What Can the Samoan "Fa'afafine" Teach Us about the Western Concept of Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article examines whether gender identity disorder in childhood (GIDC) constitutes a mental disorder as outlined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV-TR). Data were collected in Samoa, a culture that is characterized by a high degree of social tolerance towards feminine males who are known locally as fa'afafine. The study location was chosen because, unlike Western locales, it afforded the opportunity to examine whether gender-atypical behavior, gender-atypical identity, and sex-atypical identity, in and of themselves, cause distress in sex/gender variant individuals, while simultaneously controlling for the confounding effects of extreme societal intolerance towards such individuals. Because of our focus on the DSM-IV-TR's diagnosis of GIDC, we were specifically interested in ascertaining whether adult fa'afafine recalled a strong and persistent cross-gender identification in childhood, a sense of inappropriateness in the male-typical gender role, a discomfort with their sex, or distress associated with any of the above. In addition, we sought to determine whether parental encouragement or discouragement of cross-gender behaviors influence feelings of distress in relation to the behaviors in question. Based on the cross-cultural information presented here, we conclude that the diagnostic category of GIDC should not occur in its current form in future editions of the DSM, as there is no compelling evidence that cross-gender behaviors or identities, in and of themselves, cause distress in the individual.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".