Interesting article. Thanks to Kabir Altaf and to Chay Magazine for including it and taking up important issues of sexuality and gender!

Perhaps another comparable identity from North American and Western European contexts might be "transgender". There is much diversity within transgender identities (so it's hard to generalize), but many transgender people might relate to a 3rd (or 4th, 5th, 6th etc) gender, or non-binary gendered spaces the way that hijras do.

I would also comment that the definition of transsexual identity used in this article might fit some transsexual people, but not all. As with transgender identities, there is much diversity in transsexual identities as well, in terms of how people express themselves and make decisions in their transition processes. I would guess the same thing for xanith and hijras too.

That being said, I like how the author challenges the way Western constructs like homosexuality and transsexualism are used (often erroneously) to understand hijras and xanith from Oman. People need to be able to define themselves, through their own cultural contexts, rather than be constantly defined through Euro-centric lenses.

Farzana