An Inclusive Litany

9/27/02

A judge in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh ruled that Kamla Jaan, a eunuch, was legally a man and thus could not serve in a mayoral post reserved under a quota system for women. While Indian eunuchs as a group consider themselves female even though an estimated 99 percent are castrated males, Jaan argued that she was a "born eunuch," meaning a hermaphrodite with ambiguous or deformed genitals.