Boy Cuts: Female Masculinity and Queer Aesthetics in Karachi, Pakistan

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Pakistan, compared with the long-established category of khwaja sira, which can be analogous to trans femininity in English, little attention has yet been paid to trans and female masculinities. For trans men, butch women, and nonbinary people assigned female at birth (AFAB), their navigation of public spaces, negotiation of identity and aesthetic expression of gender, and balancing of globalizing LGBTQ+ discourses with pre-existing South Asian forms of queerness has meant that they see their struggles as unique from other types of queer identification and community in Pakistan. This article examines how masculine-presenting AFAB queer and trans young adults in Karachi express themselves through embodied aesthetic forms, such as hair styles and clothing, and negotiate these aesthetic choices with family and community insistences on presenting as proper women. While providing an optic into understanding the complexities of choice and agency that AFAB individuals face in displaying their masculinity, aesthetics is often also a determining factor in how they are treated and seen by others in the various kinds of public spaces that they move between. Their aesthetic choices not only help to better understand marginalized masculinities in Pakistan, but also challenge and disrupt an idealized feminine aesthetic in Pakistan that is related to marriageability and conformity