ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a comparative critique of the two hegemonic discourses which challenge the social integrity and agency of individuals and communities in Pakistan and Indonesia who are outside the dominant sexual/gender matrices and politics. It proposes the resistance of sexually diverse and gender-variant Muslims to the hegemonic discourses comes from an alterspace, a liminal locus based on diffrance as a conceptual and operative strategy. Janet Halley shows how the global northern governance feminism has emerged as a power-thirsty, rather than power-defying, ideology which has readily joined the state in various hegemonic projects. The subversion of hegemonic discourses on sexuality and gender in Pakistan is related primarily to the two grass-roots movements that of women's rights associations, such as Shirkat Gah, and that of khwajasara subjectivities. An intrinsic element of the Pakistani khwajasara experience and their specific resistance to hegemonic discourses is their faith.
