The story here:

http://news.yahoo.com/13-eunuchs-killed ... 33620.html

says there are 700,000 eunuchs in India. (Well, minus 13 now.) I had heard that being a eunuch was a big thing there, but I had no idea it was THAT big. Anybody know why? Or why they're organized? Seems to be a religious thing, but I'm curious whether someone here knows details.

Sandi

There is an older thread on this news item (with several responses) at:

http://www.eunuch.org/forums/showthread ... elhi-India

It's also possible to use the search feature on the Archive to look for posts about the Hijra.

(http://www.eunuch.org/forums/showthread ... elhi-India)

Several things had come together in order to keep the tradition of "hijras" alive in the Indian subcontinent as opposed to the "western" world. While it was eradicated in the west, there they were not persecuted on the scale that it was with so-called "Christianity". Even certain Moslems accept this way of life although other Moslems (the taliban) would never do such. The British colonists passed "anti-sodomy" laws to no avail. There is also many more males than females there. This is due to the fact that they heavily favor male births over female births, even to the extent of secretly destroying the fetus if they learn it is female which although illegal is still done anyway. Because of the lack of females, born-males seem to take their place.

So something that was known and practiced from ancient times is revisited to us via a strange cicuituous route into the present. Something that was always present but never talked about over here (at least among Latins) is come into full force over there, it seems. We should honor that.

When you take into account the number of people in India, a million is not that many. Remember they are fast overtaking China for the number one spot on people and they have about half as much real estate to do it in. This is a problem that they still have not addressed.

River

It would be nice for us here in the US to be able to form groups of feminized eunuchs such as what they have in India and certain Latin America communities (which usually stick within their biological families as opposed to joining another separate family as they do it in India). It must be recognized though that this is a different mindset than with ordinary "gays". While the two mindsets do converge within the "gay" paradigm they are however separate and different aspects. Maybe I'll find the words to explain it later on. This is the best that I can do right now. Commonly if you can sing like a girl after a certain age and do or something else like that then you are given a dress and told you must wear that instead of men's clothes. Brightly colored pretty clothes in the US let's others know that you are not a macho though.