On Sun, 25 Dec 2005 11:40:05 -0800, Bob Tiernan   
    wrote:   
      
   >Arrow wrote:   
      
   >> Their biological sex is either male or female (or could   
   >> be both if any one of them is a hermaphrodite).  But their   
   >> gender is more complicated.   
      
   >Nonsense.   There are only two, with some aberrations   
   >and freaks along the way to provide an opportunity for   
   >some to pretend there are more.   
      
   Regrettably that seems to be unstudied personal opinion tinged with   
   overt bias and ignore-ance.  I hope your historical postings are   
   better grounded.  You may have been better off saying nothing.   
      
   >Let's get back to the old west.   
      
   You take my breath away.  Here we're talking about the most powerful   
   instinctual forces in human existence, and you choose to totally   
   ignore the way patterns of sexuality and gender identification widely   
   affected  the lives of millions of Old West Anglo-Europeans and   
   pre/post Christian missionary indigenous peoples.  It's worthwhile to   
   touch on this since references frequently arise in journals of the Age   
   of Columbus onward, including those of 18th and 19th century explorers   
   in the West.  As well there was violent friction as Anglo-Europeans   
   encountered unfamiliar indigenous gender identity structures.   
      
   We learn a lot from such studies.  For instance, some modern circles   
   may enthusiastically paint pre-Christian missionary indigenous gender   
   identity structures as being progressive, having antedated modern   
   scientific views by centuries.  But it turns out that these peoples   
   appear to have been reflecting ancient mixed gender creation stories   
   in very roughly the same way you are parroting your own dominant   
   society's simpler Adam and Eve creation story. If indigenous models -   
   vestiges of which exist even today - were/are arguably accurate and   
   realistically inclusive, it seems to be relatively accidental rather   
   than a deliberated artifact.   
      
   And of course we've already visited the Anglo-European side of things.   
   To be balanced we'd also have to consider frontier society women in   
   all this turmoil. Scarcity factors must've put enormous social   
   pressures on brave women in the Old West frontier environment.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)