Books For Change, 2004, p. 2). Hijra is
‘not just a third gender’ but ‘also a third sex’, with a ‘well defined social identity…
To be hijra the crucial step is to take the vow of Hijra hood and became part of the Hijra clan, which functions almost as a caste, with its own specific inner workings, rules, rituals, and hierarchy.… In the past kings and noblemen were their patrons…
today… as they beg, sing, dance, bless and curse for a living, the public treats them with a mixture of awe, dread and disdain’ (Devdutt Pattanaik, The Man Who Was a Woman and Other Queer Tales from Hindu Lore. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002, pp. 11–12).
‘ Kothi is a feminized male identity which is adopted by some people in the Indian subcontinent and is marked by gender non-conformity. A kothi though biologically male, adopts feminine modes of dressing, speech and behavior and would look for a male partner who has masculine modes of behavior’ (Arvind Narrain, 2004, op. cit., pp. 2–3).
15. See—
( a ) Jigna Desai’s, Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film (New York: Routledge, 2004). Deals with the gender and sexual politics of South Asian diasporas.
( b ) Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham, Duke University Press, 2005).
( c ) Rajinder Dudrah, ‘Enter the Queer Female Diasporic Subject’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Volume 12, Number 4. (Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 655–656.
( d ) Jasbir Puar, ‘The Remaking of a Model Minority: Perverse Projectiles under the Specter of (Counter), Terrorism’, Social Text —80 (Volume 22, Number 3), Duke University Press, Fall 2004, pp. 75–104.
16. In articles like ‘Under the Rainbow Flag: Webbing Global Gay Identities’ (from the International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, July 2002 issue; Vol. 7(2–3), pp. 107–124), the authors compare and contrast the analyses of heavily trafficked US gay websites with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender sites originating in Mainland China, Japan and Germany. John Campbell’s Getting It On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004)
deals with the construction of the gay male body in cyberspace. David Shaw has a chapter in the Steve Jones edited Virtual Culture (London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997) titled ‘Gay men and computer communication: A discourse of sex and identity in cyberspace’ and Randal Woodland examines gay or lesbian identity and the construction of cyberspace in The Cybercultures Reader (London; New York: Routledge, 2000). From an Asian perspective, Mobile Cultures (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003) provides relevant and empirically grounded studies of the connections between new media technologies, globalization and the rise of queer Asia. There are also a few essays available, describing the Indian gay online experience, such as—
( a ) Chandra S. Balachandran, ‘Desi Pride on the Internet—South Asian Queers in Cyberspace’, Trikone (January 1996), pp. 18–19.
( b ) Vikram, ‘Cybergay’, Bombay Dost , Vol. 7(1), 1999, pp. 8–13.
70 Gay
Bombay
( c ) Shrinand Deshpande, ‘Point and Click Communities? South Asian Queers out on the Internet’, Trikone (October 2000), pp. 6–7.
( d ) Scott Kugle, ‘Internet Activism, Internet Passivism’, Trikone (October 2000), pp. 10–11.
( e ) Sandip Roy, ‘GayBombay’, Salon.com 2 December 2002, http://archive.salon.com/
tech/feature/2002/12/02/gay_india
17. Daniel Miller and Don Slater, The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford/New York: Berg, 2000), p. 5, as cited in Samuel Wilson and Leighton Peterson, ‘The Anthropology of Online Communities’, Annual Review of Anthropology (Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, 2002), Vol. 31, p. 453.
18. Dennis Altman, ‘Rupture or Continuity? The Internationalization of Gay Identities’, Social Text
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