According to this article, there are 300,000 eunuchs in Pakistan. From the article:
The eunuchs, known as “hijras” in Pakistan, are men castrated at an early age for medical or social reasons.
What baffles me is that a journalist* can write something like that and not feel the need to inform the world why on earth there are 300,000 eunuchs in Pakistan?
*Since this is GD, I will refrain from stating my general opinion of journalists and reporters.
Extremely odd. I hadn’t heard about this before, and I’m certain it’s not common knowledge in the US.
here’s the Wikipedia article on the topic. I’m gonna have to go back home and look this up in my Burton collection.
There are about 175 million people in Pakistan, so 300 thousand hijras is a small fraction of the overall population. I wonder how this would compare to the number of tran-gender males in the United States. We might see similar numbers, but due to cultural phenomenon, hijras formed a social sub-class in the sub-continent, but not in the West.
Hijras groups are found throughout the Indian subcontinent. Many of them live in all hijras communities and sustain the population by finding runaway boys to adopt into their community. They are not thought highly of in either Indian or Pakistani society. Apparently, in India many hijras make money by crashing weddings and making the couple bribe them to leave. From what I can find, there is surprisingly very little research done on the hijras.
CalMeacham said:
What?! How could you have missed