Language and Gender Variance: Constructing Gender Beyond the Male/Female Binary (Report‪)‬

Introduction While the majority of individuals identify as male or female, there have been people across the globe and throughout time that have stepped outside this binary to claim alternative genders (Nanda, 2000, p. 1). To see gender as a two-part system is a feat of culture not nature: gender is culturally constructed through various socializing interactions (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003). Cross-cultural examples show the diversity of gender systems across the globe. There have been multiple-gender systems documented a number of American Indian societies and across the world (Nanda, 2000, p. 13). In India, for example, hijras are accepted as a "third" gender (Nanda, 2003). Gender variance has also been documented in the Philippines, Thailand, Polynesia, and Brazil among other countries (Nanda, 2000).