Treći rod je koncept po kojem neki pojedinci kategoriziraju sami sebe kao ni muškarci ni žene ili ih društvo tako kategorizira. To je također socijalna kategorija prisutna u društvima koja prepoznaju tri ili više spolova. Pod pojmom treće obično se razumijeva ostali; neki antropolozi i sociolozi opisali su četvrti,[1] peti,[2] i "neki"[3] spol.
Osobno ili društveno identificiranje osobe kao muškarac, žena ili drugo, obično je definirano i rodnim identitetom pojedinca i rodnom ulogom u određenoj kulturi u kojoj živi. Nemaju sve kulture strogo definirane rodne uloge.[4][5][6]
U različitim kulturama treći ili četvrti spol mogu predstavljati vrlo različite stvari. Havajcima i Tahićanima, māhū je srednje stanje između muškarca i žene, ili „osoba neodređenog spola”.[7] Neki tradicionalni Diné Indijanci jugozapadnog SAD-a priznaju spektar četiri roda: ženstvene žene, muževne žene, ženstvene muškarce i muževne muškarce.[8] Pojam „treći spol” je također bio korišten za opisivanje hidžri iz Indije[9] koji su stekli pravni identitet, fa'afafine u Polineziji i albanske zaklete djevice virdžine.[10]
Iako se nalaze u brojnim nezapadnjačkim kulturama, koncepti treće, četvrte i neke rodne uloge i dalje su novitet u mainstream zapadnoj kulturi i konceptualnoj misli.[11] Koncept se najbolje prihvaća u modernim LGBT ili queer supkulturama. Zapadnjački znanstvenici, osobito antropolozi, koji su pokušali pisati o južnoazijskim hidžrama ili indijanskim rodnim varijantama i ljudima dvojakog duha - često nastojali razumjeti pojam treći rod isključivo na jeziku suvremenog LGBT-a zajednice. No, drugi znanstvenici ističu da je nedostatak kulturnih razumijevanja i konteksta zapadnjačkih znanstvenika glavne struje doveo do raširenog pogrešnog predstavljanja ljudi trećeg spola, kao i do pogrešnog predstavljanja nezapadnjačkih stranih kultura uključujući i to da li se koncept LGBT-a zapravo uopće može primijeniti na te kulture.[12][13][14][15]
Trumbach, Randolph (1994). London’s Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture. In Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, edited by Gilbert Herdt, 111-36. New York: Zone (MIT). ISBN 978-0-942299-82-3 LeBow, Diana, Rethinking Matriliny Among the Hopi, p.8.
Schlegel, Alice, Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority, in Quarterly Journal of Ideology: "A Critique of the Conventional Wisdom", vol. VIII, no. 4, 1984, pp.44–52
100 Native Americans Who Shaped American History, Juettner, 2007.
Young, Antonia (2000). Women Who Become Men: Albanian Sworn Virgins. ISBN 1-85973-335-2 McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms 2011 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York, McGraw Hill.
Pember, Mary Annette. 13. listopada 2016. 'Two Spirit' Tradition Far From Ubiquitous Among Tribes. Rewire. Pristupljeno 17. listopada 2016.. Unfortunately, depending on an oral tradition to impart our ways to future generations opened the floodgates for early non-Native explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists to write books describing Native peoples and therefore bolstering their own role as experts. These writings were and still are entrenched in the perspective of the authors who were and are mostly white men.
de Vries, Kylan Mattias. 2009. Berdache (Two-Spirit). O'Brien, Jodi (ur.). Encyclopedia of gender and society. SAGE. Los Angeles. str. 64. ISBN 9781412909167. Pristupljeno 6. ožujka 2015.. [Two-Spirit] implies that the individual is both male and female and that these aspects are intertwined within them. The term moves away from traditional Native American/First Nations cultural identities and meanings of sexuality and gender variance. It does not take into account the terms and meanings from individual nations and tribes. ... Although two-spirit implies to some a spiritual nature, that one holds the spirit of two, both male and female, traditional Native Americans/First Nations peoples view this as a Western concept.
Kehoe, Alice B. 2002. Appropriate Terms. SAA Bulletin. Society for American Archaeology 16(2), UC-Santa Barbara. ISSN 0741-5672. Inačica izvorne stranice arhivirana 5. studenoga 2004. Pristupljeno 1. svibnja 2019.. At the conferences that produced the book, Two-Spirited People, I heard several First Nations people describe themselves as very much unitary, neither "male" nor "female," much less a pair in one body. Nor did they report an assumption of duality within one body as a common concept within reservation communities; rather, people confided dismay at the Western proclivity for dichotomies. Outside Indo-European-speaking societies, "gender" would not be relevant to the social personae glosses "men" and "women," and "third gender" likely would be meaningless. The unsavory word "berdache" certainly ought to be ditched (Jacobs et al. 1997:3-5), but the urban American neologism "two-spirit" can be misleading.
