Seminar 7: Gender and Sexuality

31.1.18 (rec)
Presentation 1: Why have anthropologists portrayed sexuality in Hindu marriage as
‘dangerous’?
 Sexuality must be seen through a gendered lens
 Doniger 1981 – Siva: the erotic ascetic
o Siva of the tantric cult
o Shakti, Supreme Feminine Goddess
 As wife of Shiva in Parvati
 As Kali, of destruction
o Conflicting and dualistic aspects of sexuality
 Bennet 1983 Dangerous wives and sacred sisters
o High-caste patrilineal village society
o Women are problematic because of their fertility and sexuality, and because of
perception as destructive to agnatic solidarity
o Pollution and morals: uncontrolled sexuality seen as dangerous
 Patrilocal: woman as wife is affine, inherently sexual, represents a danger to
patrilineal kin
 Filial: women as perpetual asexual virgin
 Motherhood forces a compromise between the patrifocal and filiafocal view
 Sax 1990’s model conflicts with Bennet’s model Village Daughter, Village Goddess
o Studies village community among Garwhal Himalayan pilgrimage for the goddess
Nandadevi
 Curse of th out-married daughter is a destructive female power which is laid
onto neglectful kin in the natal home If they fail to reaffirm their links at
regular intervals
o Difference between male and female ideology
 Female perspective: married women maintain strong links to patrilineal
home
 Male perspective: REC
 Roy: unravelling the Kamasutra
o Written and compiled 2nd-4th centuries
o A book about the codification of kama (one of 3 dimensions of a man’s social life)
o Vatsyayana believed kama is not natural and thus requires codification
o [look up definition of kama]
o If sexual desires of man not fulfilled, he will suffer and die – implications for sexual
violence
 Gupta (historian with anthropological eye) 2002 (im)possible love and sexual pleasure in
late-colonial North India
o Any transgression by women denoted a failure not only of women but more so of
patriarchy of all Hindu men, of the family and the entire community
o Thus sexuality as dangerous because it threatens patriarchy by offering women
agency through love
 o E.g. relationship between Muslim woman and Hindu man – in this, acceptable
because the woman is being taken under control of Hindu patriarchy and Hindu
progeny
o In contrast, Hindu woman and Muslim man  discourse of abduction
o Arya Sumaj
 John & Nair (2000) A question of silence?
o Women are reproductive beings. It was the dangerous sexuality of the non-mther
that motivated social reform legislation of 19thC. It was the irresponsibile
promiscuities of the poor which prompted national programmes for control of
growing population
o More recently, reproductive responsibility, but not sexual desire affixed solely on
women
o Menacing sexuality of sex workers
o Uses Foucauldian ideas of sexuality and biopolitics
 Conclusion
o Sanskritic Hinduism: ideology of the ascetic and Kamasutra -> female sexuality
necessary risk to the male in marriage and/or male sexuality necessarily satisfied in
marriage
o Purity of consanguineal versus pollution of affinal kin#Challenge to the patriarchal
and patrilineal kinship model if female sexuality is not controlled
 Arya Sumaj
o Movement in late 19th and early 20th C to take Hinduism back to its Sanskritic roots
o Innovations around marriage – allowed conversion, simplified rituals
o Starts in Punjab, where balance is split between Sikh, Muslim, Hindu - fragile
o Heavy colonial context - census reports of Hindus declining in Punjabi populations
o Made up of male self-styled social reformers
 The Emergency
o Indira Gandhi invoked suspension of the constitution for 2 years. Opposition leaders
were jailed
o Mass population control campaigns involved forced sterilisation of the poor
 Rounded up in slums
 Vasectomies in exchange for plots of land, cars, refrigerators…
 Emma Tarlo: Unsettling memories has written an ethnography on this
 Part of development narrative that says to develop involves contraception
and sexual health

Presentation 2: Does the arrival of ‘gay identity’ in South Asia represent a broadening
or a narrowing of erotic possibilities?
 Has there really been an arrival of ‘gay identity’ in South Asia?
o Gay as sexual attraction to men
 But also as an identity with relational and social consequences (not getting
married to a woman…)
o Third sex in Jain and Indian tradition
 Third sex: unmale men, impotent, effeminate or transvestite
 Have existed in Indian tradition for 3000 years
 Jainism: 3 sexes and 3 sexualities (desires)
 Third sex tacitly admitted to be homosexual sex? Despite the conflict (2
different sexes if there are 3)
o The modern ‘third sex’: hijras
 Dancers, thought to bring fertility
 Supposedly devoid of sexual desire
 May undergo castration
 Can be seen as a defence against abuses – have nothing left to lose
and so can’t be hurt
 Opposed to jankhas/zenanas: men who dress like women but don’t undergo
castration
 Jankhas regarded as the prostitutes
o What about gay identity?
 Gays and lesbians appear as part of the English-speaking elite
 Gay movements are still emerging in South Asian countries
 Is the term ‘gay’ accurate in the South Asian context?
o HIV prevention and the dispute over sexual categories
 Shivananda Khan – dominant forms of desire for another male are kothis
and panthis. Gay men are an elite minority
 Kothi – a man belonging to a self-identifying, feminised socio-sexual group
 Panthi – mixed groups of men who have sex with kothis but who identify as
male (panthi not a self-identity but one given by kothi)
 Row Kavi: foreign NGOs ‘discover’ and impose ‘authentic Indian culture’ on
natives. Gay identity is not a gift from Western modernity.
 Cohen: the category of kothi was initially spread by a piece of academic
work on HIV prevention. Once it was presented at a conference, exploded
through NGOs. Some people adopted these categories and identified as
them [i.e. not to say it’s not real]
o Evidence for ‘gay identity’ on SA
 Vanita: terms for female-to-female love and desire in ancient Sanskrit and
Urdu texts
 So why are there apparently fewere examples of that today?
 Homophobia dominant in colonial discourse. E.g. British emphasis on
biological impotency and anomaly of hijras
 Nandy: Indians ‘internally castrated’ through colonialism: seen as passive
and effeminate. Hence emphasis on strong, heterosexual men in nationalist
post-colonial moment
 [Nandy is not an anthropologist. He is an extremely influential
commentator on colonialism. Psycho-sexual analysis. Glorifies
Gandhi above all others as the only one who escapes orientalist
representations of colonial sexual subjects, by bridging the gap
between exaggerated masculinity of the coloniser and the
effeminate. Male/female, virile/passive… Draws on long tradition of
celibacy, nationalist.
o The Intimate Enemy, 1980s]
o Evidence against ‘gay identity’ in SA
 In Bangladesh, men who have sex with men also have frequent sex with
women, which is seen as the ‘real sex’ (Khan)
 ‘Large part of change in India’s homosexuality comes from English-speaking
media’
o Conclusions
  Gay or lesbian are Western terms
 They cannot express by themselves the variety of same-sex relations in
South Asia
 MtM and FtF love is not very widespread or recognised, but might be a
legacy of colonialism
 Gay identity as we intend might have been spread by Western
representations
o What change does gay identity represent for erotic possibilities
 Spreading of positively represented gay identity might encourage men to be
more free and open about their sexuality
 But being gay is also – mostly? – an identity issue: it does not just mean
having sex with men

Discussion notes
 In the news
o Recently the supreme court has instituted a constitutional bench to hear the most
controversial cases e.g. Article 377
 4 dissenting judges have been kept off this bench
o Vietnamese-Hindu lesbian marriage with parental consent and Hindu priest
officiating
 Important to convince hijras to id as trans women
o Strongly to do with affiliation to NGOs
o Also strongly related to the social status, class and earning possibilities – to be hijra
is to be poor, excluded
 Boundaries Undermined, Hussein 2013 ethnography
 Gupta, Sexuality … Obscenity from further reading
 Dangerous wives Bennet 1983 chapter is recommended
 Joseph Alter Celibacy and Sexuality, asceticism amongst wrestlers giving us a picture of
Hindu nationalism in colonial India. Gandhi’s use of the same ideas (retention of semen…)
Further reading
o Amir Khan’s film about wrestling is the highest grossing film in recent years in India.
Looks about how a wrestler trains two of his three daughters in a village setting
(seen as entirely inappropriate). True story.
 Tension between
o Sex is a problem, a danger: conservative and anxious about sexuality
 Reform movements
o Freedom of desire in India
 Asceticism
o Van der Veer readings
 Activity versus identity
o Identity as more threatening to kin group and relationships – more backlash
 Relative lack of research on queer women can be traced back to HIV/AIDS: MSM was where
the money, research, impetus was
o Lesbians in Indian women’s rights activism were seen as suspicious, elite, external,
high class, luxury, metropolitan, Western-educated and English-speaking
 All India Democratic Women’s Association denied (not anymore) a small
lesbian group in Delhi from participating in a parade