Gender Diversity; Crosscultural Variations by Serena Nanda

I picked this up for the following reasons, i. it fits nicely with my current reading trajectory, ii. it was priced at $.01 + shipping on amazon, and iii. the author is also the author of the highly acclaimed  Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India  and so I thought it might be relatively solid.

& the book cover is so… 1970s or something. 

My copy has multiple university used book stickers on it and underlining from more than one previous owner. Usually I'd be a bit miffed about that, but somehow here it didn't seem that important. In spite of Nanda's credentials, this is sort of "academically breezy" and seemed to me to pick up the pace or move to the next section just at those moments when I wanted it to dig in a bit more.

Now, without looking back, what do I remember about it? Nanda looks at a select number of cultures and at gender diversity as presented by these. Now, what were they? Well, there is a south asian chapter discussing the Hijras of course, & there was another on Native Americans. The book discusses Brazil, but having already read Don Kulick's (fucking amazing) book Travesti, there was nothing new there for me. Then there was a chapter on Thailand, a chapter on Polynesia and… I am forgetting something. Grrr.

SUPEREGO says: Ha!

yeah yeah whatever

Ok, (book in hand) the Thailand chapter also covers the Philippines, and the other content chapter was on "Sex/Gender Diversity in Euro-American Cultures." I kind of remember that now, it goes back in history to find some more "anthropological" looking stuff in the european context but ultimately is more about contemporary stuff. I'd read Meyerowitz's history just before this and so was primed to notice places where Nanda makes a controversial claim or two. Somewhere in there she replays the (increasingly suspect) transsexual/transgender "debate" and sides pretty clearly with the transgender construction she's made, and is critical of transsexuals that seek SRS. 

Oh, and there is a list of "Selected Films" which begins with Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Really? It's a feel-good movie and sort of cute but as a supplemental for a college level class on gender diversity? But most of the others on the list look more useful for that purpose (I still have not seen Ma Vie en Rose). 

I suppose that the index of this book is as useful as the text though. If one had heard nothing about any of this stuff this might serve a useful purpose, but even where I knew nothing at all (the polynesian chapter) it never really went deep.