Summary: Brian Joseph Gilley -Two-Spirit Men’s Sexual Survivance

Anthropologist Brian Joseph Gilley’s article, Two-Spirit Men’s Sexual Survivance against the Inequality of Desire shows us how sexuality was removed as an aspect of American Indian gender-diversity while “arguing for the reincorporation of sexual desire into examinations of contemporary gender-diversity traditions.” (124)  Gilley argues that by not emphasizing sexual preference, the Indigenous gay movement refocused conceptions of Native sexuality and gender studies into a feminist third wave. Gilley proceeds to examining the ways that Two-Spirit people “experience their positionality as it is based in dominant perceptions and action of aversion toward their sexuality and gender.”(123)  In order to do this, Gilley provides an examination of desire as a “conception through which subject relations of inequality are acted out.” (124)  Endorsement by communities of specific forms of sexuality generates Inequalities of desire.  Subsequently, “legitimate” sexual partnering emerges “from a cultural history where power relations act to reinforce precise forms of corporeal desire and pleasure. . . By endorsing specific forms of heterosexuality as legitimately Indian, or tribally specific, heteronormative sexual ideologies create the impossibility of a socially recognized Two-Spirit role.” (124)

Since the 1990’s there has been a Western trend of focusing on historic and contemporary forms of gender diversity which reflected the intellectual trend of “playing down” sexual practice.   Anthropologist Will Roscoe continues this trend of deemphasizing sexuality, which caused the trend to become more influential within academic and activist circles.   Around the same time, the term Two-Spirit eventually replaced Berdache.  Two-Spirit refers to a personal subjectivity consisting of one male and one female spirit. (127)   Two articles greatly influenced the term Two-Spirit titled: And We Are Still Here and Two-Spirit People.  Two-Spirit People, argued that a contemporary Native identity was needed that recognized multiple forms of gender and sexual identities.  It also separated sexuality from one’s role within one’s society, which “led to a significant reworking of the way the “berdake” past was conceived and bolstered the social cause of contemporary GLBTQ Natives who wanted to emphasize their cultural identity over their sexual preference.” (127)  The placing of culture over sexual orientation associated Two-Spirit people with the popular gay culture, pushed same-sex desire to the sidelines,  and essentially obscured the understanding of the experiences of gay Native peoples:  In arguing that Two-Spirit identity is less about sexual desire and more about culture, scholars of Native gender diversity fail to recognize that mainstream dominant Indian society views Two-Spirit people according to broadly American notions about “homosexuality”.(128) 

Gilley argues that viewing Two-Spirit peoples in this way will inevitably lead to a discernment of qualities by the communities that Two-Spirit people wish to participate in.   This creates a bias by non-gay Indians to equate Two-Spirit people with their same-sex desire not their cultural competency, which in turn frustrates their “desire for social belonging by equating their personal identity with their sexual orientation.” (128)  Gilley claims that to avoid conceptualizing same-sex sexuality as extraordinary to a society, desire must be problematized:  “To do this requires an understanding of the whole of desire as not sexual desire but also individual longing for self-acceptance in one’s community, and a socially affirmed identity that represents how one sees oneself.” (128) 

Contemporary Two-Spirit sexuality is at the center of Indigeneity and desire which indicates a problem for social theorist conceiving Two-Spirit sexuality: “the act of claiming ancient rights and historic gender continuity at the same time as engaging in what might appear as explicitly modern sexual circulation.” (129)  Gilley argues for an understanding of “GLBTQ2 men’s sexuality originating in the axes of Native and gay and tribally specific sovereign sexuality, of the historical, original, and contemporary.” (129)   In essence, he believes we must move beyond desire as an identity.  This can be accomplished through “sexual survivance”, where Two-Spirit men can apply Indian-specific meanings about conquest, race, colonialism, sovereignty, and desire.