Talk:haxu'xan

Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture (ISBN 0807046159, 1992) offers more details, saying haxu'xan are considered to have their status as a supernatural gift from birds or other animals, and that the mythical first haxu'xan was Nih'a'ca, who "pretended to be a woman" and married a mountain lion, an Arapaho symbol of masculinity. Williams quotes Alfred Kroeber (circa 1900): "These people had the natural desire to become women, and as they grew up gradually became women [...] married to men [and] had miraculous power and could do supernatural things. For instance, it was one of them that first made an intoxicant from rainwater." Williams notes that Navajo myths also discuss the inventiveness of "two-spirit"-type people. Williams says that the myths "underscore[] the notion of woman as a social category rather than as a fixed biological entity. Physical sex is less important in gender classification than a person's desire&mdash;one's spirit. The myths contain no prescriptions for trying to change berdaches who are acting out their desires of the heart." - -sche (discuss) 20:02, 11 February 2018 (UTC)