Many LGBT members are facing and suffering different forms of gender discrimination in their everyday lives in Thailand. The significant lack of the social, political and cultural recognition of these gender minorities affects the right of these individuals to feel safe and protected in the country and the world they live in. This research paper overviews and evaluates the situation among sexual and gender minorities in Thailand. In addition, the paper examines a background and history of the Thai LGBT movement development. The social and legal aspects as well as problems of the lives of the LGBT community members are analyzed in details. The paper is oriented on the evaluation of the educational, health-care and employment discrimination of LGBT people. It is providing the recommendations for governmental and international institutions that would help to improve the rights of gender minorities both on national and international levels.
Nowadays, the problem of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is very important both on national and international levels. Despite the reputation of Thailand as one of the most tolerant countries regarding the sexual minorities in Asia, there are a number of issues of violating the cases of human rights and sex/gender discrimination. Therefore, this research paper seeks to analyze, overview, and evaluate the sexual and gender minorities, their history, as well as the social and legal aspects of the LGBT community life in Thailand.
1. Sexual Minorities Background in the Thai History
For a long time, sexual minorities have been a part of the history of Thailand. It is believed that Theravada Buddhism (the most common religion in this country) has influenced the most of the attitude of the Thai people towards homosexuality. The well-known American scholar Peter Jonson has once commented concerning this issue. His comment was as follows:
whether or not Buddhism has been instrumental in influencing the development of the popular Thai notion, a very similar mixing of physical and psychological sex, gender behaviors and sexuality occurs both in the Pali terms pandaka and in the Thai term kathoey.
Moreover, the number of cases that involved deviant gender behavior have been known even in the late 14th century. The first known homosexual scandal in Thailand happened in 1819, during the monarchy of the King Rama II. The high-ranking monk Somdet (the position of the Supreme Patriarch) had some homosexual relations with his male disciples. It was considered as the biggest shameful scandal in the Thai Buddhist community of the 19th century. Besides, scientists have found out a lot of wall murals in temples that represented the presence of homosexual behavior among men and women in the country before the Rattanakosin era. Up to the 1960s, there had been only three recognized forms of sexual/gender difference (phet): a man, a woman, and the kathoey. The latter term includes transvestites, hermaphrodites, homosexuals, and transsexuals. For the term kathoey, the Thai people had a number of meanings, as kathoey thae (a true hermaphrodite), kathoey sao (a cross-dressing woman), kathoey thiam (a cross-dressing man), kathoey num (a masculine young homosexual man), and many others. In general, people did not distinguish a difference between gender and sexuality. They mainly were focused on the fact that sexuality was only the erotic preference of a person. Even more, kathoey people sometimes had the honorable status in the society. It was believed that they had the shamanic abilities. However, with the Western influence on the Thai nation, the people’s attitude towards homosexuality has significantly changed, up to its criminalization. The Western culture has replaced this broad term with the words gay and lesbian. A number of social and cultural norms of conduct concerning the gender roles, sexuality, and behavior have been established. However, for the Thai sexual minorities, the foreign influence had both the negative and positive sides. From one perspective, the close contact between the Thai and Western lesbian and gay communities allowed to receive the necessary experience, knowledge, and support in the protection of the human rights and fight against the gender discrimination. From the other side, the upper-class Europeanized Thais were the biggest homophobes, as they were mostly influenced by the Western prejudice concerning the homosexuality during their visits to Europe. Officially, there were several hundred of Thai homosexual men in 1965. They formed the gay association (chomromgay) (Jackson & Sullivan, 1999, p. 3). The fastest development of the LGBT community began after the 80s. During this period, nearly 10 gay/lesbians entertainment places had worked throughout the country. Meanwhile only in 11 years there were more than one hundred different LGBT bars, discos, saunas, and others places opened. Approximately, twenty gay/lesbian oriented magazines in the Thai language and one in English were published in Thailand. As well, the Thai Ministry of Health officially proclaimed that homosexuality was not a mental illness or disorder in 2002 (from 1954, homosexuality was considered as a mental disorder). After that, in 2005, the Ministry of Defense allowed the LGBT community members to serve in the army. Moreover, the Thai Red Cross has allowed being blood donors for the people who have sexual contacts with the same sex person. Finally, the Gender Equality Act was signed by the Thailand government in 2015. It prohibited the discrimination and stigmatization of people basing on their gender status. Thailand authorities conduct their homosexual friendly politics also to attract more tourists to the country. The Thai LGBT market is considered as one of the most developed and LGBT-friendly places in Asia. However, despite the significant evolution of the Thai LGBT in the recent years, its local members still face a number of problems in the educational, health and employment spheres.
2. Social and Legal Aspects of Gender and Sex Minorities Life in Thailand
2.1. The Health Status
As a number of sociological and psychological studies show, transgender people need in average 10-15 years for a complete physical and psychological transformation. During this process, transgender people have to deal with many health-related issues. From a psychological perspective, they feel mental pressure, which leads to the attempts to commit suicide, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, etc. Deciding on a gender shift, an individual thinks that it would be easier to feel oneself better, but it is a deep mistake as the person cannot be changed. The internal conflict, arising at the stage of realization that the ones body is strange, remains.
One more important thing, which affects the health of transgender people, is hormones. Usually, these persons have to undergo hormone therapy during the whole life and in huge doses. The main purpose of this treatment is the bodys adaptation to the opposite biological sex. Traditionally, such therapy starts at least 6-12 months prior to the surgery, allowing the preparation of a patient to a postoperative period. If sex changes from male to female, a combination of drugs, containing estrogen and progestogen, is used. If it shifts from female to male, drugs with male sex hormones, often in the form of injections, are used. These hormones strongly affect the health and the mood of the individual. Willing to harmonize their bodies with their identities, many transgender people decide to pass the hormone therapy without consulting a doctor, which leads to other serious health problems. The average life duration of a transgender person is about