My eyebrows were raised today (despite all the Botox under them) by this article in the Telegraph:
Whu-huh? Are these transgendered people? Men unwillingly castrated as children (and if so, why?)? Is this akin to the female “circumcision” of Africa? Does anyone know anything about the Indian eunuchs, and if India has any kind of policy toward the transgendered (MtF or FtM)?
Don’t know TOO much about them, but the two terms you’ll want to search for are aruvani and hijra.
Look up the terms Dorjän said, especially Hijra.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)
IIRC A. Crowley even wrote about them when he was there for one of the Durga festivals (perhaps the one where he alleged he shot at reputed robed kidnappers in an alleyway…)
There are several books on transsexualism and transgenderism throughout history you should look up if you want to learn more about it. I’ll met Johanna knows something about the subject.
Eunuchs have been “spayed/neutered/gelded”: the testicles have been resected.
This is analgous to an ovarectomy in women: resection of the ovaries.
Female “circumcision”, as usually practiced, is a combination of a clitorectomy(removal of the clitoris), as well as tightening of the vulva/vaginal opening, rendering penetative intercourse painful. Which, given the absence of a clitoris, is also practically guaranteed to be an orgasm free event.
Isn’t that yet another example of ludicrous PC-ness? To equate transsexualism or transgenderism with voluntary sterilization with no intent to change sex or gender seems quite absurd to me.
It appears to me that the article quoted in the OP is speaking of hijra, not just “eunuchs”, even though that word is used in the article. And the hijra as a subject matter are considered to be a very valid part of TS/TG history.
If you believe the OP is talking about pure eunuchs, that is, men who simply are castrated either involuntarily or voluntarily, then you’re correct. However, I think the OP is pretty clearly not about that subject due to the quoted content. Male eunuchs generally are not wearing “brightly coloured saris”, for example.
So what’s your basis for your thinking it’s “ludicrous PC-ness”? Do you feel that the OP is not about Indian hijra? Or do you feel that Indian hijra are not a valid topic within the scope of TS/TG issues?
Thank you, Una Persson. I have a good book that explains about this…
Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations by Serena Nanda.
The same author has a book out titled Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India - which I haven’t read but would like to.
Bonus answer: If you want to read a novel with a fictional hijra character, I recommend Delhi by Khushwant Singh. He narrates the frame story in his own voice, and the hijra is his girlfriend who takes him out for walks and asks him interesting questions.
Una Persson was right about the confused nomenclature of hijras and the error in calling them “eunuchs” which is just plain wrong choice of words. The status of “eunuch” is long obsolete now that feudal harems no longer exist in modern India. Hijras are trans women. This article shows that many writers and journalists haven’t a clue about transgender. Read what hijras have to say about themselves in knowledgeable sources, like Nanda’s books. It’s rare that a journalist ever gets this subject accurately. Almost every time I see a news story on trans people, the journalist misunderstands the subject.
My understanding, possibly incorrect, is that hijra are often very secretive, either due to culture or due to self-preservation, or both. Somewhere I have an article (I think by the WSJ of all places) where a reporter spoke of a wait of “weeks” before they were able to talk to hijra who were willing to talk to an outsider. It could be that some reporters give up too easily and either rely on past (possibly incorrect) sources or just make it up based on incorrect information.
In fact, when I tried asking (in the past) some of the Indian programmers I had working under me about hijra, 2 of them claimed they had “never heard of such a thing”, and the third claimed that they were a “myth told to tourists”. So it’s possible that they’re not even well-known in some parts of India as well.
(Hmm, I see that searching on “hijra” this morning brings up many hits of hijrotica. But then, searching on “margarine” brings up porn links too, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.)
Hijra
Eunuch
Hijra
Eunuch
Hijra
Parkay
A Son of the Circus by John Irving revolves somewhat around Hirja’s. Not sure how accurate he is in describing the Hirja’s but he’s usually well researched.
Cecil’s answer 1) established that hijra != eunuch, 2) cited Serena Nanda’s books as did I (good call there, Cecil), 3) pronounced tranny sex life to be “weird.” Well, if I was worried about being called “weird,” I would have stayed in the closet. Cecil also was accurate in the description of trannys with religion, who worship a mother goddess. Notice the close correlation of transsexualism with Goddess religion? The similarity of this with certain ancient Middle Eastern Goddess religions is striking, as is the iconography of these goddesses in the Middle East and in India. I know that I’m not supposed to talk about ancient Goddess religion in connection with myself, but there it is. We’re here, we’re queer, jaya Devi Mata.
Cecil’s note that rural Indians are more accepting of hijras finds a cross-cultural corroboration in Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg, who examined the history of European peasant revolts and found transgender as a significant, continuing feature throughout the centuries. This nexus of transgender and pagan religion seems to predate urban civilization and is more at home in rural paganism, which would explain the rural-urban split concerning hijras noted by Cecil, as well as Una Persson’s modern Indian techies who don’t even want to admit that the phenomenon really exists. Maybe to them it represents a level of backwardness that modern India should have abandoned long ago.
The following question is serious.
I’ve read that the Thuggee were forbidden from harming women. Did their priests (jemhaddar? I can’t remember the ranks) include hijras in this category?
Does anybody know anything about a film with a name roughly darmiyan?
Re Eunuchs
It was my understanding that there were 3 classes of hijra-
Voluntary- Gay men, transwomen, etc
Involuntary, born- Those born visibly intersexed.
Involuntary, made- While involuntary castration or emasculation doesn’t happen today, there was a time when it did. A eunuch could no longer fulfill the life dictated by his cast. He had to find a new social status. If he was willing to renounce his maleness, the hijras would give him a new family and a new life.
When I was in India, some hijra came on to one of the trains I was on. For reference, on Indian trains it’s quite common for people to hop on and ride one or two stops while they walk up and down the aisle begging, performing services (sweeping floors- which it’s perfectly acceptable to throw your garbage on- is a big one) and selling food and trinkets.
They came on singing and clapping, and walked up and down the aisles acting flamboyantly and talking in a very exaggerated manner to each and every person. Their manner was very much like you’d expect from an American drag queen. There was no mistaking who they were. No Indian woman acts like that. Their make-up, clothing and jewelry was also quite exaggerated.
After announcing their presence, they went to each passenger and solicted money. Unlike the endless parade of cripples and lepers, who are largly ignored, each person on the train gave money to them. If you didn’t give or gave to little, the hijra would stand there and (I assume) berate you until you did. The whole thing was a little menacing, and everyone seemed relieved when they left. When I gave some money (seemed like the thing to do) a fellow passenger asked “You know this? Do they have this in America?” All I could answer was “Kind of…” He seemed kind of embarrassed about me seeing the whole thing- which may account for your tactiturn co-workers.
From what I understand, they have religious signifigance and are important to certain ceremonies. However, they also have a bit of a “bad luck” element and are not usually welcome visitors since you don’t want to invoke their wrath and essentially have to pay them off.
Well, all three of the programmers I hired came from Bangalore, which might be why.
even sven, thank you for sharing that experience. That certainly is at odds with what I was remembering from the past. I wonder if there is another qualifier for differentiation, such as hijra who must fund-raise and be in public much, versus those who try not to draw attention to themselves. I guess it could have just been another case, like I mentioned, of the article I was reading not giving a complete or accurate account.
Taking your final question first, upon investigation of just what “hijra” are (I’d never heard of them before), I would certainly agree that they would fall within the scope of TS/TG. But that’s irrelevant to my previous post.
I deny that any average reader would have even suspected that the portion of the cite quoted in the OP wasn’t strictly about eunuchs/castrated men. The article refers exclusively to “India’s Eunuchs”, “India’s 500,000 castrated men”, etc. Furthermore, there isn’t a single reference to “hijra”, and no one who didn’t already know what they were and wasn’t somewhat prejudicially reading them into the quotation would have imagined a TS/TG connection. So I must reject your claim that “the OP is pretty clearly not about [eunuchs] due to the quoted content”. After all, why shouldn’t we believe that simply castrated heterosexual males would wear brightly colored saris?
Given that, I felt that introducing what I believe to be the extremely PC subject of gender, TS, and TG into the discussion was unwarranted. And I still feel it was until the subject of hijra was explicitly brought into the thread.
Ambushed the self identification of Hijras in regards to gender, sex, sexuality ect is entirely relevant to the OP. I don’t think the article uses the word eunuch to be politically correct. I suspect it’s a bad translation (This word ‘hijra’, it is meaning ‘eunuch’) combined with standard dumbing down of an article for the general public. Dopers routinely complain about a virus being described as ‘alive’ rather than ‘viable’.
I am going to argue with you just a little about this: near as I can tell, Hirjras are analogous to trans women, but what they are are Hijras. Gender identity takes such a wonderful and complex diveristy of forms across cultures, and I really think we risk losing some of that if we try to shoehorn other atypical gender classifications into the same set of labels that we have. A sari isn’t an Indian dress, it’s a sari. A bat mitzvah is not a Jewish quinceanera. Kwanza is not African-American Christmas. These things be similar, they may serve many of the same social functions, but they are their own thing and deserve to be approached and evaluated on their own terms. In the same way, a hijras are not transwomen, though there may be many points of comparison.
One of my students is Indian, and his reaction to the hirjas is pretty much fear: “They recruit. No, I am serious”. Of course, he grew up in the States and, for all I know, they were like the boogey man that would come and take him away if he didn’t eat his vegetables. That was what his attitude reminded me of.
Oh, really? Did you actually read the article, or did you just assume the OP was the article?
(emphasis added)
I knew they were talking about hijra before I spent the 5 seconds to Google the article. Given that this thread has gone on for days, what’s the rationale for you not bothering to read the article?
It’s ludicrous to suggest that “simply castrated heterosexual males” would generally tend to wear brightly colored saris, especially in a culture such as India. Castration does not in itself feminize men, it has the potential to de-masculinize - there is a profound difference.
I don’t deny that this became relevant once hijras were explicitly brought up, but I still strongly deny that hijras, TS, or TG were under discussion from the beginning given the quotation in the OP. And that’s why I complained about TS/TG PC-ness being introduced – prior to the introduction of hijras – in a topic where I felt it was inappropriate. Disconnecting your testicles does NOT, by itself, make one a TS/TG person!
I don’t think so either, and that’s very much a key to understanding my point. The quoted part of the article speaks ONLY of castrated men and does not explicitly refer to hijra. Ergo, TS/TG discussion was clearly unwarranted at the time of my post. It was not the use of the word “eunuch” that I found unduly PC, it was the discussion that emphasized the allegedly TS/TG elements before any foundation was laid that I objected to.