Hello everyone! Hestia here with a new Megathread! Years ago, before I transitioned and when I was still in college I took an anthropology class. My favorite part of the class was when we were covering different gender customs across the globe and got to make a report on one of them. I can't remember exactly which one I chose for that project, but what I do remember is a map with different pins scattered on it with various forms of gender-queerness. I decided to track it down and share it with you folks!
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?ll=8.016975588774075%2C64.4248907814756&z=2&mid=1zDWxhBN5aOofwpE-FkZWQsiFDlE
Edit: you have to open this in a browser, if you're on a phone it will automatically try to open it in Google maps and won't bring up the info.
This map provides a brief summary of these genders, but does not go in depth. If you find any you're interested in, feel free to do some further research and share your findings here. I'll pin a comment to this post you can attach them. I'm going to share a couple that I found interesting and decided to look further into myself, both of them are non-binary and native american in origin.
The first one I want to talk about is the Winkte, which is a third gender role that was particulatly notable in the Lakota tribe The Winkte are seen as half-men, half-women, and considered sacred. They are typically AMAB and historically have served unique roles in matters of romance and matchmaking and often served as intermediaries for prospecting couples and their families. They also participated in war parties, functioning primarily as witnesses to battle and as doctors to care for the injured. They were also seen as seers, able to forsee paths to victory.
https://www.sdpb.org/blogs/arts-and-culture/the-winkte-and-the-hundred-in-hand/
This next one I'm going to talk about seems mostly local to the Zuni people called the "Lhamana" and I find the Zuni culture to be particularly fascinating, even just doing a cursory glance at it.
Gender roles were well defined in Zuni culture, but the Zuni also valued the concept of a "middle" as it represented stability. This originates from their creation myth, which I won't go in detail here because I don't feel qualified to summarize it, but it's in the link down below.
The Zuni culture is pretty neat and they don't refer to gender when talking about children. They believed that gender wasn't an inborn trait but something you acquired as you approached puberty. I wish this was the western approach, but alas.
As children approach puberty they begin to differentiate through different hair styles or clothing choices. AFAB Lhamana would grind corn and make a bowl of stew when they get their first period. There's probably some cultural significance to this, but I'm not going to do a deep dive on it right now. AMAB Lhamana would start to wear dresses once they hit puberty and start performing women's work. Both AMAB and AFAB Lhamana were allowed to switch between male and female gender roles as they pleased.
https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Middle-Gender-in-Zuni-Religion
That's all for now! To wrap thing up I would like to invite yall to our public matrix server! https://matrix.to/#/#tracha:chapo.chat
As a reminder, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.
Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.
incoherent rambling inspired by one of DirtOwl's badposts
This bad post by dirt owl got me thinking, oh wait sorry I mean feeling since I am dumb infp tanki with iq of -5, about the way we view gender as a society. Anyways, dirt owl was not the first user to talk about mbti on hexbear. Using the search function of hexbear, this post from four years ago says that it makes no sense that everyone fits into 16 distinct categories. Another comment mentions the anti-worker nature of the personality test.
The comments in the badpost often followed a similar line, with users identifying as personality types that are technically not part of the system. And this is actually valid, since in mbti you are actually the type that you say you are. What these comments show is resistance to a form of categorizing people, but it is even more than resistance, they are not even taking it seriously. The comments are metaphorically sending a giant PPB to the idea of separating people into new categories. And it's pretty obvious how this relates to gender, since both are attempts at limiting us within a binary system. Especially the thinking or feeling part, unfortunately, is connected with people's expectations of gender roles. But just as the badposters are the resistance to this typology, we are the resistance to the idea of gender under the constraints of capitalism. I think that the gender accelerationist manifesto articulates well what I've been thinking of better than I can, even though I didn't read it until today (If you haven't read it yet, perhaps you should...) Some of it talks about how the modern gender binary is a result of colonialism; that sort of relates to this week's megathread topic about gender in different cultures.
So I know that this personality stuff isn't widely used as a class to oppress people, although that is sort of what it is used for when it is used. But the way it creates boxes, it is easy to dismiss. But the typology being wrong doesn't mean that people don't have personalities. It just means that there are more than 16 expressions of personalities, since last I checked, I think that there's at least 16 people alive right now. The more "scientific" way to measure personality is through measuring traits on a multidimensional continuum. There is no need for labels to express your personality. The same goes for gender, the only difference being that gender is oppressive when used as a class. Maybe gender is also something that is multidimensional, and while some people can easily be labeled as a man or woman in the same way that others can be labeled as an extravert or introvert, there is much more variation in reality.
You know how AI language models store words as vectors? In this fashion, an analogy is represented: king is to queen as man is to woman. Here my observation is that there is some way to mathematically represent the idea of royalty, as well as some idea of gender, although most likely in this situation a reactionary version of gender is represented. But here gender is probably stored across multiple dimensions, and the gender binary could be a projection of some underlying phenomenon.
I would like to end this comment discussing the part of the manifesto about gender identity under communism.
That was me, before yesterday. Now I am fully in support of gender abolitionism.
The only way I can describe gender now is like brainwashing. We do what we are told, and we must comply. And almost everyone complies because they're all cis. If institutions didn't enforce this rigid interpretation of gender, life would be so much better for all of us here.
Sorry if this makes no sense or if some of what I am posting is obvious. Feel free to correct anything I said if it is brainwormed.
I love my trans comrades
good post and up with gender accelerationist manifesto
i should do a second read soon, it truly revolutionised how i think about gender and other class systems