Exploring resistance, resilience, and refusal amongst Khawaja Sara and Hijra communities in postcolonial Pakistan

Khawaja Sara and Hijra people in Pakistan often experience their subject position within their families of origin as violent and oppressive. This is because of socio-cultural understandings of Khawaja Sara and Hijra (re)produce discourses of normal and abnormal, honor, power and domination that set the stage for violence and physical oppression that marginalize and put Khawaja Sara and Hijra at-risk. But despite all these challenges, their resilience and resistance open up new spaces to express their gender identities and explore their sexuality with a sense of joy, happiness and fulfillment. This research examines the ways in which members of Khawaja Sara and Hijra communities refuse their families of origin and move out from their parental houses to join their families of choice known as guru-cheela houses in Peshawar. Our discussion examines how Khawaja Sara and Hijra develop families of choice after moving away from their parental houses, moves that offer spaces to breathe within precarious lives. Drawing on Ahmed’s (2010) concept of the ‘promise of happiness’ we analyze how, in these families of choice, Khawaja Sara and Hijra are able to find spaces to breathe, and to negotiate and enact their preferred gender and sexualities in ways that demonstrate their resistance and resilience against oppressive and often dangerous heteropatriarchal relations.