PeterRS

I think it is great that as many as possible contribute. I certainly don't see any contribution as highjacking. Let's have more. But I just feel - and it's a personal view - that looking at the situation of being gay in Thailand from a western perspective inevitably leads to quite a few inaccurate conclusions. I have seen the decorations at Sam Yan and am delighted they are there. Yes, it is close to two Universities. But I have to add that there are more than 50 Universities in Bangkok! What have they been doing to celebrate Pride month I wonder? Merely a question because I just do not know. Also, let's be frank. Sam Yan really is not a major hub in Bangkok. My guess is that students at Chula University are more likely to alight at Siam. Now if that display had been in the Siam/Paragon area, I believe it would have had a far greater effect. Still it is a start. I am certain that many students in other cities throughout the Kingdom are much more pro-LGBT than their elders. Students are often at the forefront of social change everywhere. Hopefully this might be true also in Thailand. But I believe it is vitally important to remember that students graduate and many move into the professions. And it is in those very professions where there is entrenched homophobia in this country. Will most of them be so keen to be known as gay when promotions, salary increases etc. are dependent on being seen to fit in to accepted norms promoted by the older generations? Will they march if there is a Pride Parade in, say, 5 years time? The graduate generation before them have not and probably will not, alas. Will major Thai corporations like TRUE or AIS contribute with cash and banners, as is the case with locally based companies at Singapore's Pink Dot after the government banned the many international companies from becoming involved? I am less convinced by those commenting in the media. Yes, there have been articles going back at least to the early 1990s. I have already mentioned Khun Natee who deserves far more credit than I believe he is given for really starting a nascent gay rights movement. Yet his base is in Chiang Mai and it was in Chiang Mai in 2009 that its second Pride Parade was shouted down by local inhabitants and had to be abandoned. It took 10 years before another could be considered. When was Phuket's Pride parade cancelled - three or four years ago? An article in Coconuts (below) states that the number of taking in the 2016 March along the Patong beachfront was 100. Just 100! It adds that, as in Bangkok years earlier, farang were involved in the organisation. I cannot stress enough my view that having farang in any key positions in the organisation of a Parade/Pink Dot or other celebration here in Bangkok is a recipe for a non-event (and I know some farang will scream at this!) I also think if the Parade is anywhere close to the gay areas in Silom/Suriwong, it will fail. As I have again stated, Taipei's Pride Parade works amazingly primarily because it has always been organised by a group of locals and, as far as I am aware, steers clear of the only major gay locale - the Red House. Returning to the subject of those being open about being gay in the media, as I stressed earlier if you take away the hospitality, arts, entertainment and fashion industries which traditionally have a large number of gay employees in most countries, I have seen very few Thai individuals commenting about being gay. Even in that group of four industries I listed, there are also huge numbers who are gay, who are known by their colleagues to be gay and who are written about as though suspected of being gay by the entertainment media - but they will still not consider coming out as gay. https://coconuts.co/bangkok/features/thailands-only-pride-parade-marched-phuket-photo-essay-0/ As for local views in the countryside, there was an interesting article in the Bangkok Post five years ago at the time of the Gay nightclub shooting in Florida. Perhaps this puts homophobia in Thailand into a better perspective. . . . truth be told, homophobia isn't the exclusive terrain of any particular religion or country. Those who think that Thailand is immune to such homophobia and violence against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT) have been fooled by the myth of "acceptance". In fact, local media has reported cases of violence against this group. A few years ago, a woman admitted to having her daughter's lesbian lover killed in Trat because she wanted her child to date a man. The victim clearly was murdered because of her sexual orientation and gender identity -- she was a tom, the Thai term for a self-styled masculine lesbian. In another case, two 17-year-old students in a lesbian relationship were found dead in Nong Khai with more than 60 stab wounds between them. Police suspected they were killed out of jealousy over their relationship. Moreover, many lesbians are subjected to rape in order to "cure" their sexual orientation, often by their own family members -- a subject rarely discussed due to the stigma around rape and lesbianism. A father in Loei confessed to having raped his 14-year-old daughter for four years in order to stop her from socialising with tom. Worse, there is a worrying trend that this so-called corrective rape is being normalised in Thai society through the expression Kae Tom Som Dee or "fixing tom and dee" – dee are the feminine counterpart to tom . . . Therefore, if we are shocked by this senseless loss of lives in Florida, the first thing we should do is to fight the root causes of homophobia in our own backyard, where much of the medical profession still considers transgenderism as a form of mental disorder; where the predominantly "Buddhist" population believes that LGBTs are sinful for past-life adultery and therefore deserve lower status; where all junior high-school students are taught by government-approved curriculum that homosexuality constitutes sexual deviancy; and where popular TV programmes regularly caricature LGBTs as promiscuous and spreaders of HIV/Aids. https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1009557/we-need-to-fight-homophobia-at-home

A very good point which Prof. Jackson makes quite clearly. My assumption should therefore be wrong. On the other hand, I do not know how else to interpret this part of Prof. Jackson's introduction. He states the following: "In this study I draw upon Butler's Foucault-influenced account of the perfomativity of gender and sex to trace the ways that shifts in the forms of bio-power over gender in Thailand not only altered norms of masculinity and femininity but also radically changed patterns of desire and identity. I account for the emergence of the new Thai identities and gender/sexual cultures by mapping out a precise character of changes in the forms of power that the Thai state deployed in its efforts to 'civilise' the public gendering of the populace - a project of power incited into being as a response to the combined challenges of English, French, Japanese and American imperialisms in Southeast Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study reveals that even in the absence of Western-Style interventions in sexuality, the disruptions of traditional Siamese culture caused by the state's response to the West radically altered the performative norms of masculinity and femininity, which in turn contributed to the proliferation of new forms of transgender and same-sex identity. This Thai case study provides a counter-example to the presumption that modernity and globalisation necessarily lead to an international homogenisation of sexual cultures." Norms of masculinity and femininity - patterns of desire and identity - new Thai identities and gender/sexual cultures - disruptions of traditional Siamese culture caused by the state's response . . . radically altered the performative norms of masculinity and femininity . . . etc. All this seems to me to indicate that nothing the state did altered what had been accepted in Thai culture for a very long time, including male to male sexual relations. Prof. Jackson adds in his Para 5. "Unlike the situation in the West, where both homosexuality and cross-dressing had long been explicitly prohibited, until the later decades of the twentieth century same-sex and transgender behaviours almost completely escaped the attention of the Thai authorities." I take Prof. Jackson's study as a whole to indicate that homosexuality as we know it did exist in Thailand and that it was in no way frowned upon by the state or indeed the public as a whole. But as I have written, it is a very long Paper and I certainly have not taken it all in. I am perfectly happy for others to contradict assumptions I have made based on the texts of the two articles from which I have quoted part. The important issue for me was to air the subject, for it has long seemed that some/many hold views about being gay in Thailand that are based much more on what is happening in the west rather than on the reality of the situation as it has developed over centuries in Thailand.

HOLE! Another culinary analogy. Toad in the Hole is a traditional English dish consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with onion gravy and vegetables

Yes, eunochs were castrated. In Beijing, they were the only men permitted to reside in the Forbidden City other than the Emperor's family and members of the Court. Castration was to ensure they did not sleep with any of the ladies in the Emperors harem! But in line with Chinese beliefs, their excised parts were kept in jars so that their bodies could be buried whole. In some countries only the testicals would be removed. In China, Korea, Vietnam and other parts of Asia I believe the penis was also removed. I read that the Third Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di, took a fancy to Vietnamese boys during the occupation of Vietnam by the Chinese. Many were castrated and brought to Court in Beijing presumably for his enjoyment. Generally, though, castration was not for sexual reasons. Starting early in the Ming Dynasty eunochs were permitted to marry and so appear 'normal'. But the ceremonies were usually secret. Eunochs were not confined to Asia, especially in ancient times. Even in the 17th and 18th centuries, boys were castrated in Europe in an attempt to save the purity of their pre-pubescent voices. Many died during the crude operation and most of the others lived very lonely poor lives. Those that made it became quite literally superstars. One, Farinelli, about whom a movie was made in the 1990s, was the pop star of his age and made a fortune. For whatever reason, women adored him!

I like him. He'd probably be on my list, but not at the top. I had also not heard of him before the Asia 's Got Talent series. If you start watching Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong movies there is a whole panoply of beautiful young guys, some more talented than others. Two I like are both actors. Deng Lun is Chinese and has recently become very popular with his boy next door look. The Taiwanese actor Luo Yun-xi looks more of a bad-boy type. He started training as a ballet dancer around age 5 and continued ballet till he was in his early teens. Since then he has become a singer and actor. He's better known as Leo Luo. Looks like he could be a lion in bed

Looks like Thais will end up with vaccines which are deemed by some as less efficient. There will still be the local AZ vaccine but Australia has just announced it will stop using the vaccine from October. The country claims to have 2 deaths from severe blood clotting following vaccination. More worrying is that the numbers infected in Thailand are not falling while the number of deaths increase - 3,174 and 51 today, the highest daily totals since the pandemic started. Bangkok's state-run hospitals announced they now have only 20 available intensive care beds. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jun/23/coronavirus-live-news-thailand-record-daily-deaths-tokyo-olympics-alcohol Take care, guys!

I believe it is more complicated than that. It's hard to explain succinctly because Professor Jackson's writing is far from simple - at least for me! I certainly I believe Jackson does not mean that kathoey means transgender, merely a man who adopts a more feminine outlook. At one point in the first Paper, he writes about Anna Leonowens' concerns when describing inhabitants of the Royal Palace. (This was the English teacher as later portrayed as 'Anna' in "The King & I" the popular Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.) She served the King for 5 years from 1862. At this time King Mongkut had 39 wives and concubines and 82 children. Anna later wrote, "Here were women disguised as men, and men in the attire of women, hiding vice of every vileness and crime of every enormity - at once the most disgusting, the most appalling, and the most unnatural that the heart of man has conceived." Yet, as Jackson points out, what Ms. Leonowens actually saw were the somewhat Amazonian female guards of the King's harem and actors performing in one of the all-male troupes. As in the time of Shakespeare, men took on the role of women on stage. She had simply failed to note much gender differentiation between men and women. "All Siamese women were perceived as masculine and all Siamese men as feminine," wrote Jackson. Even in the late 1940s, a Study of the Thai village of Bang Chan (now a suburb of Bangkok) noted that "there are very few cultural roles, apart from those associated with religion, which can not be played by either men or women . . . Thai culture in its secular aspects seems to consider all adults as simply human beings together, without major distinction of sex roles; behaviour which is appropriate to one person is equally appropriate to another." In this case, the word "roles" does not refer to a stage play. It merely means in life in general. He then adds from the same Study, "The degree of equality between the sexes which exists in Thailand . . . is a characteristic which strongly distinguishes the norms of Thai society from those of India, China or Japan, or even the Catholic Philippines and Muslim Indonesia. It is a characteristic which predated the influence of Hindu culture and the acceptance of Buddhism with their androcentrism and emphasis on masculine values." Thus the sameness of the sexes in Thailand is millennia old. As seems to be indicated by that Study - equality also refers to sexual relations. But the Westernization of the people by imposing the mandate that women and men dress very differently and specifically had also resulted in changes in attitudes to sex. Last point. There are virtually no references to kathoey until a 1924 newspaper article. It is only after World War II that the term becomes more commonly used. I suspect (and it is nothing more than that) that by enforcing a different dress code for men and women, thereafter it became much more difficult for men to have sex with other men. After all, in the past it would have been difficult for others to tell who were men and who were women! With the completely new dress code, the kathoey looked feminine and so became attractive to men seeking a homosexual tryst. I'm sorry, that is all far from simple! I hope it makes some kind of sense.

Just a bit of fun! I saw a programme on TV the other evening titled No Sleep No Fomo. (I still do not know what Fomo stands for!) Each episode is a rather crazy 60 hour romp with a host from Singapore and an Asian pop star who do a series of odd challenges in various parts of Asia. I felt I had seen enough pop stars I'd like to spend time (i.e. a night) with - even if they are not gay and not single - that I could not be bothered with any more. Then of course, someone in a K Pop group or an actor in a movie gets the urges going again. In this episode I saw my latest. Eric Nam is a Korean of American descent. Born in Atlanta, when he was 23 he spent a year studying International Studies and Mandarin in Beijing. Back in New York he worked for Deloitte Consulting before one of his youtube videos went viral. He then moved to South Korea where for 9 years he has become hugely popular as a singer, actor, dancer and promoter of two regular podcasts. These have included interviews with loads of international celebrities including Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jnr., Emma Stone and Jamie Foxx. He was named GQ Korea's Man of the Year in 2016 and was included in Forbes' 30 Under 30 Asia in 2017. Clearly highly intelligent, he is like many pop idols extremely secretive about his private life. He seems not to be married!! But I'll bet there's a lover there somewhere! He's too cute to be single

I agree with you, but the point of the thread was to look specifically at Thailand. It's a country where male-male same sex liaisons had been far from uncommon for centuries and were clearly universally tolerated, as long as the participants fitted the man-katheoy model. Also, sex was, as Professor Jackson writes in the OP "something ordinary, a matter of teasing and playful banter such as is apparent in folk songs, artwork, poetry and so on." Today most of the world regards Thailand as one of the most gay tolerant countries in the world. Yet my point was that 'gay' did not enter the vocabulary until around the mid-1960s and that when Thais realised that this meant men acting and dressing as real men having sex with other real men, tolerance of same-sex customs was virtually shattered. It was essentially a new concept. It did not fit the traditional model and it was actively disliked. It altered attitudes to sex. All this will have filtered through to the countryside only around 50 years ago and so will still be a commonly held view today by older generations. Given the importance of the family and village structure (as Londoner points out above), I suspect it is a view that is still being passed down to younger generations and it is one reason why so many Thai gay men remain afraid of the consequences of coming out. This is not at all similar to Western countries where same sex liaisons were frowned on for centuries and even criminalised, but we know they took place. Indeed, they were no doubt a lot more common than is in fact known from those cases like Oscan Wilde's and Alan Turing's which were brought before the Courts.

I can assure you it is not just in the villages. Look at almost any major business in the major cities (outside entertainment, the arts and the hospitality industry) and you will find in general the same sort of anti-gay discrimination.

Thank for correcting the link, @anddy I have spent part of the day reading the account of the murder of Darrell Berrigan. More fascinating stuff and so I will post here a summary that unfortunately does not do justice to the length and detail of Jackson's original. But it throws up some key points in the discussion of general Thai reactions to the subject of homosexuality. As Jackson points out, "Before the 1960s male homoerotic relations in Thailand were structured within discourses that ascribed masculine [phu-chai] and feminine/effeminate [kathoey] gender positions to same-sex partners. This gendered pattern was reinforced by a number of related oppositions, such as senior-junior and inserter-insertee, that established a power hierarchy between a masculine, senior 'man' and his feminized, junior kathoey partner. Notions of class and social status were also important in marking the kathoey-'man' distinction; kathoey were commonly thought of as low-class social riffraff . . . It is possible to say that during this time a crucial discursive transition began to encourage the emergence of gay sexual identities. Newspaper sources from the early 1970s suggest that by then gay did mark a sexual identity, with Thai homosexual men calling themselves 'gay king' or 'gay queen' depending on whether they saw themselves as butch inserters or less butch insertees." It was the murder of Berrigan that gradually brought the term 'gay' into general use and with it the concept of two men who acted like men and dressed like men having sex together, although initially it had primarily referred to prostitution. And as noted it was the Thai media that played this to the hilt, often using what would be regarded as expressions of extreme disgust. This compared to the account in the Bangkok Post which merely used the term homosexual in discussing Berrigan and his colleagues. "Gossip and rumor in Bangkok’s expatriate community suggest that many Western homosexual men have made the city their home since World War II. However, there are no sources that permit an estimate of their numbers and no biographies or autobiographies that document their private lives honestly. For example, William Warren’s biography of Jim Thompson, arguably the most prominent rumored homosexual American in postwar Bangkok, carefully constructs a female romantic interest for this man, who led U.S. operational support of the Seri Thai [Free Thai] anti-Japanese resistance during the war and subsequently helped reconstruct the Thai silk industry in the 1950s, earning himself the epithet 'the Thai silk king.' Warren tells us that Thompson was 'always rumoured [to be] about to marry this or that young heiress but never quite doing so' and portrays him as a rugged, butch individual. One gets a different impression of the man from the memoirs of another American, Alexander MacDonald, who worked with Thompson and the Seri Thai and cofounded the English-language newspaper Bangkok Post in 1946. MacDonald describes Thompson as 'foppish. . . . he wore dancing pumps much of the time.' Indeed, Thompson’s lifelong love of the ballet, set design, and costumes prompted his interest in Thai silk, whose outstanding visual qualities he helped bring to New York stage productions such as The King and I in the 1950s. Readers of Warren’s biography are left to interpret for themselves the private life of this U.S. war veteran with artistic sensibilities . . . "In this essay I use accounts of Berrigan’s life and death as a window on changing Thai attitudes. In these accounts, however, there is another story awaiting narration, namely, the history of the Western imagining of Bangkok as a site of homosexual liberality and a zone of supposed freedom from homophobia. The history of Western homoerotic imaginings of the exotic East in the expansion of Western economic, political, and cultural influence can be detected in reports of the lives of men such as Thompson and Berrigan. But in the sources considered here the intersection of Western desire and imperial power exists as a barely spoken subtext more often than as an explicit presence . . . "On 4 October 1965 the English-language Bangkok Post reported in a front-page story that early the previous day the body of Darrell Berrigan, forty-nine-year-old expatriate American editor of the rival English-language newspaper the Bangkok World, had been found in the backseat of his Volkswagen sedan. The car had been parked only thirty meters from his house in Soi Leucha, a side street off busy Phahonyothin Road in central Bangkok. Berrigan had been killed by a single bullet through the back of the head, and his Rolex watch and wallet were missing. On the same morning the front-page banner headline of the Thai-language Thai Rath read, 'Bangkok World Editor Stripped and Murdered . . .,' and the story reported that 'the deceased’s body lay face down on the backseat [of the car] with both hands crossed behind his back. . . . The lower body of Mr. Berrigan was in a condition that could almost be called naked, because both his trousers and underpants had been pulled down to his shins.' The reserved tone of the Bangkok Post, which said nothing about the undressed state in which the body had been found, and the detailed, direct reporting of the Thai Rath marked a divergence between English prudish caution and Thai sexual explicitness that characterized all subsequent reporting of the crime in Bangkok." Throughout the subsequent investigation, it was the Thai media that sensationalised the murder at every turn. "The Thai press left its readers in no doubt about Berrigan’s homosexuality or the sexual element in his murder. On the day of his cremation, while the English-language press praised his humanity and his commitment to the interests and welfare of the Thai people, the Thai Rath banner headline read, 'Kathoey Reveals Berrigan’s ‘Transvestite’ [lakkaphet] Life—Says He Raised Young Men as Husbands.' The article stated that Berrigan had had a 'transvestite mind' [jit lakkaphet] and 'transvestite feelings' [khwam-ruseuk lakkaphet] and that 'it was general knowledge that Berrigan loved young men the way other men love young women.' The same information was not found in either the Bangkok Post or the Bangkok World. "On 7 October . . . the Thai Rath noted that police inquiries had now focused on Berrigan’s 'sexual degeneracy' [kamawitthan]. In an interview one Kumut Janreuang, a business associate of Berrigan who had recently resigned from the Bangkok World, said that he had told the police that Berrigan had sexually assaulted [pluk plam] his son twice and that everyone at the newspaper knew of Berrigan’s homosexuality. The Thai Rath also reported that the previous day police had made inquiries at a number of Bangkok bars that Berrigan frequented, in particular the Star Night Club, the Two Vikings Bar, the Mitsui Bar, and the Playboy Bar . . . Berrigan’s prominence in Bangkok and his status as a respected foreigner made solving his murder especially urgent. Casting a wide investigative net, the police regarded all kathoey and homosexually active men as suspects. In their desperate search for clues, the police and the Thai-language press subjected Bangkok’s kathoey and homosexual subcultures to unprecedented scrutiny, exposing for the first time the extent of these networks . . . "The character of the Thai Rath’s reporting of masculine male prostitutes changed dramatically on 11 October, when it published a front-page story under the banner 'Thai Rath Finds Den of ‘Men Who Sell Themselves’—Total of Two Hundred Members, High Incomes.' The first paragraph read: 'The Thai Rath has found a den of ‘men who sell themselves’ and who call themselves ‘gay.’ The existence of masculine male prostitutes had been reported alongside stories of transvestite prostitutes before. However, the Thai Rath’s 11 October story differed from earlier reports of 'men who sell themselves' in several respects. First, the men identified as gay were nowhere described as kathoey; on the contrary, their masculinity and difference from kathoey were emphasized. Second, this and subsequent exposés about gay prostitutes were associated with a shock-horror response not found in reports of men labeled as one or other variety of kathoey. Despite having published a detailed report of 'masculine kathoey' prostitutes the previous day, it is clear from the language he used to describe the gay sex workers that the Thai Rath journalist believed that he was informing readers about a startling, disturbing new phenomenon." The reporter made clear that the group was largely made up of youths who sold themselves largely to expatriates and who were clearly wealthy, wearing fashionable clothes form fashionable stores. It also stresses the masculinity of the group. No longer is the term kathoey used. It is then that Thai Rath home s in on the point it had probably been trying to make in the days since Berrigan's murder. "[It] detailed the deficiencies of Thai law, which did not criminalize male homosexuality, and called for punitive statutes to suppress Thai gay prostitutes and their Western homosexual clients. [It] surmised that the cause of Berrigan’s death was 'his own sexually perverted behavior': 'If this is true, we need to consider another group of people, namely, men who sell themselves or who call themselves gay. If the activities of this group are left to run wild, they will present a danger to the country, both in terms of public peace and order and also, without a doubt, in terms of the good morals of the people.' Calling on the government to take action, the newspaper predicted a 'horrendous social disaster' otherwise. Several days later [it] claimed that male prostitution was much more detestable and dangerous than female prostitution: 'If a person of the male sex makes his living from prostitution, it will constitute a significant danger to the safety and order of the country and to the good morals of the people. This is because these people have degraded, perverted, and abnormal minds and may commit other serious crimes against society, such as the murder of Mr. Berrigan, or they may become a criminal element if they congregate in large numbers'. [It] also targeted foreigners as the source of the perversion of gay prostitution, counterposing the supposedly pure Thai moral order to the sexual 'filth' brought to the country by Westerners." From all the above, it is clear that some Thai media were near rabid in their determination to sensationalise the Berrigan murder and the new 'gay' sub-culture which its reporters had uncovered. It is surely little wonder that it was in part this sensationalism and the revelation of a structure of male-male sexual relations that were of a totally different nature to the traditional male-kathoey roles that led many in the country to reconsider their own views and to form new ones; ones that were basically what we might term anti-gay.

Ever since my first visit to Thailand decades ago I have been amazed at the welcome given to gay men and women and the seeming openness of gay life. At the same time I have learned and seen evidence of the relative homophobia in much of the country and discrimination in certain sections of society against homosexual individuals. I have also seen the gradual disappearance of many Thais who used to visit the bars in the 1980s and the 1990s, as well as the country boys working in many of the bars being replaced by those from neighbouring countries. In response to all these I have seen many western-style views expressed in explanation – especially rapidly rising incomes as Thailand’s economy has developed making it less attractive for young Thai guys to work in the gogo bars. I have always thought approaching Thailand’s culture and sexual morality from a western perspective wrong. A few years ago I tried to do a little research. I did find on the internet one fascinating article by the Australian Professor Peter Jackson who has written a whole series of articles and books on sexuality and queerness in Asian countries. Yesterday I tried to find that article again – without success. But I did eventually find an even longer one that focuses almost exclusively on Thailand. It is very long but I found it totally fascinating. I had intended to quote sections from it in a special post here. By the time I was half way through the article, I had way too many words. So I decided to paraphrase some of its more key moments, with sections in quotation marks being direct quotes from the article. Essentially what Jackson stresses is that western influences and a desire for acceptance by the West have had and continue to have an especially serious effect on traditional Thai cultural and sexual norms. This was very typical in countries subject to colonization. But Siam was never colonized. Why, therefore, the similarity? Strikingly, the main changes in terms of homosexuality did not start to appear until the mid 20th century and they started internally within the country. “The key finding of my earlier studies is that despite the global spread of Western power and the intensity of homophobic discourse in the early modern West, these discourses failed to register in Thailand or to be communicated through local networks of discursive power until the 1960s.” Back in the 1800s Thailand had a very homogenous society. Men and women dressed naked from the waist up. They wore virtually similar hairstyles. It was often difficult to tell men from women. This contrasted greatly with western habits where it was all but impossible not to tell a man from a woman. “With respect to gender and eroticism, Western visitors consistently made three main critiques that were taken of Siamese barbarism and lack of civilization . . . (1) the ‘nakedness of the Siamese body [above the waist]; (2) the sexual ‘excesses of polygamy; and (3) the similarity in appearance of Siamese men and women, accentuated by a lack of differentiation between male and female fashions and hair styles . . . “ That anti-colonial stance had come to the fore particularly during the reign of King Chulalongkorn (1868-1910). Historically, as Siam opened up trade to the West, two factors contributed to this change. The first was that, as had happened in China by force, Siam peacefully permitted foreign traders to be based in Siam under their home countries laws. European nations and America regarded Siam’s traditional laws as barbaric and refused to allow their nationals to be subject to them. Secondly it was King Chulalongkorn who realised that the disparaging tone of Western nations about what they alleged as Siam’s primitive barbarous customs and religion, a view expressed vociferously by Christian missionaries, could have negative international consequences. The King was aware that International Law only protected so-called “civilized nations.” There was concern that Western nations might seize Siam under the pretext of the country’s alleged backwardness. The King realised that Thailand had to change and become on the face of it more western looking. “Thai social critic Sulak Sivaraska labeled Chulalongkorn’s self-civilizing anti-colonization strategy as ‘fighting wolves by donning their clothing.’” The campaign to westernize (and thus be seen to “civilize”) the surface of the Siamese people began to take off as some of the nobility and the rising middle class had their children educated overseas, mostly to start with in the exclusive English public school system. They returned fully immersed in outward western values and helped change Thai habits, at least in the cities. As the Thai education system gradually developed through the 20th century and spread throughout Thai society in the countryside in the second half of that century, “it cut off the folk culture of rural Thais, who looked on sex as something ordinary, a matter of teasing and playful banter such as is apparent in folk songs, artwork, poetry and so on.” [As an aside, this was very much the impression given by those who worked in the gay gogo bars in the 1970s and 80s]. Even then, as far as sexuality is concerned, “in Thailand the only significant control over lay sexuality prescribed by the religion is a prohibition against (heterosexual) adultery. Thai Buddhism does not regard same-sex eroticism between laymen or laywomen as a sin. In the legal domain, sodomy was made a punishable offence in the first decade of the twentieth century as part of an effort to make the Siamese legal code appear to conform to European norms of civilization. This legal view took place in response to the extraterritorial provisions of trading treaties signed with European powers, the United States and Japan in the nineteenth century. In its Siamese form ‘offenses against human order’ included both male and female same-sex activity . . . However, while the presence of the anti-sodomy law in the legal code gave the appearance of conforming to Victorian era sexual norms, not a single prosecution for homosexuality was made under this law and Thai police ignored the clause, continuing, as previously, to overlook consensual same-sex activities . . .The clause was removed in 1956 as part of a review to purge the legal code of anachronistic and obsolete edicts.” Perhaps oddly, while Western influences in Japan were aimed to a considerable degree at the homosexual perversions amongst Japan’s religious and military elites, in Siam it focused on the heterosexual polygamous excesses of the nobility. “Western homophobic discourses failed to have an impact in Thailand until after World War II.” The key to the real change in Thai society as regards homosexuality is concerned did not occur until the later decades of the 20th century. This saw a “Thai bio-medical project aimed at controlling, if not reversing, the proliferation of same-sex and transgender identities. Beginning in the 1960s, Thai physicians and psychologists drew upon Western biomedical sciences in an attempt to control, suppress, and cure cross-dressing and homosexuality . . . However [this] only came into being after the existence of a diverse array of new identities and cultures had been exposed to public view by the sensation-seeking Thai press. [It attempted] to put the genie of proliferating sexual and gender diversity back into the bottle. This is the converse of what Michel Foucault described for Western Europe [in his The History of Sexuality: Volume 1], where it was the rise of new biomedical knowledges, amongst other factors, that in turn incites new sexualized identities into being. The biomedical project has had a significant impact on the recent history of Thailand’s same-sex and transgender cultures, but it could not have had a role in inciting these new cultures into being because it only came into existence after the fact as an ultimately unsuccessful regime of control and containment.” In the early 1960s, Hanks and Hanks [L. M. Hanks and Jane Hanks, a couple who spent many years working in and writing about Thailand] observed, “Western doctrines include a sharper distinction between the sexes than has been traditionally the case in Thailand. Little boys were once almost indistinguishable from little girls by dress or coiffure. Today sex distinctions are being cultivated.” The change has been even more universal. “Almost a century of state interventions succeeded in forcing all Thai men and women to refashion their self-comportment in newly defined and clearly differentiated masculine and feminine styles.” This official refashioning of Thai culture and society resulted in distinct homosexuality as a means of sexual expression in Thailand only beginning to be taken seriously in the 1960s. Following the sensationalist press campaign, governments adopted ineffective measures at acceptance and control of its restrictive directives. But these were inhibited by “the mass migration of unemployed and under-employed rural labourers to Bangkok which saw an explosive boom in the urban population and the rapid appearance of new social spaces where, outside the restrictive cultural controls traditionally exercised by family and neighbours, men and women could enact new identities and develop new gender-based and erotically focussed forms of community.” So in conclusion, specific gayness in Thai society is as new a phenomenon as in western nations. But it is important to realise that the underlying cultural and social structures were hugely different for centuries beforehand. These differences are ingrained in many will likely take another generation or two before being gay is accepted at virtually all levels of Thai society. Performative Genders, Perverse Desires: A Bio-History of Thailand’s Same-Sex and Transgender Cultures by Peter Jackson originally published in August 2003 in Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asia Context and republished in 2008 in Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue9/jackson.html#t112 I must stress again that I have merely tried to distil the essence of Jackson’s very long Paper. I may not have done this very effectively due to the amount of detail that has to be absorbed but hope I have highlighted at least some key issues. An indication of the depth of Jackson’s analysis is that the Paper has 125 footnotes! As a follow up, it is well worth seeking more information in Professor Jackson’s book An American Death in Bangkok: The Murder of Darrell Berrigan and the Hybrid Origins of Gay Identity in 1960s Bangkok. There is an excellent (and once again very long) summary in the link below. It highlights the expatriate homosexual subculture that existed in Bangkok following World War II. It mentions the two powerful politicoeconomic cliques that then emerged in Thailand, one based in the police and largely funded and supported by the CIA, the other the military. 49 year old American citizen, Berrigan, one of the homosexual clique with two 20s adopted Thai sons, founded and edited a newspaper titled Bangkok World which flourished in the 1960s. He was murdered in 1965. The Thai elite did not like this homosexual clique. They believed it was influencing Thai gender/sex discourses during the mid-1960s. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/12116

DICK! In England there is a popular dish named "Spotted Dick". One website describes it thus: "A quintessential British dessert, Spotted Dick represents everything that is delicious about traditional English cooking. Tender steamed pudding dotted with succulent currants is drizzled with a luxuriously rich and creamy vanilla custard. It’s heaven!"

I was perhaps wrong to make the comparison. Whilst Taipei has huge numbers attending and often any photograph will incorporate many dozens of marchers, I have certainly seen, shall I say, stragglers near the end where any photo would only include a few. So, yes, it is a subjective comment. To the list of two qualifications, I would also add that a large majority of the organisers must be Thai - and not merely students. There will be a lot of bureaucracy to get through for liaison with the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority on things like permits, police approvals and so on. That requires at least one person with an understanding of diplomacy and some degree of knowledge of how that gets done - no doubt quietly and behind the scenes if it is to be successful. I have often wondered why Thailand's attitude to sex changed quite dramatically during the 20th century. It seems to have been a very free and easy country in the 19th century. One visiting American in the 1880s was "shocked almost beyond endurance at the nudity of the people." adding "not until Siam is clothed need she expect a place among the respectable, civilised nations." Another visitor around this time, a British school inspector J. G. D. Campbell was horrified at men's sexual behaviour. He put it down to the climate. "In the hot regions of the earth, sensual indulgence is far more prevalent!" These two upholders of western morality were no doubt referring to the habit of Thai ladies not to wear tops and to the frequency of heterosexual sex rather than gay sex. But there are written accounts that gay sex was certainly practised even at Court and by at least one Supreme Patriarch. As attitudes to sexuality changed, at some point a law was introduced making sodomy a crime, suggesting that there was at the highest level an attempt, at the very least, actively to discourage homosexuality. Even when that law was repealed in 1956, for several years the media ran a very public campaign to out known homosexuals. I suspect it was probably around this time that public attitudes towards homosexuality as a whole began to change radically. As for government actions/inactions, the Human Rights Foundation published an interesting paper in 2015. Among its findings, the Thai government has failed to - 1. implement laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in all areas of public life; 2. protect LGBTI people against widespread discrimination in employment, thereby affecting their right to work and their right to emjoyment of just and favourable working conditions 3. take measures to reduce discrimination against LGBTI people in the health care system 4. protect LGBTI students against widespread bullying and harassment in the education system, thereby affecting their right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CESCR/Shared Documents/THA/INT_CESCR_CSS_THA_20028_E.pdf Given the above, it seems clear that organising any major gay Pride event will face a great many hurdles.

Yes, the old Pride Parades were organised mostly by foreigners. That was another part of the problem. I am not sure who that prominent person might be. But it was known to all in the country for decades that Prime Minister General Prem Tinsulanonda (from 1980 - 1988) and thereafter Head of the Privy Council was gay. He had been picked by the King to be Prime Minster and the two remained close until the King's death. It was alleged at the time that he gave up the Premiership when a newspaper threatened to out him as gay. Prem died two years ago aged 98.

That article gives no reason for the homophobic chants. Has one or more of the Mexican players come out as gay?

Just for information, according to the article below 2006 was the last of the series of annual marches. I am certain i watched one 2 or 3 years earlier. My memory may be playing tricks but from where I was standing I recall few spectators and a rather thin group of participants. Certainly the first two of @reader's pics show very few participants even though they are just snapshots of small sections of the Parades. In Taipei within those spaces would be dozens of marchers, many not necessarily dressed up. Still, that's all in the past. The major point as far as I am concerned was that the girls and boys who took part were not the average gay men and women in Thailand as in Taipei and other Taiwanese cities. Like Taiwan, the much smaller annual Parades in Tokyo and Hong Kong regularly feature just ordinary folk. Same is true at Singapore's Pink Dot where many of the younger LGBT community bring not only their parents but also their whole families including young children. Thailand always featured mostly professional guys and gals from the bars. The article adds that a Pride March was planned for May 20 in 2017 but was postponed to November due to the mourning period for the late King. It had been hoped to hold it on Silom but permission was was denied. Then for reasons that I have never seen explained, that March never actually happened. I think that was a pity because it was to have been the first not organised primarily by the commercial gay venues. https://www.khaosodenglish.com/life/events/2017/01/13/11-years-pride-parade-step-bangkok/ I still believe that no March here in Bangkok has a chance of being successful unless it can attract as marchers far more ordinary Thais. Clearly there is now a much greater awareness of LGBT issues amongst students and that is one group that I believe would now become part of a March. But I still see no chance of getting attendance by anyone working in the business community. And this is sad because Taiwan not only has many guys from that community, several major firms like Citibank not only support the Parade they have their banners proudly displayed during the March (see photo). Singapore also has a lot of support from local firms. It used to have considerable support from international firms based in the city state until the government banned foreign participation about 3 years ago. In fact, given that the Pink Dot idea has caught on in various parts of the world, I am starting to think a Bangkok Pink Dot held in a park would be a lot more effective than a March. Those participating could have a better cloak of anonymity, And the photos from the sky with Bangkok's skyscrapers in the background would be in many world newspapers, just as Pink Dot has been several times. It makes for a really powerful statement. Singapore Pink Dot - photo The New Paper

Sadly I cannot see any Gay Pride March working in Bangkok. You may remember one had to be abandoned in Chiang Mai in 2009 after it had actually started, as a result of harassment from about 200 protestors holding placards claiming that the event was against Thai culture. Any Pride March will require approvals from several authorities and roads will either have to be closed or, as with the past Bangkok Parades, half closed off. But if you cannot get members of most sectors of the Thai gay community to take part including those attending the hi-so nightclubs in the Thonglor area and it is left as before just to the commercial venues, I'd say it would be a total waste of time. I'm not sure i agree about moving too fast. As I mentioned, Taiwan had an equally conservative society following the end of Martial Law in 1987. At that time there were no gay venues. Bangkok, on the other hand, had quite a thriving gay culture in 1987 and many of those who attended the bars and gogo bars were Thais. Thailand was certainly ahead of Taiwan in terms of gay recognition. The difference, as I suggested in my earlier post, is that Taiwan had a dedicated band of professionals, blue-collar workers and students determined to lead a movement towards acceptance. It was a dedicated group movement intent on dialogue and discussion - not confrontation - that soon extended beyond Taipei to most of the other major cities. Thailand has occasionally had individuals like Khun Natee Teerarojianapong leading gay rights movements, but he has never had more than token backup The present student movements that are promoting gay rights remain small and fragmented, as far as I can see. Also, I seriously doubt if students can effect change on their own. And remember, once they graduate, many will get caught up in Thailand's much more homophobic business environment.

I cannot help feeling that article hardly represents the views of anything like a majority of Thais. For a start, the professions of the respondents - with one exception - are hardly representative of the community as a whole. The one exception is the student. I am delighted that he is finding more openly gay colleagues attending events for, as he says, the future is in their hands. I would like to have seen the views of at least two gay Thai professionals. Even as an expatriate with various Thai friends who has lived and worked here over many years, I know that Thai society as a whole remains extremely conservative. Most families are accepting when told their sones or daughters are gay. But there is ends. Many professional gay Thai men (and I assume women as well) will not dare tell their colleagues about their sexuality. They know only too well that this can affect their prospects for promotion. The business community is far less accepting. As some of the respondents point out, education about the LGBT community and lifestyles will no doubt help. It seems certain that existing views too often hold inaccurate and unfortunate conclusions - traditional customs, greater exposure to AIDS, ladyboy tendencies etc. I dislike even suggesting this but I believe gay community leaders here are partly to blame. I can't help looking at Taiwan where it was gay individuals who led the movement to change views among the general population, views that were generally homophobic. Progress was slow and steady and it started at a time when there were very few gay venues and places for gays to meet. Even the annual gay pride parade was started by individuals intent on getting across simple messages each year. Now of course it is a massive event with close to 200,000 attending the annual Gay Pride March. Around the turn of the millennium, Bangkok did have its own Gay Pride March. Even though the aim of the organisers was no doubt laudable, it really was a farce. I say that because it was organised by the gay business community. So those who took part were the boys and lady boys who worked in the bars and spas. It was way over the top for a city like Bangkok and drew few spectators. Certainly I think not many more than a handful of non commercial gays took part. Not surprisingly it died after a few years. For the gay movement develop here it cannot be led by the commercial venues.

Sorry but I give him zero credit. All over 60s, especially with one of the other underlying health issues, should be next in line following health workers and other front line staff. What I don't understand is that I and an expat friend here in Bangkok have been given dates and times for our first jabs next month. Although both were made via a private hospital, we have been told we are part of the government scheme and will not have to pay.

Yes to both - I mean "not" to both! Thanks for pointing this out. I realise my view on the Max is extreme. After all, without "electronic sorcery" Concorde would never have got off the ground and I looked forward to my one flight with a lot of excitement. But when I flew supersonic, the airliner had been safely flying passengers for 25 years and its cockpit crews were both unanimous in their praise for it and proud to be flying it. On the other hand, it was a complete airliner designed totally from scratch. To save cash and nor lose ground to Airbus whose Neo narrow body family, Boeing rejected a complete redesign for the 737 and instead yet again adapted that original 1960s low to the ground body. As I understand it, had Boeing simply lengthened the landing gear so that the fuselage sits higher off the ground, the engines could have been positioned under the wings and the problems and need for the MCAS system might have vanished. But a longer undercarriage would not have fitted into the existing wheel wells in the fuselage. So the struts would have had to be placed further out on the wing, thereby necessitating an a complete wing redesign which Boeing rejected on cost grounds. The problem was partly "solved" with some sort of telescopic strut. Another band aid solution!

I usually take Qatar back to the UK but only because I'm quite happy to book far ahead to take advantage of various special deals. In 2018 I got a biz return for 63,00 baht - roughly half the list price - during a 48-hour sale. On my last trip in October 2019 the aircraft was changed to one with the Q Suites and I was in 1K which is backward facing. Does not concern me in the slightest. The rows alternate backwards/forwards facing. The window seats have more privacy and tons of space - more than on the Emirates A380s. I reckon 1A and 1K are the quietest and best seats in the entire cabin. I do think Qatar beats Emirates hands down when it comes to meals and wines.

For a brief moment I thought "What the heck is this?" How does a handsome porn star of gay movies make such a confession? Then it clicked. You were not writing about Adam Archuleta!!!

This seems to follow on the idea thought up, I believe, by the novelist Neville Shute. His novel On The Beach was written as far back as 1957 and imagines a group of Australians waiting out the arrival of the nuclear cloud following World War 3. I will say no more, other than I found it a gripping read a few decades ago.

As is clear from reading this thread and those on other forums, Thailand's vaccine policy has been a disaster from the get-go. I realise this post gets close to what is within the rules, but without naming names, the decision of the Health Ministry last year to place the contract to manufacture the locally produced version of the Astra Zeneca vaccine with a company that had never before produced any vaccine of any type whatsoever was a farce. This was especially true given that the Government lab which has produced many different vaccines, some under contract to the WHO, bid for the contract and lost. The delays in getting that vaccine out shows the lackadaisical attitude of the government. Charitably they were probably lulled into a false sense of security by the very small number of cases last year. Then they dropped the ball and through mismanagement and corruption allowed the present third wave to roll over the country big time. The Prime Minister overruling the advice of his medical experts by permitting travel during Songkran this year was madness given that the wave had in fact started before then. The excuse he is quoted in the media as saying is that the public would not have stood for a second cancellation of Songkran! More madness! Now they have been forced to purchase tens of millions of doses from overseas at goodness knows what price. Oh, and the fact that the Minister of Health has ambitions to become Prime Minister may or may not have something to do with the debacle!