Hello everyone! Hestia here with a new Megathread! Years ago, before I transitioned and when I was still in college I took an anthropology class. My favorite part of the class was when we were covering different gender customs across the globe and got to make a report on one of them. I can't remember exactly which one I chose for that project, but what I do remember is a map with different pins scattered on it with various forms of gender-queerness. I decided to track it down and share it with you folks!
Edit: you have to open this in a browser, if you're on a phone it will automatically try to open it in Google maps and won't bring up the info.
This map provides a brief summary of these genders, but does not go in depth. If you find any you're interested in, feel free to do some further research and share your findings here. I'll pin a comment to this post you can attach them. I'm going to share a couple that I found interesting and decided to look further into myself, both of them are non-binary and native american in origin.
The first one I want to talk about is the Winkte, which is a third gender role that was particulatly notable in the Lakota tribe The Winkte are seen as half-men, half-women, and considered sacred. They are typically AMAB and historically have served unique roles in matters of romance and matchmaking and often served as intermediaries for prospecting couples and their families. They also participated in war parties, functioning primarily as witnesses to battle and as doctors to care for the injured. They were also seen as seers, able to forsee paths to victory.
https://www.sdpb.org/blogs/arts-and-culture/the-winkte-and-the-hundred-in-hand/
This next one I'm going to talk about seems mostly local to the Zuni people called the "Lhamana" and I find the Zuni culture to be particularly fascinating, even just doing a cursory glance at it.
Gender roles were well defined in Zuni culture, but the Zuni also valued the concept of a "middle" as it represented stability. This originates from their creation myth, which I won't go in detail here because I don't feel qualified to summarize it, but it's in the link down below.
The Zuni culture is pretty neat and they don't refer to gender when talking about children. They believed that gender wasn't an inborn trait but something you acquired as you approached puberty. I wish this was the western approach, but alas.
As children approach puberty they begin to differentiate through different hair styles or clothing choices. AFAB Lhamana would grind corn and make a bowl of stew when they get their first period. There's probably some cultural significance to this, but I'm not going to do a deep dive on it right now. AMAB Lhamana would start to wear dresses once they hit puberty and start performing women's work. Both AMAB and AFAB Lhamana were allowed to switch between male and female gender roles as they pleased.
https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Middle-Gender-in-Zuni-Religion
That's all for now! To wrap thing up I would like to invite yall to our public matrix server! https://matrix.to/#/#tracha:chapo.chat
As a reminder, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.
Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.
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Okay, cool! Glad it could be helpful :)
I'm not a professional here but I think maybe it's like about examining why you want to feel that way, I guess? I mean it kinda snuck up on me... I wasn't trying to seek out someone to date, just wanted to talk about Homestuck tbh, but then uh well oops we had tons in common and oops feelings. I would not be able to go on dates with someone I didn't already know in a friend context at least a bit, personally.
I'm sorry to hear that experience happened to you :( But I should probably say that if you are in a situation where someone wants to be romantic with you and you don't, that's a very common and understandable experience, and any person worth being close with should understand. I feel this way about sex sometimes, where I get so deep into my own head about it I end up tying myself in knots, it sure seems like I really need any person I'm going to be physically intimate with to be able to understand how much I struggle to stay present, and to help me actually relax enough to enjoy it. I wonder if maybe there's a similarity there with you and romance. But it's also totally ok to reject the societal expectations and just see where things go in relationships with no expectations as well, imo.
Seems like you're not the only one in this thread who sees flirting as more than just a sexual thing, this is cool and I like it!
I think it just comes down to not wanting to be alone. Like I want to live life with someone(s) and not just do it alone. Though I think what that would look like for me is different than it would be for most people. When I think about it, I think best case scenario is I find someone I consider to be my best friend ever and then start living with them and we just keep being best friends who maybe also cuddle sometimes. That actually sounds like heaven. I'm just bad at meeting and talking to people
That's very much something I should think about. I sometimes struggle with that kind of fluid thinking. When I was trying to figure out if I'm trans, I kept coming at myself with labels that I didn't properly understand, and convincing myself that I didn't fit them. Eventually I got to the point where I just said "who cares if I'm trans or not, really? I just want to do what I want to do" and it was that epiphany that helped me to pretty immediately recognize that I definitely am trans. It's possible I might need to have a similar epiphany regarding the romantic stuff. It might just be as simple as the above "best friend who lives with me and sometimes we cuddle" scenario, and maybe there doesn't have to be a word to describe that, though I'm sure there is. There's something preventing that from fully clicking in my noggin though, and I'm trying to place what that is.
This may just be my asexuality showing, but it's genuinely news to me to find out that flirting even has a sexual component at all for most people lmao