Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India

Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India

The Hijras are a group of people in India who consider themselves neither men nor women. They are a group of people who are considered the third gender in India. They are typically born as male and perform the Nirwaan which is the process to change their private parts. Others normally born with ambiguous backgrounds which can be intersexed, female or male and who doesn’t develop at puberty or male living as women. The term Hijra means to migrate and in their case is to leave a part of themselves behind or their tribe behind and start a new way of life. The male Hijra usually has to go under castration to change their male genitalia. They normally are the impotence, infertile, and homosexuals (Sterling, 2013).The Hijra of India are one of the most popular third gender in the world.

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The Hijras traditional role in society is to dress as women and sing and dance at weddings. They are very entertaining because they chose to live their lives as full as they can. Their roles include comedy and women body language. They dress in Indian clothing and choose to be the third gender (Jaffrey, 1998). They do not understand the society’s need of classifying them based on male or female. The Hijra believe in the Indian religion such as Hinduism, the Hindu mother goddess and mostly are Muslims.

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Most of the Hijras earn a living by performing. They use their talents at wedding ceremonies, birth of boys and any other parties people invite them to. There are some who earn their living selling sex and prostituting or begging. Some Hijras are married to regular men who are not part of the Hijra community. Most of the ones who end up getting married, it ends up in a secret marriage that is hidden from the society. Society has not accepted them to the point of having the freedom of normal jobs in India and Asia. The biggest obstacle they surpassed was in 2014 when India recognized the third gender on birth certificates, passports and voting cards (Anuja, 1997).

According to Peletz (2007) The Hijras face discrimination every day. They get abused at any public spaces such as police station, transportation areas to their own family homes. There are human rights activists who fight for the Hijras freedom to be part of the community as a third gender. Even though there are laws that passed to support the third gender in India and Asia society well likely take a while to get used to the concept of accepting them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYZE2bcHkAU

In this YouTube video I watched the Hijras talk about discrimination and the hardship they deal with for their lifestyle. Some of them realize that it is ok for society to not accept them yet because they realize we don’t live in a perfect world. They are becoming more and more relevant in society because India has made education and formal policies that recognize them as the third gender which uses the letter X on formal paper work to describe them as the third gender.