Vol. 50 No. 4 (2006): Ciało i kultura
Articles and essays
The Third Gender from a Multi-cultural Perspective
Abstract
The paper examines alternative forms of gender in five contemporary societies: hijra in India, fa’afafine from Samoa, kathoey in Thailand, travesti in Brazil, and xanith in Oman. The term “third gender” refers to males fulfilling roles which are traditionally connected with femininity, as well as looking like and behave like women, while being neither a man nor a woman. What is of importance is that the term “third gender” may also be linked with alternative models of femininity, but in this paper they are not analyzed. The author focus on several relatively well-documented patterns of transgender men. These forms of gender diversity come from cultures in which the following religions dominate: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. His main aim is to show that modern Western sex and gender ideologies which are based on binary opposites — man vs. woman, masculinity vs. femininity, heterosexuality vs. homosexuality — are not universal. The anthropological perspective makes it clear that there are many different ways of creating gender and sexuality. The examples of gender diversity in this article encourage us to rethink our understanding of what is normal and natural.
References
- Badinter Elizabeth, 1993, XY — Tożsamość mężczyzny, tłum. Grzegorz Przewłocki, Wydawnictwo WAB, Warszawa.
- Bem Sandra, 2000, Męskość, kobiecość. O różnicach wynikających z płci, tłum. Sylwia Pikiel, Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne, Gdańsk.
- Besnier Niko, 1996, Polinesian Gender Liminality Throught Time and Space, w: Gilbert Herdt (red.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, Zone Books, New York.
- Bolin Anne, 1996, Transcending and Transgendering: Male-to-Female Transsexuals, Dichotomy and Diversity, w: Gilbert Herdt (red.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, Zone Books, New York.
- Brummelhuis Han, 1999, Transformations of Transgender: The Case of the Thai Kathoey, w: Peter A. Jackson, Gerard Sullivan (red.), Lady Boys, Tom Boys, Rent Boys: Male and Female Homosexualities in Contemporary Thailand, The Haworth Press, New York–London–Oxford.
- Butler Judith, 1990, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, New York–London.
- Foucault Michel, 1995, Historia seksualności, tłum. różni, Czytelnik, Warszawa.
- Fraser Laura, 2003, Tam, gdzie chłopcy wyrastają na kobiety, „Marie Claire”, nr 10, s. 60–65.
- Giddens Anthony, 2004, Socjologia, tłum. Alina Szulżycka, PWN, Warszawa.
- Głażewska Ewa, 2005, Płeć i antropologia. Kulturowa koncepcja płci w ujęciu Margaret Mead, Centrum Edukacji Europejskiej, Toruń.
- Hekma Gert, 1996, „A Feamale Soul in a Male Body”: Sexual Inversion as Gender Inversion in Nineteenth-Century Sexuology, w: Gilbert Herdt (red.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, Zone Books, New York.
- Herdt Gilbert, 1996a, Introduction: Third Sexes and Third Genders, w: Gilbert Herdt (red.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, Zone Books, New York.
- Herdt Gilbert, 1996b, Mistaken Sex: Culture, Biology and the Third Sex in New Gwinea, w: Gilbert Herdt (red.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, Zone Books, New York.
- Jackson Peter A., Sullivan Gerard, 1999, A Panoply of Roles: Sexual and Gender Diversity in Contemporary Thailand, w: Peter A. Jackson, Gerard Sullivan (red.), Lady Boys, Tom Boys, Rent Boys: Male and Female Homosexualities in Contemporay Thailand, The Haworth Press, New York–London–Oxford.
- Laqueur Thomas, 1992, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.–London.
- Lorber Judith, 1994, Pardoxes of Gender, Yale University Press, New Haven–London.
- Meer Theo, 1996, Sodomy and Pursuit of a Third Sex in the Early Modern Period, w: Gilbert Herdt (red.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, Zone Books, New York.
- Nanda Serena, 1996, Hijras: An Alternative Sex and Gender Role in India, w: Gilbert Herdt (red.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, Zone Books, New York.
- Nanda Serena, 1999, Neither Man nor Woman, Wadsworth Publishing Comapany, Belmont CA.
- Nanda Serena, 2000, Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations, Waveland Press, Route IL.
- Rattachumpoth Rakkit, 1999, Introduction, w: Peter A. Jackson, Gerard Sullivan (red.), Lady Boys, Tom Boys, Rent Boys: Male and Female Homosexualities in Contemporary Thailand,
- The Haworth Press, New York–London–Oxford.
- Renzetti Claire M., Curran Daniel J., 2005, Kobiety, mężczyźni i społeczeństwo, tłum. Agnieszka Gromkowska-Melosik, PWN, Warszawa.
- Ringrose Kathryn M., 1996, Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium, w: Gilbert Herdt (red.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, Zone Books, New York.
- Roscoe Will, 2000, Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York.
- Schmidt Johanna, 2003, Paradise Lost? Social Change and Fa’afafine in Samoa, „Current Sociology”, t. 51, s. 417–432.
- Stefanicki Robert, 2000, Eunuch przynosi szczęście, „Magazyn”. Dodatek „Gazety Wyborczej”, 10 października.
- Sulima Roch, 2000, Antropologia codzienności, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków.
- Trumbach Randolph, 1996, London’s Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture, w: Gilbert Herdt (red.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, Zone Books, New York.
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
