BBC Radio 4: Hijra: erasing homosexuality

[Pluvia]

Radio 4 broadcast this programme yesterday:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct5tgm

I have listened to the whole programme. The Hijra, according to older academic sources and anthropological studies, are communities of Asian gay men (the majority) plus some other male social outsiders. They dress as women and, traditionally, have worked as entertainers, musicians and prostitutes. Islam has traditionally been unwelcoming towards homosexuals. They have always been marginalised. What we would call swishy, camp gay men and boys who have been disowned by their families find community and support among the Hijras.

They've now been reinvented as communities of transgender and intersex people, according tot he BBC. Nothing to do with being homosexual at all. This programme completely erases their homosexuality. Everything has been submerged by gender. The men are called 'she' throughout. No uninformed listener would have any idea that these are gay men living in a homophobic society where they can't be openly gay unless they disguise themselves as women.

This is homophobia in action and the BBC are broadcasting it without any kind of cultural or academic analysis.

From Wikipedia: "Hijra is officially recognised as a third gender throughout countries in the Indian subcontinent"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)

Officially recognising something in law does not make it so in biology. Hijra are men.

And, OP, I haven't yet listened to the programme, but going by your description your concerns are spot-on. I know it's pissing in the wind, but I imagine you could write a detailed complaint to the BBC on grounds of accuracy.
I'll listen to it at some point and will likely feel moved to write my own complaint.

They're recognising other genders, not a third sex

Wow. I would be interested to know how they refer to themselves, do they all identify as trans? Seems very unlikely. That is quite shocking.

Yes.
As the OP says, 'Everything has been submerged by gender.'

"Hijras' identity originates in ancient Hinduism and evolved during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) and Mughal Empire (1526–1707)"

I'm afraid I'm not getting what your point is.

That the concept of other genders is a long recognised notion in other cultures

Well, I'm not arguing with that.
But as the OP says, these are homosexual men. And what seems to be missing from this programme is any interrogation of why there is this third gender, and why gay men need to instead say they are this other gender.

They've been recognised as a third gender for centuries. Nothing to see here

But you're not engaging with the questions the OP raises.

Like I said, I don't think there's anything to see here, unless you want a wider discussion on the impact of attitudes to gender in other cultures and how it impinges on western culture (negatively imo)

This is a genuine question: are you not understanding the points the OP is making? Or are you being obtuse deliberately?
It's not about attitude to gender per se, it's a misunderstanding or ignoring of what having a 'third gender' means in this cultural context.

Yes, the concept of "third genders" is regressive.

And the concept of "men actually being women" is even more regressive.

So this BBC report is taking something bad and trying to make it even worse.

Yes homosexuals have been persecuted for centuries. Ask how many openly homosexuals there are in these societies. The answer is zero. That should elicit some intellectual curiosity but apparently not.

How are you defining gender? It cannot be something innate, as then everybody would have a gender. Gender is something imposed by societal values and stereotypes, hence 'feminine' and 'masculine' genders. In India Hijra gender would be a specific variant of feminine gender that can only be applied to males.

So, yes, a third gender is recognised in the sense that the the genders recognised in India are feminine, masculine and Hijra.

Just as inAfghanistan the three genders are feminine, masculine and Pacha Bosh.

The adjectives feminine and masculine give no information about the sex of the person being described, just assumptions. Hijra and Pacha Bosh, however, do give information about the sex of the person being described, as a person cannot be Hijra without being male, just as a person cannot be a transwman without being male.

I think the OP's point is they were a third gender (homosexual men surviving in a homophobic culture). The BBC report seems to be claiming they are now all transwomen (female gender). Something that just a few years ago would undoubtedly have been alien to them before they were colonised by Western gender ideology.

No: they are gay men living in a country where gay sex is illegal. They are swishy same-sex attracted men who were cast out of polite society because of their obvious homosexuality and/ or failure to exhibit expected sexual stereotypes. The culture was/is homophobic, but the Hijra permits a get-out situation in which, if gay men wears lipstick and female clothing, they can be socially accommodated — as outcasts, but as outcasts with a role in society as musicians, performers and prostitutes.

Pretending to be female is part of the bargain that those gay men make in order to find some kind of respite in an Islamic, extremely sexist and homophobic society. They take the second-class citizen (female) role, they are disrespected and marginalised, but it's okay because it accommodates their homosexuality. Gender ideology has now erased the reality of their same-sex attracted sexuality by making them trans. It's profoundly homophobic: it's denying the fact that these are men who are sexually attracted to other men.

Wikipedia etc are all just parroting the gender shit promoted by TRAs and people who think it's progressive to erase same-sex attracted people from society.

Go back 10, 20+ years and all the research on the Hijra makes it clear that they are gay men who have adopted womanface in order to survive. Islam has found ways of doing this. Iranians accommodate homosexuality, by saying it's fine for a same-sex couple to live together etc as long as one of them goes through full sex-change surgery in order to give the impression that they are a straight couple. They're transing away the gay and the BBC is promoting it.

Sex, not gender. It's sex that matters. No one has ever been able to define gender. It's a bunch of feelings, everyone defines it differently. But everyone, even intersex people, are either male or female. If you remove the word gender from your vocabulary things become much clearer.

I agree it's sex. I'm just using 'gender' in the new fashion as a word for sexist stereotypes rather than its former use in grammar, or as a polite synonym for sex. Hijira are/were never a third sex and they aren't/were never women.

Trying to speak the same language as a pp who seems to have misunderstood.

Not disputing that sex matters at all. But other genders are recognised in other cultures, so I believe we need a more nuanced approach to that, rather than simply saying gender doesn't exist. I see the problem in the UK being that this issue hasn't been thought through carefully enough leading to the erroneous confusion/conflation of sex and gender

Okay, I'll try one more time.
Can you address the issue that these are gay men who are presenting themselves as something other than gay men for particular reasons?

@Coffeelovr Why would men who are sexually attracted to other men need to hide behind the facade of being women?

How do you mean they're a 'third gender', from the post it seems they are men who because they are sexually attracted to other men are being forced to pretend if they're women, because the culture doesn't recognise homosexual males, I only see 2 genders here, just like there are only 2 sexes. It doesn't seem as these men are voluntary identifying as women, but being forced to pretend they are in order to escape a death penalty.

I can see why the genderwangers in the West want to hijack the existence of this community and use it to give validity to their barn pottery, but the men in this community don't seem to have a lot in common with those that choose to ID as 'women' in the West.

What about women who are sexually attached to women, is there also community of women being forced to pretend they're men in India and for centuries and centuries.