FIVE GENDERS AND COUNTING?

 

I hope the Supreme Court justices are reading the NYT today. GOOGLE The Land of Five Genders—NYT Simply put the 5 genders are male, female, birth male-gender female, birth female-gender male, bissu-unique blend of male and female. These distinctions don’t translate perfectly from Indonesian culture to US usage. It seems that while gender is cultural, esp. the view that there are only 2, Nature has provided the basis for more. The following quote shows early Islamic missionaries in a better light than their later Christian rivals, but modern political Islam is more in tune with the ignorant anti-scientific views of Christian and other religious and political reactionaries. ‘’Sharyn Davies, an associate professor at Monash University in Australia who has studied the bissus, said when Islam came to Indonesia, it arrived with the idea that “God created you as you are.” By contrast, the early Christian missionaries to Sulawesi told local people that they had to be either men or women, or be killed.’’ NYT 6/15/26