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The bi-polar model for gender (only males and females exist) has been accepted dogma for the last few centuries. Anthropologists had always rejected evidence of Chumash and other skeletons dressed in "inappropriate" costumes. The Chumash tribe, we now know, assigned burial ceremonies to their two-spirits, for which they were awarded gifts. "Two-Spirit" is a recent designation for Native American shamans previously called winkte (Lakota) or berdache (an insulting term), in order to reclaim traditional roles of healing, predicting, burial ceremonies, and as psychopomp (aiding the dying process). Though Native Americans coined the term to describe persons who have a feminine spirit and a masculine spirit in one body, some non-Native Americans have adopted the term.
Shamans have been a part of human society since prehistory, acting as advisers, healers, counselors in many societies. Transgenders were usually assigned that role, on the presumption that a person who has crossed one "impossible" barrier may also be able to travel the three worlds, see the future, cure the sick, predict the weather. We may not be able to predict the best planting time for crops, but T's are more adventurous in spirit than most people, who cannot imagine changing genders.
Our personal experience, spirit path if you will, gives us an overview of gender not available to others. This path offers us another option than the one that the majority society is willing to offer, as long as we continue to support the European bi-polar model of either/or but nothing in between.
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