AFruit4Thought

Western societies have only two genders, ‘man’ and ‘woman.’ Some societies have three genders—men, women, and berdaches or hijras or xaniths. Berdaches, hijras, and xaniths are biological males who behave, dress, work, and are treated in most respects as social women; they are therefore not men, nor are they female women; they are, in our language, ‘male women.’ There are African and American Indian societies that have a gender status called manly hearted women—biological females who work, marry, and parent as men; their social status is ‘female men’. They do not have to behave or dress as men to have the social responsibilities and prerogatives of husbands and fathers; what makes them men is enough wealth to buy a wife.