Summary: “Romancing the Transgender Native: Rethinking the Use of the “Third Gender” Concept” by Evan B Towle and Lynn M. Morgan examine the concept of “third gender” in U.S. anthropological scholarship and fine it to be a useful, as well as popular, though problematic, term because its inherent ambiguities are well-suited to its historical moment; at a time when large segments of the U.S population are encountering cultural differences around the globe. “Third gender” signals both tolerance for diversity and adherence to Western categories of personal identity. The authors note the term “third gender,” is being replaced by or conflated with the newer term “transgender.” Towle and Morgan consider popular transgender writing on “third genders” to make several errors. …show more content…
This essay offers a critical examination of how “third gender” concepts are used in popular American writing by and about transgendered people. The authors focus on several points in their essay to illustrate the flaws which is organized into five categories: the primordial location, reductionism and exclusionism, typological errors, inconsistent use of the culture concept, and the West versus the rest. This figure is a literary trope used in transgender testimonial writing to invoke longing for the other and the authors add to this conversation using these five points in arguing that the transgender native surfaces in several of these examples as an object of