12/21/2023 0 Comments Very young kathoey![]() Joseph Pemberton, a US marine, murdered Filipina trans woman Jennifer Laude in 2015, his defence being he didn’t know she was trans. But something is alluring or titillating about it nonetheless.” And this trope surrounding deception has real-life consequences. The male tourist gets caught up in something they don’t realise and feels cheated somehow. “It’s an Orientalist trope,” Murtagh tells VICE, “that one of the dangers of Southeast Asia is that you can’t even trust gender. “I’m never getting drunk in Thailand,” says another. “Starting to scare, if I didn’t listen to the voice I wouldn’t know,” says a user on one of the videos. A common argument that’s made in those videos and echoed in the comments is how deceitful these women are. This lack of protection from local authorities works in tandem with objectifying, discriminatory attitudes promoted by tourists. Criminalisation also impacts corruption: sex workers have to give money to the police to maintain their businesses, and if they don’t, they’re fined or put in jail.” “If you’re exploited on the job, for example, if your income is deducted because you don’t look good enough on the day, it can’t be investigated or protected. To complicate things further, sex work remains criminalised: “The burden is all on the sex worker,” says Best. ![]() In 2015 the country introduced the Gender Equality Act, which aims to protect Thai transgender people from discrimination, but a 2021 report highlighted how insufficiently it’s been put into practice, and trans people’s gender identity still isn’t legally recognised. She says the Thai government has historically capitalised on LGBTQ+ people – primarily through the entertainment industry – without providing welfare or protection. “LGBTQ+ identities are only conditionally accepted in Thailand,” says Best Chitsanupong, founder of the LGBTQ+ youth community organisation Young Pride Club. Tourists treating an experience with a ladyboy as a box to be ticked on a lad’s holiday to-do list contributes to a misconception of Thailand as this liberal paradise where everything goes, but that isn’t necessarily reflected in the conditions of actual trans people in the country. ![]()
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