subincision on the penis, a procedure that some commentators believe gives the new initiate a 'female sex organ so that he will resemble the divinities' who are always bisexual.” (Page 16-17)

“...cross dressing has been ubiquitous. It is an important element in many religions and serves to emphasise that male and female are somehow incomplete standing alone, and that there is some element of both sexes in everyone.” (Page 18)

“Transvestism is both a global and historical phenomenon. Descriptions of reversals of gender-coded dressing seem ubiquitous, throughout cultures and ages. James Frazer, renowned author of The Golden Bough, cites numerous examples of cross-dressing in widely disparate parts of the world in his chapter entitled 'Priests dressed as women': "In the Pelew Islands it  often happens that a goddess chooses a man, not a woman, for her minister and inspired mouthpiece. When that is so, the favoured man is often regarded and treated as a woman. He wears female attire, he carries a piece of gold on his neck, he labours like a woman in the taro fields. ...The pretended change of sex under the inspiration of a femlae spirit perhaps explains a custom widely spread among savages, in accordance with which some men dress as women and act as women through life. These unsexed creatures....are regarded sometimes with awe and sometimes with contempt, as beings of a higher or lower order than common folk. Often they are dedicated and trained to their vocation from childhood. Effeminate sorcerers or priests of this sort are found among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo, the Bugis of South Celebes, the Patagonians of South American and the Aleutians and many Indian tribes of North America. In the island of Rambreem off the coast of Aracan, a set of vagabond 'conjurors' who dressed and lived as women, used to dance round a tall pole ... Male memebers of the Vallhaba sect of India often seek to win the favour of the god KRishna, whom they specially revere, by wearing their hair long and assimilating themselves to women; even their spiritual chiefs, the so called Maharajas, sometimes simulate the appearance of women when they lead the worship of their followers...""

(Introduction: The Prevalence of Transvestism. Page 6.) ‘Unzipping Gender. Sex, Cross-dressing and culture’. Charlotte Suthrell. Berg. Oxford. 2004.)

“There are numerous examples of transvestite/transgender categories of people being sometimes accorded 'special' status, both in history and ethnography. Examples are transglobal and some are described here to give an idea of the range of contexts. They include the 'two-spirit people' or berdaches of Native American Indian culture, the cross-dressed shamans of Siberia and Central Asia, and, in rather different ways, the Travestis of Brazil, the Bantut of the Philippines and the Xanith of Oman. Transvestism may also occur in a ceremonial or ritual context such as the Naven ceremony of Papua New Guinea, in which most memebers of society dress as the opposite sex at some time in their lives, THe notion of a third gender has been discussed by many and in widely varying contexts. In the cultures described in Chapter 6, the travestis of BRazila dn the two-spirit people (or Berdaches) of Northern America, like the Hijras, are instances in which men have chosen to dress or to live as women.”

(Page 7)

Tasha