tribeNet.tribeTG.discussion.iPost

having just joined a new [tribeNet.tribe], i found myself immediately posting a long response to an inquiry about persons identifying as third-gendered. those of you who are members can just read it, but you other losers (hello, how about joining? it's free & doesn't suck like some other networks who shall remain nameless in the interests of "friend"-ship - "stir" the soup) can read my response here.

those who know me usually see me as a woman, a transwoman or a transdyke.

personally, while these are useful handles for the general public, i loathe the terminology because i think it implies something about my sex and my gender that replicates western ideas of how gender is determined by one's sex in a deterministic fashion. it gives me the heebies to self-describe as transgendered but there isn't much in the way of good alternative terminology.

i am a woman: i wish that was just accepted as is, that there are different kinds of women. i do identify as a kind of third party to the sex system; after all, as a "clinical TG", i was born male & have undergone hormone and other treatments to change my apparent sex to match that of factory-direct chicas. that means i am also "clinically intersexed", even though technically i was not born so by the dictates of the psycho-medical communities.

i see that the term two-spirit, which is popular in the modern american indian movement here in the u.s. and the first nations of canada, describes my situation well. drawing from a history of alternative gender roles, it encompasses all kind of queers depending on who is speaking. however, the alternative gender system was based not simply on "being transgendered": in some tribes, this was another division of society with its own expectations of behaviour and work patterns separate from those of men and women.

there is little room for a true third gender such as this in the modern west. i find that i am recognised as a lesbian (true if you consider that i solely date women) because of the communities in which i transitioned, the women with whom i associate and my presentation and appearance. i do identify as a lesbian, but i also see alternate opportunities...

anyway, my grandpa was off-rez eastern cherokee and i don't feel uncomfortable as a two-spirit. there needs to be some space for those of us who are not abo; the experience of western persons in another gender space is much different than that of the two-spirit in the modern american indian movement and the term is inappropriate for use outside native communities.

incidentally, because of the extreme heterogeneity of abo nations in north america alone, the 'two-spirit' movement is a modern one: it is an attempt to build pantribal culture does draw from western patterns like the modern LGBT movement. monolingual or extremely traditional third-gender persons do not get recognised as part of an inter-nation-al pattern or movement and do not identify themselves as "queer" or the like. some important modern native scholars are third gendered and this status is simply unrecognised outside of their own tribe, where they just present as either a "woman" or "man".

nuff mental masturbation, i think.