text

Who were the Plains Indian berdaches?

SOAR Repository

Show simple item record

dc.contributor.author Blakeslee, Donald J.
dc.date.accessioned 2008-12-01T02:59:25Z
dc.date.available 2008-12-01T02:59:25Z
dc.date.issued 1979
dc.identifier.citation Blakeslee, Donald J. (1979). Who were the Plains Indian berdaches? -- Lambda Alpha Journal of Man, v.11, no.1, p.41-65. en
dc.identifier.issn 0047-3928
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10057/1747
dc.description.abstract The standard anthropological view of berdaches is that they were men who took up their society 1 s version of the woman!~ role by choice -- male homosexuals who adopted women's dress and women's work without any loss of respect from their respect~ve communities. There is very little in the ethnohistoric and ethnological literature to support this point of view, however. The scattered and varied references to berdaches among the Plains Indians reflect a more complex situation. Berdaches may not always have been homosexuals, sometimes did not wear women's clothing, performed roles that were not identical to women's roles, and, in at least some tribes, appear to have inherited their status. It is probably misleading to assess Plains Indian berdache~ in terms of the sex role and sexual identity variations recognized in our own society. The iqeas and models implied by the terms homosexual, transvestite, and transsexual are not easily applied cross culturally. The processes of acquisition of sexual identity in Plains Indian societies were probably different enough from those in our own society (which are still poorly understood) to render analysis of them unrewarding at this time. en
dc.format.extent 193280 bytes
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.language English (United States) en
dc.language.iso en_US en
dc.publisher Lambda Alpha Anthropology Honors Society at Wichita State University en
dc.relation.ispartofseries LAJ en
dc.relation.ispartofseries v.11, no.1 en
dc.subject Berdaches en
dc.subject Plains Indians en
dc.subject Sex role en
dc.subject Transvestite en
dc.subject Homosexual en
dc.subject Transsexual en
dc.title Who were the Plains Indian berdaches? en
dc.type Article en

Files in this item

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Search SOAR


Advanced Search

Browse

My Account

Statistics