She/He/They/Me

by Robyn Ryle

  Some intersex conditions are chromosomal, which means that they are located in your DNA—your genetic blueprint. Sexual dimorphism tells us that one of the real and objective criteria for distinguishing between women and men are their chromosomes. Men are XY and women are XX. But some intersex people are XXO or XXY or XO.

  Intersex conditions can also involve internal organs. Some intersex people have both an ovary and a testis.

  So what happens to you as an intersex newborn? How do doctors and parents deal with a baby to whom they cannot immediately assign a gender?

  A lot depends on the particular type of intersex condition you have and whether it’s apparent at birth or not.

  Your intersex condition is apparent at birth. GO TO 32.

  Your intersex condition isn’t apparent at birth. GO TO 31.

  4

  You’ve been born a hijra in India. You’re neither man nor woman, but one of the many gender-variant categories that exist around the world.

  Actually, you’re not born a hijra in India. The hijra role is something you become rather than something you’re born into. As a hijra in India, you get to have some say in your gender assignment, something you wouldn’t get in many other cultures.

  In order to understand what it means to be a hijra, you have to understand a little bit about Hinduism, the religious tradition from which the hijra role emerges. Representations of androgyny (the combination of feminine and masculine characteristics) and intersex people (people whose physical bodies don’t quite fit into the defined criteria for sorting women and men) are both common in Hindu origin myths. For example, the Rig Veda (a Hindu religious text) says that before creation, the world lacked all distinctions, including those of gender. Men with wombs, a male god with breasts, a pregnant man—these are all common images in ancient Hindu poetry, reflecting this idea of androgyny. Multiple genders are acknowledged among both gods and humans.

  To become a hijra, your gender assignment at birth starts as a boy. Later, you receive a spiritual call from the Hindu Mother Goddess, known in one form as Bahuchara Mata. If you ignore her call, you risk being born impotent for the next seven future rebirths—not at all a good thing in a culture where being able to have children is very important. The call tells you to undergo a gender change, wear your hair long, and dress in women’s clothes. To answer the call, you join a “house,” or a particular lineage or clan of hijras. There you become a chela (disciple) with a guru (master or teacher) who gives you a feminine name and pays your initiation fee into the hijra community.

  ANDROGYNY

  n. /an-ˈdrä-jə-nē/

  The state of being neither specifically masculine nor feminine.

  When you become a hijra, you both leave behind your masculine identity and take on a feminine one. You dress like a woman and assume a feminine name. You use feminine kinship terms with others in your house, like auntie, sister, and grandmother. On public transportation, you and other hijras request “ladies-only” seating. But you are not truly a woman. Your feminine dress is often exaggerated and, unlike traditional Hindu women, you exhibit a more aggressive sexuality. Part of the hijra role involves dancing in public on ritual occasions, which is something Hindu women would generally not do.

  You may not be a woman as a hijra, but you’re not a man, either. Some hijras are, in fact, born with intersex conditions. If you weren’t born intersex, you must undergo an operation which surgically removes your masculine genitalia. This renders you, as a hijra, incapable of fulfilling the masculine role sexually; without a penis, hijra cannot penetrate a sexual partner and this makes them not really men, according to the way masculinity is defined in Hindu culture.

  Your role as a hijra is institutionalized in Hindu society, which means that there are rules and norms about what you can and should do, just as there are for women and men. Hijras are ascetics in Hindu society; you are expected to renounce sexual desire, as well as your family and kinship ties. You’re also supposed to be dependent upon religious-inspired charity for your livelihood. Hijras have a ritual role in celebrating the birth of a son. You and other hijras would perform dances to celebrate the birth and then ritually inspect the son’s genitals to make sure he’s not intersex. You would bless the son on behalf of the Mother Goddess with the powers that you as a hijra don’t possess: the ability to have children. The family would then give you ritual payment for your performance. You might also perform after a marriage, when the bride arrives at the home of her new husband’s family.

  Being a hijra has its drawbacks. Even with the power granted to you as a hijra by the power of the Mother Goddess, you may still be held in low esteem and seen as a social outsider. The hijra role is full of such contradictions. Still, as with many gender-variant categories, the hijra are evidence that in some places, there really are more than two genders.

  To start a new gender journey, TURN BACK TO 2.

  5

  You’ve been born an alyha among the Mohave in North America at the turn of the twentieth century. You’re neither man nor woman, but one of the many gender-variant categories that exist around the world.

  The process of becoming an alyha among the Mohave begins when you’re still in the womb, with your mother’s dreams. As a mother of a future alyha, she would have dreams about objects that are associated with masculinity in Mohave culture—things like arrow feathers. But her dreams would also contain hints of your future status as an alyha.

  As an alyha, you’re born a boy, but at around ten or eleven years of age, you start to pursue different interests than the rest of the boys. While they’re beginning to practice masculine adult activities such as hunting and riding horses, you play with dolls. Or maybe you play games, like gambling, that are set aside for women. You might want to wear a bark skirt, which is women’s clothing, instead of what the other boys are wearing, a breechclout.

  Initially, your parents push you back toward being a boy and doing “boy” things. If you keep it up, though, they accept your alyha status and prepare a ceremony to officially mark your transition. In the ceremony, two women lead you into a circle made up of other people from your tribe. Everyone sings a song associated with alyha. Dancing as the women do means you’re definitely an alyha. You put on a bark skirt and are now, permanently, no longer a boy, but an alyha.

  As an alyha, you take a girl’s name and insist that all your male genitalia now be identified with names used for female genitalia. You’re likely to marry a man as an alyha and you won’t have trouble finding a husband. In Mohave culture, alyha are seen as a good match—perhaps better than young girls.

  Once you’re married, you’ll “menstruate” like other women. For alyha, you create the illusion of menstruation by scratching yourself between the legs to induce bleeding. Your symbolic menstruation will be treated the same way as a biological woman’s menstruation; all the same ceremonies are observed.

  You take on many of the characteristics of being a woman in Mohave culture, but you are not fully a woman. You marry a man, wear women’s clothes, and do the household chores of women. But women’s lineage names are not allowed for you. And the rules for how your husband-to-be courts you as an alyha is also different.

  Among your tribe, you wouldn’t be ridiculed for being an alyha, though your husband might be made fun of for marrying you. You would be seen as generally peaceful, unless someone made fun of you for some reason besides being an alyha; in that case, you might respond with violence. You might also be believed to have special supernatural abilities, which could be used in curing illness.

  Although the alyha traditions are no longer practiced, they are evidence that in some times and places, people who exist outside of the categories of female and male can be given positive meaning and bestowed with some power.

  To start a new gender journey, TURN BACK TO 2.

  6

  You’ve been born a sworn virgin in the Balkans in Eastern Europe. You’re neither man nor woman, but one of the many gender-variant categori
es that exist around the world.

  Actually, you’re not born a sworn virgin. The sworn virgin role is something you become, rather than something you’re born into. As a sworn virgin, you get to have some say in your gender assignment, something you wouldn’t get in many other cultures.

  In order to understand what it means to be a sworn virgin, you have to understand a bit about the historical culture of the western Balkans. Yours is a severe warrior culture that involves blood feuds and murder between competing groups. The society you’re born into is aggressively patriarchal, which means that power leans toward men and masculinity. Women have few rights and are seen as social outsiders. Women can’t carry weapons, and they are off-limits for violence by men.

  At birth, you’re a girl. You might become a sworn virgin if your family doesn’t have any sons to inherit and carry on the family name. Maybe like Tonë, who became a sworn virgin in the early twentieth century, your brothers die in childhood. With the support of your parents, you become your parents’ son. For Tonë, this happened when he was nine years old. You promise never to marry, and you begin to dress like a man. Your feminine name stays the same, but people refer to you with a masculine pronoun. You do men’s jobs and chores with your father. Over time, you come to walk and talk and generally move around like a man.

  If you’re like Tonë, you occupy a wide range of masculine roles in your community. If you have sisters who marry, you’re the one who gives them away. You might even command an all-male unit in World War II, which Tonë did until he was captured. Sworn virgins don’t marry or have sex because that’s a central part of how the role is defined. But along with a younger sibling, you might become master of your own household, like other men. When you die, you’ll be buried in men’s clothes, but with the blessings of the Catholic Church as a virgin. The funeral oration usually given for men won’t be performed at your funeral, as that would violate tribal rules.

  Why would you live as a sworn virgin? In this patriarchal culture, you’d probably do it to save your family from the distress of their house “disappearing” due to the lack of any male heirs. Or you might become a sworn virgin to avoid being forced into an arranged marriage. Maybe you enter this role because you always felt like a man, or because you want the greater freedom available to men in Balkan culture. Even if your parents eventually gave birth to a son, you would probably maintain your status as a sworn virgin.

  As a sworn virgin, you’re no longer a woman, because women are expected to marry and have children. But as you can see, you’re not quite a man, either; you don’t get the funeral rites accorded to a man. In addition, although you’re allowed to use weapons like a man, anyone who attacked you would be stigmatized in the same way they would be for attacking a woman. The sworn virgin role is about more than just gender crossing.

  There are fewer sworn virgins like you in contemporary Balkan culture, partly due to the loosening of gender roles for women. Estimates suggest that there are still around one hundred true sworn virgins in countries like Albania. Those who remain occupy a category that is somewhere in between—a gender-variant role.

  To start a new gender journey, TURN BACK TO 2.

  7

  Life as a boy in a patriarchal society is pretty good. In a patriarchy, androcentrism is a central lens through which people see the world. Androcentrism is the idea that men and masculinity are superior to women and femininity. Because of androcentrism, you’re automatically seen as superior to girls and women, not because of anything you do but just because of who you are. By definition, in a patriarchy, more power rests in the hands of boys and men. In other words, the whole system of gender is set up in a way to benefit people like you. Score!

  PATRIARCHY

  n. /ˈpā-trē-ˌär-kē/

  A system of social organization in which power leans toward men and masculinity.

  On the other hand, there are costs that come with being on the top in a system like this. As a boy, you’re expected to follow all the rules of masculinity. If you don’t, even your gender assignment as male won’t keep some people from looking down on you in a patriarchal society. If you get labeled a “sissy” boy, you’re likely to get made fun of and be bullied. Here’s a short list of some things that you’ll be discouraged from doing as a boy: expressing your emotions, being nurturing, resolving conflicts easily, being intimate with other people, and taking care of your own personal well-being.

  ANDROCENTRISM

  n. /ˌan-drə-ˈsen-ˌtri-zəm/

  The idea that men and masculinity are superior to women and femininity.

  So being in a patriarchal society as a boy is both good and bad.

  GENDER SOCIALIZATION

  n. /ˈjen-dər ˌsō-sh(ə-)lə-ˈzā-shən/

  The act of learning how to fit into the particular gender to which a person is assigned.

  Now that you know what sort of society you’re in, you can get started on the process of gender socialization, or learning how to fit into the particular gender to which you’ve been assigned. Who does that socializing is important, so you need to know who’s going to spend most of their time taking care of you. You need to know who your primary caregiver is going to be.

  Your primary caregiver is a woman. GO TO 30.

  Your primary caregiver is a man. GO TO 20.

  Your primary caregiver is a group of people. GO TO 26.

  8

  You’re in a matriarchy. What exactly does that mean? In matriarchal cultures, lines of inheritance and lineage flow through women instead of men. Myths and stories emphasize the power and importance of women. There’s some debate about both what a matriarchy is and whether it truly exists. Some researchers argue that all societies we know of are, in fact, patriarchal. But in some places, power does lean more toward women.

  In a place such as this, would you be oppressed as a boy? Probably not. True matriarchies tend to be nonhierarchical, which means that there aren’t any large differences in social status among people in the tribe or group, even along gender lines. Differences in economic status, based on who has more stuff, aren’t important either, because the distribution of material goods is based on a model of economic reciprocity, or a constant circulation of gifts. Mothering is valued in these cultures, so that it becomes a cultural model for everyone. Marriage is matrilocal (which means daughters stay in the household of their mother when they marry), and inheritance is matrilineal (descent moves from mother to daughter rather than from father to son). But the stuff that gets inherited is still distributed equally, so women don’t acquire more stuff than men in this system. Because of these patterns of kinship, everyone in a matriarchy is seen as related to everyone else, and this is another way that status differences are flattened out. Everyone in a matriarchy qualifies as a “brother” or “sister” or “mother” within this expansive system of kinship. So you end up with one big family of caring relationships among social equals.

  MATRIARCHY

  n. /ˈmā-trē-ˌär-kē/

  A system of social organization in which power leans toward women and femininity.

  MATRILOCAL

  adj. /ˌmatrəˈlō-kəlˈ/

  Denoting a custom in marriage when a daughter stays in the household of her mother when she marries, or the husband moves to live with his new wife’s community.

  MATRILINEAL

  adj. /ˌmatrəˈli-nē-əl/

  Of or based on kinship with the mother or the female line in a family.

  Great, you might say to yourself, but women still have more power than men, right? Maybe, but the differences in power between women and men in a matriarchy are much smaller than those in a patriarchal culture, because power is more evenly spread out in general. In a culture where mothering defines how people should interact and everyone views each other as family, decisions are made based on consensus—everyone has to agree before a decision is made. No one person or even group of people (like women) have the ability to tell others what to do, unless everyone agrees. When decisions
are all based on consensus, power is pretty equally distributed among everyone in the group. So as a boy in a matriarchy, you might have slightly less power relative to girls or women, but the differences would be pretty small.

  As a boy in a matriarchal culture, you might be expected to go live with your wife’s family when you get married. Or you might follow the pattern of “visiting marriage,” where you don’t live with your wife at all. You stay in your mother’s household and “visit” your wife or lover, where you’re seen as a sort of overnight guest. Your children stay with your wife in her household, and you might not have any rights or duties relative to your own children. Instead, you have social rights and duties to the children in your own mother’s household, serving as a “social father” to your sisters’ children. Under this kinship system, it’s not that you don’t have parental rights as a father, it’s just that those parental rights are attached to your sisters’ children instead of your own biological children.

  As a boy in a matriarchal society, we could assume that the person who’ll be doing most of the work of taking care of you as a child—your primary caregiver—will be a woman. But maybe not. Maybe in a matriarchy, men are the ones assigned to do most of the childcare. Or maybe men and women share these tasks fairly equally.

  Your primary caregiver is a woman. GO TO 30.

  Your primary caregiver is a man. GO TO 20.

  Your primary caregiver is a group of people. GO TO 26.

  9

  You’re lucky enough to find yourself in a matriarchal culture as a girl. Woo-hoo!

  There’s some debate about whether or not matriarchies actually exist. Some researchers argue that all societies we know of are patriarchal. Still, there are some places where power leans more toward women. So let’s assume that you’re in one of those places and that matriarchies really do exist.