this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
916 points (98.4% liked)
Funny
13857 readers
1368 users here now
General rules:
- Be kind.
- All posts must make an attempt to be funny.
- Obey the general sh.itjust.works instance rules.
- No politics or political figures. There are plenty of other politics communities to choose from.
- Don't post anything grotesque or potentially illegal. Examples include pornography, gore, animal cruelty, inappropriate jokes involving kids, etc.
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Where do you come from, if you don't mind me asking. Because your birthplace sounds AWESOME
I don't want to say specifically where I'm from, but I am originally from South East Asia. A common theory for the relative gender equality is because of the sea-faring, nomadic culture of Austronesians, who populated South East Asia and later the Pacific. Apparently, because of the lifestyle and constant movement, the workload is distributed between men and women, which promotes egalitarianism. Similar thing is observed on Native Americans and hunter gatherer cultures. I don't know how solid the theory is but I will have to read more on it.
Even with South East Asia now being a "settled" society, and Abrahamic religions introducing some patriarchal ideas, the egalitarian value still largely remains as far as I can tell. There is remarkably more women in management roles in South East Asia compared to other countries. Many Westerners even noted how there are many female security guards in my home country.
Being generic here, but the concept of Hijra is not controversial or unaccepted across SE asia, correct? Or at least to the best of my knowledge (Cambodia and Burma).
I tend to pose just having such uncontested language goes a long way for gender roles (and conformance) not being such a puritanical binary like it is in the American anglosphere.
The hijra are on South Asia or the Indian subcontinent. I don't know exactly what their social status is but it might differ from one part of South Asia to another.
I don't know much about Burma and Cambodia so I can't comment. Barring Malaysia and Indonesia, since they are Muslim-majority countries, the lgbt community in Philippines and Thailand is widespread and less stigmatised. We all know how accepting Thailand is of lgbt, and in Philippines many gays and lesbians are tolerated, but not accepted due to Catholic reasons for still refusing same sex marriage. However, before the Spanish colonisation of Philippines, gay men or bakla were conferred a special status as clerics in religious occasions, similar to hijra in South Asia and third spirit among Native Americans. Despite the Christian influence, the tolerance of lgbt in Philippines is still intact.
Austronesian languages are not gendered. There is no he or she. Probably the closest translation of singular pronouns to English from Austronesian languages is "they", which may sound awkward to gendered language speakers.