Meanwhile in the West:On the island of Samoa, there are four recognized cultural genders: female, male, fa'afafine, and fa'afatama. Fa'afafine and fa'afatama are fluid gender roles that move between male and female worlds. These third and fourth gender groups tend to care for elders in the community and educate others about sex, a topic considered taboo in public conversations for male and female genders.
lol.
Honestly everyone in that video with maybe one or two exceptions seems incredibly fucked up you know? edit: really can't get over it I could understand if anyone thought it was fake and scripted it's so perfect. Like I'm watching season 8 of Parks and Rec (the uncensored 18+ reboot.) Just complete political chaos. Twitter irl.
The West has never really managed to pull off a healthy relationship with gender and sexuality as far as I can tell. Not to say that anyone else has either necessarily.
That's closer to the West hah."It is the norm that they (fa'afatama) generally ignore each other and avoid any interactions."
😂"For instance, they were approached by us individually to participate but it is the first time most of them have met each other or in this case forced to meet each other."
You know according to census data I live somewhere with a large number of trans men and I saw someone on twitter like 'where are all the trans people in this town?' When someone posted a map and I'm just a hermit. I'm non-binary through. I don't think there's really a visible community of LGBT+ people in general outside of London and Brighton. I don't know if the census data is accurate though because the media were discussing that. It seemed like a lot of ethnic minority groups may have been confused about questions relating to gender and it's also a very diverse town.
"Most associate with other men through sports, friends and bands but rarely with other fa'afatama/transmen," said So'oalo.He also pointed out that as biological women; the associated cultural significance of the Samoa "woman" was a designation that was difficult to escape, particularly the expectations and demands by society of what was normal.It is interesting that this is somehow just universal (with the exception of that one Balkan group that seemed to be well integrated and was fairly different not a gender/sexuality thing. More a cultural role often adopted out of necessity)The S.F.A. said the Fa'afatama participants' admitted the discrete and invisible nature of their existence was not helpful "It is common knowledge that most of the fa'afatama community are unemployed, living with family and heavily dependent on family members for support."
"In a way it is also one of the main reasons for being oppressed because of their obligation to the hands that feed them and the fear of being ostracized from this support system."
Sworn virgins have existed for centuries. According to tradition dating back to the 15th century developed out of the Kanun, a tribal code of law, tribal clans from the Balkans considered families without a male presence as pariahs. When blood feuds decimated all the men in a family, the only way to salvage their honor was for a woman to become the patriarch of the clan and start acting like a man.
That second person is really masculine. They say they always compared themselves to men though so maybe they were always like that. This video is kind of ruined by the need to insert a feminist morality and the fact it's 13 minutes long and really uninformative about the history in general. Someone left this comment:
But anyway I don't think trans masc people do themselves any favours. There are definitely small communities of people and a few YouTubers or whatever, but a lot just aren't interested. So there's less 'culture' or whatever.I am not sure if "sworn virgins" encompasses the correct translation of the word "burrnesha" in English. OF course, that is not a wrong translation but somehow it captures only some superficial parts of the psycho-social catharsis these women went through in their lives, surely not even an Albanologue could create a perfect translation but the issue I have with "sworn virgins" is that it somehow still retains a feministic sense in regard to the transformation, the sexual aspect is only a small part of it that is why the "virginity", sworn or otherwise, is to me irrelevant here, you can be a sworn virgin and still be a woman in the social connotation of the word (because biologically speaking they are and will always be women of course), if I would have to invent a word in English (as there is no current literal translation in the English language) that would be something akin to "manwoman", although I fear that in the English-speaking world it might be mistaken for some kind of transgender-related expression (which it's not), but as a native Albanian speaker but also an English speaker since early childhood, that would be to me a better translation than the "sworn virgin".
Burre = Man, the (e) at the end falls during the connection with "nesha" which is the appendix for the "woman" part of the entire expression. Burrnesha - Manwomen.
They became men, they dressed as men, they lived as men, they were fiercer than men, they could kill men in the ways men killed, and they sacrificed their feminism for the possibility to live in a harsh world where women could not survive as such by themselves, but it goes beyond even this, it takes a meaning that is connected to honor, it is as though they did not just become men, they became men of honor. They had to be honored as men of honor would have had to have been honored.
I'm sure I am going into a linguistical rabbit hole here, but being an Albanian myself and knowing what it means, I struggle to find a better word or expression that could relate that human concept to the rest of the world. I live in a part of Albania (Tirana) where this social catharsis was unknown as this happened mostly in the North (but not only) where the concept of honor and that of "kanun" existed as legal constructions in relations between individuals, and it still does in some parts.
It is a harsh environment, if I would have to compare it to some other parts of the world with a similar social environment, would probably be the Scottish Highlands, that harshness is something that only those who have lived deep in the mountains know.
The only trans guy I talked to regularly had weird ideological positions (along with everyone in that discord chat) he was a lot younger (as most trans masc people are,) and he'd spent most of his teen years online talking to trans women (so like me he'd spoken to more trans women than trans men.) Specifically lesbian trans women so he saw them as 'masculine but in a weird/autistic way' similar to himself unlike more feminine trans men (I'm sure trans women would love that haha.) He was stealth irl and so avoided talking to trans people etc. Obsessed a lot about details of his body that might give him away to other people but that most people realistically wouldn't notice. Like the angle of his elbow etc.
He also had issues with trans guys who have my etiological background and was sort of misogynistic. He was straight. There there were a bunch of similarities between us but a bunch of issues and we never got that close. I don't think he actually disliked me though. I don't know it was a weird chat anyway lol. Like a bunch of dissident outcasts of the trans/trans-adj community had been thrown together like some kind of sitcom. Everyone was mentally ill to varying degrees. One person was having an obvious breakdown every single day. They worked as a researcher so did a lot of experiments on mice and so were always feeling guilty about that too. They also refused to transition as they didn't think they'd ever pass as a woman but they definitely would have because they had very feminine bone structure so also BDD. Apologising constantly but people basically never cared about what they were apologising for. Literally like this fictional character from the Fruits Basket anime. I think they had BPD diagnosed as well. Oh that's a whole other topic though lol (like everyone in that chat was really unique and weird in different ways so I'd be here all day.) It was such a weird time. I was in it for 2ish years.
But he didn't view us as part of the same group in fact he would have been horrified by the implication in general lol. Not related so much to the fact that I'm non-binary but that I'm fairly feminine because of my etiological background. The easiest way to sum this up in a way that might make sense is to just say that he was homophobic lol which I think is how he framed it as well at one point (oh he was quite self aware as well too lol.) Except it's a form of homophobia that only extends to trans guys. Probably because he saw effeminate cisgender homosexual men as being closer to identifying as/being straight women but [BEEP] trans guys/non-binary people do weird things with gender. There was other stuff too in his complicated model of which groups of [BEEP] women and/or trans guys bothered him but I can't remember all the details now.
To be honest I don't relate to most young American trans men and non-binary people I come across online either.
Irl every trans person I know has been amab, same for my brother who has known some trans women. Mostly trans women but someone I used to have a crush on irl is non-binary (they weren't out then.) I stumbled on their twitter profile recently and their style is sort of similar to some clothes I have (since about 2015,) and how I'd probably present if I put in more effort. Like this sort of thing:
This is probably stereotypical really.
They have short hair now well they did during some of the time I knew them as well (they had long hair when I was attracted to them. I'm very shallow about hair. There were some guys in school I was attracted to with short hair though but as a general rule.)
I have these biscuits that taste kind of like incense and it's really great. I like incense because it makes me kind of nostalgic and reminds me of certain areas of London I used to visit a lot and other weird occult shops etc. They're not supposed to taste like incense I don't think they just do.
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