Unmarried Daughters, Caretaking Sons: Queer Transmasculinities and Natal Kinship in North India

This article explores how unmarried queer and transgender individuals living with natal kin-particularly butch lesbian, non-binary, and transmasculine people raised as daughters-navigate structural and interpersonal norms that expect them to be future wives and mothers. I ask: How do unmarried queer and trans individuals slotted and socialized as daughters form and assert themselves as masculine members of their natal families, and what does this reveal about gender, kinship, and normativity in North India? The study draws on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Lucknow, the capital of India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, with 20 core queer and trans individuals aged 21-38, as well as some of their mothers. This research finds that these individuals, who I term "structural daughters," assert culturally inflected North Indian masculine esthetics and practices which allow them to be protectors of women such as their mothers. By establishing daily labor-related, financial, and emotional interdependence with natal kin, unmarried masculine daughters secure son-like emotional and material belonging while simultaneously reinforcing normative aspects of South Asian gender and kinship. This article contributes to queer and trans studies by centering queer transmasculine subject formation in North India, expanding conversations on queer futurity, care, and belonging.