The constructed “naturalness” of a world made up of two sexes, two genders, and heterosexual desire as the only legitimate desire has been continuously questioned and challenged by those marginalised by these norms. This forces us to ask some important questions: How is gender really understood and constructed in the world that we inhabit? How does it operate through the various socio-political-cultural structures around us? And, most crucially, how is it lived? No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy answers these questions with a research study that attempts to understand gender through the lives of queer persons assigned gender female at birth. The lived realities of the respondents, echoing in the book through their voices, help to interrogate gender as well as provide clues to how it can be envisioned or revisioned to be egalitarian. This book explores how gender plays out in public and private institutions like the family, educational institutions, work and public spaces. Looking at each of these independently, it elaborates the specific ways in which binary gender norms are woven into each arena and it also explores the multiple ways in which interlocking systems of heteronormativity, casteism, class and ableism are enmeshed within patriarchy to create exclusion, marginalisation, pathologisation and violence. This book illustrates the multiplicity of ways in which people live gender and testifies that even if there are gender laws, in a just world there can be no gender outlaws. Published by Zubaan.

Examining the complex linkages between gender and education in the Indian context forms part of a wider matrix of inquiry related to understanding gender and its intersections with class, caste, religion and region. The sixteen essays in this Reader by eminent scholars offer critical feminist perspectives covering many issues related to these linkages, examining ideologies, structural contexts, knowledge, pedagogy and experiences through a socio-historcal lens. They point to the range of sources and methods that can be used to uncover the linkages between gender and education such as quantitative data, literature, autobiographies, oral histories and ethnography. This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Bridging a gap between higher education research and women’s and gender studies, this volume explores the conceptual underpinnings and methodological implications involved in researching different concepts commonly associated with gender, including queer, trans*, women, men, feminisms, intersectionality, alongside discussions about the term gender itself. Drawing on a range of empirical experiences and methodological frameworks, chapter authors consider the ethical, political, theoretical, and practical questions that arise when conducting gender-related research in college and university contexts. This book is a foundation for understanding the complexities of gender, as well as a site for envisioning new futures for educators and researchers in this emerging global discipline.

This book frames the major debates and contemporary issues in women’s and gender studies in India. It locates them in the context of key theories, their interlinkages, and significant crossings and overlaps within the field while juxtaposing feminist and queer perspectives. The essays in the volume foreground emerging challenges as well as offer clues to future trajectories for women’s and gender studies in the country through a comprehensive and interdisciplinary survey of intersectionalities in feminist activism and theory; gender, caste and class; feminist, masculinity, queer and transgender studies; disability and feminism; feminist and queer pedagogies; and Indian, Western and transnational feminisms. The volume traces how gender studies have shaped established social science as well as interpretative and representational discourses (psychoanalysis, literature, aesthetics, cinema, new media studies and folklore). It examines their strategic potential to draw upon and transform these areas in national and international contexts. This book will be useful to students, teachers and researchers in women’s studies, gender studies, cultural studies, queer studies and South Asian studies.

This book engages with the discourses on human rights as they apply to the transgender or the hijra community in India, capturing not only their larger struggle for legal rights and dignity but also their personal hardships. It situates the issues and concerns of the Indian transgender community within a global context to explore the extent of social justice in independent India. By narrating stories of individuals, local movements and activities of groups like the Association of Transgender/Hijra in Bengal (ATHB) and others, the book gives context to the changes that globalisation has brought to the narrative around transgenders in India. This shift has challenged their marginalisation and has led to stories, films and queer individuals like Chapal Bhaduri – the jatra rani – and the iconic filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh to flourish and become relevant. This book brings these literatures and personal stories to the fore, allowing readers to perceive the changes and the challenges that Indian society faces when it comes to ensuring the rights for transgender people. This volume will be of interest to scholars of gender studies, queer studies, literature and social work along with readers who want to engage with the transgender movement and community in India.

Draws upon multi-disciplinary frameworks of analysis to provide an account of the making of sexual cultures in modern India.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: re-presenting feminist methodologies -- Part I Mapping terrains -- Section 1: Feminist journeys -- 1 Studying women and the women's movement in India: methods and impressions -- 2 'To bounce like a ball that has been hit': feminist reflections on the family -- 3 Masculinities in fieldwork: notes on feminist methodology -- 4 Real-life methods: feminist explorations of segregation in Delhi -- Section 2: Unpacking disciplines -- 5 Stories we tell: feminism, science, methodology -- 6 Researching online worlds through a feminist lens: text, context and assemblages -- 7 The erotics of risk: feminism and the humanities in flagrante delicto -- 8 Impractical topics, practical fields: notes on researching sexual violence in India -- Part II Exploring themes -- Section 3: Development -- 9 Planning for modernization? feminist readings of plans and planned development in India -- 10 Unpacking 'win-win': how feminists interrogate microfinance -- 11 Globalizations, mobility and agency: understanding women's lives through women's voices -- 12 'Ladkiyaan phir aage?' towards understanding the formal school system -- Section 4: Health -- 13 Researching assisted conception from a feminist lens -- 14 RUWSEC Clinic: challenges faced by a grassroots feminist clinic -- 15 Feminist critical medical anthropology methodologies: understanding gender and health care in India -- Index

This book explores the growing up experiences of gay and lesbian individuals within their homes, schools, neighbourhoods, among friends; and their journeys of finding themselves and their communities while living in a heterosexually constructed society. It is based on an exploratory, qualitative study with young gay and lesbian persons in two cities of Maharashtra, India and employs a life course perspective. The author has written this book from two primary loci: those of a mental health professional and activist, and a queer feminist activist. Through layered narratives and psychosocial analyses of experiences that are simultaneously attentive to subjectivities and to social and interpersonal processes, the author provides insights into the lives of children who grow up feeling ‘different’ from their siblings, peers and friends, and receive constant messages about correct ways of being and expression from their parents, teachers, friends and counsellors/doctors; the unique challenges to growing up as gay or lesbian, alongside complex processes involved in the decision of ‘coming out’; and the experience of meeting others like oneself, forming intimate, romantic relationships, bonds of friendship, political solidarity, families of choice and so on. In this book, the author employs a critical stance towards mainstream life span development studies, developmental psychology, child development and childhood studies that make universal assumptions of heteronormativity and gender binarism. This book is of interest to a wide readership, from psychologists, mental health and human rights scholars, to scholars of youth and childhood studies, gender studies, cultural studies, social work, sociology and anthropology.

Gendering the Massification Generation examines why young people from the same families and communities in India experience different decision-making processes regarding higher education access because of their gender. In India and other contexts where higher education is massifying, and gender parity of enrolment has been reached at undergraduate level, there are still many questions to be asked about gender and access to higher education. Based on an exploratory study of gendered higher education access and choice within the state of Haryana, India, the authors explore gender inequalities of higher education access and choice in the Indian context and connect this with the broader international phenomenon of widening participation. Through an in-depth analysis of the ‘massification generation’, where young people from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds are accessing higher education, often for the first time in their families and communities, readers are encouraged to apply a lens of social disadvantage and gender, and to recognise the norms and transgressions of femininity and masculinity in relation to higher education access and choice. With global implications for the ways in which gender is analysed and framed in widening participation research and policy, this is the ideal book for scholars, students and policy makers working on higher education, as well as researchers and NGOs specialising in gender, school-to-higher education transitions, international development, sociology and area studies.

'Interesting and relevant. It brings multiple perspectives and approaches to the study of feminism, lesbianism, and lesbian feminism as these intersect with queer theory.' Mimi Marinucci, author of Feminism is Queer: The Intimate Connection Between Queer and Feminist Theory 'Very much original. An opening of two lines of questioning that are very important: whither lesbian feminism and whither international queer feminism.' Holly Lewis, author of The Politics of Everybody: Feminism, Queer Theory, and Marxism at the Intersection