Māhū

Māhū means in the middle. Not half kāne and half wahine — the place between them, which in Hawaiian thinking is an actual location rather than a gap between two real things.

The word belongs to Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) and Māʻohi (Tahitians). If you have no Hawaiian or Tahitian ancestry and no standing in those communities, this page is not describing you. Read it if you want to understand someone. Don't take the word home.

Historically the position came with jobs. Keepers of genealogy and chant. Teachers of hula. Healers. The ones who raised other people's children. Four māhū healers are said to have brought the healing arts from Tahiti to Oʻahu; their stones sit at the western end of Kūhiō Beach in Waikīkī, and you can go and stand in front of them.

Then missionaries, then American law. In 1963 Hawaiʻi criminalised dressing with intent to deceive, and māhū working in Honolulu had to wear a button reading I Am A Boy or face arrest, a $500 fine and often a beating. That clause was not deleted until 1972. The women who wore those buttons are alive.

So the word carries two things at once. Depending on the mouth it comes out of, it is your grandmother naming you plainly, or a boy shouting from a truck.

Kānaka do not fully agree on the edges. Some use māhū only for people raised in the culture with a cultural role. Some use it as the ordinary Hawaiian word for trans and gender-diverse Kānaka. Some elders still won't say it. All of that argument is live right now, inside the community.

One honesty note. Much of what circulates online about pre-contact māhū is thinner than it sounds. Missionaries did most of the writing down and they were not neutral observers. Be careful with anyone who tells you exactly how it worked in 1700.