Spotlight on Students: Gender Comparisons

The following post features work produced by students of my Anth 101: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course.  These students were tasked with comparing the gender identities, norms, roles, beliefs, values, etc. between two cultures: their own and one from a list of provided.  These are the exemplary pieces composed by my students.


The Alyha and Hwame of the Mojave Tribes 

By: Jay Eyer
 

According to author Will Roscoe in his piece “How to Become a Berdache: Toward a Unified Analysis of Gender Diversity”, in over 150 North American aboriginal societies there is evidence that the gender roles did not stop at male or female but were even further defined. A third role existed in all of them and a fourth role existed in up to one half of them. As identified in the Mojave language, Alyha for the male choosing female roles and Hwame for a woman that took on male roles, but there were different names in each culture for these roles. They were categorized as Berdaches by Europeans, which had varying meanings from slave to homosexual submissive (Roscoe 2). When Europeans arrived they were extremely ethnocentric with little understanding or concern for the cultures that already existed.   They began to classify things according to their own cultures way of seeing things. The term Berdache is now taken as derogatory and a new term is preferred, Two Spirits. Walter L. Williams in his article for The Guardian Online explains, “It is more accurate to understand them as individuals who take on a gender status that is different from both men and women.” The people who were Two Spirits were revered in most of the Native American cultures. Valued as someone with a special connection to the spirits, they would give advice to the chief and help settle internal disputes. Gifted with the spirits of both sexes they were seen as advantageous to the village.

Both Alyha and Hwame were accepted in their tribes’ societies. The Alyha and Hwame could marry, raise children, and participate in the activities of their chosen gender. The Alyha were treated as a woman would be treated, albeit a woman with a spiritual connection. They also had the ability to take on the jobs associated with either gender. An Alyha would make baskets, plant crops, take care of the home, and took elaborate means to act like women up to and including faking pregnancies. Anthropologist George Devereux was cited as writing that Alyhas would give birth to a “still born fecal fetus”, which would be buried with ceremony (Roscoe 14).  Hwames would often be shamans in their villages. Evelyn Blackwood and her 1984 article “Sexuality and Gender in Certain Native American Tribes: The Case of Cross-Gender Females” in Signs, a feminist magazine, states that with divorce and  subsequent remarriage, Hwame may even have been involved in raising children that were not their own (9). She points out that in cases of divorce during pregnancy the paternity of the child changed with a new partner. The gender identities that these people assumed were considered different but equal members of society that were productive in the daily life of their villages.

When comparing the two cultures I find the native cultures usually had a much better grasp on how to address the issue of Two Spirits. Unfortunately, as Europeans started seeing this phenomenon, it struck them as barbaric. The devout foreigners were not at all open minded to the idea of differences within our own gender but the practice did survive until the late 19^th century.  Our own culture retained many of its puritanical ideas on how gender roles should be discussed and until forty years ago or so it was rarely thought about in general society. As the country went through the sexual liberation of the 1970s and subsequent HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s the topic of homosexuality was more in the open. Discussions of transgenderism are still an uncomfortable idea for many but it is becoming easier and more widely accepted.  

The key parts of both of our cultures are very similar. Family is valued and basic gender identities are the same.  Gender roles are changing as traditionally male oriented jobs are being done more frequently by women and as a result that has opened up female centric jobs to more men. Male nurses, female doctors, female firefighters, and male flight attendants are just a few examples. There is a growing acceptance for legal marriage between couples regardless of gender and television has made various lifestyles more accessible to the masses. Americans seem unready, however, to address the Two Spirit folks as a different gender any time in the near future.

The morals and actions that have been acceptable in our country have been ingrained in us for a few hundred years. The acceptance of Two Spirits in the indigenous tribes went back thousands of years. Possibly the cultures themselves were to blame for the far different levels of recognition. Our culture, influenced by Christianity and our conservative colonists, has rejected the idea of homosexual relationships except to condemn them. Our economy was run by men, as was our military and government. Even at home men were in charge, women meant to be submissive and at home. Men that were not manly had little influence. By contrast the more egalitarian Mojave would have been less concerned with building wealth and cities and more entrenched in the survival of the village. Women had a much stronger home role. The Alyha and Hwame could fill a void in certain roles and not increase the burden on the village. Their economy was less about things and more spiritual. The major roles for the Alyha and Hwame were spiritual in nature. In addition to their everyday existence as male and female, they were treated as shamans or advice givers to chiefs. The things that made our cultures unique either allowed for or stunted the growth of the idea of other gender.

I was aware of a lot of the history of Native American tribes, even that gay members had certain status. I was unaware of the Alyha and Hwame and I was pleasantly surprised, when through my reading, I saw how widely and universally accepted the practice was. I have always felt that Americans could learn more from the people that we subjugated than they ever learned from us. Sometimes replacing a millennia’s old culture with our updated version causes us to     lose much more than we gain. The term Berdache, even though I had never heard it, feels like a negative word after my readings. The culture we inhabit has many, many good things. It has regrettably, made us forget how to appreciate them.  While the spiritualistic aspect of the Two Spirits may be too religious feeling for me, the concept of acceptance or affirmation of the person who is Two Spirit seems much more comfortable.

Works Cited

Blackwood, Evelyn. ”Sexuality and Gender in Certain Native American Tribes: The Case of Cross-Gender Females” Signs, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 27-42 The University of Chicago Press

Roscoe, Will. ”How to Become a Berdache: Towards a Unified Analysis of Gender Diversity.”

Northeastern.eduhttp://www.northeastern.edu/womensstudies/graduate/courses/course_material/feminist_theory/documents/berdache.pdf

Williams, Walter L. “The 'two-spirit' people of indigenous North Americans”theguardian.com, Monday  11 October 2010 07.28 EDT  

AndrogyneOnline. http://androgyne.0catch.com/2spiritx.htm