Oaxaca's Indigenous 'Muxes' Challenge the Gender Binary in a Major Way Raquel Reichard - Latina
go to original December 26, 2015

Who Is Mexico's Ancient Third Gender Population (Seeker Daily)

When it comes to defying the gender binary – that limiting classification of gender into two distinct forms of masculine and feminine – Oaxaca, Mexico has a lot to teach the rest of the world.

In that southernmost Mexican state, the indigenous Zapotec people have a third gender: muxe, which describes boys and men who sometimes dress as women and, more commonly, those who live their full lives as women.

Muxes, the Zapotec word for mujer, which means woman in Spanish, shouldn’t be compared to more familiar identities in the U.S. like transgender or transsexual, though. Unlike these gendered identities, which have nothing to do with sexual orientation, muxes often identify as gay men who sometimes dress like women – and when they do, they identify as muxe, meaning that their identities are also fluid.

"I consider myself gay and muxe. I’m gay the moment I’m behaving as a boy, and I’m a muxe the moment I’m behaving as a girl. It’s a duality I have inside me. It’s two in one and that’s the only way I don’t lose my essence," Marluu Ferretti, a muxe, told Fusion.

Muxes have been living openly across the region since the 1950s, but anthropologists believe that the third gender has a much longer history in Oaxaca’s indigenous past.

"They say God gave St. Ferrer a bag of muxes to spread across Mexico and the entire continent. But upon arriving in Juchitán, the bag broke and he spilled them all," Ferretti said.

Read the rest at Latina

Related: Coming Out as Transgender to Your Latino Family: Tips from a Trans Latina Counselor (Latina)

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