am i transgender?

or maybe you are Two Spirited...

People in North America, after coming in contact with the Europeans, started to adopt most of their traditions in the bid to assimilate with the mainstream of the society. Most of the original inhabitants of North America are today aware of the words like gay, lesbian, LGBT, transgender, and so on but they do not know about two spirited people. Same sex marriages may have received support from the Supreme Court only recently, but there are many tribes among Native Americans who have a long history of gay marriage. Navajo is one such tribe that has been recognizing same sex marriages for a very long time.

Like Navajos, there are many other native tribes in North America that have traditionally accorded high respect to people who are a little different from the rest of the population. These people, often referred to as two spirit people, are either feminine males or masculine females. Europeans, when they learnt about these two spirit people, called them berdache. Androgynous males had sex with other masculine males. On the other hand, masculine females had sex with other ordinary females. Such people were referred to as sodomites by the English colonists and the Spanish settlers. 

However, and this surprises many sociologists in modern times, is the fact that native Americans do not believe in this or the other gender but a continuum between feminine and masculine and well defined categories of third, fourth, and even fifth genders. Like in the earlier times, these two spirit people are encouraged by their societies to continue to live their lives in the gender and the role that they love the most.

Most of the men who have bodies and organs like males but believe they are females are allowed to wear women’s clothing and associate with women. They are also allowed to marry a male and take part in many of the spiritual ceremonies of the tribe as one of the many two spirited people of the tribe.  Similarly, there are also females like these males though they are far less in numbers in these Native American societies.

Berdaches were viewed with respect in their societies and they were associated with spiritual power. Europeans only highlighted their homosexual behavior while overlooking other aspects of their personality. However, with increasing contact with the westerners, this tradition of berdaichism is slowly dying with native people converting to Christianity. In their desire to look and behave like Christians, two spirit people are slowly fading away.