Histories of aging and gender variability: Old age in the nineteenth‐century ‘Hijra’/‘Eunuch’ archive

Abstract

Queer, trans and gender histories have destabilised concepts of childhood and adolescence and thereby shown how age‐stratification and normative notions of time are produced through gender and sexual normativity. However, scholars can productively consider how gender variability produces, negotiates or unravels hegemonic concepts of old age. This article analyses narratives about old age and gender variability from late nineteenth‐century north India. While elderly, gender non‐conforming people were often constructed as soon‐to‐die, this article highlights more capacious meanings of old age.