Paper short abstract:

The paper asks: how is radical care and community understood and practiced by the transgender community in Pakistan through the act of cooking and eating together? What does queer ethnography centered around food in a South Asia context look like from a (non)visibility politics point of view?

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the central role that food occupies in building community and radical care networks for the transgender community in Pakistan. While in theory, there are some legal protections instituted for the Pakistani transgender community, in practice, trans people continue to face violence physically, emotionally, politically, and socio-economically. This paper centers the historic care structures that trans people have created for themselves in order to find and create community for themselves rooted in the “guru” system but highlights more specifically the role of food as the site of building community, redefining strength and joy, and providing essential sustenance.

Particularly around the times of religious rituals such as the celebration of Ramadan, the feeling of isolation from their biological families faced by the trans community is exacerbated. Hence, the act of making Iftar and breaking their fasts together becomes a revolutionary act of creating one’s “chosen family”. The paper aims to take a non-Western-centric approach to understanding indigenous Pakistani queer culture while situating food both as the site of resistance as well as care for Pakistani transgender people.

The paper asks: How is violence in terms of food insecurity experienced by the transgender community in Pakistan? What does queer ethnography centered around food in a South Asia context look like from a (non)visibility politics point of view? And finally, how is radical care and community understood and practiced by the transgender community in Pakistan through the act of cooking and eating together?