As culture historians of mankind, anthropologists have had to go beyond the written records. Consequently, their account of human behavior includes what is known of all peoples of the world. Since most of the peoples were non-literate, our knowledge of them depends upon what can be excavated through archeology and what can be learned from the living representatives through interview and observation. There have been suggestions that the degree of distribution around the world gives a clue to historic depth. Thus, customs which are universal are usually assumed to be extremely ancient. In any event, we now know that homosexual behavior is one of the cultural items which appears universally. This may be a result of instinctive behavior which we have inherited biologically from our mammalian and pre-human primate ancestors; thus, it could be considered normal and natural behavior like eating or sleeping. On the other hand, anthropologists have found so few customs which have resulted from direct instinctive heredity of a biological nature that they start by assuming that all behavior is learned behavior or is altered by learning. We would begin by assuming that homosexual behavior-like speech, eating habits or other customs-has been passed on from one generation to another. Since around the world almost all peoples have been observed or have admitted the practice of sexual attraction and love between members of the same sex, it follows that the behavior pattern is an extremely ancient

one.

Anthropologists have usually classified homosexual activities under the names berdache or transvestite. Both of these words are of ancient usage, but their history has been intermingled to such an extent that in recent anthropological writings the two words, berdache and transvestite, are so often used as synonyms and are interchangeable. The problem of such interchange was brought to the attention of the anthropological profession by a paper presented to the American Anthropological Association in December 1953 by Henry Angelino and Charles L. Shedd of the University of Oklahoma. (Their paper was later published in the American Anthropologist of February 1955.) They demonstrate that berdache was known in European languages and could be traced back from the English usually spelled berdache, but sometimes berdash (which was the French spelling), to a similar word in Italian. The word in Arabic is bardaj, which comes from the Persian word barah. In spite of the slight difference in spelling, the meaning in earlier times was uniform from England to Persia, and the word berdache was used to indicate a "male prostitute" or a "kept boy." In the reports of early travelers, especially Frenchmen, the word was used to designate "male concubines" or "male prostitutes," and was consistent with the ancient European and Near Eastern usage. French travelers gave rather complete accounts of berdachism. among tribes they visited in the New World such as the Choctaw in the southeastern states, but also of the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota. One famous berdache among the Pillager band of Chippewa Indians of Minnesota was accepted mattachine REVIEW

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more or less as a matter of course by the French travelers, was described with some shock by the early English travelers, but was scorned, insulted and greatly belittled by the American travelers who met him and were actually frightened by his advances.

As the word itself implies, transvestism is the custom of a person wearing the dress of the opposite sex. This custom has been widely observed in the New World, and in the Old, but does not in itself indicate that the transvestite is a lover or concubine in the actual sense of a member of the same sex. Transvestism, however, has been frequently confused and used interchangeably with berdache in recent anthropological writing. Angelino and Shedd in their paper to the American Anthropological Association regretted the looseness in the use of the two words. They suggested that berdache should be used in exclusively those cases where there is evidence of homosexual love and sex relations, whether the phenomenon was accompanied by change in costume or not. Transvestite should be used whenever a person habitually wears the costume and carries on the duties of the opposite sex, but refrains from homosexual relations. Such transvestites have been known. Restricting the use of these words seems to be to me entirely proper. Where there is no evidence of sex relations accompanying the wearing of clothes of the opposite sex the word transvestite alone should be used. Berdache should always carry with it the implication of sex relations between members of the same sex. If the berdache is also a transvestite, the two words could be used to designate this. There is also the question of physiological and anatomical hermaphroditism. An anatomical hermaphrodite could be a berdache and/or a transvestite or neither. An hermaphrodite might consistently choose one role or the other corresponding to the most well developed part of his anatomy. Thus, by insisting on the exactness of a few separate words, and the use of adjectives, the true behavior could be made explicit.

The inconsistent and rather fuzzy use of the words transvestite and berdache has probably grown out of the fact that anthropologists and travelers were fre quently uncertain whether the man dressed as a woman did in fact indulge in homosexual love. The anthropologists, however, usually accepted the probability that such persons did perform the sex acts typical of male homosexuals when they took on the costume and assumed the activities of females. Although the accounts do not always make this explicit, there are frequently phrases like the "berdache married another male," or "the berdache lived with other men." These imply that berdaches and their companions were indulging in homosexual activities. What has been said about inexactness in the use of berdache and transvestite for males also applies to females, although here again the cases reported of female transvestism or female berdachism are much less numerous than for male. It should be further pointed out that in many cases the berdache may also undertake heterosexual activities. A male berdache may also be a husband 13