Transitioning into the Third Gender in Nepal: The Politics of Recognition within Transnational LGBT and Human Rights Regimes

This article traces the biography of the third-gender identity as it came into being amid intense political and social upheavals in Nepal between 2000 and 2007. It argues that the third gender in this context is a reimagination of “transgender” as Nepali LGBT activists navigated the constraints and opportunities posed by multiple human rights frameworks amid increasing international attention on a violent civil war and the rise in transnational mobilization around LGBT rights. It shows how these shifting terrains of engagement led to the transition from the public health category of meti—often ghettoized as street-based, cross-dressing sex workers—to the LGBT rights category of transgender, and subsequently the vernacular, but cosmopolitan, pan–South Asian category of third gender. By doing this, the article advances a transregional approach to queer scholarship that emphasizes the role of globalization, NGO-ization, and the active participation of transnational networks of LGBT activists in collective identity formation.