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An interesting column from the The Nation, Jan 7, 2013
Photo from Blogspot.com
Nat Separates the Men from the Ladyboys
Any man who comes to Thailand and has sex with a ladyboy, even if that man believed his tryst was with a woman, must be gay, right? Not so, says Nat. As with any situation with ladyboys, there is far more than meets the eye.
I once had a friend visit from England who thought he might go for a spot of some naughty fun in Pattaya. Having been told of the illicit pleasures that Pattaya could offer a single man, he couldn€™t wait to partake of the services a bar girl would have to offer. I don€™t judge my friend for this. It is well-known amongst Thais that sex tourism is what brings many people on holiday to Pattaya. I€™m not particularly embarrassed about it either. Of course I hate the idea that when the rest of the world thinks of Thais they think of us as prostitutes and drug dealers, but no one €” including our leaders €” seems to want to make a concerted effort to rectify this situation, so it is stereotype that we will have to live with. But I€™m not trying to initiate a discussion on sex workers or drug trafficking. That€™s for another day. The issue I€™m going to talk about is the fact that the comely young lady my friend engaged for the evening was, unbeknownst to him, a man.
Needless to say that came as an unpleasant surprise.
Okay, before I go any further, I apologise for all the clarifications I will make in the name of being politically correct. Not that I€™m trying hard to avoid getting sued. This is what happens when a liberal person like me discusses how you can tell a boy from a girl.
Don€™t get me wrong. As a gay man, I happily embrace the transgender community because, in many ways, this community is part of my own. Not that I have any desire to be a woman. I mean, I have an immense amount of respect for people with the courage to live openly transgender. I just don€™t happen to be one. I€™m just gay. I do have transgender friends, however, and they are the first ones to tell you that gender identity is not necessarily about the body one was born with.
See what I mean? I start talking about this and it€™s an ideological minefield.
Anyway, the question everyone wants to know is: couldn€™t my friend tell? Frankly, men €” in the strictest sense of the term €” have dangly bits down there. Some men in Pattaya have both dangly bits down there and jiggly bits up there and some others make a great living from it, but surely my friend could tell the difference between a man and a woman based on looks alone. Couldn€™t he?
Well, no, he couldn€™t. You see, he didn€™t get to see the dangly bits until, deep in the throes of penetrative sex, he decided to switch on the light, the better to admire the Thai beauty with whom he was sharing intimacy. And, wouldn€™t you know it, there was more to this beauty than he expected.
Some people I talk to don€™t believe that my poor friend is heterosexual and that he subconsciously wanted to have sex with a man so chose a transgender prostitute for the evening. But I assure you, that was not the case. My friend just couldn€™t tell. My friend is not blind, either.
The Likely Ladylads
So why couldn€™t he tell?
The markers for masculinity and femininity are different across races and, when someone from one race encounters someone from another race, he can€™t necessarily tell the difference. The same could be said for telling one person from another. The features we look at to tell people apart vary from race to race. Westerners have hair ranging from platinum blond to black and so it is often difficult for them to tell one person from another when looking at Asians because we all have either very dark brown or black hair. So while it can be racist to declare that all Asians look alike, if you are trying to tell people apart by hair colour, such a statement isn€™t untrue.
To many westerners, a thin Thai man doesn€™t look that much different from a thin Thai woman because the markers of gender €” large breasts on a woman or big muscles on a man €” aren€™t always as obvious. Throw a female wardrobe into the mix and it can get even more confusing. Instead of looking for such markers on the body, we in Thailand look more at facial features to tell men from women or, in the case of my English friend, women from ladyboys. Men of any race tend to have more prominent brows and larger noses and chins in comparison to women. Men also tend to have Adam€™s apples. That€™s how I usually tell a transgender woman from the average one.
And so what is my point, or perhaps more aptly, the lesson to be learned here? One answer would be: it can€™t hurt to ask the madam or bar manager before engaging a prostitute. The real lesson, however, is that, when travelling from one part of the world to another, it is wise never to make assumptions based on past experience because the most basic of distinctions might be made in a different way from what you are used to.
And what about my friend from England? What became of him? He, of course, survived the incident and is now telling tales of his derring-do in Thailand.
Any man who comes to Thailand and has sex with a ladyboy, even if that man believed his tryst was with a woman, must be gay, right? Not so, says Nat. As with any situation with ladyboys, there is far more than meets the eye.
I once had a friend visit from England who thought he might go for a spot of some naughty fun in Pattaya. Having been told of the illicit pleasures that Pattaya could offer a single man, he couldn€™t wait to partake of the services a bar girl would have to offer. I don€™t judge my friend for this. It is well-known amongst Thais that sex tourism is what brings many people on holiday to Pattaya. I€™m not particularly embarrassed about it either. Of course I hate the idea that when the rest of the world thinks of Thais they think of us as prostitutes and drug dealers, but no one €” including our leaders €” seems to want to make a concerted effort to rectify this situation, so it is stereotype that we will have to live with. But I€™m not trying to initiate a discussion on sex workers or drug trafficking. That€™s for another day. The issue I€™m going to talk about is the fact that the comely young lady my friend engaged for the evening was, unbeknownst to him, a man.
Needless to say that came as an unpleasant surprise.
Okay, before I go any further, I apologise for all the clarifications I will make in the name of being politically correct. Not that I€™m trying hard to avoid getting sued. This is what happens when a liberal person like me discusses how you can tell a boy from a girl.
Don€™t get me wrong. As a gay man, I happily embrace the transgender community because, in many ways, this community is part of my own. Not that I have any desire to be a woman. I mean, I have an immense amount of respect for people with the courage to live openly transgender. I just don€™t happen to be one. I€™m just gay. I do have transgender friends, however, and they are the first ones to tell you that gender identity is not necessarily about the body one was born with.
See what I mean? I start talking about this and it€™s an ideological minefield.
Anyway, the question everyone wants to know is: couldn€™t my friend tell? Frankly, men €” in the strictest sense of the term €” have dangly bits down there. Some men in Pattaya have both dangly bits down there and jiggly bits up there and some others make a great living from it, but surely my friend could tell the difference between a man and a woman based on looks alone. Couldn€™t he?
Well, no, he couldn€™t. You see, he didn€™t get to see the dangly bits until, deep in the throes of penetrative sex, he decided to switch on the light, the better to admire the Thai beauty with whom he was sharing intimacy. And, wouldn€™t you know it, there was more to this beauty than he expected.
Some people I talk to don€™t believe that my poor friend is heterosexual and that he subconsciously wanted to have sex with a man so chose a transgender prostitute for the evening. But I assure you, that was not the case. My friend just couldn€™t tell. My friend is not blind, either.
The Likely Ladylads
So why couldn€™t he tell?
The markers for masculinity and femininity are different across races and, when someone from one race encounters someone from another race, he can€™t necessarily tell the difference. The same could be said for telling one person from another. The features we look at to tell people apart vary from race to race. Westerners have hair ranging from platinum blond to black and so it is often difficult for them to tell one person from another when looking at Asians because we all have either very dark brown or black hair. So while it can be racist to declare that all Asians look alike, if you are trying to tell people apart by hair colour, such a statement isn€™t untrue.
To many westerners, a thin Thai man doesn€™t look that much different from a thin Thai woman because the markers of gender €” large breasts on a woman or big muscles on a man €” aren€™t always as obvious. Throw a female wardrobe into the mix and it can get even more confusing. Instead of looking for such markers on the body, we in Thailand look more at facial features to tell men from women or, in the case of my English friend, women from ladyboys. Men of any race tend to have more prominent brows and larger noses and chins in comparison to women. Men also tend to have Adam€™s apples. That€™s how I usually tell a transgender woman from the average one.
And so what is my point, or perhaps more aptly, the lesson to be learned here? One answer would be: it can€™t hurt to ask the madam or bar manager before engaging a prostitute. The real lesson, however, is that, when travelling from one part of the world to another, it is wise never to make assumptions based on past experience because the most basic of distinctions might be made in a different way from what you are used to.
And what about my friend from England? What became of him? He, of course, survived the incident and is now telling tales of his derring-do in Thailand.
