User:Fruipit/TS

Two-Spirit is a term that originates from some indigenous and Native American peoples, and is used to describe people who identify as having both a "masculine and feminine spirit". While history has been "selective", especially when it pertained to sex and gender that "deviated from the bipolar European norm", this has not always been the case, and the contrast to European norms has not always been framed negatively. One notable example from the mid-20th Century states that "many American Indian tribes the [Two-Spirit] was a recognised social institution" The term Two-Spirit has itself has been attributed to Elder Myra Laramee, who proposed it in 1990 as a translation of the Anishinaabemowin term niizh manidoowag: two spirits. In particular, the decision to use this term was deliberate, with a "clear intention to distance themselves [attendees at the third Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference in Winnepeg, 1993] from non-Native gays and lesbians". However, the term is far older than that, and is considered to be more akin to a third gender. Within a few years of the term's adoption, it had come to refer to more than just gender, with it encompassing sexuality, gender categories and "traditions wherein multiple gender categories and sexualities are instutionalized in [...] tribal cultures", traditions of gender diversity in other, non-Native American cultures, transgender peoples, and drag queens and butches. Contemporarily, it has been understood by some Two-Spirit youth as an assertion of the intersectionality between Indigeneity and being LGBTQIA+, and the term itself covers far more than gender; for some it encompasses the "violent theft of languages and lifeways" that has left some Indigenous youth unable to describe their gender in their own language, as well as "community-building work that is ongoing".