According to the book "Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia" by Jean Bottero, some "men" in ancient Sumer wore women's clothing and took women's names, and "...if we can believe an astonishing oracular text -- playing the part of wives and even mothers."
Yes, the legends are true. In Daruny, a transgendered person really can be accepted as their gender of choice regardless of how masculine or feminine they look. To a Darunian, if you present as male, youre male, and if you present as female, youre female; gender is a social grouping instead of something biological.
I realize it's hard for non-Darunians to imagine such a society. But consider this quote from Lynn Conway:
For those who are strongly transgender or transsexual, living without having a properly assigned gender produces a nightmarish separation from the dance of life. Whether it's dating, finding love, courting, marrying, raising children, and generally doing all the little everyday things that continually celebrate one's own gender, the transgendered are often left stranded on the sidelines, to watch as spectators. Or worse yet, while feeling ugly and ludicrous in their male social appearance, they are forced to "act out" empty of all feeling a role that is alien to their inner female nature.
In Daruny, this doesn't happen to the people Prof. Conway is talking about.
This is an actual real-world 12-year-old Dutch girl who is biologically male; she will take antiandrogens to stop male puberty and estrogens to look more female as she matures. Eventually, she will have "sex reassignment surgery," commonly known as "the sex-change operation." (Throughout this site, for convenience, I will refer to all people by the gender as which they present.)
There are thousands of girls like her in Daruny; however, a Darunian girl like her does not take any chemicals to stop male puberty or to look more female, because she is accepted by everyone as a girl. She (Darunians use feminine pronouns and word-forms when talking about such a child) is seen as a masculine-looking girl during puberty, and as a very masculine-looking woman afterwards. Unlike transsexuals in other countries, she makes no attempt to hide who and what she is. Once she decides she's a girl, she presents as entirely female in every way--clothes, hair, speech, gestures, you name it. The Darunian language has masculine and feminine nouns and adjective endings, and this girl uses feminine forms for herself; for example, she would say, "Contenta sum" ("I am happy"), whereas a boy would say, "Contentu sum." She does not have to take hormones or get surgery, and even if she wanted to, Darunian doctors would no more give her hormones or surgery than they would give an anorexic liposuction; they see nothing wrong with being transgendered or even presenting as the gender contrary to one's biological sex, but they see the need to change one's body as a sickness. (A few who are especially vain travel abroad to find doctors who will do such things.)
This is what the girl in the picture above would grow up to look like if she lived in Daruny.
Most Darunians are unable to think of her as male; they see her as a cross-sexed woman, that is, a woman with a physical difference instead of a man with a mental problem. ("Cross-sexed" is the English translation for tansesatu/-a; to use "transsexual" or any of the trans- words would betray the meaning of the Darunian word.) She may or may not be attracted to men, but if she is (only 5% are exclusively lesbian, just like the general population), she need not worry; having a male body is no more a turn-off to Darunian men than weighing more than the average would be, and just as some men are attracted to fat women, there are quite a few Darunian men who think women with male bodies are the sexiest. (Foreigners often believe these men are gay, but if you told them that, they would say, "If I wanted a man, I'd be with one." In fact, one thing that some Darunian men like about cross-sexed women is that they're more likely to enjoy being women.) Her biggest problem will be her inability to become pregnant, but if she wants children, she can do what other women who cant have children do: adopt. Darunians are much more accepting of adoption than Americans; to them, if you raise a child, the child is yours, no questions asked. Thus the fact that she can't become pregnant is not so much of an issue (like it would be in Thailand and Samoa), and she can do in Daruny what she can do in no other country: become a wife and mother.
A Darunian cross-sexed woman and her husband. Their relationship is considered completely heterosexual. (Her husband got the tie-dye shirt on a business trip to Los Angeles, in case you're wondering about that.)
By contrast, in most countries, the same child would be thought of as a boy with the wrong mental attitude, a sissy who needs to toughen up and learn to fit in with the other boys. (If you'd like a first-person account of what that's like, click here.) If he (this child is addressed using male pronouns and word-forms in nearly every language that has them) is vocal about his desire to be a girl, he is shamed into silence and sometimes even forced into aversion therapy. If he is savvy, he keeps his feminine self under wraps until he can find a place to safely express it; if not, his feminine behaviors are beaten out of him. Even after growing up, he must keep his feminine self a secret if he is to be socially accepted; sometimes it can be literally a matter of life and death. Dating provides a particularly difficult situation; whether he is attracted to women or to men, his partners often expect him to take on a masculine role in many aspects of the relationship. (From what I'm told, quite a few masculine gay men don't like feminine gay men.) Often, he does not allow himself any feminine expression and tries very hard to be male. He may eventually find that he can no longer live as a man. If he wishes to live as a woman, he must take female hormones and get costly, dangerous surgeries that will help him pass as a woman. If this does not work (and very few can pass completely), he will still be seen as a man; a crazy man, but still a man. As a result, he will face discrimination for the rest of his life. It's not a pretty picture. (Men who are physically female do not have this problem to such an extent in most industrialized countries. Darunian feminists see this as yet another thing that's easier for men.) Many people manage to prosper despite such conditions, but most agree that they would have been better off if they had been allowed to choose their gender.
His only other option is to emigrate to Daruny. But millions of people just like him apply year after year, hoping they will be allowed in; only a small minority are ever accepted. The sad truth is that only a few thousand can be allowed in each year, and even then, they must have something to contribute to Daruny; otherwise, it would be overrun with foreigners, and Darunian culture would not survive for long. If you want in, your best bet is to get a doctorate in something useful. In fact, given the amount of competition, I can't imagine you'll get in without one. Even then, youll probably have to learn Darunian beforehand, since many of the applicants already have. (A side effect of this is that the global transgender community uses Darunian as its international language, making Darunian one of the few languages with more foreign speakers than native speakers.) And even if you speak Darunian fluently, I would still advise you to have a back-up plan in case you are not accepted; there are lots of people with doctorates even in this country who can't get jobs.
In Daruny, lots of cross-sexed people are recognized early on, but many others decide soon after puberty. ("Decide" isn't exactly the right word because Darunians find the idea that being transgendered is a lifestyle choice as ludicrous as the idea that one can choose one's biological sex.) Childhood is seen as a time for gender exploration; Darunians find it perfectly natural that children have a say in determining their own gender. When they change their gender, they choose a new name or their parents choose one for them. Often, they simply adopt the opposite-gender version of their own name (Mikel becomes Mikela and vice versa), or if they don't like that (not many Saras want to be called Saru because it's such a rare name), they consider other choices; Ariela is a popular name among cross-sexed women born in the 1980s because of Sirenita (The Little Mermaid), and a disproportionate number of cross-sexed men that age are named Mariu because of Super Mario (also because it's so common and because of Mariu/Maria from Platea Sesamu). Darunians who change their gender later in life are very rare; most people who do are foreigners from less tolerant countries. (However, there are many stories of people disguising their gender.) And unlike some cultures I can name, Darunian culture doesnt require cross-sexed people to change their bodies in any way, because Darunians understand that a woman can look masculine and a man can look feminine. Many won't consider them attractive (though, as I mentioned, there are some who don't care and even some who find them more attractive than the rest of the population), but they're still accepted as the gender they know themselves to be. There are a few cross-sexed people who go abroad to change their bodies, but they are seen as extremely vain, as if they got rhinoplasty or liposuction.
Things aren't perfect in Daruny, though. Women are subject to strict standards of beauty, just like in any other country. So a cross-sexed woman is seen as ugly (unless she looks biologically female), and doctors won't let her have cosmetic surgery to make her look more feminine. Very young children don't understand biological sex or gender very well; the masculine bodies and facial features of such women remind them of apes, so quite a few Darunian parents have been embarrassed by their children asking, "Why does that lady look like a gorilla?" In all-male groups, men sometimes say things that make this question seem polite by comparison.
The woman on the left gets that question all the time. (Fortunately, she's learned to have a sense of humor about it. After all, it's much less embarrassing than "Why is that man wearing a dress?") The woman on the right does not. Just as some femina coporeala ("corporeal women"--the phrase used in English is "genetic women") are seen as more attractive than others, so it is with cross-sexed women. The one on the right is lucky enough to look more feminine.
Also, since 98% of people have agreement between gender and biological sex, Darunians have the same mental pictures of "man" and "woman" as people in other countries; in other words, if someone says, "Some guy cut me off in traffic," the listener pictures someone who is biologically male in addition to being socially male. Most Darunians don't notice that there are no cross-sexed people in foreign movies, because everyone is still either male or female.
The strict selection process for immigrants makes it very difficult for some people. Many conservative countries have banned the teaching of the Darunian language. Because a solid grasp of Darunian is required for all immigrants, this means that anyone in those countries who wants to emigrate to Daruny must first travel to a country where they can learn Darunian. As a result, most immigrants are from industrialized countries; the rest are relatively well-off. In addition, a little bit of racism influences the selection process, so you will see very few dark-skinned people in Daruny. To a Darunian, anyone who is light-skinned is considered white; anyone else is "black." While anyone who speaks good Darunian is Darunian enough for most people, almost no one would consider having children with someone they consider black, on the grounds that this would create problems for the child. Interestingly, few Darunians have any qualms about adopting Chinese babies or about having children with northeast Asian immigrants, perhaps because they think of the light-skinned Asians as white. Some have speculated that the Darunian population will slowly but surely look more and more Asian as time goes on. However, others feel this reflects unwarranted optimism.
With the widespread use of birth control, fewer babies are available to adopt than in the past. Couples have to wait longer than they used to, and the standards are becoming stricter. With falling birth rates in other countries, it's getting harder to adopt foreign babies. One can hire a surrogate mother, but this is expensive. Thus some men, especially those of the lower classes, face pressure from their families to avoid marrying any woman known to be unable to have children. For cross-sexed women, this means it's getting more difficult to find marriage partners. (This is not so much of a problem for the men because artificial insemination will take care of the problem in most cases.) Many fear that this could lead to them being unable to become wives and mothers, as in Thailand and Samoa; this would make future generations of genetically male children more reluctant to allow themselves to choose the female role--and their parents more reluctant to allow them. For this reason, Darunian scientists are trying to find a way for a biologically male person to become pregnant. (Even that may not work, because reproductive technology is so expensive; someone rich enough to afford this can probably be accepted for adoption.) A few doctors who are concerned about all this are trying to make hormones and surgery available to teenagers so that they can develop "normally" for their sex and have no problems marrying, but the Darunian public accuses them of taking advantage of teenage girls' body-image insecurities.
One of the most famous Darunian movies, Filia No Es Filiu Meu (My Son Is Not A Girl), directed by Alisa Demacasi Yoani, depicts a future in which cross-sexed people are looked down upon as much as in other Western cultures, with a prologue showing exactly how this came to be. The prologue shows a fictional case study of two families with biologically male children who want to live as girls; one is allowed, and one is not. The one who is allowed does fine until she reaches adolescence; she finds that boys are under intense pressure not to date her (because their parents don't want them marrying women known to be unable to have children), and this situation does not improve no matter how old she gets. By the time she reaches the age of thirty, her friends have long since abandoned her because they got into relationships, and her only source of companionship is her many pets. The other child is under constant pressure to act male, but goes through life feeling empty inside and envying women, but staying male so he can marry and raise children. Thirty years after the making of the movie, the tradition of allowing children to choose their gender is forgotten.
The movie then goes into the life of a fifteen-year-old boy named Carolu who desperately wants to be a girl. He's not male enough to be a guy's friend or a girl's boyfriend, and the girls aren't interested in him as a friend, so he is trapped between world. He meets a girl his age named Dominica, who is actually biologically male; her mother has allowed her to take hormones to develop in the female way. However, she has not been allowed to get genital surgery, since she is a minor. So the boys discover that she has male genitals, and she becomes the laughing stock of the school. Carolu and Dominica become best friends. However, when she starts encouraging him to be the girl he always knew himself to be, his mother forbids them from seeing each other. They continue to see each other in secret, but are caught. Carolu's mother complains to the school, and it goes all the way to the Darunian Supreme Court. They rule that all minors must present as their biological sex. Dominica stops going to school, and life goes back to normal for Carolu. At the end of the movie, Dominica informs Carolu that she has taken an exam to graduate from high school and is leaving the country to go to college. The last scene shows their tearful goodbye at Liskom International Airport.
While this future seems sad, the present is not utopia either. Just because a person has a say in their own gender doesn't mean gender roles don't exist. Boys are expected to be tough even if they are biologically female; the most common question a sensitive boy hears is, "Are you sure you're not a girl?" Often, other boys call him by the feminine form of his name and use feminine adjectives to tease him. Strong girls are given more leeway than that, at least until they reach adolescence. When these children grow up, they still have problems, just like their foreign counterparts; for example, someone who identifies as male and likes being male socially but wants the female role in a relationship is thought of as crazy, and the first question his partner asks him is, "So what made you decide to be a man?" And even though things are better than in just about any other country, men still have higher status than women.
Still, it beats most countries... at least for someone whose gender identity strongly leans one way or the other and whose personality fits in with their gender identity. As I will explain later, the rest aren't so lucky.
Tips for gay and lesbian travelers
First off, if youre just visiting, I dont recommend getting involved with another person, no matter what your sexual orientation is. The heartbreak is just too much; unless you're one of the lucky few, you won't be allowed to live in Daruny. But if youre gay or lesbian and are into summer romances, here are a few things you need to know.
Darunians have different ideas about homosexuality from other Westerners. They dont really see gays and lesbians as a group thats distinct from the rest of the population; lots of people get physically intimate with close same-sex friends, even after they marry. In fact, homosexual affairs are encouraged during adolescence, because it (theoretically) keeps girls from getting pregnant before they grow up.
But, just like anywhere else, there are people who are incapable of being attracted to the opposite sex. If youre butch or femme (or if you're neither but like butches or femmes), you will be the most accepted among gays and lesbians. If youre butch, dress and conduct yourself as a man; if youre femme, dress and conduct yourself as a woman. Because gender is defined by presentation, you will be seen as the gender youre presenting as. If youre a bit uneasy about this, try to see it from a Darunian perspective. For example, a masculine gay man is thought of as being attracted to cross-sexed women (unless he is attracted to people who are both biologically and socially male). A feminine gay man often lives as a woman and is considered cross-sexed, or if he lives as a man (which happens a lot more than one would think; most Darunians don't understand it, either), he stays single and has "an intimate male friend." Darunians don't usually think of such a pairing as a "real" relationship, even if it is; to them, it's not a real relationship unless there are clear male and female roles. In some ways, Darunian culture's acceptance of transgendered people makes their views on gender more rigid, not less.
If youre neither butch nor femme and are seeking someone else who is neither (or if you're one of the two and are seeking someone like you), most Darunians wont know what to make of you. Most likely, theyll blame it on the fact that youre a foreigner and are not used to the Darunian way. But there are a lot of gay and lesbian Darunians who are like you; it's just that they're not very visible.
If you prefer a more separatist atmosphere, try the cities; only the largest cities will have any gay/lesbian culture. In Liskom, head downtown and look for coffeehouses and bars with poetic names (you need to be able to read Darunian for this), or check out the closed-shutter district (red-light district in English).
The Third Sex
Can you believe these two are the same person?
Some people dont feel comfortable with either gender role. Like Americans who dont really identify as Republicans or Democrats but pick the party they like better, many of these people pick whatever gender role they like better and live with its privileges and restrictions. But some dont pick and just do things without regard to gender or even have two separate lives in the two genders. Most Darunians think of these people as psychologically confused; in some ways, those who identify as neither male nor female (or as a blend of male and female) are worse off than they are in other countries. In most other countries, they are thought of as masculine women or feminine men; some people are all right with that, some arent. But in Daruny, they are seen as needing to pick a gender and stick with it.
If a child differs enough from gender norms, the parents assume that their child is cross-sexed and from then on, raise the child as the opposite sex. So a boy who likes to wear pretty clothes and play with dolls and has more female friends than male friends is often raised as a girl. If he prefers to be a boy nonetheless (it can and does happen, but most Darunians don't understand how that can be), his parents and his peers try to toughen him up to fit into the male role (so he's no better off than his American counterparts); if he prefers to be a girl in spite of having a male gender identity, then in the minds of Darunians, he was a girl all along. (However, in the latter case, he may change to the male role at puberty.) Just as American doctors surgically alter intersexed babies to look male or female, Darunian culture tries to force everyone to be either male or female socially.
If a child likes to be both male and female, Darunians usually accept this; after all, to a Darunian, childhood is a time for gender exploration. Some children have two identities, one for each gender. It is not uncommon to hear parents say, "She has two names. When she's a girl, we call her Nicola; when she's a boy, we call him Nicolu." Platea Sesamu's character Mariu/Maria is a perfect example of this. It's being feminine and strongly identifying as a boy (or being masculine and strongly identifying as a girl) that makes Darunians feel uneasy. Some Darunian parents have been wrongly accused of forcing their daughters to be boys or their sons to be girls because of this; more than one child has been taken away on account of this. Darunians are no better than Americans when it comes to what Jennifer Finney Boylan calls "confusing femininity with womanhood"--in fact, some say Darunians are less enlightened in this respect. For example, when the animated series Casper was translated into Darunian, the producers were uncomfortable with the fact that Casper seemed too "girlish" for a boy, so they made him a girl in the Darunian version.
Darunian has no word for "sissy" or "tomboy;" the all-purpose word for gender-variant people is "ambijeneru/-a" ("ambi-gender") or just "ambi" for short. (Whether the masculine form or the feminine form is used depends on the person's presentation.) The former is neutral; the latter is pejorative, like "homo" for "homosexual" in English. Where an American boy would call another a "fag" or similar derogatory word implying homosexuality, a Darunian boy would call another an ambi: "What are you, an ambi or something?" Though children are allowed to be both genders, once a person reaches adolescence, they are expected to live fully in one gender or the other and leave behind all opposite-gender behaviors.
I imagine theres some Darunian third sex person my age imagining a society with multiple genders, the cultural equivalent of Swahili. Maybe theyll send me the link to their geofiction. (Or they might like Zompists Axunai culture.) Or maybe they've moved across the mountains to a neighboring country.
Just like anywhere else, Daruny is better than other countries for some people and worse for others. If you're a feminine woman in a man's body or a masculine man in a woman's body, this is the perfect country for you. If your gender identity is less clear-cut, you may have some problems there.