This groundbreaking collection includes thirteen essays from historian, sociologists, and anthropologists who discuss transgendered females and same-sex desire among women in Asia, Latin America, Native North America, and Africa. Offering compelling evidence against the commonly accepted notion that non-Western women are generally passive victims of male domination and compulsory heterosexuality, these essays on lesbian desire in ancient and modern India, butchfemme social types in Indonesia and Peru, and the lesbian movement in Mexico dispel the myth that same-sex female desires is rootes in Western neo-imperialist culture. The illuminating studies look past the ethnocentric categories in which sexuality, identity, and culture are often considered.