Trans in Mongolia

[Always_aUnicorn]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/03/03/_lvaro_laiz_photographs_the_transgender_community_ in_mongolia_in_his_series.html

[Prospero]

Fascinating post... thanks for that.

I actually dated a Mongolian TS in London a few years back. She had been going out with an American who worked for the US Embassy in Ulan Bator but broke up and then came to the UK. Very lovely and unusual looking but beautiful girl. She has now transitioned and is living happily with a husband and two adopted kids.

[Always_aUnicorn]

So glad to hear that. I read things like this almost every morning. It's a way to stay up on things and be grateful that though I don't live in Brazil or Thailand I'm blessed to have been able to transition. And the fight for others to have the same liberty is real. Thanks for sharing your experience and letting me know girls are making it out of Mongolia. It may sound fantasy but maybe someday those that want to transition and stay in their birth country will get that opportunity. It starts with a few trailblazers.

[Stavros]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/03/03/_lvaro_laiz_photographs_the_transgender_community_ in_mongolia_in_his_series.html


Many thanks for the post on a much neglected country and its transgendered people. It has got me wondering if there are any structural or cross-cultural affinities between the Mongolians of the plains and the Bedouin of Arabia. Not sure. As I think about it, the pre-modern nomadic societies/nations of North America seem to have had a quite different attitude to transgendered people -sometimes, and mistakenly referred to as Berdache although a more common accepted term is 'two spirit' people, which seems to embrace both a physical and spiritual concept of the person; and, again, the Fa'afine of the South Pacific and the Mahu in Hawaii seem to have been, to a degree, accepted. I wonder if a key difference exists in cultures where being transgendered is negative/wrong, where it is accepted, or is a mixture of karma, fate; and even of clinical inevitability, ie that a % of babies will be born every year with no defining gender identity...

[Always_aUnicorn]

I haven't mastered the quote thing yet. The Spanish when they first went to Louisiana and encountered "two spirited" people thigh they did not speak the language they quickly could tell these people apart and did not shame them. They gave them a name I find beautiful. Joyas. Meaning jewels. I wish people saw us with their spirits and not their eyes that have been clouded by social stigma which has lead to shaming

[sukumvit boy]

Interesting discussion .One thing that caught my eye ,that Stavros mentioned , is the startling % of babies born each year who are found to have indeterminate gender identity. I remember being shocked when I saw the statistics.
Was that post on this forum? I'll look around.
Nice story prospero ! Btw , I'm startled by god-like Darwin looks in that particular portrait . Amusing trope ,if the artist intended it.

[Stavros]

Interesting discussion .One thing that caught my eye ,that Stavros mentioned , is the startling % of babies born each year who are found to have indeterminate gender identity. I remember being shocked when I saw the statistics.
Was that post on this forum? I'll look around.
Nice story prospero ! Btw , I'm startled by god-like Darwin looks in that particular portrait . Amusing trope ,if the artist intended it.

Some links for you -around 1 in 1,500 babies are born with the horrible term Disorder of Sex Development [DSD] -this might be the UK rather than worldwide. Germany now allows the non-registration of babies as either male or female where this occurs enabling the child growing up to make the decision; and the Wikipedia article which goes into the medical definitions of being intersexed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14459843

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24767225

Intersex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)

[Always_aUnicorn]

So sorry to the poster below. I went to hit like and it hit thumb down. My sincere apologies. That you for that share!!

[Stavros]

No problem, I don't take any notice of those things anyway.

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks for the excellent articles ,Stavros.
Even 1 in 2000 people is startling , of course , due the associated stigma we usually only see the tip of the iceberg.
Good info there , especially in the first article ,about a multi- specialty approach to help the parents and the 'patient' learn about their options and than move in the desired gender identity direction.
Also enjoyed the BBC article and the mention of more accepting attitudes in Thailand and India. Which I would attribute to the Buddhism in Thailand and Hinduism in India.

[Stavros]

I wonder how Buddhists do in fact regard transgendered people -the theological element suggests acceptance, but in reality is it not the case that many fathers and mothers are disappointed when their son wants to be a daughter, and how common do you think this is in places like Thailand? And is it not also the case that redemption or reconciliation, if that is what is happening, is often more related to the 'son' being able to meet expectations of filial responsibility, rather than religious observance? I used to correspond with a fairly well known Thai transvestite on the web who claimed that he would not be able to live as a girl in Thailand because his family (quite rich by Thai standards) would not tolerate it. Class trumped religion in this case.

[sukumvit boy]

Yes , I agree that is probably true in many , perhaps most , cases . Also , the whole first barn son thing is very much an issue throughout Asia.
Although I have been spending a month in Asia every year for the last 15 years and have Thai and expat friends who live in Thailand , I can't remember having this discussion with them. Outwardly there is certainly more acceptance than say , small town America , but I think people in developed countries in general are becoming more tolerant and respectful of gay and trans gender people .
Certainly , even in my lifetime ,there has been a dramatic reduction of violence against not only gay and trans gender people , but women , children, minorities and animals as exhaustively documented by Steven Pinker in his most recent book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature". I would think the reduction in violence also suggests increased empathy and respect.
We are becoming more civilized , kinder , gentler people!?

[Always_aUnicorn]

More from the origional article http://www.buzzfeed.com/skarlan/this-photographer-is-traveling-the-globe-to-document-transge?s=mobile

[Stavros]

The link below is to an article on the use of androgen in men with prostate cancer and how this can 'feminize' them -and places this whole issue in the context of being a 'eunuch' where something -chemicals, surgery- has re-configured a man, but where this does not cosign a man to the margins of society. In the course of the article is looks at a wide variety of experiences of 'such people' call them 'eunuchs', 'transexuals' or 'two-spirit people'. It does not include the controversial research Unni Wikan did in Oman in the 1970s, so I have also included a link to her fascinating article which looks at the fate of men who (often teenagers at the time) who were unable to perform on their wedding night and the social consequences of being 'useless'.

Thanks for the link to the website and the film, I enjoyed it.

www.researchgate.net/publication/6804428_The_sexuality_and_social_performance_of_an drogen-deprived_(castrated)_men_throughout_history_implic ations_for_modern_day_cancer_patients/file/e0b495249dcfc2f19e.pdf

http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Man_Becomes_Woman.pdf

[sukumvit boy]

The second article above is fascinating reading. Although apparently written in the mid to late 1970's it reads like and anthropological antique , compared to the current scholarly literature. At the same time it seems fresh and open due to the lack of "political correctness". It's almost as interesting for what it reveals about the anthropologist .as well as her research subjects. Fascinating observations about gender roles in 1970's Oman..
Good article ,bad situation for TS males in Oman. Forced into prostitution and something akin to domestic slavery ON TOP OF the shitty way women were treated in Arab culture.

[sukumvit boy]

Sorry about the detour.
To return to Mongolia , interesting and disturbing images from Alvaro Laiz and his "Transmongolian" series and than contrasting Mongolian and Venezuelan Warao people gender attitudes. From absolute intolerance to absolute inclusion. and a window into pre-Columbian culture. Good stuff ,thanks

[Stavros]

The second article above is fascinating reading. Although apparently written in the mid to late 1970's it reads like and anthropological antique , compared to the current scholarly literature. At the same time it seems fresh and open due to the lack of "political correctness". It's almost as interesting for what it reveals about the anthropologist .as well as her research subjects. Fascinating observations about gender roles in 1970's Oman..
Good article ,bad situation for TS males in Oman. Forced into prostitution and something akin to domestic slavery ON TOP OF the shitty way women were treated in Arab culture.

I am not sure you can in fact call them 'ts males' as one of the interesting things about the article is the way in which Unni Wikan in effect dismantles the conventional concept of male and female identity at the same time as the apparent violation of 'the rules' creates a social crisis for the man and the parties to the marriage.

What is crucial is the relationship with penetration and masculinity, and the reaction to a failed marriage consummation as signifying a lack of masculinity, rather than first night nerves, or just lack of attraction between the bride and groom. The need to prove in public that the marriage has been consummated by exhibiting blood-stained sheets the morning after, is not unique to Oman anyway, I discussed this article with an Italian I used to know and he said it was still common in rural Sardinia when he was growing up which would have been in the 1960s, just as the whole charade is in any case as much about the 'honouring' of a contract between two families/clans as it is proof of the consummation of a marriage.

If you have access to a good library, try to get the bound copies of the first series of MAN, because the article generated much controversy which continued in several issues after Wikan's first article. It was I think in the 1970s that the arguments about anthropologists taking their prejudices into the field became part of an inward looking critique, as a consequence by the 1980s it was discovered that Margaret Mead not only edited much of her field-notes on the Samoans she studied for her pioneering work, to give her narrative the slant she had decided upon, the Samoans she had studied, when interviewed years later claimed they often told her what they thought she wanted to hear rather than what was true; Levi-Strauss's work in Brazil came under similar scrutiny.

Wikan's article was re-jigged and is a chapter in her book Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman, which also has a photo of a Xanith. There is much dispute about whether or not the men who 'become women' are close to our concept of transexual, or whether they are temporarily what we might call 'fembois' working as prostitutes to get by while they acquire the self-confidence and indeed the technique to 'do what a man does' and thus re-establish their credentials as potential/actual husbands and fathers.

That there seems to be no barrier to men having sex with other men has long been a paradox of Islamic societies in the Middle East, and one assumes it is a long-standing practice that is considered irrelevant to religion. In an anthology of journalism on same-sex relations in the Middle East, whose title I cannot recall, published in the 1990s, a Turkish transexual describes being repeatedly buggered by his uncle and his uncles friends from the age of about 10, as he had soft skin -the consequence was that because he was always being penetrated, he assumed he must in fact be female and take a passive role in sex, so the 'transition' to becoming a woman may have not had any basis in biology but in social role playing or socialisation.

In addition, it is well known that the segregation of male and females and the preservation of women for reproduction is not unique to the Middle East but has been common across the world; but that this means men have often chosen other men, or young boys for sexual pleasure -from Ancient Greece and Rome, to the 'catamites' of Kandahar, and it should also be noted that lesbian 'marriages' in East Africa, mostly Kenya have been recorded where an older women takes in a younger women as her protector and forms what in many ways is a conventional marriage.

What is most important is the argument, or belief, that social roles, rather than biology/nature can determine the fate of one's gender identity.

[sukumvit boy]

Very impressive ,and still working!
http://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/people/aca/uwikan/

I can get a copy if "Behind the Veil... " for $0.01 from amazon. Gotta love it!
Amazon.com: Unni Wikan: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WWJWRWCML.@@AMEPARAM@@51WWJWRWCML (http://www.amazon.com/Unni-Wikan/e/B001IZTGV0/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1)

The Journal "Man" and the Royal Anthropological Institute ...
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Anthropological_Institute_of_Great_Britain_a nd_Ireland)

[Stavros]

If you are interested in these issues, I should also recommend the work of Gilbert Herdt, who has conducted field research in Papua New Guinea among a tribal group he calls the 'Sambia' (to protect their identity). His research is as controversial as Wikan's in that he claims there are three phases to manhood in Sambian society "Boys must provide sexual service to young men, adolescents must then receive oral sex from boys, and males enter adulthood by becoming heterosexual."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Herdt#Books

I think it is in the essays The Sambia: Ritual and Gender in Papua New Guinea (1987) that he presents an elaborate argument which is based on the spatial segregation of men and women in Sambian society. Segregation is shaped by issues around smells and bodily fluids and driven by a dichotomy between the 'red and the white' where red means blood and white means either semen or breast milk. Blood shed in anger -and violence in Papua New Guinea is horribly common- and menstrual blood are negative, associated with shame, pain and death; where milk and semen are associated positively with life and pleasure. Moreover, he argues that the Sambia believe semen is stored in the body like breast milk, and that it is a precious resource that cannot be wasted. Young boys, around 9-11 are therefore taught how to fellate teenage boys and young men in order to store semen in their bodies, just as they then receive fellatio from younger males in the generation behind them. At this age, young boys are removed from the company of women, but there is no suggestion of 'homosexuality' in these practices although Herdt did find one middle aged man who had enjoyed it and was by our definition homosexual, though he was not widely respected in his community, if memory serves from my reading of these accounts. I believe that ultimately, the ability to penetrate and ejaculate is considered a crucial element of masculinity.