Key takeaway: Critically examining the third gender concept reveals how reductionist, ethnocentric frameworks can obscure cultural diversity, and underscores the need to decolonize transgender and non-binary identities by privileging local meaning-making.
Table of Contents
Introduction
In anthropology and transgender studies, the term third gender has been widely used to describe non-binary or gender-variant roles in non-Western societies. While invoking a third gender category highlights global gender diversity, it often flattens complex identities into a single template. This blog unpacks the evolution, critiques, and contemporary implications of the third gender concept, drawing on Towle & Morgan’s critique of typological errors and Dutta & Roy’s reflections on decolonizing transgender in India.
What Is the Third Gender Concept?
The third gender label emerged in 1975 through Martin & Voorhies’ Female of the Species, and has since been popularized by Euro-American anthropologists[asset:1]. It groups diverse roles—South Asian hijra and kothi, Native North American two-spirits, Arabian xanith—under one umbrella term. By conflating multiple cultural formations into a singular third gender, it risks:
- Misleading readers into expecting a homogeneous “third gender” experience.
- Reinforcing Western transgender subjectivities as universal.
- Overlooking cultural and historical specificity of each role.
Primordial Location and Stereotyping the Third Gender
Anthropological portrayals often accord third gender a “primordial” status, as if it has an unchanging essence. This approach:
- Misleads by suggesting that non-Western gender variance is static and uniform.
- Assumes exposure to diversity equals acceptance, which may not hold true.
- Equates non-binary roles with Western transgender models, a crude comparison that erases context[asset:1].
Reductionism, Exclusion, and the Third Gender
The third gender concept functions as a catch-all category that:
- Subsumes all non-Western gender variants, erasing terminological and historical nuance.
- Naturalizes binary sexual dimorphism by presenting a single “other” category while protecting male/female as default.
- Excludes alternate non-binary practices by enforcing a narrow typology[asset:1].
Typological Errors in Third Gender Scholarship
Typologies encourage static thinking:
- They focus on classifying types and interactions rather than lived processes.
- They privilege certain cultural scripts, marginalizing others.
- They ignore how individuals negotiate identities within changing social landscapes[asset:1].
Inconsistent Cultural Usage of Third Gender
Relying on cross-cultural third gender examples to argue for change at home is illogical:
- Hijras or two-spirits may not embody emancipatory roles in their own societies.
- Oversimplified citations of a third gender flatten lived realities and obscure power dynamics[asset:1].
The West Versus the Rest: Ethnocentrism in Third Gender Discourses
The third gender concept often reinforces ethnocentrism by:
- Portraying the West as separate and superior to “other” gender systems.
- Ignoring intra-cultural diversity and contestation over gender norms.
- Failing to account for how gender ideologies evolve within politicized, shifting contexts[asset:1].
Decolonizing Transgender: From Third Gender to Transnational Rubrics
Dutta & Roy critique how “transgender” has replaced “third gender” in India’s National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) guidelines, defined in essentialist, male-to-female transition terms:
- Local identities (hijra, kothi, jogappa) were subsumed under a universal “transgender” rubric.
- Transnational funders and CBO leaders demanded Western-style discourse, reinforcing scalar hierarchies between global and vernacular knowledge[asset:1].
Collapsing Local Identities under Third Gender
By treating regional non-binary forms as merely “local” expressions of a global transgender identity, the third gender concept:
- Elides and erases particular histories, practices, and trajectories.
- Fails to recognize unstable or non-linear gender transitions within single bodies.
Towards an Analytic Rubric, Not an Umbrella Term
Rather than subsume local identities under a monolithic third gender label, we can:
- Use “transgender” analytically to access resources without erasing difference.
- Critique structural assumptions and hierarchies between transnational and local discourses.
- Enable particularistic identities to flourish within global movements[asset:1].
Conclusion
The third gender concept, while historically significant for highlighting gender diversity, is fraught with reductionism, typological rigidity, and ethnocentrism. Decolonizing transgender and non-binary discourse requires dismantling the third gender rubric, foregrounding local meaning-making, and deploying transgender as an analytic tool rather than an umbrella category.
Practice Questions
Explain two major critiques Towle & Morgan raise about the third gender concept.
- The third gender concept conflates diverse non-binary roles into one static category (typological error).It naturalizes binary sexual dimorphism and excludes multiple gender histories (reductionism and exclusionism).
How did the NACP’s adoption of “transgender” in 2007 replicate colonial hierarchies?
- It replaced local identities (hijra, kothi) with an essentialist Western model of transgender transition, enforcing a transnormative hierarchy between global and vernacular discourses.
Propose one way to decolonize transgender discourse while still accessing transnational resources.
Use “transgender” as an analytic rubric to secure funding and rights while maintaining specific indigenous and local gender categories in policy and community organizing.
Session 6 : Hijra Identity: Exploring Kinship, Ritual, and Resistance in South Asian Transgender Discourses
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