Update: Hermaphrodites are named as "Third Sex" in some countries...

Title: The third sex, and even socially recognized by law in some countries
Author: Almudena Serpis


The third sex includes people who do not consider either men or women, but from an intermediate sex.

"Homosexuality is a very large umbrella under which there is no one, not two, but three different sexes," he explained to Efe Vijai R. Nair, vice president of india Udaan Trust organization which defends the rights of the third sex in Mumbai.

In March 2005 the third sex was added as a category in the register of sexual passports of India, added to the category E, with the eunuch F (female) and M (male).

In india the 'Hijra' (urdu word which means hermaphrodite) men dressed as women as they relate to other men or with other hijras. Hijra tradition has thousands of years old and is present in the sacred writings of the Hindu religion.

Another representative of Udaan Trust, Akshey Kumar, told Efe that are easily identifiable social minority "is a dialect and customs in which all its members are Muslims, although many are engaged in prostitution or sorcery to survive. Many of them are castrated: the eunuchs. "

According announced on Thursday the High Court of New Delhi (TSD) homosexuality is not criminalized in India, a step forward for the integration of the third sex, most accepted in Buddhist countries like Thailand.

The Kathoey in Thailand are biologically male, but consider themselves as women trapped in a body that is not yours.

The Buddhist religion based on tolerance, makes it possible for Kathoey are respected in Thai society as a sex party. His transformation begins in childhood, before they become teenagers.

In the West, the term 'third sex' is attributed to transsexuality, a change of genre to another (male to female or vice versa).

"In most societies' modernized 'it is a sexual bipolarity that does not exist. We think we are more advanced but we are too conditioned to conceive of gender as something purely biological, rather than as something social," he told Efe Beatriz Espejo, founder of the collective transsexuals in Catalonia.

This intermediate sexual metamorphosis that defies the laws of the xx and xy is latent in many other places. In some regions of southern Mexico there muxe (a term derived from the Spanish word woman), people born with a male to gain an aspect of women and men tend to pair with and educate families.

"Not having a defined sexuality, those considered as a third sex assuming the role of mother, father, husband or wife, regardless of biological sex, often alternating roles," says Vijay R. Nair

Many resort to plastic surgery operations, but not with the desire to change sex to a male or female, but with the intention to manifest a physical identity of a different sex.

The concept of third gender also appears in the history of ancient Greece through the myth of Hermaphrodite (the son of Hermes and Aphrodite), in which Salmacis the spirit of a lake, obsessed with the beauty of Hermafrofito he embraced him and asked to the gods that the two merged, creating a dual-sex individual.

In the populations of American Indians in United States, the berdache, or two minds, claiming to possess the spirit male and female simultaneously. In cultures Samoan, Filipino and Polynesian families educate their sons to become members of the third sex when they are children.

This demonstrates that there are people with chameleon powers able to metamorphose and create a new sex, free from the stereotypes that define many of today's societies.

Peter, a third sex-af'afafine Samoan-says in a will Affafine published by the Association of Samoan (Samoa Faafafine Association) that his life is similar to that of a butterfly: "I started my life as a sissy version of a sick child only to later become a precious af'fafine.