Editing Third gender (section)

====Inca====
Andean Studies scholar Michael Horswell writes that third-gendered ritual attendants to ''chuqui chinchay'', a [[jaguar]] deity in [[Incan mythology]], were "vital actors in Andean ceremonies" prior to [[Spanish Empire|Spanish colonisation]]. Horswell elaborates: "These ''quariwarmi'' (men-women) [[shaman]]s mediated between the symmetrically dualistic spheres of Andean cosmology and daily life by performing rituals that at times required same-sex erotic practices. Their transvested attire served as a visible sign of a third space that negotiated between the masculine and the feminine, the present and the past, the living and the dead. Their shamanic presence invoked the androgynous creative force often represented in Andean mythology."<ref>Horswell, Michael J. (2006). ''Transculturating Tropes of Sexuality, ''Tinkuy'', and Third Gender in the Andes'', introduction to "Decolonizing the Sodomite: Queer Tropes of Sexuality in Colonial Andean Culture". {{ISBN|0-292-71267-7}}. [http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exhordec.html Article online].</ref> [[Richard Trexler]] gives an early Spanish account of religious 'third gender' figures from the [[Inca empire]] in his 1995 book "Sex and Conquest":

{{blockquote|And in each important temple or house of worship, they have a man or two, or more, depending on the idol, who go dressed in women's attire from the time they are children, and speak like them, and in manner, dress, and everything else they imitate women. With them especially the chiefs and headmen have carnal, foul intercourse on feast days and holidays, almost like a religious rite and ceremony.<ref>Trexler, Richard C. (1995). ''Sex and Conquest.'' Cornell University Press: Ithaca. p. 107</ref>}}