Sisters, Boyfriends, and the Big City: Trans Entertainers and Sex Workers in Globalized Thailand (original) (raw)
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2022
Many queer foreigners perceive Thailand as a gay paradise. They have an image of the country as having a tolerant attitude towards LGBTIQ+. However, for Thai LGBTIQ+, Western countries evoke wealth, progress, and acceptance where people with a different gender identity or sexual orientation can fully enjoy their rights. Thai LGBTIQ+, like men and women, strive to go abroad seeking a life they dream of. This article aims to give an account of one of these marginalized groups' experience that is often neglected by both Thai and Western transnational scholars. Based on an ethnographic study in four European countries with 26 Thai transgender informants, this article argues that migration needs to be considered as a search for one's well-being, not only in terms of economic aspects, but also in terms of sentimental or emotional needs-that is, the possibility of living their gender and being socially and legally accepted. In this transcultural context, not only do people move across borders, but they also export with them perceptions and understandings about sex, gender, and sexuality from their home country. These aspects are renegotiated and rearticulated in the new socio-cultural milieu of the host countries in order to maximize these new conditions for their own interest. They may or may not reveal their transgender identity, depending on contexts, social interactions, and whom they are dealing with. Their transgender identity can offer them advantages, particularly in the realm of sex.
QUEER MEDIA LOCI IN BANGKOK: Paradise Lost and Found in Translation
2011
In the Western popular imagination, Bangkok is a “gay paradise,” a city that affords cheap and easy access to exotic “boys.” This reputation for sex tourism as well as a local cultural tolerance for homosexuality and transgenderism is a common representation of queer Bangkok in English-language media. This article juxtaposes Thai media and lived experience to displace, recontextualize, and expand the prevailing Western view. It argues that Western gazes that depict Thailand as especially tolerant of homosexuality and gender variance may in fact inhibit the free expression of Thai male-bodied effeminacy. Finally, this article argues that the hypersexualization of Thais and new regional alignments are molding local desires and subjectivities away from the West toward East Asia.
Thai trans women’s agency and the destigmatisation of HIV-related care
Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2021
Until recently, trans women have been subsumed within the category of men who have sex with men for HIV-related care. Following a 2016 UNAIDS report finding that trans women globally are 49 times more likely to be living with HIV than the general population, health programmes have sought to expand their reach to this key population. Yet, trans women are often treated as passive subjects to be recruited into programming or clinical trials for HIV-related care. This paper uses case studies of two community-based clinics in Thailand to highlight the agency of trans women in creating and implementing unique models for the provision of care that fit their needs and those of their local communities. By tailoring goals to be trans-specific and local, trans women at these clinics help destigmatise HIV-related care. This paper argues for the importance of engaging trans women as community stakeholders in HIV-related care and prevention and identifies suggestions for stakeholder engagement in programme design both in and beyond Thailand by focussing on local conditions.
2009
Since the early 1990s, many authors [e.g. Plummer, 1992; Altman, 1996a, 1996b, 1997, 2001; Drucker, 2000; Jackson, 2000] have identified the transnational proliferation of new same-sex and transgender identities and cultures as a significant instance of cultural globalisation. In 1992, Plummer wrote, “Homosexualities have become globalised”. [Plummer, 1992: 17] Altman has labeled this phenomenon “global queering”, [Altman 1996a] and in a 1997 article “Global Gaze/Global Gays” he observed, “What strikes me is that within a given country, whether Indonesia or the United States, Thailand or Italy, the range of constructions of homosexuality is growing”. [Altman, 1997: 424, emphases in original] Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan observe, “Queerness is now global. Whether in advertising, film, performance art, the Internet, or the political discourses of human rights in emerging democracies, images of queer sexualities and cultures not circulate around the globe.” [Cruz-Malavé & Manalansan 2002...