Muxe: Dismantling the Gender Binary Before Its Conception
By Isobel Edwards, MSc Gender and International Relations
When existing in a cultural time and space where Presidents and Prime Ministers continually attempt to erase and deny the presence of an entire global community, the stringent gender binary of Western society feels evermore constricting. However, in these sad and turbulent times, hope can be found in the colourful corners of our world.
In Southern Mexico in the state of Oaxaca, there is a town known as Juchitán that is found adjacent to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec where a third gender identity is not only recognised but celebrated. The people of Juchitán identify as Zapotec, an indigenous community of Oaxaca whose language does not recognise gender. Dissimilar to Spanish, the language of Zapotec leaves pronouns, names and objects ungendered, creating and sustaining a society that does not seek definition nor classification through language nor elsewhere. Although Zapotec is only spoken by a small community of people throughout Mexico, eighty per cent of Juchitán residents continue to speak the language and view its conservation and customs as a cultural priority.
Not only has the Zapotec language neglected the use of a gender binary, but its rejection is deeply embedded within local myth. The community of Juchitán believe that San Vicente-Ferrer, the patron saint of Juchitán, was in possession of three bags of seeds intended for dispersal around the world; one bag held male seeds, another held female seeds and the final bag contained a mixture of both. However, during the saint’s journey, the third bag spilled over the town of Juchitán and catalysed the birth of the Muxe community.
Described by the Zapotec poet and human rights defender Elvis Guerra as ‘an entity with a gender identity’, Muxe is a term given to individuals of the Juchitán community who do not identify as wholly male or wholly female. Typically, Muxhes are individuals who are assigned male sex at birth but begin to culturally detach from masculine roles, adopting feminine ones to express autonomy and defy social organisation. Muxhes often pursue feminised occupations such as artisan craft, especially in the embroidery and textile work of indigenous Zapotec female dress, often worn by Muxhes themselves as a public display of identity.
However, the Muxe community pride themselves in their collective endeavour to achieve an absence of discrimination and overt distinction from the male/female binary, so any person who feels kin to the Muxe spirit of fluidity and resistance may find acceptance within the community. Although gender expression and performance are important facets of Muxe life, Guerra explains that the Muxe identity is less concerned with the role that aesthetics play and moreso by the values of diversity and defiance: ‘it goes beyond parties and dressing up… it is a social struggle’.
Although the Muxe community existed prior to the development and widespread enforcement of dominant, Western gender ideology, the term ‘Muxe’ appeared in discourse in the sixteenth century. During Spain’s colonisation of Mexico and its consequent influence of Catholicism, the term ‘Muxe’ manifested as a derogatory label. Derived from the Spanish word for woman, ‘mujer’, ‘Muxe’ was equipped as an insult of cowardice and applied to individuals who were fearful and thus feminised in their refusal to participate in war. Despite the repressive connotations of the term’s origin, Amaranta Gómez Regalado explicates the importance of its retention within Mexican society as an important lexical symbol of the dying Zapotec language. As well as being an anthropologist and social activist, Regalado was the first member of the Muxe community to stand as a political candidate. In an essay entitled ‘Transcending’, Regalado writes that:
‘Us from Juchitán have an ability to integrate the things that come from the outside; living in modern times without losing our customs and roots. This is what has been taking place […] with the rescuing of our cultural identity by retaining words like muxe, for their social and cultural value’.
Although the connotations of ‘Muxe’ are now widely associated with pride, perseverance and autonomy, recent sexual liberation social movements in Juchitán have counterintuitively led to the sexualization of the Muxe community, catalysing dangerous consequences. Much of Guerra’s poetry orbits the themes of Muxe eroticism, desire and health as a way to reclaim power over Muxe sexuality. Guerra laments that the mass media rarely interrogates these themes, and the struggles that Muxhes encounter, in the construction of a false image of Muxe life as paradisical and free from strife. Guerra explains how discrimination, hate crimes and murders persist and that a visceral intolerance can be felt in many regions throughout Mexico: ‘there is pink and blue, but no space for grey’.
However, Juchitán remains a distinctively bright and hopeful epicentre for Muxe acceptance. Regalado also comments on Juchitán’s especial treatment of Muxhes, that ‘the difference in acceptance levels which exist in Juchitán towards muxhes in comparison to other regions of Mexico is due to this sense of acceptance, community and respect which is established during [Muxe] childhood’. It is evident that the instantaneous support that is offered to Muxe children during the early stages of identity formation fosters an accepting and supportive wider society with powerful outcomes for its members.
Due to its simplistic yet potent ‘don’t ask and don’t assume’ culture, Juchitán remains an inspiring microcosm for gender and sexuality acceptance and diversity amidst growing global attitudes of intolerance, with the Muxe community themselves acting as an essential reminder of the joy and strength that may be found within defiance.
The first cover of Vogue to feature a Muxe figure, Estrella (credit: Vogue)
Further Reading and Information:
This community in southern Mexico has defied the gender binary for generations
Life Outside the Binary: Meet Mexico’s Muxe Community Celebrating Genderqueerness
Muxes - Mexico’s Third Gender, The Guardian
Edited by Ben Bryant and Scarlett Bantin
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