Time to time when I google about eunuchs I come across a mysterious man in india. He looks like this:

http://www.fotothing.com/photos/aae/aae ... b7c45a.jpg

He is probably Firoze Shakir, a photographer who have made many photos of hijras, some of them are rather rare or different than usual hijra photos. For example this photo of very young hijra:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/firozeshakir/4754318435/

He's photos are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/firozeshakir/

He has many tens of photosets of hijras containing thousands of pictures in total.

Like this one about childeunuchs and eunuchs children:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/firozeshak ... 444501488/

one particular child is documented growing up through his camera lense called Mona and under one picture he writes littlebit about her.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/firozeshak ... 444501488/

He is a shia mystic. It seems he has some kinks by our western thinking. But he is very open about that as he seem to be open to anything different.

But he has many other appeareances on the net.

I have a great deal of respect for these people and the photographer and his religion too. I wish I could start a community here in the States or something based on that model. I do think that they once actually did exist in the western world at one time. Plus all pre-industrial communities seem to have had a third gender category.

They are saying these children are born eunuchs? Is that true? Or are they castrated boys?

My uneducated impressions on Hijras is that they are of low social status (see wikipedia),

Most hijras live at the margins of society with very low status; the very word "hijra" is sometimes used in a derogatory manner. Few employment opportunities are available to hijras. Many get their income from performing at ceremonies, begging, or sex work—an occupation of eunuchs also recorded in premodern times. Violence against hijras, especially hijra sex workers, is often brutal, and occurs in public spaces, police stations, prisons, and their homes. As with transgender people in most of the world, they face extreme discrimination in health, housing, education, employment, immigration, law, and any bureaucracy that is unable to place them into male or female gender categories.

Also, I am not ever in favor of forced (or religiously-pressured) castration; to me, it's like female genital mutilation (often in Africa), or intersex genital mutilation (still everywhere?).

Great photos (this person is also attractive imo -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hijra ... amabad.jpg). Any links so I feel less uneducated would be much appreciated.

As a partial answer to PurpleTomato’s question, there are several books and articles about the Hijra listed in the Bibliography (http://www.eunuch.org/forums/showthread ... bliography). I have several more academic articles about them in the stack next to my desk. I will catalog them as I find time.

They are a large and diverse group – not just the eunuchs that the popular press and popular imagination depict them.

Estimates of the number of Hijra in India range from less than 50,000 to over 6,000,000. That there have been over 50,000 at single Hijra events demonstrates that the low number is inaccurate. I doubt the high number just as much. The estimates by scholars whose work I trust run around two million, plus or minus a bit. They are not counted separately in the Indian census, so numbers are all educated guesses. There are also a number of Hijra in Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, though there seems to have been little written about them.

Most of the Hijra would fit into some transgender category (and I will get to those who do not after I explain the transgenders). They were judged to be male at birth, but are not. Most would probably be classified as Male-to-Female in the west, though there are many who would fit the Male-to-Eunuch category as well. For most, the only surgery available is a rather “primitive” folk severing of the external genitals without any anesthesia and then letting the wound bleed until it all stops by itself. The rate of surgical complications (and long-term or permanent pain) is quite high. It’s assumed that there is also a high death rate from the surgery, though no reliable figures have ever been gathered.

Because of the pain and danger, some of the Hijra opt to live as their appropriate gender without any surgery. They live as females and present publicly as female, though they retain their testicles and penis. What’s inside the head is much more important than what’s between the legs.

In caste-ridden South Asia (including the Moslem areas), those who are outside the “norm” automatically fall into the outcaste or “untouchable” area regardless of the caste of their birth. This is also true for those who are born “intersex” and are not clearly male or female at birth. The tradition over the centuries has been that these intersex children are adopted by Hijra and are then considered to be Hijra themselves.

The child in the photographs is likely to have been of indeterminate sex when she was born. She has been adopted and raised by loving Hijra parents.

Jesus, your systemized clarification about hijras is just excellent!

Firoze Shakir seem to be an interesting man with a camera, having trust of many Indias communities of his interest. Hijra community among them. He seem to be a poet, dress designer and artist in more general sense.

Eunuch childs he refers to seem to have born with malformed genitals and abandoned by their real parents, given over to hijra community, which is better than just infanticide, which isn't uncommon. As Firoze Shakir himself explaines. There is a normal male child growing up in the same Hijra community too, so other childs must have some sort of genital malformation.