Friday, July 10, 2009

Five Genders of Indonesia

Sex is biological. Gender is defined by culture. There are five genders in Indonesia. These Indonesian transsexuals seem comfortable with their somatic selves. Is this because the culture "welcomes" them and they are not forced to fit themselves into one of only two categories?

2 comments:

Bad hair days said...

Renember my Question about the in between?

Some Transsexuals have a bodymap issue, some only have it for only parts of their body.

But within every culture where you see options (katoe, hirjaan so on) the people wothout such issues but with a strong gender identity are more in numbers. Only in the western sociaty are only those (like me) accepted who need the full package. That makes the others, in our culture called transgender, not less worthy, but the other way arround our (TS) needs not disposable.

Anonymous said...

"Is it because they're comfortable with their somantic sex?"

No-If they were they wouldn't be TS. The belief that transsexualism is a gender role issue is false and drives
many classical (HBS) transsexuals to distraction.

The belief espoused by BHD that its a body map issue is drawn from BIID discourse and is equally flawed.

For years we have described a need to "bring both parts of ourselves together", or to "make ourselves whole", or as Jan Morris put it, "be all of a-piece."

It aught be obvious that their is a clash of biologies going on here. You will need to move past the identity paradigm to understand it.

You might like to visit this blog and go to the comments section. Not the discussion and its conclusion. Here:

http://womenborntranssexual.com/2009/07/23/compromises-rev-3-2/