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also carry an overt and, I would argue, deliberate confusion of feminine and mas-culine reference. The authors of expressions (d) and (f) address their fellow hijras not with the feminine mui but with the masculine mue, a term that is itself gener-ally thought of as a “soft curse” used primarily by women. The first six of these ex-amples point to the addressee’s insatiable sexual appetite, which in (a) can be sat-isfied only through size (i.e., sugarcane), in (b), (c), (d), and (e) only through quantity (i.e., the bananas at the bazaar, regular supplements of sweets, leftover leaf-plates, a storę of stick-buying customers), and in (f) only though pacification (i.e., a cold glass of water at bedtime). Yet while the first four examples attribute an aggressive femininity to the hijra addressee, placing her squarely in the feminized role as the husband’s lover or wife, examples (e) and (f) highlight the addressee’s masculinity and point disdainfully to her machismo, referring to her insatiable lakri ‘stick’ on the one hand and her need to subdue an erection on the other. The finał insult reproduced in (g) again points to the addressees femininity, criticizing her for passively allowing her małe lover to take a co-wife.