#ChangeTheClap, a 2017 social media campaign aimed at combatting stigma towards Pakistan’s marginalized transgender communities, draws upon the distinctive hijra clap, even as it erases the embodied clapping hijra. The changing hands of the clap across almost a decade of activism gestures to the neoliberal limits of the trans rights movement in Pakistan and attempts to contain hijra identity.

While the “bad girls” of Pakistan's contemporary Punjabi theatre are accused of “obscenity” and “vulgarity” and punished by harsh censorship, girls from “good families” are actively promoted in Anglophone dramas. Punjabi performers reverse the gaze onto this split discourse, exposing the body politic's gender and class biases.

The tropes of mainstream and peripheral transgendered performers are explored for their playful negotiations in the body politic of Pakistan.