Serena Nanda’s research shows that some persons labeled hijra in India are both prostitutes and celebrants of rites of passage (weddings and births of boys):
’’There is absolutely no question that at least some hijras—perhaps even the majority—are homosexual prostitutes. . . . That hijras, at least in modern historical times, engage in widespread homosexual activity, undermines their respect in society but does not negate their ritual function.
’’Hijras are well aware that they have only a tenuous hold on legitimacy in Indian society and that this hold is compromised by even covertly engaging in sexual relations and practicing prostitution. The idea of hijras as “wives” (of ordinary men) and prostitutes obviously runs counter to their claims to be ascetics or other-worldly religious mendicants, that is, people who have renounced sexual activity. (pp. 10-11)
One hijra prostitute, Kamladevi, bluntly told her:
’’Those who say they have no sexual interest are all telling lies. Those who say they have less interest—that they like only to sing and dance—they are the aged people. When they were young, sex was their main desire. Now they say, “Oh, I think only of God and religion, ” but that’s all nonsense. When you enter the “dragon” of this life, you get the bad habits first; then when you become old you become less desirous of this sexual interest and think more of religion. It is only from getting older.’’ (p. 57)
Neither Nanda nor anyone else has yet endeavored to measure either the relative time spent or the relative income derived from the two kinds of performance of unmasculinity by those born male. It seems to me likely that reliance on sex for income is increasing and that for most hijras income from prostitution exceeds that earned at weddings and birth celebrations.
The ideological rationale for hijra communities is shared devotion to the Mother Goddess. However, gurus function as pimps or bordello-keepers without any religious legitimation. Like secular equivalents, “the community of gurus and prostitutes provides their working space, a steady source of customers, a minimum assurance of physical security in case customers get rowdy, and someone to pay off the police so that they are not arrested” (pp. 53-54). Besides organizing sacred and secular work, hijra households provide economic security for the aged and for any who become disablingly ill, and social support for those cut off from their natal families. As Nanda noted, in South Asia “being independent of the group means not freedom, but social suicide” (p. 48) and, fearing that nonprocreativity is contagious, their natal families expel hijras.so an alternative support system is crucial for hijras’ survival.
Although castration is a socially sanctioned and defining feature of the role, South Asians, also call some uncastrated cross-dressing men hijras. That is, some natal males classify themselves and/or are classified by others as hijras without this purportedly defining feature, although the legitimacy of uncastrated hijras to confer blessings of the Mother Goddess are challenged by customers and skeptical bystanders. Moreover, those who can display the scars of castration make more money by credibly threatening to show their excision scars. Still, in that this “defining” feature is variable, it is obvious that (natal) males are hijras first (i.e., regard themselves as hijras and are regarded as hijras by others), and only later in their lives ponder the irreversible role commitment that castration inscribes directly on the body.
The hijra views collected by Nanda are that hijras are born hijras. Older hijras identified some of them when celebrating their births. Some felt they were hijras and went to join their “own kind.” Not a few were impelled by labeling of non-hijras, but they conceived this as a recognition rather than the formation of their nature.
While some hijra no doubt devote themselves entirely to their sacred callings and abstain from sex, hijras told Nanda that they had sexual desires, though none for women. For instance, Lalitha: “We are all men, born as men, but when we look at a woman, we don’t have any desire for them. When we see men, we like them, we feel shy, we feel some excitement” (p. 16). Some come to like sexual receptivity initially experienced as coercion. Others find it a relatively easy, relatively lucrative source of income. Some find “husbands, and others try to avoid sex altogether, especially as age decreases their marketability and payment rate.
Gay men born and raised in South Asia whom I have asked insist that hijras are a kind of man, though judged to be inadequate for failing or refusing to procreate. This unrandom émigré sample rejects the suggestion that hijras are a distinct sex or gender. Insofar as procreativity is the defining feature of the category ’’man, ’’ the feminine appearance and dress of hijras is irrelevant to classifying them as inadequate males. Nanda reported “free variation” of male, female, and neuter pronouns in hijra speech when among themselves (1990: xviii), which supported her view of gender-mixing (instead of crossing over), though it seems to me that an interpretation of hijras being a third (or zeroeth) gender would be bolstered more by consistent use of the third (or zeroeth neuter) grammatical gender for those who are neither man nor woman. Astonishingly, rather than retain neuter (or masculine) pronoun forms, Nanda renders them feminine in English (1999:xiv), which supports the interpretation of gender crossing (to ’’womanly’’ if—again using a procreation calculus—not fully ’’women’’), rather than a distinct gender. Similarly, a role in which male genitalia are removed is not the most promising basis for a contrast to the supposed ’’Western view of gender as permanent’’ (p. 142)! Nanda does not provide any instances of ex-hijras becoming accepted as ’’normal men, ’’ as is possible for Omani ex-khanith who sire children. And her claim of Hindus’ ’’greater willingness to find a place for individual diversity, especially in matters of sexuality’’ (p. 147) is very dubious in contrasting the ostracized (not just marginalized) hijras with gay people in the West demanding full equality.
This second edition of the book does not include updates of the main body of the text. Besides jettisoning John Money’s foreword, Nanda has added a few pages to her preface, added some material (I’d estimate about a third) to the cross-cultural closing chapter (an abridged version of the argument of in her other recent book, Gender Diversity), and an interesting eight-page epilogue on her fieldwork that includes some information on what happened to some of her original informants. I am disappointed that Nanda did not choose to provide more systematic data about the caste and religious background of hijras or to elaborate on the puzzle of a quasi-caste who professionally serve a Hindu deity converting in large numbers to Islam -- a religion which is both rigorously monotheistic and clearly proscribes excision of Muslim genitals. (Nanda ignores relevant research on transgendered male prostitutes in Pakistan.)