According to the attached article, AIDS activists are concerned about unsafe sex at a gathering of eunuchs in India. Could you please elaborate on what sexual abilities eunuchs have? –F.T., Danbury, Connecticut
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A bizarre story made even more bizarre by a mistranslation: the festival in question is not a gathering of eunuchs, strictly speaking, but of “hijras,” as they’re called in India. Hijras are men who live as women, or to put it another way, transsexuals with religion, being devotees of the mother goddess Bahuchara Mata. Many, but not all, have been castrated–voluntarily for the most part, although there have been reports over the years of hijras who were forcibly emasculated. A few are hermaphrodites–that is, born with both male and female plumbing, typically underdeveloped. Some hijras, or perhaps we should say parahijras, are normally endowed homosexual men who just like the hijra life-style.
“There is not a birth in the country that goes unmonitored by the local hijra community–they visit the house and demand to examine the newborn. In the old days it is said that if the baby’s genitals were malformed, parents would not want to raise the child and the hijras would immediately take it away and raise it as their own.
