I've just watched a highly interesting documentary film about
Fa'afafine on Samoa: men who live like women.
Apparently, if there aren't enough girls in a family, they simply raise a few boys as girls. They dress like girls, move like girls, speak like girls and do work that is traditionally assigned to women in Samoan society.
As girls are rigorously guarded by their families, young Samoan men have their first sexual encounters with
Fa'afafine. These are straight men, who later marry and have traditional families.
Fa'afafine consider themselves heterosexual women, despite their different... equipment and are sometimes called "the third gender" of Samoa.
They are also fully accepted, even by the Catholic church of Samoa - as long as they don't live with a man as a couple. I don't know what Rome says to it, but as the priest interviewed in the documentary said about such a couple: "I consider them as friends. What they are doing during the night - how can I know?"
I only found German links. For those who understand German, here is one:
http://www.arte-tv.com/de/wissen-entdeckung/geo-360/605538.htmlArte-tv is a joint French-German company, BTW.
Edit: I googled for the thing and did find English links, after all. Try this:
http://www.the-sisterhood.net/transworldnews/id57.html
