hijra
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also Hijra
Contents |
English [edit]
Etymology 1 [edit]
Arabic هجرة (híjra, “departure, exodus”), referring to Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE; from the verb هجر (hájara, “emigrate, to abandon”)
Noun [edit]
hijra (plural hijras)
- Alternative capitalization of Hijra
Usage notes [edit]
Usually uppercase
Etymology 2 [edit]
From Urdu ہیجڑا (hījṛā) / Hindi हीजड़ा (hījṛā).
Noun [edit]
hijra (plural hijras)
- A member of a third gender found in India and Pakistan.
- 1995 Gayatri Reddy:With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, & Culture) ISBN: 0226707563 http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/16479.ctl
- With Respect to Sex is an intimate ethnography that offers a provocative account of sexual and social difference in India. The subjects of this study are hijras or the "third sex" of India, individuals who occupy a unique, liminal space between male and female, sacred and profane. Hijras are men who sacrifice their genitalia to a goddess in return for the power to confer fertility on newlyweds and newborn children, a ritual role they are respected for, at the same time as they are stigmatized for their ambiguous sexuality. (review).
- 1994: John Irving: A Son of the Circus: Bloomsbury ISBN 0747517630 P.57.
- "They are an accepted third gender in India; they are called hijras - an Urdu word of masculine gender meaning hermaphrodite. But hijras are not born hermaphrodites, they are emasculated - hence eunuch is the truer word for them....And hijras dress as women, hence the term "eunich transvestite" comes closest to what they are.
- 1995 Gayatri Reddy:With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, & Culture) ISBN: 0226707563 http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/16479.ctl
Translations [edit]
third gender
Synonyms [edit]
- khojá, khunsá, khusrá, khwája-sará (as servant), mukhannas, nawáb (as servant), názir (as servant), zankhá (as dancer)
- listed in A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province (1911), so may be pejorative or outdated in contemporary usage
- derogatory: kaurika, kojja (Telugu), pottai (Tamil)
- from Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India (1999)
