Drag Queens - Political Bellwethers of Pakistan?

Almost twenty years ago while traveling through Swat Valley, I stopped in a bazaar and two women approached me, tall women with heavy make up. They stood in front of me and asked where I was from in broken English. I replied in Urdu which set them off with high squeals and sexy wiggles. A crowd gathered. There is always a crowd when there is a tamasha. What a show this was, an American dressed in shalwar kameez, wearing a Pashtun hat, speaking Urdu, driving a Japanese car, talking to two six feet tall ‘women’ who were flirting like crazy and reaching out to feel blonde hair.

“Do you take female hormones,” I asked. It was a fair question because they had asked me if I thought they were beautiful as they puffed out their bosoms. I nodded and rolled my eyes. Wah! The crowd laughed.

“Yes. Yes. I do, but my friend Sheila here does not. She has not been a nar, male since he was castrated as a child. She is a eunuch.” I looked at Sheila and my gaze embarrassed her; she turned away shyly, but then returned my gaze and lifted her eyebrows in a question mark. The crowd of children echoed the word eunuch, hirja.

“Do you sing and perform?” I asked.

“Yes. Yes almost every night. We have even performed in the famous Nishtar Hall in Peshawar when we were younger. We were very famous!”

In the Northwest Frontier Province where I spent my childhood, I had seen many, many men dressed as women, in drag as we say in the States. But not really in drag. My parents always looked away and did not answer our questions about tall women in drag. Cross dressing implied ‘functional’ men dressed as women. I was informed later by my father that most of the men who dressed like women, were eunuchs, and if not, were effeminate, and often homosexual. He was comfortable about this reminding me of the ‘eunuch of Ethiopia’ who was forced to carry Jesus’ cross.

Already my readers are squirming. Drag, eunuch, homosexual, effeminate, cross dressing… these are only mentioned in whispers by the men in parties or away from the family. Such are not discussed within family, within ear-shot of wives and children, particularly the word homosexual; that term had a special taboo, it was unthinkable. But in Pakistan, since its inception in 1947 and in the NWFP where I grew up, many men had a penchant for young boys, and beautiful men as they had throughout history. Check your history books about the Emperors of ancient India, who their favorite entertainers were. Oh, heaven forbid another term, pedophilia in India!

“In a society that strictly segregates women and men, these transgender musicians perform for male audiences—at weddings and other social occasions, swinging their hips in suggestive gyrations.” Dancers Cheer Islamist Defeat in Pakistan Vote, by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 26. 2008.

This article suggests that the new election results in the NWFP of Pakistan are harbingers of change for cross-dressers and entertainers who had in recent years been prohibited, that a new era of more liberal thought and attitude toward dancers will now become a reality because the people in Swat have voted against Islamic militants who banned music, bombed and burned stores that sold video tapes, prohibited suggestive signs advertising with sexual overtones, and worst of all prohibiting the sale of those suggestive very evil Indian Bollywood movies and videos in which young women dance with faces exposed and hips and breasts moving suggestively.

The Wall Street Journal article suggests that there may be a return to ‘normalcy’ so that the featured entertainer, Adel, will be able once again to perform in Peshawar’s Nishtar Hall; a great step forward toward normalization of social activity.

Does the irony of all this leap out at you as it does for me? Normalization of social activity? So what is normal? Concealing women within society to the point that the normal urge for heterosexual interaction must be satisfied with men acting as women singing in falsetto voices and wiggling their hips and breasts to satisfy the prurient needs of a sexually repressed society? Even more, the ‘dancers cheer’ is a bellwether of political-social change. What an irony.

A bellwether is any entity in a given arena that serves to create or influence trends or to presage future happenings. The term is derived from the Middle English bellewether and refers to the practice of placing a bell around the neck of a castrated ram (a wether) in order that this animal might lead its flock of sheep.

Now the bells are around the ankles of Pakistani eunuch ‘cross dressers’; castrated rams that lead the flock of sheep toward political change. What a beautiful image.
But in the same newspaper the headline shouts, PAKISTAN LULL IS SHATTERED, and reports that insurgents are receiving renewed attention in the assassination of Lt. General Mushtaq Baig, an eye surgeon who headed the Army Medical Corps. Insurgents; such a convenient term for cowards who hide behind religious convention and dogma to exert control, even to the extent of assassination and heaven forbid, the closing down of YouTube and repression of cross-dressing dancers.

Dancing bellwethers! Long may they gyrate and presage future happenings, leading out the sheep in the repressed frontier along the Afghanistan border.