The Myth of the Queer Savage

The whole concept of "Two-Spirit people" was invented by white gay rights activists.

DEAR NEVERMORONS,

Today’s post is partly inspired by the Stone Age Herbalist, who blogs about anthropology and archaeology here on Substack. He likes to focus on the dark side of anthropology, which is why Nowick Gray calls him a “brutalist”.

Stone Age Herbalist and I have very different political views, and draw very different conclusions about human nature based on our readings of the anthropological record, but I can’t not respect what he does. He’s very knowledgeable, and he’s willing to voice unpopular opinions.

One of his most popular pieces is about homosexuality in the anthropological record. This isn’t something that I have studied super deeply, but I do know that the whole concept of “Two-Spirit” is purely a modern invention. It was created by white gay rights activists, not traditional indigenous people.

Let me be clear - there certainly were indigenous cultures where transgenderism was practiced, including the Lakota, the Dineh, and the Zuni.

Nevertheless, a certain Myth has emerged, which I will call the Myth of the Queer Savage, which promotes a de-contextualized pan-indigenous notion that queer people were revered, practically worshipped, in most of the traditional societies of Turtle Island.

Think I’m exaggerating? Watch this:

Did you watch it? Sounds convincing, doesn’t it? But there is good reason to doubt that this narrative accurately reflects the past.

Before I begin debunking the notion of “Two-Spirit” people, I should probably explain what the term means and where it comes from.

WHAT DOES TWO-SPIRIT MEAN, ANYWAY?

According to Wikipedia:

Two-spirit (also known as two spirit or occasionally twospirited) is a contemporary pan-Indian umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) social role in their communities.^[1][2][3]

Coined in 1990 as a primarily ceremonial term promoting community recognition, in recent years more individuals have taken to self-identifying as two-spirit. Two-spirit, as a term and concept, is neither used nor accepted universally in Native American cultures. Indigenous cultures that have traditional roles for gender-nonconforming people have names in their own Indigenous languages for these people and the roles they fill in their communities.

The initial intent in coining the term was to differentiate Indigenous concepts of gender and sexuality from those of non-Native lesbians and gays^[4] and to replace the pejorative anthropological terms that were still in wide use.^[5] While two-spirit has been controversial since its adoption,^[6] the term has experienced more academic and social acceptance than the term berdache, which it was coined to replace.^[5][7][8]

A bit further down, we read:

For early adopters, the term Two Spirit was a deliberate act to differentiate and distance themselves from non-Native gays and lesbians,^[4] as well as from non-Native terminology such as gay, lesbian, and transgender, and particularly the offensive anthropological label berdache,^[5][4] which had previously been the preferred term among non-Native anthropologists for Indigenous people who did not conform to European-American gender roles. However, berdache, which means "passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute", has always been offensive to Indigenous peoples.^[11]

Aha. Now I get it. So “two-spirit” was invented as a PR term because existing terms had negative connotations. Good to know.

If you would like a very interesting history lesson, I direct you to The Origin of “Two-Spirit” & The Gay Rights Movement by the Stone Age Herbalist.

The Origin of 'Two-Spirit' & The Gay Rights Movement

Here’s a teaser:

If you have encountered any academic discussion of LGBT topics in North America, you will almost certainly have heard the phrase ‘Two-Spirit’ - sometimes included in the acronym as ‘LGBTQ2S’, or some variant thereof. The most crude explanation for the term is something like ‘a gay Native American’, but it has a much more complex and subtle origin…

If you push on this terminology you’ll be told that it was invented by Native Americans as a way to self-define and take control of their own culture. Push further still and you’ll find a particular conference, held in Canada in 1990, which voted to adopt the term.

You may also come across two names in particular: Harry Hay and Will Roscoe.

If you don’t know who Harry Hay is, look him up.

He’s quite a fascinating character, and I can’t do him justice in a few words. I will mention that he was 100% white and 0% indigenous, though. According to Wikipedia, he was “born to an upper middle class family in England”.

Here’s a picture of him as a young man:

As for Will Roscoe, he was some sketchy anthropologist who wasn’t native either.

So, if you’re wondering about whether the term “two-spirit” is related to actual indigenous beliefs about some people having a masculine spirit and a feminine spirit in the same body, it’s not. It’s not a translation from any language in which some kind of equivalent term or even concept existed. It simply didn’t exist as an identity category in any indigenous language.

As Wikipedia points out:

Criticism of "two-spirit" centers on the term's Western origins, interpretations and influence, the lack of emphasis on Indigenous cultural traditions as maintained by tribal elders, and the potential to render tribal traditions indistinct or vanish them completely.^[11][6]

The terms used by tribes who have roles for gender-variant persons, both currently and historically, do not translate into any form of 'two spirit', and the Ojibwe form niizh manidoowag is also modern – a new translation from the English that was chosen in 1990, after the term was coined in English.^[11]

Stone Age Herbalist suggests that the idea of “two-spirit” people can be traced back to two gay psychologists named Mitch Walker and Don Kilhefner, neither of whom were indigenous.

Both were interested in using Jungian theory and ritualistic practice to explore gay consciousness. This particular technique rests on Jung’s belief that men possessed an ‘anima’ - an unconscious feminine aspect which can be explored through therapy. In one sense gay men being attracted to Jung has an obvious logic, with his emphasis on duality and the a female aspect to man, as well as the negative consequences of this, self-hatred and projection. But we can trace here an explicit connection between Jung’s archetypal ‘two-spirit’ and the later development of a Native American spiritual category of ‘two-spirit’.

So there you have it, folks. The idea of “two-spirit” appears to come from an unorthodox interpretation of the ideas of Carl Jung, not any traditional indigenous culture.

According to Wikipedia, Walker may actually have invented gay depth psychology.

In 1974 Walker had a realization that same-sex love was archetypal, not "a mere accident or adaption," answering the question if one was born gay or does gayness come from social experience.^[1] His revelation led to his master's thesis "discussing the then unheard-of topic of gay depth psychology."^[1]

Mitch Walker was also a Radical Faerie, by the way, as was Kilhefner.

In 1979, Walker co-created with activists Harry Hay, John Burnside, and Don Kilhefner the first gay-centered spiritual movement, the Radical Faeries,^[12][13][14] a loosely affiliated, worldwide network and counter-cultural movement seeking to reject hetero-imitation and redefine queer identity through spirituality.^[15]

I’M NOT ANTI-GAY. I’M ANTI-LYING.

Okay, at this point I’d like to give a disclaimer, lest anyone think that I’ve turned into a hardcore family values conservative. I’ve met people who have been involved with the Radical Faeries, and I don’t think that they’re all part of some big conspiracy to promote homosexuality. I think that they were attempting to create their own Mythos, for understandable reasons. Their own culture told them that they were perverted moral degenerates, and they felt differently. Therefore, they tried to create a narrative by which their existence as gay people was validated. I’m not hostile to the idea of a gay mythology. After all, some people are clearly into homoeroticism. Such people certainly must wonder about why they have the feelings they do. It seems to me that a healthy culture would have some kind of answers to such questions.

I am all for sexual freedom, and I don’t consider it any of my business what kind of sex people are having. I’m pro-pleasure. If you like doing gay stuff because it brings you pleasure, more power to you. I support your right to experience sexual pleasure, and if you want to encode your values within some kind of mythology which promotes acceptance of homosexuality, you do you. What I have a problem with is that white gay rights activists have been projecting their fantasies onto indigenous cultures which were decimated by European invaders. What the Radical Faeries were doing would be deeply offensive to many indigenous people, because traditional indigenous spirituality is definitely not a free-for-all. The rights to conduct ceremony, for instance, are very difficult to obtain, and conducting ceremony without having rights granted by a lineage-holder is basically sacrilege. And what could possible be more offensive than sacrilege?

Listen, nature clearly produces gay and bisexual people. I am of the firm belief that nature does not produce anything valueless. I’m not against homosexuality. To say that homosexual desires are degenerate and perverse is to say that the Creator gave millions of people desires they are meant to repress, which seems cruel. Why would the Great Spirit do that?

Furthermore, I’m for freedom, which means I’m for sexual freedom, and you can’t be for sexual freedom and be against homosexuality at the same time.

I’m for sex-positivity. If God didn’t want us to have sex, women wouldn’t have clitorises. And if some people are gay, well that’s great, because that means there’s less competition amongst men for the limited supply of desirable women. Because a primary cause of feuding is male disputes over women, the tolerance of homosexuality might reduce the amount of societal conflict. Plus, it’s not like there’s a shortage to human beings on Planet Earth right now. Homosexuality could be part of nature’s solution to overpopulation. If it is, there is a solid argument to make that homosexuality should be accepted and even celebrated.

So allow me to be crystal-clear. I’m not anti-gay. I’m anti-lying. I’m particularly opposed to the colonial appropriation of narratives about indigenous societies. Traditional cultures are being edited to appease the sensibilities of the colonizer, and the colonizers are teaching indigenous people to believe false things about their heritage. To me, this isn’t about sexuality. This is about colonization and the colonial gaze. It’s about the erasure of traditional indigenous values, which had everything to do with the right relationship between men and women, each of whom had separate and complementary gender roles.

It irks me that woke sociology departments have been promoting false narratives about the role of queer people in the indigenous societies of Turtle Island. It’s messed-up that gay rights activists invented an Ojibway word for something that didn’t exist in Ojibway culture, because future generations of Ojibway people might then come to believe that the concept refers to a traditional concept that didn’t actually exist. If that’s not cultural subversion, what is? Do you not see how insidious this is?

I have known that the “Two-Spirit” label is a modern invention for years, but I knew that so-called “third genders” did exist in some indigenous societies, including the Lakota, where some biological men would assume the roles of women. These people were called “berdaches” or “winktes” (from Winyanktehca, meaning "wants to be like a woman").

Recently, I was reading Margaret Mead’s Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies and I came across an interesting passage about berdaches.

Among the Dakota Indians of the Plains, the importance of an ability to stand any degree of pain or hardship was frantically insisted upon as a masculine characteristic. From the time that a boy was five or six, all the conscious educational effort of the household was bent towards shaping him into an indubitable male. Every tear, every timidity, every clinging to a protective hand or desire to continue to play with younger children or with girls, was obsessively interpreted as proof that he was not going to develop into a real man. In such a society, it is not surprising to find the berdache, the man who had voluntarily given up the struggle to conform to the masculine role and who wore female attire and followed the occupations of a woman. The institution of the berdache in turn served as a warning to every father; the fear that the son might become a berdache informed the parental efforts with an extra desperation, and the very pressure which helped to drive a boy to that choice was redoubled.

This is congruent with what I know about Lakota culture. I found this illuminating.

Before you judge them too harshly, it should be pointed out that Lakota lands were under invasion by settlers at the time, so it seems likely that masculine warrior virtues would have been lionized for that reason. It should also be noted that the introduction of the horse by Europeans transformed Lakota culture, which previously had been quite akin to the Anishnaabe. It is probably technically accurate to refer to both the Lakota and Anishnaabe as patriarchal, but the idea of “right relationship” between men and women were at the heart of both cultures. In any case, the world is upside-down and backwards these days, which is part of the reason that I’m trying to understand different traditions - in order to look for something that makes good logical sense, because the political and economic system we have today simply does not make logical sense.

In any case, I have decided to share a short story taken from Black Elk Speaks, the classic book published in 1932. I think that it paints a picture of the Lakota that speaks for itself.

Crow Qu’appelle

High Horse’s Courting

by Black Elk, as told to John Neihardt (1932)

You know, in the old days, it was not so very easy to get a girl when you wanted to be married. Sometimes it was hard work for a young man, and he had to stand a great deal. Say I am a young man, and I have seen a young girl who looks so beautiful to me that I feel all sick when I think about her. I cannot just go and tell her about it and then get married if she is willing. I have to be very sneaky to talk to her at all, and after I have managed to talk to her, that is only the beginning.

Probably for a long time, I have been feeling sick about a certain girl because I love her so much, but she will not even look at me, and her parents keep a good watch over her. But I keep feeling worse and worse all the time; so maybe I sneak up to her tepee in the dark and wait until she comes out. Maybe I just wait there all night and don’t get any sleep at all, and she does not come out. Then I feel sicker than ever about her.

Maybe I hide in the brush by a spring where she sometimes goes to get water, and when she comes by, if nobody is looking, I jump out and hold her and just make her listen to me. If she likes me too, I can tell that from the way she acts, for she is very bashful and maybe will not say a word or even look at me the first time. So I let her go, and then maybe I sneak around until I can see her father alone, and I tell him how many horses I can give him for his beautiful girl, and by now I am feeling so sick that maybe I would give him all the horses in the world if I had them.

Well, this young man I am telling about was called High Horse, and there was a girl in the village who looked so beautiful to him that he was just sick all over from thinking about her so much, and he was getting sicker all the time. The girl was very shy, and her parents thought a great deal of her because they were not young anymore, and this was the only child they had. So they watched her all day long, and they fixed it so that she would be safe at night too when they were asleep. They thought so much of her that they had made a rawhide bed for her to sleep in, and after they knew that High Horse was sneaking around after her, they took rawhide thongs and tied the girl in bed at night so that nobody could steal her when they were asleep, for they were not sure but that their girl might really want to be stolen.

Well, after High Horse had been sneaking around a good while and hiding and waiting for the girl and getting sicker all the time, he finally caught her alone and made her talk to him. Then he found out that she liked him maybe a little. Of course, this did not make him feel well. It made him sicker than ever, but now he felt as brave as a bison bull, and so he went right to her father and said he loved the girl so much that he would give two good horses for her—one of them young and the other one not so very old.

But the old man just waved his hand, meaning for High Horse to go away and quit talking foolishness like that.

High Horse was feeling sicker than ever about it; but there was another young fellow who said he would loan High Horse two ponies, and when he got some more horses, he could just give them back for the ones he had borrowed.

Then High Horse went back to the old man and said he would give four horses for the girl—two of them young and the other two not hardly old at all. But the old man just waved his hand and would not say anything.

So High Horse sneaked around until he could talk to the girl again, and he asked her to run away with him. He told her he thought he would just fall over and die if she did not. But she said she would not do that; she wanted to be bought like a fine woman. You see, she thought a great deal of herself too.

That made High Horse feel so very sick that he could not eat a bite, and he went around with his head hanging down as though he might just fall down and die any time.

Red Deer was another young fellow, and he and High Horse were great comrades, always doing things together. Red Deer saw how High Horse was acting, and he said: “Cousin, what is the matter? Are you sick in the belly? You look as though you were going to die.”

Then High Horse told Red Deer how it was, and said he thought he could not stay alive much longer if he could not marry the girl pretty quick.

Red Deer thought awhile about it, and then he said: “Cousin, I have a plan, and if you are man enough to do as I tell you, then everything will be all right. She will not run away with you; her old man will not take four horses; and four horses are all you can get. You must steal her and run away with her. Then after a while, you can come back and the old man cannot do anything because she will be your woman. Probably she wants you to steal her anyway.”

So they planned what High Horse had to do, and he said he loved the girl so much that he was man enough to do anything Red Deer or anybody else could think up.

So this is what they did.

That night late, they sneaked up to the girl’s tepee and waited until it sounded inside as though the old man, the old woman, and the girl were sound asleep. Then High Horse crawled under the tepee with a knife. He had to cut the rawhide thongs first, and then Red Deer, who was pulling up the stakes around that side of the tepee, was going to help drag the girl outside and gag her. After that, High Horse could put her across his pony in front of him and hurry out of there and be happy all the rest of his life.

When High Horse had crawled inside, he felt so nervous that he could hear his heart drumming, and it seemed so loud he felt sure it would waken the old folks. But it did not, and after a while, he began cutting the thongs. Every time he cut one, it made a pop and nearly scared him to death. But he was getting along all right, and all the thongs were cut down as far as the girl’s thighs, when he became so nervous that his knife slipped and stuck the girl. She gave a big, loud yell. By this time, High Horse was outside, and he and Red Deer were running away like antelope. The old man and some other people chased the young men, but they got away in the dark, and nobody knew who it was.

Well, if you ever wanted a beautiful girl, you will know how sick High Horse was now. It was very bad the way he felt, and it looked as though he would starve even if he did not drop over dead sometime.

Red Deer kept thinking about this, and after a few days, he went to High Horse and said: “Cousin, take courage! I have another plan, and I am sure, if you are man enough, we can steal her this time.” And High Horse said: “I am man enough to do anything anybody can think up, if I can only get that girl.”

So this is what they did.

They went away from the village alone, and Red Deer made High Horse strip naked. Then he painted High Horse solid white all over, and after that, he painted black stripes all over the white and put black rings around High Horse’s eyes. High Horse looked terrible. He looked so terrible that when Red Deer was through painting and took a good look at what he had done, he said it scared even him a little.

“Now,” Red Deer said, “if you get caught again, everybody will be so scared they will think you are a bad spirit and will be afraid to chase you.”

So when the night was getting old and everybody was sound asleep, they sneaked back to the girl’s tepee. High Horse crawled in with his knife, as before, and Red Deer waited outside, ready to drag the girl out and gag her when High Horse had all the thongs cut.

High Horse crept up by the girl’s bed and began cutting at the thongs. But he kept thinking, “If they see me, they will shoot me because I look so terrible.” The girl was restless and kept squirming around in bed, and when a thong was cut, it popped. So High Horse worked very slowly and carefully.

But he must have made some noise, for suddenly the old woman awoke and said to her old man: “Old Man, wake up! There is somebody in this tepee!” But the old man was sleepy and didn’t want to be bothered. He said: “Of course there is somebody in this tepee. Go to sleep and don’t bother me.” Then he snored some more.

But High Horse was so scared by now that he lay very still and as flat to the ground as he could. Now, you see, he had not been sleeping very well for a long time because he was so sick about the girl. And while he was lying there waiting for the old woman to snore, he just forgot everything, even how beautiful the girl was. Red Deer, who was lying outside ready to do his part, wondered and wondered what had happened in there, but he did not dare call out to High Horse.

After a while, the day began to break, and Red Deer had to leave with the two ponies he had staked there for his comrade and the girl, or somebody would see him.

So he left.

Now, when it was getting light in the tepee, the girl awoke and the first thing she saw was a terrible animal, all white with black stripes on it, lying asleep beside her bed. So she screamed, and then the old woman screamed, and the old man yelled. High Horse jumped up, scared almost to death, and he nearly knocked the tepee down getting out of there.

People were coming running from all over the village with guns and bows and axes, and everybody was yelling.

By now, High Horse was running so fast that he hardly touched the ground at all, and he looked so terrible that the people fled from him and let him run. Some braves wanted to shoot at him, but the others said he might be some sacred being and it would bring bad trouble to kill him.

High Horse made for the river that was near, and in among the brush, he found a hollow tree and dived into it. After a while, some braves came there, and he could hear them saying that it was some bad spirit that had come out of the water and gone back in again.

That morning, the people were ordered to break camp and move away from there. So they did, while High Horse was hiding in his hollow tree.

Now, Red Deer had been watching all this from his own tepee and trying to look as though he were as much surprised and scared as all the others. So when the camp moved, he sneaked back to where he had seen his comrade disappear. When he was down there in the brush, he called, and High Horse answered, because he knew his friend’s voice. They washed off the paint from High Horse and sat down on the river bank to talk about their troubles.

High Horse said he never would go back to the village as long as he lived, and he did not care what happened to him now. He said he was going to go on the warpath all by himself. Red Deer said: “No, cousin, you are not going on the warpath alone, because I am going with you.”

So Red Deer got everything ready, and at night they started out on the warpath all alone. After several days, they came to a Crow camp just about sundown, and when it was dark, they sneaked up to where the Crow horses were grazing, killed the horse guard, who was not thinking about enemies because he thought all the Lakotas were far away, and drove off about a hundred horses.

They got a big start because all the Crow horses stampeded, and it was probably morning before the Crow warriors could catch any horses to ride. Red Deer and High Horse fled with their herd for three days and nights before they reached the village of their people. Then they drove the whole herd right into the village and up in front of the girl’s tepee. The old man was there, and High Horse called out to him and asked if he thought maybe that would be enough horses for his girl. The old man did not wave him away that time. It was not the horses that he wanted. What he wanted was a son who was a real man and good for something.

So High Horse got his girl after all, and I think he deserved her.