What MVPFAFF+ Is

MVPFAFF+ is an acronym grouping seven Pacific Island terms for gender non-conforming males. It was coined by Niuean fakafifine activist Phylesha Brown-Acton and first presented at the 2011 Asia-Pacific Outgames Human Rights Conference (NCWNZ; Outright International). The letters stand for:

The acronym is now widely used in Aotearoa New Zealand health, education and government documents, often written alongside LGBTQIA+ as MVPFAFF+/LGBTQIA+. It is not a traditional term from any Pacific language — it is a modern advocacy umbrella created in a diaspora context.

Phylesha coined the mnemonic MVPFAFF+ / Māhū – Hawaiʻi, Vakasalewalewa – Fiji, Palopa – Papua New Guinea, Fa’afafine / Fa’atama – American Sāmoa & Sāmoa, Akava’ine – Cook Islands, Fakafifine – Niue, Fakaleiti or Leiti – Tonga, which recognises terms that are far more expansive in understanding of gender. — (Te Papa, n.d.)

Why It Was Created

Brown-Acton has been explicit about the purpose: to give Pacific gender identities visibility separate from the Western LGBTQ+ acronym, which she and others argue flattens culturally distinct categories into imported ones. As the Hawai'i LGBT Legacy Foundation puts it, MVPFAFF "refers to those in the Pacific Islander community, who may or may not identify with the LGBT initialism" (Hawai'i LGBT Legacy Foundation, n.d.).

The acronym emerged in a specific historical moment. By the late 2000s, Pacific diaspora communities in New Zealand — particularly in Auckland, which has the world's largest Polynesian population — were navigating two pressures at once: Christian conservatism imported during colonisation, and a Western LGBTQ+ rights framework that offered legal protections but at the cost of cultural specificity. MVPFAFF+ was an attempt to claim space in the second without surrendering to it.

Brown-Acton's organisation F'ine Pasifika Aotearoa, founded in 2015, uses the acronym in its mission to support MVPFAFF+ people and their families. She was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2019 for this work.

What the Terms Actually Describe

Every term in MVPFAFF+ refers to males who live in a feminine role. This is consistent across all seven cultures. The categories are:

• Sex-specific — they apply to males. There is no equivalent category for masculine females in any of these cultures. (Samoa has fa'afatama, Tonga has fakatangata, but these are far less visible and less socially accepted.)
• Defined by presentation and social role — childcare, domestic work, community service, aesthetic occupations — not by an internal "gender identity."
• Not claims to be female — fa'afafine, fakaleiti and māhū recognise that they are male. As the psychologist Paul Vasey notes, fa'afafine "do not see themselves as women" and reject being labelled as such.
• Not defined by medical transition — most do not take hormones or have surgery. Those who do are not understood locally as having "become women."

Research by Vasey and colleagues at the University of Lethbridge, spanning two decades, consistently finds that fa'afafine are almost exclusively attracted to men. In a 2023 retrospective of 358 fa'afafine, all reported either exclusive or near-exclusive attraction to males (Semenyna et al. 2023). This is a sexual-role category, not a gender identity in the modern Western sense.

Fa'afafine are identified in childhood on the basis of their gender presentation, not on their sexual orientation; nonetheless, they are almost always exclusively attracted to men. — (Bartlett & Vasey 2006; see also Vasey et al. 2007)

The Tension Inside the Acronym

MVPFAFF+ contains a contradiction. It was created to resist Western flattening — yet it does exactly what the Western LGBTQ+ acronym does: it groups seven distinct cultural categories into a single string of letters, for use in Western-style advocacy, policy and healthcare settings.

This is not lost on the people it describes. The Samoa Fa'afafine Association has publicly stated:

The terms Fa'afafine & Fa'afatama are culturally unique and specific to Samoa's 3rd gender. It is a social and communal gender fluid based status given to effeminate males and butch females within the Samoan cultural context. We go on record that we, Fa'afafines and Fa'afatamas, are NOT all transgender. Some of us, but they are exceptions to the rule. Boxing our issues together with Transgender issues under the LGBTIQ framework ignores our cultural connection or "fa'asinomaga" which is the essence and at the heart of every Samoan. — (Samoa Fa'afafine Association, quoted in Silly Ol You 2018)

Anthropologist Johanna Schmidt argues in Redefining Fa'afafine that Western reinterpretation of fa'afafine is actively changing the category itself — making it more "homosexual" and more "transgender" than it was, as Samoans absorb imported frameworks through HIV/AIDS awareness, Christian moral panic and global media (Schmidt 2001).

When presumably informed academics use Western terms in the context of Samoan culture, it attributes a certain 'real meaning' to the former as a translation of the latter, and carries the weight of a discursive sexual pathologising that is not applicable to fa'afafine. — (Schmidt 2001)

"Gender Colonialism"

The strongest critique of how MVPFAFF+ and similar terms are used comes from Paul Vasey himself, writing in Newsweek. He argues that Westerners "err when they call these individuals 'trans women,' because the vast majority of fa'afafine and muxes actively reject being labeled as women" (muxes are a similar category of feminine males in Oaxaca, Mexico):

Unlike many trans people in the West who identify as male-to-female, fa'afafine and muxes recognize that they have male bodies and that these are immutable. A tiny number might femininize their bodies with hormones or even more rarely surgery, but no one in their local communities, least of all fa'afafine and muxes themselves, believe that such procedures transform them into females.

Dragooned into the service of Western gender ideology, the unique cultural character of fa'afafine and muxes can become warped like a funhouse mirror and, in the process, we end up far from reality. ... Let's be clear about calling this what it truly is: gender colonialism. — (Vasey 2019)

Vasey also notes that fa'afafine and muxes are not "raised as girls" (a common Western myth), that families do not "create" them as substitute daughters, and that gender dysphoria has historically been uncommon in these cultures — precisely because the categories do not require claiming to be female.

What Detransitioners Say

Detransitioners frequently encounter MVPFAFF+ and similar "third gender" evidence in arguments that "trans people have always existed." Their responses tend to focus on three points.

1. These categories exist because societies could not accept feminine males as men.

They also point to older cultures that have a third gender as a way to legitimize transness, not realizing these cultures only have this third category because some people were so GNC they didn't "count" as women or men within said culture. Rather than ostracizing them, a third gender was created. They fail to realize just how regressive this is. To claim a human somehow can't be a member of their own sex classification because of their personality, social role, or lifestyle is so sad. —AbsentFuck, desisted female.

Most of the "third genders" they describe are usually what we would call gay men in modernity anyway, it's all a consequence of sexism. Males who are to take the role of a woman in places where women are not allowed to be, or gay men deemed not-man-enough and relegated to an inbetween. —vsapieldepapel, desisted female.

2. The categories are not "trans" and should not be claimed as such.

Real!! I was born+raised in the US but I have Polynesian and Belgian roots...I HATE when people bring Indigenous elders into conversations about trans people being these ancient transcendent beings that have been around for thousands of years and persevered. Two-spirit, Malu, and Māhū are NOT in the realm of transgenderism. They ACTUALLY EARNED THOSE TITLES. —Typical-Cicada7783, detrans female.

3. Gender non-conformity is universal; medical transition is not.

They have 100% taken that from the saying "gay people have been around for thousands of years", leaving out of the conversation the fact that same-sex attraction doesn't need any "help" from others to exist. ... Medical transition hasn't been around for thousands of years. Actually identifying as the opposite sex — not out of survival in sexist conditions — has been very rare in history. Now what has existed for thousands of years? Gender non conforming people. —FineBalance44, desisted female.

What MVPFAFF+ Actually Shows

Read carefully, the acronym and the cultures behind it support a more specific claim than the one usually made with them:

• Gender non-conformity is universal. In every culture, some males are feminine and some females are masculine. This is a stable feature of human variation.
• Societies create categories to manage it. Those categories reflect local kinship systems, labour divisions and power structures — not a universal "gender spectrum."
• The categories are sex-specific and role-based. They describe what someone does, not what someone is in a metaphysical sense. They acknowledge biological sex rather than transcending it.
• Acceptance does not require medical intervention. Pacific cultures accommodated feminine males for centuries without hormones or surgery. The medicalisation of gender non-conformity is a modern Western development.
• Umbrella acronyms flatten. MVPFAFF+ was created to resist Western flattening, but it reproduces the same move at a different scale. The Samoa Fa'afafine Association's objection — that boxing fa'afafine with transgender issues "ignores our cultural connection" — applies to the acronym itself.

The lesson is not that "trans people have always existed." The lesson is that feminine males have always existed, and that different societies have given them different names, different roles and different degrees of dignity — none of which require changing sex.

References

• Brown-Acton, P. (2011). Introduction of MVPFAFF at the Asia-Pacific Outgames Human Rights Conference. Recorded in: National Council of Women of New Zealand, Milestones: Legal Status and Sexual Orientation/Identity, source; Outright International, Niue country page, source.
• Hawai'i LGBT Legacy Foundation. (n.d.). MVPFAFF/2SLGBTQIA+. source.
• Te Papa Tongarewa. (n.d.). Phylesha Brown-Acton MNZM on the trope of the dusky maidens. source.
• Schmidt, J. (2001). Redefining Fa'afafine: Western discourses and the construction of transgenderism in Samoa. Intersections, 6. source.
• Vasey, P.L. (2019). Stop imposing Western LGBTQ+ identities on non-Western cultures. It's gender colonialism. Newsweek. source.
• Vasey, P.L., Pocock, D.S., & VanderLaan, D.P. (2007). Kin selection and male androphilia in Samoan fa'afafine. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28(3), 159–167. source.
• Bartlett, N.H., & Vasey, P.L. (2006). A retrospective study of childhood gender-atypical behavior in Samoan fa'afafine. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35(6), 659–666. source.
• Semenyna, S.W., Petterson, L.J., VanderLaan, D.P., & Vasey, P.L. (2023). Male androphilia, fraternal birth order, and female fecundity in Samoa: A 10-year retrospective. PNAS. source.
• Samoa Fa'afafine Association statement, quoted in: Silly Ol You (2018). Whitewashing colonialism: Fa'afafine in Samoa. source.
• ABC News (2019). Fa'afafine, fakaleitī, fakafifine — understanding the Pacific's alternative gender expressions. source.
• Out on the Shelves (2025). Pacific (MVPFAFF+) booklist. source.
• Rainbow Directory NZ. Glossary: MVPFAFF. source.