Response to Farrukh Dhondy's Hijra Hattao' article in Asian Age

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'Tatte Girao, Hijra Hattao'

Response to Farrukh Dhondy's article in Asian Age

'Tatte Girao, Hijra Hattao' was written in response to Mr Farrukh Dhondy's

article ' The male eunuch & other chromosomes'. Mr Dhondy's article appeared in

the Asian Age newspaper of August 29th, 2009. The article 'Tatte Girao, Hijra

Hattao' has not been accepted by the editor of Asian Age and is therefore being

circulated on relevent e-lists.

Apologies in advance for cross-postings.

NOTE: 'The male eunuch & other chromosomes' can be read at:

http://www.asianage .com/presentatio n/columnisthome/ farrukh-dhondy/ the-male-

eunuch--other- chromosomes. aspx

Satya Rai Nagpaul

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Tatte Girao, Hijra Hattao

Caster Semenya's record breaking run in the Berlin World Athletic Games this

August, not only raised doubts in the organisers about her 'real sex " , but back

home, has precipitated our very own Mr Farrukh Dhondy's jounalistic activism to

save our boys from falling into any possible sexual/gender ambiguity.

His prescription: Get 'the apparatus' and you shall be a 'man'!

If the medical and legal communities were not enough, we have now to fight our

so called " progressive " journalists who write columns about 'so called

eunuchs', who their medical friends tell them 'were not eunuchs at all'.

The transphobia, gender essentialism and high moral ground in Mr Dhondy's

article couldn't have been more naked. What appears throughout the article as

his well meaning and sympathetic concern, finally reveals its true face in that

last draconian sentence: 'Make hijras history'. How could the corporeal

realities of the hijra be so lost on a journalist [and one who is himself a

minority, being a parsi, as stated in his article] that he can wish for the

wiping out of an entire way of life? Instead of espousing their human rights, he

wishes them not to exist at all?!

Mr Dhondy's statement that all hijras suffer from Cryptorchidism, and that it is

a simple medical procedure that will make men out of them, not only reveals his

journalistic smugness but also that he has been completely absent from all

discourses on sex/gender emerging ever since the years of the second world war.

The binary conceptualisation of sex/gender is long dead in cutting edge academia

and even the medical sciences have begun to open out their sex/gender categories

to the new conceptualisations.

Crytorchidism could become an opportunity for the person & the family to revisit

& reimagine the category sex, but what Mr Dhondy recommends is a reinforceing of

the binaries of male & female. The old guard of medical practitioners tell us

who we are and who we should become and our journalists, having completely

bought into this medicalisation of sex, carry further these prescriptions in

their columns. But of course all this mess about 'categories', whether athletic

or otherwise, appears to Mr Dhondy, as one 'dilemma' and of course it 'bores

him'.

This intellectual apathy and gender puritanism pushes the already difficult

lives of hijras and all those who lie outside the binary of male and female,

further into the margins and into the closets.

We have also learnt, haven't we, that Mr Dhondy never uses his 'own being as

ironic instrument to raise the price of [his] own meal' ? Only, he is not

telling us he won't be found at the traffic lights; he has more sophisticated

junctures to sell his stuff at.

Since Mr Dhondy, on his own admission, has already lived a long time without

finding out the 'precise' difference between sex and gender, he could do three

if not more things: refrain from putting pen to paper on something he does not

know about, and then, not sit next to an idiot box and blame it for telling him

what to think! And if 'Diwan Hijro' still visits his dreams, that brilliant

mathematics teacher will also tell him that 2+2 does not make 4 in most other

subjects.

' a very brief sojourn in the changing room would [not] settle the matter'. A

brief sojourn into the life of a hijra, may.

Satya Rai Nagpaul

Transman, Cinematographer.

5th September, 2009

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The male eunuch & other chromosomes

Farrukh Dhondy

" She never reads for truth

But only for sensation

I placed a bet on love and lost

On Casablanca station " .

From The Love Song of

J.P.X. Jaganbhai by Bachchoo

Augest.29 : I have lived a long time without asking myself what the precise

difference between sex and gender is. I am now told — I can’t help but hear,

because it is loudly proclaimed from the speakers of TV sets and radios — that

" gender " is a purely grammatical concept whereas sex is — Well! — the real

thing!

The distinction is being proclaimed because a young South African athlete, who

spectacularly set a new world record for the women’s 800 metres race in the

current Berlin World Athletic Games, is under suspicion of really being a man.

One would have thought that a very brief sojourn in the changing rooms would

settle the matter. But no!

Poor Caster Semenya, the " woman " in question, was asked if she was a man, but no

examination of the obvious sort took place. Instead the world was told what, to

my untutored mind, came as something of a surprise.

The spokesman for the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF),

one Nick Davies, says that the tests necessary to determine the sex of Ms

Semenya involve " an extremely complex procedure involving doctors, scientists,

gynaecologists and psychologists " .

Apparently this is because there are a variety of sexual states in between what

we know of and accept as the " male " and the " female " .

Most people’s sex awareness begins with a comparison of the apparatus one

possesses with that of a member of the opposite sex.

One naturally takes what one possesses to be the universal state of being and

then notices that a sister, a cousin or some other child, seems to be the proud

possessor of alternative arrangements.

I don’t think it ever occurred to me, surveying as an infant my female

cousin’s properties, that the complementary contrasts were unexpected or

shocking. Girls were girls and boys were boys and there were differences to

explore and celebrate. Obviously, at that age one didn’t know how the

apparatus fitted together or what it was for.

The other great lesson in sexual identity was provided by the backwardness of

India. In my home town of Pune (then " Poona " ) there was Dastur School, founded

by Parsis for the benefit of the general community but with a Zoroastrian ethos,

attended predominantly by Parsi children. I didn’t go to that school though

several of my friends from the neighbourhood, including Kishan Abhichandani, a

Sindhi, did.

The reputedly brilliant mathematics teacher of the school was a Parsi gentleman

called Mr Diwan. He was slightly obese, had very distinct formations of breasts

which showed through his shirt, circular hips and, though he was easily 40 when

I became aware of his existence, no facial hair and so no necessity to shave.

The male pupils of the school referred to him in Gujarati as " Diwan Hijro! "

openly calling him a eunuch.

Even in my innocence I knew that shouting this epithet at him when he passed us

in the street was rude and unacceptable, even though I didn’t know anything

about the intermediate sexual state to which it referred.

In India hijras were (and still are!) everywhere, and one of them made me

conspicuous in my crowd of friends when he/she crossed the street and caressing

my cheek said, " Salim hein Salim! " and clapped with the hollows of his/her palms

ringing. I had to live the name down. We always thought of hijras as " eunuchs "

and I often wondered what sort of sexual apparatus they possessed.

A doctor friend enlightened me. These so called eunuchs, the hijras, were not

eunuchs at all, they were " cryptorchids " .

They were born with male genitalia but as infants their testicles were trapped

inside a peculiar bone formation of their crotch. A very simple medical

procedure could release these testicles and allow them to drop as those of all

males normally did. The paucity of medical attention and supervision in the

country resulted in these growing boys having their testicles trapped and

crushed instead of developing in the male way.

So while " hijras " possess a little boy’s penis, the machinery that would have

made them preponderantly male with testosterone dominating their hormonal

production has been crushed and they develop the secondary sexual features of

males and females. Parents who observe their sons growing in this way give them

away to be adopted by tribes of " their own kind " . Here, dear Indian reader, is a

sadness that could be legislated away.

In the West you don’t have gangs of hijras at traffic lights begging for a

living, clapping and parodying themselves, using their own being as ironic

instruments to raise the price of a meal!

A simple medical procedure allowing the testicular drop, makes men of these, to

me, unfortunate boys.

It is unfortunate that the athlete Ms Semenya will soon be the subject of tests

to determine which chromosomes she carries, whether she has had a sex operation

to change from being a boy to a girl while retaining some of the hormonal

characteristic of boys which give oomph to the running muscles… etc.

I saw her and heard her speak on TV and she does possess a muscular frame, the

lean hips of a lad and a deep voice. All these could be the characteristics of

any one of the intermediate sexual forms that seem to have gained scientific

morphological recognition. The sports committees and the Olympic associations

have a problem. Should there be racing categories for each of these intermediate

sexes? So there would be the Men’s 100m, the Women’s 100m, the XXY

Chromosomic 100m, the XYY chromosomic 100m, the 70:30 testesterone: Oestrogen

100m… and so on and on.

Sorry, though I am for Ms Semenya and what she must be going through after

assuming that she was what everyone thought of as a girl, the larger athletic

dilemma bores me. Let the Olympic committeewallahs, with their fat salaries,

come up with the solutions.

I am much more concerned that cryptorchidism be abolished forever from India,

South Africa and everywhere and in my own yard that the Indian government passes

a law to get doctors to examine and remedy, if bone structure necessitates, male

child. Make hijras history!

_______________________________

Satya Rai Nagpaul

e-mail: <ekdoorbeen@...>