Translations:Gender-variant identities worldwide/38/en

In classical Arabic writings, people called Mukhannathun were queer people who were assigned male at birth. They were analogous to transgender women, or to very feminine gay men, depending on the individual. In Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 41, Number 4910, Mohammed said to exile a mukhannath, and said not to kill them. At one point during the Umayyad dynasty, a caliph ordered that all mukhannathun should be castrated. In response to this, a group of mukhannathun are recorded as having this conversation about it: "This is simply a circumcision which we must undergo again." "Or rather the Greater Circumcision!" "With castration I have become a mukhannath in truth!" "Or rather we have become women in truth!" "We have been spared the trouble of carrying around a spout for urine." "What would we do with an unused weapon anyway?"