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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   26450 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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The way she tells it, they’re disproportionately lower-caste and often shuffled out of their family homes and into the hijra community by families who don’t know what else to do with an effeminate son

Hijras aren't just effeminate, many of them are intersex or have ambiguous genitalia, and it's a tradition in many parts of the country to hand over such children to the local Hijra community shortly after birth, since in earlier times they'd have few prospects for a normal life via the usual marriage route. Less common in urban areas as opposed to rural parts, but it still happens.

There are also plenty who are eunuchs for one reason and another, others who you could call transgender or transvestites. It's rare for a plain old gay boy to end up in their ranks, the usual approach is to just marry them off as normal when they're old enough and see how that plays out.

I have a dim view of them for reasons unrelated to their gender identity, they largely make a living by terrorizing social events and particularly weddings, you have to bribe them to not make a scene and confer you with a "blessing", and they accost travelers on public transports and will not hesitate to insult you or grope you if you don't give them a few coins.

Hijras are a very small minority (albeit they annoy well out of proportion to their number), I would be surprised if there were more than a few hundred or thousand of them in a typical city, though you'll find concentrations in the larger ones

I had previously heard that it was occasionally the case that they would castrate children. I didn't want to malign them more than I already have, so I checked, and it's far worse than I thought:

https://www.indiatimes.com/news/lgbtq-the-truth-about-how-hijras-are-made-in-india-because-they-re-not-always-born-that-way-257525.htmlot-always-born-that-way-257525.html

Only 1 percent of eunuchs are born so, while the rest either pretend to be hijras (eunuch) or have been forced to join the community by abduction and castration, reveals a study by the All-India Hijra Kalyan Sabha (AIHKS).

According to the study, there are 30,000 eunuchs in the national capital alone. This “high number” is contrary to “reliable estimates” that say “only one in a lakh is a born eunuch”.

The study further reveals that at least 1,000 youths are converted into eunuchs in the city every year.

They are actually castrated men. “Young and addicted boys are abducted and then introduced to homosexuality by the agents of eunuch’s gurus. Castrations are clandestinely forced on them and ironically, very few people gather the courage to retaliate,” Bhola said.

A victim of forced castration says how he was abducted, made an addict of brown sugar and hashish, and then pushed into homosexuality.

This way, he alleges, eunuch gurus have made huge sums.

“The hijra mafia that controls the castrations operates secretly throughout the country. They have a network of hijra mandis where a newly castrated eunuch is auctioned to the highest bidder. The auction is conducted with claps - a single clap means Rs 1,000. Fair, clean-limbed boys who can earn more, attract highest bids. Victims are threatened with death if they break silence,” reveals Bhola.

That's certainly food for thought, you can't just naively transfer Western concepts of transvestitism or transgenderism to other contexts, and these guys victimize each other just as much as they do the general public, and much of the scorn and disdain they get is richly deserved. A 1000 rupees is just 10 USD or so..

My, you're a straight one. That's a common enough euphemism/outdated street slang for heroin, specifically the dirty stuff that's otherwise known as black-tar heroin. I don't think it's India specific, even if it's archaic.

Like castrati for church choirs, is what it sounds like. Even officially banning the practice meant workarounds like "oh he had an accident where a bull crushed his testicles and they had to be removed" and other tall tales, and the desperate/poor would have a boy castrated in hopes he could become a high-earning singer (of course not everyone did).

In the 1720s and 1730s, at the height of the craze for these voices, it has been estimated that upwards of 4,000 boys were castrated annually in the service of art. Many came from poor homes and were castrated by their parents in the hope that their child might be successful and lift them from poverty (this was the case with Senesino). There are, though, records of some young boys asking to be operated on to preserve their voices (e.g. Caffarelli, who was from a wealthy family: his grandmother gave him the income from two vineyards to pay for his studies).

There's a Tamil movie based on a novel which is in the vein of realism and is harrowing subject matter; it's about professional beggars, or rather the people who buy and sell them in gangs in order to profit off them. This includes buying disabled children, and if you can't buy them, then you create them by forcing the women to have children. (The movie shifts focus by adding in another alleged true-life story and makes the beggars the secondary plot).

This certainly isn't confined to India; it's been historically noted in the West, too; when you can make money by appealing to charity, then you get professional begging; and when the most sympathy is evoked by the most misery, then you have an incentive to get the most deformed and miserable to extort money out of the public. And to have organised gangs.

India Today is a reputable news outlet, and the NGO making the claims otherwise stands for the rights of hijras and their general welfare. I claim no specific expertise beyond this, but I can't think of a reason either would pen a hit piece.

It's a good thing you consider the overall rate of birth with ambiguous genitalia, that provoked me to search down the rabbit hole.

The stigma is justified enough as is, it's hard to overstate how much of a nuisance they can be, especially if you're a middle class Indian relying on public transport, but I am relatively open minded about gender norms so it's not like I despise them for just presenting as an opposite gender. I certainly don't care about their other source of income, prostitution.

I would still take it with a pinch of salt, but in general Hijras don't deny the existence of castration ceremonies, they just claim it's voluntary. So maybe let a bit of your current stance on gender reassignment in children in the West bleed through I guess, I personally don't think it's all above board leaving aside the difficulty of verifying numbers and the activists who see any criticism of hijras as hostile.

To put vague numbers on it, I'm 80% that such practises are commonplace, but only 50% or less that it happens with such a high frequency.

It's all good, I feel like these claims are outlandish/inflammatory enough that I should pro-actively provide evidence in the first place!

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