Ladyboys … is there no end to this?

I don’t know how much (relatively minor) news filters out of Thailand to the international media but, given the large expatriate contingent living and working, or maybe retired, in the country, there are several daily news websites and a couple of English language tabloid “newspapers” (I can’t think of another word to describe them, but the standards of journalism and reporting are pretty low; so low in fact that calling them newspapers is a giving them undue credit!) which churn out a constant diet of crime, scandal, gossip and so on for their readers.

Presumably, there are enough readers of these papers for them to survive as they seem to have been around for years; and, presumably, their readers are content with reading about some of the more lurid aspects of life in the self-christened “Land of Smiles”!

Yes, yes, I know I’ve been down this route before and I know I’ve made comments about the hardships Ladyboys face here in Thailand and how, fundamentally, widespread education and support for their cause is the answer. However, over the last few weeks hardly a day has gone by without some new low being reached in the (alleged) behaviour of members of the T community being reported by the media with glee—and, what’s more, it seems that we are now dealing with a veritable United Nations of victims; witness:

“Ladyboys rob Swedish tourists in broad daylight near popular tourist beach,” or

“Oman tourist drugged and tricked by Ladyboy,” or

“Maltese tourist encounters thieving Ladyboys on Pattaya Beach;” or maybe the most eye-opening headline of late:

“Pakistani tourist’s rented car stolen by two Ladyboys from love motel,”

How on earth can we, more regular, (I wanted to write “normal” but feel that word probably doesn’t suit many of us!)… ahem, more respectable, members of the T community gain any credibility or make progress with not being discriminated against when incidents like the above are happening and being reported with such frequency?

How do we convince the public at large that there are many, many “different shades” of T people within our diverse community and we are not all apt to set out and rob, trick or drug other people?

How can we make other people see that the root causes of such actions will never go away whilst there is such discrimination, bias and misunderstanding against T people who, at the end of the day, like it or not, are our “sisters”?

I completely understand that many minorities are likely to suffer when they try to become more visible — and many other minorities are persecuted simply because they don’t conform to the general views of what is normal and what is not.

Yet, the general perception is that Asian societies are far more tolerant and open about the “third gender” or however you wish to label T people — and by and large this seems to be true. Day to day acceptance, as I have mentioned before, is fine in Thailand but a “glass ceiling” on career prospects and restrictions on total assimilation into society for most T people remains.

Still, in view of the headlines mentioned above, I feel that somewhere, somehow along the way, T people in this part of the world have got to group together, take a long hard look at themselves/ourselves and work out how to stop the minority within our minority affecting the way the rest of the world at large tends to view us.

Otherwise, far sadder headlines such as: “Transgender stabbed to death” or “Ladyboy fatally injured in fight,” will never go away and any sympathy for the “T cause” and the positive perceptions which we try generate will continue to be denuded by the behaviour and actions of a small minority — making the struggle for unequivocal acceptance all that much more difficult.

I really don’t recall members of certain other minorities, such as our G or L friends, going around stealing or drugging and robbing people whilst they were fighting for recognition and acceptance.

So why should we?

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Tags: featured, katoey, Ladyboy, Thailand, Transgender, Transsexual

Category: Transgender Community News, Transgender Opinion