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Pakistan's Transgenders In A Category Of Their Own
by EDITOR
12:07 PM MON SEPTEMBER 3, 2012
http://keranews.org/post/pakistans-transgenders-category-their-own (http://keranews.org/post/pakistans-transgenders-category-their-own)
LISTEN (4 minutes 23 seconds):
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Credit Lauren Frayer / NPR
In Pakistan, transgender women have long been considered good luck for both newborns and newlyweds — and perform both at baby showers and weddings. Despite this, they continue to face discrimination in this otherwise conservative Muslim country.
This year, hijras won a key legal battle to have a third gender option on national ID cards. About 50,000 Pakistanis are classified as hijras like Mehvish. The category includes self-reported transgender men and women, as well as ->-bleeped-<-s, hermaphrodites and eunuchs.
"I'm neither a man nor a woman," Mehvish says. "We cannot marry, we cannot produce children. So this is how we lead our lives. We are neither."
Mehvish was born male, but now identifies as female — and not as gay, which she considers a sin in Islam.
"I just have a boyfriend, I don't have a girlfriend. So I'm not homosexual," she says.
Gender studies professor Fatimah Ihsan says Pakistanis have more fluid gender identities than you might expect.
Even so, serious discrimination against hijras exists — for example, stories of rape by police who are supposed to protect them. But their status is rising slowly.