Gender terminology, when chosen carefully and deliberately, can have a profound impact on activist groups and the societies in which they live, argued Prof. Faris Khan (ANTH) M.A. ’07 in a lecture on Friday. Khan, who is currently publishing a book on his fieldwork on the politics of gender ambiguity in Pakistan, delivered “Illegible Bodies: Khwaja Sira Activists, the State, and Sex/Gender Regulation in Pakistan” on Friday as part of the Brandeis Anthropology Research Seminar series.

Khan began by discussing “Khwaja Sira”, a term that loosely means “third gender” in Urdu, and its history. According to Khan, the term stems from when it was used to describe imperial eunuchs of high status within Muslim courts. Though the use of the term began to wane with the fall of the Mughal Empire, Khan explained, it made a resurgence in the early 21st century when gender nonbinary individuals in Pakistan adopted it as a “deliberate gesture of ambiguity.”

Some of the gender terms used in Pakistan, he explained, include Khunsa, intersexual individuals; Zenana, who were designated male at birth and identify as female, though they may not present as a woman; and Hijra, individuals designated male at birth who identify and present as women.

Of those who adopted the term “Khwaja Sira,” Khan said that they are, in essence, “reclaiming South Asian history.” He recalled that, during his fieldwork with the Gender Solidarity Society, one Khwaja Sira noted that the term “is a term of respect,” while another denounced Hijra’s non-native linguistic roots as unsuitable for a Pakistani.

For contemporary Khwaja Sira — who typically earn a living through begging, sex work or blessings — the term calls to mind the holy individuals from the Islamic faith and “denoted respect and was devoid of derogatory connotations attached to [terms like] Hijra.” Because the term showed a favored status in Islam, it thus allowed gender nonbinary individuals to claim social, religious and cultural legitimacy, Khan argued.

Khan then transitioned into a discussion of the legal history of Khwaja Sira, discussing in particular a period of time from 2009 to 2012 when the Pakistan Supreme Court ruled to officially recognize Khwaja Sira as a third category of gender and give them legal privileges. These rulings, Khan argued, were made possible by the term’s inherent ambiguity and Pakistani society’s misled notion of what it means to be a Khwaja Sira individual. “One of the most widely held cultural assumptions was that Khwaja Sira were intersex,” he explained. Since intersexuality was “a god-given condition,” he added, this assumption led Pakistani society to tolerate Khwaja Sira more, as it led to the “notion that Khwaja Sira could possess a soul.”

After the rulings, he continued, the state wished to better define the gender of its citizens by administering medical tests and requiring a census of the Khwaja Sira communities.

The tests — which included blood hormone tests to verify gender — were panned by groups like the GSS, which argued that the medical requirements were discriminatory and fundamentally flawed. “‘A doctor will tell us who we are? Really?’” Khan recalled one GSS leader as saying at the time.

However, the state eventually relaxed its policy on testing, and after the court rulings, there were three new gender labels that could appear on an individual’s identification card: Male Khwaja Sira, Female Khwaja Sira and Khunsa-e-Mushkil, or “gender undetermined.” Initially, though, there was great confusion in Khwaja Sira communities over whether “male” meant female-to-male or designated male at birth, and other similar uncertainties, Khan explained. As a result, he concluded, “Instead of regulating ambiguity, the state became complicit in its propagation.” Now, after the rulings, he added, Khwaja Sira as a term became one of “unforeseen potential” in terms of LGBTQ political rights.