Signs

Signs mean different things to different people, however. Veils, headcoverings and scarves mean many things (power, religious solidarity, privacy, modesty, etc.) to the many different groups who wear them. Among the Tuareg of North Africa, for example, men wear face veils; women do not. Furthermore, men do not begin to wear them until they have reached a certain age, thus indicating a link between gender and maturity. El Guindi explains:

The veil is worn continually by men - at home, traveling, during the evening or day, eating or smoking, sleeping and even, according to some sources, during sexual intercourse. To eat, a Tuareg 'carefully raises the veil enough to enable him to eat but not far enough for his mouth to be seen [for if he] ...lowers his veil to eat [he] reveals his low status'[.] A noble, explains Murphy, does not expose his mouth[.] And again, the pattern connecting the veil (or other forms of dress) and maturation, which has been described among a number of groups, exists among the Tuareg. The veil is a mark of maturity. Only as a youth approaches maturity, at about the age of seventeen, does he wear a veil. Unveiled youths and slaves do much of the menial work and the herding. Tuareg women are not face-veiled at all, but they do pull their shawls across the lower parts of their faces when expressing reserve - a behavioral pattern that re-emerges in the ethnography of veiling. (124.)

Even Judeo-Christian rituals point to the tradition of an acquired gender. The acts of becoming a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah, for example, are celebrations of the rites of passage for children who become religiously responsible men and women, respectively, in the eyes of their community. A boy's wearing of the yarmulke, or kippa sugra, and the girl's construction of it ( in certain cases) also help to mark gender differences. A similar ritual occurs among some Episcopalian Christians. At adolescence, Episcopalians become "confirmed" men and women within their religious community.

Gender or Sex?

It's important to emphasize that dress may convey a person's gender, not necessarily their biological sex. For example, in some societies, biological males will become women, and vice-versa, often out of social necessity. In many societies, the roles of men and women are clearly defined in terms of labor and inherited wealth. In the case of some Samoan and Native American societies, if a family has no daughters to perform traditional "women's work," the families will opt to "transform" a biologically male child, into a girl. Among Samoans this "third gender" is known as fa'afafine.

The institution [...] is seen as a necessary adjustment for the proportions of women needed in their balanced society. [...T]hese 'women' find sexual partners amongst young men of their villages, never other fa'afafine. 'That would be lesbianism' explains Mishie, one fa'afafine, with horror. 'We only go with straight men, and we always take the passive role in sex'.' [...] According to the folklore of Polynesian culture, one of the male siblings in a family was often raised as a fa'afafine if there were not enough biological females to deal with domestic chores. 'The child was dressed like a girl and was expected to behave like one - that is, to cook and clean, play nursemaid to elderly relatives [...] When he grew up the fa'afafine would not marry but devote himself to caring for his elderly parents[.]" (Young, 114.)

A similar transition occurs in some northern Albanian families. In cases where a family has only daughters, the family may opt to transform a child who is a biological female into a boy. Because a family's wealth is inherited through males, this transformation allows the wealth to stay within the family, instead of being inherited by a non-blood relative, such as the male spouse of a daughter. These "women who become men" are known as "Sworn Virgins."

Protection

Sometimes genders are switched for protection against evil spirits. The practice was known among some English in the nineteenth century, and elsewhere, explains Pearl Binder:

Girls being universally less valued than boys, every device was used, both in Asia and in Europe, to trick the demons into believing the boy child was really a girl child. In Europe, as recently as a century ago, boys were dressed as girls until the age of seven. (74.)

In Euro-American culture, these people would be branded with labels such as transsexual, transvestite or homosexual. And yet the motives for their dress are not erotic or sexual at all. Dress is simply a means to acquire a new gender in order to achieve social mobility.

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