Hossain Adnan
a Anthropology , Universiteit van Amsterdam , Amsterdam , Netherlands.
Cult Health Sex. 2017 Dec;19(12):1418-1431. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2017.1317831. Epub 2017 May 12.
Hijra, the iconic figure of South Asian gender and sexual difference, comprise a publicly institutionalised subculture of male-bodied feminine-identified people. Although they have existed as a culturally recognised third gender for a very long time, it is only recently that hijra have been legally recognised as a third gender in several South Asian countries. This paper focuses on the transformation of this long-running cultural category of third gender into a legal category of third gender in Bangladesh, showing that the process of legal recognition has necessitated a simultaneous mobilisation of a discourse of disability in the constitution of hijra as citizens worthy of rights. While the international community views the recognition of a third gender as a progressive socio-legal advance in the obtaining of sexual rights in a Muslim majority Bangladesh, locally, hijra are understood as a special group of people born with 'missing' or ambiguous genitals delinked from desire. Furthermore, what was previously a trope of disfigurement based on putative genital status has now been transformed into a discourse of disability, a corollary to which several interest groups, namely the civil society, the state, international community and hijra themselves, have all been party.
海吉拉是南亚性别与性差异的标志性人物，他们构成了一个由生理男性但自我认同为女性的人组成的、已被公开制度化的亚文化群体。尽管他们作为一种在文化上得到认可的第三性别已经存在了很长时间，但直到最近，海吉拉才在几个南亚国家被法律承认为第三性别。本文聚焦于在孟加拉国，这一长期存在的第三性别文化类别如何转变为第三性别法律类别，表明法律承认的过程必然要求在将海吉拉构建为值得享有权利的公民的过程中，同时调动一种残疾话语。虽然国际社会将承认第三性别视为在穆斯林占多数的孟加拉国获取性权利方面的一项进步的社会法律进展，但在当地，海吉拉被理解为一群天生生殖器“缺失”或不明确且与欲望脱节的特殊人群。此外，以前基于假定生殖器状况的毁容比喻现在已转变为一种残疾话语，几个利益集团，即民间社会、国家、国际社会以及海吉拉自身，都参与了这一话语的形成。
