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The book “Neither Man nor Women” is an ethnography about the Hijras of India published in 1990. Serena Nanda, author of the book, is a professor of Anthropology in City University of New York. When beginning her fieldwork in the study of the Hijras, she only had brief information about the Hijras since there was not much written about them before. Nanda knew she would encounter conflict in communicating with the Indian community and that she would need translators. In the city she settled in, Bastipore, which is located in south central India, there were three spoken languages. She states in the introduction that the translation process was “time consuming, but [she] felt it was necessary to make sure that [she] had correctly understood the subtleties and complexities in such conversations and to increase the reliability of [her] data” (xix). I can understand why it was so imperative to have a translator, especially because she wanted to provide readers with valid information of such unique group of people. Her organization of the book contained chapters with different informative topics about the Hijras. A few of the different sections consisted of: defining Hijras, an overview of the roles they played in society, description of their rituals and spirituality, the operation process, work, personal interviews of individual Hijras. The way she selected to organize the book is acceptable and easy to follow through. As a result of Nanda’s fieldwork, she was able to accumulate comprehension of the Hijras of India and give readers a glimpse of their lifestyle in great detail.
As Nanda got to know the Hijras, she put together a definition that well described what a Hijra was. In the introduction she states that Hijras are “a religiou...
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...em; the problem is that many people do not understand them. The negative stereotypes are what set them apart from other transgendered people.
The personal interviews Nanda provides in the book were intriguing. The whole book challenged me to think outside of what I am accustomed to seeing in my society. Seeing the way sexuality and spirituality connect among the Hijras was very interesting. Nanda’s writing style was fairly easy to read and understand. She was very detailed. The photographs gave me a more vivid insight to what Hijras dress like. The book is overall informative since it was knowledge that I hadn’t encountered before that takes place in India. Nanda does a great job giving me as a reader a well-described insight into the lives of the Hijras.
Works Cited
Nanda, Serena. 1990. Neither Man nor Woman. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
This book differs from most ethnographies in that it was not authored by an anthropologist. Fernea originally set out to accompany her husband as he completed research for his doctorate in social anthropology from the University Chicago. Henceforth, Fernea did not enter the field with any specific goals, hypotheses, or particular interests. In many ways, Guests of the Sheik reads as a personal narrative, describing Ferneas struggles integrating into a society that has vastly different expectations and guidelines for women. Fernea recalls the culture shock she first experienced as well as her eagerness to overcome it. Her goals were mainly of a human nature: she wanted to feel a sense of belonging, to have friends, and to establish a life in El Nahra. The first part of Guests of the Sheik largely mimics Fernea's own journey to feeling accepted as it introduces readers to the various groups of women who soon become Fernea's close friends and confidants, most importantly Laila, who will later introduce many aspects of Muslim culture to Fernea. Throughout the book, each chapter emphasizes a different aspect of life as Fernea discovers it, or details an important event. As such, readers experience Ramadan and Eid, two staples of the Muslim culture, Weddings and marriage arrangements, discussions of monogamy and polygamy, the Pilgrimage to Karbala, and many other customs
This is my personal reflection about this book. First and foremost, I would like to say that this book is very thick and long to read. There are about nineteen chapters and 278 pages altogether. As a slow reader, it is a quite hard for me to finish reading it within time. It took me weeks to finish reading it as a whole. Furthermore, it is written in English version. My English is just in average so sometimes I need to refer to dictionary for certain words. Sometimes I use google translate and ask my friends to explain the meaning of certain terms.
The great feminist theorist once said “‘Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they don’t see it, but because they see it and don’t want it to exist’” (Mook 195). Support becomes very important for transgender people at the time they transition. Many families support their transgender family members, but society rejects their transition. Many people want transgender people out of their communities.
Transgender is defined by Wikipedia as, “the state of one's gender identity (self-identification as woman, man, neither or both) or gender expression not matching one's assigned sex.” The article explains how a transgender individual may define themselves as having the characteristics that are normally associated with a particular gender but will choose to identify elsewhere on the gender continuum. It use’s the love story of Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker as an example. It took five years for Zackary to transition from male to female and Rhys from female to male. But both truly believe that they were born the wrong gender, and choose to correct this wrong with hormone treatments, surgery and personality changes that to the more tradition eye may seem absurd and abnormal. This is one of the main reason such transgender couples are talking about their transformations. To beach this gap between transgender’s and the rest of the population. It is believed that by educating society, we are more likely to accept something than if we do not fully understand the parameters that surround such an issue.
1.) Intro: I decided to focus my Religious Ethnography on a friend whom I recently have become close with. Adhita Sahai is my friend’s name, which she later told me her first name meant “scholar.” I choose to observe and interview Adhita, after she invited me to her home after hearing about my assignment. I was very humbled that she was open to this, because not only was it a great opportunity for this paper, but it also helped me get to know Adhita better. I took a rather general approach to the religious questions that I proposed to the Sahai family because I didn’t want to push to deep, I could tell Hinduism is extremely important to this family. Because this family does not attend a religious site where they worship, I instead listened to how they do this at home as a family instead.
Transgendered people have a different and unique fight than the rest of the community. Transgendered peoples not only have the issues of “coming out,” (as others in the communities do) but also becoming a different gender. There are different obstacles that Trans people have to face.
Being a culture under pressure from both sides of the contact zone, there needs to be passion and emotion or else the culture might disappear into history. Anzaldua’s text makes great use of passion and emotion while merging the ideas of multiple cultures together through the tough experiences in her life. Autoethnographic texts give perspective to outsiders on how a culture functions from the inside point of view. Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” excellently portrays her culture’s plight and creates a fiery passionate entrance for her culture in their uprising through the contact zone.
There is more to gender expression, gender identities and biological sex that can be seen. The reason we do not go out looking for the differences between them is because some individuals are afraid of any difference that breaks their social norm. Each person is unique in their own way by having vast differences and challenges that they may face to become themselves. These differences and challenges is what bring us together and make up the communities we live in. They could be one someones teacher, best friend, sister. or brother, they could even be someones role model. Those “different people,” such as the interssexed, transgendered, or even biological males/females that differ from our social (daily) norms in the end are not that different.
There are very few times when someone comes out as transgender and their lives are still relatively easy to manage. There are a copious number of people who oppose this lifestyle and want no one to be apart of it.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Many transgender people often refer to themselves simply as “trans.” Transgender does not define one’s sexual orientation, however; gender is considered a social construct while sexuality is not. Some cisgender people, or people who identify as the genders they were born with, dislike or disagree with the way trans people live because they lack an understanding of what transgender means.
Hijras include such minorities as eunuchs, hermaphrodites, transvestites, transsexuals, and homosexuals and “literally means neither male nor female”2. Most hijras undergo a secretive castration operation as part of their religious rites. Because of this secrecy it is unknown as to the exact number of hijras in India. They are described, and describe themselves, as the “ ‘third sex’ – somewhere inbetween and beyond male or female”3. They see themselves as existing inside and above society. Even so, theirs is a day-to-day existence.
Nanda, Serena. Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub., 1990. Print.
No one wants to feel like they do not belong or like they are not cared for. Transgender people are just like everyone else and deserve to be treated equally to cisgendered people. According to Sam Killerman, being transgendered means living "as a member of a gender other than that expected based on sex assigned at birth." This definition is extremely important because a transgender person is still a person.
In a book called Culture and Human Sexuality: A Reader, written by David Suggs and Andrew Miracle. The book had a detailed and informative chapter solely about the hijras of India. The hijra’s are neither male nor female, but contain elements of both. They are believed to have sacred powers that have come from their...
It’s upsetting to know that there are so many trans-phobic people out there who believe gender is natural and bash people of trans simply because they do not conform to society’s gender expectations. It’s important to realize that transgender people are no different from you and I they are humans just like the rest of society. It is also interesting to note a lot of people get uptight and uncomfortable when the topic of transgender comes up .Our society is so ignorant when it comes to the topic of sexuality and