Notes on Fa'afafine, Fa'atama, and Female-Bodied Māhū

Jaiyah Saelua

The acronym MVPFAFF describes male-bodied sexual orientation and gender identities (SOGIs) of the Pacific, where it stands for: 

• Māhū (Hawai'i and Tahiti)
• Vaka sa lewa lewa (Fiji)
• Palopa (Papua New Guinea)
• Fa’afafine (Samoa)
• Akava’ine (Rarotonga)
• Fakaleiti (Tonga)
• Fakafifine (Niue)

Strictly speaking, the Samoan term fa'afafine is actually associated with the Samoan diaspora, or post-colonization. Tcherkézoff (2014) notes:

"When speaking Samoan, however, fa‘afāfine assert that they are teine, “girls,” or tama‘ita‘i, “ladies.” In thirty years’ worth of fieldwork in Samoa, I have never heard anyone say about her- or himself, “I am a fa‘afafine” (although the situation may be different for Samoans in the diaspora)...For these reasons, instead of “fa‘afafine,” I use the term “fa‘ateine” and the feminine pronoun to refer to them, although this choice is a prescriptive rather than a descriptive one. Ideally, one would also forego the prefix fa‘a-, because they say that they are girls (or ladies) and not just like girls. For sake of distinguishing non-heteronormative persons from normative females (teine), however, I will stick to the prefixed version of the term... In the early 1980s, Aiono Dr. Fanaafi Le Tagaloa, a highly respected Samoan scholar and founder of Samoan studies at the University of Samoa, whom I am proud to consider as a mentor throughout the 1980s, told me, “You should not use the word ‘fa‘afafine,’ it is not really Samoan, it post-dates contact with Europeans; the old Samoan word was ‘fa‘ateine.’”

The term fa'afafine has a negative connotation to some: "Because of the narrow meaning of the Samoan word “fafine,” namely a female person within a potential or actual sexual relationship, “fa‘afafine” gives the misguided impression that the fa‘ateine’s life is entirely centered on matters of sex." (Tcherkézoff, 2014) Others, including the following interview subjects, do not take issue with being described as fa'afafine. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV_FXxJd_g4

Much can be written about the fa'afafine, but here are a few details worth noting:

• Generally speaking, MVPFAFF are feminine, androphilic males. Analogues do not just exist in the Pacific, but in many different indigenous cultures. One example is the Kalaallisut term arnaasaq, which is similar to fa'afafine in terms of etymology and meaning. In turn, there are similarities between angutaasaq and fa'atama. As expressed through the concept of the vā fealoa'i, there are similarities between the fa'afafine and the nadle, who hold a sacred role in maintaining cosmic balance. Although their historical presence is not as well-established, the present-day fa'atama and dilbaa serve a similar sacred role.
• Jaiyah Saelua describes fa'afafine as a "spectrum": "There are all sorts of fa'afafine, and the word fa'afafine translates to "in the manner of a woman", and the opposite of that would be a fa'atama, who is someone who was assigned the female gender at birth and portrays characteristics that are more commonly associated with the male gender...A lot of indigenous identities are excluded under the LGBTQI Spectrum. For instance, the fa'afafine identity, it's one word for us and it's a spectrum for us, but we all of a sudden are divided when we are put under the rainbow spectrum, the LGBTQI+ spectrum. So gay men and trans women become separated under that spectrum, whereas in the Samoan culture and in a lot of indigenous cultures around the world, we are one and the same."
• Fa'afafine do not believe themselves to be female, nor do they insist on belonging in women's spaces. The FIFA legend Jaiyah Saelua competed in the men's leagues, and explains the nuances here: "Fa'afafine is not the same as trans women, not only in social perception but also in the identity itself. Fa'afafine, like I mentioned, is a spectrum. Which, because, the meaning of fa'afafine is "in the manner of a woman", and this might sound controversial to the LGBTQI narrative, but "in the manner of a woman" also means, or denotes, that we understand that we are not women. I think it could be controversial to, especially to the trans identity, because there is a push for a narrative for trans women to equate to women, and a lot of the times there's this saying that "trans women are women" and I understand where they're coming from, but for fa'afafine we understand that we are not women. We only present as women, and we live our lives as women, but we cannot equate to our sisters, our mothers, not only our physical attributes but also the cultural responsibilities that are set aside or reserved for them, and the cultural roles that are reserved for us as fa'afafine and fa'atama. And so, there's a lot of things that make us different. I think the biggest thing is that there's no sense of pursuit for fa'afafine and fa'atama to take up spaces that are already reserved for women and men because we grow up understanding that...the vā fealoa'i is this contextual space between any two human beings or groups of people that separate us in regards to the cultural structure of the Samoan people, and those are sacred spaces that under Western influence we might tend to want to overlap but, I think what's beautiful about the fa'afafine and fa'atama identities is that we know our role and the spaces that we should take up. But yeah, I think that's the biggest difference, is the sense of belonging and the things that we value and our priorities in regards to the different identities."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMIT3RSlgGU

More notes from a different series of interviews:

• Fa'afafine know they are fa'afafine from their "early ages", around 5-6 years old. "I'm sure my mother and father have known there is fa'afafine around. They saw that in me when I was a little child growing up. They did not even bother trying to change me to become a boy or a girl. They just let me be because they know. It's already existed. Fa'afafine has been long existed from the past, many many years ago."
• "Being fa'afafine is not a choice. It is bestowed to you naturally. I did not choose to be fa'afafine."
• "To me, I believe that it isn't something someone can create or something random, it isn't just a feeling that you want to become a fa'afafine then you suddenly transform into one. I firmly believe in my foundation which is that I was born this way, and God created me this way as an individual and to be able to use my humble abilities so that I may live this way and be this way."
  
• "The term fa'afafine had always been around for generations, even before me, my generation. But fa'afafine was more of an insult, it was more of a ridiculing label that was given to men who were not able to present themselves as masculine in the Samoan context...So it started off as an adjective, or a word explaining a word. In the Samoan context, fa'afafine was started off like that. This was in the early dictionary, fa'afafine in the sense that you had to make it in the manner of a woman, like a very wary, a very active woman. But it somehow changed into a noun, and that's where we have the label of fa'afafine, which is now given to those who are male or men, who actually have effeminate mannerisms." Compare with the Kalaallisut term arnaasaq.
• Pacific cultures are not individualistic. Fa'afafine reject the notion that it is a "human right" for fa'afafine to "exploit the spaces that are only reserved for women, for example sports", calling that "misconceived." "Human rights is about allowing people without power, which is all of us, to really challenge and hold the Authority of the ones who have the power to be accounted to this and that. That's the main principle...It is about respect. It is about dignity and integrity. It is about mutual understanding."

As Saelua explains, the fa'afafine have a well-established role in Samoan history, yet face struggles due to colonization:

• "A lot of the struggles that we face are during our coming of age stages of life, but fa'afafine adults and fa'atama adults live very comfortable lives and we are some of the most respected people in American Samoa and in the Pacific. In a sense, it is sort of a Utopia for SOGIs people, where we can excel at whatever we chose to do in life and we are respected generally in our communities. A lot of the struggles that we face come from, stem from, the effects of colonization, Western influence, religious influence... Traditionally and culturally we do have a place that are set aside for us by our traditions and our culture."

Male-bodied MVPFAFF tend to be strong allies of their female-bodied counterparts, defending their role in their respective cultures. As in Native American cultures, this has noble intent but can lead to romanticization of the past. Is Saelua correct in asserting that the female-bodied fa'atama held a respected role in Samoan culture?

Fa'atama of Samoa

Vanila Galumulivai Ualegalu Heather

In Samoan, there are three terms to describe female-bodied SOGI: fa'atama, fa'atamaloa, and fa'atane. Fa'a means "in the manner of" or "in the way of", tama means "boy, young man", tamaloa means "adult man", and tane means "man as husband, male" (Tcherkézoff, 2014). Henceforth "fa'atama, fa'atamaloa, and fa'atane" will be referred to as "fa'atama", as this is the most commonly used term.

Another term that is used to describe this group is the English loanword tomboy. As in Asia and Africa, tomboy in the Samoan context is not synonymous with the English definition of "tomboy". In the Samoan context, tomboy means "a girl or woman who acts like a man in contexts where “strength” (mālosi) is particularly central to the definition of manhood. This concept encompasses a wide range of connotations, such as the capacity for hard physical work, in olden days the ability to win wars, to be good at competitive sports, and to be sexually successful. " (Tcherkézoff, 2014). Tcherkézoff (2014) also describes usage of the loan word lisipia ("lesbian"), but does not specify the differences between the Samoan usage of lisipia and the English definition of "lesbian".

Kanemasu & Liki (2023) explain:

"Much less is known about fa'afatama, who are also called fa'atamaloa. There is a near-total absence of historical or contemporary accounts about them (see Tcherkézoff, 2014, for a notable exception). According to a senior SFA member, fa'afatama and fa'atamaloa became recognized as gender categories in Samoa around 2010. Many participants considered the two terms to be interchangeable, whereas two explained that fa’afatama denotes those who identify as young/unmarried men and fa’atamaloa as mature/married men (we follow SFA’s use of the term fa’afatama throughout this chapter). Our fa’afatama participants variously identified themselves as fa’afatama, as fa’atamaloa, as transmen and as lesbians dressed as men. All but one preferred the personal pronouns ‘he/him’."

Treagus & Enari (2024) explain: 

"The only critical work on tomboys to date has been by Serge Tcherkézoff, an anthropologist who spent the 1980s and 1990s doing fieldwork in Sāmoa. This fieldwork informs his more recent work on sexual minorities across both Sāmoas and their diasporas. Tcherkézoff prefers to use the term tomboy, as he claims it is the only one commonly used in Sāmoa (2014, p. 117), though this is changing within Sāmoa and the diaspora, as our three examples indicate. Tcherkézoff contests the use of the term fa‘afafine for queer AMAB Sāmoans, seeing it as overly sexualised with its connotations of a sexually active adult female (2014, p. 117); we continue to use fa‘afafine as the term primarily employed by contemporary Sāmoans (Treagus & Seys, 2017, p. 88), also noting that it appears in George Pratt’s dictionary, first published in 1862, as the Sāmoan translation of effeminate: “Effeminate…amio fa‘afafine” (Pratt 1984, p. 364). It clearly had nineteenth-century currency. As Picq and Tikuna contend, “Ancestral tongues prove it” (2019, p. 1). Tcherkézoff claims that while it is unclear when the English word tomboy came into use in Sāmoa, “today the term has a precise meaning: a girl or woman who acts like a man in contexts where ‘strength’ (mālosi) is particularly central to the definition of manhood” (2014, p. 117). He also suggests that nowadays it also implies “sexual attraction to girls” (2014, p. 117). This is sometimes enhanced with the Sāmoan rendering of lesbian, “lisipia” (Tcherkézoff, 2014, p.118). For the purpose of this paper, we will use the term tomboy interspersed with fa‘atama, as these are the most commonly used terms both in the Sāmoas and their diaspora"

Tcherkézoff (2014) explains:

"...Samoans born as boys who act like girls have at their disposal a much broader range of identificational practices than Samoans born as girls who act like boys. The contrast is obvious in everyday public behavior, but it is sharpest in the context of the pursuit of fulfillment of sexual desire. The contrast also colors affective relations between non-heteronormative individuals and their families. Under the superficial symmetry between boys who act like girls and girls who act like boys (or the adult equivalents) lies a profound asymmetry—indeed a sharp social inequality—which has yet to receive any analytic attention in writings about gender and sexuality in Samoa or elsewhere in the Pacific Islands. And this asymmetry works directly to the detriment of tomboys." 

The history of the fa'atama is not as well-established as that of the fa'afafine. During his fieldwork in the 1980s-90s, Tcherkézoff (2014) found that the terms fa'atama, fa'atamaloa, and fa'atane were "unintelligible" to Samoans, or sometimes "interpreted literally to refer to someone or something that was somehow “man-like” in a temporally and contextually bounded way". He had to use the loanword tomboy to carry out conversations. "The absence of non-borrowed terms for tomboys may also be related to their lack of ideological and practical visibility. Some heteronormative Samoans, for example, maintain that tomboys “are not part of our custom” (aganu‘u). Similarly, visitors to Samoa may never see or hear about tomboys (there are no shows organized by tomboys, for instance), while they will immediately notice the presence of fa‘ateine in such highly visible contexts as families, shows, and sports."

"Transgender females [tomboys] are not a widely recognized category of persons in Samoa, although the term “tomboy” has gained currency since the 1960s to stigmatize some women...I have heard this term used in more sophisticated urban circles to disparage certain unmarried women in a derogatory manner intended to imply that these women are lesbians. I have also heard it used teasingly of girls who behave roughly or are unkempt. While awareness of the possibility of woman-to-woman sexuality and transgender females has trickled into public consciousness from overseas with returning migrants and the increasing importance of mass media, it is generally considered to be something unlikely to occur in Samoa and, if it does, is vehemently disapproved of. [Next is the "notable exception" mentioned by Kanemasu & Liki (2023)] In the 1970s, I knew of only one woman who was referred to disparagingly as fa‘atama (boyish), and this only on the occasion when she was fined by the village council for verbally abusing someone else. She was in her forties and unmarried—a brisk, unusually slim women who wore her hair short instead of long in a bun, as most women did at that time, and did boys’ and men’s work (in a household with no shortage of boys and men), such as tending to ground ovens and planting. However, she was by no means the only older woman in the village who conformed to that description, although she was the only unmarried and childless one. When the village council fined her, she was instructed to act in a more womanlike manner." (Tcherkézoff, 2014)

The fa'atama are not as socially accepted as fa'ateine. 

"Although mothers may indulge their young sons to engage in fa‘ateine practices while fathers never do, neither mothers nor fathers encourage tomboy tendencies in their daughters. Parents never provide any affective compensation for girls’ tomboy behavior and on the contrary only deplore it. Yet one finds tomboy girls in a not unsubstantial number of Samoan families...While the rejection of the fa‘ateine by her father and brothers certainly provides grounds for a multitude of psychological problems, she finds herself included by her mother and her sisters, sometimes even coddled, but at least never rejected. Nonetheless, this tension between rejection and approval never colors the tomboy’s relationships with her close kindred. I have seen a father good naturedly teaching his daughter to throw a good punch, but these games are not sustained, and the father quickly changed from stating, “All my children, daughter included, must know how to defend themselves,” to mocking and then becoming angry at the same daughter for being too openly tomboy." (Tcherkézoff, 2014)

Fa'ateine can receive support from their female relatives, and are allowed to socialize with their sisters. Tomboys do not receive similar support from their male relatives, and their brothers do not socialize with them. "She gains no prestige, only mockery, for her ability to perform heavy physical tasks...The tomboy's inability to find a place and a role model in the family has serious consequences." (Tcherkézoff, 2014) Tomboys are prevented from forming social niches or networks with each other "because the sight of congregating tomboys immediately evokes in the minds of others the suspicion that they are sexually involved, whereas fa'ateine seen together arouse no such suspicion, as sexual attraction between them is unthinkable." (Tcherkézoff, 2014) 

Tcherkézoff (2014) continues to describe the social stigma attached to tomboys: "In the Samoan diaspora (primarily in New Zealand, Australia, Hawai‘i, and the continental United States), when tomboy couples live together, their lives remain difficult. Parents and friends display little patience for them, refusing to visit or receive them. “What have I done to be thus punished by God?” asks a mother of her tomboy lesbian daughter. The tomboy may be blamed for her parents’ illnesses, and decades into adulthood siblings continue to hate her for the shame that she has brought upon the family. Rarely do such strong feelings surround the presence of a fa‘ateine in a family."

Kanemasu & Liki (2023) also describe the stigmatization of fa'atama:

"In contrast to the high visibility of fa’afafine, most fa’afatama do not ‘come out’ and are not open about their gender/sexual identities due to the greater levels of stigmatization and marginalization they face. One young fa’afatama shared that he had left his Savai’i home because his family ‘don’t accept me … I’m not free’. Although he was living with his uncle’s family in Apia, he did not tell them about his gender identity or about his romantic relationship with a girl. Another participant agreed that many fa’afatama experience

rough treatment from their family, yeah. And that's when they start moving here and there. You know, they don't stay in their house. To Apia, on the streets. Some of them are on the streets now. And staying around with gangs, you know. Staying with fa'afafine and stuff like that. Some of the fa'afatama stay with fa'afafine because they know they are free [around fa'afafine].

The routine nature of community sanctions against fa’afatama was keenly felt in one of our interviews. As we talked to our participant outside a grocery shop in Apia, a young male walked past us. With a smirk on his face, he shouted in Samoan, ‘Are these your kind of people?’, leaving the participant looking down in pain. Fa’afatama may personally advise and support each other and even form informal networks, but many are isolated, like the above-mentioned participant living with his uncle, who did not know any other fa’afatama in Apia and longed to have someone with whom to share his experiences. Fa’afatama were not represented by any formal organization until SFA extended its membership in 2017." 

Hamer & Wilson's (2020) interviewees describe facing rejection. One interviewee was beaten, made homeless, and became suicidal for being fa'atama:

"When I was fourteen years old, I know at that time I know I was a tomboy, and I tell my parents "I don't like guys I only like girls", and they turn around "get your stuff, and move out. Go look a place to stay." 

Where fa'ateine are assumed to be sexually attracted to men, the reverse was not always so for fa'atama. Tcherkézoff (2014) notes: "During my fieldwork in the 1980s, the term “tomboy” did not necessarily imply sexual attraction to girls, whether “straight” girls or other tomboys. Today, however, it does have this connotation."

Egalitarian lesbianism, or possibly the "tom gay" pattern of attraction is described by Tcherkézoff (2014): "if a migrant lesbian tomboy visits her family with another woman, the situation is very different. Everyone immediately will assume that they are a couple, which is frequently the case, because lesbian tomboys do not seek each other’s company simply for the sake of sociability."

Tcherkézoff (2014) suggests that parental neglect encourages tomboy identification and the expression of same-sex sexual behavior, providing two examples: 

"In one case that I witnessed in the course of my fieldwork, when a baby girl was born, everyone around her marveled at the fairness of her complexion, an iconic sign of beauty in Samoa, as in the rest of the Pacific.7 As she grew up, however, she displayed a pre-tomboy comportment by spending a great deal of time outdoors, thus violating the expectation that girls stay indoors and take responsibility for household chores, which also ensures that their complexion is not affected by the sun. The child in question grew “black,” said her relatives, and she became the butt of her parents’ and siblings’ ceaseless teasing: she was told she was an ugly duckling. Not surprisingly, the girl’s behavior increasingly became that of a tomboy, behavior she seemed to cultivate, and later in life she became bisexual."

"Another case concerns two sisters close in age. One had a light complexion and pleasant features, for which she was complimented from a young age; the other, with a dark complexion and a puffy-looking face, was mocked, and calling her names became a family habit. One became the object of boys’ assiduous courting and engaged in exclusively heterosexual practices, while the other became a tomboy, with an aggressive demeanor, and eventually exclusively engaged in sexual relations with other women, surreptitiously while she remained in Samoa but more openly once she emigrated overseas. "

As in Asia, Tcherkézoff (2014) notes that "The aesthetic valuation of fair complexion predates contact with the West and is thus not the result of the internalization of a colonial racism."

Tcherkézoff (2014) also argues that "heteronormative hegemony" pressures Samoan tomboys into sexual relations with men: "No group of women is defined by sexual nonconformity and there is no vocabulary with which to talk about it. The very idea of a sexual relationship between women is thus disallowed by hegemonic ideology, and the lack of terminology in the Samoan language to describe it is another sign of its repression. Finally, a lesbian tomboy who may have a fa‘ateine brother will find no comfort there, as the latter strives to be assimilated with her heteronormative sisters; and together, the fa‘ateine brother and her sisters will not welcome their sister tomboy." It is remarkable that female-female relations occur in spite of this social pressure to suppress them.

More key excerpts from Tcherkézoff (2014):

"A tomboy's sexuality is subject to less surveillance than those of her heteronormative sisters because her parents believe (erroneously) that she has no interest in boys. Paradoxically, it is the parents who consider her "transgender," failing to see her as a girl and to hear her assertions that she is a girl. As a result, she can find herself embroiled in sexual activity much more easily than her closely supervised and frequently admonished sisters, and may find herself pregnant at a young age." 

"When the tomboy gave birth to a girl, her mother took the baby away from her and banished her to live with cousins on another island of the Samoan archipelago—the culmination of a sense of rejection and abandonment in the tomboy daughter, who would later talk about her baby girl in tears. Sent overseas, she turned to the bottle and became a butch lesbian; but her violent behavior consistently put off potential lovers or made relationships short-lived."

"...few adult tomboys are without children (at least in the diaspora), but this fact is consistent with Samoan mainstream ideologies of gender: since tomboys remain women, a desire to have children is fundamental to their identity. How they acquire children varies: in one case, a tomboy was married heterosexually while she was still young and had children, whom she kept when she and her husband separated and she entered into a relationship with another woman; in another case, a tomboy had sex with a man with the explicit purpose of getting pregnant while she was between same-sex relationships."

This last quote is similar to the description of contemporary nadle women.

Tcherkézoff (2014) characterizes Samoan gender norms as binary and male-dominating. Tomboys receive the shortest worst treatment because they are non-normative ("transgender") and female.

The fa'atama are similar to female-bodied māhū or māhūkāne (Tahiti & Hawai'i) fakatangata (Tonga) binabinamane (Kiribati) whakatane, takatapui tane, tangata ira tane (Māori) brotherboys (Torres Strait Islands). Roughly, these terms mean "in the manner of a man" and don't always describe someone who is same-sex attracted. 

Female-bodied māhū

Elliston (1999) describes the female-bodied māhū of Tahiti, which are similar to the fa'atama. They are commonly same-sex attracted, but not always exclusively:

"Gunson (1987) is one of the few scholars who has allowed that māhū historically could have been female as well as male, writing, “The relatively high proportion of transsexual or effeminate men, particularly in the Society Islands and Samoa, may well have been balanced by a similar phenomenon amongst women” (1987:145).7"

"In contrast to the scholarly presumption that māhū are exclusively male, during my research in the Society Islands I found the category māhū used by Polynesians to refer to both male-bodied and female-bodied persons. One vahine (woman) I knew explained the availability of the category māhū to both females and males by referring to the very meaning of māhū: “Māhū,” she said, “that can be a man or woman because that’s what it means, someone who’s both.”"

"Female-bodied māhū, for example, are thought to “behave in the manner of men,” as the Polynesians I knew phrased it: some undertake work culturally coded as men’s (working as drivers, for example, or working at fa’a’apu [subsistence gardening, cultivating work]); they may use embodied expressions and wear clothing culturally coded as masculine, and in a society where most Polynesian women grow their hair long, female-bodied māhū often cut their hair quite short.10"

"People describe māhū as “natural” with the “naturalness” of māhū authorized largely through reference to the māhū's history of “being that way”: māhū are thought to show signs that they are māhū at a very young age; that is, māhū are thought to begin demonstrating māhū styles of self-presentation or preferences for transgendered work when they are still children. Boys may be identified as māhū at the onset of displaying these behaviors; girls who are identified as “tomboys” (Fr., “garcon manque”) during their childhood or adolescent years may be perceived as likely to be māhū. The natuarlization of māhū through appeals to the māhū consistent personal history introduces the importance of experience for authorizing and explaining gender categorization among Polynesians and, more generally, points to the ontological primacy given to experience and behavior in the formation of the socialized Polynesian person."

"Female-bodied māhū are generally assumed to have sex with women. Among female-bodied māhū I knew and learned about, most had taken women (vahine) as their loves, but many had also at some time taken men (tane) as lovers; others were single and celibate."

Unlike in Samoa, the "tom gay" pattern is not observed: "One of the corollaries of the complex relationship between gender and sexuality in the Society Islands is that the lovers of māhū are either men (tane) or women (vahine): māhū do not sleep with other māhū; that is, they do not take sexed-body-same māhū as their lovers. Female-bodied māhū behave, in Polynesian terms, “in the manner of men” and this means that, as for men, the focus of a female-bodied māhū's sexual desires may be a woman. The female lovers of female-bodied māhū are characterized socially and unproblematically as vahine or “women”: they deploy the Polynesian signs of femininity-in styles of dress, work, and/or embodied expression-and they are considered by other people to be women (vahine). The women lovers of female-bodied māhū, then, unlike female-bodied māhū, are not linguistically or socially marked as anything other than women (vahine), even though they have sexual relationships with female-bodied māhū.13"

Elliston (1999) has conversations with “Aimata, a woman in her mid-thirties who had taken female-bodied māhū lovers as well as men (tane) as lovers”:

"During a conversation about whether male-bodied māhū usually slept with men, Aimata rather impatiently told me, “If one dresses like a woman [vahine], of course it’s someone who wants to sleep with a man [tane]: why would anyone dress like a woman [vahine] if he wasn’t wanting to sleep with a man [tane]?”"

Elliston (1999) mentions the usage of the French loan words lesbienne and gouine ("dyke"). Her conversation with “Tefatua, a middle-aged married man I knew on Huahine” articulates the difference between (female) māhū and the French term lesbienne: “Lesbienne is a universal thing, but māhū is just here, just in Polynesia…It’s only here you find māhū…we’ve always had them” 

Elliston (1999) notes that Other Polynesians view lesbiennes as completely foreign, French, or Polynesians influenced by French, not “truly Polynesian.”

Elliston (1999) interviews a married woman in her early thirties, who states that: "I think that lesbiennes didn’t exist here in the old times… It’s since they brought porno films here that it’s increased… now there are more… I think that before, there were hardly any.”

References

Elliston, D. A. (1999). Negotiating Transnational Sexual Economies: Female Māhū and Same-Sex Sexuality in Tahiti and Her Islands. In Blackwood, E., & Wieringa, S. E. (Eds.). Female desires: Same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures, 232.

Hamer, D. & Wilson, J. (Director & Producer) (2020). The Rogers of Sāmoa. Qwaves. Retrieved November 9, 2025 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g_q-Zt7Mks

Kanemasu, Y., & Liki, A. (2023). Weaving ‘culture’and political advocacy in a small island nation: Samoa Fa'afafine Association and non-heteronormative Samoans. In Handbook of civil society and social movements in small states (pp. 138-150). Routledge.

Tcherkézoff, S. (2014). Transgender in Sāmoa: The cultural production of gender inequality. In N. Besnier & K. Alexeyeff (Eds.), Gender on the edge: Transgender, gay, and other Pacific Islanders (pp.115-134). University of Hawai‘i Press.  

Treagus, M., & Enari, D. (2024). Fa ‘atama: Indigenous Tomboys of Sāmoa. eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics, 23(2), 197-212.