Changing Ones
Sep. 13th, 2017 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetThe first chapter of Will Roscoe's book Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native America is a brief, general introduction to traditional Native American societies. I wonder if there's a correlation between the acceptance of gender variation and the fact that most of these societies were "only weakly stratified" and that "opportunities for women to acquire prestige and take leadership roles existed in every group". (These are generalisations; Roscoe is careful to note the wide variety of social arrangements in the ~400 different groups.)
Roscoe writes: "Alternative gender roles were amongst the most widely shared features of North American societies. Male berdaches* have been documented in over 155 tribes... In about a third of these groups, a formal status also existed for females who undertook a man's lifestyle, becoming hunters, warriors, and chiefs." These groups "occur in every region of the continent, in every kind of society, and among speakers of every major language group."
The "core set of traits" of these third and fourth genders were "[s]pecialized work roles", "gender difference [ie] temperament, dress, lifestyle, and social roles"; "spiritual sanction"; and "same-sex relations... with non-berdache members of their own sex". As well as taking on jobs usually done by the "opposite sex", there might also be special tasks reserved for gender variant people. Their "active sex life" meant they were "considered fortuitous in all matters relating to sex and romance" - matchmaking, love magic, curing STDs. Their same-sex relations were the result of their gender status, rather than the other way around. "... rather than an opposition of heterosexuality to homosexuality, native beliefs opposed reproductive to non-reproductive sex." "[K]inship-based social organization" dictated most people's sexual availability, but the same restrictions didn't apply to gender variant people; similarly, some of the elements of marriage, such as bridewealth and political alliances between families, didn't apply.
Third and fourth gender people both had roles in war, from "provid[ing] support, entertainment, and luck", to "joining in the fighting, handling enemy scalps, and directing victory ceremonies". Roscoe remarks on "[t]he associations of alternative genders with death", such as in war or as "undertakers or mourners". He says: "They point to a nexus of beliefs difficult to grasp from a Western perspective, in which nonprocreative sexuality and fertility, creativity and inspiration, and warfare and death are linked". (I think there's something similar in Aztec culture, which Peter Sigal talks about in The Flower and the Scorpion: Sexuality and Ritual in Early Nahua Culture, of which more later.) In some groups, the alternative genders "enjoyed special respect in privileges"; in a few, their supernatural powers were feared.
In an overview of third and fourth genders in various groups, Roscoe mentions a study of "central arctic Inuit, in which arbitrary gender assignments along with individual preferences result in complex and varied 'gender histories' for many individuals. Boys and girls are raised in accordance with the gender of one or more names selected for them before their birth. Consequently, some children are raised with cross- or mixed-gender identities" which they may retain or change at puberty. Also "[t]he Inuit believe some infants, called sipiniq, change their anatomical sex at birth." My curiosity is piqued.
* Roscoe mounts a thoughtful defence of this term, but I think it's now largely been discarded.
__
Roscoe, Will. Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America. London, Macmillan, 1998.
Roscoe writes: "Alternative gender roles were amongst the most widely shared features of North American societies. Male berdaches* have been documented in over 155 tribes... In about a third of these groups, a formal status also existed for females who undertook a man's lifestyle, becoming hunters, warriors, and chiefs." These groups "occur in every region of the continent, in every kind of society, and among speakers of every major language group."
The "core set of traits" of these third and fourth genders were "[s]pecialized work roles", "gender difference [ie] temperament, dress, lifestyle, and social roles"; "spiritual sanction"; and "same-sex relations... with non-berdache members of their own sex". As well as taking on jobs usually done by the "opposite sex", there might also be special tasks reserved for gender variant people. Their "active sex life" meant they were "considered fortuitous in all matters relating to sex and romance" - matchmaking, love magic, curing STDs. Their same-sex relations were the result of their gender status, rather than the other way around. "... rather than an opposition of heterosexuality to homosexuality, native beliefs opposed reproductive to non-reproductive sex." "[K]inship-based social organization" dictated most people's sexual availability, but the same restrictions didn't apply to gender variant people; similarly, some of the elements of marriage, such as bridewealth and political alliances between families, didn't apply.
Third and fourth gender people both had roles in war, from "provid[ing] support, entertainment, and luck", to "joining in the fighting, handling enemy scalps, and directing victory ceremonies". Roscoe remarks on "[t]he associations of alternative genders with death", such as in war or as "undertakers or mourners". He says: "They point to a nexus of beliefs difficult to grasp from a Western perspective, in which nonprocreative sexuality and fertility, creativity and inspiration, and warfare and death are linked". (I think there's something similar in Aztec culture, which Peter Sigal talks about in The Flower and the Scorpion: Sexuality and Ritual in Early Nahua Culture, of which more later.) In some groups, the alternative genders "enjoyed special respect in privileges"; in a few, their supernatural powers were feared.
In an overview of third and fourth genders in various groups, Roscoe mentions a study of "central arctic Inuit, in which arbitrary gender assignments along with individual preferences result in complex and varied 'gender histories' for many individuals. Boys and girls are raised in accordance with the gender of one or more names selected for them before their birth. Consequently, some children are raised with cross- or mixed-gender identities" which they may retain or change at puberty. Also "[t]he Inuit believe some infants, called sipiniq, change their anatomical sex at birth." My curiosity is piqued.
* Roscoe mounts a thoughtful defence of this term, but I think it's now largely been discarded.
__
Roscoe, Will. Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America. London, Macmillan, 1998.
