While many transgenders, or lady-boys, have a high visibility and work in female professions such as hairdressing, cabaret shows, and Thailand’s sex industry, they are still looking for better integration into Thai society.
Born as men but living and looking like women, they often take female hormones and have cosmetic surgery to achieve the ultra feminine look. Transgenders and lady-boys are part of the cabaret and sex scene in other countries – especially India and the Philippines - but Thailand’s more open society means that the West hears more about the Thai scene than the scene in other countries.
They are also more accepted in Thailand as the Buddhist culture places a high value on tolerance. Despite this tolerance, many complain that society does not show them the respect it offers other members of society, and the ridicule and lack of acceptance in the workplace is something they are now fighting against. Lack of “normal” work has led many into prostitution, a risky profession at the best of times, more so now as many of them are badly informed about HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
To help the lady-boys, a counseling centre for transgenders, called Sisters, was set up in Pattaya in 2005, a city where there are probably more of them than any other place, catering, as it does, to a diverse range of foreign tourists. The current estimate of the number operating in Pattaya is over 2,000.
The opening of the centre was attended by the Mayor and blessed by a Buddhist monk. and it aims to provide them with advice, support and to teach them basics like cooking and housekeeping. It is the nearest thing many of them have to a real family as they are not always accepted by their relatives, although the money they send home is always welcome.
What they are asking for now is for the Thai government to offer them specific legal protection. They want transgenders to be considered as separate from gay males as they say their life is very different from that of a gay or straight male. Neither does it fit the term female.
Some steps have been taken towards improving the rights of lady-boys and transgenders and they have been recognized as separate and distinct from homosexuals in many areas of life. But what is most wanted, is the right to legally change their gender to female so that their ID documents is in compliance with the way they look.
Eventually, they hope that a change in the law would allow them to get married, something that is currently forbidden under Thai law.
Lady-boys always seem to be having a good time. They laugh and chirrup a lot, their high-pitched voices like birds, but their life isn’t fun. Beneath the banter and the smiles, there is a sadness. They have chosen this life, even had their bodies cut to make the changeover complete, but the final acceptance is still denied them.
Mari Nicholson - Award Winning travel writer and historian, member of British Guild of Travel Writers.Travelwriters.co.uk, and Society of Women Writers and ...
