How does a study of the Hijras contribute to an understanding of gender as cultrually constructed?

Question

To what degree is gender biological in this case and can you compare the Hijras to similar gender roles in our society?

Answer 1

Define your terms first and foremost.  In gender studies you always have to.  In transgender studies "gender identity" has nothing to do with gender (as social scientists define it - cultural, outside the body, and able to be chosen or rejected) but rather with internal s*x.  If you want to talk about gender as a social construct, you don't need the Hijra.  You can talk about the blue for boys/pink for girls flip-flopping between the world wars, breeching, kilts and tunics, matriarchy, or anything within a culture or cross-culturally.  If you want to talk about the social construction of s*x with the Hijra, you must understand the extent to which reproductive function plays into the Indian system of the sexes.  You might also look at other non-binary s*x systems around the world.  In the social sciences, gender is said to be the social constructs linked to a s*x category while s*x is said to be the biological (or believed-biological) category based on the body.  Note, however, that gender identity is biological (read the Kruijver study below) while "the sexes" are culturally constructed so as to create a certain number of categories (usually two or three, occasionally four or five depending on local definitions of s*x and gender) from the wide variation in human biological bodies (see the second link for stats on body variance).  

The Hijra are a separate s*x.  In the DSM-IIIR, they were explicitly excluded from diagnoses as transsexuals.  They are not merely men who dress as women effeminate men either.  They are separate.  Their role in society has changed a lot with Westernization as well.  To try to relate them now, or as they are reported to have been before Westernization, would require a lot of research, some of which is complicated field research that hasn't been done yet, and some is about the cultures and their ideas about whether nature makes women and men and Hijras or just women and men.

Answer 2

i really thought it did but i am not for sure