Feminist Blind Eyes In India

In India, a report by the Federation of Eunuchs stated that every year between 20,000 and 25,000 men and boys are captured, kidnapped, or sold by their parents—and forcibly castrated (no genitalia left at all). Most are then forced into slavery: working as beggars or prostitutes for local organized crime rings. Due to Indian society’s caste system, men and boys turned into “hijra”—despite whether it was forced upon them—have no chance to live in Indian society except as hijra.

In a recent article written by Dr. Javed Jamil and published by India Tomorrow on April 19, 2014:

In 1990, Dr. B.V. Subramaniam [3] of the Surat Medical College wrote a paper based on his research on the making of a eunuch. The study reported that most eunuchs in India were the result of forced castration. The method adopted for the surgery is crude, unscientific, threatening to the health of the patient and done in the most unhygienic conditions. The genitals of a normally born male baby are slashed off with a knife dipped in boiling oil. After dressing the wound, a nail with a string attached is tied to the waist and drilled into the stump, which would, with medication and time, begin to look somewhat like a female crotch.

Dr. Jamil continues by saying:

How can castration be destiny? How pertinent a question! How mind baffling! How painful! But no one – in the government or the Courts – has tried to stop the destiny of castration. While giving hijras their human rights, opportunities for good education, jobs and comfortable living are what the existing Hijras deserve without bias, what needs to be ensured with greater vehemence is that no more eunuchs are created. According to surveys carried out by Salvation Of. Oppressed Eunuchs (SOOE), the number of eunuchs in India is around 19 lakhs, (Eunuch Statistics in India – Dr. Piyush Saxena). The natural justice does not merely demand good life for existing eunuchs but also total and effective ban on the creation of eunuchs and rigorous punishment to those involved in the trade. Furthermore, strict action is also to be taken against those who pose as eunuchs for money and those who are engaged in prostitution have to be removed from the trade and rehabilitated.

Important translation: lakh = 100,000, so 19 lakhs = 1.9 million.

Feminists have a lot to say about violence against women in India, and what about the 1.9 million hijra (third sex, eunuch) forcefully castrated and turned into slaves? Do they have something to say about that? No. It happens to men, so who cares? A group of people supposedly for equality of all people have no interest in the 1.9 million men and boys captured, kidnapped, or sold by their parents into gangs and castrated (all genitalia removed) so that they have to live as slaves—no big deal.
Lets just say something about the difference between rape and genital mutilation. When you are raped, you’ve been raped. You’ve been violated in an unseemly and repugnant way. It can alter your identity, it can foreshadow all future activities. You’ve been victimized: for how long you remain a victim differs from person to person. There are coping mechanisms, there is therapy, there are ways of adjusting so that you are can become a whole person again and function normally. You were victimized, you were violated, but with time and therapeutic treatment of various sorts you don’t have to be and live as a victim.
If, on the other hand, you were in Sierra Leone and someone chopped off your arm and or leg, it doesn’t matter what you do—you have to exist as an amputee. You have to live with the constant reminder of victimization and violation. You are a victim forever: no matter what psychological stature you raise yourself to. There’s no way to put back what has been taken from you: your options are to cope or commit suicide. Many people commit suicide, some live life as best they can, but there’s no return to normal. There is forever the victimization—because you don’t have what is gone, and there is no way to deny it, there is no coping mechanism to put your hand or leg back in place. You just have to adapt to a completely new style of life; some are able to, some are not.

With castration/emasculation, not only are you victimized and violated, but, like any other amputee, there is also no replacing what is gone. You have to live like that. Having one of the primary attributes by which human beings define themselves taken away—there’s no possible way to regain that cornerstone of your existence. You’ve lost part of your self-identity forever. So not only are you victimized and violated, but you also exist in a constant state of victimization and violation. You live in a constant state of rape—forever. Rape victims go on to have families, partners who love them, children. Women who’ve been raped can go on to live successful and fulfilling lives, respected by the community in which they dwell. It’s possible to function as a normal human being: relationships, getting married, building a family, having children, being respected in society. If you’re a man divided of your manhood, what of that can you have?
Rape, no matter how long it takes to recover, is temporary. Mutilation is permanent. Worse yet, a woman being raped doesn’t challenge her CORE concept of who or what she is in regards to whether or not she IS a woman any longer. A mutilated man—depending on the type and severity of the mutilation—may never be able to consider himself a man any longer.

Feminists think that men are evil and target women to rape them, despite how fundamentally untrue that is. On the other hand, in fact, feminists talk quite often about castrating men. When a man does fall victim to the act, even if completely innocent of any crime, they cheer. See Sharon Osbourne and The View—an entire female audience rolling with laughter when they heard about an innocent man being emasculated. His only crime was that he wanted a divorce from his then-wife, Catherine Kieu. Do you see men cheering when a woman is horribly raped?
Feminist minds would have to be profoundly diseased to truly believe they work for equality. That requires a lack of empathy that is only found in the most extreme forms of pathological narcissism and psychopathy—personality disorders that are associated with the most despised and heinous villains in recorded human history.

Courtesy: Written on September 16, 2014 by Observing Libertarian @ ''http://honeybadgerbrigade.com/2014/09/16/feminist-blind-eyes-in-india/'

Once Among Elite, Eunuchs Now Sing, Dance In Despair

Four centuries ago, during the glittering rule of the Mogul monarchs, eunuchs were at the apex of power.
As the entertainers, trusted guards and tutors of the king`s harem, eunuchs thrived in a swirl of court intrigue. Through a favored concubine of the king, a eunuch could shape royal policy.
 A bribe to an influential eunuch could advance the fortunes of an ambitious courtier; a eunuch`s whispered accusation could bring ruin.

But today, eunuchs are pariahs in Indian society, clinging to their close-knit community to escape social derision. Estimates of their numbers range from 60,000 to more than 1 million.
To earn a meager living, they dance and sing at weddings and other family celebrations. Their presence at such times is considered a good omen, although many Indians regard them as beggers, prostitutes and a nuisance.
Historically, eunuchs, called hijras in Hindi, were men who were castrated and served as harem officials at a time when women were confined to purdah, or seclusion. Now most claim they are congenital eunuchs, or born with defective sex organs. Others say they have both male and female organs.
The birth of such a child is still considered a disgrace here and eunuchs say that rather than being given medical care, the baby often is given to them to raise. But according to some reports, eunuchs have been known to force parents to surrender a child.
For two years, Khairati Lal Bhola, a self-styled champion of the eunuchs, has contended that innocent boys are captured and forced to become part of the ``eunuch empire.`` Bhola says he heads a union of 50,000 eunuchs.
He charges that 40,000 boys are castrated in India every year. After they are kidnaped, he said, the youngsters are exploited by the eunuch leaders or gurus who pocket most of their earnings. Bhola has petitioned Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to arrest the gurus and rehabilitate the eunuchs by providing pensions, housing, ration cards and vocational training.
``Every day, about 40 or 50 eunuchs come to me asking for help,`` said Bhola, who is married, has a family and is not a eunuch. ``Just yesterday, a man came to tell me about his plight. He was just about to be married, and the gurus kidnaped him and castrated him. The man was weeping.``
The eunuchs say that Bhola is a fraud who makes promises to better their situation in exchange for hefty contributions.
``He says, `Give me 1,000 rupees (about $80), and I will get you a seat in Parliament,` `` explained Tara, 32, a eunuch with cropped curly hair, heavy eye makeup and bangles. ``And we say, `What will we do with a seat in Parliament?` ``
Although other Indians refer to a eunuch as ``it,`` the eunuchs consider themselves female, taking women`s names and dressing like them. Disputes have flared over such issues as whether they should be allowed to occupy bus seats reserved for women.

In cities such as Delhi where large numbers of eunuchs congregate, they have a finely tuned organization. Generally, a eunuch joins a household, where up to six may live under one guru.
Earnings are pooled and shared equally among the group. The eunuchs refer to each other by family names; mother, aunt and sister, for example. When the guru dies, the senior disciple takes over.
A city is divided into zones where designated groups of eunuchs have the exclusive right to operate. Through a network of informants, from household servants to hospital workers, the eunuchs learn of upcoming births, weddings and celebrations.
They may be asked by a family to participate, but frequently they show up uninvited, singing and dancing in exchange for money, food or saris.
Now some eunuchs charge that fringe elements are trying to give eunuchs a bad name.
Each city has a panchayat or council of elders to resolve eunuch disputes.
Eunuchs often are seen in markets, harassing merchants and making obscene gestures in order to extort a few rupees. Newspapers here carry reports of eunuchs menacing newly married couples and those who have a new baby. While eunuchs say prostitution is frowned on, it is commonly thought to be a widespread source of extra income for them.
Unable to live normal lives, eunuchs say they are resigned to their plight as outcasts and stay to themselves. Rekha Grover, for example, shares a two-room hut in central Delhi with 12 other eunuchs and family members.
For five years, Rekha has lived with a man Rekha calls ``my husband.``
The couple adopted the infant son of a friend who died in childbirth.
``Sometimes, I feel like dying when we move down the street and people call us names,`` Rekha said. ``But there are compensations--our dance, our music and when we return to our homes--then it doesn`t matter who we are.`

Courtesy: October 29, 1986|By Sheila Tefft, Special to The Tribune. @ "http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-10-29/news/8603210378_1_eunuchs-castrated-gurus"

India's shunned transgenders struggle to survive

Seema, a husband and father of two, gets ready for another night of work on the streets of the Indian capital, placing two halves of a yellow sponge ball into empty bra cups.
The 33-year-old then plucks out the stubble on his chin, applies foundation from a pink heart-shaped make-up box and combs his chin-length black hair in front of a large mirror.

Seema is transgender, one of hundreds of thousands in conservative India who are ostracized, often abused and forced into prostitution due to no legal recognition, even as the world marks International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia on May 17.

"It's necessary for me to do sex work because I have to look after my family," Seema said, adjusting a deep red scarf. "Nobody does it of their own wish. We have sex because we have no other choice."
Male-to-female transgenders, also known as "hijras", have a long history in South Asia, experts say. The Sanskrit texts of the Kama Sutra, written between 300 and 400 B.C., refers to a "third sex". The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Hindu text on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature.
During the Mughal empire in the 16th and 17th centuries, castrated hijras - or eunuchs - were respected and considered close confidants of emperors, often being employed as royal servants and bodyguards.
These jobs were so coveted that historians say some parents actually castrated their sons in order to attain favor with the Mughal kings and secure employment for their children.

But despite acceptance centuries ago, hijras today live on the fringes of Indian society and face discrimination in jobs and services such as health and education.
"I think things are different today because of the kind of laws that were introduced to India when the British came. The whole concept of unnatural and natural was defined in our law," said gay rights activist Anjali Gopalan.
Many hijras are now sex workers or move around in organized groups begging or demanding money from families who are celebrating the birth of a child or a marriage. They threaten to curse the happy new couple or the newborn if they do not pay up.
Many Indians fear a hijra's curse, which is said to bring infertility or bad luck.
But transgenders are the biggest victims, say activists.
Hate crimes against the community are common yet few are reported, partly due to a lack of sensitivity by authorities such as the police.
Last week, an activist fighting for transgender rights had his throat slashed in the southern state of Kerala. The previous month, in neighboring Tamil Nadu state, a 42-year-old transgender was strangled to death with a rope.

HER REAL SELF
By day, in a cramped one-room home in west Delhi, Seema is known by her male birth name Hardeep and is a loving father of a one and six-year-old who call her "daddy".
As night falls, she goes to a local charity to paint her face and transform into Seema, who sells herself on the street under a busy city flyover.
She earns about 200 rupees ($4), offering oral sex or "thigh sex," in which the client will place his penis into her clamped thighs. Other hijras generally offer anal sex too.
Within 15 minutes, a black car pulls up and she is whisked away before returning to serve another client - this time a man on a motorbike in a dark shirt and light blue jeans.
The job comes with many risks.

In 2009, Seema was raped by a policeman inside a roadside booth, and she is now HIV positive.
"First and foremost, they are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. Due to their job, they get beaten up left, right and centre almost everyday," said Abhina Aher from the India HIV/AIDS Alliance.
According to the India's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), HIV prevalence amongst transgenders is 20 times higher than the general population.
Activists say some progress is being made in lifting discrimination. Three years ago, the British-era law banning gay sex was overturned. In Tamil Nadu, pensions, free sex "re-assignment" surgery and university scholarships are now offered.
But hijras like Seema believe more needs to be done.
"If the government wants to help, they should do some sensitization with people so that they don't discriminate," said Seema.

"We are also human beings. It's not my choice God made me this way. I can't help it."

Courtesy: May 16, 2012 | Atish Patel | Reuters @ "http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-05-16/features/sns-rt-us-india-transgendersbre84g060-20120516_1_transgenders-gay-rights-activist-anjali-gopalan"

May Manabi Bandopadhyay change the way the society look at the third gender?

I was about eight or so. An annual carnival used to be held just behind our home in Kolkata on a sprawling meadow. I had gone there one July evening, accompanied by my nanny, Shantimashi.

At some point, thanks to the maddening crowd, she lost me.

"Come here," a really tall, buxom woman in a bright orange tangail sari said, grabbing my arms. She was strong, literally towering over me.

I was terrified. Telling her that I wasn’t here alone. She was insistent, luring me with a bar of Cadbury’s. Her eyes laden with kohl – something odd about her voice. Like she were a man, or something else.

"Want to try the fairwheel? Roll, khabi?" she winked, dragging me on.

I burst into tears. Some onlookers eyed us suspiciously. I called out for Shantimashi, frantically.

Another woman, more masculine looking, in a discoloured ghagra, joined us.

"I want to go home," I sobbed.

"Come shona… have pav bhaji?" she signalled to a taxi parked close by. I shrieked.

Thankfully, there was a cop drinking tea from a roadside stall nearby. He came charging toward us. There was a lot of commotion. Shantimashi was shoving her way through the crowd, sobbing violently herself. Guilty.

"Be careful of these people. Whenever you see them, roll up your car windows at once. And never give them money. If they curse you, you will fall sick. Beware of their buri nazar," she warned, hugging me tight. "Who was that woman?" I whispered.

"Hijras… evil," she hissed, protectively…

Almost three decades later, I am still a tad wary of hijras. I get edgy when I see them clapping at traffic signals, hoping the lights change fast. I always lock the door when I see throngs of them play the dholak and sway promiscuously into our Delhi colony. I remember being scared of Maharani in the Mahesh Bhatt directed Sadak - a eunuch played villainously by the late Sadashiv Amrapurkar.

A gnawing childhood anxiety still paralyses some part of me…

Are hijras really evil?

I mean, if the third gender is a reality, validated by the Supreme Court, where do they rightfully belong? And why is our most common perception of this community as cross-dressing beggars at traffic crossings, who croon popular Bollywood item songs in a particularly nasally voice, clapping their hands a certain way - banging at your doorstep, the minute a child is born, or during weddings, wearing cheap lipstick and fake, conical breasts.

The word hijra symbolises myriad sexual identities. From eunuchs or men who have emasculated themselves, intersexed people, both men and women with genital malfunction, hermaphrodites, those with indeterminate sex organs, impotent men, male homosexuals to even effeminate males who are often called chakka, in ridicule. The term hijra is borrowed from the Arabic "ijara", which means eunuch or castrated man.

Are hijras feared equally by men? Does that also explain the sexual abuse and violence against them in police stations, brothels and shelters?

Their fate, for long, was sealed by archaic laws like the 1897 ammendment to the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, subtitled, “An Act for the Registration of Criminal Tribes and Eunuchs”. Under this law, the local government was required to keep a register of the names and residences of all eunuchs who were "reasonably suspected of kidnapping or castrating children or committing offences under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code". The law also decreed eunuchs as incapable of acting as a guardian, making a gift, drawing up a will or adopting a son. Just as dehumanising as Section 377 of the IPC, which criminalises "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal", even if it is voluntary.

Hijras? Unnatural? Shadow people?

Hijra history dates back to more than 4,000 years ago. Hindu hijras trace their lineage to epics. In the Mahabharata, Arjun spent a year in hiding as a eunuch and Bheeshma finally chose his death at the hands of the eunuch prince Shikhandi. Or another, Aravan, son of Arjuna and Nagakanya, was to be sacrificed to Goddess Kali to ensure the victory of the Pandavas in the Kurukshetra battle. The only condition that he made was to spend the last night of his life in matrimony. Since no woman was willing to marry one who was doomed to die, Krishna assumed the form of a beautiful woman, Mohini.

The hijras of Tamil Nadu consider Aravan their progenitor and refer to themselves aravanis. Hinduism also abounds with tales of powerful deities worshipped as androgynes. Take the case of Lord Shiva, one of the most venerated gods. While thousands of Indian women pour warm milk over the shivalingam, every Shivaratri, with a prayer on their lips to secure a husband as potently masculine as him - Shiva is worshipped as Ardhanarisvara, half man and half woman. Shiva united with his female creative power known as Shakti.

Initiation into the Hijra community is symbolically based on the first and most significant step of complete emasculation – a ceremony akin to rebirth, termed nirvana. The transformation signifies the divine connection with both Shiv and Shakti, after which the eunuch is supposedly blessed with the goddess’ creative prowess. After the completion of this ritual, which includes a period of seclusion, a special diet and other symbolic rituals, the newly born eunuch can bless others with fertility and good fortune.

Religion and ritualism, however, remain a far cry from ground reality; with discrimination dictating the way we continue to treat hijras here. Despite NGOs like Sangama working tirelessly in the reassertion of their gender identity, this community remains one of the most disempowered social groups. Most hijras from the lower income group earn their livelihood through prostitution. What alternatives do we offer them? How else can they exist? What will they eat?

Will an Indian parent be cool, if their son comes home and says he is in love with a woman, say like Lakshmi Narayan, one of the most well-known faces of this community, a noted transgender rights activist and a participant in Season five of Bigg Boss? Evicted after just six weeks.

Why we don’t have any hijra friends? Why are our primary responses to this class an embarrassment. So much so, that the mainstream, LGBT community too doesn’t fight as hard for the common hijras – the ambivalent sex – ones with wigs who wink and whistle, crossing our paths, daily. Swaying their hips…

Hijras have virtually no safe spaces.

Parents. Police. Pimps…

Just this morning, social media was agog with reports of Manabi Bandopadhyay, who is set to assume charge as principal of Krishnagar Women's College in West Bengal on June 9. She is the first transgender college principal in India, and probably in the whole world, too.

Is this the beginning of a new wave of gender equality? Or a populist stint? Will the hijra community finally find their voice as a whole? Will we now see them differently…

"I don’t think that too much will come out of the decriminalisation of homosexuality by the Delhi High Court last week. Nothing happens in India for the good of anybody who chooses to be different. You can pass laws, but you can’t change the people. It’s a fact that man is free, but everywhere he’s in chains…" Manabi was quoted as saying in an article in The Guardian, on July 14, 2009.

Courtesy: 'http://www.dailyo.in/politics/hijras-manabi-bandopadhyay-first-transgender-principal-bengal/story/1/3968.html'