I found out something interesting about my culture and the way things used to be back a very long time ago. I'm Native American, that's something I'm kind of half proud of and half ashamed, personal reasons account for that. But I found out about the gender classifications in my culture in the ancient times, cue mysterious music. The gender classifications for Native Americans weren't just two specific genders. Everyone was classified into four different gender groups: I can't type the specific native words on a keyboard, so here are the direct classifications in english. 1. Man 2. Woman 3. Feminine Man 4. Masculine Woman Another Addition: Two Spirit is another term used for the Transgendered, and it was actually positive label. It was astonishing to here everything about each classification. I learned about this from a friend I met in PFLAG, he's a pretty cool guy. The downside of this is that gender classification system just disappeared around when Europe started settling America back in those days. It just simply vanished, but the system was still kept, underwraps in those days, and now it persists in these times. The unfortunate thing is that not many people know where I live know about it. But there are still traditional families who still live the culture who know about that. My friend certainly knows about it, and after some research it's actually really cool to hear about it. That was the happy point of my day today. =)
oh i've heard of this! we studied this back in school. i've always felt a connection to native american culture
There is a book you can get about this called Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality by Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas and Sabine Lang (1 Jul 1997) Amazon.co.uk: 0252066456: Books
I'm part native, I've heard of being two spirited, but I haven't heard of the four classifications. Interesting post, thanks for sharing it .
From what I've read, native americans considered transgendered people to be completely the gender they identified as. There was no stigma or anything, no one saying, "You're not a real man."
In the movie "Little Big Man" (1970) starring Dustin Hoffman, there was a two-spirited Native American, I found this dialogue from the movie: "Little Horse: [a obviously homosexual Indian approaches Jack] Little Big Man! You have returned. Don't you remember me? That hurts me deep in my heart. Jack Crabb: [voiceover] It was Little Horse; the boy who wouldn't go on the raid against the Pawnee. He had become a "heemanee" for which there ain't no English word. And he was a good one, too. The Human Beings thought a lot of him." The Natives called themselves "Human Beings" ("Inuit" also means that).
