OK, that's weird

[ikhet_sekhmet]

Idly eyeing an article on Hittite birth rituals, I read that the midwife would give a newborn boy "the goods of a male child", and a newborn girl "the goods of a female child"; similarly, in a Sumerian ritual, the midwife gives a male child a mace and axe and a female child a spindle. The Hittites and the Mesopotamians were neighbours, but Aztec midwives, hugely separated in time and space, did exactly the same thing. I wonder how many cultures throughout history have engaged in this gender enforcement (and how the midwives handled intersex births, of which they must have seen very many).

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Pringle, Jackie. "Hittite Birth Rituals". in Averail Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt (eds). Images of Women in Antiquity. Croom Helm, London and Sydney, 1983.