5 ms·

As someone close with a two-spirit person, this is the most offensive and ignorant thing i’ve seen on this topic by far.

cato_the_elder 4y ago
Unfortunately, being offended doesn't make you correct: > The neologism two-spirit was created in English, then translated into Ojibwe, in 1990 at the third annual Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, as a replacement for the offensive, anthropological term, berdache. > The primary purpose of coining a new term was to encourage the replacement of the outdated, and offensive, anthropological term berdache, which means "passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute" (from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit#Etymology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit#Etymology)
- eesmith 4y ago
  By my reading, the definition of berdache existed in the 1600s, and in is original European context, refers to '"passive homosexual", "catamite" or even "boy prostitute"' (quoting Wikipedia.) Europeans didn't have a gender framework that could handle concepts outside of "male/female":"man/woman" so some re-used that French term meaning broadly to include what Europeans would now describe as transvestite, transgender, hermaphrodite, and homosexual people. See http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/archive/20070205170933!Berdache-A_Brief_Review_of_the_Literature.pdf http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/archive/20070205170... You can see from the examples that while "berdache"/"two-spirit" was widespread in Native American cultures, there wasn't a "traditional native-american 'boy prostitute' role". In addition to "berdache" being re-used to mean non-gender-binary-conformant, the term as used in the scientific literature carried with it European prejudice which didn't reflect the native understanding: > literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries regarded the berdache as a “creature of failed biology, for example, hermaphroditism [...], or failed morals [...], or as someone not able to live up to an expected norm” (Herdt in Jacobs et al. 280). -- quoting https://www.proquest.com/openview/c98c4f83e2910bd20e6b3ebb6b7e6f54/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2026366&diss=y https://www.proquest.com/openview/c98c4f83e2910bd20e6b3ebb6b...

cato_the_elder 4y ago

Unfortunately, being offended doesn't make you correct: > The neologism two-spirit was created in English, then translated into Ojibwe, in 1990 at the third annual Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, as a replacement for the offensive, anthropological term, berdache. > The primary purpose of coining a new term was to encourage the replacement of the outdated, and offensive, anthropological term berdache, which means "passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute" (from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit#Etymology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit#Etymology)

eesmith 4y ago
By my reading, the definition of berdache existed in the 1600s, and in is original European context, refers to '"passive homosexual", "catamite" or even "boy prostitute"' (quoting Wikipedia.) Europeans didn't have a gender framework that could handle concepts outside of "male/female":"man/woman" so some re-used that French term meaning broadly to include what Europeans would now describe as transvestite, transgender, hermaphrodite, and homosexual people. See http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/archive/20070205170933!Berdache-A_Brief_Review_of_the_Literature.pdf http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/archive/20070205170... You can see from the examples that while "berdache"/"two-spirit" was widespread in Native American cultures, there wasn't a "traditional native-american 'boy prostitute' role". In addition to "berdache" being re-used to mean non-gender-binary-conformant, the term as used in the scientific literature carried with it European prejudice which didn't reflect the native understanding: > literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries regarded the berdache as a “creature of failed biology, for example, hermaphroditism [...], or failed morals [...], or as someone not able to live up to an expected norm” (Herdt in Jacobs et al. 280). -- quoting https://www.proquest.com/openview/c98c4f83e2910bd20e6b3ebb6b7e6f54/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2026366&diss=y https://www.proquest.com/openview/c98c4f83e2910bd20e6b3ebb6b...