Gender subordination and political hierarchy in pre-Hispanic America

R. Texler

When the Spaniards arrived in the New World, they encountered biological males who in every possible way acted and dressed like women their life-long. Through suppression, this social type disappeared by the twentieth century, to be superceded, so to speak, by modern gay cultures among descendants of these native Americans. Trexler's talk will describe the berdache as a social, rather than existential type, and clarify its function in native American societies. It will also introduce her/him as a subject of scholarly debate, addressing in particular how the berdache has been used and misused in the controversy over gay identity.