Gender system
The Europeans "attempted to explain the berdache from various functional perspectives...in terms of the contributions these sex/gender roles made to social structure or culture.
[4]: 13 There were many roles for male and female Two-Spirits, productive specialization, supernatural sanction and gender variation.
If a boy was interested in women's activities, or vice versa, a gender variant role would likely be undertaken in adulthood.
"In some societies, same-sex sexual desire or practice did figure into the definition of one's gender variant role, in others, it did not.
In the majority of Native American societies, biological sex played no part in any gender variant role.
[4]: 13 In Mohave society, pregnant women believed they had dreams forecasting the anatomic sex of their children.
The alyha would imitate many aspects of female life, including menstruation, puberty observations, pregnancy, and birth.
[4]: 21–23 A documentary film entitled Blossoms of Fire, produced in 2000, depicts the people of Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca, Mexico.
It follows the daily lives of the women as they run their businesses, wear colorfully bold traditional clothing and hold their heads firmly high as they carry the weight on top.
They strongly believe that their community is able to function because gender roles are not placed on individuals but rather that everyone is equal—for example there is no identifiable "bread winner".
Gay, lesbian, and transgender people tend to feel more accepted in this alternative gender system.
The machi were inevitably influenced by the dominant Western gender system of Chile through state sponsored evangelization, (most Mapuche today are Catholic)[6]: 327–328 and by the Indigenous Law.
When compared to the native North Americans, the gender system is essentially binary, but the ideas themselves are quite different from Western thoughts.
[1]: 42 In order for one to be accepted into the hijra society they must be sponsored by a guru, who in turn teaches them and helps them form a family.
In 2020, the State of São Paulo published a booklet with the following definition:[10]: 22 Travesti: a person who is born with the male sex and has a feminine gender identity.
She has no discomfort with her biological sex of birth, nor with the ambiguity in female and male body traces, assuming a gender identity different from that imposed by society.
Standard Italian femmina, "a female", -ello, masculine diminutive suffix) is a term used to refer to a population of males with markedly feminine gender expression in traditional Neapolitan culture.
[11][12] It may be hard to define this term within modern Western notions of "gay men" versus "trans women" since both these categories overlap to a degree in the case of femminielli [12] It has been noted that this term is not derogatory and does not carry stigma, with femminielli instead traditionally believed to bring luck.
[11][12] It is often considered reductive to insert the Neapolitan femminiello within the macro-category of transgender usually adopted in Anglo-Saxon and North American contexts.
For the historical and symbolic coordinates of Naples, the identity construct of the femminiello is not superimposable to more common European and euro-centric transgender clusters.
[13] The femminiello in Campania may enjoy a relatively privileged position thanks to their participation in some traditional events, such as Candelora al Santuario di Montevergine (Candlemas at the Sanctuary of Montevergine) in Avellino[14] or the Tammurriata, a traditional dance performed at the feast of Madonna dell'Arco in Sant'Anastasia.
Achille della Ragione suggests that recent surveys have shown that Neapolitans have a generally negative view of what he calls "the politically correct model of homosexuality of a hypocritical do-gooder society" (implying the mainstream Western gay culture), yet he contrasts femminielli as enjoying a favorable attitude from part of Neapolitan society.
Bakla are males with a feminine spirit, or core identity, who cross-dress and are assumed to take the receiving role in sex.
Over time, baklas have tried to gain status as a third sex or gender as an attempt to normalize their nonconformity and be equal to males and females in society.
In certain Sambia people of New Guinea for example, it is believed that a boy is unable to reach puberty or maturity without first ingesting the semen, considered life-force, of an older male.
[20]: 9–18 In addition, these Sambian people believe that a man is unable to replenish his semen on his own, so the ritual continues until a certain time, usually marriage, when he is told of a tree that exudes a milky semen-like sap he may ingest instead.
[20]: 18 In Basotho society in contemporary Lesotho, girls and women may exchange long kisses, engage in cunnilingus, and even fall in love and form a marriage-like union.
Anne Fausto-Sterling proposes that a body does not necessarily have to fit into the orthodox gender binary set by a society, but rather can be categorized under the possibility of male, female, merm, ferm, and herm, which are labels given to individuals born with a variation in sex characteristics.
The Alternative Model allows for this type of gender labeling as well as to be comprehended in terms of behavioral, biological, and mental characteristics.
[27] Organizations such as California Coalition Against Sexual Assault support the Latino communities in particular to end domestic violence.
