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[–]Complicated-Spirit 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Those “third gender” culture are also generally super-strict when it comes to gender roles. It’s funny how they can wax poetic about the beauty and wisdom of the precious ancient sacred hijra tradition of India, and just not fucking care that it has the highest rate of violence against women in the world.

Yes, I said violence against women, not “gender-based violence” because I’m not insisting on remaining blind to goddamn fucking reality.

[–]luckystar 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, agreed. Maybe I didn't express it well enough in my post. These cultures have a term for "man who doesn't act like our rigid definition of what a man should act like". More egalitarian cultures don't need a separate term for that because their definitions aren't as rigid. And as always, it's ONLY men that are allowed to "opt out" of being men, because they aren't essential to reproduction (the "correct" men are probably thinking "hey all the more women for me"/"I can have sex with this man and still be considered manly as long as I top", it's a win win for them). If it was truly about having looser boundaries around genders then we'd see a term for women who break the mold, but since they always appear in these ultra patriarchal cultures, where women's reproductive capacity is tightly controlled, women are not allowed to identify out of womanhood. There are no female "hijra".