Essay On Hijras And Culture

The word socio-cultural embraces the concept of society and culture. Society is the combination of interdependent organisms of the same species and culture is the learned behaviour of the members of the society. The roles of gender vary between different cultures and some cultures accept the possibility of a third sex or a third gender. A third sex is also discussed in ancient Hindu law, medicine, linguistics and astrology. They are known with various name, as Aravani, Hijra or Jagappa, in different places. The “Hijras” in South East Asia and the “Two-Spirit” among American natives serve as examples of the fluidity of gender (Gessel). The transgender people are assigned as others because their biological sex does not match with the supposed natural gender. They are disowned by their family, society and even from the participation in the mainstream society. They are forced to earn their livelihood by dancing, begging and sex work. Hijras’ society and community is shaped by their culture and the role they play in society.Most hijras live at the margins of society with very low status. They face a lot of harms which are sociological, psychological, cultural,

All participants were recruited from third gender community. At the beginning of the interview, each participant was asked a total of two demographic questions: (1) what is your race, and (2) what is your gender identity? Each demographic question was phrased in an open-ended manner in the form of Interview. Participants’ ranged in age from 16 to 55 years. Two of the twenty participants identified her race/ethnicity as Nepalian and the rest of the participants identified as Indian. When asked about gender identity, four participants who labelled her/his gender identity as male to female and sixteen participants were identified as transgender. A person who identified as male to female stated the following about his gender