Obscenity, Moral Contagion and Masculinity:<i>Hijras</i>in Public Space in Colonial North India

Hinchy, Jessica

doi:10.1080/10357823.2014.901298

Cited by 64 publications

(26 citation statements)

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“…However, the boundaries between hijras and other male-assigned GNC categories are shifting and unstable; many people associated with hijras do not unambiguously identify with the term hijra. 3 Despite activism and outreach by NGOs over the past 25 years, hijras continue to be disparaged within the “general society” because of their poverty, their supposed dirtiness (Hinchy 2014), their association with gender and sexual deviance, and their generally marginal status.…”

Section: Hijras And/vs Trans Women: Hiv/aids Outreach and Gnc Diffementioning

confidence: 99%

“I Am Not a Hijra”: Class, Respectability, and the Emergence of the “New” Transgender Woman in India

Mount

2020

Gender & Society

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This article examines the mutual imbrication of gender and class that shapes how some transgender women seek incorporation into social hierarchies in postcolonial India. Existing literature demonstrates an association between transgender and middle-class-status in the global South. Through an 18-month ethnographic study in Bangalore from 2009 through 2016 with transgender women, NGO (nongovernmental organization) workers and activists, as well as textual analyses of media representations, I draw on “new woman” archetypes to argue that the discourses of empowerment and respectability that impacted middle-class cisgender women in late colonial, postcolonial and liberalized India also impact how trans women narrate their struggles and newfound opportunities. Trans woman identities are often juxtaposed to the identities of hijras, a recognized (yet socially marginal) group of working-class male-assigned gender-nonconforming people. Instead of challenging stereotypes of gender nonconformity most evident in the marginalization of hijras, some transgender women are at pains to highlight their difference from hijras. These trans women are from working-class backgrounds. It is partly their similarities in class location that propel trans women’s efforts to distinguish themselves from hijras. They employ the figure of the disreputable hijra to contain negative stereotypes associated with gender nonconformity, thus positioning their identities in proximity with middle-class respectable womanhood.

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Section: Hijras And/vs Trans Women: Hiv/aids Outreach and Gnc Diffementioning

confidence: 99%

“I Am Not a Hijra”: Class, Respectability, and the Emergence of the “New” Transgender Woman in India

Mount

2020

Gender & Society

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“…They deprived Khwajasarais of their political status in the kingdoms that they started to annex from the mid‐nineteenth century. In 1871, the British government enacted the Criminal Tribes Act that prescribed registration and control of ‘eunuchs’, a collective term they used for the transgender communities (Hinchy, ). Before that, in 1860, much to the disadvantage of both queer communities and non‐queer homosexuals, the British had criminalized ‘unnatural intercourse’ or sodomy under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) (Narrain, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Before that, in 1860, much to the disadvantage of both queer communities and non‐queer homosexuals, the British had criminalized ‘unnatural intercourse’ or sodomy under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) (Narrain, ). The continuance of these laws hardly gave the Indian queer forms any opportunities to claim moral and social recognition during and after colonial rule (Hinchy, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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LGBTQ Activist Organizations as ‘Respectably Queer’ in India: Contesting a Western View

Ghosh¹

2014

Gender Work & Organization

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This study contests the distinction of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) organizations suggested by earlier scholars as ‘respectable’ — i.e. normalizing, professionalizing and conforming to the dominant cultural and institutional patterns — and ‘queer’, meaning challenging the cultural and institutional forces that ‘normalize and commodify differences’. Using Bernstein's model of identity deployment, it is found problematic to distinguish LGBTQ organizations this way because when the actions of LGBTQ organizations are more complex to describe, it is not warranted to conflate identity goals with identity strategies — whether normalizing (respectable) or differentiating (queer). To examine these concerns, a qualitative inquiry was used to study five LGBTQ organizations in India where the intersections of post‐colonial ethnicity, gender, social class and sexuality offer an intriguing context through which to study queer activism. Based on the findings, it is argued from a post‐colonial perspective that when the socio‐cultural and historical existence of non‐homonormative queer communities and practices is strong, LGBTQ organizations challenge the heteronormative and/or other forms of domination to become ‘queer’. But they may simultaneously become ‘respectable′ by conforming to the diversity politics of non‐profit business, donors, and social movement organizations they seek support from, and turn out as ‘respectably queer’.

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“…Differences between different kinds of thirdness were also marked through participation in regional traditions of theatre and performance: jankhas, jogtas and bhands (actors who impersonate women) were differentiated from asli hijras or absorbed into the category depending upon context (Cohen 1995, Nanda 1999, Pament 2013. Historically, it was this overlap between hijras and participants in various regional traditions of performance that prompted the colonial policing of the hijra in public spaces but also resulted in hijras devising tactics and strategies to evade such policing such as wearing female clothing only in areas beyond British rule or in the privacy of their homes (Hinchy 2014). Furthermore, globalizing discourses on sex and gender lead to the increasing vernacularization of categories such as 'Men who have sex with men' (Boellestorff 2011) and 'transgender,' thus making any neat categorization of the 'third gender' impossible.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

To Be Some Other Name: The Naming Games that Hijras Play

Saria¹

2015

samaj

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Although the hijras appear as a generic category in much official and scholarly discourse that renders them as the 'third gender,' members of these communities themselves pay close attention to the multiple criteria through which one hijra body might be distinguished from another. 1 This kind of differentiation is reiterated in common talk among the hijras and relates to the moral economy of izzat, 2 or honor. Of the multiple signs through which hijras make their bodies and their sexuality apparent in both the public domain and in interpersonal relations, proper names play a significant role in marking the place of the hijras in the wider sexual economy and also for indexing the changes in the status of a particular person through the life course. From the outside, it might appear that the boundaries of the hijra community are well-defined but from the inside, the community is haunted by questions about who is an asli (real/true) hijra and who might be a nakli or false one (false in the sense of an impostor or a duplicate which carries with it a moral charge of cheating). Distinctions are made through reading very closely the multiple alterations of bodies through surgical and medical interventions, the movement between names, and the volatility of relations in which different subcommunities of hijras are implicated, for differentiating hijra bodies and selves. In this volatile play of who one is, questions about asli and nakli are not simply about social identities but about one's existence as genuine or fake. 2 This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted between 2008 and 2010 intermittently and then without any break for a further period between 2011 and 2013 amongst hijra groups in three rural districts of Orissa-Bhadrak, Jajpur, and Kalahandi. Before my fieldwork in Orissa, I belonged to the community of sexual minorities in Calcutta that organized various public events demanding recognition from the state. This is how I first came to register the mutual suspicion among hijras about who is a true hijra. For instance, Shonali, a hijra guru in Bhadrak, did not consider the other hijras of Bhadrak asli (genuine) because they were married to women, 3 while hijras in Jajpur did not consider any of the hijras of the Bhadrak, including Shonali, asli because, while they

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Obscenity, Moral Contagion and Masculinity:Hijrasin Public Space in Colonial North India

Cited by 64 publications

References 28 publications

“I Am Not a Hijra”: Class, Respectability, and the Emergence of the “New” Transgender Woman in India

“I Am Not a Hijra”: Class, Respectability, and the Emergence of the “New” Transgender Woman in India

LGBTQ Activist Organizations as ‘Respectably Queer’ in India: Contesting a Western View

To Be Some Other Name: The Naming Games that Hijras Play

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