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Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History. Edited by Gilbert Herdt. Zone Books, New York, 1994, 614 pp., $20.00.
Man and woman; created He them. From Genesis on, most accounts of gender begin with the duality of the sexes and attempt, with greater or less success, to find niches for those who do not or cannot conform to this duality. Herdt and nine contributors examine sex and gender from the perspectives of anthropology and social history. They show how various cultures have incorporated nonconforming individuals by creating alternative genders to which they may belong and in which they may form a psychologically coherent and socially recognizable (if often stigmatized) identity. In some cultures, the "third" gender is an androgynous mixture of the typically masculine and feminine, but in others, a unique gender is designated-for example, by special clothing, insignia, and social roles which partake of neither male nor female. Nor does the title mean to imply that gender classification is exhausted by just three. As Herdt remarks in the Introduction, "The third is emblematic of other possible combinations that transcend dimorphism."
Many of the contributors to this volume will be known to readers of this journal: Ringrose discusses the place of the palace eunuch in the Byzantine Empire, a role significant enough in her view to qualify as a separate gender. In a chapter on London's Sapphists, Trumbach...