#berdache

[this-is-my-main-i-follow-from]

Language, culture, and Two-Spirit identity.

I am a huge language geek.  As in, I’m a little obsessed with language and how it relates to culture, to identity, to understanding the worl

I love language & I am queer & I am learning cree/michif. For anyone else in a similar boat (like the other cree-learning michif trans man I know who went to school for anthropology) I think it is a worthwhile read!

[whosoeverdotorg]

Many spiritual systems of the Americas taught that all being, including Deity, is twinned in nature, both male & female. The idea of the Sacred Twins is common.

"Maybe the Two Spirit Person is closer to truly human than the rest of us."

For Native American Heritage Day, here's beloved LGBTQ+ author Patricia Nell Warren's excellent deep-dive on the berdache and two-spirit traditions.

[queermythsandlegends]

Begochidi

Begochidi or Begochiddy is a Navajo trickster God

Begochidi was the son of the sun. The sun committed adultery with everything in the world. This was how so many monsters were born. After this, the sun was put a way off so that could not happen again. But as the sun came up he touched a flower which became pregnant and gave birth to be’gochidi. He was the youngest son of the sun, and the sun spoiled him. He was put in control of many things, such as game and domestic animals. He was a berdache and the first pottery maker.

He could also move about invisibly and change into different forms at will: a rainbow, wind, sand, water, etc. He was named be’gochidi because he would make himself invisible and sneak up on young girls to touch their breasts, shouting “be’go, be’go” (breast). He especially annoyed men who were hunting. When a hunter had taken aim and was ready to shoot, be’gochidi would sneak up behind them, grab their testicles, and shout “be’go.” This spoiled the hunter’s aim every time. The worst was when a man and a woman lay down to have intercourse. He was always touching one or the other and shouting “be’go.”

[avalia-8bit]

@ all my trans friends out there

SO BEFORE I START I NEED TO TELL YOU I’M WHITE AF SO IF YOU’RE FROM ONE OF THESE CULTURES PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG, THIS IS BASED OFF MY ANTHRO CLASS

I am taking cultural anthropology and I just read some really cool stuff about the berdache, which varies from culture to culture, but for a lot of them are actually treated very well and in some cases essential to Native American life. These do not include all Native American tribes, but include many scattered throughout the Northwest, Southwest, Prairie, Great Plains, the western Great Lakes, and I think the southern part of the East. I think the Navajo have a good example of this idea!

So, the basic thing goes like this: the spirit of a person is more inherent of a person’s gender than their genitalia, which, in our terms, would be more the character of a person. If, for example, a boy’s actions seem to be more feminine, their parents will begin to notice it and plan a ceremony. In some, the boy is given the option of picking between something traditionally considered masculine or feminine, and if he chooses something feminine, he enters the role of a berdache.

A berdache is separate from both female and male, but a sort of mix of both, a mediator between the two and in some cases life itself. Each thing has a polar opposite, but it also has something in between that can keep it together. Many peoples believe that a berdache is essential in order to keep things from falling too far apart.

Berdaches are even included in the Navajo origin myth: in the first world, there is man and woman, and in the second world, they meet twins that “change,” White Shell Girl and Turquoise Boy. Turquoise Boy remains with the people, carrying on traditionally feminine activities, while White Shell Girl becomes the moon.

I thought it would be really cool to share stuff I learned from class relating to LGBT for pride month! Happy pride and show off your colors friends!! Because in a lot of these cultures, you’re valid!!

(If someone can tell me the born female equivalents, please do!!)

EDIT: here’s the thing i read!! source

[notesonfilm1]

I was too tired to sleep and too tired to do anything yesterday so I watched ´Tacos’ on Netflix, wonderful, and made more so by the appearance of Lady Tacos de Canasta, my new heroine, who explained the role of the Mutje, two-spirit people in her culture, rather like the Berdache in North America, whilst making her tacos ´de canasta´and then selling them on her bike in full drag, looking, as she says, ´tan guapa/ so pretty´y ´con esa vocerrona aguerdientosa /loud and deep whisky voice´. All these types of shows are inevitably Ministry of Tourism, but I think this one is also more than that. For one thing, I love the relish with which the various people speak of the tacos, and also I love that voice-over, epic, grandiloquent, noble but about poor people´s pleasures…….and as you can see from the Lady Tacos de Canasta episode, very inclusive. Lady Tacos de Canasta appears in the third episode (see clip above). She´s fabulous and her story is very poetically told. Actually I like the way the whole series connects the taco to working people, and regions and nations, poetically. I don´t know if the series got better or if I simply got used to the rhythms of the language and expressions. But ti´s a show that will have you salivating, offer a social geography of food, and mixes it all up with a bit of poetry. I recommend.

José Arroyo

Tacos on Netflix I was too tired to sleep and too tired to do anything yesterday so I watched ´Tacos' on Netflix, wonderful, and made more so by the appearance of Lady Tacos de Canasta, my new heroine, who explained the role of the Mutje, two-spirit people in her culture, rather like the Berdache in North America, whilst making her tacos ´de canasta´and then selling them on her bike in full drag, looking, as she says, ´tan guapa/ so pretty´y ´con esa vocerrona aguerdientosa /loud and deep whisky voice´.

[catsareallweird]

Berdaches

I'm reading up on berdaches from North American Nations and by golly I wish someone not as white-presenting as me would write narrative historical fiction books about these "very successful female berdache hunters." I'd have loved to read about them as a child.

[deuil-merveilleux]

Here's a preview of the exhibition for our Pride Flash Day on saturday. Featuring artworks by @san_deuil @hublechat @misanthropie666 You can buy the prints and all the profits will go to Berdache. Tomorrow some addition by @capitaineplum We will also show more of @ps_tattoo 's Prideoids #tattoo #tattooflash #deuilmerveilleux #flashday #pride #belgianpride #lgbt #lgbtqia #queer #art #prints #charity #solidarity #love #sandeuil #madamechan #misanthropie #capitaineplum #paulinaszoloch #berdache (à Deuil Merveilleux)

[dakrolak]

two-spirits

Wewha

“The New World.” This romanticized term inspired legions of Europeans to race to the places we live in search of freedoms from oppressive regimes or treasures that would be claimed in the name of some European nation.

two-spirits

The Europeans saw new geography, new plants, new animals, but the most perplexing curiosity to these people were the Original Peoples and our ways of life. Of all of the foreign life ways Indians held, one of the first the Europeans targeted for elimination was the Two Spirit tradition among Native American cultures. At the point of contact, all Native American societies acknowledged three to five gender roles: Female, male, Two Spirit female, Two Spirit male and transgendered. LGBT Native Americans wanting to be identified within their respective tribes and not grouped with other races officially adopted the term “Two Spirit” from the Ojibwe language in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1989

Perhaps one of the most famous Two Spirits of the past was We’wha (1849-1896), of the Zuni nation. We’wha was biologically a male and engendered with a female spirit. By all accounts, she was a very intelligent person who became the Zuni Ambassador in Washington, D.C. and was celebrated by the Washington elite as “The Zuni man-woman.” This photo depicts We’wha in traditional Zuni female clothes.

Wewha

Read the whole thing at link below

via Two Spirits, One Heart, Five Genders – ICTMN.com

  Two Spirits, One Heart, Five Genders "The New World." This romanticized term inspired legions of Europeans to race to the places we live in search of freedoms from oppressive regimes or treasures that would be claimed in the name of some European nation.