For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen hijras on the streets of Karachi, knocking on car windows in bright clothes and extensive makeup. As a child, I might have (wrongly) feared their persistence due to societal perceptions, but I never found myself questioning their gender identity or sexual preferences. This fear and lack of questioning was partly due to the taboo surrounding the topic of hijras in South Asia, especially in Pakistan.

By the time I started to ask those questions, I had moved away to Dubai and didn’t have much interaction with hijras. As such, my questions never really surfaced. I eventually moved to the U.S. where I gained further knowledge and opinions on LGBTQ+ communities, with relatively more emphasis on LGB and Q rather than T. Although I understood the nuances between bisexual and pansexual orientations, I never really understood properly transgender individuals or intersex individuals, although I knew there was a difference. As such, I went on to research and explore these definitions and meanings and I realized that this is one of the first steps of tackling a much bigger problem: societal taboo.

I wanted to preface the rest of this by saying that I don’t mean to offend anyone, especially not those in the LGBTQ+ communities; my aim is simply to try and educate myself, as well as try to educate others, on the difference between the communities based on my experience that is that most (including myself until recently) simply lack this knowledge. I don’t claim to understand individual stories, struggles or lives and welcome any constructive criticism with regard to my use of terminology or my understanding.

This idea and need to educate oneself became even more pertinent when Princeton University announced the addition of “gender-inclusive changing and shower areas” to their gym locker rooms, Pakistan’s provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) allocated, from their annual budget of 505 billion PKR, 200 million PKR to the “transgender community,” and a group of clerics in Pakistan passed a fatwa (Islamic legal pronouncement) that said marriage between transgender individuals is permissible in Islam. A couple of people began talking about this, and it came to light that we didn’t understand what transgender individuals are relative to intersex individuals, or if a trans male is by default homosexual for example. Admitting this ignorance was the first step to getting rid of it.

First, I think it’s important to understand that there is a difference between gender identity and sexual orientation. The Human Rights Campaign defines sexual orientation as “an inherent or immutable enduring emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to other people” and gender identity as “one's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither”. This differs from gender expression, or “external appearance of one's gender identity,” which is also an important distinction.

Thus transgender individuals are attracted to other individuals: “some of them may be attracted to people of the same gender, based on their own gender identity, and other transgender people may be attracted to people of a different gender, based on their own gender identity”.

Intersex individuals are defined those “whose anatomy or genetics at birth — the X and Y chromosomes that are usually XX for women and XY for men — do not correspond to the typical expectations for either sex”.

Wikipedia, however, says that “Hijra is a term used in South Asia […] to refer to trans women (male-to-female transgender individuals).”

I believe Pakistanis use “hijra” as an umbrella term to refer to both transgender and intersex individuals. Even the Guardian refers to the term “hijra” as “the Urdu catch-all term" Pakistan’s transgender and eunuch [men who are castrated, typically early enough for that to face hormonal consequences] community, as well as those who dress and act in a “manner traditionally associated with the opposite sex” (this is where the idea of gender expression is important). “Hijras” oppose these traditions and have been described as having “their own social norms — all dress in women’s clothes, and many have undergone castration — but a range of identities come under this umbrella.”

As such, though Pakistanis may use “hijra” casually, I think an understanding of the distinctions between the identities under the umbrella term are both essential and lacking before we go on to discuss the aforementioned policy changes as well as past ones, for example, the 2009 Pakistan Supreme Court ruling ordering the “National Database and Registration Authority to issue national identity cards with a "third gender" category for non-binary citizens.”

Although the term “hijra” is commonly used, even in news publications, “the term more commonly advocated by social workers and community members themselves” is the more inclusive “khwaaja sira.” Writer Mahwash Ajaz makes a strong point about how “their identity [is used as] a derogatory term used only to insult” people, much like the term “gay” was.

On to KP’s annual budget decision: it’s important to keep in mind the context of this decision. Just before the budget was announced, a transgender female activist named Alisha was “shot eight times” and “succumbed to her wounds” at the hospital, where her fellow activists who were at the hospital say that she never received intensive medical attention, and that they were mocked at the hospital. “The 25-year-old's is the fifth reported case of violence against trans people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this year."

A 2016 report by the Trans Action Alliance, a group that aims “to reclaim spaces for transgender community and end transphobia” in KP states that at least 46 transgenders have been killed in the last two years in Peshawar and that there are “45,000 transgender people in the province and at least half-a-million nationwide." Society’s attitude towards those who are “khwaaja sira” thus affects thousands, if not millions.

With regard to the aforementioned fatwa legalizing marriage: “transgender rights worker Almas Bobby told BBC Urdu" that although the community is glad, “by Sharia [Islamic law] we already had the right [to marry], but unless measures are taken to remove the misconceptions about us in society, the condition of our community will not be changed."

Similarly, although KP’s budget is a step in the right direction to “ensure the welfare” of these communities and KP’s information minister stated that “a comprehensive policy will also be introduced for security, residence and employment of transgender people,” until khwaaja siras stop being simply “officially recognized but publicly shamed,” no real change will occur.

It’s a common line of thought in the south of Pakistan that the north is unsafe due to terrorism. However, Khusboo, a transgender in Peshawar, "says they are not threatened by militants nor have they been displaced by terrorism but their biggest concern is the attitude of the society and police towards them.”