“Contestant NUMBER THREE!!!” rang out across the tinny speakers in the overheated weightlifting gym, as I fanned myself furiously, along with the rest of the audience.
I could hear audible gasps and laughter erupt around me, as a huge length of black material started to flow from the back of the stage like a giant wave, revealing a fa’afafine standing on stilts in the centre. The stilts had raised her so high that her head threatened to take out the ceiling. The material began to take on the shape of eight tentacles, created by purple and black balloons beneath it, held up by helpers. As the voiceover described the octopus her outfit was invoking, contestant number three’s creative wear began to spit out glitter confetti through the tentacles, which were bobbing as if below the sea. The glitter reflected the lights of the arena as she and her octopus snaked their way slowly across the stage.
Because fa’afafine do not fit into the gender binary and have been quite visible in Samoan communities for some decades now, the fa’afafine of Samoa are perhaps the most studied Pacific gender diverse community in the world
I am at the annual Miss Samoa Fa’afafine Association Pageant held in our weightlifing gym in Apia. It’s December – the month when the tropical heat and humidity ratchets up to its highest frequency – and there is no air conditioning. Crammed into the gym with thousands of fellow Samaons – and sweating profusely – we are enjoying a night of outrageous entertainment, daring performances, and creative interpretations of Samoa’s natural environment through fa’afa-fabulous fashion.
Beauty pageants are big part of Samoan and fa’afafine life. And for fa’afafine, they not only offer a platform to show off our talents, creativity, humour and knack for entertaining others, they are also the major fundraiser for the Samoa Fa’afafine Association, founded in 2006 to advocate for the rights and dignity of fa’afafine in my home islands. The annual Miss Samoa Fa’afafine Association Pageant, not to be confused with the annual Miss Samoa Pageant reserved for cisgender women, is the monetary life blood of the organisation and all the advocacy that flows from it.
The term fa’fine in Samoan more or less translates to ‘in the manner of a woman.’ And because fa’afafine do not fit into the gender binary and have been quite visible in Samoan communities for some decades now, the fa’afafine of Samoa are perhaps the most studied Pacific gender diverse community in the world.
In Samoa, family is our foundational institution. Our entire indigenous political system revolves around family clans, village clans and the ability to prove one’s lineage in relation to one of the four chiefly paramount titles. While Samoa now has its own version of a Westminister Democracy, our whole society and culture continues to orbit around the significance of family ties.
The Samoa Fa’afafine Association have for many years taken the position that fa’afafine is a cultural identity, which follows the premise that fa’afafine have a cultural role in Samoan families, villages and wider society. But in Samoa there is a clear contradiction that occurs where fa’afafine are apparently as Samoan as taro, but fa’afafine are also continually subjected to high levels of gender based violence and societal-wide discrimination.
[Some Samoan commentators] point has always been that the cultural role of fa’afafine means that a place has always existed for us, and the idea of visibility of fa’afafine being tied to global movements is an incorrect one.
In the scholarly space, Paul Vasey’s foundational work from a Western academic perspective has helped to develop an interpretation of fa’afafine as a third gender. In doing so, his work argued that our social function as fa’afafine in Samoan families relates to our ability to support our families through the redirecting of our resources to our nieces and nephews as well to extended family, presumably in lieu of our ability to have children of our own. In this way, there may even be a genetic explanation – diversity of the genome – that might help to explain the existence of fa’afafine in Samoa when understood within this context.
Other Western researchers have also analysed fa’afafine through the lens of tranvestitism – or as transgenderism (not exactly the same thing but seen as a close enough approximation) – in doing so, they view fa’afafine through the prism of sex and gender binary (transgression), as defined within their own research traditions. There has even been a suggestion by some researchers that fa’afafine only became prominent in Samoan culture and society in the post World War II era, as Samoa found itself part of a globalising world that led to the influx of Western media and representations of queerness.
Samoan commentators, however, often push back against this framing, speaking of fa’afafine through a cultural lens – suggesting that fa’afafine have always existed in Samoan society. Their point has always been that the cultural role of fa’afafine means that a place has always existed for us, and the idea of visibility of fa’afafine being tied to global movements is an incorrect one.
For while fa’afafine are able to claim a cultural space, gay men or lesbian women are far less visible and much less accepted.
Western researchers like Lee Wallace for example, have argued that this is a culturally relativist frame. Their point is that this excessive focus on the cultural role of fa’afafine disconnects our experience from homosexuality and the associated experiences of homo and transphobia. In other words, by distancing ourselves from terms like queer and homosexuality, there is a danger that we are not able to see the way trans and homophobia actually mediate the full lived experience of fa’afafine, and other queer folk who may not use the term in our country. For while fa’afafine are able to claim a cultural space, gay men or lesbian women are far less visible and much less accepted.
Wallace’s observations took place in the 1990s as they cited the consequential difficulty in raising awareness around HIV awareness, as an example, due to stubborn social stigma that incorrectly equated the disease with homosexuality at the time. And in some ways, by giving fa’afafine a cultural role and space, it can have the unintended effect of reinforcing homophobic views that HIV is a homosexual disease; especially if some fa’afafine choose not to describe their sexual acts as homosexual as a strategy to avoid being associated with the disease.
While I believe fa’afafine do have a defined role in Samoan society and culture, I do not believe that we are somehow exempt from the violences that can accompany the gender binary because we are a third gender and protected by our cultural position.
While Wallace made many stinging points during a scarcely disguised tirade against a documentary called Queens of Samoa that featured many Samoan fa’afafine articulating the cultural roles of fa’afafine; and while some might say his critique came from a colonial perspective, I think he made some valid points. If fa’afafine are somehow placed in Samoan culture as a ‘third gender’ that fit in, how then are we disrupting conservative views of family and sexuality if we are just a part of the Samoan furniture? To put it another way – what’s disruptive about being a third point of a gender system that still has prescribed norms, expectations and roles on either end?
As a fa’afafine myself, I sit somewhere in the middle. While I believe fa’afafine do have a defined role in Samoan society and culture, I do not believe that we are somehow exempt from the violences that can accompany the gender binary because we are a third gender and protected by our cultural position. Furthermore, we must investigate further what our defined role is. From my vantage point, many see fa’afafine as mere entertainers and relegate us to service roles in our society.
For instance, it’s widely accepted that if a generation happens to birth a fa’afafine, then that fa’afafine is expected to take care of their parents in their old age as the fa’afafine sibling is less likely to be married and to have a family of their own. And yes, while family is everything to us as Samoans, and it is seen as an honour to be able to nurture your parents as they enter the final years of their life cycle, I have to ask: is having such a prescribed role empowering, or is it a limiting cultural and societal expectation?
This is why I also believe that the literal translation of fa’afafine to ‘in the way of’ or ‘in the manner of’ a woman, is hardly adequate to capture the fullness and challenges of fa’afafine life in Samoa. Neither is this description adequate enough to encapsulate the transnational nature of fa’afafine existence that has accompanied Samoan mobilities, spreading the Samoan nation to nearly every corner of the globe. In other words, the time is nigh, I believe, for fa’afafine to expand this definition, and conceptualise it in a way that is rooted in Samoan ways of knowing and being, but also pays attention to our aspirations, and to how we engage in global conversations around queerness, research and advocacy.
From my own experience, fa’afafine are celebrated in Samoa by nearly everyone. I say nearly, because conservatives in Samoa’s deeply Christian religious institutions have openly opposed our existence for decades. And while this opposition has continued to rise recently, we are still praised for our multi-dimensional talents, the lightness we bring to social interactions with our often extroverted personalities, and our propensity to practice the great Samoan value of tautua – or service. In Samoan, the proverb: o le ala i le pule o le tautua, is drummed into us from a young age. The pathway to leadership is through service. All Samoans are called to serve – it just so happens women and fa’afafine do the bulk of the serving in many families and communities.
This is not to disparage the role men play in our society, as gender roles are complementary in our society (just as much as they are fluid) but while we exist, our existence is not always celebrated and our inclusion is not always guaranteed. And whilst we have many fa’afafine who have become successful in their own right – Samoa is still yet to see its first ever fa’afafine Member of Parliament, or first ever fa’afafine CEO of a government agency. Granted these aren’t the be all and end all of markers of acceptance, but they sure would lend credence to the idea that we belong.
This is especially important at a time when there are increasingly vocal movements in Samoa that are seeking to reinforce heteronormativity and conservative family values. Christianity arrived in Samoa in 1830 with the London Missionary Society and when we gained independence in 1962, we adopted the phrase: E fa’avae i le atua Samoa, meaning Samoa is founded on God, on our coat of arms. In 2017, Samoa ammended its constitution to officially become a Christian state. In recent times, Samoa has seen a rise in the establishment and flourishing of more evangelical Churches. Today, 98% of Samoans consider themselves Christian, including many fa’afafine, with what we call the three ‘big’ churches: Congregational Christian Church of Samoa (Protestant) also known as Ekalesia Fa’apotopotoga Kerisiano Samoa (EFKS), The Catholic Church and The Methodist Church, considered the older churches. For the most part, the older churches have adopted a stance of tolerance regarding fa’afafine.
In the past few decades the EFKS Church and the Methodists have debated whether fa’afafine should be allowed to preach, when for many years fa’afafafine have been Sunday School teachers in different villages and congregations. While these controversies have for the most part been resolved by individual churches themselves, there is no such space given for fa’afafine in the newer churches. The online space in particular has become an arena where evangelical pastors and followers have engaged actively in spreading misinformation regarding fa’afafine and queer folk alike. Many have openly called for the removal of fa’afafine from Samoan life and denying that fa’afafine have any ‘natural’ or ‘normalised’ role in Samoan families or society.
This has recently spilled over into the public arena. I will never forget the day that Samoa Observer, our national daily broadsheet, published the photo of the deceased body of Jeanine, a fa’afafine who had died by suicide, on the front page dead naming her in front of the entire nation. The media storm that followed helped to reveal that there were many in Samoa who did not believe that we belonged at all. There are so many incidents I have come across of fa’afafine being abused by their families, experiencing forms of conversion therapy, and being kicked out of home for displaying feminine characteristics.
I was one of the lucky ones. I am one of many fa’afafine in my family. As a young person, my mother always had fa’afafine around at our place. They were her friends, they were the people she could speak to, this was her chosen family. Because my mother was so generous in providing a shelter at her home for fa’afafine who had no family connections in New Zealand when they migrated there – it has led to many older fa’afafine being connected to me. They subsequently looked out for me as I came of age and entered the world as a fa’afafine.
While academic critiques are valid in being able to read, pose questions and problematise the wider social context in which we exist, resist and persist – it’s the quotidian in which we live, survive, provide and ultimately seek to thrive.
Vasey was astute in their observation that in Samoa, and in Samoan households around the world, fa’afafine are key parts of families. We help to rear children, we are often in the kitchen helping with preparing meals, in the garden helping to sort out the weeds in the blistering Samoan sun, we sell goods and family plantation grown produce at markets to earn incomes for our families and we are some of the smartest kids in school. My fa’afafine cousin and I used to unofficially compete for the highest accolades at our school prize givings each year, which would bring great pride to our family.
Where fa’afafine have always excelled the most has been in the promotion, practice and preservation of Samoan cultural customs.
One aspect of this is how fa’afafine are the frontrunners in pageantry – hugely important for a culture whose customs and traditions rely on the ritualistic practices and large scale ceremony in all facets of social life. And while women are considered sacred in Samoan traditions (if we ignore our epidemic of gender based violence) due to their role of birthing the next generation and for the fact all of our cultural wealth such as fine mats and tapa cloth are made with their hands, it is often fa’afafine who stand behind our women as make up artists, hair dressers, costume designers and makers, deportment coaches, creative directors, performance coaches, choreographers, speech makers and people connectors. I believe that this is because fa’afafine possess huge amounts of creativity and are seen as the perfect assistants to women, as we are neither male nor female and do not threaten what we call the feagaiga or the covenant/special bond between the brother and sister, as such, we do not transgress the sacredness of women in helping them dress and adorn their bodies.
While Miss Universe has only recently allowed women of different bodies and ages to compete, the Miss Samoa contest has never had any restriction on the body type of a woman who could enter, unless of course she is fa’afafine, then she is considered not a woman and must compete in the Miss Samoa Fa’afafine Association pageant instead.
Pageants in Samoa are truly massive. I put their persistence down to the uniqueness of the Miss Samoa contest, which is a pageant that scrutinises the participant’s ability to master Samoan social customs and ceremonies, such as oratory, Samoan dance and the creative use of our natural environment to create adornment that represents our culture. While Miss Universe has only recently allowed women of different bodies and ages to compete, the Miss Samoa contest has never had any restriction on the body type of a woman who could enter, unless of course she is fa’afafine, then she is considered not a woman and must compete in the Miss Samoa Fa’afafine Association pageant instead.
To win Miss Samoa is considered an incredible honour, which marks out the winner as Samoan royalty for a year, and elevates a young woman’s status for the rest of her life. To this point, fa’afafine have been intrinsic in supporting so many young women over the years to win the crown. In fact, the current holders and directors of the Miss Samoa franchise are fa’afafine, with fa’afafine leading dance academies that are priming the next generation of Miss Samoa contestants.
This practice is not just limited to Samoa’s own pearly shores. As Samoans have moved around the world, so, too, have fa’afafine. In New Zealand where I am based, many fa’afafine have led popular dance groups – again, an integral part of our cultural heritage – and these dance academies are literally teaching Samoan dance and culture to Samoan young people growing up outside of our home islands.
While my fa’afafine sisters have contributed immensely to our country, families, culture and society, to be fa’afafine invites many forms of judgment, instances of exclusion and the potential for violence.
Fa’afafine reality is transnational. Many of my fa’afafine contemporaries, Aunties and older sisters over the years have moved to places like New Zealand so they can contribute remittances to their families in Samoa. Today, many fa’afafine like myself regularly move between Samoa and our diasporic bases, staying well and truly connected to life in our ancestral homes.
The Miss Samoa Fa’afafine Association Pageant with the contestant on stilts embodied this. In the 2023 edition, there were 3 fa’afafine contestants who represented Samoan and Pacific communities in Aotearoa-New Zealand (Auckland, Hastings and Wellington) as well as a contestant who flew over from Melbourne to compete. Miss Annie Togia, representing Hastings and Teine O Le Apu (‘The Apple Ladies’ – Hastings is New Zealand’s largest apple producer), was crowned Miss Samoa Fa’afafine Association on the night.
While Annie competed, in attendance were Miss SOFIAS (Society of Fa’afafine in American Samoa), and Miss Island Goddess from Seattle WA, representing the Samoan and Pacific community based in Washington State. With the President of the SOFIAS, Executive Director of UTOPIA Washington (Queer and Trans Pacific Islander serving organisations in Washington) and F’INE Pasifika Aotearoa Trust (Queer Pacific Islander service organisation based in Auckland, New Zealand) presenting the Samoa Fa’afafine Association monetary donations from outside the island on the crowning night in support of their organisation and its mission to advance the rights and welfare of fa’afafine in Samoa.
So as I sat in the crowd sipping on warm beer in the overheated weightlifting gym watching contestant number three’s octopus leave a trail of glitter and confetti behind, it gave me a chance to reflect on what being fa’afafine life is truly like today.
For me, it’s a world of contradictions. I know that I belong in Samoa, but I can’t help but think that this sense of belonging comes with many caveats. While my fa’afafine sisters have contributed immensely to our country, families, culture and society, to be fa’afafine invites many forms of judgment, instances of exclusion and the potential for violence. This is a contradiction I believe many indigenous and queer folk of colour can relate to around the world.