White people and Colonialists are getting blamed for much of the nonsense these days. Some of it fair, most of it not fair and historically inaccurate. A recent article in the Post Millennial blamed “Colonialists” for the addition of “two spirit” to Queer Theory, as in LGBTQIA2S. While the hate filled fascist elites blame colonialists for everything, I REFUSE to take any responsibility for the harm done to indigenous peoples by this jargon. Those hate filled fascists co-opt everything. Remember the rainbow!

The article, “First Nations feminist says ‘two spirit’ gender expression is a colonial invention”, begins:

A First Nations feminist scholar told a crowd in Burnaby, British Columbia recently that the “two spirit” concept is a colonial invention and was first promoted in 1990 by gay rights activists as a way of depicting people who identify as both gay and indigenous.

Dr. Cherry Smiley criticized the entire transgender movement for attempting to undermine women’s rights and erode the feminist creed that women have historically been oppressed by men, according to a report in The New Westminster Times.

If biological men can pose as women, women’s rights are downgraded in the process, Smiley argued, dismissing the two-spirited talk as something that is not even in the First Nations lexicon.

Oh PUH-leez. I can’t and won’t argue with that first sentence. I know a lot of gay people, but zero gay rights activists. I agree with criticizing the entire transgender movement…, but they are trying to erase Gay men and Lesbians too. All people, not just women, have been oppressed by the fascist elites. If tomboys and masculine women can pose as men, all of our rights, as individuals are erased. There is a lot of Queer Theory that is not in anybody’s lexicon.

By the by, I hate that term “colonialism”. Colonialists were just the last people who conquered a land and/or people. Colonialism was the way of the world until recently, but I digress.

As we celebrate #TDoV, we are also highlighting the unique identities of #TwoSpirit people in Indigenous cultures. Chevi Rabbit (she/they), one of our advisory partners, explains what Two-Spirit identity means to them. pic.twitter.com/BsTB3OUeVC

— Office of the Federal Housing Advocate (@HousingLogement) March 28, 2024

“Women are f*cking pissed off,” declared Smiley, a member of both the Nlaka’pamux and Diné Nations.

Smiley, who has authored the book Not Sacred Not Squaws: Indigenous Feminism Redefined, castigated transgender activists for appropriating First Nations culture with the notion that “two or even three or four genders” is a product of that experience.

“First Nations women know where babies come from,” Smiley told an appreciative audience, reiterating her belief that it is biological sex and not “gender” that characterizes how aboriginal people understand the dynamic of male and female relationships.

Smiley insisted that First Nations have not recognized rigid parameters for the sexual division of labor because she said indigenous women were traditionally accustomed to doing the same jobs as men did. She said the idea that “gender” can trump sex is a byproduct of the colonialism spawned by “white men.”

Aw for the love of Mike, you all have waaaay too much time on your hands. The elites among those “White men” had power but the average man had no power. “Sexual division of labor” was not a “thing” among the poor. When conquering a land, forcing the land to provide food to nourish you, there wasn’t room for a Dylan Mulvaney type.

In my quest to find the origins of “Two Spirit”, I found this in Object! a RadFem website:

‘Two-spirit’ was a new term deliberately created at a 1990 native American lesbian and gay gathering in Canada, mainly to replace an old, colonial, homophobic term ‘berdache’ which originally meant a ‘kept boy’. It has not been universally accepted by traditional communities (who are happy with the words they already have in their languages), although they prefer it to ‘berdache’. Not a mention of trans.

There is a lot written by gender-political activists and scholars on ‘two-spirit’, but little by professional historians. One who has covered it is US Professor Gregory D. Smithers, author of books on native Americans, racism and black intellectuals. His 2014 article ‘Two-spirit Native Americans’ states that the evidence for ‘two-spirit’ is at best scanty and rests on a single dubious document.

Whoa! “Kept boy”. I wondered if that was like the “Chai boys” we learned about from the Afghanistan war. I don’t want to leave out Asia:

This purely a new western fantasy come to life. All the larpers and Reddit kids have grown and our lack of leaders encourage degeneracy for their own motives.

Lady boys in Asia have existed forever, none try to fight females in competition. Only the west is playing these games.

— Methuselah (@Methuselah360) June 21, 2023

Romanticizing or fetishizing or demonizing a culture is strictly a symptom of people with two much time on their hands. No matter our cultural heritage, most people were too busy trying to survive to even bother to learn about such “theories”.

Featured Image: Steve Damron/flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons