#Māhū

[kingrosalani]

Live at xBk for Rhythm & Pep’s Queer Icons show

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎

Performed my song MĀHŪ live

[lgbtqtext]

Requested by tmblrkid

[naychuchu]

the way pleakley could’ve been a good opportunity to shine light on the mahu community of hawaiian culture…

but you make him a white man

honestly i don’t expect much from them anyways, especially considering they even watered down the original movie

[justanotherspeaker]

We will

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

for our

RIGHTS RIGHTS RIGHTS

[halfmouse]

Culture-specific genders are amazing. (All genders are amazing, of course, but…yo, these are amazing). Be you!

to lgbtq+ indigenous youth:

just a reminder that you are under no obligation to label yourself according to the western-centric + white-centric labels of gender and sexuality.

lgbtq+ identities existed long before colonization touched our land. You do not have to exchange one type of conformity for another to fit in with other lgbtq+ folks.

If labels like nonbinary, genderfluid, etc feel good to you, go for it!

If two-spirit feels right, that’s awesome! If not, don’t sweat it.

If you have an identity specific to your indigenous heritage, you are under no obligation to translate your complex, nuanced identity into terms that non-natives understand.

You are under no explanation to explain your identity to non-natives.

(ok for non natives to reblog!)

[kingrosalani]

MĀHŪ the music video is out on YouTube

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎

[lethroe]

Did you just miss my entire point or are you intentionally ignoring it? Let me ask this. Do you think an intersex person can identify as cis?

I’m really tired of people treating intersex people like a mistake, deformed, or mutated version of male and female.

SEX IS NOT BINARY AND NEVER WILL BE!!! ITS A WHITE COLONIAL CONCEPT FORCED ONTO NATIVE POPULATIONS AND PEOPLE STILL PRETEND IT WAS A NATURAL ORDER!!! STOP ERASING INTERSEX PEOPLE!!!

[desktopmermaid]

I’m playing infinite wealth rn and I’m rly charmed with it. It’s interesting to see what locations were changed for the game and what parts were kept realistic. It’s so strange seeing areas me and my friends would hang out.

Anyway. This is near where a tourist almost ran me over with a Segway

[bearclawmarks]

native queers I love you 2Spirit fags and dykes I love you indigenous genderqueer people I love you third gender people I love you māhū I love you ahhhhhhhh

[kleinewahines]

Reminder there are 5 pages to my rules/muse list, so keep scrolling if you don't find a wahine or kahuna or māhū who hits your fancy. And I also have many verses.

when my body stops rebelling I'm gonna see if I can poke some folks into peoples' inboxes like I do when I'm super comfy w/ u. But if you'd like to let me know now to fling someone into ur inbox like the thing/comment w/ muse pref.

[peat-moss-and-starlight]

Some other media that covers this issue:

The *All My Relations* podcast has a 3-part episode on Hawai’i, colonization, and tourism.

The show *We’re Here* on HBO Max has an episode in Season 2 where the queens put on a drag show in Hawai’i featuring a māhū person and several Hawaiian activists working for increased Indigenous sovereignty.

The podcast *Gender Reveal* did an interview with Lehuauakea, a māhū artist who talks about tourism, ongoing colonialism, and Indigenous history and futures.

Hey Tumblr peeps, anyone happen to have any good (preferably indigenous) resources talking about Hawaii and it's history?

Particularly talking about its annexation, the negative impacts of tourism and how the indigenous population has been impacted by US inteference.

Thank you 😊

[jesncin]

Unimaginable Utopia vs the believable Colonized World

"Why can't we make Krypton, Superman's home planet, flawed or evil instead of a utopia (as it was traditionally portrayed)?"

Much of the justification for an evil or flawed Krypton is that it "adds depth" or "makes it believable/ interesting" when Krypton isn't a utopia. Because utopias, in a lot of people's minds, are unimaginable. We can imagine aliens, distant planets, magic, superpowers, but utopia without suffering is "ridiculous".

I have been gripped by this Little Joel video on Omelas: How We Talk About Utopia for ages now because I think it succinctly wraps up everything I feel about the topic. Omelas and Krypton are both fictional worlds (in the case of Omelas, explicitly a fiction within the short story fiction where the author herself encourages you to imagine utopia with her as a thought experiment), yet in the demand to make these fantastical worlds more "believable", suffering (regardless of how nonsensical) needs to be added in order to "make sense of the good that exists". The idea of utopia without suffering is unimaginable.

For Krypton, this means any sort of interpretation from "Kryptonians are colonizers now" or "Kryptonians are evil aliens who hate Earth, plot twist!" or "Kryptonians have a class system that punishes progressive thought" or "Kryptonians are racist, sexist, ableist, etc."! Somehow this fictional alien world has to look a lot more like our flawed world in order to be "believable". But that's not the full picture. Many real world societies in themselves are hard to believe, especially in the American mindset.

["From A Native Daughter" by Haunani-Kay Trask excerpts]

People are shocked to learn of societies outside of the West with more broad systems for gender, or that queerness existed at all in indigenous cultures around the world without the influence of white people. Societies outside of a patriarchal or capitalistic system? Is that really possible?

["From A Native Daughter" by Haunani-Kay Trask excerpts]

I'm not here to paint all these cultures as perfect or necessarily enlightened before colonialism set them back. But I am saying that the way many of these societies were built were so unimaginable to colonizers that they had to lie and label these worlds as barbaric or worse-than-they-were as a means of "civilizing them" through colonization. Projecting familiar European structures on them, regardless of accuracy. "These indigenous genderqueer roles are perverse, they must fit our binary two gender system!" And now all of these cultures are set back, and we'll never really know what they'd have looked like had they been allowed to develop and grow without colonizers intervening. Many have bought into the European structures enforced on them. Because that's believable.

(American Missionaries in the 1800s abolishing the genderqueer practices of the Māhū, from Kumu Hina documentary)

The basic premise of Superman is that he was born on a utopian planet, but sent to Earth as a baby when said planet faced world-wide destruction. He is raised by his adopted American parents and culture. Superman is by all technicalities, an undocumented immigrant.

So why do I think utopia is important to Superman mythos? Isn't there an argument to be made for portraying a refugee allegory when Superman leaves a bigoted Krypton to find safety in a flawed Earth? Because any other alien character in DC's roster could do that. Martian Manhunter used to be written as coming from a utopian Mars, but I personally think that him fleeing from a bigoted one works better for his themes. What makes Superman different? What makes him unique from all these alien migrants?

Because being the Man of Tomorrow, an ideal to strive for, is inherit to the best Superman stories. Part of what makes his rivalry with Lex Luthor so compelling is that Lex Luthor has bought into the flawed Omelas premise. He's been raised to believe that power without stepping on someone else is impossible. So when he sees Superman, he's frustrated that this alien man flaunts power without malice. It's unimaginable to Lex that someone can be powerful and selfless. It's even become a meta discussion for fans that someone as kind as Superman is unbelievable. "Too good to be true".

When you remove utopia from Superman's backstory, this contrast is lost. Superman just becomes an exception from an evil planet. A miraculous white savior, assimilated into American culture to be our hero.

(the infamous, xenophobic John Byrne panel)

Nowadays, people want to shake up the formula. It's a trendy twist to make Krypton a planet of colonizers. Or maybe a morally grey one. Or a feudal, classist, and bigoted one.

Superman is no longer a guy from a native utopia who hopes to bring our flawed world into a better tomorrow like the one he came from. He's now just magically the best guy from the shitty planet. Sometimes he's like that because his Kryptonian parents happen to be activists (Absolute Superman). Other times, Superman is good because he was raised by upstanding American citizens. He's not like those other aliens; barbaric, feudal, bigoted. Superman's good because he's assimilated into being an American. And he will spread that American goodness throughout the galaxy to bring them into the American Way- oh wait that's the less progressive line, I mean- "A Better Tomorrow".

Think for a moment about Superman as an immigrant allegory and how that parallels real human experiences for a second. What does it mean to change Superman's home planet to be something "more believable"? To add elements of American/western bigotry into these distant sci-fi worlds? Why make Kryptonians evil colonizers like yourselves? Why make a Superman that disavows his Utopian Kryptonian roots? Why make a Superman that assures us he is more human than alien? It's because our modern imaginations are limited by colonial constructs. New writers think they're twisting the Superman formula, but they manage to bring it backwards to xenophobic directions.

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."

-Those Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin

[queerasfact]

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day!

Today the USA marks Indigenous Peoples' Day - to celebrate, have a listen to these podcasts to learn some of the Indigenous, queer history of what is now the USA.

Osh-Tisch

Osh-Tisch was a batée born in the mid-19th-century Crow Nation. Batée is a uniquely Crow gender identity, describing a person assigned male at birth, who performs female as well as specifically batée social roles. Osh-Tisch was renowned for their skills as a craftsperson, their bravery in the 1876 Battle of the Rosebud, and as the best poker player in the region. In the face of attempts by the US government to force assimilation to Western ideas of gender, Osh-Tisch’s community fought for their right to express their identity.

[Image source: Will Roscoe’s Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America]

We'wha

Born c.1849 at Zuni (now in New Mexico), We’wha was a lhamana - a Zuni gender including both masculine and feminine roles. Like many lhamana, We'wha was a highly skilled craftsperson, proficient in both traditionally masculine, and traditionally feminie crafts. In 1885, We’wha travelled to Washington DC as a representative of the Zuni people, where they worked with anthropologists and the Smithsonian museum to demonstrate and share information about Zuni crafts and culture, and met US President Grover Cleveland.

[Image source]

Bíawacheeitchish

Born in the early 1800s, Bíawacheeitchish (Woman Chief) was a Gros Ventre woman who lived amongst the Crow people. She was skilled in traditionally masculine pursuits like riding, hunting and warfare. Polygamy was common amongst the Crow, and Bíawacheeitchish married four women. Her military prowess led to her becoming one of the most respected Crow chiefs.

[Image source]

Kapaemahu

According to Hawai'ian oral histories, in around the 1500s, four healers visited Honolulu from what are now the Society Islands. These healers - named Kapaemahu, Kahalao, Kapuni, and Kinohi, were māhū, a gender recognised in Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawai’ian) culture, with a particular focus on healing and caring roles.

When they departed Hawai'i, the four māhū left behind four huge stones as a memento of their visit, imbued with their healing powers, which are still revered in Hawai'i today.

[Image source]

[aqua-cultured]

Here's an interview in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi

And a half hour documentary on the revitalizing of the language (in ʻōlelo with English subtitles)

And a mele (song) as well

I'm gonna reblog with some videos of people speaking various American Indian/indigenous American languages, because I think most people don't even know what they sound like. Not to be judgement of that—just, you know, I think people who want to be informed should know what they sound like!