Many societies have historically recognized more than two genders

The argument

One cannot argue that there are only two genders just because some people and governments don’t recognize more than two genders. Though most European and (post-colonization) North American cultures have historically only recognized two genders, there are many other cultures that have historically recognized more than two genders. Many cultures that recognize more than two genders are Indigenous peoples of North America, Africa, and Asia. One of the most prominent examples is the hijras of India. Hijras are generally people who were assigned male at birth who do not identify as a man or woman, along with some intersex people and transgender women. However, hijras are not just any person who does not identify as a man or woman; to be a hijra is also a spiritual identity. Individuals who want to be hijras must undergo a ritual process that can take months or even years to complete. Many ancient Indian texts acknowledge that three genders are part of the natural order of the world. Additionally, the Hindu god Shiva is sometimes portrayed as a genderfluid, androgynous individual, leading to Hindu communities regarding hijras with holy reverence. Thus, hijras are not just accepted as people of a “third” gender, but are also praised and highly respected for their identities. Other similar examples include the Indigenous māhū of Hawaii and the fa’afafine of Polynesia. A Native American example of a gender besides male or female is being Two Spirit. Two Spirit people are believed to have both male and female spirits inside them, so they do not fit neatly into a gender binary. Two Spirit people have been documented for decades. Claiming that there are only two genders erases all of these histories of people who are not male or female. There is great historical precedent for there being more than two genders, so there is no justifiable reason to deny their existence.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The historical record cited is accurate, and the difficulty is in what is drawn from it. The argument moves from an anthropological observation — that many societies have recognised social categories beyond man and woman — to a conclusion about how many genders there are. Cultural recognition establishes that societies have organised gender differently, which is a claim about social classification rather than a count of genders; a critic could accept every example and hold that what varies is how cultures assign social roles, not the underlying number of kinds. A sharper objection comes from scholars within the traditions named. Hijra, māhū, fa'afafine and Two Spirit are distinct categories embedded in particular cosmologies, kinship systems and ritual obligations; several Indigenous writers have objected to their assimilation into a single Western frame, noting that Two Spirit is a pan-tribal English umbrella adopted in 1990 to serve a contemporary purpose and is not equivalent to a gender identity in the modern Western sense. Gathering them together as instances of one thing does exactly the flattening the argument objects to elsewhere. The closing sentence also runs two claims together. That people occupying these categories exist and their histories are real is not in dispute in this exchange; how gender as a category should be enumerated is a separate question, and treating disagreement about the second as denial of the first forecloses the argument rather than winning it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That societies have organised gender categories differently establishes variation in social classification rather than settling how many genders there are; the descriptive and the ontological claims come apart. [Rejecting P2] Hijra, māhū, fa'afafine and Two Spirit are distinct categories embedded in specific cosmologies and obligations, and scholars from those communities have objected to their assimilation into a single Western frame — Two Spirit being a pan-tribal English umbrella adopted in 1990.