Five genders found in Indonesia (Nat Geo)

National Geographic, Oct. 21, 2008; CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Ananda, (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Indonesia is the site of the world's largest excavated Buddhist temple complex: Borobudur

Five Genders? | National Geographic

(National Geographic) Through many options for gender expression, including recognizing five genders, this [indigenous] Indonesian community finds balance and peace and prays to share this with the world. It is not part of the original Buddhism that covered the island, nor the subsequent Hindu and Islamic influences that dominate today.

This funded white lab coat says I'm the authority.

WQ COMMENTARY: Does having five basic genders make sense? It does and has since ancient times. Even ancient India recognized that some people might be:

1. male,
2. female,
3. ambiguous or androgynous (both male and female)
4. male feeling like a female
5. female feeling like a male.

If the last two want to identify not as they were born but as they now feel, we might well designate those individuals "transgender" or transsexuals or crossdressers or expressive nonnormative individuals.

Group 3 used to be called hermaphrodites with attendant organs or vestigial components of both organs and/or chromosomal deviations from the standard binary categorization the medical field imposes on a population. Moreover, it would make sense that some humans are asexual (not sexual), eunuchs (neutered/spayed), or gay, bisexual, heterosexual, pansexual, or questioning and fluid, "heteroflexible."

So while this might seem confusing, it is actually not that complex. The growing complexity of LGBTQIA[LMNOP]+ is confusing and left undefined.

This discussion already took place in ancient Buddhist times, and the great commentator Ven. Buddhaghosa and others of his day opined that apart from males and females, they are pandakas ("perverts," deviants, gender-benders, crossdressers, humans with ambiguous genitalia and therefore "eunuchs," which could be karmic in origin -- usually spoken of as the result of past sexual misconduct -- or simply within a biological spectrum of what's normal for human earthlings, as opposed to the humanoids that live elsewhere throughout the galaxy and universe, within and outside of this world-system).

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