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The older hijras’ employment of the masculine-marked epithet in the second ex-ample is particularly telling, as it reflects their dissatisfaction with the initiate s at-tempts at discursive femininity. Refusing to grant the initiate the feminine refer-ence so expected within the community (see Hall and 0’Donovan 1996), the morę experienced hijra veterens refer to the “ill-behaved” initiate with masculine-marked verb and noun phrases. Their use of the epithet vagina-owner^m, in this context, ironically implies that the addressee is acting too “masculine,” a behavior that merits retribution in a community that wishes to distance itself from małe representations. The initiate is categorized, in essence, as a vagina-owning want-to-be, the grammatically masculine bhosri vala^m being used to betray her essential (i.e., anatomical) masculinity.

As with the term bhosri vala, the ingroup examples recorded in