Robert Knoth

Neither men nor women. The red light district in the Pakistani city of Lahore is as famous in South Asia as the Amsterdam district by the same name is throughout the West. Strict rules about the separation of men and women in Muslim societies have determined men and boys to have more explicit roles in many branches of the entertainment industry including dance, theatre and the sex industry. Important in Lahore are Hijras, best defined as ‘neither men nor women’. Men born as transgender, hermaphrodite or of female gender, trapped inside male bodies.