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| Rules about "purity" that structure how a society works. Includes: what is eaten, what is touched, sexual acts, and the handling of corpses |
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| A mythical figure who is both male and female at the same time |
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| A practice among the higher social classes in China consisting of breaking a woman's feet, preventing her from performing physical labor. Considered a sign of wealth and status. |
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| Killing a female member of the family after she is raped, has an affair, or is sexually violated, for shaming the family |
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| Biologically driven instinct. Genetically determined, but open to cultural and social conditioning. Emphasis on biological matters. |
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| Culturally variable model of masculinity or femininity. The meanings and practices of being a man or woman. Emphasis on social influences. |
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| The specific way a person's sexual desires are directed towards a particular kind of sexual object. Not to be understood in binary terms. |
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| Religious state determined by a commitment not to engage in sexual activity for some religious end. |
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| Technical term used by scholars to refer to any kind of sexual lifestyle, orientation, institution, text, or symbolic system that is fluid, ambiguous, and constantly morphing with respect to the direction of desire and/or the gender identity of the figures involved. |
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| An umbrella term for all those mixed genders, alternative sexualities, bisexualities, or transsexualities that do not follow the traditional binary logic of male/female or heterosexual/homosexual but break out into other "queer" modes of sexual being and religious experience. |
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| A figure of Native American cultures, whose work, sex, and dress mix gender roles and whose bodies are believed to house both a masculine and feminine spirit. |
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| "Rule" of the "father", a modern term referring to the very stable, nearly universal observation that traditional cultures and religions are heavily weighted toward male interests. |
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| Moral or Cultural Relativism |
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| The position that it is impossible to judge a culture's value system, because one will always make such judgments from one's own culture. |
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| Paternity-Patriarchy Principle |
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Method for comparing sex, gender, and religion across cultures. Works from two principles:
1. Religious purity codes can be explained by the desire to have clear paternity and inheritance.
2. Societies tend to structure themselves around male interests. |
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| Cutting off the tip of the foreskin. A marker of religious identity in Judaism and Islam. |
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| "Circles" A series of conscious energy centers within Tantric yoga located along the central channel of the body. |
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