Response to Blackwood's article

Before Evelyn Blackwood’s article “Sexuality and Gender in Certain Native American Tribes: The Case of Cross-Gender Females” I never would have thought that for different Native American tribes it was socially acceptable to have a same sex relationship, since our own society is so intolerant of them. I had previously believed that most tribes had the same social hierarchy as western culture in that men were in charge and that women were passive and only had domestic roles. So it was of great interest to learn that of the several tribes mentioned in the article many had an egalitarian society that was flexible with gender roles and sexuality. In our previous discussions of intersex people, specifically Ann Fausto-Sterling’s paper “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough” with her proposal of additional gender terms to fit different conditions of intersex, I expected that the tribes would also have developed a different gender assignment for these women. However, I was surprised to learn that they instead allowed them to assume a man’s role and activities, thus preserving the male/female dichotomy.

It is unfortunate that influence from western culture turned these once egalitarian societies into patriarchal societies. I figured that the balance would be tipped mostly by Western culture’s ideology of gender and sex, but I had not considered economics as a factor too. The tribes’ collectivist society that depended on the contribution of all for survival, valued all jobs done either by man or woman as the same. However, as we discussed in class, the capitalistic society of western culture shifted the value placed on work in the tribes. For example, as the demand for hides increased, the value of hunting, typically a man’s job, also increased and thus disrupted the balance of all jobs contributing equally to the survival of the community.