Third Gender

It is useful for comparison and it is misleading if you take it literally.

The term marks a simple observation: many societies, across every inhabited continent and across recorded history, have recognised gender categories beyond two, with their own names, obligations, ceremonial functions and social positions.

The problems start immediately after that observation.

• "Third" implies a sequence. It puts man and woman first and everything else in a numbered slot after them, which is a claim about ranking that these societies do not generally make.
• "Third" implies one. The Bugis of South Sulawesi recognise five genders, not three. Diné tradition is usually described as recognising four positions. A single extra slot is the wrong shape for most of these systems.
• It merges things that are not alike. A ritual specialist, a kinship-based occupational community, a customary-law property arrangement and a personal identity are all in the list below. They are not variants of one thing.
• Nobody self-describes this way. There is no one who says "I am a third gender". They say hijra, or māhū, or bissu.

We keep the term because it is the label under which people search and because the comparison it enables is genuinely useful. We use it as a doorway, not as a description.

Recognised gender categories beyond man and woman

The list below is a starting point for further reading, not a taxonomy. Each entry has its own history, its own language and its own self-understanding, and several have full entries on this site. Each row gives the name, the culture and region, and what distinguishes it.

• Hijra (South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal). A community with its own guru-chela kinship system and ritual occupation, not only a gender. Legally recognised in India since 2014. Full entry
• Māhū (Kanaka Maoli, Hawaiʻi, and Tahiti). "In the middle." Traditional roles as teacher, healer and keeper of knowledge. Closed to outsiders. Full entry
• Two-Spirit (pan-Indigenous, North America). An English umbrella term created by Indigenous people in 1990. Not a traditional term and not claimable by non-Indigenous people. Full entry
• Travesti (Latin America, principally Argentina, Brazil and Peru). An explicitly political identity in Argentina, with its own body of theory. Frequently refuses translation as "trans woman". Full entry
• Burrnesha (Albanian highlands, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia). A social position entered by irrevocable oath under the Kanun. Nearly extinct: roughly a dozen remain. Full entry
• Fa'afafine (Samoa). "In the manner of a woman." People assigned male at birth with an established social and family role; widely recognised in Samoan society and in the diaspora.
• Fa'afatama (Samoa). "In the manner of a man." The counterpart role, assigned female at birth. Less visible internationally than fa'afafine and not a mirror image of it.
• Fakaleitī / leitī (Tonga). A related Polynesian role, distinct from fa'afafine despite frequent conflation in outside accounts.
• Bakla (Philippines). Assigned male at birth, feminine expression, with precolonial roots connected to the babaylan ritual specialists. Bakla mixes gender and sexuality in a way that resists sorting into either.
• Kathoey (Thailand). Widely recognised socially, without corresponding legal recognition. Usage ranges from neutral to pejorative depending on speaker and context.
• Bissu (Bugis people, South Sulawesi, Indonesia). Ritual specialists understood to combine all genders, one of five recognised Bugis genders. Numbers have fallen sharply since the twentieth century.
• Calabai and calalai (Bugis people, South Sulawesi, Indonesia). The two further Bugis genders that, with bissu, oroané and makkunrai, complete the five-gender system documented by Sharyn Graham Davies.
• Muxe (Zapotec communities, Oaxaca, Mexico). A recognised role with deep local roots, centred on Juchitán. Muxes are Indigenous Mexican and the term is not a general Latin American one.
• Sekrata (Sakalava people, Madagascar). A recognised role for people assigned male at birth raised and living as women. Documentation is thinner than for most entries here, and mostly from outside.

Things this page is not saying

• These are not "types of non-binary". Non-binary is a contemporary Western identity term with its own history. Placing these traditions underneath it inverts the chronology and imports a framework none of them was built in.
• These are not proof that gender diversity is natural. They are evidence that gender systems vary. That is a stronger and more interesting claim, and it does not require anyone else's culture to serve as an argument in a European debate.
• Several of these are closed. Two-Spirit and māhū in particular are not available to outsiders. Others are not closed but are still not floating labels: they carry obligations.
• Several are contested from within. Whether burrnesha is a gender at all, whether rae-rae is separate from māhū, whether kathoey is neutral or insulting: these are live arguments among the people concerned, not settled facts a reference guide can hand you.

Third-gender and gender-variant roles are documented on every inhabited continent and across thousands of years. Many were suppressed or criminalized under European colonialism, and many are now being reclaimed and legally recognized. The orphan members named in this guide (Sekrata, Bakla, Fa'afatama, Calabai, Calalai, and others) each have their own cultural context.