How is American Samoa not a country? It's a country whose government is run by another country, sure, but history is stiff with examples of that - at one point it was probably as common as not. Unless it becomes a state of the Union or merges with Western Samoa, it's a country within the meaning of the act for all sporting events and similar jamborees.
The main point of your post, about the trans player is ace, because my guess is that 99.999% of people have no idea that there's anywhere on earth where it's normal to be trans, and that knowledge ought to be general. It's weird, because I had the impression that American Samoa was a deeply Christian country - I read somewhere that at one point you couldn't even get into their football squad unless you were a Christian. Now I'm not saying it's impossible to be Christian and trans, or Christian and cool about people who are, but a lot of heads are going to explode while they process this.
Hell, Northern Ireland is a country for some sporting purposes.
Manu Samoa don't train on Sundays, because that would interfere with the Sabbath.
Northern Ireland is the analogy here, given that there's an independent country of Samoa. I guess if Northern Ireland is a nation for the purpose of sport, there's nothing strange about American Samoa being the same.
I shouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows about what it's like for fa'afafine in Samoa (or at least what it was like in the mid-90s) -- there's certainly stuff that I'd call the equivalent of sexism. But there isn't the baseline ooo-that-'s-disturbing reaction, it's perfectly normal.
And Samoa is deeply Christian, they're just mostly not jerks about fa'afafine. Some sects, a bit, but not mostly.
Fa'afafine are a pretty fascinating thing.
The interaction with the Christianity is quite interesting as well.
The Northern Ireland thing confused me for a minute. I thought Fa'afine was one of Fionn mac Cumhaill's companions.
The Wikipedia article could use some help.
Argh. The longer it's been, the worse my Samoan gets. The word is fa'afafine, not fa'afine. I went back and fixed all the prior misspellings.
With proper care, your Samoan should stay in good shape for decades.
Actually, Keir, I was wondering if the large NZ Samoan population (and is there an analog to fa'afafine in Maori culture?) has had an effect making trans issues easier or saner in NZ politics generally. It seems as if it should, but I don't know.
This fa'afafine concept is fascinating; I've never heard of it. (Roughly, what's the translation? I can't tell if I should be referring to these people as "the fa'afafines", or referring to people who "are" fa'afafine, or people who have been chosen to fa'afafine, or what.)
Googling, it seems that somewhere between most and many [fa'afafines] go on to marry women, even though they otherwise continue to live their lives "as" women. Is that right? It makes sense, I guess, since they're chosen for the roles by their parents well before their sexual orientation could be known.
From the poorly edited Wiki in 7, it doesn't sound exactly like they are "chosen for the role" by their parents. That would be a different kind of thing than your parents seeing the role the child was tending toward and not imposing a narrowly constructed gender role.
I shouldn't be opining as the great authority on the concept, given that all my expertise is from two years living there; anyone with more knowledge who happens to be reading should come in and straighten me out.
But AFAIK, the 'chosen for the roles by their parents' bit is a little misleading. There are a couple of things going on: first, household work is strongly gendered, and largely done by kids and teens. Boys do boy work (cooking, gardening), girls do girl work (cleaning, laundry, weaving mats). If you've got a household with a gender imbalance, you've got a problem getting the work done. So families will pick a boy to do the girl work where there aren't enough girls, and treat him as a girl, raising him fa'a (like, in the manner of) fafine (a woman). (Same thing happens with girls, but it's less formalized).
What makes it a little more complicated is that kid fa'afafine don't necessarily stay fa'afafine. Sometime in the teen years, a boy who's been raised as a fa'afafine may decide it's not working for him, and go back to being a boy -- they end up with some effeminate mannerisms and household skills, but are just ordinary adult men, gender-performance wise, mostly. And a kid who hasn't been raised as a fa'afafine may decide that he is one, and start dressing and acting as a girl of his own accord. So the population of ten-year-old fa'afafine, who are chosen and raised by their parents as such, isn't anything like a perfect overlap with the population of twenty-year-old fa'afafine, composed in reasonably large part of people who opted in.
Now, parents will pick the boy who seems to be that way inclined to raise as a girl, so you do get a fair number of fa'afafine who are raised that way and remain fa'afafine through adulthood. But it's still a voluntary opt-in/opt-out status for adults.
I don't know, to be honest. I don't think it does much, but then trans issues are a kinda weird one, because fa'afafine aren't precisely trans in a western sense.
In NZ, as a rule, Polynesian communities are (a) socially conservative and (b) very solidly Labour, even though Labour aren't very socially conservative.
New Zealand had a trans MP in Georgina Beyer, who was elected in the semi-rural constituency of the Wairarapa. So that mught be something.
Oh, and the word is a noun. I'm a woman, you're a man, she's a fa'afafaine.
Interestingly, for me, with Polynesian languages pluralising the noun according to English rules seems really awkward. (Given that in Polynesian languages nouns don't change with number.)
So I wouldn't say fa'afafines, only fa'afafine. Which is a funny shiboleth to have.
In NZ, as a rule, Polynesian communities are (a) socially conservative and (b) very solidly Labour, even though Labour aren't very socially conservative.
A bit like the British working class then.
How does a tradition like this arise? If there was simply a recognition that some people aren't binary, you'd expect a f/m equivalent. It seems more likely that fa'afafine had a specific economic or social function in traditional society, but I can't think what it would be and Wikipedia ain't telling.
If you've got a household with a gender imbalance, you've got a problem getting the work done. So families will pick a boy to do the girl work where there aren't enough girls, and treat him as a girl, raising him fa'a (like, in the manner of) fafine (a woman). (Same thing happens with girls, but it's less formalized).
Something similar happens with women in Albania - if there's no man to take over the farm (because he's been killed in a vendetta), then there's a provision in the Kanun for women to officially take on a male role. And wouldn't that have been an interesting twist to put into "The Godfather"?
Custom's dying out though.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/world/europe/25virgins.html?pagewanted=all
Yay, ajaye already mentioned the Albanian sworn virgins! There's a new documentary that will eventually show up on PBS about the waria in Indonesia, but I don't know a ton about it yet. It's interesting to me how often US people assume that other cultures must share our "trans is weirder than gay" hierarchy, when in fact it's in some ways I think it's more common to have a third-sex role of some sort than acceptable same-sex couplings. But I just know anecdotes, of course.
I wonder if Western Samoa's rugby league team have ever had one? I suspect the Rothmans Yearbook probably wouldn't know.
17: There was a female equivalent, just not as formalized. Girls were sometimes raised to do boy chores, and at least one of my students who had been was in a same-sex relationship with another girl. (That is, they had a tendency to emerge from the same bit of shrubbery with leaves in their hair.)
So if the American Samoans have good soccer players, transgendered or uhhh non-transgendered, why hasn't the United States taken them over absorbed them into its national team? A carrier battle group friendly invitation would work wonders. I mean, what good is being a superpower if we can't get the best possible side for the Qatar World Cup? Possible campaign issue in 2012.
The usual rule here (for olympics, soccer may be different) is that they'd be eligible for either the US or American Samoa national team, but once you pick one you can't switch. Tim Duncan is from the US Virgin Islands which used to not have a basketball team, so he played for the US. Now they do have a team but he's not allowed to play for it (but he also refused to play against it).
I'm a bit uncomfortable with the use of transgendered in the Western sense here. It seems like they are very real differences, culturally, and historically between the two concepts, even if there's an overlap at some level.
re: 20
I remember reading an interview with some English player (Union, I think, but it might have been League) in which he talked of meeting his Polynesian team mate's 'sister' [who was fa'afafaine].
22: They have terrible soccer players. They just won their first game ever this season, I think.
So the population of ten-year-old fa'afafine, who are chosen and raised by their parents as such, isn't anything like a perfect overlap with the population of twenty-year-old fa'afafine, composed in reasonably large part of people who opted in.
Ah, this was the part that didn't come through in the articles I'd looked at (which is why the "chosen by their parents" phrase seemed right to me).
Although, in some ways that makes it even more odd that most fa'afafine boys who grow into fa'afafine adults (continuing to dress as women, etc.) would marry women. You'd think they'd mostly just re-identify as men? Or maybe I'm still not understanding the dynamic very well.
25: The OP gives the impression that they qualified for the world cup, in fact they did not come close to qualifying but did win their. first ever international game and came close to winning their pool in qualifiers.
they'd be eligible for either the US or American Samoa national team, but once you pick one you can't switch.
In Samoa, trans-soccer-ism is abhorred.
I'd just like to point out, even though no one is really doing this in this thread (which is great!), that my experience in HS as part of the queer scene was that queer and transgendered kids can get really annoyed by false equivalencies between different cultural codes and responses to their status. Back in the early 90s, it was all about well-meaning guidance counselors bringing up the example of "berdaches" (now, more properly "two-spirit") as a reason for kids not to feel so alienated or whatever. But queer and trans kids are not stupid, so they do not see a reason to be particularly happy that some people who were sort of like them but mostly not, and who lived in a totally different culture, were not subjected to the same cruelties and structural oppressions they face. So, just be on your guard, I guess.
But queer and trans kids are not stupid...
Just by chance, in any given school of sufficient size some of them are very likely to be stupid. Maybe your guidance counselors were trying to them specifically as opposed to queer and trans kids in general.
31: Well, I am a lot smarter than most people, so perhaps I'm just not seeing the subtle nuances of stupidity that flow and eddy through the populace.
26: It's not my impression that most adult fa'afafine do marry women -- I'm not sure what your source for that is. It could be true, and I could just be very confused, but I don't think it is.
22: I'm a bit uncomfortable with the use of transgendered in the Western sense here. It seems like they are very real differences, culturally, and historically between the two concepts, even if there's an overlap at some level.
Certainly, it's true that fa'afafine aren't American/UK/European/Australia/NZ transgendered people, it's a culturally and historically specific thing. On the other hand, 'transgendered' isn't a terribly specific concept -- in a Western context, it can cover all sorts of people who present in very different ways. 'Transgendered' seems to me to be loosely enough defined to be used as an umbrella term to refer to Western trans people as well as various culturally specific practices including fa'afafine, berdache/third-spirit, and so on. (Although if someone with more knowledge of the politics told me it was offensive to use it as such, I'd back off.)
30: I wasn't thinking of the story so much as cheerfully patronizing rooting for trans people ("Look, your kind can be non-ostracised and even professional athletes") so much as an object lesson for cis people ("Look, there are entire countries full of cis people who aren't freaked out by trans people -- they're not making some huge effort to be tolerant, it's just not a big thing. Maybe you can get over your belief that you're ineradicably viscerally disturbed by anyone trans.")
For what it's worth, Saelua is quoted in many articles saying "I just go out and play soccer as a soccer player. Not as transgender, not as a boy and not as a girl. Just as a soccer player." Which suggests that she's comfortable with transgender as an umbrella term describing herself.
35: that might not be what she actually said; the journalist could have translated fa'afafine in order to make things clearer for their readers.
Good point. One should never trust quotes from journalists. In fact she could have said something rather different and the journalist could have just taken poor notes. According to journalists it's more unethical to double-check a quote with a source than it is to misquote someone.
(I'm actually not being tongue-in-cheek here, you're totally right that there's no reason to believe journalists quote anyone accurately unless the original quote is in writing.)
That seems like an implausible substitution to me -- I'd think a journalist would be more likely to leave the unfamiliar word in for color, and explain it -- although of course anything can happen. OTOH, I do bet that Saelua used the word 'transgender' rather than 'fa'afafine' in the hopes of being clear to a non-Samoan audience.
A journalist would be more likely to do pretty much anything.
For the record, American Samoa's great achievement is not qualifying for the World Cup (they've just been kicked out of qualifying), but rather winning their first game, ever.
Well, it's not a soccer country (and it's a very small country). Rugby's their thing. A lot of casual volleyball, too, but I don't think they do international competition. And a local version of cricket with a locally made bat that's more of a club, and that tends to lead to really epic fights.
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Only the Brits will have a clue what this is about, but I just watched Paul McMullen's evidence to the Leveson inquiry and it was the most extraordinary broadcast I will ever see. "Privacy is for paedophiles!"; "Hacking of Milly Dowler's phone was not bad thing for journalist to do"...
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Amazing, wasn't it.
"Is phone hacking always immoral? Well, no, it's illegal but you can see it would be morally OK in cases of extreme public interest like impending war or something. And I define the public interest as "what the public is interested in - and buys newspapers to read about". Therefore anything we, the most popular newspaper in the country, do to get a story is ipso facto in the public interest."
Only slightly changed for brevity.
Oh, man.
McMullan says he regrets the stories he did on Jennifer Elliott, the daughter of actor Denholm Elliott.
She became a drug user and started begging following the death of her father and the News of the World exposed this.
"I really regret it because I'd got to know her very well and I really quite liked her. The fact she was begging outside Chalk Farm station came from a police officer, who had been surprised when he asked her to move on.
"I went too far on that story. Someone crying out for help, not crying out for a News of the World reporter.
"I then took her back to her flat and took a load of pictures of her topless.
"Then she went on TV and described me as her boyfriend."
He adds:
"When I heard a few years later that she'd killed herself I thought 'Yeah that's one I really regret.' But there's not many."
Good lord. If I heard that out of context I would assume it was fiction -- that no one could possibly be such a jerk.
It's interesting that looking at all the Wikipedia examples under "Third gender," traditional-society-based transgender roles seem to be predominantly MTF rather than FTM: India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Polynesia, miscellaneous places in Africa and Latin America. Exceptions seem to be Albania and the Dominican Republic (where it may be associated with a genetic abnormality).
Keir, that page also specifies whakawahine as the Maori equivalent of fa'afafine. Does that help at all?
McMullan is a real piece of work, isn't he? Le Carre could have invented him, an utterly unprincipled scalphunter trying to crab his way back towards something approaching morality, but giving the impression he doesn't really understand it. He's only heard that other people have ethics and therefore his stabs at it are weird.
McMullan says News International has been "cosying up" to prime ministers for 21 years from the moment Margaret Thatcher "tapped up Murdoch" and asked him to back her.
He claims Cameron had a lot owing and alleges he turned a blind eye to illegal activities.
"He ends up with Murdoch lite - James - and Rebekah Brooks. For 21 years you have a culture of illegality of phone hacking and fiddling your expenses and so on, under Rebekah Brooks. What you have is a future prime minister cosying up and being moulded by the arch-criminal, Rebekah Brooks, the criminal-in-chief."
So he misappropriated a NI surveillance team and set it to watch the prime minister:
McMullan reveals he stuck a surveillance van outside Rebekah Brooks's house in recent months in the hope of getting a story linking her to Cameron.
And he has "spent a while in the Cotswolds and the pubs where they used to meet each other".
"I thought what a great story [if I catch them plotting with Cameron] ... this is my Watergate, I'm going to bring down the government. I didn't mean to bring down the News of the World, but I got nothing. I'm entirely responsible for the reopening of the investigation of Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks and the revelations about Milly Dowler and here we are today."
46: This is something that I don't have any evidence at all for -- it's pure speculation. But in Samoa, there was a parallel practice for girls, it just wasn't really talked about or reified -- I don't even know the word for 'girl raised to do boy chores' (should be 'fa'a[man]', but I'm blanking on the word for man-as-in-male as opposed to man-as-in-human, and I certainly never heard the word used in Samoa). I've wondered if the missionary influence deemphasized it/pushed it under the rug, in the same way that Victorians were horrified about male homosexuality and sort of pretended female homosexuality didn't exist.
45: I should have linked to the source - it's from the Guardian's liveblog, which has lots more startling stuff.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/nov/29/leveson-inquiry-nick-davies-paul-mcmullan-live
Also this gem -
"We did all these things for the editors, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson...They're the scum of journalism for trying to drop me and my colleagues in it."
That's right, Paul. All you did was exploit a homeless drug addict to sell softcore, as a result of which she killed herself. But Brooks is scum because she tried to get you into trouble. How dare she?
45: Yes. Even if you thought like that, I can't figure how you could say it aloud without knowing the self-awareness to know what it sounds like to others.
Huh. Tama is boy, not man, but nothing says it has to be perfectly parallel.
In the light of the Leveson subthread, is there something similar for "brought up as a rat"?
Can't remember 'rat', but dog is malie, and is insulting. Fa'amalie isn't a Samoan word that I know, but I'm pretty sure it'd be understood and and would piss people off something fierce.
Pissing off Samoans being something you want to do regularly, of course.
Well, if you're going to, might as well be efficient about it. Unflattering comparisons to Tongans are also good.
I don't generally approve of long distance diagnosis, but if I was a novelist trying to write a realistic psychopath, I'd go back to that Leveson material.
Oh, he's not a psychopath - he's an ordinary man in the Christopher R. Browning sense. He was only obeying orders, after all. He regrets his actions, but the public wanted them and the editors ordered him to give them what they wanted. He's got a whole Nuremberg/A Few Good Men rationalisation system.
Sorta related, via Frowner, the story of a Brandon Darby-esque provocateur in the New Left.
In one sense I'm not surprised by McMullan's comments. He was on Newsnight and said mroe or less the same stuff - no regrets, privacy is for evil people etc. But I'm actually pretty staggered he's willing to say it all so bluntly to a judicial inquiry. He's probably going to be single handedly responsible for statutory regulation.
I suspect this might be a watershed for print journalism in a way that statutory regulation wouldn't be on its own. Joe Public likes eating red meat, but not so fond of taking a tour of the slaughterhouse.
That's right, Paul. All you did was exploit a homeless drug addict to sell softcore, as a result of which she killed herself. But Brooks is scum because she tried to get you into trouble. How dare she?
She's the scum of journalism. Journalists are a clan and to betray a fellow journalist is to be a traitor, lower than dirt. Standard fascist thinking. I wonder if he starts respecting her if he thinks of her as a double agent who was secretly working for the journalists' nemesis, the politicians.
37
According to journalists it's more unethical to double-check a quote with a source than it is to misquote someone.
I don't think any more highly of the corporate/mainstream/so-called-liberal/Very Serious People media than most people here do, but I don't think this is quite right. It's not that double-checking a quote with a source is bad; it's just that double-checking quotes is the limit of the amount of control reporters are supposed to give the subjects of articles. If you tell them more than that then there's too much of a chance of them trying to get you to change it or act on it in advance of publication or something, but you can't really begrudge someone checking for genuine accuracy of quotes that are allegedly word for word. Obviously, this presumes an adversarial model of journalism that seems to be rare and marginalized these days, especially in mainstream, national-level reporting. But in theory the standard doesn't seem bad.
I'm not as familiar with McMullan and the News of the World as the UK people here are, but it seems to me no more representative of journalists than Bernie Madoff is of bankers. Yeah, sure, the profession has certain standards that may seem shady to outsiders, and sociopaths have been remarkably successful in it in recent years, but the average journalist doesn't consciously emulate those people.
Wakawhahine is just the cognate term though --- waka wahine, as a wahine. I don't think there's an equivalently prevalent practice.
Where does the Boo Yaa tribe stand on these issues?
There was a very interesting discussion of this on a science journalism blog here. Even in *science* journalism, where you'd expect this to be a cut-and-dry situation (there's not an adversarial political issue in most cases, scientists really care about the truth, and journalists have a lot of trouble understanding science) lots and lots of journalists opinion was "you can never under any circumstances show part of an article, including direct quotes, to a source or else you are committing a deadly sin."
69: the distinction is between "let me just check that I understand you correctly" - because a lot of the time people will misspeak - and "giving the source a veto on quotes" which is WRONG.