Looking for more factual information in books only made two things stick out: It was a phase I'd get over -- but if I didn't -- I was destined to a life of casual sex in bathroom stalls and I'd end up in the hospital with god-knows-what stuck up my ass (no thanks to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask by David Reuben).

Years later I finally found the book I'd wanted all along: Walter L. Williams's The Spirit and the Flesh. Here was a book that documented the honoring of gay men as integral and sometimes revered members of Native American tribes. As an anthropologist in the '70s, Williams had started gaining recognition for work in American Indian legal studies, when he came across what European missionaries deemed berdaches. From the original Persian bardaj, berdache was a derogatory term for a passive homosexual or a pretty boy. Among several Native American tribes, berdaches are accepted as neither male nor female, but as their own distinct gender. Williams explains that the berdaches are "androgynous to the extent that they combine both masculine and feminine elements in their personality."

Their berdache status usually merits a title within the tribe: the Lakota winkte, the Crow bade or the Navajo nadle, all of which can be loosely translated as "halfman-halfwoman" or "man-woman." In the past, berdaches wore women's clothing, performed women's duties, such as weaving or pottery, and generally took the passive role in sex with men. This wasn't frowned upon; it was often more appropriate to have sex with a berdache than with a female before battle, and it was favorable for a man to marry a berdache, as they often held the wealth of an entire family.

Not only did several tribes accept the berdaches, some practically deified them. The berdaches were frequently the shamans of the tribes and would be given gifts for their prophesying powers. They were considered protected spiritually; stories abounded about their supernatural abilities, and to insult a berdache was to ask for trouble.

All this changed radically with the Spanish invaders' Christian visions of right and wrong. Berdaches were often murdered for committing acts of sodomy. Most tribes eventually hid traditions that Europeans despised, or ignored their heritage in favor of survival. Williams's work to bring this information forward has had an incredible impact on anthropology as well as on gay and lesbian American Indians, some of whom discovered their own history through his writing.

Steven: Have you found examples of the berdache tradition in other cultures?

Walter: Since the book was published I did research among the Yuka Eskimos in Alaska and the Aleuts in Alaska, and found amazingly similar traditions and individuals who identified as such persons. Then I did research in Indonesia, and found similar roles in Indonesian cultures that were amazing, considering this is a totally different part of the world. Yet there seems to be close overlap.

Can you say how they overlapped?

In personality types. I research people's life histories from their earliest memories up to the present -- childhood roles, things they enjoyed doing in terms of play activities, in terms of seeing themselves as different and unique from the average person and recognizing themselves as androgynous. And then on through their adolescence and their beginning sexuality and their attraction to persons of the same sex. In many cases their spirituality as well. All of those things are tied together. It's not that it's just sexuality or just spirituality, or it's just their gender role in terms of what they do in their work; it's all combined.

Does that include the initiation ceremonies in Native American societies?

I don't think there are those similarities, but the societies I looked at don't tend to emphasize initiations as much as American Indians in general. It has to be seen in that context. I also did a brief amount of research in the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia and found very similar traditions there. Most recently my work has been in Polynesia, especially in the South Pacific, among Native Hawaiians. I have been interviewing mahus, and it's extremely similar to the berdache role. They are often the artists and the teachers of Hula.

Hula was originally the religion; each dance tells a story of the mythology and the religious aspect. This is closely connected to that religious role. And mahus are heavily involved in the revitalization of the Hula. They're the most prestigious Kuma Hula (the Hula teachers in Hawaii today).

Have mahus had a similar fight as the Native American berdaches to reclaim their history?

Yes, it's very similar. Christian missionaries came to Hawaii in the early 1800s and severely disrupted the culture. They were able to convert a lot of Native Hawaiians to Christianity, as they did with American Indians. They brought all of these diseases and the population of Hawaii declined to the point that over 90% of the population was lost.

In that trauma and stress, of having all their relatives die, people started listening to the missionaries' message that, "Well, the reason all the people are dying is because you're not following the true religion." Many converted over to Christianity and started absorbing western ideas.

The status of the mahu and the homosexual in general went down. They may have become an object of humor or put-down, but still among Native Hawaiians it's much more accepted than it is in western culture. Especially within the last couple of decades as Native Hawaiians, like American Indians, have been revitalizing their culture into renaissance. With mahus being right at the center of it, they've raised their status quite a bit. I think a lot of Hawaiian people who really respect their traditions, respect the mahus.

Are the mahus similar to Native American berdaches in that they become identified as the third gender?

Yes, but I don't like to use the term "third" because that implies men are the first, women are the second and they are the third; it implies they are lower than the other genders and they are not. In some respect, like the Native American berdache, they are considered above the other genders.

In the book you talk about modern Native Americans who feel more comfortable in urban gay society and seem to go in and out of their traditional roles. Have you noted anything else about these trends since you wrote the book?

One of the amazing things since the book was published in 1986 was that more and more gay and lesbian Indians have come out on their reservations. Or a number of them who have lived in cities have gone back to the reservation, and taken their gay liberationist ideas with them.

It's more prominent and open on reservations than it was in the immediate past, but in the distant past it was much more open. But there's also this cultural revitalization movement of American Indians gaining more respect for their traditions. We have seen the emergence of groups in both urban areas and reservations calling themselves Two-Spirit Persons of the First Nation. They have organized an international gathering every August in different parts of the country. They gather from lots of reservations. They have a week of interchange and workshops and ceremonies; it's very traditional, it's very interesting. I was invited to speak at their gathering in British Columbia a couple of years ago. I spoke about my research and quite a number of them told how much my book had affect them and their families and their reservation.

Did you find yourself relating to the role of the berdache as you discovered more about its traditions?

People have asked me many times, do I think I would have been a berdache? I don't know. I see elements that apply to my own life, yet there are things that are very different. I don't know if I would have been a berdache or the husband of the berdache. The point of bringing this up is not to say, "Okay, this is how it was done in that society, and so therefore we should become like them." That's not the point. The point is to say, "Okay, here are lots of different ways of organizing gender and sexuality in a society." And doing it without a prejudice and homophobia that we see in Western culture. So we can take inspiration in creating a new ethic within our own culture. It doesn't have to be the same as in their culture, but it certainly can draw on the good things from lots of different cultures.

Have you found anything like that happening in modern gay culture?

Oh, I definitely think so. When I started speaking on this before the book was published, very few people were talking about recognizing and accepting our differences. People were more like, "We're the same as heterosexuals expect for what we do in bed." Now I think there's more acceptance and recognition that we don't have to be the same as everybody else. We can value our differences. And see ourselves as having special talents to contribute that maybe the average person would not have.

Does that have anything to do with why you went forward with this work? Needing to know there was a place where homosexuality was accepted? Or was it more because here was a whole section of history being ignored?

It was both of those things. I had been active not only in anthropology but in the historical field in the 1970s; I was cofounder of the Committee on Lesbian and Gay History for the American Historical Association. I was supportive of people doing research on gay and lesbian history, but I thought I couldn't do that myself because it was so depressing; there was so much negativity. Doing research into persecution and discrimination and people being burned at the stake. Then when I learned about the berdache, I thought, "Wait a minute, here's another approach: To look at societies that are not homophobic."

What was so amazing is that one of the world's best examples of these cultures was in the area I was trained to do research on: American Indians. It was kind of a confluence of my background and my personal desire to see more research being done on this. The third factor was that I thought it would have a political impact on this society if people could see that not every society has to be homophobic.

Many societies around the world are not infected with this kind of prejudice. And society works very well without this kind of discrimination. So it shows that it's not homosexuality which is unnatural; what's unnatural is discrimination against homosexuality. Once I had that kind of wider perspective, it gave me a whole different approach to understanding anti-gay discrimination. What I've found over the years is that a lot of people may be homophobic, but it's easier for them to open their minds to think about this in new and different ways when talking about another society than when talking about their own.

If we really want to talk about human behavior, as opposed to behavior in only one society, we've got to recognize that there's more variability among people than any strict norm that applies to everybody. What different societies do to that variability is to pressure people into a certain social norm which may vary widely from one society to another. In New Guinea, they basically pressure every male to be homosexually involved with other males at one time period and yet get married to a woman later on in life. Conversely, in Western culture, traditionally everybody is pressured to be heterosexual. If we look at a society that does not put that kind of pressure on people, (a good example would be the Mohave Indians) what we find is that not everybody is any one thing. Certain people are completely heterosexual and that's okay, and certain people are completely homosexual and that's okay. Then there are many other people, probably the vast majority, who to a greater or lesser extent are maybe sexually involved with both sexes at some point and that's okay. What that says to me is that if societies do not put pressure, what's going to end up resulting is variability, which is a good thing.

You may order a copy of Walter L. William's book The Spirit & The Flesh here.