Two-spirit
Neologism for gender-variant Indigenous North Americans / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Two-spirit (also known as two spirit or occasionally twospirited) is a contemporary pan-Indian umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) social role in their communities.[1][2][3]
Coined in 1990 as a primarily ceremonial term promoting community recognition, in recent years more individuals have taken to self-identifying as two-spirit. Two-spirit, as a term and concept, is neither used nor accepted universally in Native American cultures. Indigenous cultures that have traditional roles for gender-nonconforming people have names in their own Indigenous languages for these people and the roles they fill in their communities.
The initial intent in coining the term was to differentiate Indigenous concepts of gender and sexuality from those of non-Native lesbians and gays[4] and to replace the pejorative anthropological terms that were still in wide use.[5] While two-spirit has been controversial since its adoption,[6] the term has experienced more academic and social acceptance than the term berdache, which it was coined to replace.[5][7][8]
Early adopters stated that a two-spirit identity does not make sense outside of a Native American or First Nations cultural framework.[3][2][9] The term has sometimes been appropriated by non-Natives.[10]
The gender nonconforming or third-gender, ceremonial roles traditionally embodied by some Native American and Indigenous peoples in Canada that may be encompassed by modern two-spirit people vary widely, even among the Native individuals or cultures that use the term. Not all of these cultures have historically had roles for gender-variant people, and among those that do, no one Indigenous culture's gender or sexuality categories apply to all Native people.[11][12]