OneGate Media
English
1 x 43 min
Worldwide

In Mexico of all places – the land of the machismo – is an enclave in which more than 2000 men live as women and are highly regarded as such. They call themselves “Muxes”. For the most part, they wear women’s clothes, makeup, do the housework, stand behind market stalls and embroider traditional costumes – fully integrated in a region in which women set the tone. This third gender of the Muxes is a unique phenomenon of the Zapotec culture in Mexico’s southwest. It is rooted in Indian mythology and managed to withstand Spanish Catholicism. It is not the body, but the social role that determines here, who is a man and who is a woman. This documentary ventures a very direct insight into a society, famed as being a tolerant “Paradise of the Muxes”, yet is still far from being free of tensions and contradiction.