scholarly journals Il terzo genere? Koṭhī, hijṛa, kinnar e donne trans alla ricerca di cittadinanza nell’India contemporanea

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Alessandra Consolaro

Hijṛā communities from South Asia are often taken as an example of social acknowledgment of transgender in a ‘traditional’ context. Nevertheless, this exoticizing representation erases all distinctions among hijṛā, kinnar, koṭhī, third gender persons, transmen and transwomen, and other individuals whose gender identity does not conform to the man/woman binary. In this article, I will introduce the debate about identity construction of people that complicate the binary gender identity, within the framework of citizenship claims and homonationalism.

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lal Zimman

Transgender people’s recent increase in visibility in the contemporary United States has presented new linguistic challenges. This article investigates those challenges and presents strategies developed by trans speakers and promoted by trans activists concerned with language reform. The first of these is the selection of gendered lexical items, including both gender identity terms (woman, man, etc.) and more implicitly gendered words (e.g. beautiful, handsome). The second is the assignment of third person pronouns like she/her/hers and he/ him/his as well as non-binary pronouns like singular they/them/theirs or ze/ hir/hirs. Both of these challenges tap into the importance trans people place on individual self-identification, and they come with new interactional practices such as asking people directly what pronouns they would like others to use when referring to them. The third challenge addressed here is avoiding gendering people when the referent’s gender isn’t relevant or known, which can be addressed through the selection of gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language. The final challenge is how to discuss gender when it is relevant – e.g. in discussions of gender identity, socialisation or sexual physiology – without delegitimising trans identities. Several strategies are presented to address this issue, such as hedging all generalisations based on gender, even when doing so seems unnecessary in the normative sex/gender framework or using more precise language regarding what aspect(s) of gender are relevant. Taken as a whole, trans language reform reflects the importance of language, not just as an auxiliary to identity, but as the primary grounds on which identity construction takes place.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grusha Prasad ◽  
Joanna Morris

There has been increased awareness that individuals need not have a binary gender identity (i.e., male or female), but rather, gender identities exist on a spectrum. With this increased awareness, there has also been an increase in the use of they as a singular pronoun when referring to individuals with a non-binary gender identity. Has the processing of singular they changed along with a change in its usage? Previous studies have demonstrated that sentences in which they is co-indexed with singular antecedents, are judged acceptable and are easy to process, but only if the antecedents are non-referential and/or have ambiguous gender; co-indexing they with referential antecedents with unambiguous gender (e.g., Mary) results in lower acceptability ratings and greater processing effort. We investigated whether participants who frequently interacted with individuals with a non-binary gender identity and/or identified as having a non-binary gender themselves would process sentences in which themselves was co-indexed with singular antecedents similarly. We found a significant P600 effect for sentences in which themselves was co-indexed with singular referential antecedents with unambiguous gender, but failed to find a P600 effect when the antecedents were non-referential and/or had an ambiguous gender. This pattern of results is consistent with behavioural results from previous studies, suggesting that the change in the usage of singular they has not resulted in a corresponding change in the way in which this pronoun is processed.


2018 ◽  
pp. 165-175
Author(s):  
Puja Mitra

Transgender people are discriminated based on their gender identity, especially, in the societies of South Asian countries. The legal recognition of this ‘third sex’ had to wait long in countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. The human rights of these people are being violated in every sector although having been recognized as ‘citizens’ by their respective governments. Many countries have already started to let them get involved in different social and economic activities. In 2013, the Bangladesh government declared the status of the third gender to the transgender people of its territory. This recognition was aimed to protect all the human rights of the third gender enabling them to identify their gender as ‘Hijra’ in all government documents and passport. Section 27 of the Constitution of Bangladesh states that ‘All the citizens are equal before the law and are entitled to equal protection of law’. But the legal protection of the human rights of the newly recognized third gender is questionable till now. The Prevention of Oppression against Women and Children Act, 2000 describes the rights of only women and children. In Bangladesh, the transgender people are becoming rape victims everywhere but unlike women and children, their rape cases never get filed as the police officers do not even believe that anyone can rape these third genders. This social taboo and negligence are costing the sexual minorities their human rights like legal protection. Therefore, it has become important to address this issue to create social awareness which might induce the urgency to practice equal laws for every gender identity. In this paper, a critical analysis of the human rights of Bangladeshi transgendered people has been performed. Finally, the human rights condition of transgender people of Nepal and India is also discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jos Twist ◽  
Nastasja M de Graaf

There has been a recent rise in the number of people who hold a non-binary gender identity. However, the proportion of young people attending gender services who identify as non-binary has not yet been investigated. This article presents the findings from a pilot study of newly designed questionnaire, the Gender Diversity Questionnaire, which included questions about gender identity and gender expression. Responses from 251 adolescents attending the United Kingdom’s National Gender Identity Development Service between June 2016 and February 2017 are reported here. The majority, 56.9%, of young people identified as trans, 29.3% identified as a binary gender (male or female), 11% identified as non-binary and 1.2% as agender. There were no significant differences in self-defined identities based on assigned gender or age. However, once young people were separated into these groups, some of them were very small; thus, a larger sample is required. In terms of aspects of gender expression that were important to the young people, the data formed five themes – name and pronouns, external appearance, the body, intrinsic factors and ‘other’. Strengths and weaknesses of the research are discussed as well as future work that will be conducted.


Author(s):  
Linda Stepulevage

This article draws on interviews and case study research on gender-IT relations to examine the relationship between gender identity and IT development activities. It explores the intertwining of gender and technological identity for women in office work contexts, a location where a boundary between the design and use of IT systems has long been recognised. It is important to explore identity construction within this framework of design and use as separate activities since women’s identity is constrained on both sides of this perceived boundary. The article first explores issues for women as IT professionals, then as users of IT-based work systems and lastly, it discusses the feasibility of constructing gender identities that encompass and recognise the technical work that both developers and users do.


2020 ◽  
Vol LII (2) ◽  
pp. 5-11
Author(s):  
Vladimir D. Mendelevich

An analysis of the problem of non-binary gender identity and transgender shows that the professional position of psychiatrists and psychologists is often based on selfish gender when subjectivity begins to be seen in psychiatric diagnostics due to a rigid binary gender setting. Modern research proves the existence of gender diversity and a spectrum of gender identity. All this allows us to state that the phenomenon of so-called gender identity disorders goes beyond the psychopathological context. The psychiatrists use of the binary approach does not correspond to rapidly changing public ideas about the norm and pathology of human behavior.


2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas M. Ponton

This work examines the linguistic construction of gender identity in the discourse of Margaret Thatcher. Identity is defined in the terms of Bucholtz and Hall (2005) as an ‘emergent’ phenomenon, depending on local contexts of interaction. In analysing the contributions by media figures to processes of identity construction recourse is made to the theories of Turner and Oakes (e.g. 1989) in the field of social identity theory. Interviewers’ questions are examined for what they reveal about identity presuppositions. Mrs Thatcher at times plays along with these presuppositions, ignores them, or objects to them. Her answers tell us something about the identity she wishes to construct. The work focuses on Thatcher’s first major political breakthrough; her conquest of the Conservative leadership in 1975. The toolkit for examining identity in discourse proposed by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) is adopted, and Corpus Linguistics and the Appraisal Framework of Martin and White (2005) are used in support of the selected tools.


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