As much as we like the world to fall into neat little categories, often the more we work for that the more rapidly the distinctions fall apart. It seems the moment lines begin to be drawn they begin to blur.

One of the most radical ideas of the 20th century was really an old idea come full circle. Literally. As far back as Plato it was suggested that there were more than two genders, two sexes, and that originally, human beings were round, circular beings made of two male parts, or two female parts or, occasionally male and female parts. Oddly, in this version of things, it's the male-female circular being that turned out to be heterosexual and the male-male, female-female beings would search their lives full to find their same-sex half.

Early gay liberationists, shrugging off the twentieth century fascination with psychology and its susceptibility to the illness model of aleopathic medicine, shook the world with the radical suggestion that homosexual (the psychological term) people might actually be another oppressed minority (though Plato and Kinsey both might argue same-sex orientation is actually, numerically, a majority) or, even more fundamentally and intriguingly, a third, fourth or maybe even sixth, seventh or eighth gender.

So are we being told gender is simply another form of sexuality? Are physiology or biology destiny? And if they are, what are their relationships to psychology? Do gay people have special sensibilities because of the sex they have? Or do we have the kind of sex we have because of the sensibilities of our special souls? Chicken. Egg. Egg. Chicken.

If one thing has become clear in the development of the Fall 2001 issue of White Crane Journal it is this: the subject of gender is worthy of an on-going journal of its own. Just as the facets of spirituality inherent in the lives of gay male-identified individuals have filled the pages of White Crane for over ten years, this subject could easily engender a similar volume of thought, questions, answers, experience and just plain stories.

Something as simple as what to call someone becomes a source of endless discussion in this matter. Pronouns become problematic. The late Ojibway elder Wub-E-Knieuw, author of We Have The Right To Exist (Black Thistle Press) asserted that English and European languages were incapable of relating the spectrum of experience because they were exclusively "male" languages and had no expression of the female experience. At the very least, our choices are reduced uncomfortably to "him" and "her" and the objectifying "it." Where does that leave one's "self" if "one" feels like "none of the above"?

There are websites, chat rooms and e-lists of individuals on the Internet, of course. If you search under "gender" nearly 10,000 sites are suggested and an attempt to narrow the subject only expands it into areas of "religions and spirituality, law, science, Buddhism, social sciences, psychology, arts," and, oddly, "celebrities." I guess there's nothing in modern American culture that wouldn't include a celebrity or two.

Is it possible to discuss, much less define a third or fourth gender in terms that don't need the words "male" or "female" to delineate? Does "not-male" mean "female"? Or can there be a "not-male, not-female" place? What does it look like? And what evolutionary role might these individuals play in the Darwinian scheme of things? So much of our time is spent defining ourselves in terms of what we are not. Who might we be without the struggle? Who would we be if we were just able to be? History, other cultures and this issue of White Crane offer some fascinating suggestions.

So with this issue we attempt an overview of this vast and occasionally troubling subject. Some questions get answered and some don't. Some only raise new questions. What seems clear is that, as usual, the binary either-or, male-female way of looking at things is once again woefully inadequate to the permutations of the discussion.

Viewpoints we are privileged to share in this issue range from the deeply personal ones of an intersex reader who is willing to identify only as Berdache Paul, to the scholarly work of Wesley Thomas, an acknowledged "nadleehi" of the Navajo nation and the recent results of a study by Ingrid Isell. We have science fiction and spiritual reality... the lines blur and hopefully we achieve a modicum of clarity as a result.