#your analysis reminds me of sizhen's essay on Faggotization and the Gender Subaltern class - not a coincidence i assume?

[jadeharleyinc]

yeah i was originally phrasing this with an "gee only The Orient has exotic cultural-spiritual third sexes because clearly the West is the default and has no culture" angle but i really should've just quoted your article lol

i like the way you straight-up point out that this imaginary orientalist Nonthreatening Nonmedicalized Cisfeminist-Inspiration-Porn-y Third Sex is actually also present in western circles, 100%. the "ancient tradition of androgyny" Nanda invokes, obviously downstream of every western nation wanting to be ancient greece's most specialist spiritual successor... and i'd guess the more modern example of the safely applauded, safely discarded acceptably-gender-nonconforming/genderqueer person.

but obviously that veneer of cultural acceptance is straight-up bullshit. the "third sex" has its identity constructed for it, it is shaped by patriarchy into a scapegoat class that can be exploited to uphold the binary and its already-existing exploitation.

so it's really disheartening to see OP paint comparisons to the western transfem experience as "oppressive" "erasure" and play into the hands of: -the western trad right ("the Third Sex is part of the backwards tradition of The Foreigners, unlike newfangled Western Trannies who threaten our gender binary") -TERFs ("the Third Sex is part of the liberatory/precolonial tradition of The Foreigners, unlike newfangled Western Trannies who reinforce our gender binary") -and of course non-western institutional transphobia (which as you point out, is quite glad to import western third-sexism to justify the immutability of the binary and existence of a scapegoat class).

I'm so glad that y'all are so into Monkey Man and the badass hijra priestess army, but friendly reminder that hijra are NOT trans women. Hijra are their own distinct gender; trans women are women. India has both :)