Title: Third Genders: New Concept? Or Old? | The Evolution of Human Sexuality
Headings: Third Genders: New Concept? Or Old?
Third Genders: New Concept? Or Old?
Content: Instead of being written off as outcasts, as persons of atypical gender identities often are today, these mahu were revered in their social roles as sacred educators of ancient traditions
In ancient Incan culture, the Incas worshipped a “dual gendered god” known as chuqui chinchay, who could only be attended and honored by third gender shamans or servants who wore androgynous clothing as “a visible sign of a third space that negotiated between the masculine and the feminine, the present and the past, the living and the dead.” Among the Sakalavas of Madagascar, there is a third gender group reserved especially for little boys thought to have a feminine appearance and personality. These boys, rather than labeled as “gay men” after maturing and experiencing the upbringing of a male, are instead raised by their parents as girls from a young age. Though many of these societies may refer to transsexuals or homosexuals as a third or separate gender, most of the time, these extra genders represent individuals who identify neither as men nor women. To most of these cultures, this means that the third gender symbolizes the intermediate condition between the genders or a state of being both. ( This is often described as the “spirit of a man in a woman’s body” and vice versa.) In layman’s terms, this means that individuals included in this third gender either have no gender affiliation, have the ability to cross or swap between genders, or are a gender category all together independent of the traditional male and female roles. It doesn’t always stop at third. Third genders are widely accepted as being understood as an “other” gender, but fourth, fifth, and sixth genders have been documented by anthropologists as well. In contemporary societies, people have started to draw a line between sex (biological and anatomical nature) and gender (social and psychological nature).