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Doctrix Periwinkle's avatar

Fascinating as always, Alice.

As we approach Carnival on my Caribbean island, I am also curious about what impact, if any, cultural traditions of cross dressing/dressing to invert social roles for special occasions might have on tolerance for gender role flexibility. Many European (and especially Catholic) influenced cultures have for centuries had a festival like Mardi Gras or Carnival, where there are costumes that are both gender-bending and also invert social roles, like poorer people dressing up as the king/having various frivolous "king" characters who parade through town. In the Caribbean and Latin America, these are especially famous and locally popular--but the Caribbean and Latin America include both gay-friendly locales (again, hooray Saba, my island home) and places that are violently homophobic (looking at you, Jamaica). I'd be interested to know your thoughts on this.

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Woolie Wool's avatar

I think one aspect missing from your analysis is the influence of indigenous American cultures both on the Americas and on western Europe (through colonization and contact with indigenous peoples). There were many indigenous peoples that were far, far more libertarian culturally, politically, and sexually than almost anywhere in Eurasia before the 20th century.

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