Westerners cannot get the hang of 'third gender'

"In the Western world, it is widely accepted as natural - and seen almost as a law of nature - that mankind is divided into two sexes or genders - males and females. In many cultures and societies, however, more than two sex and/or gender categories are recognized, which in some instances refer to the biological sex and in others to gender roles and social status. Aims: To give an intercultural comparison of various ways of dealing with gender variance. Methods: In the following paper, we review the anthropological literature during the last 100 years describing individuals who live neither as men nor women in various non-Western cultures. Results: Only rarely, these individuals suffer from disorders of sex development in the modern medical or biological definition: in many if not all societies there have been individuals who are not covered by the gender category of male and female.''

Claudia Langa, Ursula Kuhnleb

aDepartment for Anthropology and African Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University, and
bCenter for Child and Adolescent Health, Munich, Germany

Note from Reclaiming Natural Manhood site:

Please note that the authors describe 'third gender' in terms of 'gender roles' and 'social status', but do not consider it a biological/ natural phenomenon. This is a purely misguided Western viewpoint which views gender as purely a social construct, whereas the fact is that Gender is basically a biological construct, like (outer) Sex, but Gender is also heavily constructed socially, but which for scholarly as well as practical purposes should not invalidate the real, biological part.