South Asian Trans People

While use of the term trans in South Asia can be traced back no more than two decades, gender-variant communities have existed in the region for centuries. Following its use by transnational HIV/AIDS developmental funding programs in the 2000s, trans (expressed and institutionalized more often as transgender in South Asia) was adopted as an umbrella term by local communities and social movements. This expansion of the term produces some conflicts between universalizing conceptions of trans identities and regional/local gender-sexual configurations and knowledges.

Contextualizing Regional Trans Formations

The use of the term transgender in South Asia has been prevalent since the early 2000s in its more popular form “TG” and was associated primarily with culturally recognized and historically documented hijra (India and Bangladesh), meti (Nepal), and khwaja ...

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