Doing transgender ‘right’: Bodies, eroticism and spirituality in khwajasira work

Abstract

The regulative and oppressive effects of gender norms on bodies of transgender workers have been mostly explored in standard binary gender work settings. We explore the regulative effects of specialized transgender work regimes by posing the following two questions: How do specialized transgendered work regimes regulate transgender work and bodies? How do transgender workers cope with these regimes? Through a case study of khwajasiras, a community of male-to-female transgender people in Pakistan, we explain how competing and conflicting body ideals of hyper-eroticism, spirituality, and hybridity set by these regimes, allow khwajasiras to transgress the binary gender norms. Ironically, however, these specialized work regimes have their own regulative and oppressive effects on khwajasiras’ bodies and work. We then demonstrate how khwajasiras cope with these regulative effects in three different ways: embracing the body ideals, strategically shifting work and body across the regimes, and relegating body norms as unimportant for being a transgender. We finally argue that these differences in enacting different form of transgenderness is an outcome of a tight coupling or contradiction between audiences, khwajasira community and individual workers’ own sense of transgender authenticity.

Constructing subjects that matter: A case of conditional recognition for Pakistani Khawajasiras

“…Similarly, a long tradition of organization studies has explored the gendered nature of work and its functioning as a regulatory ideal of identity (Ashraf et al., 2021; Johansson et al., 2017; Zanoni & Janssens, 2015). Yet, investigations into the role of work as an ideal regulating gender diverse people have just begun (Ashraf et al., 2021; Hines, 2010a, 2010b; Muhr et al., 2016; Pullen et al., 2016; Schilt & Connell, 2007; Thanem, 2011). The few organizational studies on gender diverse people have mostly explored their lived experience in standard binary gender work settings, whereas the nature and characteristics of non‐normative work performed by them continue to be underexplored (Ashraf et al., 2021).…”

“…Yet, investigations into the role of work as an ideal regulating gender diverse people have just begun (Ashraf et al., 2021; Hines, 2010a, 2010b; Muhr et al., 2016; Pullen et al., 2016; Schilt & Connell, 2007; Thanem, 2011). The few organizational studies on gender diverse people have mostly explored their lived experience in standard binary gender work settings, whereas the nature and characteristics of non‐normative work performed by them continue to be underexplored (Ashraf et al., 2021). In this study, we were interested in investigating how work and gender play a part in media discourses on gender diverse communities.…”

“…Similarly, Schilt and Connell (2007) have documented the experience of employees who transit to another gender category while crafting a distinctive gender identity. These studies have mostly investigated how transgender people experience work (Ashraf et al., 2021; Pullen et al., 2016), but little is known about how the work that transgender and gender diverse people perform is constructed through public discourses. Delving into a previously well‐recognized notion of work being a regulating mechanism for gender (Ashraf et al., 2021; Jeanes & Janes, 2021; Vayreda et al, 2019), we suggest instead that this discursive construction is an important part of heteronormative regulatory processes of identification.…”

“…These studies have mostly investigated how transgender people experience work (Ashraf et al., 2021; Pullen et al., 2016), but little is known about how the work that transgender and gender diverse people perform is constructed through public discourses. Delving into a previously well‐recognized notion of work being a regulating mechanism for gender (Ashraf et al., 2021; Jeanes & Janes, 2021; Vayreda et al, 2019), we suggest instead that this discursive construction is an important part of heteronormative regulatory processes of identification. Our analysis thus explores how the relationship between gender and work is constituted by a particular type of public discourse, that is, the media.…”

Editorial: Introducing the Special Issue to mark the 75th Anniversary of Human Relations

“…In common with many social scientific journals, we are publishing an increasingly sizeable proportion of articles that focus on empirical settings outside the West (see Holtom et al, this issue). Importantly, however, we are starting to publish more articles whose primary intellectual resources also originate from outside the West (e.g., Ashraf et al, 2021; Haar and Martin 2021; Jamjoom and Mills, 2022) as well as those focusing on issues that, historically, have been stigmatized (Anand and Mitra, 2022) or trivialized (Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2021). I am confident therefore, that if, in 2047, the editors of Human Relations decide to produce a similar ASI for the journal’s 100th anniversary, they will be able to choose from a wide range of new landmark articles that will be even more varied and ground-breaking than those we have available to us in 2022.…”