Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations by Serena Nanda

This was a very readable book about the idea of gender and how it's not as black and white as some would love to make it. It basically takes a look at different cultures and documents how they view gender. When we think gender, in the Westernized society we live in (that I am sometimes not that happy about being a part of) we think of only two possibilities, male and female. Homosexuals are still men or women if they like someone of the same gender, they're just weird *dripping with sarcasm*. However, what we fail to realize (when I say we I mean main stream society, the mob, the collective) is that the concept of gender is a mental construction. What we see as fact and set in stone, is about as whimsically held together as a kite made out of feathers, it can fall apart at any time. As nature doesn't provide only two types of human beings, society must come to see that more than two types of human beings exist. Some cultures take this better than others and that is the point of this book. In some cultures there are three or four genders, and in some cultures other manifestations of sexual preference or gender are revered.

This book looks at various cultures around the world and how they deal with the issue of gender. It's a short read, but a fun one.