Similarities and Differences in institutionalised homosexuality in New Guinea and Native North America
In New Guinea, the custom of pederasty, or man-boy homosexual relationship is very common. In Native North America, is it frequent and permissible to see gender-crossing individuals, such as a man becoming in important social aspects a woman, for example. If in both cases, there is the presence of an institutionalised homosexuality, they differ in many ways. Indeed, in New Guinea, these man-boy relationships are limited in time, as there is no sexual attachment between both individuals and the practice is merely a custom that is seen as a necessary and integral part of the manhood ritual, in which a boy become a man through different rituals amongst which he needs to receive and ingest semen. Indeed:
“manhood, in both physical and cultural aspects, is embodied in semen, hence some regular mode of transmitting the stuff in order. (Whitehead, 1981:82)
Furthermore, the age and status difference between the two individuals is of crucial importance, as homosexual relations with the same age group is seen as improper in New Guinea. The older partner is to have the active role, giving the semen while the boy is to have to have the passive role of receiving it to become a man.This differs from homosexuality in Native North America, as “gender-crossing individuals” or a “person of one anatomic sex assuming part or most of the attire, occupation, and social – including marital status – status, of the opposite sex” (Whitehead, 1981:85) has homosexual relations with his partner(s) for an indeterminate period.
In addition, if in the case of institutionalised homosexual relations in New Guinea, both boy and man are anatomically and socially male (although the boy is considered as deficient and incomplete until the rite of passage is complete), in Native North America, berdaches or the gender-crossing are considered to be part-man, part-woman. Anatomically born a man, a male berdache will thus take the social roles of a woman. Unlike in New Guinea, American Indians were not using semen as a form of reification of manhood, “nor did they try to rid themselves or acquire, the reproductive attributes of women” (Whitehead, 1981:87). Hence, if in Native America there seems to be no physiological obsession surrounding gender and sex, it is very much present in New Guinea.
In New Guinea, homosexual practices are thus part of symbolically dictated rites of passage, created to grow boys into men. In Native America, the homosexual practice is to summarise it in Whitehead’s words:
“anomalous, faintly suspect but largely meaningless behaviour except when practiced by someone whose gender had been redefined to a mixed-gender type in accordance with the person’s preference for opposite-sex occupation and clothing” (Whitehead, 1981:110).
It is thus acceptable for this person to have homosexual relations. In New Guinea, the homosexual practice is perceived as acceptable because one of the two individuals is considered as deficient in the aspects normally considered with the anatomic sex. In Native America however, the homosexual practice is accepted and deemed appropriate as one of the individuals is considered to be possessing the traits of the opposite anatomic sex.
Finally, in the New Guinea gender system, feminity and masculinity and gender as an entity in its whole is focused upon material reproductive substances, symbolic of sexually mature female and male. These gendered substances are controlled by a collectivity (of men), so that any gender abnormality has to be reviewed and engineered by a “collective ritual action” (Whitehead, 1981:103). Occupational boundaries unlike in Native North America are thus strongly defended and all trespassers are to be negatively punished. Men are thus strictly superior to women. However, in Native North America, woman’s productive labour circulated outside the domestic unit. Women’s work is furthermore not subject to extensive or total appropriation by the opposite sex. Indeed, although women were accorded lesser social esteem than men, men were not privileged to appropriate the products of female labour as they please.
What then makes a berdache a berdache?
As said above, a gender-crosser or berdache, is an individual assuming the social roles, occupations, status and attire opposite to his/her anatomic sex. In North American Indian notions of gender, there are two aspects of personal identity that are crucial in their notions of gender; the first one being sexual anatomy and physiology, and the second one being “one’s sexual participation in the sexual division of labor” (Whitehead, 1981:93), and ones dressing and demeanour, although the latter are considered less important. According to Whitehead, for the individuals starting as anatomic males, no additional processes were needed to reinforce their masculinity (in contrast with manhood rituals in New Guinea). Hence, one’s masculine identity had to be reinforced or, contrariwise, contradicted by a feminine identity, through the social medium of labour and dressing. If not reinforced by “manly tasks” such as hunting or warfare, and in addition contradicted by stereotypical female tasks, such as wearing baskets for example, the male identity emerges as being “part-man” and “part-woman”, also called a berdache (Whitehead, 1981:93).
The formation of a female berdache seems to however differ from the male one. Indeed, the fact that women have a reproductive role to fulfil adds to and underscores an image of feminity, as the role can only be fulfilled by women. This could consequently weaken the masculine traits of a woman and to be counterbalanced by masculine occupations, the physiological processes of reproduction in a female need to be held as suppressible. Becoming a berdache is consequently predominantly a male phenomenon.
Gender in Native North America and its difference compared to the xanith studies by Uni Wikan
In Native North America, gender seems to encompass men, women and gender- crossers or berdaches. In this case if gender seems to be somewhat influenced by the anatomic sex and physiology of the individual, it is mainly to do with the individual’s participation in the sexual division of labour. If you are born a male and hunt and participate in warfare, you are a man, if you are born a female and take part in “womanly activities” such as painting etc... you are considered a woman. If you are born a male and take part in womanly activities, you are considered a berdache (as seen above the female evquivalent is slightly more ambiguous and hard to find).
These notions of gender differ when looking at the Oman culture, studied by Uni Wikan. Indeed, in the Oman society, “it is the sexual act, not the sexual organs, which is fundamentally constitutive of gender” (Wikan, 1977:309). A man whose actions are considered as womanly is thus considered a social woman. The man actively penetrates, whereas the woman passively receives. In such a way, it is behaviour rather than physiology that conceptualises gender identity in the Oman culture.
If in Native North America, berdaches seem to be both women and men at the same time, and be part of both genders, it is clear that in Oman, xanith are an entirely separate gender. The xanith is treated as if he was a woman, however, he is refused the be fully assimilated to one as he is considered a homosexual prostitute, and there is no such thing as a female prostitute in Oman culture. For a xanith to wear a woman’s full attire would thus be dishonouring womanhood and the purity and virtue associated to Oman women.
Could women be powerful in their own right in explaining the berdache phenomenon?
In Native North America, services such as curing and prestigious products are located within the realm of women, and not just men. Furthermore, both women and men have the right to dispose of property and can command the work of others. The gender distinction in this society thus mainly rests on differences in specialised production rather than upon “a system of sexual-political interaction” (Whitehead, 1981:105). There are no hierarchical relationships in which one is the owner of the other. Consequently, the presence of a non-conformist gender such as the one of the berdache does not threaten any social hierarchy, as there is not really a social hierarchy based on gender, and thus no domination mystique. The prestige available to women as mere women in such has made it easier for gender-crosser to jump over the social gap separating women from men. As summarised in Whitehead’s words:
“If success in the female sphere could hold a reasonable candle to success in the male, if, [...], feminity represented a positive sort of power rather than being, as it is in many cultures, overwhelmingly connotive of powerlessness, then it is conceivable that the female sphere held an attraction for men over and above anything to do with the erotic.”(Whitehead, 1981:107).
Because the social gap between men and women is narrower than in most cultures, and women are given the prestige just to be women, men could thus consider “jumping” to the other gender and entering the female realm. Without the prestige and respect given to women’s occupations and daily tasks, there would not be such a thing as berdaches.
References
Wikan, U. (1977). ‘Man becomes woman: transsexualism in Oman as a key to gender roles’ Man. 12 (2) pp. 304-319.
Whitehead, H. (1981). ‘The bow and the burden-strap: a new look at institutionalised homosexuality in native North America’ in Ortner and Whitehead (eds.) Sexual Meanings