Fictive home: the politics of urban homemaking of <em>Hijras</em> in Khulna, Bangladesh

Abstract

The third gender is an identity-based category for people who do not identify themselves as either male or female. This may include people who do not feel the male or female gender roles that their culture dictates in terms of social, sexual, or gender role preference. The aim of the paper is to investigate the crucial role that the dwelling environments play in the lives of the third gender and their ultimate transformation into and stigmatization as a Hijra. In a context characterized by a lack of social acceptance of the third gender people into mainstream activities, and in the near absence of Government (and NGO) support, particularly toward their rehabilitation and resettlement, the third gender population commonly engages in ‘anti-social’ activities in order to ensure a livelihood. A significant portion of these activities, which can also be viewed as different forms of resistance-mostly absent and ritualistic, however, take place within the confines of their urban dwelling. An investigation into their family structure and household spatial implication, organization of house spaces according to their own notion of publicness-privateness, spatial sequencing, layering and hierarchy, formal articulation of houses and their setting/location to the larger urban fabric hence speak of an apparently novel culture of an undesirable community, where such novelties, as this paper argues, degrade their identity into that of a ‘socially excluded’ Hijra. Such identification and understanding of the negative socio-political-spatial products/processes of Hijra homes hence are expected to provide important feedback to policymaking on devising sustainable ways to construct a positive identity for the so-called ‘Hijra’ population and aid through possible spatial-physical intervention (e.g. housing).