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Hijras, in their conversations, use these [gender pronouns] randomly and indiscriminately to refer to individual hijras. They insist, how-ever, that people outside their community refer to hijras in the feminine gender. When I am ąuoting a hijra verbatim, I use the gender pronoun used by that speaker if it is masculine or feminine. If it is the gender-neutral pronoun, I have translated it as a feminine gender pronoun. When I am referring to a hijra, I use the feminine gender pronoun to conform to hijra norms, unless I am referring to the hijra in the past, when he considered himself a małe. (1990: xviii)