Muxe
Levels of acceptance for third gender catagories in Oaxaca, Mexico among Zapotec communities.
Please note: This video has been included in order to present the stories of the interviewees. The labels and language used by the interviewing media source do not reflect the opinions and goals of Genderfork. If we could edit them out, we would. A longer, more candid documentary can be viewed here.
Posted by XylophoneGender on November 2nd, 2012 at 08:00 am
Category: video One comment »
November 3rd, 2012 at 6:09 pm |
I think calling all Muxes “third gender” isn’t right. Some view themselves that way and some view themselves as women. And just because a certain dominant culture calls them third gender (as Thai culture does with Kathoey or Indian culture does with Hijras, doesn’t mean that everyone who is labeled with those cultural terms actually considers themselves as such. A much better western analog to those labels is a term like transgender, which is a an extremely broad umbrella term encompassing a lot of different identities and ways of experiencing oneself. It bugs me when I see gender academicians try to fit all indigenous trans labels into the box of third gender, which only serves to perpetuate dominant culture’s assumptions (even if it does seem more progressive than total marginalization).
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