Hawai’ian sexuality and the ‘Mahu’ tradition
[Transgendered and transexual individuals greatly disturb most God-fearing Christians, who believe that everything other than ‘conventional’ marital sex is a mortal sin. The ancient Hawaiians were not as tightly strung, in their graceful understanding that all human beings possess a complete Tao of male and female qualities within themselves. ‘Mahu’ is a Hawaiian term that describes a man who has chosen to live as a woman and in the ancient (pre-missionary) culture, such individuals were respected and regarded as important members of the community. (The still image shown above is that of a Hawaiian transgender hula group, taken from the 2001 Kathryn Xian and Brent Anbe documentary on traditional Hawaiian sexual attitudes).]
Hawaiian Sexuality and the Mahu Tradition….
“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in its proportion.”
-(Sir) Francis Bacon
One of the very genuine concerns that cultivating a broad awareness within the human brain generates is that eventually, after a certain posture of open-mindedness is attained, nothing seemingly has the same potential to shake one’s sense of philosophical and moral balance as it might formerly have been able to; while ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ is not an apt analogue to employ here, the effect is arguably parallel. In that…
