Interesting column - don’t remember seeing it before, and I’d never heard of hijras before, either. “Flaming for the yokels” - heh. Wiki has a lot more about this interesting subculture: Hijra (South Asia) - Wikipedia.
Hijras are amazing, like birds of paradise, decked out in beautiful bright colors. I’ve seen them at a few weddings at my time. I remember a few years back the Indian government hired some as tax collectors, because people were inclined to pay them in order to get them away from the door…there’s some stigma in having them come to your house.
At weddings they do bring the life of the party, but you also better pay them because otherwise they cause a big stink and shame you.
I’m not sure why the penis needs to be removed, too. I’ve heard about castrati in Europe who had various degrees of castration…some of them had penii removed, too. Why? Why not just the testicles?
Strange customs we humans do.
A few appear briefly in the Marriage has come to town production number in Bride and Prejudice
Most “real” hijra I know of live on the fringes of society. They are incredibly poor and exist by begging and sex work. A few lucky ones create nuisances of themselves on trains, buses, and at ceremonies etc. but despite their singing and dancing they are normally profoundly unhappy people.
Even within the hijra community there are subsets of belief. Some are religious-based transsexuals, in which case removal of the penis makes perfect sense within that context. Others consider themselves “third sex” and may or may not remove the penis. Some claim it doesn’t matter what genitals they have, as being third sex is independent of that, and a controversial minority claims natal women can be hijra as well under the third sex definition.
It’s a very complicated culture which even experts outside the community dispute and debate over. I certainly am no expert, but merely report that there are a variety of definitions and explanations.
On a related note, I am likely going to India in January or February and intend to spend some time with the hijra community while I’m there. If they are not my sisters, they are at a minimum distant cousins.
Oh, I am absolutely sure. No one can be truly happy living on the fringes of society and barely allowed in. It’s like, here, look at all this beautiful stuff but ONLY LOOK! You can’t have any!
Have fun in India…it is a beautiful country, despite the negative press. It’s not all bad. Yes, a lot of things are still backwards but it is moving in the right direction.
[Latin geek]“Penii” would be the plural only if the singular were “penius”, and then only if the noun were second declension. Since neither is the case, the plural is “penes”, pee-neez. Or just accept that it has been imported into English and give it an English plural.[/Latin geek]
I’m guessing the hijra care little for Latin.
Sure, but at least one poster in this thread cares more…
I knew the word, but I’ve been pronouncing it wrong all this time. What I said was pen-nezz.
That’s a kind of pasta. Easy mistake to make.
A case could be made out for pen-ayz, but then you’d presumably pronounce the singular as pennis. On the other hand, we’re inconsistent about “opus” and “opera”, or at least most of us are - I’m in a significant minority when I pronounce the first with a short o, although they too are singular and plural.
And now back to your Indian eunuchs. 
They’re not mine!