Gender: cultural curiosities and big issues from India and Thailand
In Chapter 20 of the book, (Sex and sexual orientation), I wrote about the sensitivity of minority gender and sexual orientation issues, including: the adaptation of documentation to take account of same-sex couples, whether in legal or informal partnerships; the recording of next-of-kin choices; personal pronouns and names for transgender and transsexual individuals – and several more important questions.
Two international news stories draw attention to special cases of these issues, which are interesting and revealing. The first, reported in the Bangkok Post 20 April, 2009, relates to hijras – the people of the ‘third sex’, thought to number at least a million individuals in India (and more elsewhere in S.E. Asia).