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It’s well-known that Reddit is an extremely left-leaning platform. It’s also well-known that anthropology is one of the most left-leaning academic disciplines. According to different studies, self-identified left-wingers outnumber conservatives by at least 30 to one in anthropology faculties.
With that in mind, it was somewhat astonishing to see the following academic candour on the AskAnthropology subreddit.
The topic was the so-called ‘two-spirit’ claim relating to Native American culture. This is an oft-repeated claim by trans activists, to try and justify their nutty, irrational ideas. It’s also towering bullshit and the worst kind of genuine cultural appropriation, as even anthropologists are forced (no doubt through gritted teeth) to admit.
(Bear in mind that these answers were supplied by a self-described “leftist” who is “all for anti-colonial scholarship” and genuinely believes “there are well over 100 genders including micro-genders”. Yet, even this nutbar has to admit that ‘two-spirit’ is a big, fat lie. Not to mention a gross insult to Native American culture.)
The Two Spirit concept and term was invented in the 1990s. It is not an authentic historical identity in Native American culture. Professor of Sociology Kylan Mattias de Vries notes that the term was created “In 1990, at the third annual Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.”
This English term was not a translation of an original Ojibwe term, nor did it represent a traditional Ojibwe concept or cultural practice. De Vries explains, “The concept and word two-spirit has no traditional cultural significance”, and adds that the corresponding term in the Ojibwe language was also created at this time. He observes “Because this term was recently created, it has no linguistic equivalent or meaning in other nations and tribes.”
In other words, it was deliberately invented to shoehorn pre-modern practices into modern Western identity politics – over the objections of the Ojibwe themselves. Because, like most traditional societies, the Ojibwe knew perfectly the difference between poles and holes. They also knew annoying faggots when they saw them.
Ojibwe scholar Anton Treuer is clear on how traditional societies actually viewed these matters. Sex determined gender and social role. Men did men’s work. Women did women’s work. Anyone who crossed those lines was still understood as a man performing women’s tasks or a woman performing men’s tasks.
Firstly the Ojibwe viewed gender itself as typically determined by sex. They did not view sex and gender as distinct from each other. Biological sex usually determined an individual’s gender. Secondly, they viewed roles in society as strictly gendered. Men were expected to act in one way, and women were expected to act in a different way. So biological sex not only determined a person's gender, it also determined their social roles.
Thirdly, the Ojibwe viewed gender in strictly binary terms: man and woman. They did not have a term for a third gender, and they did not have a term for non-binary gender.
The language used was often blunt: ‘one who endeavours to be like a woman’, ‘unmanly man’, ‘thinks she can act like a man’, or ‘pretending to be a man’. These were not celebrations of fluid identity. They were descriptions of people stepping outside the expected binary.
Other tribes were even more un-PC in describing cross-dressing perverts. ‘He loves men,’ sniggered the Mi'kmaq. ‘Unmanly man,’ sneered the Winnebago. At least three tribes outright called them ‘cowards’. Cree called them ‘fake woman’ and ‘fake man’. The Arapaho were perhaps funniest: ‘rotten bone’.
Trans activists are glibly hijacking traditional religious beliefs. The rare cases where individuals took on opposite-sex roles were framed as the result of spiritual dreams or visions. The person remained their biological sex. They did not ‘identify’ as the opposite sex. They performed a role considered sacred within very narrow cultural boundaries. This has nothing to do with the modern claim that some people are born in the wrong body or that gender is a spectrum detached from biology.
It’s as insulting to the Ojibwe as if alcohol manufacturers used Jesus to peddle cheap rotgut.
The modern ‘two-spirit’ narrative is not indigenous knowledge. It is a recent political invention dressed up in feathers and beads to give contemporary gender ideology a veneer of ancient wisdom. It flattens complex cultural practices into a simplistic ‘see, they had trans people too’ talking point, which is not just an obvious lie – it erases the actual beliefs of the people it claims to honour.
Even a subreddit full of left-leaning anthropologists cannot quite bring itself to defend the ‘two-spirit’ lie.
