My first time here, and my confusion

[Bionca]

Originally Posted by Phenom99

Yes, there are lots of things to sort out. Especially given that unless you have a label to ascribe to yourself, you can't do anything in America.

I was reading an article a few days ago for research, about an African tribe, in which gender is determined simply by the way in which you live, and not by physical markers. So people could go back and forth in the span of a day, depending on whether they fish or farm, walk with a blanket or not, who they love, etcetera. They are called the Vezo people, check them out, it's pretty cool haha if you like reading dry history (i'm a history major, lol)

Well, I was very nearly an Anthropologist until I got side-tracked into Social Work (silly me) so dry academic texts are no biggie here. The Vezo are an interesting study since their entire social identity is based on performance. You wanna be a fisher? understand what a fisher does and go fish... wanna be a Vezo? act like a Vezo and yer in (harder than it sounds). To them it is more important to understand what it means to be something than to actually do that thing. Like I said, interesting case study.

If you dig enough you can find examples all over the globe through history that maintain a more fluid understanding of identity wrt gender. Honestly, I blame Rome and their need for extreme hierarchies and it's influence on Western thought for many of the issues being discussed.