Thai
woman: (in English) Where do you live?
Me:
Over there (I gesture towards my house, about half a block a way)
Thai
woman: Who do you sleep with?
Me: No
one
Thai
woman: Why?
Me:
Because I don't have a girlfriend.
Thai
woman: I think you spoke wrong. You should have said “boyfriend”.
Me:
Nope. Mai chop puu-chai. (I
don't like men).
Thai
woman: Why?
Me:
Because I'm lesbian.
Bits
and parts of this conversation are repeated on nearly a daily basis.
If someone isn't asking me where I live, or who I live with, they are
surely asking me about my sexual orientation. I guess I'm lucky in
that regard, many Peace Corps volunteers are sent to countries that
they have to hide their orientation. Not so much here in Thailand.
In fact, I was outed at my site within, oh about a week after getting
here. Let me set the stage for you: one of the most common
questions a Thai person will ask you (after where you from) is mii
faan ru yung? (Do you have
partner or not?). I kept responding, no, no, no and they just
couldn't believe it. {ok, in all honesty, I did kinda have a
girlfriend at the time, but I knew it wasn't going to last and I just
figured it would be easier just to say no then to go through the
whole “we broke up thing”} Anyway, one night hanging out with my
host family and my host father's niece (and our neighbor- her name is
Pong, btw) I was showing them pictures of my American family on my
computer. I have the Iphoto thingy where you can tag faces, so I was
scrolling through all my different friends/family to find the
pictures to show them....
Pong:
(in English) Who's that? Is he your boyfriend.
Me:
No. I don't have a boyfriend.
Pong:
Do you like men?
Me:
silence
Pong:
Do you like men?
Me:
No.
Pong:
Do you like women?
Me:
Yes, ok?!
Pong:
(in Thai to the rest of the family) Mai chop puu-chai, bpen
Tom. (She doesn't like men,
she's a lesbian)
The
family all looked at me for a moment.
Pong:
Mai bpen rai (ain't no
thang)
Pong
then quickly took it upon herself to inform everyone any time we were
together that I don't like men. For a while, nearly every week the
ladies in the Education Department (Pong is a kindergarten teacher at
my Tesaban's nursery school, which shares facilities with the
Education Department) would bring up the topic of my sexual
orientation. Sometimes they would ask why I don't like men,
sometimes they would ask why I like women. Sometimes I would try to
explain the difference between a Tom and a lesbian (a Tom is
basically a butch dyke, a lesbian that takes on the mannerisms of a
man- in typical Thai fashion, there's not much distinction made
between a homosexual and a transgendered. More on this later). One
of my favorite conversations went something like this:
Pii
Netr: (in Thai) Nico, ta mai mai chop puu-chai? (Why
don't you like men)
Pii
Van: (in Thai) Nico mai chop puu-chai pra wa Nico
mai oaw luuk (Nico
doesn't like men cause she doesn't want kids).
This
statement is pretty illuminating when it comes to the issue of sexual
orientation in Thailand. To my Thai friends, it made perfect sense
that I would be a lesbian because I don't want to have kids. The
same way it makes perfect sense to some Thai ladies to suddenly
decide they may want to give puu-ying (women)
a shot when they meet me. {I don't know if its because I'm so
irresistible, or because I'm so irresistibly farang
(foreign)} No joke. This has happened a number of times, either
someone will say she used to like men, but now she likes me, or tell
me she wants to be my faan,
or just act in a way that is awfully, awfully suspiciously like
flirting. Its confusing to shift through all these layers of
cultural differences- is she flirting because she likes me,
or is she flirting cause she likes farang?
Is she really a lesbian/bi, or is she just playing one for the
farang? Is she even
really flirting? I recently had a crazy experience with a Thai woman
who told me she would find me a girlfriend, but then later decided
she wanted to be my
girlfriend. Later it turned out she already had some Canadian
boyfriend or something. I don't necessarily think this is an
uncommon sort of occurrence. Another PCV I know (no names) was
dating a Thai lady for a while. After they broke up, it turned out
she had had a girlfriend on the side the whole time. Just the other
day he told me about a Thai women he knows that has been married to a
male farang for 20
years, but is really a lesbian. In general, Thailand is quite
accepting of genderqueers, homosexuals, bisexuals, and everything in
between. This, however, does not stop them from making endless
comments about such people, or asking endless questions to farang
about such people (or about themselves, if you happen to be one).
They like to ask me if we have kaotoeies
in America (a Kaotoey is
a somewhat derogatory name for a transgendered male. It is pretty
much assumed all gay men are Katoeies),
then tell me they have a lot in Thailand. The point out young kids
and tell me they are Katoeies,
or (if they're female) the same as me. One time, I tried to explain
to them that I wasn't really a Tom (In Thailand, they have Toms and
Dees, basically butch and fems. I'm clearly not a Dee, but I assume
they think that Toms are women that want to be men. Maybe this is
just me not really understanding Thailand). Anyway- the conversation
went a little like this:
Pii
Netr: (In Thai) Nico bpen Tom, chia mai? (You're
a Tom, right?)
Me:
(In Thai) Mai. Nico mai chop puu-chai, chop puu-ying, dtee
mai yaak bpen puu-chai. Kaow jai mai? Nico bpen puu-ying, dtee mai
bpen puu-ying puu-ying (No. I
don't like men and I like women, but I don't want to be a man. Do
you understand? I'm a women, just not a girly girl.- ok this last
part probably wasn't said right, but oh well)
Pii
Netr: blank look
The
thing about Katoeies and Toms, or saao bpra-payt song (a
women with two parts) is that they consider them (or us, I should
say) a third gender. Some one who is not one or the other, but both.
But what person (gay or straight or what have you) doesn't have a
little of the other gender in them? The point is, given my limited
understanding of the whole issue, a saao bpra-payt song
isn't really a person of one
gender that wants to be (or identifies as) the other, but a person
that is beyond the limiting dynamics of a two-gender system. The
concept of a third gender is hard for a lot of my other PCV friends
to understand, and I think its equally hard for a lot of Thai people
to comprehend. Regardless, the acceptance of the fact of the
existence of a third gender has been around in Thailand a hell of a
lot longer then it has been in America. Given this option of a third
gender, I do wonder where I actually fall. I know I'm a lady, and
I'm happy being one; but damn if I don't conform to the gender
standards American (and Thai) culture sets out for me. But is this
an indication of my internal gender identification, or an indication
of the fuck-upness of our cultural constructs of gender? Part of me
would just automatically place myself in the third gender category
just for the sake of being different. But again, how much of how I
behave and act (contrary to established gender roles) has to do with
my gender vs the constructs of gender? I know Thai women make me
feel like a hulking butch, because I tower over them and don't wear
make-up or skirts and I'm not afraid of insects/geckos and I can walk
more than a block without passing out. But there are other PCVs
(female) that do/don't do all of that, and I'm sure they would never
put themselves in a third gender category. Does my sexual
orientation change my perception of my gender? If given the choice
between a Tom and a Dee, I would probably go for the Dee (although,
actually I would probably be happier with the Tom) does this make me
more or less of a Tom? Do I have to wear skirts and make-up to be a
Dee? Do I have to look like a boy to be a Tom? Is my love of
androgyny an indication of my third gender? Or do I just hate labels
and categories? I recently had a gay friend from America come and
visit. One night, we crashed a wedding (not really, I wasn't
invited, but as we walked towards we were waved over). Towards the
end of the night, we were hanging out with some of my male friends
and Phil got up to pee.
Su-su:
(In Thai): Puan bpen puu-chai or puu-ying? (Is
your friend a man or a woman?)
Me:
laugh
Su-su:
(In Thai): Kao bpen puu-ying lae Nico bpen puu-chai!!!
(He's a woman and you're a man!)
We
all laughed hysterically.
If
it bothered me every time a Thai person assumed something about me,
or other farangs, I would be in deep shit. They think all farangs
drink black coffee and it will turn your skin white (cause I do, and
I have it). They think all farangs have hairy legs (cause I do).
They think all farangs are rich (not because I am, they just think
that). They think I want to go to Pattaya (cause there's a lot of
farangs there). They think all farangs live alone (because I do, and
well, maybe I told them that so they would get off my back about
living alone). They think I'm a student of Thai culture, that I'm a
Christian, that I'm going have some sort of job placement when I get
back to America. They think I'm German, or English, or that all
farangs are the same. They think there's a passa farang
(a foreigner's language). Sometimes they think I'm part Thai and
that my mother is Thai and my father is a farang. They think farang
men like dark skinned Thais (because a lot of farang prey on the poor
in Isaan- who tend to be darker skinned then Central Thais). Part of
being a Peace Corps volunteer is dispelling some of these myths.
Teaching people that farang are just like them, that we're not all
whore chasing, rich bastards. And part of Peace Corps is teaching all
of you back in America that all Thai women aren't whores,
that there's more to this country than Pattaya and that both the
phenomena of Thai/farang marriages and Pattaya have their roots in
the Vietnam war (ok, maybe that last one isn't officially sanctioned
by the US government, but isn't it time we started accepting our
country's impact around the world?).
When
my first host family learned that I would eventually be living by
myself they got worried and kept asking who would take care of me.
(funny enough, when my host father asked me that, I didn't know what
he was saying and looked it up in the dictionary. What he was saying
was chuai eng, which
means “help yourself” or “masturbate”. I thought for a
second he was asking me if I would masturbate when I lived alone.
That little mix-up payed off later when my friends were
talking about masturbation and I
could understand what they were saying). When the topic came up with
my host family at site they kept worrying about who would take care
of me, and if I would be lonely and why I
wanted to live alone. I agreed that I would keep coming to their
house to eat, and I said I wouldn't be lonely and that I wanted to
live alone because sometimes farang just want their space and to be
alone. They told me Thais think that's lonely and that they like
being around lots of people all the time.
A
couple months ago, I actually considered trying to find a new person
to move in with. I realized I was getting lonely and my language was
going down hill. Coincidently, around that time, one of my best Thai
friends killed himself. He was a well-known and well-liked member of
the community, and it came as a shock to all of us. He was an only
child, and after he died, his mother now was living alone. I knew
how much his death has upset her, and how little Thai people like
sleeping/living alone. I decided I would spend a couple nights with
her in an attempt to show my concern, since I didn't know how to do
with language. I think it really touched her, and she began to say
that I should move in. I thought about it for a while, but then she
started chasing me down when I was out and I started to get resentful
and I realized that I like to live alone not because I'm a farang, or
I like to be alone or I like my personal space (although I do like to
be alone and like my personal space) but because people generally bug
the shit outta me,
and I can only take them for so long before I start to resent
everything about everything. Which is probably a personal problem I
should work on....
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