gender and sexuality Flashcards

Question

prescribed reading for imperial officials by Akbar

Answer 1

* Tusi’s Akhlaq-i Nasini – Abu’l Fazl said Akbar had this read to him regularly and set it as prescribed reading for imperial officials from 1594  Work states that the rational soul should govern the savage and bestial souls in order that man achieve his highest moral being in ‘adalat (equity/justice)  Tusi: the family is like the body; its head is the physician and each member a limb  Boys should be trained in self-discipline, obedience, manners, and restraint; girls in modesty and female accomplishments (not reading and writing)  Almost Victorian – and thus modern – ideas about gender/sexuality

Answer 2

* Mughal regime draws together disparate groups – Irani, Turani, Afghan, Rajput, Indian, Muslim, Hindu * Need to create a unifying dynastic ideology – this is done by Akbar’s trusted advisor Abu’l Fazl in the Akbar-Nama  This Akbar as the perfect man (insan-i kamil), one of worldly virtue and supreme toleration  Presentation of the individual, the household, and the kingdom as microcosms of each other  importance of the humours, bodily regulation, and moral regulation of the household in order to preserve the sanctity of empire

Answer 3

* These ideas sanctioned Akbar’s authority without resorting to divisive Sunni orthodoxy  A ‘natural’ authority that supersedes religious endorsement  Physically and ideologically binds men to imperial service – only through service to the emperor can a man be his best  Offers a model for senior court members to apply to their own houses and domains, bolstering their authority too

Answer 4

 Prostitutes of Dehli were compelled to live outside the capital under a warden/inspector, to whom men must apply to seek their services  Young women found in bazaars/streets without veils, and ‘disobedient’ wives could also be banished to this quarter  Female sexual activity for adultsonly – men told not to lie with women >12 years older than themselves

Answer 5

 Homosexual love not a part of self-controlled masculinity – lustful and cannot produce children  Jalal Khan Qurchi 1566 – tries to flee with his male youthful lover but Akbar has him seized, brought to court, and confined beneath the public staircase to be trodden on

Answer 6

 Ideas of patriarchal and heterosexual authority contrast with perceived sexual transgressions of the N. Turanians and the Deccan in the South  Contrast also with warrior Timurid ancestry of Mughals, where fierceness and aggression were valued qualities – Mughals no longer a conquering state but need to consolidate and control rather than encourage disputes/subversion

Answer 7

* Uzbeg military commander Ali Quli Khan Zaman – fell in love with Shaham Beg, a member of Akbar’s special bodyguard, whom he was eventually forced to give up  Khan allegedly used to bow down before Shaham Beg, call him emperor, and perform the kornish (royal salutation) The filthy manners of Transoxiana’ – this story proliferates to demonstrate that Uzbegs are good military men but morally depraved

Answer 8

* In the first decades of the seventeenth century, the shogunate formalized a system of organizing society in which each household was assigned a status ( mibun ) and placed within a social unit, which John Hall memorably called a “container.” These containers— households ( ie ) of samurai or nobles, villages ( mura ) of peasants, city wards ( chō ) of townsmen, sects ( shū ) of Buddhist clergy, and so on... A household's position in one of these containers determined its place of residence along with its tax burden and corvée labor obligations, and it also established its members’ legal standing relative to those who belonged in other containers— a samurai, for example, was considered superior to a peasant, who ranked higher than an outcast. Ideally, every household was headed by a man, and his dependents would take on his status designation.

Answer 9

* A household head's wives and children occupied a different social stratum from hereditary servants, but in certain situations they too were counted among a household's possessions. During the Kamakura period (1185– 1333), women were permitted to inherit, possess, and amass property. They could keep their own lands separate from their husbands’ holdings, and they exercised authority over their own hereditary servants. But the shogunate's law codes considered women's bodies to be part of their husbands’ or fathers’ estates, treating violent crimes against women as violations of their household heads’ property rights. For example, a man who raped a married woman owed compensation not to her but to her husband

Answer 10

* Janet Goodwin has shown that until the fourteenth century, there was no clear distinction between women who made a living selling sex and those who did not. - By the late medieval period, however, patterns of work in the sex trade had changed. In 1500, lists of prostitutes referred to women who sold sex as their sole occupation, such as the “madame stander” ( tachigimi ) and the “madame person of a narrow alley” ( zushigimi). These designations reflected the increasingly urban and commercial nature of the business.

Answer 11

- Like Innai's wives, prostitutes resisted their masters’ efforts to treat them as property. One such woman, Jūzō, caused the magistrate so much trouble that he wrote several diary entries despairing of her behavior. Jūzō's master, the proprietor of the Innai branch of a large Fushimi brothel had died suddenly, leaving behind four prostitutes— Jūzō, Nagasaki, Hyōzaemon, and Kokane (possibly the same Kokane who ran away with Sōdayū two years later). A few months after her master's death, Jūzō came to Masakage's office and informed him that she wished to return to her home in Kansai. Like many of the mine's women, she had no relatives or acquaintances in Innai, and she argued that she could no longer support herself. Masakage was troubled by her request, and he ordered her to remain in the mine for several more months. If her master's relatives came to claim her, he explained, they would be justifiably upset to learn that she had left the mine.

Answer 12

* Loyalty and honor were to be extended to one’s living family and to one’s ancestors, a quality termed “filial piety.” Sons were needed to carry out the rituals honoring family ancestors properly. As a result, various ways were devised to provide sons for a man whose wife did not have one: taking second or third wives or concubines, legitimizing a son born of a woman who was not a wife or concubine, or adopting a nephew, or an unrelated boy or young man. A woman whose husband had died before she gave birth to a son might be expected to remarry his brother, so as to produce a son who was legally regarded as the child of her deceased husband.

Answer 13

* In Confucianism the roles of both women and men were essential to the cosmic order, but men were regarded as superior and women expected to be subordinate and deferential. * Female seclusion was also accomplished through foot-binding, a practice that began in the Song period among elite women and was gradually adopted by the vast majority of the female population in central and northern China

Answer 14

* the Confucian model was mostclosely emulated after Vietnam gained its final independence in 1427. the “traditional” subordination of women can in fact be ascribed to this period as Vietnamese rulers attempted to enforce ideas of Confucian morality and virtue. Official edicts, for example, prohibited the custom whereby young men lived in the house of their bride’s parents, while other rulings forbade marriage with the matrilineal Cham of central Vietnam, since inheritance should descend from father to son. As in China and Korea, the cult of “chaste widows” sought to discourage female remarriage.

Answer 15

Confucianism in Vietnam was always limited.- The effectiveness of court edicts was also restricted because of a strong tradition of village autonomy. Unlike China, legal matters were normally handled at the village rather than the district level, which allowed for recognition of women’s customary rights in marriage and inheritance. Even among the nobility, however, Vietnamese law permitted women to manage ancestral property and perform rites in the absence of a male heir

Answer 16

* Buddhism: a father’s superior position in the household was legally incontestable. * Buddhism: A principal wife was worth half the sakdinagrade (the “worth” of an individual measured in theoretical rice fields) of a man in the same social rank and laws regarding marital fidelity always emphasized female obligations. A Mon text from Myanmar, for example, specifies he amount of time a wife should wait for a husband before remarrying, but the right of a man to take a second wife is not questioned

Answer 17

means purity of blood * Iberian Catholic idea that blood and ancestry bestows social honours and status * Female virginity and chastity thus becomes a necessity to maintain blood purity  If social status predicated on birth/blood rather than merit, women’s sexual purity decisive in male competition * Any women who marries below her status contaminates her entire family – always the socially inferior parent who decides the status of the child

Answer 18

o Image of the depraved yet irresistible mulatta exempts white men from responsibility for their sexual transgressions * Portuguese men and their mixed race children cannot marry locals as This would give them claims to land use Iberians forbid Muslims, Jews, travellers, their children, and others who aren’t reconciled with the Church from going to the Americas

Answer 19

liberating’ women from ‘barbaric’ ancient custom * The harem, the veil, polygamy, sati – all considered symbols of female oppression

Answer 20

the imperial book of laws rewritten and reworked by each successive sultan * Book covers the gaps in shari’a law and thus present sultan as ultimate defender of God’s law

Answer 21

topic is sexual crime ▪ Empire’s foundations begin with defining normative social and sexual relations ▪ Zina (sexual crimes/adultery) – under Mehmed II men and women pay the same fines and are granted the same impunity from slanderous accusations ▪ Laws’ purpose less to regulate society than to assert imperial authority * Mehmed’s laws are concerned only with Muslims even though his empire includes Jews, Christians (indeed, a Christian majority) ▪ Sucessive Kanunnames do make laws applicable to all subjects, inc. non-Muslims

Answer 22

increasing emphasis on male protection of wives, daughters, and slaves ▪ Women as victims – if they commit adultery, their husband pays the fine

Answer 23

▪ Confinement of women to the interior

Answer 24

* In early Iberian America, mixing with Amerindians was encouraged to further the spread of Christianity and gain local knowledge * Shortage of women on the side of the colonisers necessitated reproduction with native women in order to populate the empire * Later change – men going to the New World were told to bring their wives, and immigration of women was encouraged (but not very successful)

Answer 25

* Imperial daughter marriage was used to reaffirm Qing bonds with particular noble houses in the banner elite

Answer 26

Polygamy the norm: man’s prestige linked to the number of his wives African Sub-Saharan Cultures: Polygamy. families living in house-compounds in which each wife had her own house, cattle, fields, and property. Marriage was an agreement between families and involved a transfer of wealth, often in the form of animals.

Answer 27

Eisen- harmony of husband and wife is the way of lifelong pleasure for human beings but, he emphasised the inherent inequality in their relationship. ‘The usual case is for man to be heaven and woman to be the earth that receives his tool. The most important thing is for her to do everything for him’.

Answer 28

without womanly virtues, even a princess is no different than a menial ... it has occasionally happened that a base woman who practised the womanly virtues granted by heaven became the lord’s wife’. Instructions for Women’ places the entire responsibility for the conjugal harmony achieved through sexual intercourse on the wife. If she is successful, the lord will remain healthy, he will have the confidence to deal with the day’s crises, and he will ‘think of his wife as his tutelary deity’. A wife who resents her lord will become a curse to him and bring bad luck to both.o These instructions place the wife’s sexual needs at the service of her lord. She is to conform to his desires gracefully and with restraint whether at night or during the day, with no thought for her own convenience. She should forego climax if her lord finished before she did because only his pleasure mattered

Answer 29

* Hindu families often attempted to marry their daughters off at a very young age – the recommended age by the year 1000 was between eight and ten – to ensure that they were already married before they became sexually mature. People who represented a rupture in the goal of family continuity, such as widows or women who could not bear children, were viewed as unlucky, so they were not welcome at festivities or rituals.

Answer 30

People were often enmeshed in a complex system of dependency, sometimes placing themselves or family members into slavery to another in return for support – what is often termed “debt-slavery” – or otherwise promising loyalty or service. One also gave gifts in order to have others in one’s debt; gift-giving was an important way to make alliances, pacify possible enemies, and create links and networks of obligations among strangers. Often these gifts included women, for exchanging women was considered the best way to transform strangers into relatives. but they were also understood to be temporary. If the spouses disagreed with one another or the man returned to his home country, the marriage was over.

Answer 31

o Since marriage and childbearing were so important to the family, a girl’s first menstruation was often ritually marked because it was an affirmation of her adulthood. At the same time, menstruation was a reminder that a woman embodied powerful forces of fertility

Answer 32

* Particularly in port towns- Chinese men were quick to negotiate a local marriage or purchase slaves as “wives.” At first sight this might appear to be a continuation of long-established customs that encouraged foreign traders, including Europeans, to enter into legitimate if short-lived marriages with local women who acted as assistants, agents, and interpreters. Women willingly entered into such arrangements because they gained access to foreign goods, acquired valuable language skills, and enhanced their chances of remarriage. However, these egalitarian relationships were now being fundamentally reshaped as men set up households with slave-wives, or entered into liaisons with poor women, often former slaves, who lacked family support. Not only were such women likely to be mistreated; they had no legitimate rights and could easily be sold

Answer 33

no women considered good enough for the sultan o By Suleiman’s time, accepted that concubines would be the sources of heirs rather than legal wives o Concubines and their children loyal to the sultan only – no distinguished matrilineal line to cause conflict- although perhaps acknowledging the possible power of women

Answer 34

Andaya endorsed inheritance for daughters and allowed women to maintain a reasonable share of family and community resources.  In many societies, female interests have been protected by matrilocal residence, by which a young couple lived with the wife’s natal family o Low population densities and communities where agriculture drew heavily on female labor placed a value on all children, regardless of sex. In bridewealth societies the birth of a daughter was welcomed because her marriage would eventually enhance a family’s resources. A hierarchy that assumed male superiority was implicit in the world religions and in the state structures they supported, but the effects of idealized gender roles were felt primarily among the elite

Answer 35

A Ming map of the imperial territories dated to 1526, for instance, represents the border between southwestern China and “Southeast Asia” as a stylized ocean separating Chinese civilization from barbarians who “valued women and undervalued men.”

Answer 36

Hideyoshi wrote to the Jesuit vice-provincial in 1587 complaining about the “Portuguese, Siamese, and Cambodians” who bought Japanese slaves. He demanded, rather quixotically, that all his countrymen be set free and returned to their homeland. Days later, he promulgated an ordinance forbidding both domestic trafficking and the sale and export of Japanese people. Despite these injunctions, the domestic traffic in people, particularly women, was still thriving during the fragile peace of the early seventeenth century. As men flooded into newly established cities and castle towns to work as warriors, artisans, or menial laborers, they created an intense demand for female bodies to serve their sexual needs. Traffickers seeking to supply this new market found that their activities were barely restricted. the Innai mine magistrate ‘s diary indicates that women were bought, sold, and traded more frequently than men. Innai's townsmen also treated their wives’ bodies as assets, exchanging them for money and using them to settle debts

Answer 37

Weisner-Hanks- * Orthodox Islam demanded seclusion for women and social segregation from men, and could therefore severely limit women’s work. But in some areas such as the Songhay Empire of West Africa in the fifteenth century, women freely circulated publicly without the veil in the presence of men in the markets and on the streets. Although African slave women may have performed more domestic labour than men, both men and women performed backbreaking fieldwork, just as women had in Africa centuries earlier. Gender did not necessarily differentiate agricultural workers picking cotton or harvesting tobacco, even though men and women may have worked in same-sex teams.

Answer 38

* new environment for female poverty = prostitution often simplest means of survival in absentia of family support.

Answer 39

, women played key roles as translators, go-betweens, and mediators Eva acted as an intermediary between the agents of the Dutch East India Company and various kin and tribal groups on the Cape Colony’s frontiers. Eva’s crucial role in translating, guiding the Dutch in their diplomacy with African leaders, and enabling the creation of new economic relationships * The Dutch then gave Eva all the credit (or blame) for proposing they take two sons of the Goringhaiqua chief, Gogosoa, as hostages, until all the slaves were returned. Considering the level of restraint the Dutch had exercised to date against using force with their Khoenaadversaries, this implied a significant revision of policy. Malherbe suspects that the Dutch set up Eva as a scapegoat, as the tactic of hostage taking was in no way unfamiliar to them concluded a peace treaty which freed the hostages and secured the return of the slaves. Significantly, it also contained clauses stating that the Goringhaiqua now gave up all claims to the Cape peninsula- ession of land to the Dutch

Answer 40

the nonthreatening indigenous woman pressed into service and learning European languages and ways, powerful chiefs using such women as their eyes and ears in the strange new settlement She also exploited gender stereotypes which cast her as a ‘‘safe’’ person to be entrusted with full access to the Van Riebeeck household. , a case can be made that Van Riebeeck had an intimate relationship with Eva at some point. The most compelling evidence comes from the larger picture, taken as a totality. The trust and reliance that Van Riebeeck invested in Eva clearly transcended the boundaries of a conventional master-servant relationship. He invited her to important meetings, explained important decisions to her, consulted her privately about vital issues, gave her freedom to come and go, and made her an active sales agent. Contrast w abusive subsequent master. The new commander treated Eva with outright churlishness and hostility

Answer 41

● The effects of commercialization could re-gender even that quintessential female skill, weaving. In the eighteenth-century, the Spanish established factory schools for training Filipino apprentices in the production of sailcloth, and a generation later men were actively involved in many aspects of what had been a women’s domain.

Answer 42

● Weisner-Hanks: Between roughly 1400 and 1750, the evolution of merchant capitalism and proto-industrial production in concert with new technologies, tools, and crops, and newideologies praising women’s domestic non-productive labor (but devaluing their productive domestic labor) had increasingly negative consequences for women. The resulting sharpening of gender divisions of skill by definition assured that when women worked for wages, they performed less skilled work and earned less than men Broadhead (1997) argues that as noblemen became merchants,noble women (their sisters) lost class, and were more and more defined by the status of wife, which in turn became conflated with slave

Answer 43

* Nor did changes in economic patterns disrupt basic attitudes toward “female” work, which was still seen as essential for household and community survival * The demands of long-distance trade, warfare, raiding, corvée, and religion contributed to a level of male absenteeism that gave women prime responsibility for food production, and analogies between plant growth and human maturation rendered female participation essential to rituals for crop fertility. in the rice-growing areas of Southeast Asia. Everywhere, it seems, the earth was personified as a woman and the agricultural cycle of planting and harvesting equated with human conception, pregnancy, and birth.The idea that the rice seed is a baby which should be lovingly nurtured is captured in one Malay manuscript, The transplanting and harvesting that were primarily women’s work- implicit understanding that the com-munity would go hungry without women’s involvement

Answer 44

* Power to Queen Mothers and women of the haram – can lend legitimacy to the next ruler o The power of pregnancy and the regency ● Even when the ruler was a young woman, the emphasis was not on her sexual union with men but on her allegorical role as mother of a huge family

Answer 45

Amangkurat’s court had armed women patrolling the palace, and women served as his personal bodyguards.

Answer 46

This tradition of activism may account for the involvement of Safavid women in court politics in the early part of their rule. Royal Safavid women played a decisive role in giving advice to the kings, as wives, daughters, and sisters. daughter of Shah Tahmasb (1526–76), the second ruler of the dynasty. During her father’s lifetime, “She was highly esteemed by her royal father and had great influence. Anyone in great difficulty referred to her for advice and took refuge in her. Hergreat intelligence and knowledge made her a consultant to the king.”

Answer 47

queen, Mahd-i Ulya, was a woman of great ability. She was made regent because of her husband’s blindness and her son’s minority drawn into the struggle between various powerful tribal factions They demanded that she either hand over power to them or be killed. To save her life, her husband expressed willingness to abdicate. But she opposed such a step; instead, she declared, “As long as I live I will not change my way

Answer 48

the seventeenth-century ruler of Ndongo, a kingdom in central Africa that was located in what is now a portion of northern Angola, came to power in Africa through her military prowess, skillful manipulation of religion, successful diplomacy, and re- markable understanding of politics.

Answer 49

Women had however played a powerful role at court…. Women of the elite class were often in the inner circle, privy to the world of men. (Njinga herself claimed to have sat in on her father’s councils when she was just a child.) large numbers of women attached to a single man did not mean that women occupied a subordinate position. One of the earliest eyewitness reports regarding the status of ordinary women in Ndongo society noted that a woman kept her independence even when she lived in a household with hundreds of other women

Answer 50

▪ Njinga - kept a large number of young male con- sorts (concubines), and she is reported to have had multiple lovers throughout her long life. Although none of them became her principal husband, when she was younger she led an active sexual life.

Answer 51

▪ it was this same Njinga who conquered the kingdom of Matamba and ruled it together with the remainder of the powerful Ndongo kingdom for three decades; defied thirteen Portuguese governors who ruled Angola between 1622 and 1663, keeping her kingdom independent in the face of relentless attacks; and made important political alliances not only with several neighboring polities but with the Dutch West India Company. It was this same Njinga whose religious diplomacy enabled her to make direct contact with the pope, who accepted her as a Christian ruler, and to establish Christianity within her kingdom. ▪ Involved in multiple military campaigns –

Answer 52

▪ While in Luanda, Njinga refused to wear Portuguese clothing, instead strategically choosing to highlight Mbundu fashion Njinga not only achieved the political ends that her brother expected but also gained some political leverage for herself. At her departure, the governor promised privately that the Portuguese would maintain mutual friendship with the region of Matamba, where Njinga had consolidated her own power. Her success in Luanda contrasted dramatically with her brother’s inefective leadership.

Answer 53

▪ Njinga’s position in 1625 represented a turning point in the Ndongo Njinga seems to have created the conditions for the first popular Mbundu uprising against Portuguese exploitation. She attracted to her cause Mbundu sobas who had become part of Portuguese Angola, including 109 sobas in the province of Hari who had become allies of the Portuguese.

Answer 54

1641-99 ▪ Dutch factors present at court observed that political intrigue, factions and threats of civil war were kept under control because the queen was successful in maintaining peace and authority▪ Prevented the VOC from buying even on elephant (symbols of power and prestige as well as important in trade) and resisted giving them exclusive trading rights for pepper and tin, despite their multiple missions

Answer 55

women who ruled Aceh to 1699 employed different methods of rule - devolution of power, an emphasis on rule of law, wariness of increasingly powerful external enemies, and an economical use of state resources - but were not less powerful than their predecessor. agreed to install women on the throne because they believed that doing so would prevent another violent and autocratic monarch like Iskandar Aceh’s female monarchs instead established friendly relations with Western powers to maintain their power

Answer 56

women bringing an extra man into the relationship when a poor couple has no money o Economic incentive opposed to selling children – man pays to have sex with the wife, with her husband’s approval o Agency – women choosing men? Or perpetuating patriarchal structure in order to supplement family income? ▪ Dorothy Ko argues against orientalist/Western reading – these women do have agency

Answer 57

* 3rd gender individuals possess ritual power in eg Chile and, Philippines o In Indonesia – the calabai (men dressed as women/women dressed as men) and bissu (gender transcendent people) suppressed by authorities.

Answer 58

Society is properly organized in a set of hierarchical social relations, which became formalized in the caste system. Because of the obligation toward the family, all men and women were expected to marry, and having children was viewed as a religious duty. Anything that interfered with procreation, including exclusively same-sex attachments, was viewed negatively

Answer 59

Selim and Suleiman both make homosexuality a crime

Answer 60

* At the Ayutthaya (Buddhist) court, women denounced for ‘playing with friends’ - having same-sex relationships - were lashed 50 times, tattooed on the neck, and paraded around the palace compound o Relations between men were considered tantamount to treason and dealt with by strangulation.

Answer 61

o Females fail biologically because of physical deformity; failed men are those whose sexual adequacy is defined in terms of performance. False Females fail to attain the proper role of women; only false Males are not merely Deficient, but appear to move toward the opposite, feminine, sexual pole. ▪ All of these asymmetries reflect the assumption that sexual action or initiative is a male attribute!!!

Answer 62

o Several texts suggest that men saw female sexual satisfaction as important for women’s physical and mental health; through my analysis of a sex manual said to have been written by a nun, I want to raise the possibility that women too made this claim o New interpretation that masturbation was not just subordinate: possessing the phallus in the form of a dildo enabled women in the inner quarters to isolate a male-signified piece of equipment that freed them from dependence on the human male. ▪ The most expensive commercially produced dildos were made from either water buffalo horn or tortoiseshell. Tanaka argues that, in their materiality, these objects offer proof of a recognition that a woman’s need for sexual release had to be taken seriously Secret Techniques’ (supposedly written by a nun in EM Japan) teaches that nipples, clitoris, labia and vagina all figure in female arousal.

Answer 63

o early modern Japan’s dominant categorisation of women according to their sexual function o In early modern Japanese discourse, female (and male) sexual practices varied depending on status and position in the life cycle. Masturbation was associated with servants and widows. The discourse of the day placed female same-sex relations on a continuum with masturbation. Both constituted discursively inferior sexual practices in that they did not engage the penis.

Answer 64

o Using evidence from Borneoand Sulawesi (Indonesia), Leonard Andaya (in Andaya, 2000) has argued that despitethe conception of two genders and two sexes, a belief that the union of men and women made a sacred whole meant that in some societies transvestite figures assumed the dominant religious role.

Answer 65

Philippines, accorded the same ritual prominence to individuals who combined male and female elements. The “men in the garb of women” and the women wearing male accoutrements described by early Europeans were thus highly respected spirit-mediums and guardians of sacred objects who acted as conduits to the supernatural world o In the Philippines, religious leaders termed baylans or catalonans were generally married older women, regarded as to some degree androgynous because they were no longer able to have children. They were thought to be able to communicate with both male and female spirits, and this, in addition to their lack of fertility, gave them greater freedom of movement than younger women had. When men performed rituals as baylans or catalonans, they wore women’s clothing or a mixture of men’s and women’s clothes.

Answer 66

o In all societies older women whose reproductive days were past and who had thus become more “male” could also assume important positions as ritual leaders

Answer 67

o two-spirit people were generally distinguished from others by their work or religious roles, as well as their sexual activities. They often had special ceremonial roles because they were regarded as having both a male and female spirit rather than the one spirit which most people had, and could mediate both between the male and female world: Male-bodied two- spirits were found among more groups than female-bodied two-spirits. In the early modern period, Spanish conquistadors and missionaries encountered them in Mesomamerica, Florida, and the Andes, and French traders and missionaries in the western Great Lakes

Answer 68

The harem refers to a specific area within a household or palace where the women of a royal family or elite household are secluded and live separately from men. The term is most commonly associated with Islamic societies, particularly the Ottoman Empire, where harems were a prominent feature of palace life.