Binabinaaine

Binabinaaine or sometimes called Pinapinaaine are people who identify as a third gender that is not male nor female. In Kiribati, this term is broad and can refer to gay men, bisexual men, and transgender women.Their sex is assigned male at birth but they are seen to have female or more feminine characteristics. The word means “becoming a woman” in Gilbertese.They come from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in Kiribati and Tuvalu. The term is flexible and can be used as a noun, verb or adverb. There are multiple terms in the surrounding area for a third gender that is more feminine presenting in the region. Oceania has a large and rich history of peoples being born male but not fulfilling traditionally male or masculine roles. These people are well known and documented throughout the many islands of the pacific ocean. Notably the Binabinaaine can be compared to the faʻafafine in Samoa and the māhū and raerae in French Polynesia. Typically, this sort of third gender role is assigned later in life. Children are typically assigned male in this case and then later grow up to inherit more feminine traits and roles. This sort of gender assignment is different from the transgender identity that is more commonly recognized in North America and Europe. Although the Binabinaaine, Fa’afafine, and māhū are all assigned male at birth and then later take on feminine roles and present themselves in a feminine manner, they think of themselves as distinctly not women. They believe themselves to not act as men or women but as a third gender distinct from male and female.

Binabinaaine or pinapinaaine (with the meaning of "becoming a woman" in Gilbertese) are people who identify themselves as having a third-gender role in Kiribati and Tuvalu, and previously in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands which reunited the two archipelagoes. These are people whose sex is assigned male at birth, but who embody female gendered behaviours.

The term comes from Gilbertese and has been loaned into Tuvaluan; it can be used as a noun, a verb or an adverb. The more rarely used term in Tuvaluan is fakafafine. There are similarities between the societal roles that binabinaaine share with other gender liminal communities from the Pacific, including the Samoan fa'afafine and the Tongan fakaleiti.

According to anthropologist Gilbert Herdt, some Tuvaluans view binabinaaine as a "borrowing" from Kiribati whence other "'undesirable' traits of Tuvaluan culture, like sorcery, are thought to have originated", but those ideas are mainly spread by Protestant churches as Church of Tuvalu originated from Samoa, where the equivalent of binabinaaine also exists.