Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Audio Slide Show - Fa'afafine: A Third Gender in Samoa
Fa' afafine: "© Copyright 2007, The Anchorage Daily News, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Company"
Cultural contradictions
Tafi Toleafoa explains what it means to be fa'afafine
 Tafi Toleafoa answers questions after her presentation on fa'afafine at the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on a recent Sunday in West Anchorage. Her talk was titled "What Do I Call You? What Are You? Gender and Sexual Identity at American Universities." ( ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News)  After arguing both sides of a U. S. Supreme Court case before their constitutional law class, Melody Allen, left, Lacy Jensen, Tafi Toleafoa and Denny Hickerson review their performances while waiting in the hallway for classmates to judge their presentations at UAA. (ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News)  Tafi Toleafoa, left, and her closest friend, Maggie Mau, tend to Tafi's sleepy niece Leileanah Toleafoa, 1, at her first birthday celebration in midtown on June 15, 2007. (ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News)  Tafi Toleafoa and classmates cast votes after listening to teams argue both sides of a U. S. Supreme Court case in constitutional law class on a Wednesday evening in June at UAA. Tafi will be the first in her family to earn a college degree. (ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News)  Tafi Toleafoa tends niece Leileanah Toleafoa, 1, during a family gathering after church on a Saturday afternoon in June in west Anchorage. Fa'afafine typically take on traditionally female duties in Samoan culture. (ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News)  Tafi Toleafoa helps mom Ropeta Toleafoa and family serve food to guests at a first birthday celebration for niece Leileanna Toleafoa June 15, 2007, in south Anchorage. Fa'afafine typically do women's work in Samoan culture, in this case packaging and serving meals to family members and friends from church. (ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News) |
By JULIA O'MALLEY
jomalley@adn.com
(Published: August 19, 2007)
"What are you?" The question came at Tafi Toleafoa from a young woman across the computer lab. People always want to know, but they rarely ask out loud. Students wear the question on their faces the first day of class. Professors trip over pronouns. It's been that way since Tafi came from Samoa two years ago to attend the University of Alaska Anchorage. "Are you a boy or a girl?" Now, one more time, Tafi had to explain, to untangle the contradiction of her long thick hair and plump, glossy lips with the masculine tenor of her voice and her tall, substantial body. She had to tell the girl that, no, she isn't a boy, or a girl, exactly. She's something else. "I'm fa'afafine," Tafi said. "That means I have a boy's body, but I was raised in Samoa as a girl." Tafi could have explained that in the islands, nobody ever asked. She could have told the girl that a Samoan mother with a fa'afafine among her children is considered lucky. Fa'afafine help with babies and cooking, they tend the elderly and the sick. They are presumed to have the best traits of both men and women. But the girl didn't want to know more. She picked up her things and left, giving Tafi one last look over her shoulder. The way most Americans understand it, gender breaks down simply: there are men and there are women. But across Asia and the Pacific Islands, many cultures recognize a third gender with characteristics both male and female. In Samoa, when a son or a daughter prefers the work and clothes of the opposite sex, they are called fa'afafine "like a woman" or, far less commonly, fa'atama, "like a man." Tafi has a male body, but she lives her life as a female and asks that people refer to her as "she." That's how she will be described in this story. In the islands Tafi was more accepted, but her life was still complicated. Many fa'afafine live as women, the maleness of their bodies ignored by those around them. Outside of the cities, especially in Christian families, they must follow strict social rules binding them to household duties. Many families, including Tafi's, expect they will remain celibate. In a culture that prizes both its tradition and Christianity, fa'afafine are tolerated, but behavior that hints at homosexuality is not. Still, many fa'afafine, who see themselves as women, do have discreet relationships with men. In her ideal world, Tafi, who was raised as an oldest girl-child named Alicia, wouldn't have to change her body to be accepted here. She wouldn't have to rearrange her outside to make people accept what she is inside: a straight woman who is attracted to straight men. But the world isn't ideal. Since she came to Anchorage, Tafi's family, who loves her as she is, has pressured her to dress like a man. They have decided she needs to fit in to avoid ugliness she isn't used to. Now, at 23, she's torn between the expectations of her family who accept her as an asexual helper, and American culture that's less accepting but offers her what she wants most: a chance to become physically female, to find a husband and have a family of her own. Tafi wasn't surprised that the girl in the computer lab didn't know what she was seeing. Sometimes Tafi doesn't know how to see herself -- or her future.
ALICIA
Ropeta Toleafoa knew her son was fa'afafine at age 4. Unlike his brothers, he stayed close to her and didn't like getting dirty, she said, speaking in Samoan with her son Taivaleoaana "Seven" Toleafoa translating. "He didn't like going outside and doing what men do," she said. Tafi's life wasn't like the stories she watched on re-runs of American talk shows as she grew up in Samoa. She never felt she was a woman trapped in a man's body. She never felt shame. Samoa is a tribal, communal society, different from America where individual desires rule. Samoan parents hold a powerful role and commonly influence their children's decisions far into adulthood. Children don't choose to be fa'afafine; their mothers decide for them. At 5, Tafi, a sweet, outspoken child, began hoisting babies on her hip, filling bottles for her mother and helping with the dishes. Ropeta, a mother of eight, was pregnant or nursing for many years and welcomed Tafi's help. Tafi wasn't encouraged to dress like a girl, but she gravitated toward her sisters' clothing, playing dress-up in private. "I loved skirts, short skirts to be specific," she said. "I always had to be pretty." At school, Tafi bonded with girls and other fa'afafine among her classmates and teachers. By third grade, most everyone called her Alicia. Her younger siblings, all girls, saw her as an oldest sister. Tafi's father, Saunoa "Noah" Toleafoa is a religious man, an elder in the Seventh Day Adventist church that missionaries brought to the islands along with Western ideas about gender. Noah had fa'afafine in his family, but he held on longest to the idea that Tafi would be like her older brothers. A boy dressing as a girl is not what God intended, he said. He tried forcing her to change her clothes and cut her hair like a boy's, but nothing worked. Tafi couldn't be forced. "This one thing I know," he said. "Tafi is different." By the time Tafi reached her teens, the idea of an actual sex change consumed her. Tafi found many examples of adult fa'afafine around her, some of whom had surgery. To each other they spoke a fa'afafine language, a mixture of English and Samoan. Tafi soon caught on. "It wasn't hard to ask them, 'Hey, how did you get boobs?'" she said. Out of respect for her father, Tafi dressed "androgenous," wearing women's pants, a T-shirt, and her long hair pulled into a bun. Her one indulgence was glitter. "Lots of glitter," she said. "I loved shiny stuff." Ropeta and her daughters insulated Tafi from her father's disapproval, which gradually waned. For junior prom, Ropeta saved two paychecks to buy Tafi the material to make a pink dress. By 2002, all the Toleafoas had immigrated to Anchorage, following family connections and the promise of better jobs. Tafi stayed behind, her immigration status complicated because she was born in western Samoa, which is an independent country, different from the U.S. territory of American Samoa. She'd graduated from high school and was working on her associates degree. "That's when I started dressing like a woman full-out," she said. In a snap-shot from that period posted on her MySpace.com site, Tafi glows, her chest full under a black blouse. "It felt right," she said. "Perfect."
AMERICA
In 2005, on her way to Anchorage to start at UAA, Tafi took her first step on U.S. soil in Hawaii, wearing platform sandals and short-shorts. She always imagined Americans, with their gay celebrities and liberal attitudes, would accept her. She remembered RuPaul and the movie "To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything!" a drag queen comedy she'd watched in high school. "I thought, 'OK if there's people like that, then probably I don't have to explain myself,' " she said. "I didn't know that it was going to be like there's nobody that dresses like that in a real everyday life." When she showed her passport, which said she was a man, customs officials singled her out for two special searches. Standing in the balmy Honolulu airport, she felt the disapproval of strangers for the first time. The collapse of her expectations continued in Anchorage. The first day of her liberal studies class, when she answered a professor's question, she heard whispers. Her voice betrayed her. "When they look at your face and you have earrings on and you have make-up on and you have long hair, then automatically you're supposed to have this kind of voice," she said. "If you are not going to have that voice, then you are kind of like an alien or something." After her first two weeks of school, her father sat Tafi down. He had four fa'afafine on his mother's side, he said. One of them came to America 10 years ago, to California. People didn't understand her there, he said. At a party, Americans beat her and threw her from a window. She was killed. "He said he's concerned about my life and my safety," Tafi said. "That's why he advised me that I should change my style to kind of like, umm, androgenous, sort of like professional." There would be no more short-shorts or glitter. Instead, it was T-shirts, and slacks. And if her professor asked about pronouns, she'd go by "he." But, even in her toned-down outfits, Tafi seemed feminine. Her professors struggled with what to call her in class. "Even the most inclusive people do not know what this is," said her professor Ann Jache. "They don't know how to talk about a person that is both male and female." Tafi took her classmates' judgment as a challenge. A gregarious "he," she excelled in class, tackling complicated literature, winning a seat on the student senate, making a loyal group of friends in the school Polynesian association. Tafi didn't want to hide, Jache said, she wanted to explain. Jache and Tafi crafted a project on fa'afafine over the generations. Tafi gave a presentation to her class, and then to the campus, and then to a Unitarian church. Each time, she grew more confident. Tafi began to see it as her job to inform the campus about fa'afafine. "I knew that they are not educated about it. They wouldn't be mean like that if they knew ... Fa'afafine are all coming to Alaska," she said. "If they are running into the same problems, I have to do something about it."
LOVE. . . .
Meet the first transgender panda
(...well, not really. But still a cute story and panda photo. R.A.)
Associated Press
It’s not very often that I get to report on good news to my faithful readers, so this week is something special. I just received a news that an endangered panda named “Jinzhu” has given birth to two healthy cubs. What makes this story so remarkable, though, is that Jinzhu was originally believed to be a male panda!
To my knowledge, Jinzhu is the world’s first and only transgender panda or “pandsgender.” (”Tranda” would be an acceptable term as well.)
But no matter how joyous the news is, Jinzhu’s identity crisis is a failure of panda management. Panda expert Li Deshen, however, believes that Jinzhu gender mix up can be attributed to the fact that “The penis of an adult panda is only 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) long.” 1.2 inches long?! That means my penis is almost three times longer than the average Panda’s. Almost.
I have developed a cheat sheet for zoologists to use in determining if their beloved panda is really a tranda:
- Has changed name from Wu Xan to “Chris” or “Dale”
- Life story is being made into a movie starring Hillary Swank
- Refers to gender as a “spectrum” or a “construct”
- Has started attending Sarah Lawrence college
Jinzhu’s plight raises the troubling prospect that there may be more pandsgenders out there who need our help. Can you imagine how hard it must be to be both endangered and transgender? Those pandas must be beaten up in high school nearly every day. And its up to us to save these Trandas, because our current administration certainly won’t: I can’t think of anything a Republican would hate more than an animal that is both endangered and transgender. Maybe if it were a welfare recipient, too. But that’s ridiculous. Pandas can’t be welfare recipients.
Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege
In academic feuds, as in war, there is no telling how far people will go once the shooting starts.
Skip to next paragraph 
Sally Ryan for The New York Times
J. Michael Bailey’s book about gender enraged some transgender women.
Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times
Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar, investigated the accusations against Dr. Bailey.
Roosevelt University
Deirdre McCloskey called opposition to Dr. Bailey’s theory “fair comment.”
Earlier this month, members of the International Academy of Sex Research, gathering for their annual meeting in Vancouver, informally discussed one of the most contentious and personal social science controversies in recent memory.
The central figure, J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, has promoted a theory that his critics think is inaccurate, insulting and potentially damaging to transgender women. In the past few years, several prominent academics who are transgender have made a series of accusations against the psychologist, including that he committed ethics violations. A transgender woman he wrote about has accused him of a sexual impropriety, and Dr. Bailey has become a reviled figure for some in the gay and transgender communities.To many of Dr. Bailey’s peers, his story is a morality play about the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom. Some scientists say that it has become increasingly treacherous to discuss politically sensitive issues. They point to several recent cases, like that of Helmuth Nyborg, a Danish researcher who was fired in 2006 after he caused a furor in the press by reporting a slight difference in average I.Q. test scores between the sexes.
“What happened to Bailey is important, because the harassment was so extraordinarily bad and because it could happen to any researcher in the field,” said Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar and patients’ rights advocate at Northwestern who, after conducting a lengthy investigation of Dr. Bailey’s actions, has concluded that he is essentially blameless. “If we’re going to have research at all, then we’re going to have people saying unpopular things, and if this is what happens to them, then we’ve got problems not only for science but free expression itself.”
To Dr. Bailey’s critics, his story is a different kind of morality tale.
“Nothing we have done, I believe, and certainly nothing I have done, overstepped any boundaries of fair comment on a book and an author who stepped into the public arena with enthusiasm to deliver a false and unscientific and politically damaging opinion,” Deirdre McCloskey, a professor of economics, history, English, and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and one of Dr. Bailey’s principal critics, said in an e-mail message.
The hostilities began in the spring of 2003, when Dr. Bailey published a book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen,” intended to explain the biology of sexual orientation and gender to a general audience.
“The next two years,” Dr. Bailey said in an interview, “were the hardest of my life.”
Many sex researchers who have worked with Dr. Bailey say that he is a solid scientist and collaborator, who by his own admission enjoys violating intellectual taboos.
In his book, he argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women. This idea runs counter to the belief, held by many men who decide to live as women, that they are the victims of a biological mistake — in essence, women trapped in men’s bodies. Dr. Bailey described the alternate theory, which is based on Canadian studies done in the 1980s and 1990s, in part by telling the stories of several transgender women he met through a mutual acquaintance. In the book, he gave them pseudonyms, like “Alma” and “Juanita.”
Other scientists praised the book as a compelling explanation of the science. The Lambda Literary Foundation, an organization that promotes gay, bisexual and transgender literature, nominated the book for an award.
But days after the book appeared, Lynn Conway, a prominent computer scientist at the University of Michigan, sent out an e-mail message comparing Dr. Bailey’s views to Nazi propaganda. She and other transgender women found the tone of the book abusive, and the theory of motivation it presented to be a recipe for further discrimination. . . .
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