The term "gender" refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, attributes, and identities of males and females within a given culture or society. Traditionally, cultures have been characterized by strict adherence to gender norms, where men are expected to exhibit masculine traits such as aggression, physical strength, and leadership while women are expected to be submissive, nurturing, and domesticated. This rigid gender binary has led to the oppression and marginalization of individuals who do not conform to these social constructs, often referred to as gender variant people.
Some scholars argue that this traditional acceptance of gender variance was historically suppressed to reinforce colonial hierarchies. The argument is based on the premise that colonial powers used gender binaries to justify their exploitation of non-Western populations, and that this legacy persists today in modern societies.
In precolonial Africa, for example, there were many cultures that recognized and celebrated different genders, including those who identified as male but presented themselves as feminine, known as "women-men," and others who presented themselves as male despite being assigned female at birth, known as "female-bodied males." These individuals played important roles in their communities, serving as spiritual leaders, healers, and even warriors. But with the arrival of European colonizers, these traditions were replaced with Western ideas about gender and sexuality, which viewed any deviation from the binary as unnatural and deviant.
The suppression of gender variance during colonialism was intended to reinforce the power structures imposed by the colonizers. By marginalizing those who did not conform to Western norms, the colonizers could assert control over entire populations and maintain a hierarchy between the dominant and subordinate groups. As historian Antoinette Burton argues, "the colonial project relied on the creation of new discourses around sexual difference and deviance, both in terms of the regulation of the bodies of native peoples and in terms of the representation of those bodies as 'primitive' or 'barbaric.'"
Today, this legacy continues to impact how we view gender identity and expression. In many countries, transgender people are still criminalized, denied access to healthcare, and subjected to violence due to societal pressure to conform to rigid gender binaries. This is particularly true in Africa, where some countries have passed laws prohibiting cross-dressing and other expressions of nonbinary gender identities.
There are also examples of cultures that have maintained traditional acceptance of gender variance.
In Samoa, gender identity is understood as fluid and flexible, with people able to change their genders throughout life based on social roles and responsibilities. Similarly, in Mali, individuals may identify as both male and female simultaneously without conflict or stigma. These cultures provide an alternative model for understanding gender beyond the strict binary of masculine and feminine, and suggest that perhaps traditional acceptance of gender variance has never truly been lost but simply suppressed.
Is it possible that traditional acceptance of gender variance was historically suppressed to reinforce colonial hierarchies?
Gender variance is an umbrella term for any form of nonconformity with cisgender identity (identification with one's biologically assigned sex). Such forms include transsexualism (the desire to change one's sex), crossdressing, tomboys, or effeminate men. [.