Are you a Two-Spirit?

Indigenous cultures have long recognized the fluidity of women’s and men’s role and the mixed-gender status of some of their people.  Traditionally called a “berdache” and more recently referred to a “two-spirits” these societies open up other possibilities for understanding what we call homosexuality. What if instead of focusing on the sex between two men we focused on the spirit or nature of the men involved, recognizing that in the same-sex relationship they might be living out their different natures, their individual spirits, expressions of masculine, feminine, and/or androgynous spirits. What if our sexual attractions and behaviors are reflections of our spiritual natures?

It might even be that there are other spiritual natures that express themselves in same-sex relationships besides what the indigenous societies call berdaches or the two-spirit. Certainly, over the past several years, gender diversity and alternative gender expression have emerged other than the traditional male and female. Gender identity is much more fluid. Sexual attraction much more varied so that it isn’t tied to a particular gender. What if we, like the American Indian and indigenous societies, begin to focus on the spirit or the nature of a person with an understanding that a person’s spirit may also have an alternative sexual expression that is true to it.

For example, transgender is a multifaceted term. One example of a transgendered person might be a man who is attracted to women but also identifies as a cross-dresser or as a woman. Other examples include people who consider themselves gender nonconforming, multigendered, androgynous, third gender, and two-spirit people. All of these definitions are inexact and vary from person to person, yet each of them includes a sense of blending or alternating the binary concepts of masculinity and femininity. We might begin to view these people as having particular spirits or inborn natures rather than seeing them as somehow flawed or the result of some psychological or emotional problem or the result of too much of one parent and not enough of another. Rather than forcing people to fit into the binary system of male/female and masculine/feminine, what if we evolved a system to include the spirits of such people as they are?

 We must begin to open space for the multi-diversity of gender expression and allow individual spirits to make choices that are congruent with their soul. For some that may be two masculine men in a loving and sexual relationship. For others that might mean a masculine man in a relationship with an effeminate man or an androgynous male. For still others that might mean a bisexual man in a relationship with a woman. For others, their same-sex behaviors may in fact be part of a larger identity with a certain spirituality that their two-spirit nature puts them in touch with—an awareness of the value and unity of all things. Each must find his or her own soul’s expression. As we each find space for our soul’s expression of our diverse sexualities and gender identities, hopefully the culture will begin to mirror the same and open space to embrace the diverse ways the soul expresses itself.

From my book, The Other Man in Me, Erotic Longing, Lust and Love: The Soul Calling. To download the entire chapter, Homosexuality and the Two-Spirit, click here: https://www.sheldonshalley.com/homosexuality-and-the-two-spirit