Pacific Islands and the TG'd world

[Sally]

Hi there SharonRose,

Wow, what a busy time for you and you've accomplished so much. Congratulations.

TG, TS etc is quite common and quite accepted as part of their heritage in a lot of the Pacific Island nations and indeed South East Asian where there is an ancient tradition of crossing gender. In the folk tales of many societies we meet beings that change sex as a source of power. The famous witch of Balinese mythology, Rangda, is always impersonated by men in the ritual plays. In the traditional theatre of Java, Ludruk, a key figure is the transvestite, who teaches her audience the proper values of Javanese society. Before the arrival of Christianity and Islam, (two religions which are particularly intolerant of gender-crossing), traditional priests and shamans from the Philippines to Indonesia permanently lived as women and were highly regarded by their societies.

If we look at some of these social attitudes and compare them with modern day gender-crossing in Thailand, Java, Vietnam and elsewhere a good place to start is with the tribal societies of Borneo because here perhaps we see the purest manifestation of the ancient practice of crossing gender. Among the Sea Dyaks, gender-crossers were known from the first contact with European mariners, but our best reports are of a Land Dyak tribe known as Ngadju. Schwaner, a 19th century Dutch bigot, made this remark about the Ngadju trannies: "In spite of their loathsome calling they escape well-merited contempt". Harleland, another 19th century traveler to Borneo, cast a disapproving eye over the Ngadju with this comment about their shamans: "Dressed as women they are made use of at idolatrous feasts and for sodomic abominations and many of them are formally married to other men." What these early travelers to the region failed to appreciate due to their ethnocentric prejudices was the essential role of the tranny priests (basir or 'unfertile') in Ngadju society.

The way anthropologist Hans Scharer interprets it, boys who received a holy calling through spirit visitations were considered sacred and as basir were expected to live as women in honour of the tribe's bisexual godhead. At the important new year ceremony of the Sacred Service the basir performed the ritual of the creation when male and female elements combined. In other words, the basir were essential for making sure that the cosmos remained unified. Without them the world would come asunder.

On the northern Indonesian island of Sulawesi (the Celebes) lived a warlike tribe, the Toradja, greatly feared for their headhunting habits. Men strove to become great war chiefs and take many heads. Yet the society had a place for men who abhorred war. These became bajasa (deceivers), or transgender priests who lived as women and were fully-accepted into that role. In a warlike society such as the Toradja any man who chose not to be a warrior had no other option but to become a woman. Incredibly though, any warrior who had lost his taste for war and severing heads could abandon the warpath and become a woman and learn the religious arts. No one in Toradja society would condemn or ridicule him for his change in roles.

Still on Sulawesi but south of the Toradja dwelt the once ­powerful kingdom of the Bugis. Their priests were a group of trannies called bissu (asexual or bisexual), so highly regarded that they lived in the palace with the king, who wanted always to be close to their source of magical power. The bissu behaved as women in every regard, but due to their intimacy with the court they were restricted to certain behaviours. According to the 16th century Portuguese traveller Paiva, any impropriety with the princess, into whose bedchamber the bissu could enter, could end in their drowning, or if found having sex with any of the courtly women they were boiled in oil.

Bugis culture has been totally uprooted with the intrusion of Islam. Yet the bissu still have an important role to play in Sulawesi society today, as healers, as custodians of sacred cult objects and as prophets. Even among the Muslim community of Sulawesi bissu are respected. One bissu and successful businessman, Haji Gandaria, who also became a Muslim, has been to Mecca eight times, including once dressed as a woman. Contrast this to the outrage expressed by the Muslim community of Java who opposed the return of Ruben Vivianto to Indonesia after a sex-reassignment operation.

Gender crossing was also widespread across the Philippines. When the Spaniards arrived in the 16th century they found Tagalog shamans on Luzon dressed as women praying to a hermaphrodite god. Once again we see the divine influence of bisexual gods on the society's holy men. However, to the south on the island of Negros the transgenders (bayot) of the Cebuans do not seem to have been priests or shamans. Today the bayot are only found in rural communities where they dress ambivulently and dress fully as women only during fiestas. They are not condemned by other Cebuans, nor are they highly regarded. A kind of joking relationship exists between them and their communities in which harmless teasing takes place. In Cebu City and Manila though, we find the hardened attitude of Catholicism towards transgenders (or binabae as they are called in Tagalog). The binabae respond by adopting the western­ like attributes of transsexualism, with drag shows, prostitution and a strong desire for a sex-change dominating their lives.

[Cathy L. Anderson]

TG, TS etc is quite common and quite accepted as part of their heritage in a lot of the Pacific Island nations and indeed South East Asian...

Thanks for a very informative post, Sally! Did you learn this from various different sources, or is it summarized in a book somewhere?

Cathy

[Absaroka]

Thanks for a very interesting and informative post

A couple of thoughts. I wonder if there is some sort of relationship in the Toradja between the extreme agression shown by the warriors and the popularity of retreating into the tranny priesthood. i.e. the greater the violence the greater the need for an alternative lifestyle.

It reminded me of how the very warlike Iroquois delcared the peaceful Delaware men to all be honorary women.

Also I seem to remember reading somewhere that the name Bugis is the root of the expression boogy man.

I have always found the traditions of the South Seas fascinating.

On a more unpleasant note it is in the South Seas that another gender tradition was crossed according to Malinowski. This is where you have cultures where women participate in violent rape of men. The male victims respond very similarly to the female victims in our society, with fear and self loathing among other things. Germaine Greer wrote about this some years ago.

Thanks again for the post

Andrea

[Sally]

Hi Cathy,

I've long studied ancient cultures in regard to cross gender as I believe we, as a more modern culture, and supposedly 'higher intellect' have so much to learn from them in how we treat people, judge what is right or wrong and how we refuse to accept some things as nature at work. There is an abundance of information available written by anthropologists on the subject and it makes for very interesting reading, well for me it does.

I think it's well documented over the years my thoughts on the part nature plays in who and what we are. I've always been as I am and thought as I do from my earliest memories and I came to the conclusion that there must be a logical reason why my brother and I, both of the same parents and brought up in the same environment could be so different in nearly every way. He's robust, macho, strong and was always very adept at contact sports etc, whereas I was always the complete opposite. My sisters tell me I tried to dress in their clothes before I can consciously remember. I never made any conscious decisions to be as I am, so it has to be a higher force, as I've written so many times over the years. I think so much of this is backed up by studying ancient cultures. I think we can 'join the dots' from them to us in modern days and nothing has really changed, nature still creates as she wishes. The main difference between then and now is that there was more acceptance in ancient times than the bigoted times, we, as the supposed higher educated, higher intellectuals live in. We really have gone backwards over time but the wheel is turning a full circle, albeit slowly.

I'll include an article here for you to read which I printed off some years ago, which may be of interest, on the North American Indian. I've had the article for some years and the name of the author escapes me just at the moment, but I do remember at the time she presented many excellent researched articles on various topics, including, Gender, sexuality, prostitution, womens issues etc and I apologise to her for forgetting her name.



" Long before the Europeans came to North America, Indian gender crossing occurred across the continent. It was widely reported by white men in their first encounters with Indian tribes. As early as 1564 a French traveler, Jacobus Le Moyne, in Florida remarked: "When (the Indians) go to war the 'hermaphrodites' carry the food" and "those who are stricken with any infectious diseases are borne by the 'hermaphrodites' to certain places and nursed until they may be restored to full health." These 'hermaphrodites' were not biologically ambiguous individuals, but simply Indian males who chose to live as women. Le Moyne and other Europeans of his time could only understand gender crossing by describing it as hermaphroditism. His description, however, alerts us to certain phenomenon associated with gender-crossers among Indian tribes: they joined. the warriors on the war path; they behaved like women in attending to the food; and, they had magical powers of healing. A century after Le Moyne, a Jesuit, Jacques Marquette, in 1671 made this observation of Sioux Indians: "There is some mystery in this; the berdache never marry and glory in demeaning themselves to do everything that women do. They go to war but can only use clubs and not bows and arrows, which are the proper weapons of men. They are present at the solemn dances... at these they sing. They are summoned to the councils and nothing can be decided without their advice. Through their profession of leading an extraordinary life, they pass for manitous, that is to say, spirits, or persons of consequence." "Berdache" was a term the French explorers used to describe Indian gender-crossers: it derived from an Arab word for "male prostitute" or "catamite" (kept boy), but Marquette was clearly referring to gender-crossers and not prostitutes. Once again we see that the Indian gender-crossers accompanied the warriors on the war-path and were treated with great respect for their wisdom and magical skills. In the 1830s the American traveling artist, George Catlin, visited the sauke tribe and witnessed a ceremony in which warriors openly announced having had sexual relations with berdaches, or as the Sauk called them i-coo-­coo-a. Catlin's Victorian upbringing caused him to express his disgust: "He (Catlin preferred to refer to the i-coo-coo-­a in the masculine pronoun regardless of her demeanor and dress being obviously feminine) is driven to the most servile and degrading duties, from which he is not allowed to escape...being the only one in the tribe submitting to this disgraceful degradation". This remark implies that the i-coo-coo-a was nothing more than a sex-slave. But further on Catlin is forced to admit that the i-coo-coo-a is "a man dressed in women's clothes, as he is known to be all his life, and for extraordinary privileges which he is known to possess... (he) is looked upon as medicine and sacred and a feast is given to him annually.

In many other tribes the gender-crossers had high status in their community. Anthropologist Royal Hassrick, in reporting on the Sioux winkte (man-woman), found them to be "good shamans (medicine-men) who go about calling one another 'sister'. Each one has his own tipi (skin tent), for after men have sexual relations with them their parents put up a tipi for them. The Sioux regarded the winkte as wakan (holy) and no attempt was made to prevent them crossing gender from men to women. Hassrick claims that the winkte were held in awesome respect on one hand and in disdainful fear on the other." He felt this reflected the ambivalent attitude which the Sioux had for the winkte, but it sounds more like the typical response Indians had towards all shamans, whether they were gender crossers or not. In the 1860’s the Cheyenne Indians had six gender crossers, or he-man-eh (half men ­half women), as they called them, who all came from the same kin group, the Bare Legs band. These were highly regarded personages who were granted the full status of women by the tribe. Yet, they were more than ordinary women. They were the most powerful beings in the tribe, with supernatural powers beyond even the shamans. Only the he-man-eh had the necessary power to handle fresh scalps brought back by the warriors after a successful battle, for the negative power of the enemy whose scalps had been lifted could only be nullified by the half men ­half women. And, what’s more, after performing this extraordinary feat, the he-man-eh passed on their amazing powers to courting couples to ensure they had long and happy lives together.

The most positive response to gender-crossers by any people anywhere in the world carne from the Navajos, who referred to those who permanently crossed gender or did so only from time to time as nadles ("being transformed"). These were god-like beings whom a Navajo informant told anthropologist W.W. Hill "are leaders like President Roosevelt (and) around the hogan (earth ­dwelling) they will bring good luck and riches. It does a great deal for the country if you have a nadle around... you must respect (them) for they are somehow sacred and holy." The nadles were the source of knowledge, well­being and protective power for the tribe, for as the informant said: "They know everything. They can do both the work of a man and a woman. I think when all the nadles are gone it will be the end of the Navajos." The mythology of the Navajos is full of wondrous deeds performed by the nadles, from intervening in a quarrel between First Man and First Woman to their preference for women's roles over men's. The nadles were the outstanding artisans and sheep breeders, and usually prominent shamans, choosing one or another of the holy professions, such as a chanter, a curing doctor, a curer of incest, a midwife or a sorcerer. Like the cheyennes, the' Navajos treated their gender-crossers as a third sex with special powers not available to the conventional sexes. But, unlike any other Indians, the nadles were gods on earth who held the fate and destiny of their people in their hands.

Many attempts have been made by white men to explain the phenomenon of gender crossing in North American Indian societies, from Le Moyne's hermaphroditism and Catlin's "disgraceful" homosexuality to modern psychoanalytical theories. One anthropologist, Donald Forgey, suggests that Indian boys unable to survive in the competitive world of warriors sought alternative lifestyles as women before they reached manhood. But this was achieved "with a supernatural explanation and justification of their condition." The Omaha Indian gender-crosser, or min-qu-ga, claimed to have dreamt their destiny when the moon spirit carne to them in a vision and offered them a woman's pack-strap in one hand and warrior's bow in the other. When the boy reached out for the bow the spirit switched hands so that he grasped the pack-strap instead. But, as the old Sioux shaman, Lame Deer, once remarked: "if nature puts a burden on a man by making him different, it also gives him a power." Thus, did the Indians themselves explain why crossing gender and shamanism went hand in hand.

Not all tribes treated their gender-crossers with the deference of Navajos, Cheyennes, Sioux, Sauk, Omaha and most other plains and eastern woodlands peoples. The Pimas cast their gender-crossers out of the tribe, and the Apaches went so far as to kill them. Among the Mohaves the alyhas (like a woman) were treated as a joke. But their partners were ridiculed to the effect that they are unable to get a 'real' woman. The poor alyhas went to extraordinary lengths to demonstrate their feminine nature, even to the point of deliberately causing constipation, so that they could claim their swollen bellies were due to pregnancy. When they eventually defecated they said that the resultant dung was a still-born baby, and went through an elaborate burial rite and period of mourning. The people often taunted them by pointing to dog droppings in the village and loudly proclaiming it as one of their children. Others would try to lift up the alyhas' grass-skirts in an attempt to expose their penises, and when an unfortunate alyha's penis became involuntarily erect and poked through the grassy covering this was an occasion for great communal mirth. The la' mana (man-­woman) of the Pueblo Indians were better treated. Though crossing gender was generally discouraged by the Pueblos, if a boy was determined to live as a woman no further obstacles were put in his way. The 19th century anthropologist Mathilda Stevenson reported extensively on a famous la' mana, We-wha, of Zuni Pueblo, who became a leader in the community, and found her to be mentally and physically the strongest person in the tribe. It is likely that this acceptance of the la' mana is due to Zuni gods being asexual. Similarly, the Cocopas and Yumas also accepted their gender crossers because they reflected the hermaphrodism of their gods.

There is very little evidence of females crossing over to masculine roles in North American Indian societies. This might seem surprising given the generally higher status of Indian men, but then the lifestyle of the warrior was much more demanding than that of the woman and fraught with enough danger to dissuade females from taking the route. It has been suggested by some white observers that Indian mothers sometimes deliberately feminized their sons to avoid them dying on the battlefield, but neither parents would contemplate emasculating daughters for the strong possibility of being killed in war. On the other hand, in some warlike tribes like the Iroquois, where women had political power and the usual warrior's death was by prolonged torture (causing a high rate of suicide among men) their is no evidence of either women nor men crossing gender, while gender:-crossing occurred amongst the peaceful Pueblos where the sex roles were similar. The fact is though that women's roles in many Indian societies were not as confining as men's. For instance, Black feet women were known to have acquired great wealth in horse herds usually achieved only by chiefs and prominent warriors, and, during the Indian wars of the 18th and 19th century white soldiers frequently commented on Indian women fighting side by side with their men folk. The anthropologist George Devereux reported on female gender-crosser, Sahaykwisa, a Mohave hwame (like a man), who insisted on being treated as a warrior. But the people called Sahaykwisa "split vagina" on account of the way he and his "wife" laid with vaginas touching. Sahaykwisa bragged about his imaginary penis and strutted around the village in a manly fashion. Everyone humoured him with this behaviour, but when he tried to enter the war councils of warriors he was refused outright and he was not allowed to touch the men's weapons just as women weren't. Obviously, Sahaykwisa did not threaten the social order by "pretending" to be a man, but when he wanted to enter the warriors' inner sanctum he posed a direct threat to a masculine prerogative. This rebuttal was too much for Sahaykwisa, who ended his torments by drowning himself in the raging Colorado River. "

Kind Regards,

Sally.

[Danette]

Thank you, Ladies for some very interesting reading. It seem like sometimes, We (as humans) have un- evolved in some aspects of treating one another. So sad.


Thanks,
Danette