have anything to do with so-called gender identity. Which they don't.
(, Tue 10 Aug 2021, 9:20, Reply)
And, of course, an XXY male is - drumroll - male. So still binary. Because that's what sex is.
(, Tue 10 Aug 2021, 9:41, Reply)
There is no "third" where one is neither make nor female.
(, Tue 10 Aug 2021, 13:58, Reply)
(, Tue 10 Aug 2021, 14:07, Reply)
but anything else seems highly speculative, such as claims like "might have viewed them as non-binary". It's a rare find and probably signifies something about the period, but I don't think there's enough to build any reliable narrative in the absence of other evidence.
If I was taking a punt, I'd hazard that in those superstitious days in non-christian european societies, freakish people were often looked on as having something magical or spirit connected about them, and that might account for the high status position, rather than some sort of normalisation of transgender roles hitherto unevidenced. Although, there is observed anthropological evidence of acceptance of transgender roles in relatively more recent east siberian hunter gatherer societies, almost always taking a medicine man/woman type role, but a congolese pygmy is closer to finland than a chukchi reindeer herder as the crow flies. and speculation should never be more than a placeholder, as people often latch onto it when it suits their own wishful narrative
(, Tue 10 Aug 2021, 10:44, Reply)
"Transgender roles" implies that our (sexist) intuitions about what is "proper" to which sex - and "gender" is nothing but that - and therefore about what is "transgender" by dint of defying those intuitions are both normal and normative. But I'm not sure that there's evidence for normality, and there's no basis at all for their normativity.
(, Tue 10 Aug 2021, 12:57, Reply)
But transgender roles as I've used it just means someone behaving as a trangender person does (i.e. dressing and acting like the opposite sex) I wouldn't read any more into it than that, unless you're trying make some other point.
I just remember years ago reading a book about some polish anthropologist still in the time of the czars, before their way of life was mostly wiped out, reporting on shamanism in the koryaks and chukchis and how male shaman dressed as woman and took on feminine behaviours (and even male partners if memory serves). She postulated that shamans might have been women in the past but men took over and adopted that gender behaviour, perhaps for it's traditional authority in their culture. It's a fair bit of different to some androgynous scot posting youtube vids, granted.
And I did say mine was speculation, I just think it's more likely than their take, which has a whiff of imposing modern values on quite a different time and culture
(, Tue 10 Aug 2021, 13:39, Reply)
Bogoras distinguishes various degrees of 'transformation' among the Chukchee:
1. The shaman, or the sick person at the bidding of a shaman, arranges and braids his hair like a woman.
2. The change of dress: Kimiqai, for instance, were woman's clothes by order of the spirits. In his youth he had been afflicted by in illness and had been greatly benefited by the change of dress. At the time described he was an elderly man with a beard, and had a wife and four children.[5]
3. The change in the habits of one sex is shown when the man 'throws away the rifle and the lance, the lasso of the reindeer herdman, and the harpoon of the seal-hunter, and takes to the needle and the skin-scraper '.[6] He learns the use of these quickly, because the 'spirits' help him all the time. Even his pronunciation changes from masculine to feminine. His body loses its masculine appearance, and he becomes shy.
4. In rare cases the 'soft man' begins to feel himself a woman; he seeks for a lover, and sometimes marries.
The marriage is performed with the usual rites, and the union is as durable as any other. The 'man' goes hunting and fishing, the 'woman' does domestic work. Bogoras thinks they cohabit modo Socratis, though they are sometimes said to have mistresses in secret and to produce children by them.[1] The wife does not, however, change her name, though the husband sometimes adds the name of his wife to his own.
Public opinion is always against them,[2] but as the transformed shamans are very dangerous, they are not opposed and no outward objections are raised. Each 'soft man' is supposed to have a special protector among the 'spirits', who is usually said to play the part of a supernatural husband, the 'kele-husband' of the 'transformed' one. This husband is supposed to be the real head of the family and to communicate his orders by means of his 'transformed' wife. The human husband, of course, has to execute these orders faithfully under fear of prompt punishment.[3]
www.sacred-texts.com/sha/sis/sis08.htm
(, Tue 10 Aug 2021, 16:00, Reply)
but the only thing google threw up was that same paper (which was pretty well cited of late, i'm assuming because it supports many current agendas) and b3ta links itself which is pretty fast indexing. So I reckon she meant to say platonic but it's just a typo, unless its some rare archaic term only used by 19th century polish anthropologists
(, Wed 11 Aug 2021, 3:45, Reply)