Male Homosexuality in 21st-Century Thailand

[reader]

From Anthem Press

A Longitudinal Study of Young, Rural, Same-Sex-Attracted Men Coming of Age

By Jan W. de Lind van Wijngaarden

Anthem Studies in Sexuality, Gender and Culture

This book presents the very first analysis of male homosexuality in modern rural Thailand that is based on sociological/anthropological research directly with 25 young same-sex attracted men. It explores changes in the way men view and describe their sexuality over time by interviewing them three times over a period of around 18 months. The men are followed during an important transition in their lives: the end of their high school years and the end (in most cases) of their life as a child with parents or extended family at a rural home. Nearly all decided to move to a city to continue their education or to find work. Some also had stints with sex work in one of Thailand’s well-known centers for prostitution. For nearly all men, this transition brought them into contact with new ideas about gender and sexuality, and many experienced an abrupt increase in their opportunities to have sex, leading to a readjustment of their moral universes. The young men in the study were still in the process of figuring out who they were/wanted to be, and many contradictions emerged in their narratives over the period of data collection. These contradictions, and the way they were resolved, presented an opportunity to critically explore the way the social structures in which these young men operate influence the way they think and explain their own sexual/gendered selves, and how changes in these social structures affect their sense of self.

A number of explanatory ‘lenses’ are used in the different book chapters that zoom in on different structuring/explanatory frameworks for making sense of gender and sexuality in Thai cultural contexts, as used and applied by the study participants. The first is Buddhism. Buddhist beliefs and traditional ideas about karma, fate, hierarchy, family, masculinity and femininity played important roles in the young men’s childhood understandings about homosexuality and same-sex relations–  especially in terms of their cause and morality. The second lens for understanding male homosexuality in Thailand is gender, where men are divided into feminine-oriented bottoms and masculine-oriented tops. A third lens is modernity/the desire to develop and grow, closely linked to Thailand’s globalizing economy and the increasing role of the Internet and social media. The Internet functioned as an important ‘playground’, a platform for trying-out different presentations of the self via Facebook and chat applications – and in many men this resulted in a rejection of their previous self-presentation as effeminate, which they gradually started to associate with being backwards, rural and ‘traditional’. The fourth lens is related to economy. Many of the young men in the study searched for romantic relationships based on complementarity and were looking for boyfriends who had something they did not have—money, a better position in society, or ‘wisdom’/the ability to guide. Most of the more effeminate men saw their sexuality as valuable, and several of the study participants described in this book – especially those coming from poor families – engaged in sex work and used their youth and beauty to find a wealthy long-term partner, in the hope of lifting their families out of poverty, towards a more prosperous future. The fifth lens is nationalism, or more specifically the concept of ‘being a good Thai’; gradually the young men learned that the Thai sense of self and the importance of performing one’s role as a ‘good’ son in public can be used as a strategy to cover-up private behaviors and desires. The sixth and final lens is family. Being ‘good’, respecting elders and elder siblings, financially supporting (grand-)parents, having good manners, meaning ‘acting appropriately in time and space’, gave the young men a way to retain the respect and support of elders and seniors, and determined how they dealt with (non-)disclosure of their sexuality to their families and others and explained their ability and desire to remain part of the mainstream of society. In the final chapter, a discussion about three critical concerns pertaining the health and wellbeing of same-sex attracted Thai men are discussed in the light of this proposed model: the ongoing HIV epidemic, mental health and LGBTI rights. 

Overall, this book presents significant new insights about the Thai sex/gender system, particularly on how it is affected by processes of globalization and the ascent of the Internet and mobile phones as tools for dating and romance.

https://anthempress.com/sociology/books/male-homosexuality-in-21st-century-thailand-pdf

 

 

 

[Londoner]

Thanks : even a precis as short as this  has identified several issues that have repeatedly arisen during my nearly eighteen years with P. I must explore further.

[CurtisD]

16 minutes ago, Londoner said:

even a precis as short as this  has identified several issues that have repeatedly arisen during my nearly eighteen years with P.

I have ordered a copy to see what insights it provides into Bangkok Guy. Any reduction is guesswork is valuable, even at $90 a copy. Cheaper on Kindle, but I enjoy leafing through a book over coffee.

[PeterRS]

I see that this is part of a short series of books on Studies on Sexuality, Gender and Culture. According to the introductory blurb on the Anthem Press site, "the series encourages detailed study of intimate sexual meanings, love and romance, gender and sexual relationships and institutions, including the formation of relevant public policies and education. The series is interested in changing meanings of intimacy and courtship, as well as the extension of research into public policies in areas such as sexual citizenship, sex and moral panics, sexual migration, sexual health and sexual identity movements in society and online, the redefinition of gender and belief in religion and the contribution of sexuality to social inequality in Western nations."

Given that last phrase, I am rather surprised that the series has a book on Thai society!

However, I see from the Cambridge University Press website that there is a direct quote from the book's Introduction. 

"Of the 25 young men in this study 20 were Buddhist; 4 were Muslim and 1 was Christian. I had expected that including young men from the south and the northeast in the study would lead to a certain variety in terms of interpretations of homosexuality that could partly be derived from the young men's religion. However, the four Muslim men in the study seemed to be Muslim in name only; they hardly ever went to the mosque or attended other religious services or events. They were recruited from Phuket, Pattalung and Nakhon Sri Thammarat, which are provinces where only a small percentage of the population is Muslim. For security reasons, I was unable to recruit men in the four ‘troubled provinces’ in the south of the country, where Islam has a much stronger role in everyday life and where life for a young homosexual man is likely to be very different. The influence of Islam on the development of the sexual subjectivity of young same-sex-attracted men could therefore not be studied in sufficient depth and detail in this study."

I'd love to know the age range of the young men in the study and how they were selected. A study of just 25 from around the country does seem to be a rather small sample. I wonder also from what social backgrounds they were selected. Since some had found their way into sex work and had a desire to find a wealthy long term partner, how many, I wonder, were from a higher social stratum and sought a career starting with University after school? The latter, in my view, have an even greater effect on the economy and positions in society. Also would any in that group see a necessity to restrain their gay selves in order to fit in as a professional working in Thailand's conservative society?

Perhaps these questions are answered in the book. I hope so. And i hope it will be worth the advertised £80 per copy!

[fedssocr]

obviously any "study" like this is going to be essentially anecdotal. I'm sure there's still some interesting tidbits though.

The whole young-gay-man-leaves-the-sticks-for-the-big-city narrative is a very old story across many countries and cultures.

[PeterRS]

9 hours ago, fedssocr said:

obviously any "study" like this is going to be essentially anecdotal. I'm sure there's still some interesting tidbits though.

I agree. My concerns remain the very small sample study, the geographical spread of the respondents being limited to rural areas in the north east and the south, and the fact that the interviews were conducted almost 10 years ago. Since technological advances play a part in the study, these will certainly in part be outdated.

I am certain the responses of the boys will be illuminating. I'll not be spending £80 on the book but hope someone may eventually post their views on it here.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I'll not be spending £80 on the book but hope someone may eventually post their views on it here.

The pdf version is £25, which is more reasonable.    Having got about a dozen other books waiting to be read, I'll wait for a review first. 

 

18 hours ago, CurtisD said:

I have ordered a copy to see what insights it provides into Bangkok Guy. Any reduction is guesswork is valuable, even at $90 a copy. Cheaper on Kindle, but I enjoy leafing through a book over coffee.

I would be most grateful if you could write a short review.

[CurtisD]

3 hours ago, z909 said:

I would be most grateful if you could write a short review.

Will do!

[TotallyOz]

I am curious to see how the book turns out. I read part of the beginning on Amazon and I found it odd the way the guy talked about the guys. Can't wait to read a review from someone that reads it.

[CurtisD]

My copy arrived the other day and I read it through in one sitting over a pot of coffee.

This is a book with a serious purpose – to better understand the life experience and mindset of young gay (not the term used in the book) ex-urban Thai guys in order to see if there is a better way to get them up to speed on the risk of HIV and the need for safe sex before they become part of the 30% of gay men in urban centers with HIV.

As it is a serious book, it is not written for light reading and there is some academic jargon. However, it is pretty readable, much more so than I would have expected for a book of this type.

The book is based around interviews with 25 guys over an 18 month period in which they finish high school and go on to higher education or the job market, usually leaving their home town for a city. What the guys say is quite illuminating and requires a re-read. There is a lot of material and having only read through it once over coffee the precis that follows may need amendment on a second reading.

The Thai framing of life in general including sexuality is quite different to the Western framing. There are many strands here, which in combination suggest that a Western approach to HIV outreach (peer-groups, gay-community-based support) will be much less effective than it is in the West because (i) young Thais listen better to someone more senior in the social hierarchy than a peer and (ii) young gay Thais do not see themselves as part of a gay community – creating an identity around being gay makes as much sense to them as creating an identity around a brand of car or a football team.

The process through which they and their family and friends recognize their sexual difference is quite different to that of a Western teen.

·        Thai society places a lot of value on appearances – on behaving correctly and fulfilling the expected role – and less value on factual truth. As long as you fulfill public role expectations, what you do in private is not of much concern as long as it does not hurt anyone. This means that having separate public and private personas is totally acceptable, not hypocritical.

·        Same-sex attraction is not a sin or bad behavior. It is bad luck. You have been dealt an unlucky hand because achieving a stable same-sex relationship is very difficult, if it is possible at all. Your chance of being happy in love is thus less than a straight persons. In karmic terms it is punishment for being a homewrecker in a previous life.

·        Sexual roles are defined along gender lines. If you are gay, you are assumed to be more female and it is assumed that acting and being female is what you want. Hence the recognized role of kathoey. Many of the guys interviewed were accepted and socialized as kathoey by their family and community before going to the city. As they gained experience they realized that they were not in fact passive and changed their self-presentation from kathoey to Man.

·        The fact that same-sex attracted people are accepted – with a slight second-class status as ‘bad luck’ – means they feel part of the broader family and community and creating a separate gay community does not feel so necessary.

·        The Thai view is that successful long term relationships are built on the combination of the differences that each partner brings to the relationship. Male/female, top/bottom, young/old, rich/poor, attractive/unattractive. The relationship is built on the exchange of these differences.

·        For teens of both sexes from poor backgrounds, this understanding of ‘exchange of differences’ provides a deeper logic to finding an older, wealthier partner than the logic that is obvious to Westerners.

·        The obligation to the family, particularly the mother, is life-long. The debt to the mother can never be repaid. You need to be a good son and support your family and particularly your mother. If you cannot provide grandchildren, you can compensate by greater provision of lifestyle support. You still have a role and maintain face.

·        Entering the bar scene is not loss of face. (i) The separation of public/private personas is not hypocrisy. In your home town you are a good son supporting your family. You do not escort in your home town, that would lose face, but out of sight is fine. (ii) As same-sex attracted you are thought of in a female role framework, so finding a husband to support you is a legitimate objective. To improve the economic status of the family, a wealthy husband would be preferable. Working bars is a way, probably the only way, to meet a wealthy man.

·        An ex-urban teen arriving in the city is likely to have very little knowledge of HIV and AIDs and safe/unsafe sex.

·        An ex-urban teen arriving in the city will not seek out a gay community and so will not encounter gay support groups who handle HIV/AIDs education.

·        A same-sex attracted teen arriving in the city has probably been conditioned to be passive, to seek an older wealthier partner and to follow the lead of this partner who is more senior in the hierarchy. So initially the teen is likely to be the receptive partner not the penetrative one and will take the lead of their partner on safe or unsafe sex practices. This creates a very big risk that they are infected with HIV early in their sexual experience. After some initial experiences, they may realize that they prefer the active role, and if they have contracted HIV and continue to not practice safe sex, they then help to spread it. And there you have the 30% positive rate among gay urban Thai men.

 

 

[PeterRS]

Thanks you @CurtisD for a fascinating and wide-ranging review. It throws up many issues which I did not realise would be covered in the book and, hopefully, once and for all condemns to the trash can other western outdated notions of why young gay boys in Thailand behave as they do.

14 hours ago, CurtisD said:

There are many strands here, which in combination suggest that a Western approach to HIV outreach (peer-groups, gay-community-based support) will be much less effective than it is in the West because (i) young Thais listen better to someone more senior in the social hierarchy than a peer and (ii) young gay Thais do not see themselves as part of a gay community – creating an identity around being gay makes as much sense to them as creating an identity around a brand of car or a football team

It has been obvious for decades that the real success Thailand had in combatting HIV and AIDS had little to do with western programmes and vastly more to one Thai man, Meechai Veravaidya. As when I was a young boy, condoms were difficult to buy and there seemed to be a stigma attached to purchasing them in a shop (indeed, in my town only one shop stocked them). Working in family planning, Meechai realised that the only way Thailand could reduce it mushrooming birthrate was to work on birth control. So he set about touring villages to popularise the condom and its use. He even had condom blowing competitions and creating water bombs from them. It worked amazingly well and the birthrate has now been significantly reduced.

When HIV came along, he switched to stressing the importance of condom use. By the mid '80s he was a Minister in Prime Minister Prem's government and therefore very high in the social hierarchy. Since condoms had become so popular they were known as 'Meechais', this unquestionably helped in controlling rates of HIV. Had he been able to continue his work which was by the start of the century extensive, more could have been done But the Thaksin government cut the funding for HIV-AIDS education. Sadly the boys in the study largely fall into that group, approaching puberty when the HIV prevention programmes were being wound down. And these I believe are the main reasons for the following conclusions from the book -

14 hours ago, CurtisD said:

-        An ex-urban teen arriving in the city is likely to have very little knowledge of HIV and AIDs and safe/unsafe sex.

·        An ex-urban teen arriving in the city will not seek out a gay community and so will not encounter gay support groups who handle HIV/AIDs education.

But even more important, I believe, is the notion of public/private personas and fulfilling a role. It explains why there can be a general acceptance of homosexuality in much of Thai society but non-acceptance in, for example, most places of work. It explains why gay men a bit older than those in the study who are trying to hold down a job in a large company and to fit in to Thai society are exceedingly reluctant to be associated with gay movements.

Thank you again.

[Vessey]

Now, I have not read this book, so my few observations are only based on what I have read on this thread.

In Pattaya I think the bars can 'de facto' create loose 'family groups' around the bar, where boys talk and support one another (aside from any physical liaisons that take place). Similarly groups of bars, JC, Sunee, Boyztown etc, can extend those groups.  The boys all seem to know each other and talk to each other and often support and help each other in straightened times.

Secondly I think social media, FB groups, Line groups etc. can also provide some discrete sense of gay community. The number of Thai orientated gay FB groups are increasing, with boys posting to get the validation or encouragement from other boys for their looks, sexuality, etc. There are often many thousands in each group; some boys members of several groups. As a farang joining such groups I am a mere observer, just vicariously enjoying the provocative pictures (well as provocative as FB allows that is) the boys put up.  They create the same sense of 'community' as we do ourselves as members of this (and other) gay Thailand forums; perhaps more so.

[Londoner]

A fascinating thread...thanks , everyone.  

Reading the precis, kindly prepared by CurtisD, led me to consider , yet again, the eighteen years I've been with P. and in particular those periods of mutual incomprehension that were  a feature of our early days.  

Line by line, I recognised what appeared to be puzzling aspects of this relationship and our attempts to explain to each other (mainly in Thinglish) what was going on.  And how our struggles were likely replicated in many such relationships.

A couple of things.

Vessey is spot-on about the friendship groups that sustain the guys, particularly those who've just arrived. P arrived in Pattaya twenty years ago with two bosom pals. In times of plenty, they partied; in times of hardship, a lucky one who had enjoyed an off shared his winnings among the the three of them. Although he is now comfortably settled in his longed-for farm up in the north, he looks back at his three or so years as a Pattaya MB with  nostalgia..... something that astonished me at first. He didn't mind the sex- even with people like me- but he loved the comradeship.

Secondly, CurtisD reports that  the study claims that guys from the country aren't clued-up on the hazards and prevention of Hiv/Aids. Not so in P's case. He was taught about this at school; even the famous banana/condom lesson was given.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

[spoon]

Just curious, is there a mention of the time the interview happened? Surely those who are teenagers in 2010 onwards vs those who were teenagers in 1980s has a very different experience growing up. 

[vinapu]

1 hour ago, spoon said:

Just curious, is there a mention of the time the interview happened? Surely those who are teenagers in 2010 onwards vs those who were teenagers in 1980s has a very different experience growing up. 

Good point !

[vinapu]

6 hours ago, Londoner said:

... he looks back at his three or so years as a Pattaya MB with  nostalgia..... something that astonished me at first. He didn't mind the sex- even with people like me- but he loved the comradeship.

 

perhaps it's the same mechanism which makes us missing our school years, we forgot tons of homework, bad marks, failed tests and nasty teachers but good stuff lingers on in our memory.

[CurtisD]

2 hours ago, spoon said:

is there a mention of the time the interview happened?

There were 3 interviews which took place over a 20 month period in 2011-2012. The participants were aged 18-19 at time of the first interview.

 

6 hours ago, Londoner said:

Vessey is spot-on about the friendship groups that sustain the guys, particularly those who've just arrived

Only 5 of the 25 participants were involved in the bar scene at any time and of those their attitude toward their fellow bar-boys was mixed, some seeing the culture as being bad as it encouraged a cycle of partying, drugs and consumption that made bar work necessary to maintain the cycle. 

Most of the participants seem to have been looking for a long term relationship and for the poorer ones this was often structured as seeking an exchange of differences with a partner who could not only help them but also their family - this was the case whether or not they got involved in the bar scene. 

6 hours ago, Londoner said:

the study claims that guys from the country aren't clued-up on the hazards and prevention of Hiv/Aids. Not so in P's case. He was taught about this at school; even the famous banana/condom lesson was given.   

The author was surprised by how lacking in knowledge they were as the participants were obtained through advertising to participate in a study related to improving knowledge of HIV on gay aps and networks. 

Bangkok Guy is younger than the participants in the study and is very informed about HIV/AIDS. The only form of sex is safe sex. I am now curious to understand how he became so well informed. My guess is that his 'older sister' with whom he runs some of the market stalls may have clued him in. 

 

[Ruthrieston]

The excellent work by the SWING charity in Pattaya reaching out to the boys working in the bars has achieved a great deal and deserves all our support. Handing out condoms and talking to the boys, and I remember my ex going on a weekend trip where they played games and had sessions learning about safer sex and condom use. 

[PeterRS]

14 hours ago, spoon said:

Just curious, is there a mention of the time the interview happened? Surely those who are teenagers in 2010 onwards vs those who were teenagers in 1980s has a very different experience growing up. 

As pointed out above, the interviews took place in 2011/12.

18 hours ago, Londoner said:

P arrived in Pattaya twenty years ago with two bosom pals. In times of plenty, they partied; in times of hardship, a lucky one who had enjoyed an off shared his winnings among the the three of them. Although he is now comfortably settled in his longed-for farm up in the north, he looks back at his three or so years as a Pattaya MB with  nostalgia..... something that astonished me at first. He didn't mind the sex- even with people like me- but he loved the comradeship.

Secondly, CurtisD reports that  the study claims that guys from the country aren't clued-up on the hazards and prevention of Hiv/Aids. Not so in P's case. He was taught about this at school; even the famous banana/condom lesson was given.   

Without knowing P's exact age, I can only surmise that he was taught sex education before the first Thaksin government had reached its mid-way point. After the huge success of Meechai's campaigns, it was extraordinary that Thaksin decided to reduce funding for sex education and HIV prevention in schools. Perhaps he was under the influence of his old pal, the deeply religious Interior Minister Purachai and his emphasis on the family - of which the Social Order campaigns were only the most obvious ouward sign). As a guess this reduction would have been put into effect in the curricula around 2003/4. A 2017 study outlined in a very long UNAIDS paper "The Thai State and Sexual Health Policy: Deconstructing the culture of silence and stigmatisation of young people’s non - marital heterosexual activity" states -

"for the age group of 15 to 24, only 46 percent of those surveyed could correctly identify ways to prevent the spread of HIV, implying more focus is needed on HIV prevention education for young people."

Given that a large part of those surveyed in the cities would indeed be aware, the actual knowledge of boys in the countryside may well have been very limited in 2011/12, as it probably is today..

https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2440/120203/1/Drew2019_PhD.pdf