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Antóin Mac Comháin
PI Member
The word "bisexual" is first used in its current sense in Charles Gilbert Chaddock's translation of Kraft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis in 1892, but in the Ancient world, Bisexuality was practiced in most Nations throughout the world, with different terms used to describe the way of life.
Two Spirit Culture in Native American Society
The Two Spirit term was adopted in 1990 at an Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering to encourage the replacement of the term berdache, which means, “passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute.”
A Two Spirit person is a male-bodied or female-bodied person with a masculine or feminine essence. Two Spirits can cross social gender roles, gender expression, and sexual orientation.
Since Europeans arrived in the Americas, they’ve documented encounters with Two Spirit people. In many tribes, Two Spirit people were accepted and respected, but that changed with colonization. The colonizers, through forced assimilation efforts, changed acceptance into homophobia in many indigenous communities.
Within most tribes there is a term, in their language, to describe a Two Spirit person:
Aleut: Male-bodied Ayagigux’ (“man transformed into a woman”)
Female-bodied Tayagigux’ (“woman transformed into a man”)
Arapaho: Male-bodied Haxu’xan (singular), Hoxuxuno (plural) (“rotten bone”)
Arikara: Male-bodied Kuxa’t
Assiniboine: Male-bodied Winktan
Bannock: Male-bodied Tuva’sa (“sterile”)
Bella Coola: Male-bodied Sx’ints (“hermaphrodite”)
Blackfoot, Southern Peigan: Male-bodied Aakíí’skassi (“acts like a woman”), Female-bodied, Saahkómaapi’aakííkoan (“boy-girl”)
Cheyenne: Male-bodied He’eman (singular), He’emane’o (plural) (he’e = “woman”)
Female-bodied Hetaneman (singular), Hatane’mane’o (plural) (hetan = “man”)
Chickasaw, Choctaw: Male-bodied Hoobuk
Chumash: Male-bodied Agi
Cocopa: Male-bodied Elha (“coward”)
Female-bodied Warrhameh
Coeur d’Alene: Female-bodied St’amia (“hermaphrodite”)
Cree: Male-bodied Aayahkwew (“neither man or woman”)
Crow: Male-bodied Bote/Bate/Bade (“not man, not woman”)
Dakota/Lakota/Nakota (Oyate): Male-bodied Winkte, a contraction of winyanktehca. (‘wants’ or ‘wishes’ to be [like a] woman”).
Female-bodied Bloka egla wa ke (“thinks she can act like a man”)
Flathead: (Interior Salish) Male-bodied Ma’kali
Gros Ventre: Male-bodied Athuth
Hidatsa: Male-bodied: Miati (“to be impelled against one’s will to act the woman,” “woman compelled”)
Hopi: Male-bodied: Ho’va
Illinois Male-bodied: Ikoueta Female-bodied: Ickoue ne kioussa (“hunting women”)
Ingalik Male-bodied: Nok’olhanxodeleane (“woman pretenders”), Female-bodied: Chelxodeleane (“man pretenders”)
Inuit Male-bodied: Sipiniq (“infant whose sex changes at birth”)
Juaneno Male-bodied: Kwit
Karankawa Male-bodied: Monaguia
Keresan, Acoma Male-bodied: Kokwi’ma
Laguna Male-bodied: Kok’we’ma
Klamath Male-/Female-bodied: Tw!inna’ek
Kutenai Male-bodied: Kupatke’tek (“to imitate a woman”), Female-bodied: Titqattek (“pretending to be a man”)
Kumeyaay, Tipai, Kamia Female-bodied: Warharmi
Luiseno, San Juan Capistrano Male-bodied: Cuit Mountain– Male-bodied: Uluqui
Mandan Male-bodied: Mihdacka (mih-ha = “woman”)
Maricopa Male-bodied: Ilyaxai’ (“girlish”) Female-bodied: Kwiraxame
Mescalero Apache Male-bodied: Nde’isdzan (“man-woman”)
Miami Male-bodied: Waupeengwoatar (“the white face,”)
Micmac Male-bodied: Geenumu gesallagee (“he loves men,”)
Miwok Male-bodied: Osabu (osa = “woman”)
Mohave Maled-bodied: Alyha (“coward”) Female-bodied: Hwame
Western Mono Male-bodied: Tai’up
Navajo Male-/female-/intersexed-bodied: Nadleeh or nadle (gender class/category), nadleehi (singular), nadleehe (plural) (“one in a constant state of change,” “one who changes,” “being transformed”)
Nisenan: (Southern Maidu) Male-bodied: Osa’pu
Ojibwa (Chippewa): Male-bodied Agokwa (“man-woman”) Female-bodied: Okitcitakwe (“warrior woman”)
Omaha, Osage, Ponca: Male-bodied: Mixu’ga (“instructed by the moon,” “moon instructed”)
Otoe, Kansa (Kaw): Male-bodied Mixo’ge (“instructed by the moon,” “moon instructed”)
Papago (Tohono O’odham), Pima (Akimel O’odham): Male-bodied Wik’ovat (“like a girl”)
Paiute: Northern Male-bodied: Tudayapi (“dress like other sex”) Southern Male-bodied: Tuwasawuts
Patwin: Male-bodied Panaro bobum pi (“he has two [sexes]”)
Pawnee: Male-bodied: Ku’saat
Pomo: Northern Male-bodied: Das (Da = “woman”) Southern Male-bodied: T!un
Potawatomi Male-bodied: M’netokwe (“supernatural, extraordinary,” Manito plus female suffix)
Quinault Male-bodied: Keknatsa’nxwixw (“part woman”) Female-bodied: Tawkxwa’nsixw (“man-acting”)
Salinan Male-bodied: Coya
Sanpoil Male-bodied: St’a’mia (“hermaphrodite”)
Sauk (Sac), Fox Male-bodied: I-coo-coo-a (“man-woman”)
Shoshone: Male-bodied Taikwahni tainnapa’ or sometimes taikwahni
Female-bodied Taikwahni wa’ippena’
Lemhi: Male/Female-bodied: Tubasa Female-bodied: Waipu sungwe (“woman-half”)
Gosiute Male-bodied: Tuvasa
Promontory Point Male-bodied: Tubasa waip (“sterile woman”), Female-bodied: Waipu sungwe (“woman-half”)
Nevada Male-bodied: Tainna wa’ippe (“man-woman”) Female-bodied: Nuwuducka (“female hunter”)
Takelma Male-bodied: Xa’wisa
Tewa Male-/Female-bodied: Kwido
Tiwa Isleta Male-bodied: Lhunide
Tlingit Male-bodied: Gatxan (“coward”)
Tsimshian Noots; Plural g̱a̱noots; Dialectal Variant g̱a̱noodzit
Southern Ute: Male-bodied Tuwasawits
Winnebago: (Ho-Chunk) Male-bodied Shiange (“unmanly man”)
Wishram: Male-bodied Ik!e’laskait
Yuma (Quechan): Male-bodied: Elxa’ (“coward”)
Female-bodied Kwe’rhame
Yup’ik Chugach/Pacific (Alutiiq, Southern Alaskan): Male-bodied Aranu’tiq (“man-woman”)
St. Lawrence Island (Siberian Yup’ik, Western Alaskan): Male-bodied Anasik
Female-bodied Uktasik
Kuskokwim River (Central Alaskan): Male-bodied Aranaruaq (“woman-like”)
Female-bodied Angutnguaq (“man-like”)
Zapotec: Male-bodied Muxe
Zuni: Male-bodied: Lha’mana (“behave like a woman”)
Female-bodied: Katotse (“boy-girl”)
Two Spirit 101 - Native OUT
Bisexuality & Polygamy in Spartan Society
The city of Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the River Eurotas in the southern part of the Peloponnese. Between c. 650 and 362 B.C. it was the dominant military power in the region, and as such was recognised as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars. Between 431-404 it was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. By the year 362 Sparta's role as the dominant military power in Greece was over, but the so-called Spartan myth continues to fascinate Western culture.
Ancestral law in ancient Sparta mandated same-sex relationships with young men who were coming of age for all adult men, so long as the men eventually took wives and produced children. The Spartans thought that love and erotic relationships between experienced and novice soldiers would solidify combat loyalty and encourage heroic tactics as men vied to impress their lovers. Once the younger soldiers reached maturity, the relationship was supposed to become non-sexual, and there was some stigma attached to young men who continued their relationships with males into adulthood.
Women, being more independent than in other Greek societies, were able to negotiate with their husbands to bring their lovers into their homes. According to Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus, men not only allowed their wives to bear the children of other men, but encouraged the practice due to the general communal ethos which made it more important to bear many progeny for the good of the city, than to be jealously concerned with one's own family unit.
Bisexuality in Ancient Japan
Records of men who have sex with men in Japan date back to ancient times. Historical practices identified by scholars as homosexual include shudō , wakashudō and nanshoku.
The Japanese term nanshoku , which can also be read as danshoku, is the Japanese reading of the same characters in Chinese, which literally mean "male colors." The character for color, still has the meaning of sexual pleasure in China and Japan. This term was widely used to refer to same-sex relationships in the pre-modern era of Japan. The term shudō, abbreviated from wakashudō, the "way of young men" is also used, especially in older works. References become more numerous in the Heian Period, roughly the 11th century. Some Heian-era diaries contain references to Emperors involved in homosexual relationships and to "handsome boys retained for sexual purposes" by Emperors.
Several writers have noted the strong historical tradition of open bisexuality and homosexuality among male Buddhist institutions in Japan. The man was permitted, if the boy agreed, to take the boy as his lover until he came of age; this relationship, often formalized in a "brotherhood contract", was expected to be exclusive, with both partners swearing to take no other (male) lovers. From religious circles, same-sex love spread to the warrior (samurai) class, where it was customary for a boy in the wakashū age category to undergo training in the martial arts by apprenticing to a more experienced adult man.
As Japanese society became pacified, the middle classes adopted many of the practices of the warrior class, in the case of shudō giving it a more mercantile interpretation. Male prostitutes (kagema), who were often passed off as apprentice kabuki actors and who catered to a mixed male and female clientele, did a healthy trade into the mid-19th century despite increasing restrictions. Onnagata or oyama (Japanese: "woman-role"), are male actors who played women's roles in Japanese Kabuki theatre.
Two Spirit Culture in Native American Society
The Two Spirit term was adopted in 1990 at an Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering to encourage the replacement of the term berdache, which means, “passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute.”
A Two Spirit person is a male-bodied or female-bodied person with a masculine or feminine essence. Two Spirits can cross social gender roles, gender expression, and sexual orientation.
Since Europeans arrived in the Americas, they’ve documented encounters with Two Spirit people. In many tribes, Two Spirit people were accepted and respected, but that changed with colonization. The colonizers, through forced assimilation efforts, changed acceptance into homophobia in many indigenous communities.
Within most tribes there is a term, in their language, to describe a Two Spirit person:
Aleut: Male-bodied Ayagigux’ (“man transformed into a woman”)
Female-bodied Tayagigux’ (“woman transformed into a man”)
Arapaho: Male-bodied Haxu’xan (singular), Hoxuxuno (plural) (“rotten bone”)
Arikara: Male-bodied Kuxa’t
Assiniboine: Male-bodied Winktan
Bannock: Male-bodied Tuva’sa (“sterile”)
Bella Coola: Male-bodied Sx’ints (“hermaphrodite”)
Blackfoot, Southern Peigan: Male-bodied Aakíí’skassi (“acts like a woman”), Female-bodied, Saahkómaapi’aakííkoan (“boy-girl”)
Cheyenne: Male-bodied He’eman (singular), He’emane’o (plural) (he’e = “woman”)
Female-bodied Hetaneman (singular), Hatane’mane’o (plural) (hetan = “man”)
Chickasaw, Choctaw: Male-bodied Hoobuk
Chumash: Male-bodied Agi
Cocopa: Male-bodied Elha (“coward”)
Female-bodied Warrhameh
Coeur d’Alene: Female-bodied St’amia (“hermaphrodite”)
Cree: Male-bodied Aayahkwew (“neither man or woman”)
Crow: Male-bodied Bote/Bate/Bade (“not man, not woman”)
Dakota/Lakota/Nakota (Oyate): Male-bodied Winkte, a contraction of winyanktehca. (‘wants’ or ‘wishes’ to be [like a] woman”).
Female-bodied Bloka egla wa ke (“thinks she can act like a man”)
Flathead: (Interior Salish) Male-bodied Ma’kali
Gros Ventre: Male-bodied Athuth
Hidatsa: Male-bodied: Miati (“to be impelled against one’s will to act the woman,” “woman compelled”)
Hopi: Male-bodied: Ho’va
Illinois Male-bodied: Ikoueta Female-bodied: Ickoue ne kioussa (“hunting women”)
Ingalik Male-bodied: Nok’olhanxodeleane (“woman pretenders”), Female-bodied: Chelxodeleane (“man pretenders”)
Inuit Male-bodied: Sipiniq (“infant whose sex changes at birth”)
Juaneno Male-bodied: Kwit
Karankawa Male-bodied: Monaguia
Keresan, Acoma Male-bodied: Kokwi’ma
Laguna Male-bodied: Kok’we’ma
Klamath Male-/Female-bodied: Tw!inna’ek
Kutenai Male-bodied: Kupatke’tek (“to imitate a woman”), Female-bodied: Titqattek (“pretending to be a man”)
Kumeyaay, Tipai, Kamia Female-bodied: Warharmi
Luiseno, San Juan Capistrano Male-bodied: Cuit Mountain– Male-bodied: Uluqui
Mandan Male-bodied: Mihdacka (mih-ha = “woman”)
Maricopa Male-bodied: Ilyaxai’ (“girlish”) Female-bodied: Kwiraxame
Mescalero Apache Male-bodied: Nde’isdzan (“man-woman”)
Miami Male-bodied: Waupeengwoatar (“the white face,”)
Micmac Male-bodied: Geenumu gesallagee (“he loves men,”)
Miwok Male-bodied: Osabu (osa = “woman”)
Mohave Maled-bodied: Alyha (“coward”) Female-bodied: Hwame
Western Mono Male-bodied: Tai’up
Navajo Male-/female-/intersexed-bodied: Nadleeh or nadle (gender class/category), nadleehi (singular), nadleehe (plural) (“one in a constant state of change,” “one who changes,” “being transformed”)
Nisenan: (Southern Maidu) Male-bodied: Osa’pu
Ojibwa (Chippewa): Male-bodied Agokwa (“man-woman”) Female-bodied: Okitcitakwe (“warrior woman”)
Omaha, Osage, Ponca: Male-bodied: Mixu’ga (“instructed by the moon,” “moon instructed”)
Otoe, Kansa (Kaw): Male-bodied Mixo’ge (“instructed by the moon,” “moon instructed”)
Papago (Tohono O’odham), Pima (Akimel O’odham): Male-bodied Wik’ovat (“like a girl”)
Paiute: Northern Male-bodied: Tudayapi (“dress like other sex”) Southern Male-bodied: Tuwasawuts
Patwin: Male-bodied Panaro bobum pi (“he has two [sexes]”)
Pawnee: Male-bodied: Ku’saat
Pomo: Northern Male-bodied: Das (Da = “woman”) Southern Male-bodied: T!un
Potawatomi Male-bodied: M’netokwe (“supernatural, extraordinary,” Manito plus female suffix)
Quinault Male-bodied: Keknatsa’nxwixw (“part woman”) Female-bodied: Tawkxwa’nsixw (“man-acting”)
Salinan Male-bodied: Coya
Sanpoil Male-bodied: St’a’mia (“hermaphrodite”)
Sauk (Sac), Fox Male-bodied: I-coo-coo-a (“man-woman”)
Shoshone: Male-bodied Taikwahni tainnapa’ or sometimes taikwahni
Female-bodied Taikwahni wa’ippena’
Lemhi: Male/Female-bodied: Tubasa Female-bodied: Waipu sungwe (“woman-half”)
Gosiute Male-bodied: Tuvasa
Promontory Point Male-bodied: Tubasa waip (“sterile woman”), Female-bodied: Waipu sungwe (“woman-half”)
Nevada Male-bodied: Tainna wa’ippe (“man-woman”) Female-bodied: Nuwuducka (“female hunter”)
Takelma Male-bodied: Xa’wisa
Tewa Male-/Female-bodied: Kwido
Tiwa Isleta Male-bodied: Lhunide
Tlingit Male-bodied: Gatxan (“coward”)
Tsimshian Noots; Plural g̱a̱noots; Dialectal Variant g̱a̱noodzit
Southern Ute: Male-bodied Tuwasawits
Winnebago: (Ho-Chunk) Male-bodied Shiange (“unmanly man”)
Wishram: Male-bodied Ik!e’laskait
Yuma (Quechan): Male-bodied: Elxa’ (“coward”)
Female-bodied Kwe’rhame
Yup’ik Chugach/Pacific (Alutiiq, Southern Alaskan): Male-bodied Aranu’tiq (“man-woman”)
St. Lawrence Island (Siberian Yup’ik, Western Alaskan): Male-bodied Anasik
Female-bodied Uktasik
Kuskokwim River (Central Alaskan): Male-bodied Aranaruaq (“woman-like”)
Female-bodied Angutnguaq (“man-like”)
Zapotec: Male-bodied Muxe
Zuni: Male-bodied: Lha’mana (“behave like a woman”)
Female-bodied: Katotse (“boy-girl”)
Two Spirit 101 - Native OUT
Bisexuality & Polygamy in Spartan Society
The city of Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the River Eurotas in the southern part of the Peloponnese. Between c. 650 and 362 B.C. it was the dominant military power in the region, and as such was recognised as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars. Between 431-404 it was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. By the year 362 Sparta's role as the dominant military power in Greece was over, but the so-called Spartan myth continues to fascinate Western culture.
Ancestral law in ancient Sparta mandated same-sex relationships with young men who were coming of age for all adult men, so long as the men eventually took wives and produced children. The Spartans thought that love and erotic relationships between experienced and novice soldiers would solidify combat loyalty and encourage heroic tactics as men vied to impress their lovers. Once the younger soldiers reached maturity, the relationship was supposed to become non-sexual, and there was some stigma attached to young men who continued their relationships with males into adulthood.
Women, being more independent than in other Greek societies, were able to negotiate with their husbands to bring their lovers into their homes. According to Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus, men not only allowed their wives to bear the children of other men, but encouraged the practice due to the general communal ethos which made it more important to bear many progeny for the good of the city, than to be jealously concerned with one's own family unit.
Bisexuality in Ancient Japan
Records of men who have sex with men in Japan date back to ancient times. Historical practices identified by scholars as homosexual include shudō , wakashudō and nanshoku.
The Japanese term nanshoku , which can also be read as danshoku, is the Japanese reading of the same characters in Chinese, which literally mean "male colors." The character for color, still has the meaning of sexual pleasure in China and Japan. This term was widely used to refer to same-sex relationships in the pre-modern era of Japan. The term shudō, abbreviated from wakashudō, the "way of young men" is also used, especially in older works. References become more numerous in the Heian Period, roughly the 11th century. Some Heian-era diaries contain references to Emperors involved in homosexual relationships and to "handsome boys retained for sexual purposes" by Emperors.
Several writers have noted the strong historical tradition of open bisexuality and homosexuality among male Buddhist institutions in Japan. The man was permitted, if the boy agreed, to take the boy as his lover until he came of age; this relationship, often formalized in a "brotherhood contract", was expected to be exclusive, with both partners swearing to take no other (male) lovers. From religious circles, same-sex love spread to the warrior (samurai) class, where it was customary for a boy in the wakashū age category to undergo training in the martial arts by apprenticing to a more experienced adult man.
As Japanese society became pacified, the middle classes adopted many of the practices of the warrior class, in the case of shudō giving it a more mercantile interpretation. Male prostitutes (kagema), who were often passed off as apprentice kabuki actors and who catered to a mixed male and female clientele, did a healthy trade into the mid-19th century despite increasing restrictions. Onnagata or oyama (Japanese: "woman-role"), are male actors who played women's roles in Japanese Kabuki theatre.
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