By Farrukh Dhondy
“She never reads for truth
But only for sensation
I placed a bet on love and lost
On Casablanca station”.
From The Love Song of J.P.X. Jaganbhai by Bachchoo
Augest.29 : I have lived a long time without asking myself what the precise difference between sex and gender is. I am now told — I can’t help but hear, because it is loudly proclaimed from the speakers of TV sets and radios — that “gender” is a purely grammatical concept whereas sex is — Well! — the real thing!
The distinction is being proclaimed because a young South African athlete, who spectacularly set a new world record for the women’s 800 metres race in the current Berlin World Athletic Games, is under suspicion of really being a man.
One would have thought that a very brief sojourn in the changing rooms would settle the matter. But no!
Poor Caster Semenya, the “woman” in question, was asked if she was a man, but no examination of the obvious sort took place. Instead the world was told what, to my untutored mind, came as something of a surprise.
The spokesman for the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), one Nick Davies, says that the tests necessary to determine the sex of Ms Semenya involve “an extremely complex procedure involving doctors, scientists, gynaecologists and psychologists”.
Apparently this is because there are a variety of sexual states in between what we know of and accept as the “male” and the “female”.
Most people’s sex awareness begins with a comparison of the apparatus one possesses with that of a member of the opposite sex.
One naturally takes what one possesses to be the universal state of being and then notices that a sister, a cousin or some other child, seems to be the proud possessor of alternative arrangements.
I don’t think it ever occurred to me, surveying as an infant my female cousin’s properties, that the complementary contrasts were unexpected or shocking. Girls were girls and boys were boys and there were differences to explore and celebrate. Obviously, at that age one didn’t know how the apparatus fitted together or what it was for.
The other great lesson in sexual identity was provided by the backwardness of India. In my home town of Pune (then “Poona”) there was Dastur School, founded by Parsis for the benefit of the general community but with a Zoroastrian ethos, attended predominantly by Parsi children. I didn’t go to that school though several of my friends from the neighbourhood, including Kishan Abhichandani, a Sindhi, did.
The reputedly brilliant mathematics teacher of the school was a Parsi gentleman called Mr Diwan. He was slightly obese, had very distinct formations of breasts which showed through his shirt, circular hips and, though he was easily 40 when I became aware of his existence, no facial hair and so no necessity to shave. The male pupils of the school referred to him in Gujarati as “Diwan Hijro!” openly calling him a eunuch.
Even in my innocence I knew that shouting this epithet at him when he passed us in the street was rude and unacceptable, even though I didn’t know anything about the intermediate sexual state to which it referred.
In India hijras were (and still are!) everywhere, and one of them made me conspicuous in my crowd of friends when he/she crossed the street and caressing my cheek said, “Salim hein Salim!” and clapped with the hollows of his/her palms ringing. I had to live the name down. We always thought of hijras as “eunuchs” and I often wondered what sort of sexual apparatus they possessed.
A doctor friend enlightened me. These so called eunuchs, the hijras, were not eunuchs at all, they were “cryptorchids”.
They were born with male genitalia but as infants their testicles were trapped inside a peculiar bone formation of their crotch. A very simple medical procedure could release these testicles and allow them to drop as those of all males normally did. The paucity of medical attention and supervision in the country resulted in these growing boys having their testicles trapped and crushed instead of developing in the male way.
So while “hijras” possess a little boy’s penis, the machinery that would have made them preponderantly male with testosterone dominating their hormonal production has been crushed and they develop the secondary sexual features of males and females. Parents who observe their sons growing in this way give them away to be adopted by tribes of “their own kind”. Here, dear Indian reader, is a sadness that could be legislated away.
In the West you don’t have gangs of hijras at traffic lights begging for a living, clapping and parodying themselves, using their own being as ironic instruments to raise the price of a meal!
A simple medical procedure allowing the testicular drop, makes men of these, to me, unfortunate boys.