In Fiji, gender diversity is not a new import, a Western fad, or a social media invention. Long before modern debates about transgender rights and identity politics, iTaukei (indigenous) Fijian society had ways of recognising people who did not fit neatly into the male–female binary. Among the most widely discussed of these roles is vakasalewalewa (sometimes rendered as vaka sa lewa lewa), a term commonly used to describe people assigned male at birth who live, dress, work, and socialise in ways traditionally associated with women. While never identical to contemporary Western notions of “transgender women,” vakasalewalewa occupied a culturally legible social space—known, named, and embedded in everyday life.
Oral histories, ethnographic accounts, and community memory suggest that gender-diverse people were historically present in villages and kinship networks, not hidden on the margins. They participated in domestic labour, caregiving, ceremonial preparations, and social life. In many accounts, vakasalewalewa were valued for their skills, humour, emotional labour, and ability to move fluidly between gendered social worlds. Acceptance was not necessarily framed as “rights” or “identity” in a modern sense, but as social recognition: people knew who they were, what they did, and where they belonged. This kind of acceptance was pragmatic rather than ideological, rooted in communal life rather than abstract moral doctrine.
That historical legibility matters, because it complicates the common claim—often made by conservative leaders today—that gender diversity is “un-Fijian” or alien to Pacific cultures. In reality, the sharp moral rejection of gender variance is a relatively recent development, tied closely to colonial rule and Christianisation. When Britain formally colonised Fiji in 1874, it brought with it Victorian-era legal codes, rigid gender binaries, and Christian moral frameworks that redefined sexuality and gender expression as matters of sin, deviance, or pathology. Churches became central institutions in Fijian society, shaping education, law, and public morality. Over time, indigenous understandings of gender diversity were pushed into silence, reframed as shameful, or dismissed as moral failure.
This process did not erase vakasalewalewa from Fijian life, but it did change the terms under which they were seen. What had once been familiar became something to be corrected, prayed over, or hidden. Gender-diverse people increasingly learned to navigate a double reality: tacit acceptance within families or villages on the one hand, and open condemnation from church pulpits, schools, and state institutions on the other. Many grew up internalising the message that their way of being was tolerated only so long as it remained discreet and non-confrontational.
Modern Fiji presents a striking paradox. On paper, it is one of the more progressive countries in the Pacific when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity. Same-sex conduct was decriminalised in 2010, and the 2013 Constitution explicitly prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression—language that remains rare even in many Western constitutions. These legal provisions are often cited by international observers as evidence of Fiji’s leadership on LGBTQ issues in the region.
Yet the lived reality for vakasalewalewa and other gender-diverse people remains far more precarious. Constitutional promises do not automatically translate into everyday safety, dignity, or equality. There is no clear, accessible system for legal gender recognition, meaning many trans and gender-diverse people are forced to use identity documents that do not reflect their lived gender. This mismatch exposes them to harassment in schools, workplaces, healthcare settings, and encounters with police or immigration officials. Employment discrimination, family rejection, bullying, and barriers to healthcare remain common, especially outside urban centres.
Religious conservatism continues to exert powerful social pressure. Public discourse often frames gender diversity as a threat to family values, Christianity, or national culture, even as those arguments contradict Fiji’s own pre-colonial history. Media coverage has, at times, sensationalised or misgendered vakasalewalewa, reinforcing stigma rather than challenging it. High-profile cases of violence against trans and gender-diverse people have sparked outrage and calls for justice, but they have also exposed deep gaps between legal ideals and institutional practice.
Advocacy groups and regional networks have worked to document these gaps and push for reform. Organisations such as the Asia Pacific Transgender Network have highlighted how colonial-era legal frameworks still shape contemporary governance, even when constitutions appear progressive. Their research underscores a key irony: Fiji’s strongest legal protections coexist with some of its weakest implementation mechanisms. Without clear procedures, training, and political will, gender-diverse people are left navigating systems that were never designed with them in mind.
For many vakasalewalewa today, the struggle is not only for new rights, but for the recognition of old truths. Activists and elders alike increasingly emphasise that gender diversity is not something Fiji needs to import or invent; it is something that was already there, before missionaries, before colonial courts, before binary laws. Reclaiming that history is both a cultural and political act. It challenges the idea that tradition and gender diversity are incompatible, and it exposes how much of today’s intolerance is itself a colonial inheritance.
The story of vakasalewalewa is therefore not just about gender; it is about memory, power, and whose version of culture gets to define the nation. In contemporary Fiji, gender-diverse people live at the intersection of deep-rooted indigenous practices and equally deep-rooted religious conservatism. They are citizens of a state that promises equality while often failing to deliver it, and heirs to a cultural past that recognised them, even if imperfectly. Understanding that tension is essential to understanding Fiji itself—not as a society torn between “tradition” and “modernity,” but as one still negotiating the long, unfinished aftermath of colonial rule.
I always get suspicious when someone tells me that gender diversity is “against tradition.” That sentence usually means: against the version of tradition I learned in church, school, or colonial textbooks. Tradition, darling, is a lot older—and messier—than that.
Across the Pacific, long before missionaries arrived clutching Bibles and gender binaries, people already knew that some boys grew into women, some men walked the world with softness, and some people simply refused to stay in the box assigned at birth. They had names. They had roles. They were not mysteries to be solved or sins to be erased. They were just… there. Living. Cooking. Caring. Laughing too loudly at kava circles. Being useful. Being loved. Or at least, being known.
Then came the great moral clean-up. Empire arrived with paperwork, uniforms, laws, and the firm belief that God had only created two genders and was extremely upset about anyone improvising. Suddenly, what had been familiar became shameful. What had been visible became something to whisper about. And what had once belonged to the community was declared a problem to be fixed.
Here’s the part that irritates me most: today’s loudest moral crusaders often claim they are defending “culture.” But whose culture? Certainly not the one that existed before colonial courts and missionary schools. What they are defending is a very modern invention—a Christianised, sanitised, fear-based version of tradition that mistakes rigidity for authenticity.
And now, we live in the age of hypocrisy. Governments love to brag about progressive constitutions and anti-discrimination clauses. On paper, everything looks fabulous. Champagne-worthy. But on the ground? Gender-diverse people are still harassed, misgendered, blocked from jobs, denied healthcare, mocked by media, and blamed for their own vulnerability. Equality exists beautifully—in theory. In practice, it’s conditional, fragile, and often revoked the moment someone quotes scripture.
What’s quietly radical about gender-diverse Pacific histories is not that they were perfect—they weren’t—but that they remind us something crucial: acceptance does not have to be imported. It can be remembered. Reclaimed. Dusty, imperfect, local, and stubbornly alive.
So when someone tells you gender diversity is “Western,” smile politely and ask them which century they’re living in. Because the real foreign import here isn’t transness or femininity or fluidity. It’s the idea that there was ever only one right way to be a man or a woman.
Tradition isn’t fragile. It survived oceans, empires, and missionaries. What’s fragile is the lie that pretending otherwise will make us moral.