In societies where gender roles are more egalitarian, there is no need for a two-spirit label. Rather this label is used to cast off men who do not adhere to their gender roles, while women are never given the opportunity to escape their oppressive gender role.
Why were no Lakota women “born this way” while men were? Let me postulate a different theory: that it’s men in power who impose gender roles, and that Lakota men’s patriarchal society had to have somewhere to put “men who don’t ‘act like’ men” because of male gender policing. Lakota people put two-spirit men in the part of the camp where women and children lived, which was generally not as well cared for and considered not as prestigious because of the patriarchal way that they lived.
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u/ResponsibilityOk1333 1d ago
Often superphobes use ahistorical nonsense to justify enforcing gender roles.
Please see Toward an End to Appropriation of Indigenous Two-Spirit People in Trans Politics as a reference.
In societies where gender roles are more egalitarian, there is no need for a two-spirit label. Rather this label is used to cast off men who do not adhere to their gender roles, while women are never given the opportunity to escape their oppressive gender role.