[Commentary] [USA] Third genders, two spirits, and a media without a clue.

[Stephanie Stevens]

Scientific American, USA


THE PRIMATE DIARIES
Notes on science, politics, and history from a primate in the human zoo.

The Allure of Gay Cavemen

Third genders, two spirits, and a media without a clue.

By Eric Michael Johnson | May 23, 2012


Author’s Note: Earlier this month the UK Daily Mail reported
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2141904/The-gay-Stone-Age-village-Scientists-Czech-long-houses--male-skeleton-buried-women.html>
on continued excavation at an archaeological site near Prague where
researchers described an individual with an alternative gender
identity. The following post originally appeared at Neuron Culture
<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/neuronculture/> hosted by Wired
after the original report last year.

[Photo: "Cave Painting" by Nathaniel Gold]

In 1993 the reputable German weekly Der Spiegel printed
<http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13688203.html> a rumor that
Otzi, the 5,300-year-old frozen mummy discovered in the Otztal Alps
two years earlier, contained evidence of the world’s earliest known
homosexual act. “In Otzi’s Hintern,” wrote the editors, referring to
the Iceman’s hinterland, “Spermien gefunden worden.” (If you require a
translation <http://bit.ly/KsCG6s> , chances are you didn’t want to
know anyway.) The rumor quickly spread on computer bulletin boards as
the recently unveiled World Wide Web inaugurated a new age in the free
flow of misinformation. The origin of the rumor, as Cecil Adams
discovered <http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/920/whats-the-story-with-otzi-the-gay-caveman>
, turns out to have been an April Fool’s prank published in the
Austrian gay magazine Lambda Nachrichten. The joke about our ancient
uncle being penetrated deep in the Alps was then picked up by other
periodicals, but with a straight face.

Twenty years later it appears that little has changed. On April 6,
2011 Czech archaeologist Katerina Semradova spoke with the Iranian
news service PressTV about their ongoing excavation of a burial in
Prague that contained evidence suggesting a “third gender” identity.
Dated to approximately 4,700 years ago, the archaeologists found what
they said was a man from the Corded Ware culture who had been buried
in a way that was highly uncharacteristic for the time. Typically,
males from this Chalcolithic society were interred laying on their
right side facing east while women were placed on their left side
facing west. Accompanying the bodies would be gender specific grave
goods that the deceased individual would presumably need in the
afterlife (weapons or tools in the case of males and jewelry or
domestic jugs for women).

“We found one very specific grave of a man lying in the position of a
woman, without gender specific grave goods, neither jewelry nor
weapons,” said Semradova. “[I]t could be a member of a so-called third
gender, which were people either with different sexual orientation or
transsexuals or just people who identified themselves differently from
the rest of the society.”

Identifying the biological sex of a 5,000-year-old skeleton can be
difficult enough, let alone interpreting a persons gender identity
from a long forgotten culture. Nevertheless, their archaeological
hypothesis is a sound one. The trouble however, as both John Hawks
<http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/meta/communication/gay-caveman-prague-2011.html>
and Kristina Killgrove
<http://killgrove.blogspot.com/2011/04/gay-caveman-zomfg.html> pointed
out, is that the statement was merely part of an outreach campaign and
didn’t have a scientific paper to accompany it. Nevertheless, the
story quickly went viral with news agencies ranging from Ukraine
<http://www.osvita.org.ua/news/57113.html> to Vietnam
<http://www.xaluan.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=256853>
to Saudi Arabia <http://www.aleqt.com/2011/04/13/article_526057.html>
all announcing the discovery nearly simultaneously. The problem lay
not with the scientists, who were describing preliminary findings that
previewed some tantalizing results, but a media culture that
emphasizes sensationalism over accuracy and being first over being
right.

By all accounts it seems that the UK Telegraph
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8433527/First-homosexual-caveman-found.html>
had the dubious honor of being first in this case, and in so doing
committed two wrongs in just as many words: “Gay Caveman.” First off,
a person living during the Chalcolithic (a period previously referred
to as the “Bronze Age”) was not a caveman. This highly inaccurate term
is usually used for Neandertals or Cro-Magnon humans, both of whom
lived about 35,000 years ago. Secondly, an alternative sexual
orientation does not make a person gay. Full stop. The first error is
conflating one date with another that was seven times earlier, like
claiming the Australopithecus Lucy lived alongside the giant mammal
Megacerops <http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/03/thunder_beasts_of_new_york.php>
. But the second error is conflating entire categories, like saying
that everyone in Asia is Chinese. Someone making the first error we
might excuse as merely being ignorant of specific time periods and
details they don’t normally encounter, but the second error is just
plain ignorant.

Something that was seriously lacking from almost every report on this
story, a notable exception being Rosemary Joyce’s blog post
<http://ancientbodies.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/gay-caveman-wrecking-a-perfectly-good-story/>
on the topic, was providing their readers with the proper context of
what was meant by third gender. This is a term that can best be
understood as an umbrella concept that incorporates multiple sexual
identities that don’t fit into either male or female social norms.
It’s a term that is mostly used when describing non-Western societies
and the closest equivalent in our own culture would be the
reappropriated word “queer” as it’s used within the LGBT community
(outside that community it’s often used as an epithet, very much like
a certain N-word).

Of course, non-Western societies have their own terms for third
gender. Native Americans use “two-spirit” to describe a person who
simultaneously embodies a mixture of traditionally masculine and
feminine identities, or two spirits residing in a single house.
According to anthropologist Will Roscoe in his book Changing Ones,
more than 155 North American societies have been documented as having
two-spirit people (or “berdaches” as they were commonly called in
anthropology). Some were men who took on traditional female gender
roles, some were women who identified as men to become hunters,
warriors or chiefs, and some were members of either sex who weren’t
easily categorized. To the Crow they were bote, the Navajo knew them
as nadleehi, while the Lakota called them winkte. Some had sexual
relationships with women, some with men, some with both, and some
eschewed sexuality altogether.

“However, when the sexual preferences of berdaches have been reported
a definite pattern emerges,” says Roscoe. “Male and female berdaches
were sexually active with members of their own sex and this behavior
was part of the cultural expectations for their role.” The gender
roles that we’ve come to know as homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and
transgender were all represented in these societies, but in ways that
were culturally specific and likely to have been quite unfamiliar
based on our definitions.

Outside of North America the story of gender diversity is just as
rich. In southern Mexico, the descendants of Zapotec societies have a
gender identity they refer to as muxe, or a man who dresses and
behaves as a woman. As the recent CNN program “Men, Women, Muxe”
<http://csws.uoregon.edu/?p=5035> highlighted, these individuals are
highly respected in society, particularly in the Oaxacan city of
Juchitan. Some are sexually attracted to men while others just feel
more comfortable dressing as women (what we might refer to as
transvestism). In the latter case these muxe marry and have children
as any man would, though I expect the choice of bridal gown requires
some negotiation.

Third genders are reflected in practically every region of the globe.
In Polynesia are the mahu <http://bit.ly/KSbwDL> , in both classical
and modern India the hijras <http://bit.ly/KB8kLd> and jogappas
<http://bit.ly/JFwMek> , in the early Islamic cities of Mecca and
Medina were the mukhannathun <http://bit.ly/JzyGnz> , while those in
the modern societies of Pakistan, Indonesia, Samoa, and the Dominican
Republic are known as khusra <http://bit.ly/KWpKUC> , tomboi
<http://bit.ly/KcX6kC> , fa’afafine <http://bit.ly/Lsgw0W> , and
guevedoche <http://bit.ly/MJyeTh> respectively. All systems contain
aspects that are both familiar and unique. In the latter example,
guevedoche translates to “penis at twelve” and these intersex
individuals are born with undescended testes along with an absent or
clitorislike penis. Many of these biological males are therefore
raised as girls until, at puberty, their voice deepens, their testes
descend, and their phallus grows, at which point they transition into
life as a man. Within their society this is nothing particularly
unusual and there’s no stigma attached, it’s just guevedoche. Given
such a diversity of roles, it seems that three genders aren’t nearly
enough to represent the numerous forms that sexual identity can take
in our species. Gay cavemen, indeed.

However, despite the initial similarities between the gay cavemen
scandals of 1991 and 2011 there is a very important difference. Us. In
the last twenty years the global community has undergone a radical
shift in our understanding and acceptance of alternative sexual
identities. In ten countries (including where I sit in Canada, though
not where I’m from in the United States) gay marriage has the same
legal recognition as straight marriage. Sadly, the national dialogue
of my home country remains painfully reminiscent of the pre-1967 era
when interracial marriage was a crime
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia> and bringing Sidney
Poitier home for dinner <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061735/> was
risqué enough to attract an audience. But the situation is improving.
The popular allure of the gay caveman story is just one indication of
this ongoing change. Given time I’m confident that our society will
one day see our myriad differences as our strength. Because whether we
call it third gender or two-spirit, our diversity is one thing that
truly unites us as a species.

--
Eric Michael JohnsonAbout the Author: Eric Michael Johnson has a
Master's degree in Evolutionary Anthropology focusing on great ape
behavioral ecology. He is currently a doctoral student in the history
of science at University of British Columbia looking at the interplay
between evolutionary biology and politics.
--


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