Bissu

Bissu

Sulawesi Island, Indonesia

The Bissu play an essential role in the society of the Bugis people, who divide themselves into five genders: cisgender males and females, female men and male women, and the “gender transcendent” Bissu, in which all aspects of gender combine to form a whole, and who have effigies made in their honor because they are intermediaries between the people and the gods.

This entity appears in the story “23. Island Faiths”.