Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India

Hinchy, Jessica

doi:10.1017/9781108592208

Cited by 102 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 167 publications

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“…. Hijras' (Hinchy, 2019)-viewed under a Western gaze as a deviant form of gender/sex expression-through both formal law (such as the Indian Penal Code and the subsequent Criminal Tribes Act) and discursive practices around morality and perversion, which sought to stigmatize indigenous bodies and sexual practices (Hinchy, 2019). Similarly, the so-called "third gender" aboriginal people of Andean indigenous culture were labelled as transgressive "sodomites" (Horswell, 2005).…”

Section: Gender/sex Binary As Colonial Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auto-essentialization: Gender in automated facial analysis as extended colonial project

2021

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Scholars are increasingly concerned about social biases in facial analysis systems, particularly with regard to the tangible consequences of misidentification of marginalized groups. However, few have examined how automated facial analysis technologies intersect with the historical genealogy of racialized gender—the gender binary and its classification as a highly racialized tool of colonial power and control. In this paper, we introduce the concept of auto-essentialization: the use of automated technologies to re-inscribe the essential notions of difference that were established under colonial rule. We consider how the face has emerged as a legitimate site of gender classification, despite being historically tied to projects of racial domination. We examine the history of gendering the face and body, from colonial projects aimed at disciplining bodies which do not fit within the European gender binary, to sexology's role in normalizing that binary, to physiognomic practices that ascribed notions of inferiority to non-European groups and women. We argue that the contemporary auto-essentialization of gender via the face is both racialized and trans-exclusive: it asserts a fixed gender binary and it elevates the white face as the ultimate model of gender difference. We demonstrate that imperialist ideologies are reflected in modern automated facial analysis tools in computer vision through two case studies: (1) commercial gender classification and (2) the security of both small-scale (women-only online platforms) and large-scale (national borders) spaces. Thus, we posit a rethinking of ethical attention to these systems: not as immature and novel, but as mature instantiations of much older technologies.

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Section: Gender/sex Binary As Colonial Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auto-essentialization: Gender in automated facial analysis as extended colonial project

2021

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“…The NWPO's aim was to produce industrious families. 70 However, the Sansiya project attempted to redraw the relationship between families, social groups and space in much more drastic ways than had been attempted in groups confined to their own villages.…”

Section: Space Family and Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

Conjugality, Colonialism and the ‘Criminal Tribes’ in North India

Hinchy

2020

Studies in History

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The Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871 was a project to geographically redistribute and immobilize criminalized populations on the basis of family units. Family ties were a key site of contestation between criminalized people and the colonial state, as well as cooperation, or at least, situationally coinciding interests. This article’s focus on the family goes against the grain of existing literature, which has primarily debated the historical causes of the CTA and the colonial construction of the ‘criminal tribe’. This article explores a particular type of family tie—marriage—to provide a new vantage point on the minutiae of everyday life under the CTA, while also shedding light on the history of conjugality in modern South Asia. In 1891, the colonial government in north India launched a matchmaking campaign in which district Magistrates became marriage brokers. Colonial governments showed an uneven concern with marriage practices, which varied between criminalized communities and over time. In the case of ‘nomadic’ criminalized groups, colonial governments were more concerned with conjugality, since they attempted more significant transformations in the relationships between individuals, families, social groupings and space. Moreover, criminalized peoples’ strategies and demands propelled colonial involvement into marital matters. Yet the colonial government could not sustain a highly interventionist management of intimate relationships.

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“…Illustrating the kind of strategies that the secular age affords, she writes regarding a case of kidnapping against hijras: 'Drummond appears to have lowered the age of one of the minors to emphasize his child status, claiming that the child was "certainly under 10", even though his mother insisted he was older'. 17 Yet despite these machinations, not everybody shared the anxieties that hijras allegedly provoked. Concerning the inclusion of hijras in the Criminal Tribes Act, Hinchy notes:…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In nineteen districts, however, 'the law seems to have been carefully attended to'. 18 While such uneven, fractured implementation is characteristic of colonial policing, I would also venture to guess that it is equally the result of an incomplete picturing or indexing of sexuality -or at least of British colonial sexuality -an insight that psychoanalysis has given us. 19 While the bawdy performances, beggary, vagrancy and buggery polluted the public spaces and provoked the ire of the colonial officers, Hinchy points out that there was a 'variety of occupations among registered people, including: renting out houses or shops; animal husbandry; tenant farming; work as agricultural labourers; shopkeeping; itinerant petty trading; weaving and tailoring and domestic work'.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…19 While the bawdy performances, beggary, vagrancy and buggery polluted the public spaces and provoked the ire of the colonial officers, Hinchy points out that there was a 'variety of occupations among registered people, including: renting out houses or shops; animal husbandry; tenant farming; work as agricultural labourers; shopkeeping; itinerant petty trading; weaving and tailoring and domestic work'. 20 The incommensurability in the colonial imagination between the disreputable and respectable occupations shored up a narrative of hijras' peripatetic criminality but also shows us in retrospect how hijras were fully ingrained in the local landscape and were received differently across race, class and kinship.…”

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confidence: 99%

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JessicaHinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, C.1850–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)LiatKozma, Global Women, Colonial Ports: Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East (Ithaca: State University of New York Press, 2017)DurbaMitra, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)IshitaPande, Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univers

Saria

2022

Gender & History

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Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India

Cited by 102 publications

References 167 publications

Auto-essentialization: Gender in automated facial analysis as extended colonial project

Auto-essentialization: Gender in automated facial analysis as extended colonial project

Conjugality, Colonialism and the ‘Criminal Tribes’ in North India

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