taleth:

qbits:

thepeoplesrecord:

Going beyond the Western gender binary - unlearning our backward cultural conditioning 

In Western colonial society (which dominates many aspects of the globalized, capitalist world today) we operate under the presumption that there are only two genders, male and female. But gender is a social construction. One’s options for what gender they identify with are shaped by the culture they are born into. Biological factors are most-often the primary driving forces that choose among the available socially-constructed gender categories.

Cultures around the world have different ways of talking about, thinking about, and identifying gender. It’s often a challenge for (particularly cis-sexual) Westerns to think about other ways gender can be socially constructed. Westerns have the false equivalency of gender and sex drilled into their eternal psyche from the time they are very young, and re-enforced through examples in popular culture. There is no biological reality to gender. Many Westerners have the bizarre belief that one’s XY-sex-determination should also inform one’s gender identity, a socially constructed role in society.

In some cultures, there is no distinction made between gender and sexual orientation and the same can be said for sexual orientation - our culture socially-constructs the options and our biology helps us identify which socially-constructed option feels most ‘right’ and best resonates with us.

I’ve attached some photos to offer some examples of non-colonial, non-Western construction of gender. They’ve all been uploaded onto our Facebook page photostream in case you’d like to ‘like’ or ‘share’ them there. There are literally hundreds of ‘third-gender’ identifying peoples around the world. The eight I’ve chosen are mostly examples I remember from some of my anthropology courses but if you google ‘third genders’ you can find many lists and examples.

Who cares? Why it matters.

The most obvious reason to care about the way our culture has constructed gender and sexual orientation is to deepen one’s capacity for solidarity with people who identify as transgender, transsexual, and others whose gender or sexual identity exists outside of binary Western culture.

But there are other reasons as well. Western culture’s binary nature often creates non-sensical, problematic binary identity constructions that are inherently problematic. For example, I believe that Western masculinity (dominance, aggression, lack of communication, lack of emotional expression, etc) is inherently problematic. I believe that to be the reason why most acts of large-scale-violence and terror are committed by men (see: 100% of the mass school shootings in the United States), and I believe it fosters a degree of internal misery within people who heavily adopt these particular ‘masculine’ traits.

In the age of information, and the age of global connectivity, there is no longer any reason (particularly for young people) to feel isolated or restricted to Western definitions of gender, sexual orientation and identity in general. I think the social ramifications of a generation where more and more people begin to identify outside of the gender binary would be tremendous, and I think we should all consider how we can unlearn our cultural conditioning to embrace other, perhaps less exploitative and dominating identities.

Background information on the identities depicted in the above images:

Hijras
Hijras are male-body-born, feminine-gender-identifying people who live in South Asia (mostly in India & Nepal). Many Hijras live in well-defined, organized, all-Hijra communities, led by a guru.

Although many Hijras identify as Muslim, many practice a form of syncretism that draws on multiple religions; seeing themselves to be neither men nor women, Hijras practice rituals for both men and women.

Hijras belong to a special caste. They are usually devotees of the mother goddess Bahuchara Mata, Lord Shiva, or both.

Nandi female husbands
Among the Nandi in Western Kenya, one social identity option for women is to become a female husband, and thus a man in society’s eyes. Female husbands are expected to become men and take on all of the social and cultural responsibilities of a man, including finding a wife to marry and passing on property to the next generation through marriage. Female husbands may have lived their lives as women and may even be married to a man, but once she becomes a female-husband, she is expected to be a man. Women married to female-husbands may have sex with single men uninterested in commitment in order to become pregnant, but the female-husband (who is often an older woman, often a widow) will father the child of said pregnancy and treat the child like her own.

Two-spirited people
Two-Spirit is an umbrella term sometimes used for what was once commonly known as ‘berdaches’, Indigenous North Americans who fulfill one of many mixed gender roles found traditionally among many Native Americans and Canadian First Nations communities. The term usually indicates a person whose body simultaneously manifests both a masculine and a feminine spirit. Male and female two-spirits have been “documented in over 130 tribes, in every region of North America.”

Travesti
In South America (with a large presence in Brazil), a travesti is a person who was assigned male at birth who has a feminine gender identity and is primarily sexually attracted to masculine men. Therefore, sometimes the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation is not made. Travestis have been described as a third gender, but not all see themselves this way.Travestis often will begin taking female hormones and injecting silicone to enlargen their backsides as boys and continue the process into womanhood.

The work of cultural Anthropologist Don Kulick (a gay male by Western definitions) in Brazil demonstrated that gender construction in Brazil is binary (like Western gender construction), but unlike Western gender construction, instead of having a male-female binary, there is a male-notmale.

In this particular construction of gender:

• Males include: men who have sex with women, men who have sex with Travestis but are never on the receiving end of anal sex, men who have sex with men but are never on the receiving end of anal sex.
• Not-males include: women, men who receive anal sex from ‘male’ gay men or from Travestis.

Fa’afafine
Fa’afafine are the gender liminal, or third-gendered people of Samoa. A recognized and integral part of traditional Samoan culture, fa’afafine, born biologically male, embody both male and female gender traits. Their gendered behavior typically ranges from extravagantly feminine to mundanely masculine

Waria
Waria is a traditional third general role found in modern Indonesia. Additionally, the Bugis culture of Sulawesi (one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia) has been described as having three sexes (male, female and intersex) as well as five genders with distinct social roles.

Six Genders of old Israel
In the old Kingdom of Israel (1020–931 BCE) there were six officially recognized genders:

• Zachar: male
• Nekeveh: female
• Androgynos: both male and female
• Tumtum: gender neutral/without definite gender
• Aylonit: female-to-male transgender people
• Saris: male-to-female transgender people (often inaccurately translated as “eunuch”)

Kathoey (often called ‘ladyboys’)
Australian scholar of sexual politics in Thailand Peter Jackson’s work indicates that the term “kathoey” was used in pre-modern times to refer to intersexual people, and that the usage changed in the middle of the twentieth century to cover cross-dressing males, to create what is now a gender identity unique to Thailand. Thailand also has three identities related to female-bodied people: Tom, Dee, and heterosexual woman.

-Robert

Excellent overview of non-binary gender categories. Sadly, Western imperialism has all but extirpated many traditional concepts of non-dualistic sex and gender categories through residential schools and religious indoctrination. -Q

Radical feminists want to destroy the diversity of gender in PoC cultures and communities. This is what they want to kill when they say they want to abolish gender. They are nothing more than white supremacists.

wishkind:

300 follower giveaway!!! wow cool

you can win:

• a cat zipper sweater (colour + size of your choice)
• a drawing by me (it can be anything!! yeah i know i draw furry shit and stuff like that but i can do humans! ill draw a ship/you or w/e (i wont do any nsfw stuff gomen)
• u dont have to have the drawing if you dont want it omg

RULES!! (read wow)

• reblog as much as you want!! idc man (but be kind to your followers)
• likes dont count but it dosent hurt to like!! (hahh ah)(ha)
• make sure ask box is open omg
• you dont have to be following me, but if you do ill throw in something a little extra for you uwu (maybe)
• if you dont respond within 25 hours sorry man but im picking another winner
• you have to be content w/ giving me your address
• no giveaway/side blogs! 
• ends 3rd of July!!

yeah thats it!! good luck uwu

parrotbeak:

malisteen:

parrotbeak:

strifeandslash:

korra:

The “Collect Her” episode of The Powerpuff Girls essentially predicted Brony culture which is funny because My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was created by Lauren Faust who was an artist/writer/director for The Powerpuff Girls

holy shit

Note that the fan was the villain of the episode but that Faust has gone out of her way to defend bronies even by the time they drew highly misogynist porn of her self-insert OC.

There’s a lesson in there. Somewhere. That may or may not have to do with Faust.

Like the villain of the episode, who trapped and kidnapped the girls to keep them all to himself, Bronies have to a large degree stolen the current generation of MLP from its original target audience by spamming the internet with child-unsafe mlp fan content, swamping appearances by creators and cast members with sketchy adults such that parents feel unsafe with their children there, and noisily attracting so much attention to themselves that it has distorted the nature of the show itself and especially its marketing.  ie, the MLP comic book, that is very much ‘by bronies for bronies’, an adult minded parody of the show’s characters rather than an adaptation that remains true to the style, spirit, or all ages nature of the source material.

And as it has grown in influence, we’ve seen insensate brony screeching change from ‘its not just for little girls’ to ‘its not for little girls at all’.  We’ve also seen vicious, ugly, herd-mindset attacks on anyone within the fandom who dares to question the way the brony herd behaves at all, up to and including death and rape threats directed at said critics.  Far from being a ‘few bad apples’ situation, we’ve seen brony musicians making death and rape threats within their music go on to be invited to perform at brony conventions specifically because of how well received their hatred and bile proved to be within the community.

Maybe Faust shouldn’t have been so supporting of the Brony community to begin with, and maybe show creators shouldn’t have gone out of their way to include explicit nods to them in the show and the marketing.  After all, bronies already liked the show and purchased the merchandise, pandering to them and encouraging them didn’t widen the show’s appeal.  Rather it just seems to have driven them to heightened levels of obnoxiousness and entitled possessiveness, and if anything they’ve in turn narrowed the show’s appeal.  They’ve certainly badly subverted its message, bringing a heavy dose of misogyny to the fandom of a show that was directed with all love and earnestness at young girls, and in doing so have brought down a cloud of ugliness and cynicism on what was so refreshing and engaging to begin with specifically for its openness and sincerity.

I got to “Like the villain of the episode, who trapped and kidnapped the girls to keep them all to himself” and then I decided I like malisteen.

(Source: coubline)

furippupauplus:

I love flying lobsters

(Source: rippedwing)

adventurerun:

rhamphotheca:

Conservation of Hellbenders (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis)

by Jeff Humphries, hellbenders.org

There is no doubt that hellbender populations have declined dramatically over the past several centuries, especially during the 1900’s.

Unfortunately, biologists don’t have much baseline data to go on - we don’t know how widespread hellbender populations were in the past because no one was studying hellbender populations in the 17- or 1800’s, or even into most of the 1900’s for that matter. It is clear, however, that hellbenders have declined in many stream over the past few decades and they are gone from large areas where good habitat probably once existed.  

The good news is that there are still some very good hellbender streams remaining, mainly in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. Several good streams also remain in some parts of Pennsylvania. Populations in the Ozark Mountains are nearly gone, or have drastically declined.  

The only logical strategy now is to try to make sure that good streams remain good streams. This will take a lot of effort and careful planning in the way we as humans develop or protect landscapes…

(Find out more about the Hellbender Conservation)

(photo: Jeff Humphries)

And the Blue River in southern Indiana! :)