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<blockquote data-quote="Mean Eyed Cat" data-source="post: 3674927" data-attributes="member: 4564">Very interesting theory.&nbsp; However, how would you explain the role of berdache in most tribal societies?&nbsp; For those that don't know, berdaches are typically males of a tribal society who specialized in the work of women and formed emotional and sexual relationships with other men.&nbsp; They really didn't go out hunting with the other men.&nbsp; There are also female berdaches who took on men's work [such as hunting] and married other women--as seen among some Plains Indians tribes.&nbsp; In many instances, these individuals would also fill a special spiritual role and, therefore, were often times valuable to the tribe.&nbsp; For example, among some California tribes, male berdaches were called upon to bury and mourn the dead, because such close contact with the spirit world was considered too dangerous for others.I know this is taking the subject out of the genetic realm and placing it more in the sociological, but I'm curious how the role of berdaches would be explained from an evolutionary standpoint [if it can be explained at all].&nbsp; Also, I'm interested because my background is in Cultural Anthropology. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />And to tie the subject back into the Forgotten Realms, there are many tribal societies across the face of Faerun.&nbsp; We have the Uthgardt in the northwestern Silver Marches, the Nar in northeastern Faerun, the Shaaran of the southeastern grasslands, and the southwestern Chultan or &quot;Tabaxi&quot; which is a reference to the &quot;one great tribe&quot; that they feel they belong to.&nbsp; I know this is analogous to tribal societies of own world, but I feel that among the tribal societies of Faerun, homosexuality would probably be present and accepted.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mean Eyed Cat, post: 3674927, member: 4564"] Very interesting theory. However, how would you explain the role of [i]berdache[/I] in most tribal societies? For those that don't know, [i]berdaches[/i] are typically males of a tribal society who specialized in the work of women and formed emotional and sexual relationships with other men. They really didn't go out hunting with the other men. There are also female [i]berdaches[/i] who took on men's work [such as hunting] and married other women--as seen among some Plains Indians tribes. In many instances, these individuals would also fill a special spiritual role and, therefore, were often times valuable to the tribe. For example, among some California tribes, male [i]berdaches[/i] were called upon to bury and mourn the dead, because such close contact with the spirit world was considered too dangerous for others. I know this is taking the subject out of the genetic realm and placing it more in the sociological, but I'm curious how the role of [i]berdaches[/i] would be explained from an evolutionary standpoint [if it can be explained at all]. Also, I'm interested because my background is in Cultural Anthropology. :) And to tie the subject back into the Forgotten Realms, there are many tribal societies across the face of Faerun. We have the Uthgardt in the northwestern Silver Marches, the Nar in northeastern Faerun, the Shaaran of the southeastern grasslands, and the southwestern Chultan or "Tabaxi" which is a reference to the "one great tribe" that they feel they belong to. I know this is analogous to tribal societies of own world, but I feel that among the tribal societies of Faerun, homosexuality would probably be present and accepted. [/QUOTE]

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