Nearly half of those interviewed were healers or in the medical profession.
A majority of them, again like their Eastern counterparts, were artistic enough to make a living from their abilities.
This is seen as a mediation between the spirit and mundane worlds.
It is seen as a positive and is almost revered in most Eastern cultures, whereas in Western cultures, people who don’t conform to heteronormative ideals are often seen as sick, disordered, or insufficiently formed.
In Africa, a woman can be recognized as a “female husband” who enjoys all of the privileges of men and is recognized as such, but whose femaleness, while not openly acknowledged, is not forgotten either.
The hijras, of India, are one of the most recognized and socially accepted groups of third genders.
while sociological research in Australia, a country with a third 'X' sex classification, shows that 19% of people born with atypical sex characteristics selected an "X" or "other" option, while 52% are women, 23% men and 6% unsure.
The Open Society Foundations published a report, License to Be Yourself in May 2014, documenting "some of the world's most progressive and rights-based laws and policies that enable trans people to change their gender identity on official documents".A sex/gender system which recognizes only the following two social norms has been labeled "heteronormative". Peletz believes our notions of different types of genders (including the attitudes toward the third gender) deeply affect our lives and reflects our values in society.In Peletz' book, "Gender, Sexuality, and Body Politics in Modern Asia", he describes: For our purposes, the term "gender" designates the cultural categories, symbols, meanings, practices, and institutionalized arrangements bearing on at least five sets of phenomena: (1) females and femininity; (2) males and masculinity; (3) Androgynes, who are partly male and partly female in appearance or of indeterminate sex/gender, as well as intersexed individuals, also known as hermaphrodites, who to one or another degree may have both male and female sexual organs or characteristics; (4) the transgendered, who engage in practices that transgress or transcend normative boundaries and are thus by definition "transgressively gendered"; and (5) neutered or unsexed/ungendered individuals such as eunuchs.This may be a result of the notion of reincarnation, which reduces not only gender categorization but also sex and species, allowing for more fluid and mutable categorization.There are countless other cultures in which the third gender is seen as an intermediate being rather than as a movement from one conventional sex to the other, either male to female or vice versa.