"Their sacred rituals embody both genders: the daggers represented masculinity; the colorful silks femininity. 'Within a bissu, both male and female exist, and that is perfection,' said Kahar Eka, 52, a senior bissu, who wore a distinctly male attire of a peci hat and trousers, a day after donning an elaborate headdress embedded with flowers...."
Eka, who commonly goes by just one name, remembers feeling effeminate even as a young boy; but that sentiment was rejected by Eka’s father, a conservative Muslim. Growing up in Sulawesi, Eka often looked at the bissus and wondered why they were respected, but the calabai — or men who exhibited feminine traits — were bullied. The calling to be a bissu, Eka said, came in a fever dream....
Sharyn Davies, an associate professor at Monash University in Australia... 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. 'From the very start, they’ve been able to find a place within Islam,' Ms. Davies said....
Job opportunities are few and far between. Like many transgender people in Indonesia, bissus often find that they are limited to being performers, makeup artists or hairdressers.
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37 comments:
“To the tall buildings!”
Atomic facepalm.
Thai ladyboys mean girl snicker.
Shorter excerpt:
bissus...were respected, .... 'From the very start, they’ve been able to find a place within Islam.... Job opportunities are few and far between. ...bissus often find that they are limited to being performers, makeup artists or hairdressers.
Thank you NYT, for telling us how the other 0.000001% live.
>bissus often find that they are limited to being performers, makeup artists or hairdressers.<
Wait, what?...none of them are Indonesian congresswomen?! What's wrong with that place!
We're they A) born with male sex characteristics or B) male?
I'm going with B.
John Henry
I quickly repaired to Wikipedia for more information. Unfortunately it didn't help much. Very confusing situation for these five genders. For bissus, it appears that "ambiguous genitalia" are one (?) requirement, or at any rate characteristic, though (1) the ambiguous genitalia need not be visible and (2) the ambiguous genitalia are not sufficient to make someone a bissu.
There was one line in the Gemini info that stood out: if not an AI hallucination, there are only five or six of these people left.
How is this unique to a specific culture? It seems NYT can talk about this only because it's not a western society.
Worldwide, gays and lesbians have always been present and floated in certain careers. Specifically, in appearance-related jobs, as emotion-driven performers, and in sex work.
In the west there were plenty of obvious-but-closeted gays loved by millions, to include Liberace, Elton John, Freddie Mercury, etc. At the same time, there were plenty who were bullied and abused. At the same time, there were plenty who were indeed groomers and child predators.
This is lots of fancy language about the routine bell curve of individual traits versus the inescapable biological centering of reproduction.
There used to be a comic feature in some newspapers, Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
I am glad to see the NYT put it on the front page.
"We're they A) born with male sex characteristics or B) male?
I'm going with B."
B = "Non-gestating people". It's NY, new style guide just dropped.
Ambiguous Genitalia will open for James Blake at The Catalyst Club…
it's IMPORTANT, to remember;
that if 1 person out of a hundred thousand has a condition..
THEN;
we should incourage some (Most? (ALL?)) of our children to pretend to have that condition.
I'm SO OLD, that i remember back when lefties CLAIMED to be Against genital multilation of children.
my! how times have changed
Ploopus grrls... bissous...
Where do you find these queerdos, ann???
It's like your not content with your life or something.
James Talarico put the NYT on the global search.for the non-binary deity?
Indonesia is the most exotic place I've ever seen, especially as one moves eastward, toward Papua. This is but a small slice of that aspect, but they've squeezed it out of shape, then carved it all up trying to make it conform to their own small-mined narrative.
The Bissu are a BOGO for the NYT: Muslim and trans, at the same time. Doesn't get any better than that!
The (minuscule) exception that proves the rule.
One might question how this 1) made the NYT (that some still thinks covers all the news that's fit to print) and 2) isn't roundly mocked instead of promoted.
But not by me. No siree, Bob. Not me.
Plucked his eyebrows on the way
Shaved his legs then he was a she
Hey babe - take a walk on the wild side
“Like many transgender people in Indonesia, bissus often find that they are limited to being performers, makeup artists or hairdressers.”
That obviously could not be their preference, right? I’ve been to the Philippines, where cross-dressers are historically, very accepted, and these are exactly the occupations they seem to prefer.
Sharyn Davies, an associate professor at Monash University in Australia... 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.
Oh for heaven's sake...
In many Islamic male dominated cultures - young boys are dressed up and made-up as girls and raped. for the pleasure of the male Islamic.
NYT types are cool with it.
Did these missionaries do the killing themselves or did they ship them to residential schools in Canada to be strangled by nuns and buried in unmarked graves?
Sharyn Davies, an associate professor at Monash University in Australia... 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.
Once again, Christians reveal themselves to be the bloodthirsty contrast to enlightened Muslims.
Not in the real word, of course. But where it counts: in the world of academia.
Five genders means more trouble picking up a group in bars. Usually one of the genders is stand-offish and you have to resort to a brothel for that gender.
This reminds me of the fictional African societies in the Tarzan books
James Tallarico assured me there were 6 genders. Why are the bissus living in a hateful place that only recognizes 5 of them?
"buried in unmarked and undetectable graves"
There ya go!
I can't remember what Heinlein book it's from, but somewhere, as an illustration of a futile effort, he references (I'm recreating this quote from memory so it's not actually a quote) "the professor who spent his career trying to prove that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by Homer but by another Greek of the same name." If only these efforts of the TQ-cum-anti-Christian activist lobby were, as they deserve to be, so futile as this.
There are two genders: masculine and feminine, and a transgender spectrum: homosexual and simulant. The rest are aborted and sequestered in liberal societies that perform human rites for social, clinical, criminal, political, and climate progress.
Sex-correlated or social-adjacent traits? Perhaps an early transition as a homo around 6 weeks as a viable baby... fetus, or later as a prop in modern families and a lifetime of mutilation and profit.
So the ever-so-tolerant moslems saved the day again! Thank mohammad they're here when you need them most, like when the young boys of Afghanistan are being raped by the tribal elders practising that grand old tradition of bacha bazzi. Wait... you mean to say that they are all moslems? Do tell.
We owe a huge debt to the NYT for finding some obscure tribe to help us normalize gender dysphoria. More particularly, we should be grateful for the comments of an Aussie prof. Now we know that Islamists honored sexual deviants while Christians wanted them killed. This is called “NYT reality.” Not to be confused with “reality.” /s
Andorians in Star Trek supposedly have 4 genders: 2 male and 2 female. In one of the novels, an author claimed that that genetic contributions by all 4 were requirednto create a baby.
@Rocco --
ST: TNG had a pre-Woke take on transgenderism with the J'naii. They required a 3rd bio partner to reproduce and Riker wrecked a planned relationship.
The plot, while far far far far left, would never fly today. Way too much nuance and ambiguity. Seemed rather contrived too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outcast_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
Castration of males for sexual reasons has a long lineage in many cultures. The Roman emperor Nero once lost his temper and kicked his pregnant wife Poppaea in the stomach (as you do)because she complained about him staying out late at the chariot races. In doing so, he killed both the fetus and Poppea. Overcome by guilt and grief, Nero sought a replacement (as you do) and found a young male slave named Sporus who bore a strong resemblance to Poppaea. Nero had Sporus castrated and forced him into a marriage (as you do), treating him as a replacement for Poppaea.
Nice to know that sexual insanity is not a recent invention. People at any time or place who feel that they have infinite power and zero accountability are quite prone to it.
So they were admired as children but scorned as adults? Something smells pedophilic.
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