Māhū

In Native Hawaiian and Tahitian cultures, a “third gender” of people who embody both a male and female spirit. They are respected healers, caretakers, and teachers. Nearly erased by Christian colonizers in the 1800s, there has been a resurgence among Native Hawaiians and Tahitians to reclaim the māhū identity and their cultural understandings of gender. Māhū gender expression is considered to be very fluid. Mahukane is a newly coined term of empowerment in Hawai’i, representing people assigned female at birth who have a masculine gender expression/identity; mahuwahine is another newly coined term of empowerment, representing people assigned male at birth who have a feminine gender expression/identity. Note: When living in another country or visiting other states that don't have the same cultural genders, people with these identities may code-switch and call themselves trans women, trans men, or non-binary in order for their gender to be legible to others. For more.