There is a golden rule in imported television journalism: if you are reporting on a culture that refuses to fit neatly into the rigid filing cabinets of Western bureaucracy, you are never allowed to simply state that things work differently. Oh no. You must lard the segment with a “practical” explanation: some sort of economic incentive or human-resources masterplan that would make a multinational HR director weep with joy.
The other day, while watching a TV travel report on exotic traditions (the kind featuring the soothing, plummy voice of a documentary narrator, ambient panpipe music, and the general vibe of an armchair anthropologist who has never touched grass), I stumbled across a gem that shatters all known records for broadcast nonsense.
The thesis of the segment, delivered with the utmost, deadpan “neutrality,” mind you, went roughly like this: “There are places in the world where male children are trained from a young age to be women, but they do it purely out of practicality! Because they are biologically stronger, they can handle the heavy-duty manual labour that ‘normal’ women aren’t capable of doing”.
Right. Everyone stop the tape right there. Turn off the autopilot of received wisdom and switch on a single, functioning unit of logic.
The Industrial Planning of Household Chores
Let me get this straight. According to the news report, the cunning strategic masterplan of this tribe goes like this: a family decides to raise a boy as a girl, integrates him into traditional caregiving roles… but because he has a male skeletal structure and bulging biceps, they use him as a sort of deluxe, turbocharged version of a suburban housewife: someone capable of ironing bedsheets while gripping a solid oak ironing board, or shifting three-piece suites around with the raw, focused energy of a martial arts grandmaster.
It is a short-circuit in logic so colossal that even the Silicon Valley servers that were censoring my articles the other day would short-circuit from over-voltage.
This is yet another prime example of how modern Western civilization is entirely incapable of fathoming a social structure unless it is viewed through the cold, transactional lens of productivity or a factory assembly line. If a person in a given culture occupies a fluid or traditional role, some television producer’s brain immediately assumes there must be an underground economic motive: a foreman standing in the background handing out chores based strictly on muscle mass and deadlift capacity.
The Real Story (Without the Hollywood Screenplay)
Let’s do some actual, proper journalism for a change, planting our feet firmly back on solid ground and escaping the fairy tales of the small screen.
The peoples discussed in these television reports, such as the extraordinary, millennia-old tradition of theFa’afafinein Samoa, right in the heart of Polynesia (rather than some wildly mislocated Asian jungle invented by an over-caffeinated TV editor), do not run any sort of “muscular finishing school for domestic workers.”
In Samoa, if a biological male child shows an early inclination towards female manners, sensibilities, andsocial roles, the family and the wider community don’t call an emergency meeting of industrial logistics engineers to calculate his cost-efficiency on heavy lifting. Instead, society accepts this identity with a disarming, matter-of-fact naturalness. It is a recognized and respected “third gender” that has been woven into the fabric of life for centuries. Their contribution to the extended family, whether it involves looking after the kids, managing the household, or supporting the community, stems from emotional bonds and social duty, not from a forced labour scheme based on raw physical strength or a crash course in gym weights while wearing a lavalava.
The Moral of the News Bulletin
Television is addicted to the quirky anecdote, the muscular plot-twist, and the bizarre “justification,” purely because our own society is utterly terrified of the notion that other human beings might organize their lives around spontaneous inclusion rather than shift-work hours or capitalist efficiency metrics.
The next time you catch a travel documentary on the telly explaining foreign customs with the logistical logic of a corporate management handbook, have a proper laugh. The world is infinitely richer, more brazen, and infinitely less boring than any television editor could ever hope to package between the weather forecast and a commercial break.