Legible Identities and Legitimate Citizens THE GLOBALIZATION OF TRANSGENDER AND SUBJECTS OF HIV-AIDS PREVENTION IN EASTERN INDIA

The article analyzes how conjunctures between Indian activism for gender/sexual rights, the governmental state and transnational developmental agencies create bounded and exclusionary rubrics of gender and sexual identification. I argue that such institutional linkages serve to consolidate rubrics o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational feminist journal of politics Vol. 15; no. 4; pp. 494 - 514
Main Author Dutta, Aniruddha
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 01.12.2013
Subjects
AIDS
Biopolitics
Citizens
Civil Rights
Ethnography
Gender differentiation
Globalization
HIV
HIV-AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus
Identification
Identity
India
Males
Minorities
minority
MSM
Political society
Sex
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN1461-6742
1468-4470
DOI10.1080/14616742.2013.818279

Cover

More Information
Summary:The article analyzes how conjunctures between Indian activism for gender/sexual rights, the governmental state and transnational developmental agencies create bounded and exclusionary rubrics of gender and sexual identification. I argue that such institutional linkages serve to consolidate rubrics of legible identification that legitimize certain forms of gender/sexual difference for inclusion within developmental programs and citizenship, while other forms of subjecthood and community formation are rendered unintelligible or illegitimate. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted in eastern India between 2007 and 2012, the article focuses on male-assigned gender variant same-sex desiring subjects and their interpellation within identitarian categories like transgender and MSM (men who have sex with men). While the globalization of transgender as a form of political identity has promised greater rights and governmental inclusion for gender variant persons, it entails a broader MSM-transgender schema of identification based on a standardized divide between cisgendered homosexuals and male-to-female transgender persons. Various expressions of lower class/caste gender/sexual variance are rendered illegible in this rubric, delegitimizing associated subjects who are left without access to constitutional rights and protections and/or treated as exploitable populations within the development and HIV-AIDS industries.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:1461-6742
1468-4470
DOI:10.1080/14616742.2013.818279