6 Sex, Gender and Sexuality

On March 17, 2022, Lia Thomas became the first transgender woman to win the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) swimming championship, which took place in Atlanta, Georgia at the Georgia Tech McAuley Aquatic Center. Thomas won the 500-yard women’s freestyle that evening, with a time of 4 minutes and 33.24 seconds. She was highly successful during the season in women’s college swimming, but her record placed her at the center of major controversy in the sports world and in the United States. Many people, including some of her own swim and dive teammates at the University of Pennsylvania, argued that she should not be allowed to compete against other women due to being transgender. An article from Sports Illustrated online reads, “The shy senior economics major from Austin [Texas] became one of the most dominant college athletes in the country and, as a result, the center of a national debate—a living, breathing, real-time Rorschach test for how society views those who challenge conventions” (Sanchez 2022). (The Rorschach test is also called the ink blot test in which people are shown an image made up of abstract ink blots and they are asked what is the first thing that comes to their mind. Another step would be to have the person study the blots and then recall what is in each one.)

That Thursday evening in Atlanta, protesters from the anti-trans organization Save Women’s Sports, which contends that if men are to be permitted to compete in women’s sports than there will no longer be women’s sports, gathered outside the aquatic center to protest Thomas’ inclusion in the swimming and diving championships. This is despite the fact that Thomas met NCAA requirements for transgender athletes that was established under a 2010 policy. For the winter and spring championships in 2022, NCAA required that male-to-female athletes must not exceed 10 nanomoles per liter of testosterone in their blood for four weeks prior to the competition in order to compete in women’s sports. This is at the bottom range of what a normal level of testosterone is for males (Doyle 2015). In February 2022, USA Swimming, the governing body of competitive swimming in the United States, issued a stricter rule that requires testosterone levels to be less than five nanomoles per liter for a minimum of 36 months prior to a competition (Church 2022). NCAA refused to adopt it and remained committed to its 2010 policy. USA Swimming released a statement about its new policy and restrictions citing statistical data showing that top female swimmers would rank rather low when compared to male swimmers in the same events: ‘The development of the elite policy therefore acknowledges a competitive difference in the male and female categories and the disadvantages this presents in elite head-to-head competition’ (Church 2022).

Thomas started competitive collegiate swimming on the men’s team at the University of Pennsylvania in the Fall of 2017; the same team that her brother Wes competed on for the previous four years (2013-17). Thomas proved to be a top competitor. She established several personal bests while on the men’s team. She especially excelled during the 2018-19 season with second-place finishes in championship races for the Ivy League (the conference of schools in which University of Pennsylvania is a member), which moved her closer to her goal of one day swimming in an NCAA Championship and maybe even qualifying for the Olympic games. But while she soared in competitive swimming, Thomas said she ‘felt off’ and ‘disconnected with my body’ (Sanchez 2022). Thomas did not begin hormone replacement therapy (HRT) until May 2019 for fear that it would cause her swimming career to come to an end, and she understood that HRT would affect her body and perhaps impact her race times. However, she came to realize that competitive swimming was a core component of who she was and she wanted to continue to compete as her “authentic self” (Sanchez 2022), as a member of the women’s team.

One the one hand, Save Women’s Sports argues that Thomas’ inclusion, given she was born biologically a male, counters women’s long struggle for right to compete in sports and to be recognized and compensated the same as men for their talents and work. For example, in February 2022, the U.S. Women’s National Team for soccer filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) over inequality in pay and treatment. In 2019, the minimum league salary for National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) was $16,538, as compared to the minimum salary for the (men’s) Major League Soccer (MLS) of $70,250 that same year (Spiggle 2019). The U.S. Soccer Federation agreed to pay $24 million that included millions of dollars of back pay owed to female players. The agreement also requires equal pay for both men’s and women’s soccer players moving forward (Das 2022). On the other hand, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) emphasizes questions of equity and the need for all transgender athletes to compete in their chosen gender identities. On Twitter the ACLU stated, “It’s not a women’s sport if it doesn’t include ALL women athletes. Lia Thomas belongs on the Penn swimming and diving team, and all trans athletes belong in their sports.”[1] The organization also quoted an article from Newsweek in a Tweet, “‘Women’s sports are stronger when all women—including trans women—are protected from discrimination, and free to be their true selves.’ We couldn’t agree more.”[2] This means Thomas, as a self-identified woman, should be able to compete without question in women’s collegiate swimming. Lia Thomas has been at the center of controversy because her inclusion in women’s collegiate swimming calls into question what may be considered to be “natural.” Drawing on ethnographic research from around the world, anthropologists have argued that much of what we think of as “natural” has actually been produced socially and culturally, meaning that it is not inherent, biological, or “just as is,” but rather has been crafted by individuals and communities over history.

Aren’t Sex and Gender the Same?

Sex and gender have different definitions in anthropology, and these definitions are found across the humanities and social sciences. Sex refers to anatomical and biological differences between males and females that are created at conception and continue to develop in the womb and throughout childhood and adolescence. These differences are due to males and females having different chromosomes, females have two X chromosomes and males have one X and one Y chromosome. But, as we will see later in this chapter, this is not always the case and some people have varied sets of sex chromosomes. Gender is a cultural and social construct. French philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir, famously stated, “One is not born but becomes a women” (1949, X). de Beauvoir suggests that being a woman is not how one is born, meaning it is not tied to biological sex. The most prominent interpretation of this statement by anthropologists and feminist scholars is that “woman” is a social concept. Gender indicates the cultural aspects or differences that a society will attribute to people based on their sex. The ways that society thinks of males and females, and expectations when it comes to behaviors and characteristics, is not determined solely by genetics or biology, but rather, comes about due to society’s beliefs about how males and females should be. Definitions of femininity and masculinity develop out of the cultural and social expectations that society has of women and men. Gender (and sexuality, which we will also discuss in this chapter) are not completely “natural,” even though they may have a genetic component to them; they are informed by culture and shaped by a mixture of “naturalness” and cultural scripts.

In 1972[2002], Lois Gould (1931-2002), an American writer who often wrote about women’s issues and served as executive editor at the magazine Ladies’ Home Journal, wrote “X: A Fabulous Child’s Story” for Ms. magazine, founded the year previously by American feminist activist, Gloria Steinem.[3] In the short story, which was transformed into a book six years later, Gould questions gender roles, or the range of attitudes and practices that are assigned to a particular sex and are acceptable for that sex within a society, through the story of X. Baby X was part of a “Scientific Xperiment,” named as such because no one could know if they were a boy or a girl, except for the parents, the Joneses. The Joneses received a manual from the scientists explaining that X should play with both girls’ and boys’ toys and should wear both girls’ and boys’ clothing. When friends and family came to visit X when they were brought home, they were shocked when the parents responded with “It’s an X!” to questions about the baby’s sex. They were not satisfied with this answer, wanting to know if the baby was a boy or a girl. The manual stated that as X became older, X’s mother should teach them to throw the ball and that X’s father should play dolls. As X grew older, they were considered a problem child at school, however, since their friends wanted to do what they did—Peggy, a little girl, mowed the lawn, and Joe, a little boy, vacuumed. This was the opposite of societal expectations for boys and men and girls and women. Parents of classmates organized a meeting with the Principal who required X to be examined by a team of “Xperts” to determine what X was, which would determine how they should act and what clothing they should wear. But one of the Xperts stated, “Young X…is just about the least mixed-up child we’ve ever Xamined!” The parents were outraged and could not believe that the team did not consider X to be an outlier; they continued to ask what X was. The Xperts responded, “X knows perfectly well what it is…don’t worry. You’ll all know one of these days. And you won’t need us to tell you.”

Gould sketches gender stereotypes of men and women. The United Nations Human Rights Office defines a gender stereotype as, “a generalized view or perception about attributes or characteristics, or the roles that are or ought to be possessed by, or performed by, women and men. A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and/or make choices about their lives.”[4] Due to the ability to become pregnant and to give birth, women (although not all women are able to due to various reasons) are often viewed as care givers, which means that they are the ones primarily responsible for child care as well as family or elder care. When Hughes Rinker was conducting ethnographic research on reproductive health care in Morocco, she had the chance to speak with someone who worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) office in Rabat (the capital city) about initiatives focused on increasing women’s economic and political participation in Moroccan society. The staff member asked her a rhetorical question during their conversation, “If a baby takes a bottle, is feeding the baby a bottle only a woman’s job? Can’t men give their baby a bottle too?” Shereen Hussein and Mohamed Ismail (2017) argue that generally in the Middle East and North Africa, care for aging parents and elderly kin, as well as children, has largely fallen to women, which has kept them from participating more fully in the economic, social, and political aspects of society. They suggest that this system of care must change, with more state sponsored programs and policies around care, due to how the family unit and demographics are changing in the region. These are just a few examples of how assumptions concerning women being caregivers due to their nature or their ability to give birth (not all biological women can, though), may be detrimental to women in other areas of their lives, such as having their voices excluded from society, their social and physical needs overlooked by the government, not being able to contribute economically to their families or communities as much as they would like, or facing discrimination when it comes to compensation. Stereotypes assume that something is natural, but “Much of what we stereotypically consider to be ‘natural’ male or female behavior—driven by biology—might turn out, upon more careful inspection, to be imposed by cultural expectations of how men and women should behave” (Guest 2016, 179). Sexual dimorphism, differences in physical characteristics and sexual organs in the different sexes, exist between men and women, but only at about 15% (height and weight are two characteristics that tend to differ between men and women) as compared to gorillas and orangutans at over 50% (Larsen 2003). Charles Darwin differentiated between natural and sexual selection suggesting that sexual selection will lead to adaptations that are useful in finding a mate and reproducing (Lassek and Gaulin 2022).

Sherry Ortner (1974), American anthropologist and distinguished professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote the essay “Is Female to Male as Nature to Culture?” as part of the collection Woman, Culture, and Society edited by Michelle Rosaldo (1944-81) and Lousie Lamphere. In the essay, she questions the universality of women’s lower status in society as compared to men. She writes, “The secondary status of woman in society is one of the true universals, a pancultural fact. Yet within that universal fact, the specific cultural conceptions and symbolizations of woman are extraordinarily diverse and even mutually contradictory. Further, the actual treatment of women and their relative power and contribution vary enormously from culture to culture, and over different periods in the history of particular cultural traditions. Both of these points constitute problems to be explained. the universal fact and the cultural variation” (Ortner 1974, 68). Ortner is careful to clarify that the inferiority of women does not look the same in every society around the world. Ortner states, “I must stress that I am talking about cultural evaluations; I am saying that each culture, in its own way and on its own terms, makes this evaluation” (1974, 69). A few years later, Rosaldo reiterated that, “Male dominance is evidenced, I believe, when we observe that women almost everywhere have daily responsibilities to feed and care for children, spouse, and kin, while men’s economic obligations tend to be less regular and more bound up with extrafamilial sorts of ties; certainly, men’s work within the home is not likely to be sanctioned by a spouse’s use of force” (1980, 395). Ortner and Rosaldo, two prominent feminist scholars, interrogate why women are usually considered to be at a lower status than men without reverting to biology, (and the fact that women—although certainly not all—can menstruate and can physically have children. Gloria Steinem, the American political activist and feminist organizer, in her 1978 article, which continues to be reprinted today, “If Men Could Menstruate,” writes, “What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not? The answer is clear—menstruation  would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event.” (2019, 151) Steinem notes that if this were the case, “sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free” (2019, 151) and men would praise each other at the time of menstruation by giving high fives. The most salient line of Steinem’s article is perhaps one of the last ones: “In fact, if men could menstruate the power justifications could probably go on forever. If we let them” (2019, 152); power and status are not associated with (biological) men because of anything that is “natural,” but rather, because of historically and culturally shaped scripts concerning sex and gender.

This line of argument is equally shown by anthropologist Emily Martin (1991), who argues the way that conception is often illustrated in textbooks is highly influenced by social and cultural ideals about sex and gender. Through an examination of scientific and educational texts, Martin (1991) explores the ways that “culture shapes how biological scientists describe what they discover about the natural world” (485). When Hughes Rinker teaches this text in her class, she often shows the opening scenes of the 1989 movie starring the late Kirstie Alley and John Travolta, Look Who’s Talking, where the highly active and mobile sperm are rushing to the egg, which is waiting for the sperm to arrive. The egg does not move or talk, but the main sperm, voiced by Bruce Willis, yells to the other as they all make their way to the egg  in the fallopian tubes, “Come on! Right down here!” and “Keep up!” and when they finally find the egg, “Jackpot!” Similarly, Martin (1991) notes that science traditionally depicts the egg as a “damsel in distress” (491) just waiting to be fertilized by the sperm—one sperm to be exact. Women’s reproductive processes are described as wasteful since women only have a set number of eggs and menstruation occurs each month, and as deteriorating over time: “a woman’s ovaries become old and worn out from ripening eggs every month, even though the woman herself is still relatively young” (Martin 1991, 487). Male reproductive processes are shown to be productive since millions of sperm cells are produced and this can continue over the course of man’s lifespan: “The texts celebrate sperm production because it is continuous from puberty to senescence, while they portray egg production as inferior because it is finished at birth. This makes the female seem unproductive, but some texts will also insist that it is she who is wasteful” (Martin 1991, 488). In this scenario, what is not usually talked about is that one sperm makes it inside of the egg for conception, meaning millions are wasted. Newer scientific research has shown that the traditional image of conception—active sperm, passive egg—is not entirely accurate. On their own, sperm do not have great motility, meaning the woman’s body must move them along to the egg. Moreover, they are relatively weak and cannot break through the outside of the egg easily. The outside of the egg must “trap” the sperm so that they can release enzymes to break down the exterior of the egg.

What happens when the process of conception is reported accurately in scientific textbooks and literature? Martin writes that these accurate images would grant the egg agency, or the extent to which one can act freely and independently and one can make their own decisions, and put the egg into an active rather than passive role in the process. However, while more accurate than the stereotypical ideas of conception where the sperm is the main antagonist of the story, the egg is now seen as “disturbingly aggressive…the femme fatale who victimizes men” (Martin 1991, 498). European Christianity in the Middle Ages considered women to have a strong sexual drive and capacity, one that could not be controlled. But by the 19th century, we see women being largely defined by their reproductive bodies, or their ability to carry a man’s child. Gender ideologies from the 19th to the mid-20th centuries in Europe and the United States connected sexual preference—the sex to which one person is attracted—was seen as heterosexual by default, or as natural, and because of this (masculine) men were to be attracted to (feminine) women and vice versa. And in these ideologies, masculine meant active and aggressive, like how the sperm was represented, and feminine was to be passive and quiet, like how the egg was represented. However, the new research that showed the egg in an active role in conception did not force scientists to remove the gender stereotypes from their reporting of conception completely, but rather, just made the egg and sperm fall into different, yet still detrimental and negative narratives about gender. Martin demonstrates that much of what we know about the world, including scientific facts, which are to be objective (free of bias and judgement including personal opinions and emotions) is in reality inflected by our own experiences and cultural ideals.[5]

In the United States, the 1950s is a decade that many people refer to, even in the 21st century. It was the decade after World War II ended (1941-45) and at the start of the Cold War. Often “Historians use the word ‘boom’ to describe a lot of things about the 1950s: the booming economy, the booming suburbs and most of all the so-called ‘baby boom.’”[6] Some of us have parents, grandparents, or other relatives who are described as “baby boomers,” meaning they were born between 1946 and 1964, a time when “many Americans were eager to have children because they were confident that the future promised peace and prosperity.”[7] Significant was the rise of suburbs. Housing developers like William Levitt would buy land and develop single-family homes on the outskirts of cities (first in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). Here we must note that the G.I. Bill and veterans benefits greatly assisted white families, but less so veterans of color and their families. There was a wide implementation of the benefits which grew gaps in wealth, civil rights, and education. Suburbs in the United States were mostly made up of white younger families. The baby boom and growth of suburbs had an effect on many American (predominantly white) women. They were to take care of the home and children, which was quite restrictive as compared to the 1940s when women were working in factories to support the war effort. Rosie the Riveter is a prime example of a campaign to recruit women to work in factories manufacturing ammunition and other materials for World War II given that men had left for the front-lines. There was a cultural emphasis on femininity and motherhood.

 In 1963, Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique. The first chapter is titled, “The Problem that Has No Name,” which refers to the boredom and confinement that suburban life made women feel. An advocate for women’s rights, Friedan “rebukes the pervasive post-World War II belief that stipulated women would find the greatest fulfillment in the routine of domestic life, performing chores and taking care of children.”[8] Friedan urged women to rally against the inhering sexism in American society at the time. She describes the feelings of loneliness of suburban housewives in a deeply personal way, and much of this was depicted in television shows such as I Love Lucy (1951-57), The Donna Reed Show (1958-66), and Leave it to Beaver (1957-63). Actor Donna Reed was the producer of the show, but she was not included in the credits. Only her husband’s name appeared even though she had equal control over the storyline and script (Tupponce 2021). In the show, Donna Stone, the wife and mother played by Donna Reed, counters gender stereotypes and pushes racial boundaries, such as having a friend who was married to a Japanese woman (remember this is during a time after World War II).[9] The show highlighted the discontent that Friedan wrote about, including Donna Stone becoming bored with housework, wanting to be part of things outside of the home, and her desire to be seen as equal to her husband. Annie Newton (Master’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University) states, “Her show is about finding herself in addition to being a mother. She pursues things like writing a novel or starting her own business while also finding fulfillment in her role as a mother, which is totally against what Betty Friedan says” (quoted in Tupponce 2021). Women’s roles within the home at this time also can be seen as having political significance given it was at the start of the Cold War (a longer period of political tension after World War II until 1991 between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as their allies). There was a fear of communism (from the Soviet Union) in the (democratic) United States and the family was seen as the core of democratic society. Women and mothers were to be the ones to uphold traditional moral values, and at the same time, not take away job opportunities from returning male veterans.[10] Newton proposes that The Donna Reed Show exemplified“maternal feminism,” which is unlike the radical change that Friedan encouraged: “Maternal feminism is the idea that women are empowered to challenge gender norms while fulfilling themselves…On the show it’s more of this fulfillment of motherhood while still pushing for equality” (quoted in Tupponce 2021).

A powerful and extremely bold text—one that continues to have importance even today given it shifted attention away from individual women and to systemic issues—a major critique of The Feminine Mystique is that if speaks to white, middle-class, American women who were mainly living in the burgeoning suburbs and tending to children and the home. Black feminist approaches encourage us to look at how the intersections of white supremacy and patriarchy impact the lives and experiences of women of color. Black feminism in the 1960s challenged the exclusion of women from leadership and societal participation (economically and politically) as well as the mainstream feminist movement’s focus on primarily middle-class educated white women. Friedan did not account for women of color or those of the working-class. On December 1, 1955, just eight years before the book was published, Rosa Parks[11] was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for not giving her seat in the front on the bus to a white person, which would spark a boycott of the city buses. The boycott, a form of nonviolent resistance, helped shape the Civil Rights movement in the United States over the next decade, including the work of activist Ella Baker,[12] who co-founded In Friendship, an organization to raise funds to fight against the Jim Crow Laws of the southern United States (lasting from post-Civil War to 1968, these were statutes and legislation that made racial segregation legal, such as laws against African Americans holding particular jobs, attending certain schools, or upholding the right to vote).

Constructions of Sex and Gender

Anthropology has been a champion of highlighting things considered “natural” are not actually natural or biologically given, but are culturally constructed. As gleaned from the previous section and discussed in Chapter 5, there is nothing inherently different among racial and ethnic groups; inequality is created and legitimated over time. Gender is also one of these things. We cannot deny that gender has a biological aspect. All humans have bodies, and of course, these bodies have similarities and differences among them. There are some biological differences between “male” and “female,” mostly in reproduction. In her ethnographic research in Morocco (2013), Hughes Rinker considers how male and female roles when it comes to childbearing and childrearing among her participants in a working-class area of Rabat, where women primarily are responsible for children in all capacities. She explores how these roles have come to seem “natural” through cultural scripts. She cannot deny that the women included in her sample gave birth to children. However, she argues that the expectations of men and women in reproduction and raising children are not entirely natural and should not be taken for granted, but rather, they have come to seem as natural through dominant cultural ideals about childbearing and childrearing in Morocco that have been shaped over time.

Gender is a cultural construct, meaning its meanings shift and vary depending on historical time periods and geographic contexts. Often we naturally divide humans (and many animals) into “male” and “female” based on biological sex. A salient article by Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes” (1993) suggests that sex—like gender—is not so cut-and-dry. Dr. Evelynn Hammonds (2016), noted historian of science and African American Studies, stated that Fausto-Sterling is a highly regarded and extremely influential contemporary feminist scholar. In her earlier article, Fausto-Sterling argues that only seeing sex as “male” and “female” excludes anyone who may not fit within one of these categories, which only reinforces compulsory heterosexuality and can infringe upon people’s rights. Sex is a continuum instead of a binary (two things in relation to one another; having two parts). Compulsory heterosexuality is a concept propagated by American poet and writer Adrienne Rich (1980) to describe how women are believed to prefer relationships with men over relationships with other women, with the underlying understanding this leads to procreation. Rich wrote the article on the concept to counter the invisibility of those who identify as lesbian. Heterosexuality is to be the default sexual orientation and is said to be instinctual. For Rich, heterosexuality is an institution integrated into the fabric of society that works to maintain patriarchy. Men’s dominance over women is only reinforced by the political, such as laws concerning same-sex marriage. The French scholar, critic, and activist Michel Foucault (1925-84)[13] developed the term heteronormativity to describe the rights that are afforded to those who follow norms when it comes to sexuality and family formation, in most instances, heterosexuality. Those who do not follow norms are not afforded these rights. One common example is who is able to adopt a child in different societies. In some places, those who do not identify as heterosexual are not permitted to adopt a child (and formal adoption itself, meaning adoptive parents are given parental rights, is not always allowed due to laws, culture, or religion). Heteronormativity has been used in different ways by scholars in the social sciences and humanities, such as to refer to the assumption that everyone is by default heterosexual, “heterosexist-heteronormativity” or to refer to the assumption that everyone identifies as the gender that matches their sex are assigned at birth, “cisnormative-heteronormativity” (Marchia and Sommer 2019, 267). Cisgender denotes that a person has a gender identity that matches their sex assigned at birth. Transgender is used to refer to individuals who identify as a different gender than the one that was assigned to them at birth, such as the swimmer Lia Thomas whose story opened this chapter. Heteronormativity, regardless of its particular theoretical orientation or empirical focus, highlights that those whose identities fall outside of what is accepted in a society, and reinforced through norms, laws, or other means, are excluded from being afforded particular privileges and rights.

More and more often instructors in university classrooms may ask students to disclose their preferred pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so. At George Mason University, the home institution of Hughes Rinker, there are several ways for faculty, students, and staff to state their preferred pronouns, such as on faculty and staff bio websites, on your name that appears on Zoom within your square, in your email signature, and in the online course management system. The LGBTQ+ Resources Center at Mason offers an important reminder: “Oftentimes, people conflate or confuse sexual and/or romantic orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex assigned at birth, but they are separate and uncorrelated.”[14] The center refers to the Gender Unicorn (https://transstudent.org/gender/) by Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER). We often fall into the trap of using male and female pronouns and language (e.g., he or him, she or her), but this binary excludes those who do not identify in such a way, even if done so unintentionally. An article appeared online in the daily newspaper The Washington Post in 2022, “Can Sex, Gender and Language Live Happily Ever After?” The author, Andreas Kluth (2022), states that asking for or disclosing preferred pronouns is meant “to burst out of the psycho-social straitjacket of binary chromosomal sex and the corresponding presumptions about gender roles.” The Gender Unicorn from TSER reminds us that the sex assigned at birth (male, female, intersex), gender identity (female/male), and gender expression (feminine, masculine) do not always align since they do not depend upon each other. Kluth looks at gendered language globally. Anglophones (English-speaking people) are in the middle linguistically with both neutral and gendered pronouns, and both can be used depending on preference and context. This includes the singular non-binary “they.” (Kluth states, though, that some individuals will not accept changes in pronouns or using neutral language for various reasons.) Finnish is not gendered. The pronoun han “has always referred to men, women and anybody in between” (Kluth 2022). Swedish has gendered pronouns, but Sweden created a third pronoun, hen, which is neutral; it was added to the Swedish dictionary in 2015. Some languages are inherently gendered and “can’t be that flexible, purely on grounds of grammar and syntax. Thai, Hebrew, Russian and other tongues have, to varying degrees, gender built into their foundations. In Thai, for instance, even the first person (I/me/mine) is feminine or masculine, as are other parts of sentences. In Hebrew, verbs have gender. German, French, Italian, Spanish and other tongues assign gender to articles, adjectives and nouns” (Kluth 2022).

In France there has been debate about the addition of the pronoun iel, or a combination of il (he) and elle (she) in 2021. It is the equivalent to the singular “they” in English. The French language is highly gendered with pronouns, adjectives, nouns, and verbs aligning with the gender of the person or object in which they refer to. The masculine form always takes dominance. For instance, if you are talking about a group of five women and one man, the group would be referred to as ils, the masculine plural, even though women outnumber men. The Minister for Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, tweeted after iel was added to Le Robert, the French dictionary, ‘Inclusive writing is not the future of the French language’ (Wagener 2021). In 2021, Minister Blanquer banned the use of inclusive writing methods (écriture inclusive) such as the use of iel, in French schools.  President Emanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte Macron, did not acknowledge the new pronoun when asked for a comment on the issue. The editors of Le Robert have asserted that this move was not political in nature or reflective of their personal views; their job is to “observe changes to the lexicon and then decide whether to include new words in their editions” (Wagener 2021). The addition of iel was only a reflection of contemporary changes in French society and language.

Among some First Nations (Canada and the Arctic) and Native Americans (United States),[15] Two-Spirit people “were male, female, and sometimes intersexed individuals who combined activities of both men and women with traits unique to their status as two-spirit people. In most tribes, they were considered neither men nor women; they occupied a distinct, alternative gender status.”[16] In some tribes, this was considered a third gender and in others two-spirit females were distinguished from two-spirit males, so a fourth gender. Ma-Nee Chacaby is an Ojibwe-Cree writer, activist, and artist from Canada. When Chacaby was four years old, she was told by her grandmother that she was a two-spirit child and because of this, may have a more difficult life. She went on to write the book, A Two-Spirit Journey: An Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder (2016). Dr.  Kai Pyle (201-22 Chancellors Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Two-Spirit writer and advocate) endorsed to book saying that it “will resonate with many people whose stories have not often been to…Chacaby is among the first LGBT elders to publish her story. The perspective of a lesbian Ojibwa-Cree elder is invaluable for LGBT Native youth and will be an enriching experience for many others, particularly those who have experienced abuse, disability, poverty, or the effects of colonization.”

We recognize that there is great diversity within indigenous communities across North America and that Two-Spirt is an umbrella term which may not capture all variation in meaning or roles. Moreover, the acceptance of two-spirit varied among groups. However, the Indian Health Service notes that there were four commonalities in two-spirit roles. First, two-spirit people preferred work that would be traditional assigned to the opposite sex or in artisan work such as pottery, basket-weaving, and leather work: “Among the Navajo, two-spirit males often became weavers, usually women and men’s work, as well as healers, which was a male role…Two-spirit females engaged in activities such as hunting and warfare, and became leaders in war and even chiefs.”[17] Second, two-spirit people were differentiated from men and women by how they dressed, their social roles, and their behaviors and lifestyles. Third, it was believed that supernatural intervention was what created two-spirit identities, and so two-spirit people played special religious roles in their communities. And fourth, two-spirit people usually entered into relationships with non-two-spirit people who were of the same sex: “Among the Lakota, Mohave, Crow, Cheyenne, and others, two-spirit people were believed to be lucky in love, and be able to bestow this luck on others.”[18] Displacement and violence against First Nations and Native Americans, including the spread of disease, by European settlers, missionaries, and government officials caused several practices and beliefs to disappear or go underground, including Two-Spirit, which was particularly “singled out for condemnation, interference, and many times violence” by the outsiders (refer to previous paragraphs about gender and sexuality in European Christianity to think about why this was).[19] Dr. Qwo-Li Driskill (Oregon State University), a (non-citizen) Cherokee Two-Spirit and queer writer and activist, in the book Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirt Memory (2016) argues that enforcing constructions of gender and sexuality in the United States and Canada, among other settler colonies, or places where settlers from another country or region displaced indigenous populations in order to control the area, was a tool that was used to control indigenous peoples, as well as their land and resources.

Conclusion

On November 17, 2022, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (Season 24 Episode 8) centered on a crime against a transgender woman, the daughter of a detective with the New York Police Department (NYPD). When the perpetrator was being tried in court for the crime, Assistant District Attorney (ADA) Sonny Carisi questioned Detective Amanda Rollins, who was involved in the investigation of the attack. While on the witness stand, Detective Rollins states, “People like to put things in little boxes and gender identity just doesn’t work that way. It is a deeply felt individual experience and doesn’t always correspond to the sex given at birth, and this seeming contradiction can lead to explosive reactions in some perpetrators.” The need to put people and identities into “little boxes” is what may led to the attack on the detective’s daughter. This chapter has examined how people experience gender and sexuality in cross-cultural and historical contexts. American Anthropologist Margaret Mead published Sex and Temperament: In Three Primitive Societies in 1935 in which she studies gender roles and interactions in among three tribes in Papua New Guinea (in the South Pacific): Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli. Among the Arapesh, both men and women were nurturing and spent time with their children. Men may have even shown what we would call “maternal behavior.” But among the Mundugumor, both men and women were to be aggressive and competitive. Neither particularly took to children and would use physical punishments. In these two cultures, different gender roles did not particularly exist. Among the Tchambuli, men and women did take on different roles in society, but in the reverse of what was commonly found in the United States. Women were the ones who were leaders and more assertive and men were more passive. At the time, Mead’s study outraged much of the scholarly community because it showed that gender roles and characteristics are not linked to biology, meaning women’s assumed responsive role was not a result of them being able to bear children. (Mead’s work has been critiqued by many as painting a simplistic picture of the societies in which she studied, but nevertheless challenged common views at the time in academia and the public.) We have tried to highlight just some of the range of human social practices and beliefs and show how these intersect with forces in society on multiple scales (the local, the community, the national, the global) and at different times. The meanings of gender and sexuality, even though a core part of human life and our experiences, have not remained constant and should not be taken as universal. Anthropologists and ethnographers have long-documented the significant diversity.

[1] https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1488962430977904641?lang=en