Bruzzi, androgyny and sexual agency.

To my mind, the very concept of Androgyny is erotic precisely because it does not use as justification a bodily differentiation or the existence of a compulsive lack. The androgynous person embraces equally the ideologies of being a man and a woman unlike the transvestite (who identifies with the opposite sex) or a hermaphrodite (who, as the possessor of both male and female genitalia,). As a behavioral choice, it is rife with agency. Speaking of agency, though, I always find myself intrigued when attempting to examine the agency that is granted (or not) to people exhibiting gender aberrations that are not merely ideological.

I do wonder what Bruzzi would have to say about the sexual deviance expressed through the social behavior of eunuchs –men who, traditionally, were castrated at a young age, usually for a specific social function, a marginalized community that exists only in India now. How do we assign (if at all) any sexual agency to this social category that does not always neatly fit within the biological makeup that is its very definition. The earliest existence of eunuchs in India dates back to their employment as servants for female royalty. The absence of the male organ, combined with the sheer physical strength of a man made eunuchs a ‘safe' choice to take care of the women in the palace. There was a hierarchy in place within the eunuch community, which saw a chief eunuch overseeing the work of his subordinates. As opposed to their current reality, in those times they enjoyed a position in society that was enviable enough to compel people of lower classes to castrate their sons and pass them off as eunuchs just so they could gain a position of high standing.

Over the years the term ‘eunuch’ has blended into a more ubiquitous category called ‘hijra’ which denotes a community of people that may or may be castrated men but adopt the appearance of drag queens, dressed in female attire and outlandish make-up that is entirely at odds with their heavy, male voices. Often seen begging on city roads, hijras are an ostracized community whose primary source of living is derived from social traditions such as marriage and childbirth. They assemble in groups outside the bride/ groom’s house or the marriage venue, singing raucously and demanding money; not just any small amount of money but usually outrageous amounts that run into the equivalent of hundreds of dollars. In effect they use their physical otherness as a tool with which to extort money from which, inevitably, they are always given. So great is the fear amongst Indians of being ‘cursed’ by these people and thereby of casting a shadow on the holiness of the ceremonies about to take place that people willingly part with huge sums of money for no reason other than the threat that their families will be cursed and that the hijras would resort to taking off their clothes, revealing their malformed bodies.

This fear of sexual ‘otherness’ is not an oddity in popular Indian culture; most Indians vehemently abhor any form of gender aberration, especially when it involves men playing roles traditionally assigned to women. And rather than confront this otherness in any form whatsoever they are willing to “pay” for the right to dispense with any contact, temporary as this eschewal may be. Otherness, then, works in strange ways as this shunned community is feared as much as it is revered –their word is considered potent, whether it takes the form of a blessing or curse.

I am curious to know what Bruzzi would have to say about eunuchs; do they function on the borderlines of gender codes and hence are immune to being eroticized? If so, how does sexual longing as it exists for intersex people (who, arguably, possess the physical representation of androgynous characteristics) compare with that which is experienced by this community of men who are either born without the male genitalia or castrated in their youth? Following Bruzzi’s argument about the perfect androgyne being one who is capable of ‘passing otherness off as the real’, would it stand to reason that eunuchs, by virtue of their very visible otherness, are able to perform their artifice? As I mentioned in the beginning, I suppose my question has more to do with the ability of Bruzzi’s (and to some extent Butler’s) argument to extend into areas that move beyond ideological androgyny.