Mental health articles

CULTURAL VARIANCE IN ATTITUDES TOWARDS GENDER Anthropological and sociological studies have identified significant cultural variation in gender systems and attitudes towards gender variance. Wide variations exist in beliefs about the nature of biology and what constitutes sex, and physical difference per se is not always seen as sufficient to produce gender. The Zuni tribe of North American Indians, for example, do not allocate sex at birth regardless of the appearance of external genitalia, as there is a belief that it may change. Complex rituals are used to ‘discover’ the sex of the infant and determine sex of rearing. In this situation culture is used to ‘interpret’ biology that is not self-evident and is not automatically linked to gender identity (Laqueur, 1990). In some cultural contexts, ambivalent and non-stable gender roles and identities are accepted and not necessarily seen as pathological or disordered. It is possible for gender to be neither male nor female, and for gender transformation to occur well after the age at which psychoanalytic and social learning models would see it as ‘irreversible’ (Herdt, 1994). The most studied example of culturally understood gender change is the ‘Penis at 12’ syndrome in the Dominican Republic and equivalent conditions in Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. In these examples, children with an enzymatic deficiency (5-alphareductase needed to convert testosterone to dihydrotestosterone) are born with ambiguous external genitalia and raised in many cases as female. Virilisation (that is, the activation of the deficient enzyme) may occur at puberty and many ‘change gender’ and successfully adopt a male identity. This change is usually unproblematic and this may well reflect the social acceptance of the phenomenon and challenges the concept of a fixed and unalterable ‘Core Gender Identity’ (Stoller, 1968). Similarly, the social acceptance and position of gender-variant individuals shows great cultural variation. Among North American Indians, cross-gendered individuals known as Berdaches have been documented in over 150 groups. Berdaches are assigned a position of high social status within a spiritual system and are seen as a ‘third gender’, transcending male and female categories. In several religious traditions, deities are seen as hermaphroditic or capable of gender change, which enhances rather than diminishes spiritual power. In the
Hindu tradition, for example, the Lord Krishna frequently changes sex and male transvestism is used in Tantric devotions. The Hijras of contemporary India are a diverse group of ceremonially castrated males, intersex individuals and ‘feminine males’ and are again seen as ‘alternative’ genders within the Hindu context (Newman, 2002).