Pakistani Khwajasira Struggle for Livable Life: Towards Defecting Masculinities and Womanness as Loss

Abstract

Centering the experiences of two Khawajasira Gurus from Lahore, this article explores the dominant gender regime in present-day Punjabi life, where a heavily policed gender binary is ingrained and naturalized into a pervasive masculinism. Here, maleness is prized, dominant, and superior, and it comes with an unearned, ontological privilege; and womanness is constructed as a loss, a defect, and a weakness, and is attached to people who are constructed as available to be dominated, given, taken, and exchanged for the larger purposes of the status, wealth, and wellbeing of the cisgender heteropatriarchal family structure. This article theorizes that in this gender regime, when a male-assigned body tends to womanness, the gender regime reads that person’s masculinity as defective and their womanness as a loss. Khwajasiras respond to this regime with rebellion and defection, escaping to existing Khwajasira communites in search of safety, autonomy, and livable life. Examining the upbringing of two Khwajasiras, this article asks the questions: who is valuable in the Pakistani family and why, and what larger function does this valuation serve?