In a series of ethnological volumes on homosexualities - African, Central and South American, Muslim and and Oceanic - I have culled literature by anthropologists and by other visitors to and residents of many societies. Below, I am going to embark on a whirlwind tour of the world, but I want to begin with an even briefer (and even more America-centered) historical overview. Boas's students and their students, the first two generations trained as cultural anthropologists, briefly noted gender variant roles, and like earlier and other Euro-American observers, fitted the phenomena into whatever notions were prominent in their own culture. Early on, this meant treating gender and/or sexual variance as instances of 'hermaphrodites'. That categorization was followed by Freudian, feminist, rebel-romanticizing, New Age spiritualist and other projections. Although some anthropologists endeavoured to explain 'niches' for 'deviants' during the 1930s, others 'defended' what they considered 'their people' from the charge of engaging in or accepting 'homosexuality'.
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