The Third Gender in twentieth century America

The Third Gender in twentieth century America
by Randolph Trumbach                                               Baruch College, City University of New York

George Chauncey's brilliant and often persuasive study of male homosexual relations in early twentieth-century New York was published two years ago on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riot that inaugurated the recent gay liberation movement. The world that he describes was the product of a major shift in western sexual behavior that had begun two hundred years before, around 1700. And his book is in dialogue with the scholars who over the past twenty-five years have tried to analyze that shift. The nature of the problem to be discussed can be indicated by asking whether homosexuality and heterosexuality are biological categories that divide the world into a majority and a minority that can be found in all times and places. To such a question most western people today would reply yes. And while they would probably wonder why a minority should be homosexual, they would simply accept without question that most people are heterosexual. Since the 1970s, however, the work of some historians and sociologists has radically challenged these presumptions. Mary McIntosh in a classic article in 1968 began the discussion by proposing that homosexuality in modern society was a deviant role into which some men were socialized beginning around 1700. Nine years later in 1977 Jeffrey Weeks and myself, under McIntosh's influence but independently of each other, rephrased McIntosh's proposal. Weeks maintained that the modern homosexual role emerged in the late nineteenth century when the concepts of homosexuality and heterosexuality were invented.(1)
My tactic was to compare what I thought to be the traditional western pattern of homosexual behavior with the two patterns that could be found elsewhere. In Europe since the twelfth century adult effeminate men exclusively attracted to each other had met in urban subcultures that protected them from the hostility of the majority. Elsewhere in the world adult men had licit sexual relations with both males and females, provided that they remained dominant by having relations either with adolescent males or with a minority of adult males who had been transformed into women. One of these two patterns could be seen in each of the world's major cultural areas. Domination was achieved by differences in age in east Asia, Melanesia, the Islamic world, and the ancient Mediterranean. A minority of males were socialized …

Evidence of how western faggots distorted history and created the anti-man concept of sexual orientation

Uranian

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For other uses, see Uranian (disambiguation).

From John Addington Symonds' 1891 book A Problem in Modern Ethics.

Uranian is a 19th century term that referred to a person of a third sex — originally, someone with "a female psyche in a male body" who is sexually attracted to men, and later extended to cover homosexual gender variant females, and a number of other sexual types. It is believed to be an English adaptation of the German word Urning, which was first published by activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) in a series of five booklets (1864–65) which were collected under the title Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe ("Research into the Riddle of Man-Manly Love"). Ulrich developed his terminology before the first public use of the term "homosexual", which appeared in 1869 in a pamphlet published anonymously by Karl-Maria Kertbeny (1824–82).
The term "Uranian" was quickly adopted by English-language advocates of homosexual emancipation in the Victorian era, such as Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, who used it to describe a comradely love that would bring about true democracy, uniting the "estranged ranks of society" and breaking down class and gender barriers. Oscar Wilde wrote to Robert Ross in an undated letter (?18 February 1898): "To have altered my life would have been to have admitted that Uranian love is ignoble. I hold it to be noble - more noble than other forms."
The term also gained currency among a group that studied Classics and dabbled in pederastic poetry from the 1870s to the 1930s. The writings of this group are now known by the phrase "Uranian poetry". The art of Henry Scott Tuke and Wilhelm von Gloeden is also sometimes referred to as "Uranian".

Contents [hide] 1 Etymology 2 Development of classification scheme for sexual types 2.1 The taxonomy of Uranismus 3 See also 4 References

[edit] Etymology

The word itself alludes to Plato's Symposium, a discussion on Eros (love). In this dialog, Pausanias distinguishes between two types of love, symbolised by two different accounts of the birth of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In one, she was born of Uranus (the heavens), a birth in which "the female has no part". This Uranian Aphrodite is associated with a noble love for male youths, and is the source of Ulrichs's term urning. Another account has Aphrodite as the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and this Aphrodite is associated with a common love which "is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul". After Dione, Ulrichs gave the name dioning to men who are sexually attracted to women. However, unlike Plato's account of male love, Ulrichs understood male urnings to be essentially feminine, and male dionings to be masculine in nature.
John Addington Symonds, who was one of the first to take up the term Uranian in the English language, was a student of Benjamin Jowett and was very familiar with the Symposium.
However, it has been argued that this etymology, at least for the English-speaking countries, is unrelated to Ulrichs's "coinage". In his volume Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians, Michael M. Kaylor writes:

Given that the prominent Uranians were trained Classicists, I consider ludicrous the view, widely held, that ‘Uranian’ derives from the German apologias and legal appeals written by Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) in the 1860s, though his coinage Urning — employed to denote ‘a female psyche in a male body’ — does indeed derive from the same Classical sources, particularly the Symposium. Further, the Uranians did not consider themselves the possessors of a ‘female psyche’; the Uranians are not known, as a group, to have read works such as Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Research on the Riddle of Male-Male Love); the Uranians were opposed to Ulrichs’s claims for androphilic, homoerotic liberation at the expense of the paederastic; and, even when a connection was drawn to such Germanic ideas and terminology, it appeared long after the term ‘Uranian’ had become commonplace within Uranian circles, hence was not a ‘borrowing from’ but a ‘bridge to’ the like-minded across the Channel by apologists such as Symonds.

— p.xiii, footnote

[edit] Development of classification scheme for sexual types

Ulrichs, had a typical third gender outlook of male to male attraction. He, like Freud, believed that a sexual attraction for men essentially flowed out of a female psyche -- this, even if he did recognize a class of masculine males, who liked feminine males -- but considered these masculine males to have a female pscyhe, nevertheless. His experiences of male-male desire was limited to what was happening in the transgender ghettos, e.g., the Molly Houses in UK, where, effinate males (who were considered a third gender) and their 'manly' lovers met with each other -- he seems to have no idea about males with manhood, who even in his times were secretly being sexual with each other, all the time ^[1] He also failed to take into account that a significant proportion of male to female desire exhibited by males with manhood (that he called dionings, and that the west today calls 'straight'), is exaggerated or sometimes faked, because of peer pressures and other pressures of social masculinization ^{[2] [3]}.
It was this third gender outlook, that prompted Ulrichs, and other western third genders that liked men, to seek a separate 'gender' like category for themselves (and which they expanded to the men as well), that they defined in terms of 'man-man love,' that later became known as 'homosexuals,' as a separate 'type' of males -- a category, which was readily validated by the then scientific institution, without any enquiry, in its eagerness to classify it as a disease. Ulrichs chose to include both the third genders (feminine types) and the 'men' (masculine types) under the same third gender category of Urningthum, which was compeletly unprecedented in the history of human civilization. This stigmatized male-male attraction for the 'men' (masculine /regular /Straight males), because historically, anything that becomes associated with the third gender becomes a disqualification for manhood. Ulrichs developed a more complex threefold axis for understanding sexual and gender variance, where sexual preference preceded gender orientation (masculine/ feminine) in deciding one's social category. This was his classification: sexual orientation (male-attracted, bisexual, or female-attracted), preferred sexual behavior (passive, no preference, or active), and gender characteristics (feminine, intermediate, or masculine). The three axes were usually, but not necessarily, linked — Ulrichs himself, for example, was a Weiblinge (feminine homosexual) who preferred the active sexual role.
Thus, Ulrichs started the western tradition, where masculine gendered males that desired men were still thought to be of a female psyche -- furthered later by Freud -- and so, these desires (and the respective males) who were so far classified along with other men, under the 'manhood' category, were from now on, classified with the third genders, as 'homosexual,' in a typical third gender fashion, and broken from other males with manhood, and thus kept away from the manhood category. In his entire list, there is no concept of a male with manhood, with a male psyche, that can desire a man. Just like Ulrichs confused the Third genders (feminine males) with a desire for men, he also confused males with manhood (straight) with male desire for women (heterosexuality). Just like his classification has no concept of a masculine male with male psyche that can desire men, it also has no concept of a feminine male that can desire women -- all of these misconceptions made him restructure the earlier 'manhood'/ 'third gender' social gender classification, in terms of 'hetero'-'homo' social division, which has become the backbone of the western civilization, today.
This unprecedented classification heralded a new dimension to the age-old religious stigma attached to man-man sex -- the new one being a much more potent one -- that stigmatized such man to man desires as effeminate, third gender or unmanly. In the past, only a desire for receptive anal sex was so stigmatized as qualifying one to be broken from manhood and to be classified in a separate emasculated category. Man's desire for men in a non-receptive capacity was never seen as 'feminine' earlier. This new classification, along with several other new developments in the western society, resulted in most men disowning a desire for men and taking on the heterosexual lifestyle and identity in large numbers^[4], leaving the 'homosexual' lifestyle and desires to only a few, mostly feminine males.

[edit] The taxonomy of Uranismus

Note that in these terms, -in is an ordinary German suffix usually meaning "female".

• Urningin (or occasionally the variants Uranierin, Urnin, and Urnigin): A female-bodied person with a male psyche, whose main sexual attraction is to women. ("lesbian" or "straight trans man")
• Urning: A male-bodied person with a female psyche, whose main sexual attraction is to men.

• Dioningin: A heterosexual, feminine woman.
• Dioning : A heterosexual, masculine man.

• Uranodioningin: A female bisexual.
• Uranodioning: A male bisexual.

• Zwitter: Intersexual

Urningthum, "male homosexuality" (or urnische Liebe, homosexual love) was expanded with the following terms:

• Mannlinge: very masculine, except for feminine psyche and sex drive towards effeminate men ("butch gay")
• Weiblinge: feminine in appearance, behaviour and psyche, with a sex drive towards masculine men ("queen")
• Manuring: feminine in appearance and behaviour, with a male psyche and a sex drive towards women ("feminine straight man")
• Zwischen-Urning: Adult male who prefers adolescents. ("pederast", "hebephile")
• Conjunctive, with tender and passionate feelings for men
• Disjunctive, with tender feelings for men but passionate feelings for women ("metrosexual", "bromance")
• Virilisierte Mannlinge: Male Urnings who have learned to act like Dionings, through force or habit ("straight-acting gay")
• Uraniaster or uranisierter Mann: A dioning engaging in situational homosexuality (e.g. in prison or the military)

[edit] See also

• List of transgender-related topics

[edit] References

1. ^ Male Homosexuality: From Common to a Rarity, By Pierre J. Tremblay in Collaboration with Richard Ramsay Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary.
2. ^ Men, Sex and Mateship: How homosociality shapes men’s heterosexual relations, Dr Michael Flood
3. ^ Dude you're a fag, C.J. Pascoe
4. ^ Heterosexuality and Third gender in enlightenment London, Randolph Trumbach, The University of Chicago Press

• Michael Matthew Kaylor, Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde (Brno, CZ: Masaryk University Press, 2006)
• Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, "Urania" (Springfield MA, Merriam-Webster Inc, 1995.)
• Webster's Dictionary of the English Language – Unabridged Encyclopedia Edition, "Uranian" (New York NY: Publisher's International Press, 1977.)
• Winston Dictionary of the English Language, "Uranian (Philadelphia PA, John C. Winston Company, 1954.)
• Lesbian activist Anna Rueling used the term in her 1904 speech, "What Interest does the Women's Movement have in Solving the Homosexual Problem?" text of Rueling's speech

[show]

Evidence that Third genders have receptive sex with men

Evidence that Third genders have receptive sex with men

A male who takes a "receptive" or feminine role in sex with a man will often identify as a kothi (or the local equivalent term). While kothis are usually distinguished from hijras as a seperate sexual identity, they often dress as women and act in a feminine manner in public spaces, even using feminine language to refer to themselves and each other. The usual partners of hijras and kothis are masculine men, whose sexual identity is as a "normal" male who is attracted to women.See, for example, [In Their Own Words: The Formulation of Sexual and Reproductive Health Behaviour Among Young Men in Bangladesh], Shivananda Khan, Sharful Islam Khan and Paula E. Hollerbach, for the Catalyst Consortium. They are often married, and any relationships or sex with kothis or hijras are usually kept secret from the community at large. Hijras and kothis often have a name for these masculine sexual or romantic partners; for example, panthi in Bangaldesh, giriya in Delhi or sridhar in Cochin. Hijras' and kothis' sexual identities may overlap with those of Western passive homosexual males, but are perhaps closer to the "queens" of pre-stonewall Western culture with their feminine gender identity.
Some, while clearly feminine in behaviour, may marry women and live as men. Others who live openly as hijras may form relationships with men and even marry,See, for example, various reports of Sonia Ajmeri's marriage. e.g. ['Our relationship is sacred'], despardes.com although their marriage is not usually recognised by law or religion.

In Conservative Nepal, a Tribune for the ‘Third Gender’ Speaks Out

Brian Sokol for The New York Times

By TILAK POKHAREL

Published: September 19, 2008

KATMANDU, Nepal

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The New York Times

SUNIL Babu Pant likes to take advantage of the frequent delays at Nepal’s newly elected Constituent Assembly. As the only openly gay member, he takes every opportunity to work on his homophobic colleagues, trying to convince them that contrary to what they were taught growing up in this very conservative country, homosexuals are just like any other people.
Mr. Pant, 35, a computer engineer by training, opens his laptop — an object of fascination to many in the assembly, who come from the rural hinterlands — and gives a PowerPoint presentation wherever he finds his audience.
“Kalpanaji, come join me,” Mr. Pant said during a break recently to a fellow parliamentarian, Kalpana Rana, inside a tent that serves as a canteen. Other lawmakers, there to kill time, began to move closer to his laptop.
“I have prepared this presentation for members of this assembly,” he said, giving them a beaming smile. The female members were too shy to join the crowd.
“There are some people on earth who consider themselves neither male nor female” he continued. “They like to be called third gender, which comprises roughly 10 percent of the total population.”
A man interrupted. “Oh, yes, I had seen this term in a medical book I have at home,” said the man, Mathabar Singh Thapa, of the rightist Janamukti Party in the 601-member assembly. “But, I have a question. Do they have genitals?”
“They do,” said Mr. Pant, trying not to giggle. “But, they don’t have natural sexual orientation.”
He then put a political spin on his presentation. “South Africa’s Constitution already has a provision that the third genders are not to be discriminated against,” he said. “Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, led by V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, Russia became the first nation to legalize homosexuality.” The members listen attentively until the bell rings, summoning them back to the assembly hall.
If Mr. Pant, who represents the tiny Communist Party of Nepal (United), recognizes the long, uphill battle he faces, he never admits it. In a society where premarital sex is strongly taboo and where a leader of the ruling Maoist party, Dev Gurung, once called gay people “the product of capitalism,” it is a lonely fight.
But all is not bleak for Mr. Pant. This has been an extraordinary time in Nepal, with the declaration of a democratic republic in May, the abdication of the king in June and a new constitution in the works. Moreover, the now-dominant Maoists emphasize that theirs is the party of the poor, the minorities and the disadvantaged, and they have recognized “third gender” people as “sexual minorities.” The phrase “third gender” has been used to refer to gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, the transgendered and others.
Mr. Pant, always a good student, came to Katmandu, the Nepalese capital, from his home village in hilly Gorkha district in 1990 to pursue his studies. Two years later he won a scholarship to study computer science in Belarus, where he first heard the word “homosexual.”
By that time, he knew that he was attracted to other men but did not realize that this placed him in the minority. “I thought everybody would be like me, having the same feeling,” said Mr. Pant, who has never married.
HE learned differently, particularly during a police crackdown on homosexuality in Belarus in 1994. “There were many secret police officers deployed to crack down on gays and lesbians,” he said.
He got his first taste of sexual freedom in 1997, when he had a chance to travel to Japan. “I got to learn about gay rights,” he said. “I started visiting clubs and restaurants for gays.”
He stayed three months then returned to Nepal, determined to exercise the same freedoms. He started handing out condoms at a gay hangout in Katmandu — a daring act in conservative Nepal. “It was like a tool to initiate discussion with people,” he said. “I used to talk to people who would come there, discuss H.I.V./AIDS, ask them if they know anything about sexuality, ask them if they had heard anything about gays and lesbians.”
In short order, he had a good grasp of the city’s clandestine gay culture (“After you know two or three people, then you know everyone,” he said), and he was determined to bring its problems out in the open. Just a decade or so ago, it was hard for gay people to live a normal life in Katmandu, he said. The police were brutal. Many friends, he said, were driven from their homes, and others endured torture in police custody. “I thought nothing would improve unless we organized,” he said.
He tried to found an advocacy group to fight for the rights of gay men, lesbians, the transgendered and others. But government officials said they would register the group only if it devoted itself to converting homosexuals into heterosexuals.
To get around that, Mr. Pant said only that the group was dedicated to defending human rights in general and working on health issues and H.I.V./AIDS. Today, the group, the Blue Diamond Society, has offices in 20 districts and has 120,000 registered members.
WITH Mr. Pant’s heightened profile, it was inevitable that his sexual orientation would be revealed to his family. He said that his mother, who could never understand why he did not marry, was very upset. “But things cooled down in about a week,” he adds. “Now, my parents live with me in Katmandu and have stopped insisting that I get married.”
But Nepal remained officially hostile to sexual minorities. Mr. Pant said that 13 transgendered people were exiled to India and that two were killed in Katmandu. The Nepalese Army removed two female cadets for engaging in “an indecent intimate relationship.” In August 2004, 39 members of the Blue Diamond Society were imprisoned for 13 days.
But last December the Supreme Court ruled that “sexual minorities” were guaranteed the same rights as other citizens. Since then, at least one gay man has received his citizenship card with “both” written under the “gender” category.
Relations with the police have improved, Mr. Pant said, and the government is preparing to ask local authorities to issue citizenship cards to gay men and lesbians, transsexuals and others that recognize their preferred gender status.
Richard Bennett, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal, has urged the state to respond in line with the court verdict, “to enact new laws or amend current legislation to accord equality and end all discrimination against members of sexual minorities.”
Though Nepal’s politics are in flux, Mr. Pant is optimistic that the Constituent Assembly will soon adopt a stronger and more “inclusive” constitution. “In the past, it was like ‘Don’t kill us, recognize us.’ Now, it will be like changing our livelihood. We will focus on equal justice, economic and cultural rights.”
But Nepal still has a way to go before it comes to terms with the new realities. Inside the Parliament building, Mr. Pant said, “Some male members take me to a corner and whisper questions like, ‘Why do you promote sex which doesn’t give children? What if everyone becomes homosexual?’ As if they think that this is not something to talk about in public.”
“I have found a good platform to raise the issue,” said Mr. Pant, who is already thinking of new issues to tackle, like pollution and the environment.
Not that he is about to drop his signature issue, or even that he is lowering his sights. “There is a lot yet to be done,” he said. “There is not even a single person from our community holding a high government position.”

A version of this article appeared in print on September 20, 2008, on page A6 of the New York edition.

Having Gaydar and 'appearing gay' is about being third gender

Excerpts from "The science of gaydar"

By David France "I once placed a personal ad in which I described myself as "gay-acting/gay-appearing," partly as a jab at my peers who prefer to be thought of as "str8" but mostly because it's just who I am. Maybe a better way to phrase it would have been "third-sexer," the category advanced by the gay German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld 100 years ago. The label fell into disrepute, but lately a number of well-known researchers in the field of sexual orientation have been reviving it based on an extensive new body of research showing that most of us, whether top or bottom, butch or femme, or somewhere in between, share a kind of physical otherness that locates us in our own quadrant of the gender matrix, more like one another than not. Whatever that otherness is seems to come from somewhere deep within us. It mostly defies our efforts to disguise it. That's what we mean by gaydar—not the skill of the viewer so much as the telltale signs most gay people project, the set of traits that make us unmistakably one.

The late psychologist and sexologist John Money famously called these the details of our "gendermaps," which he believed are drawn primarily by life's experience and social conditioning. Money planted some of the earliest flags in the nature-versus-nurture war by claiming that dysfunctional parents, not inborn biology, is what produced "sissy boys," tomboys, and other gender variants. But today, the pendulum has swung just about as far in the other direction as possible. A small constellation of researchers is specifically analyzing the traits and characteristics that, though more pronounced in some than in others, not only make us gay but also make us appear gay."

In popular culture too, gay means "female in male body," "receptive anal sex" (gender role of third genders) and is used as extreme name calling that affects 'men' but not 'third genders.'

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