People sometimes assume religious traditions’ ideas about gender have always been conservative and unchanging.
In many cases, “conservative” views are actually new! Conservatisms always claim to stand for the values of the past, but they quite often make up a past that didn’t actually occur.
“The past” - you know, back when they were much younger and didn’t know how the world worked, so they made up a bunch of assumptions in their head and got mad whenever anyone told them they were wrong because it was obvious they were right since they’re brilliant and they came up with it.
case in point : wahhabism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism#Criticism_by_other_Muslims
A lot of “new” religions like Christianity were all about maximizing reproduction because it’s easiest to indoctrinate children.
Which leads to those religions calling anything that didn’t result in children a sin.
According to the same religious laws against LGBT, masterbation and oral/anal are just as bad.
But they can’t even give up blowjobs and expect everyone else to follow just some parts of someone else religious rules.
I thought Christianity is like that because it was based on Judaism, and Judaism is like that because the Hebrews kept getting killed. Hard to keep a people if they don’t reproduce and you are constantly enslaved or at war.
Modern Christianity seems to prohibit abortion. Historical and modern Judaism seems fine with abortion.
You’re right, and both Aboriginal and Indigenous American (many) cultures are testament to that. In some case they weren’t simply accepted but seen as gifted, too.
And there are so many more examples of this from cultures all over the globe (Indian Hijra’s come to mind).
This is a pearl in the ocean of debate on gender and sexuality. A lot of people can’t fathom the fact non-binary genders exist and are accepted in other cultures because they have been socialised by their own heteronormative culture. It’s understandable why a lot of people can’t make heads or tails about the lgbt community for said reason, but if people get out of their information bubble and read expansively (or even better travel) outside of their worldview, then they will gain better understanding just how complex the world is, and that people of non-binary genders are actually just normal people who deserves respect like everyone else.
A lot of people can’t fathom the fact non-binary genders exist and are accepted in other cultures because they have been socialised by their own heteronormative culture.
True
It’s understandable why a lot of people can’t make heads or tails about the lgbt community for said reason…
… then they will gain better understanding just how complex the world is, and that people of non-binary genders are actually just normal people who deserves respect like everyone else.
False. You don’t need to understand a persons’ relationship with their gender, or their sexual orientation, to respect them. And you definitely don’t need to be well travelled or well read to understand that different kinds of people exist.
You might not mean it to be, but this argument is coddling the bigots and acting like ignorance excuses bigotry, when it doesn’t.
And more so, as OP and mine and other replies here have clearly shown, probably most cultures on earth have had knowledge of the gender spectrum for hundreds if not tens of thousands of years (because it’s part of nature and easily observable without the social constructs), so really there is no justification for that ignorance in the first place, yet it exists, and instead of trying to explain the ignorance you should be asking why it exists and to whose benefit.
I first read this as “ancient rabbits” and was really confused for a moment.
I think it would add some much needed levity to the public conversation if we started referring to people as “Tumtums”
Hermaphroditus is literally older than Jesus. Of course the ancients knew about them. We still use their words to describe Hermaphrodites.
You’re not wrong, however it’s worth mentioning that the intersex community in general would prefer that term not be used
