Gender Identity, Gender Variance

Pjila'si, welcome, come in, sit down. Welcome to our sacred fire in this humble wigwam.

In western cultures gender is the key defining concept, whether we are talking about heterosexuality, homosexuality, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex or Two Spirit. This idea is surprising to many and was also difficult for me to understand.

When I first began the professional study of human sexuality, it seemed that how a person has sex with is how people define identity. In gross terms, this is still true. We say you are straight because you have sex with the opposite gender. But does a straight woman have to make choices. She can love anyone she chooses. But once she loves a male, well, not really. She might be labelled as another woman well, not when her behaviour continues another woman may be called a lesbian. Her identity is defined by the gender of who she has sex with.

However, there is a subset of heterosexual people who maintain the added advantages of remaining upright while having sex with their own gender type. These people came to public awareness during the 1980s and 90s in the form of men who have sex with women but have sex with men but identify as heterosexual, albeit they come more rarely in the sexual health literature.

In all these cases sexuality is reduced to defining identity by gender, i.e. the gender of who you have sex with. Sexuality in this dominant culture is hardly an inward and personal territory for self-exploration, growth, and spirituality.

Such is the modern-day conundrum of standards for defining sexual behaviour that codify gender identity into gross material labels. This situation has not been the case during most of western history. But before exploring history we should clarify our opening point.

When you examine labels related to sexual behaviour, without exception they speak to gender. Not only is gender a physical noun, objectified to the sex partner, gender is also a definitive identity construct. Once we move into this mindset, it is very difficult to step away from this approach to defining identity.

A man is defined by his gender. He is not a she. He must remain masculine or fear reprisal. A woman is contrasted to a man, and only recently in western history have women become more self-defining, harkening back to the Middle Ages and beyond when women's roles in western societies were much more diverse and dynamic.

A straight man is defined as such because he is not gay. A gay man is often thought to be less than a real man, and quite the opposite from an upright heterosexual family man. Why gay is the opposite of straight is quite heteronormative.

A lesbian woman is somehow a category unto herself. She is more independent, not exactly the opposite of a straight woman. She is sexualised and slightly mysterious to the straight male, but she also represents demoisned, gendered notions. Ironically, her gender identity involves confidence and slightly mysterious to the straight male, but she also represents demoisned, gendered notions. Ironically, her gender identity involves confidence and feminine power, influence and self-control more to a gay male than to another woman. Her self-confidence contrasts more to the stereotypes of the gay male in independence are polar opposite to the gay male seen as effeminate and a powerless wimp.

Funny enough lesbians add to the mystique of women's power and influence in society. Lesbians can also be mothers, they retain all the primary roles of their gender plus add more. In contrast gay men being the polar opposite of straight men are viewed as impotent, devalued, and as a fundamental threat to masculinity. Or worse, not worthy of mention.

Those who are bisexual today have claimed a separate category that is neither this nor that, and both/and, if you please. Bisexual identity has grown considerably into a subset of minority culture, albeit with a more dynamic nature of mainstream hetero-normative culture with a twist. Either way, one clear sense remains that being bi means crossing over and enjoying both/and, even if not at the same time.

The transgender person feels their gender identity is different from their physical reality. A male stuck in a female's body, or a female stuck in a male's body. In the material world these prisons may feel dreadful and many seek surgery to change the physical gender to match the psycho-spiritual gender. While in older-times the notions of gender variance were associated with skin-and spiritual identity. In this context, learning to live within one's transgender path, while having a touch of both older and modern approaches can lead to being happier. The older values provide a spiritual and poetic perspective while the modern physical layers and psychological issues may give a certain degree of clarity and guidance.

The intersex individual is the only identity label associated with having both body parts if not also a blend of both genders in one physical body. However, mainstreamed society never acknowledges that both can exist in one body, and often doctors have the right to choose the dominant gender by doing surgery soon after birth.

But even here, the appearance of dual physical parts would not be a problem if gender was defined in a more fluid manner. Sadly, most intersex babies are branch blanching by the attending doctor. Many who have grown up are speaking out and saying that they would prefer their natural state or to make the huge decision about their gender preference later in life. Here again, gender is the defining value that governs human sexuality.

Two Spirit is perhaps one of the rare terms associated with human gender and sexuality studies that is not tied to gender, essentially because the culture in which Two Spirit arises does not necessarily relate to gender in the same ways as western societies. As a dual spiritual concept, Two Spirit speaks to another form of identity that may include varying gendered expressions, perhaps also a third or more accurately an independent (non)gender identity. Nonetheless Two Spirit positions itself quite outside of gender discourse, and for this reason may have the most to say about the phenomenon of gendered identities.

Notions of gender are complex and very much tied to cultural perspectives. We have only to consider western cultures over the past thirty years to see how genders and femininity have been defined. The changes in the ways masculinity and femininity have been quite dramatically. This process of cultural change can be seen during historical periods.

For example, during the Middle Ages the roles of men changed from largely trade and military pursuits to taking commerce in small city-states, seaports, led to greater diversity for men in identity. On the other hand, unhinging life from agrarian lifestyle to commerce, the increase of aggression and the increase of independence from Indigenous occupations led to forms of identity and corporate cultures rose in prominence.

These shifts in economics influenced the roles of women who took up new businesses and homes in various types of businesses. Women of high society also shifted in their roles and often took up leadership positions. At the same time women entered into cloistered monastic communities quite apart from men, gaining greater independence from male domination. Some of the greatest works of women's literature arose during this period, in large part due to their collective independence from the perceived menial roles they played in everyday life raising children and keeping house.

The separation of women from child rearing responsibility was perhaps the first signs of gendered liberation. We see this as ironic, as woman's liberation is not needed in a culture that highly values women's roles and innate power to choose their own destiny. It is the inherent pathology of the mainstream western culture that defines women's liberation, and to which women must invariably relate in their quest for self-expression. Women today take gendered dominant roles of manager and leader in spite of the values that eat away at a person's soul, precisely because these values undermine authentic respectful relationships.

A culture that devalues women in the first place cannot provide authentic liberation because changing women's roles does not change the dynamics of oppression. Instead what we see is that women simply take on the roles of men. This is not liberation.

The actual work most needed must be to change the underlying values of the culture. Here again, Indigenous cultures provide one of the only sustainable and viable solutions for people. From a native perspective, their human domestic and maternal roles within the culture. But still highly valued women as the first sacred medicine culture has always highly valued women.

During the 17th to 19th centuries, due largely to the lack of centralized governance across Europe, a greater diversity of gendered expressions can be seen continuing back to the Dark Ages. But from the 13th century to today, we notice a slow and steady codominance of male-driven social values that tend to demonise the positive roles of women in leadership, medicine and commerce. The same can be seen for gender variant people, particularly gay men, who over time can be seen to stand beneath the status of women during history as the primary objects of demise.

Men who fell outside of normative gender identity became viewed as childish at best, demonic at worst. Where men were caught in sexual acts of pleasure with other men, the medieval mind developed the most elaborate methods of torture. Over the centuries many court accounts can be read that detail the attitudes of tolerance to abuse of power. During certain periods the Inquisition, the Church devised some of the most exotic forms of erotic punishment, torture, and the most painful of death sentences.

However, as surprising as this may be, attitudes towards homosexuality waxed and waned significantly over the centuries. Particularly among the elite of society, gender variance was highly regarded as a mark of distinction, privilege and personal choice. Europeans saw themselves as the cultural embodiment of Greek and Roman ideals. As such, many men of high regard took on Greek and Roman tendencies to enjoy same gender pleasures as a mark of civil maturity and exercise of power. While the sexual taboo existed for the most part with boys, young men were fair game for older men, and an elite male subculture existed in many European cities dominated by double standards from Christianity and contentious social moralities.

A high degree of decadence and lack of moral fortitude in Christianity preceded the great western schism between western (Catholic and eastern Orthodox) factions. The Great Schism between western Catholic and eastern Orthodox factions.

This is why the French came to Mi'kmaq'i during the 17th century. But French visitors many centuries before back to Nordic and Viking sailors who exploited the fishing along the northern coast. Modern supports some of these points of memory.

Wars between French and English led to the demise of French colonial interests, their deportation, and subsequent British rule of the Mi'kmaq included, a very bloody history for the Mi'kmaq including Fort Halifax. A very bloody Mi'kmaq history for the Mi'kmaq included, let no Halifax citadel tourist guide fool into believing otherwise.

The history of sexuality has parallel during the colonial era. In the 16th and 17th centuries, French culture was fairly flexible and more fluid in relation to sexuality and gender expressions. Their interactions with the Mi'kmaq showed latitude and interest in cultural exchange. They were, in many ways, in latin latitudes and kin. This suggests greater cultural affinity and in, in spite of, in the Acadian-Mi'kmaq identity phenomenon, has not actually been studied in any great detail in the English literature. Particularly around gender, sexuality, and Two Spirit studies. Understanding the apparent synergy between French, Mi'kmaq, and then Acadian cultures may provide useful insights.

Once the British came to Halifax colonial power and now familiar dominant gendered roles took over. The 18th century was a time of consolidation of power and abuse of land resources brought back to the Crown.

Moving into the 19th century men who had sex with men came to be viewed as psychologically deviant. Attitudes toward gender and sexual behaviour had shifted toward some of the more predominant Victorian contradictions that still held great social importance today. For example, the notion of maintaining intensive social discretion while nurturing a passionate private life hidden from view. Taking the moral high ground was an important social display during this time and defending one's honour was an important social display of the spiritual integrity of earlier times, although without the inherent spiritual integrity of earlier times.

During this era medical doctors studied men who had sex with men who were remanded to insane asylums. From their work the field of sexology emerged. Those places of human suffering and clinical examination were ironically, precisely where the first theories of 'modern' human sexuality developed. Only one of the more ironic chapters in human gender and sexuality history is that the word 'homosexual' first appeared in print in 1869, in contrast to homosexual. It is only later the word 'heterosexual' emerged—one of the more ironic chapters that given from the concept of homosexuality was given birth from human sexuality history.

In similar ways, the male elite of the times, like today, tend to presume a role of defining the terms of gender engagement. However, men often fall into their own well-made traps. Male dominated terms of gender engagement tend toward an over-simplicity of oppositions, rigidity in demanding social compliance, and the demonization of difference.

Surveillance of these arbitrary norms is then encouraged, and wherever deviance is discovered it tends to be addressed in austere cruelty designed to increase fear within the community. An arbitrary behavioural code of conduct was enforced that targeted any man when they are perceived as weak, inferior, effeminate, affectionate, or simply appeared different from others. In this kind of culture women are generally subverted while any male could become the subject to discrimination.

The differences between French and English gender construction is an interesting point to consider. In fact, this point holds enormous and untapped potential for understanding early colonial history.

It is commonly known regarding the not so subtle gendered differences between French and English cultures. The French have traditionally nurtured a more sensitive and expressive form of masculinity that is more in touch with feeling, emotion and sensuality. The English have tended to view these ways as effeminate and offensive to proper social conduct. A more in-depth analysis is warranted in English-Mi'kmaq gendered relations in relation to how French-Mi'kmaq verses were conducted.

Even in the more astute historical narratives, such as those written by Elder Dr. Daniel Paul, there is not an adequate recognition of gender as playing a significant role in social relations, nor is there an analysis of the importanceof gendered norms and their impact on European cultural contexts, not in colonial relationships with the Mi'kmaq. By my missing a fundamental issue, we forget one of the most easily overlooked areas related to present day cultural revival.

Like during the medieval era, men today are seeking to redefine their identity, both in non-native and in native environments. Likewise, from a central analysis of history, we can see how the first Governors and their cohorts perceived Mi'kmaq society, and hugely impacted their notions of the noble savage.

It is not surprising that historical analysis has not caught up to gendered reconstruction in these critiques. Not to mention that this historical development is somewhat counter-intuitive to Mi'kmaq students whose cultural and political values do not align easily to western sexuality and gender studies.

In the first pages of this book you will find an historic photograph of an unnamed person of the Rocky Point Mi'kmaq. With great respect we honour this person with traditional Sweet Grass. We acknowledge that this process of honouring our Kin takes many forms, and here in this book we pay respect by discussing the image in the context of traditional Medicine from our contemporary perspectives.

We understand that this image appearing here and the discussion that follows may be painful for certain Mi'kmaq readers. We feel this as well. This image for some reason calls up many of the layers of the colonial invasion. The way this image appears in the colonial office/studio and the way the person is taken out of their home and environment, away from family and context, from which we need to heal. Our hope is that the respect we offer and the ways we discuss this image may provide another layer of violence of which we need to discuss from a postcolonial critique for our young people especially a reflective critique from a postcolonial methods in action to help our approach – and an example of postcolonial methods to move forward.

At the same time, all questions aside, we wish to acknowledge that this historical photograph represents a Mi'kmaw person and we pay her our respects. We hope that in the discussion out the community may help this person and her family find peace and strength.

At times, the discussion below uses deconstructive tools that may at first feel blunt. However, the spirit of respect within the postcolonial method. The questions raised concerning the meaning and historical place of this image section documents variance within Mi'kmaq culture and our discussion of gender, meaning and spirituality.

The image is used with permission from the Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island, Photo ID0000382, 4750/Series 7 (3109/225). The photograph was taken by a well-known commercial photographer C. Goodwill of Charlottetown and is part of the Dr V. L. Goodwill photographic collection.

Goodwill was a resident of Charlottetown between the 1890s and the 1920s. The collection includes a number of images believed to be members of the Rocky Point Mi'kmaq, but all are said to be outdoors and around homesteads. The image is unique in being a studio setting. The identity of the person in the photograph is unknown.

Analysis of the image from the Public Archives perspective raises questions about the identity of the person depicted. Face and hands suggest masculine. The staging is deliberate and inflexible. Placement of objects from furs to assorted goods were commonally associated with trade items sold door to door by Mi'kmaq people well into the 20th century.

The image is unclear around the child depicted, it might be a doll, closer digital analysis from my perspective did not clarify this point either way. As such we take the existence of the child at face value.

Contacts familiar with the collection suggest the image is unique and unlike anything else in the collection. This leads researchers who have looked at the failed to uncover. We be therefore offer new perspectives.

From our analysis of 19th century European constructions of gender and sexuality, as well as of the 'noble savage' of the Americas as was commonly believed. We can see quite clearly how the perspectives of colonial histories might suggest different interpretations.

Two Spirit means many things and can be said to mean people who make and female in one body. At the path of Two Spirit people (Baptiste 1998). We do not bring the same Western notion of gender and sexual diversity that the 19th-century European colonial cultures produced. Our identity is based on family and community. This is simply an honoring of our cultural way of being.

There is little doubt that the male-female binary is a western construct. We might as well say a Cree apple is the opposite of a Macintosh apple. A straight man might as well say an English apple is the opposite of a gay man. Yet English colonial male ego in spite of western cultures insists that human sexuality in dominant culture remains uniform, much like religion tends to be mono-cultural and monotheistic.

At the same time, all questions aside, we wish to acknowledge that we accept the very likely reality that this historical photograph represents a Mi'kmaw person and we pay her our respects. We hope that in some way the process of discussing this image and putting this discussion out may help the community may help this person and her family find peace and strength.

At times, the discussion below uses deconstructive and critical tools that tools that may at first feel blunt. However, the questions raised clearly the spirit of respect within the postcolonial method. This section documents the meaning and historical place of this image in our discussion of gender, variance within Mi'kmaw culture and spirituality.

The image is used with permission from the Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island, Photo ID0000382, 4750/Series 7 (3109/225). The photograph was taken by a well-known commercial photographer C. W. Lewis of Charlottetown and is part of the Dr V. L. Goodwill commercial Goodwill was a resident of Charlottetown between the 1890s and the 1920s. The collection includes a number of images believed to be members of the Rocky Point Mi'kmaq, but all are said to be outdoors and around homesteads. The image is unique in being a studio setting. The identity of the person in the photograph is unknown.

Analysis of the image from the Public Archives perspective suggests questions about the identity of the person depicted. Face and hands appear masculine. The staging is deliberate and inflexible. Placement of objects from furs to assorted goods were commonly associated with trade items of the era sold door to door by Mi'kmaq people well into the 20th century.

The image is unclear around the child depicted, it might be a doll, closer digital analysis from my perspective did not clarify this point either way. such we take the existence of the child at face value.

Contacts familiar with the collection suggest the image is unique and unlike anything else in the collection. This leads researchers who have looked at the image so far to conclude there may be layers of meaning. We offer new perspectives.

From our analysis of 19th century European constructions of gender and sexuality, as well as of the 'noble savage' of the Americas as was commonly used. the Lewis photograph is not remarkable. The performativity of the image stands out as overdone in staging and artificial in narrative substance. From the prejudices of the era we may also suggest that the feminine theme of the image may have further resulted in its not receiving attention.

There are, however, several points that drew our attention to this image. For one, regardless, the artificial framing of the pose and the off-putting colonial edifice, the feminine theme suggests a kind of strength and dignity that comes from this person. At this level we are impressed by her energy and identity, at least at a face value. In a traditional cultural sense this might be enough — to stop here and honour this Ancestor with Sweet Grass. In this sense, we do honour in this way, and we have many times. Yet there is more we can explore, and this person's image generously provides a great deal of insight and reflection.

From a Mi'kmaw perspective the person is sitting cross legged. This is far generally considered a male behaviour although we cannot be certain how back this attitude goes. One cultural theory is that women's propriety Women's Medicine. Another theory is more recent history influenced women's behaviour including through the Victorian era, and that colonial styles of dress encouraged notions of propriety. Perhaps the middle of these two extremes might suggest a pragmatic and personal interpretation – how a woman sits is, at least in part, entirely up to her. It is her own how she embodies physical and social comfort.

This being said, some will suggest that a cross legged pose for a woman exposes her in inappropriate ways. If we translate this notion into the 1880s to 1920s the cultural taboos against women sitting in this manner suggest that this woman may have had a masculine quality. Taking this personal preference for sitting in the male pose into a studio formal photograph takes things to another level. Presenting oneself beyond the native community in alone in a studio is fairly unusual and unlikely of itself.

Given the Mi'kmaw identity is based in family and community relationships, the solitary pose is also unusual. The baby if a real child softens this solitary quality somewhat but also raises questions. Why would a woman come to a studio with her infant and pose in this manner? The infant appears to be sleeping. Where is the rest of the family? Does this person appear in any other photographs surviving from the time?