[AnnieBL]

In further reference to that Natinal Geographic video, my first encounter related to hijras was soon after I was sent to a boy’s boarding school at the age of seven (I don’t know how my mother afforded this; there were various grants and I suspect myn grandmother paid the balance). I was put in a dormitory in which the great majority of the boys had recently returned from India around the time of independence and partition, and they had lots of stories including some about men who got rid of their penises. When I asked how, one of the answers was by tying a string tightly around it. So I tried this, but it was quickly spotted by the bullying nurse in charge of the younger boys and I was made to stand on a chair in the middle of th dormitory in front of all the other boys while she cut it off. Thereafter I became one of her preferred victims. It was the sheer humiliation of the incident that made it stick in my mind, but now it seems to me to have a possibly different significance. Thereafter I did try to conform, but it never worked well. I hated the mandatory organised sports at which I was a very poor performer being told that I ‘threw like a girl’, and wasn’t aggressive enough. I particularly hated boxing, in which I wouldn’t defend myself and hated being urged to ‘go on, hit him!’. I did once hit another boy who broke a toy of mine, and it so shocked me that I resolved (possibly a form of self hypnosis since other resolutions of this kind that I have made always seem to have stuck)) that I would never again strike anyone in anger - and to the best of my recollection I have not.

My first knowing encounter with a probably intersex person was in my early teens when we met a man who lived nearby whom my mother said (with I think disapproval) used to be a woman. Actually he seemed to me to be like a middle aged woman dressed in men’s clothing, but I suspect that he had been sexually assigned as a woman at birth (and possibly sexually mutilated) and had much later succeeded in getting the assignment corrected. As for trying to pass as a woman, I think that my avatar is a fair representation!

For myself I think I find myself most comfortable taking a receptive role in sex and in being courted rather than courting, although I am much more attracted to relation ships in females. I don’t think I have ever initiated a date with any one although having been given a second chance contrived by the woman I love, we have had a mostly wonderful marriage for well over thirty years; and I certainly enjoyed my male function while it lasted. I don’t know where I am on the gender spectrum - it seems to vary according to circumstances. I’m sorry to sound so mixed up but I’m still trying to sort things out in my own mind.