The Third Gender
Kaleen Rodriguez
ENC 1102
Exploratory Essay
The Third Gender What is the role of the third gender in South Asia? How does Asian society identify the third gender? I walked into my best friend Joel’s room this morning extremely excited to have lunch with him after a long four months without seeing him and on my journey to his room I picked up a paper that was lying by his door. I picked it up and the title was “Hijra” as I continued to read this paper, it had me very intrigued, fast. It so happens that earlier that week I was talking to my mom about Pride Fest which is a LGBT festival here in South Florida. So, my question arose, how do others across the world view what we recognize as the LGBT community (Gay,Lesbian,Bi-sexual, and Transgender)?, and finding this paper only made my thought more concise, what is “The Third Gender”? In the west we have LGBT and we also have drag queens who are men who act as women for a short period of time under certain circumstances and it is acceptable. The definition of gender as a performative (Butler) is defined as how you act in your society. Doing research for this topic was significantly easy; finding various points of views was the harder part. Looking through scholarly essays I was able to find “With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India” by Reddy, Gayatri and "The Hijras of India." by Nanda, Serena. Two of which were my primary resources for what I am about to explain. In South Asia there is LGBT, but what they consider cross dressers, and transvestites are called Hijra’s which generally is considered a third gender role in India. Hijra’s are males who dress and act as females. There are rites of passage for becoming a Hijra. This rite of passage includes the act of removing the genitals and burying them in the ground which basically show they’re devotement to the Hijra life style, but less than 10% actually commit to eliminating their genitals (Gueste0d1c4). Hijra’s adopt
ENC 1102
Exploratory Essay
The Third Gender What is the role of the third gender in South Asia? How does Asian society identify the third gender? I walked into my best friend Joel’s room this morning extremely excited to have lunch with him after a long four months without seeing him and on my journey to his room I picked up a paper that was lying by his door. I picked it up and the title was “Hijra” as I continued to read this paper, it had me very intrigued, fast. It so happens that earlier that week I was talking to my mom about Pride Fest which is a LGBT festival here in South Florida. So, my question arose, how do others across the world view what we recognize as the LGBT community (Gay,Lesbian,Bi-sexual, and Transgender)?, and finding this paper only made my thought more concise, what is “The Third Gender”? In the west we have LGBT and we also have drag queens who are men who act as women for a short period of time under certain circumstances and it is acceptable. The definition of gender as a performative (Butler) is defined as how you act in your society. Doing research for this topic was significantly easy; finding various points of views was the harder part. Looking through scholarly essays I was able to find “With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India” by Reddy, Gayatri and "The Hijras of India." by Nanda, Serena. Two of which were my primary resources for what I am about to explain. In South Asia there is LGBT, but what they consider cross dressers, and transvestites are called Hijra’s which generally is considered a third gender role in India. Hijra’s are males who dress and act as females. There are rites of passage for becoming a Hijra. This rite of passage includes the act of removing the genitals and burying them in the ground which basically show they’re devotement to the Hijra life style, but less than 10% actually commit to eliminating their genitals (Gueste0d1c4). Hijra’s adopt
Cited: Ambujablue 's Channel, . "Documentary ." Youtube . N.p., 2008. Web. 19 Mar 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QntUgXwzZH0>. Chisel, Jasmonae. “The Hijras of India”. Xavier University. Voice Lab no. 9. WorldPress.com Gueste0d1c4, India. N.p., 2009. Web. 19 Mar 2012. <http://www.slideshare.net/gueste0d1c4/hijra-culture>. Meena Balaji and Ruth Lor Malloy. “Hijras: who we are” Think Asia, 1997. 32 pgs. Print. Nanda, Serena. "The Hijras of India." Journal of Homosexuality (1986): 35-54. Web. Reddy, Gayatri. “With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India”. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2005. 78-98. Print. Reddy, Gayatri. ‘Men’ Who Would Be Kings: Celibacy, Emasculation, and the Re-Production of Hijras in Contemporary Indian Politics. Social Research; Spring2003, Vol. 70 Issue 1. Print.