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Through the life experiences of Marta, a Mapuche male transgendered shaman in Chile, I analyze how selfhood is gendered dynamically by individual desire and competing cultural and religious norms. Marta's unique identity as a divine heterosexual woman is based on a spiritual transformation, her manner of dressing, and her gender performances. It challenges conventional notions of transvestism, transgenderism, and homosexuality linked to sexed bodies. At the same time, Marta's self is shaped and constrained by the normative gender ideologies of the Virgin Mary, shamanic lore, the Mapuche, and dominant Chilean society. I analyze the negative effect that the imposition of homophobic norms of dominant Chilean society have on the life, identity, dignity and practice of machi Marta. These norms are implemented first by the prison guards, then by the media, and finally by Mapuche themselves. I explore how and why Mapuche have abandoned the older gender variant role of machi weye-machi that oscillated between masculine and feminine poles and combined women's and men's behavior, dress, and styles as well as passive or active sexual acts with women or men or celibacy that would have legitimated Marta's identity and practice. I analyze to what extent the incorporation of the homophobic gender and sexual norms of mainstream Chilean society within Mapuche communities has transformed and undermined the gender duality of machi practice. This article calls for the acceptance of all gender and sexually variant roles, particularly those of machi. I show that it is precisely the dual gender roles of machi that allows them to perform as mediators between the human and spiritual world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]