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Making the American berdache: Choice or constraint?
Journal of Social History, Spring, 2002 by Richard C. Trexler
The earliest reference to the berdaches of these parts is in Marquette, who, referring in 1673 to the Illinois and the Nadouessi, pleaded ignorance in trying to explain why their berdaches had assumed that status while they were still young, for the rest of their lives. (49) This meant they abased themselves like women, went to war with clubs rather than the man's bow and arrow, etc. For the Frenchman Marquette the fact that these berdaches were consulted as augurs before military action seemed small enough recompense for the life of degradation they otherwise suffered. However, just a few years later, at the turn of the century, other sources shed important light on what for Marquette had been a mystery. In fact, the diarist de Liette explained, these berdaches had their origins not in choice, but in constraints forced on them at a very young age. The author describes the situation as follows. Illinois men were not satisfied by their women, who were not sufficiently forthcoming sexually. To correct this sit uation, so says de Liette, groups of boys were trained from childhood as passives to satisfy the needs of these braves. Clearly, the threat of the rape of Illinois girls was here just as present as it had been among the Yumas d'Alarcon encountered a century and a half earlier. Candidates for this status were identified as follows, de Liette continues:
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When they are seen frequently picking up the spade, the spindle, the axe, but making no use of the bow and arrows ... they are girt with a piece of leather or cloth ... a thing all the women wear. Their hair is allowed to grow and is fastened behind their head.... They are tatooed on their cheeks like the women ... and they imitate their accent, which is different from that of the There are men sufficiently embruted to have dealings with them on the same footing. The women and girls who prostitute themselves to these wretches are dissolute creatures." (50)
We have thus arrived at one characteristic procedure for the native selection of a berdache: the test. Encountered among scores of tribes across the hemisphere, the native American test to discover one's "real" gender is commonly misunderstood on the natives' own terms, as if some inherent gender identity has merely been recognized by the community. But reflection confirms what is self-evident, namely that whatever the natives' explanation for their actions, they in effect were determining for an infant or young child, a gender that child could not possibly have arrived at by a free action of his other will. This is evidenced by the native traditions themselves, which at times speak for example of the moon goddess (or female Fate) tricking a boy forced to choose by his elders into choosing the hand holding the female accouterment when he thinks he is choosing the other hand, which holds the male implement. (51) Doubtless, this whole process of parents testing for "true" gender deserves the serious study it h as not yet received, but of one thing we can be sure: Wherever we encounter parents or elders imposing gender upon children through such alleged tests, this is really an exercise in parental or other adult authority and not of the child's free will. (52)
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