khwaja sira

From Urdu خواجہ سرا‎ (xāja sarā), ultimately partly from Persian.

khwaja sira (plural khwaja siras)

1. A member of a traditional transfeminine third gender in Pakistan and India since Mughal times.
   • 2014 December 18, Susan S Wadley, South Asia in the World: An Introduction: An Introduction, Routledge, →ISBN, pages 182-183:

     That the discussion kept focusing on the sexual behavior of khwaja siras agitated a number of transgender activists, who were uncomfortable that these issues were being discussed in the presence of people who were not khwaja siras. […] Beena's response demonstrates the tendency of khwaja sira activists to represent themselves and their communities in a socially acceptable manner as respectable and religious people. She emphasized the conservatism […]

   • 2018 June 12, Lena Martinsson; Diana Mulinari, Dreaming Global Change, Doing Local Feminisms: Visions of Feminism. Global North/Global South Encounters, Conversations and Disagreements, Routledge, →ISBN:

     Funding that is targeting the Khwaja Sira community ought to go through Khwaja Sira organisations, she says, insisting on being more than a token for international NGOs that have little or no knowledge about the local conditions.

   • 2018 December 6, Arzu Güler; Maryna Shevtsova; Denise Venturi, LGBTI Asylum Seekers and Refugees from a Legal and Political Perspective: Persecution, Asylum and Integration, Springer, →ISBN, page 52:

     The individual and shared identity of khwaja siras is pivotal to studying why and how they are persecuted. According to Khan (2014a), there is no universally agreed upon definition for a khwaja sira, and the fluid term has a distinct trajectory of use in Pakistan. Transgender Pakistanis may use the term hijra to refer to themselves, […]

• hijra