Transpeople in India forge identities at the confluence of contradictory social forces. Interviews conducted in the state of Kerala suggest that the experience of transphobic stigma results in self-employed transpeople being abjectified. Social abjectification, in turn, triggers their identity work within liminal social spaces located between the everyday lifeworld and postcolonial legal institutions. Through this work, the participants in this study navigated the contradictions between two identity-constituting external structures: culture and law. Culture is a source of identity threat, but it also supplies a socially legitimated identity template—the hijra—used in the vital self-formative work of mirroring and witnessing. Similarly, trans-supportive social policies and laws provide institutional scaffolding for identities. Yet, despite the agential nature of the participants' identity work, the inherent limitations of the law and the vulnerability of embodiment render them susceptible to the ongoing threat posed by the transphobia emanating from ambient cultural norms.

中文翻译：

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抵制跨性别歧视：喀拉拉邦跨性别个体经营者的身份工作

印度的跨性别者在矛盾的社会力量的汇合下塑造身份。在喀拉拉邦进行的采访表明，恐惧跨性别者的耻辱经历导致个体经营的跨性别者被贬低。反过来，社会贬低触发了他们在位于日常生活世界和后殖民法律制度之间的阈限社会空间中的身份工作。通过这项工作，本研究的参与者驾驭了两种构成身份的外部结构之间的矛盾：文化和法律。文化是身份威胁的来源，但它也提供了一个社会合法的身份模板——hijra- 用于镜像和见证的重要自我形成工作。同样，跨性别支持的社会政策和法律为身份认同提供了制度框架。然而，尽管参与者的身份工作具有代理性质，但法律的内在限制和具体化的脆弱性使他们容易受到来自环境文化规范的跨性别恐惧症所构成的持续威胁。