I haven’t really heard of this, and shared RevelryByNight’s surprise, because… I also know many trans people who are not intersex, and a few intersex people who prefer a distinction between the two terms.

I’m happy to be educated.

ISNA was dedicated to asserting that there was a clear distinction between trans and intersex people. ISNA was also fixated on its founder’s assertion that issues of cosmesis and phenotype were just the same as issues of function and genotype, mainly because the founder says she endured unconsented neonate surgery for an “oversized” clitoris (see Maggie’s post today). The separatist notion didn’t hold, though, as many trans people have intersex traits and vice versa.

There is increasing evidence that gender identity and expression has a genetic component (replications at certain gene loci), so much depends on how you define “intersex.” Other cultures and traditions aren’t so hung up on medicalizing and pathologizing difference, so people who don’t fit into a neat sexual or social binary are all considered part of the same group, as we see in southeast Asia.

My apologies.

For one thing, the child born with the ambiguous genitalia is more likely to be left on the doorstep of the hijrah house.

But based on my personal encounters with them, I found them scary and purposefully intimidating, even violent. Extortionists. The supposedly good kind, not the “behen-chods.”

I guess in the end they’re making society pay (literally) for its own intolerance, and the “punishment” is pretty evenly distributed. But I can’t really agree to a portrayal of them as completely innocent.

I’m one of the commenters who is curios about the precise taxonomy of the term “hijrahs”. I know this is fail on my part. People can call themselves wtf they want and that’s their identity. I’m still curious though…

The place for outsiders in ritual is something I think most societies have. Look at popular entertainment in open societies…

Reading about this topic, here and elsewhere, I am upset that we humans are not civilized enough to simply accept people as they are.

PZ Myers wrote a sarcastic response to the idea of giving a dangerous steroidal medication to pregnant women so their daughters would not be too masculine.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/06/attention_perversely_assertive.php

I really can’t tell which approach is more barbaric. Both view being outside the binary gender norms as a disease or defect. At least Pakistan allows them a marginal place in society.

There people behave like gangs and have “beats” carving out commercial areas to operate in.

To most of us, they are pests.

To be quiet honest, the term hijrah itself isn’t the most apt description of even how Aziz Mamoo identifies herself. As she explains it, there are three types of hijrahs: khawaja sara, kadhra, and kusra. My urdu isn’t that great, so my notes on the differences are sparse.Here is what I have though:

(this is just how aziz mamoo explained the differences, there’s nothing medical about it)

Khawaja Sara – One who has a small penis that can only be used for urinating. Khawaja Sara’s tend to be more masculine. In fact, I know of one who works as a man in the day at a mobile store and then works the streets of Zamzama (an affluent commercial district in Karachi) as a woman.

Kusra – One who has a vagina and is more woman-like. As Aziz Mamoo explains it, “there is a bone in the vagina that blocks anything from entering.” Aziz Mamoo also identifies herself as a kusra.

Kadhra – One who has both male and female genitalia. This is what most people in Pakistan think of when they think of a hijrah.

Aziz is considered a Kusra.

One term is Arabic (the one about Mohamed migrating to Medina) while this one is an Urdu word, totally unrelated.

Arabic has less sounds than Urdu.

To answer your second question, from what I am told some infants can be identified as a khadra (both with male and female genitalia). Those are the ones, I’m guessing, are left at the doorstep.

On the Indian hijra tip (and re: the empowerment of hijras @zootboing), I recommend having a look at hijra parliamentarian Shabnam Mausi’s wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabnam_Mausi

(and the astounding Bollywood movie made of her life that basically gives her superpowers. It’s a wow.)

Our knowledge of the brain is still pretty minimal and as a result, it’s easier to isolate conditions such as chromosomal abnormalities and designate them as “intersex” and declare “brain stuff” to be transsexualism.

There has been a bit of drama between the two groups, stupid, really.

@8 that’s right.
Trans and IS people are more or less accepted by Islam, although it really depends on the local authority figure. Iran actually pays for bottom surgery and has a surgical program, but other parts of Islam are far from tolerant.
As an example, in Indeonesia and other parts of SE Asia, clerics are actively attempting to erase any trace of the waria (their name for gender variant people) culture (or whatever traditional name they had in local culture)

Interesting that the masculine title is used, the feminine is Hajja.

Bassam, man, thanks again for sending this dispatch to us from the P-K. Be safe over there and good luck on the documentary project. I hope you’ll send us more posts, I know so little about the country and it’s fascinating to see it through the eyes of someone who is of the culture, and not an outsider as most of us here would be.

When there is a birth of a child that is transgendered, some families leave the infant at the guru’s doorstep

Do you mean, when there is the birth of a child who is intersexed? Gender identity forms later in life and I believe it’s impossible for an infant to have a self-perceived gender.

This confused me, because not all intersexed people are transgender, and not all transgenders are intersexed.

I understand ‘transgender’ as feeling very strongly that someone was born into the wrong gender body. How do they know infants feel that way?

As a female, I can look at my own life and see the truth in that. I receive negative attention and consequences every time I want to express “too many” masculine qualities but I get positive attention every time I act more feminine. And the desire to battle gender stereotypes for the rest of my life was drained out of me before I was five or six years old. I could tell the pressure would never let up, so I just gave up and became more girly than I would have been otherwise.

It’s like people have this need to fit everybody else into a box and it makes them very uncomfortable when they don’t know what box to put you in or you won’t stay in that box. Those genderized expectations are changing, but very slowly. And you know, if boys were allowed to be as feminine as they wanted without any criticism or pressure, then they would have no need to transition.

http://hijdaeunuchblog.wordpress.com/