Making the American Berdache: choice or constraint?

R. Texler

MAKING THE AMERICAN BERDACHE: CHOICE OR CONSTRAINT?From the time the Spanish Conquistadores first explored the western hemisphere, the American berdaches have evoked strong reactr lifelong dressed and acted like women in all possible ways, but there were also occasional girls who acted like boys. That is, berdaches were one type of social personage distinguishable from others who, for instance, temporarily not permanently crossed gender lines. Throughout the early European conquests, they everywhere met with persecution, but in the twentieth century they came to be eyed with fascination by Western anthropologists, who were engaged by the problems of gender and sexuality that thesnot permanently crossed gender lines. Throughout the early European conquests, they everywhere met with persecution, but in the twentieth century they came to be eyed with fascination by Western anthropologists, who were engaged by the problems of gender and sexuality that these persons raised.Thus if during the Spanish Conquests the missionaries, all while recording a great deal of information about them, tended to view the berdaches as creations of the devils who reigned in these American regions, the historians and anthropologists who followed have viewed them in a more secular fashion. For many male and female field workers, they were somewhat repellent, cowardly creatures who just wanted to avoid warfare. At the same time, however, some more sympathetic scholars, and their gay epigones, have perceived them as pure images of the free life style of the aboriginal American, creatures who chose to become what they were in a native American social regime that granted children liberty. On the one hand there was the repressive, Anglo society which had in truth exterminated a good part of native America, on the other the freedom-loving and carefree Indian, whose berdache brother had chosen his own gender identity and was proud of it.