1452 



HORMONAL REGULATION OF BEHAVIOR 



— were they going to be ''braves" or "live 

 like women"? Once the choice was made, 

 elaborate prescriptions of correct social be- 

 havior were available. But among a people 

 where there is no recognition of any other 

 possibility than 1, 2, and 11, the same sorts 

 of indicators of possible cross sex identifica- 

 tion which, among the Plains Indians would 

 assure a boy's being classified and reared as 

 a transvestite, will go unnoticed and unin- 

 stitutionalized. The fuller the social reper- 

 toire the more possible it is to carry a 

 knowledge of the role in the absence of any 

 person to fill it. 



So, I witnessed a case in an American 

 Indian tribe of a single young man who had 

 been classified by the women as a berdache. 

 At the time when his bodily candidacy was 

 remarked, there was no living berdache in 

 the tribe, but the women began watching 

 this boy and once undressed him to see if 

 he, whose behavior appeared to them as 

 feminine, "really was a male." Having satis- 

 fied themselves as to his external sex mor- 

 phology, they then pronounced him to be a 

 berdache. He wore male exterior clothing 

 but female underwear, was unmarried and 

 was the butt of a good deal of teasing. His 

 attempts to persuade the tribal prostitute 

 to have sex relations were rebuffed with con- 

 tempt. During our stay in the field, we were 

 visited by a male friend who had been living 

 an avowed homoerotic life in Japan, who 

 was not transvestite but wdio had a com- 

 plete repertoire of homosexual postures. 

 Within an hour of his arrival, the single 

 berdache in the tribe turned up and tried 

 to make contact with him. 



The American Indians provide our best 

 material on the assignment of the various 

 transvestite roles — male dressed as female 

 among the Plains Indians, complex arrange- 

 ments including two men living as a pseudo- 

 married pair among the Mohave (Devereux, 

 1937) , a male role in which a man becomes a 

 totally self-sufficient "household" capable 

 of both male and female activities among 

 the Navajo (Hill, 1935) and some Sioux 

 (Mirsky, 1937). The best material on trans- 

 vestism by both sexes as a function of spe- 

 cialized religious activity comes from 

 Siberia (Czaplicka, 1914), although trans- 

 vestite priests were also known in the Pueb- 

 los (Benedict, 1934). 



The possibilities of a role may also be 

 carried by a series of negative sanctions, in 

 which the cultural expectation is that no one 

 will become a spinster, a bachelor, a hermit, 

 a transvestite, etc. Here the cultural teach- 

 ing becomes not, "If you are so afraid of 

 fighting, you will have to be a transvestite," 

 but a flat imperative to all males, "Don't 

 ever under any circumstances put yourself 

 in a situation for anal attack by a male." 



Among the latmul of New Guinea (Bate- 

 son, 1958; jVIead, 1949b), there were many 

 words for sodomy used continually and in- 

 discriminately by both males and females, 

 but when little boys attempted to act out 

 the indicated behavior, older children or 

 adults immediately intervened, and the lit- 

 tle boys were made to fight instead. The 

 slightest successful attack on the exposed 

 anus of any adult male would result in a riot 

 in the men's house. Among the latmul, there 

 then developed a possibility of both active 

 and passive homosexual behavior, which, 

 however, was not allowed to be acted out 

 within the tribe. With the passive possi- 

 bility heavily tabooed and the active given 

 no expression, when the latmul young men 

 were recruited for work on plantations they 

 became notorious for their homosexual ad- 

 vances to young men of other tribes, includ- 

 ing people like the Arapesh, among whom 

 the possibility of homosexuality was un- 

 recognized rather than tabooed, but whose 

 learned passivity and receptivity made 

 them appropriate partners. 



The cues used in different societies in the 

 assignment of any of these roles vary 

 widely. Where bravery is the determining 

 point, as among Plains Indians, a timid male 

 child might be assigned a transvestite role, 

 to which he would then adjust by identify- 

 ing, not with either warriors or women, but 

 with other transvestites. Preference for 

 feminine occupation may provide a basis for 

 role assignment or, on the other hand, carry 

 no accompanying pressures except a mild 

 amount of amusement (Samoa, Mead, 

 1928). Where men and w^omen are differ- 

 entiated in areas involving possibilities of 

 softness and harshness in clothing, tactile 

 sensitivity in a male child may be the first 

 cue which leads his parents, his peers, or 

 himself to assign him to a feminine role. 

 Where religious behavior provides the cues, 



