News Forum - LGBTQ+ tourism revenue boom fuels drive for legalised same-sex marriage in Thailand

[Thaiger]

Thailand is witnessing a surge in the burgeoning LGBTQ+ community, as diversity takes centre stage worldwide, boosting LGBTQ+ tourism in the country. As per estimates by LGBT Capital, an asset management company serving the LGBTQ community, 5 to 10% of the world’s population identifies as LGBTQ+. This demographic represented around 3.6 million residents in Thailand … …

The story LGBTQ+ tourism revenue boom fuels drive for legalised same-sex marriage in Thailand as seen on Thaiger News.

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[Karolyn]

Thailanders have their own opinions about such matters. No need to import Western ideological crap. 

Lesbians and gays, and possibly share a biological cause. (Think about it.) And transgender isn't even about sex. The association of gays with transgenders, leads to gays being bullied with certain stereotypes, as well as a lack of acceptance for transwomen.

Does LGBT even make a shred of sense, with these realities in mind? 

[HolyCowCm]

15 minutes ago, Karolyn said:

Thailanders have their own opinions about such matters. No need to import Western ideological crap. 

Lesbians and gays, and possibly share a biological cause. (Think about it.) And transgender isn't even about sex. The association of gays with transgenders, leads to gays being bullied with certain stereotypes, as well as a lack of acceptance for transwomen.

Does LGBT even make a shred of sense, with these realities in mind? 

I think it is in basic general defined but some of them take it out to more obscure fetish or twisted categories. Chics with d*cs either are transitioning transgenders or they are gay with oddities. 
 

Not sure how the officials can even put a number on this category. Tourism is related to domestic I would gather and during the pride gala it had a lot of Hetero in the crowd. Could be a lot of close and ac/dc ones out there, but that they would never be openly able to count. 
But now you even have LGBT—QRS and I identify as this. Works seems yo be going sideways a bit if you ask me. 

[Pinetree]

This is going to sound bad to some, but I am sick to death of hearing about Pride Marches, TGBTQ++, Rainbow Flags,  and that community's constant whining and moaning and of those who bang on about their problems and supposed (often imagined) discrimination.  Why don't people just live their lives and leave others alone to live theirs.  I don't give a monkeys how others live their lives, just don't push it down my throat at every opportunity and on every news bulletin, it's fxxxing irritating .

There, rant over. 

[HolyCowCm]

4 hours ago, Pinetree said:

This is going to sound bad to some, but I am sick to death of hearing about Pride Marches, TGBTQ++, Rainbow Flags,  and that community's constant whining and moaning and of those who bang on about their problems and supposed (often imagined) discrimination.  Why don't people just live their lives and leave others alone to live theirs.  I don't give a monkeys how others live their lives, just don't push it down my throat at every opportunity and on every news bulletin, it's fxxxing irritating .

There, rant over. 

I’m sure some of them would love to ram something down your or their throats. 
 

But I agree, they are not castaways anymore and need to tone it down not tossing it up in everyone’s face every time they get, but I do see that with this it also makes stubborn old fossil dinosaurs cringe and have to see the change whether they like it or not. This does also foster other changes unless say like a Myanmar or CCP country. 

[Marc26]

3 hours ago, Pinetree said:

This is going to sound bad to some, but I am sick to death of hearing about Pride Marches, TGBTQ++, Rainbow Flags,  and that community's constant whining and moaning and of those who bang on about their problems and supposed (often imagined) discrimination.  Why don't people just live their lives and leave others alone to live theirs.  I don't give a monkeys how others live their lives, just don't push it down my throat at every opportunity and on every news bulletin, it's fxxxing irritating .

There, rant over. 

I think a lot of people who are considered "allies" feel the same way

 

They went way too far

And that in turn, allowed the crazies and the bigots to go into overdrive against them

 

And they only have themselves to blame

 

I'm as big of a supporter as anyone

In terms of not caring what they do and supporting their rights 

 

But it just got too much

 

 

I mentioned in another thread

The "Bud Light " freakout was one of the absurd things I have ever seen

A company had one ad to appeal to a different customer base

Trans people drink beer 

 

BUT.......I think that freakout happens because biological men are trying to compete in women's sports and guys that look like me in a dress are demanding to use women's bathrooms 

 

So yes, the freakout was ridiculous 

But it was opened up for idiots to freak out from the things above before it

 

 

Trans aren't "grooming kids"

Just as I stated in another thread

The right wingers who accuse them of doing so are Catholics and Christians who don't care their churches are the ones raping and grooming kids

 

BUT.....the Trans community opened themselves up for that by pushing those outright bizarre Drag Queen Readings 

 

 

 

[Vigo]

I suggest that the injection of trans people into sports and the issues it caused was intentional. I worked with a older senior executive who called it throwing the fox into the henhouse, of stirring the pot. The intent was to cause a fuss in expectation that the resulting upset would get rid of  undesirables. There was also an absence of guidelines in the administrative rules and procedures. At North American universities, the  athletic departments have traditionally been male dominated and they have resisted the attempts to spread funding to equitably include women's sports. The funding disparity with team sports has been well documented. What better way to cause a fuss and sabotage women's sports than to allow the trans issue to fester. The issue isn't occurring in Europe is it?  It is a USA specific issue.

No one is pushing these people down anyone's throats, since the protection of their civil liberties doesn't harm anyone. What is being pushed down our throats are book bans, and the removal of the separation church and state. If one looks closely at the battles at school boards in the USA and  Canada, at its core, it is a fight to keep the schools secular and not dominated by religious doctrine. The religious purveyors of the "purity" stance are the evangelicals both Protestant and Catholic and often including the Islamic doctrinaires.  

It is very easy to avoid exposure to flamboyant gay  people. I do not frequent the gay parts of a city I visit and in the restaurants  and shops I visit, I do not recall anyone arriving with a great swish and laddy dah to do their business. 

[ThaiFoodGuy]

4 hours ago, Marc26 said:

BUT.......I think that freakout happens because biological men are trying to compete in women's sports and guys that look like me in a dress are demanding to use women's bathrooms 

I'm not a fan of his at all, because of his insistence on using his religion to be "correct" about all of his arguments, but Matt Walsh's "What is a woman" documentary is actually very good and describes very accurately the problem you're referring to.

It only flows in one direction - pushing women out of women's spaces. Of course there are trans men (female to male) but they aren't shoe horning their way into every men's space. Women, for some reason, are being pushed out of their spaces, whether it's sports, changerooms, bathrooms, or even the terms to define them such as replacing "mothers" with "pregnant people" or "people who menstruate" or "birthing people".

The Bud Light "freakout" you refer to was, I think, less of an unmitigated freakout and more of a collective bemoaning of people who have simply had enough and want it to stop or at least ease up. Dylan Mulvaney is an insufferable troll and Bud Light could easily have tried to appeal to the trans community without partnering with such a foolish character. Also, his audience is mostly young girls, so Bud Light missed the mark on several fronts and just shot themselves in the foot. The customers voted with their dollars.

[Karolyn]

Yesterday I was moved on from, its because of 'transphobia'. I was accused of being a TERF, which as far as I know, is not a crime. I do 1/2 agree with the TERFs, actually. I do think they take it too far. But their concerns are legit about women's sports & penises in gendered spaces.

Though I am not a free speech absolutist, what should be the basis for censorship, on social media? Surely it is 1) harassment beyond what could be 'cured' by a block button, which exists only for said purpose. Or 2) the actual advocacy or threat of violence.

Where 'advocacy' is a weasel word, isn't it? But you can see why people might object to someone unironically carrying a placard, 'kill n*****s' or something. It's similar to what US law calls 'fighting words' that can spiral into violence. Despite what many women and minorities feel, despite what free speech people feel, it's not about 'fee fees'.

I don't see any grounds to respect anyones gender, excepting either a clinical or cultural basis. By the latter I mean certain categories present among Southeast Asian societies, Amerindian tribes and the like.

Here in Cambodia and Thailand, the 'kathoey' constitute such a category: Americans insisting they are 'xie' or 'xir' do not. Respect should be proportionate, to the basis for the respect. If a black man claims to be white, it doesn't make him white. Self assertion cannot be enough, once claims are called into question, in matters like sport and employment.

Properly only behaviors can cross (ie. trans-) gender lines, and gender identity - and all of personal identity - is something that is formed by a process of cumulative interactions since childhood, it therefore cannot simply be changed, any more than can someone's biological sex.

At most it's just a polite courtesy, isn't it? Even if there is a biological basis. If someone is an intersexed individual, bornwith ambiguous genitalia, everyone would agree they deserve politeness. Without pretending they are, in reality, one or the other. (I'm not talking about medical privacy.)

They are liminal, ambiguous, and they just accept that because they realise they have a problem. And this is surely the best transpeople might hope for too, but no, just look at the crap comes out of their mouths nowadays.

No I don't, wont, and can't accept peoples lifestyle choices or self identity, for no other reasons like personal choice or assertion. It needs a social or a clinical basis. 

 

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by Karolyn

[Marc26]

6 hours ago, ThaiFoodGuy said:

I'm not a fan of his at all, because of his insistence on using his religion to be "correct" about all of his arguments, but Matt Walsh's "What is a woman" documentary is actually very good and describes very accurately the problem you're referring to.

It only flows in one direction - pushing women out of women's spaces. Of course there are trans men (female to male) but they aren't shoe horning their way into every men's space. Women, for some reason, are being pushed out of their spaces, whether it's sports, changerooms, bathrooms, or even the terms to define them such as replacing "mothers" with "pregnant people" or "people who menstruate" or "birthing people".

The Bud Light "freakout" you refer to was, I think, less of an unmitigated freakout and more of a collective bemoaning of people who have simply had enough and want it to stop or at least ease up. Dylan Mulvaney is an insufferable troll and Bud Light could easily have tried to appeal to the trans community without partnering with such a foolish character. Also, his audience is mostly young girls, so Bud Light missed the mark on several fronts and just shot themselves in the foot. The customers voted with their dollars.

We are in agreement 

 

And yes, I think they have lost a lot of rational people who were/are supportive but are just tired of it all

 

We used to go to Pride in Vancouver

We loved it and always had fun

(and I've been going to Pride NYC for 25 years)

 

But when it became shoved down our throats with banks jumping in on it weeks before the actual Pride parade it lost it's appeal 

 

And then they sort of started losing me with the women sports issue and what I think is promoting less deserving candidates for jobs just because they are transgender

 

I still support their rights, always will

But they have to understand they are losing rational people 

[ThaiFoodGuy]

1 hour ago, Marc26 said:

But they have to understand they are losing rational people 

My best friend, the best man at my wedding, is a gay man, and he cannot stand the state of pride celebrations, LGBTQ curriculums, etc. Because it's no longer about letting grown adults mind their business in the privacy of their homes and let them all live their lives in peace. Now, for some reason, if a woman speaks up and says "I'm uncomfortable with having to see an erect penis while I'm changing into my swimsuit", the collective outrage screams that she is a bigot.

Similarly, and as you've referred to, drag shows themselves aren't the problem. It's the insistence on doing drag in front of children. Anyone freaking out about a drag show, just the show itself, is of course being unreasonable (at best). But when a place bans doing drag in front of children or requires that drag shows are considered 18+, the collective outrage is that they've banned drag shows. When a book is banned from childrens' classrooms because it contains sexual content, but the books aren't banned anywhere outside of classrooms, the collective outrage is that they've banned books. It's weird and it's creepy and it makes normal, everyday gays, lesbians, bi people, etc look like freaks when they mostly want nothing to do with it.

LGB adults want to simply be left alone to live normal lives between consenting adults. It's really gone wild since the T's have taken over the show.

[ThaiFoodGuy]

There was recently an episode of the "Whatever Podcast" where a guest was defending transgenderism as being a long-time worldwide phenomenon because Thailand, specifically, has had ladyboys for generations.

I've seen plenty of interviews, and spoken to plenty of ladyboys myself, who do NOT identify as being trans, do NOT want to fully transition, do NOT identify as women, etc.

Nobody visiting Thailand for "LGBTQ Tourism" cares about same sex marriage. Thai nationals of course may want the right to marry the partner of their choosing but I would argue that only L's and G's give a shit. Everyone else just wants to be left alone to have sex.

[Karolyn]

I like threads on this subject, on this site. Because I agree, to a high degree, with nearly every single comment, bar the odd factual inaccuracy. White people like Asia as a substitute West, a place with Western comforts (and a widespread use of English) but without vile identity politics crap. Such matters are properly of a social nature, and not primarily political. 

[Karolyn]

1 hour ago, ThaiFoodGuy said:

There was recently an episode of the "Whatever Podcast" where a guest was defending transgenderism as being a long-time worldwide phenomenon because Thailand, specifically, has had ladyboys for generations.

I've seen plenty of interviews, and spoken to plenty of ladyboys myself, who do NOT identify as being trans, do NOT want to fully transition, do NOT identify as women, etc.

Nobody visiting Thailand for "LGBTQ Tourism" cares about same sex marriage. Thai nationals of course may want the right to marry the partner of their choosing but I would argue that only L's and G's give a shit. Everyone else just wants to be left alone to have sex.

Kathoey, as I keep reminding people, does not refer to gender. It refers to some physical & psychological traits that are considered to be congenital and ambiguous, regardless of self-identity or expression.

Often, kathoey do identify as a different or second type of woman. They do not pretend to be real women. But they do not identify as men, and are not regarded as gay.

Their natural ambiguity is fixed, ergo kathoey do not transition. The language used by Westerners regarding transgenderism, doesn't apply to kathoey. 

Kathoey is a Mon-Khmer word, borrowed into the Daic dialects of Thailand and Laos. Philologically, it came to be a gloss for the word 'pandaka' in Pali scripture from India.

Pali being a liturgical version of Magadhan, the language of the Guptan and Mauryan empires. As such the core, historical meaning of kathoey, generations ago, can be inferred from the usage of pandaka.

Obviously, we don't know with precision, the original meaning of kathoey, before the culture of mainland Southeast Asia was 'overprinted' by Indo-Aryan ideas, both explicit and implicit in Buddhism, but the two genetically unrelated words must have already shared, a close semantic relationship, for pandaka to have had a 'ready made' gloss.

Pandaka has the etymology of apa + andaka, or without testes, referring to a eunuch. In historical western thought too, a eunuch could historically be natural or manmade. It's just that congenital or natural eunuchry is a disused concept in the west, blurred into vernacular ideas of intersex and hermaphroditism.

Note that in pre-Islamic India, the creation of eunuchs was rare to nonexistent, and Southeast Asians in the early period, did not castrate either slaves or male livestock, unlike the Chinese or West Asians. Words first used for natural effeminate, came to apply to manmade eunuchs. 

Without natural manliness, the biological male defaults to a female status. This is a widespread belief - around the world, men who lose testicles to cancer ot accidents, feel they are no longer men.

But in India, a culturally specific philosophy of biological sex emerged, based on male and female principles. Then it was exported to Southeast Asia, as part of the Buddhist and Hindu 'superstrate'. Also, Buddhist logic demanded terms, for four logical possibilities, fostering unusual system of categorising people and animals by gender. 

The essence of a pandaka (eunuch) is obviously feminine, because it is not masculine. Stereotypes about pandaka/kathoey and their flaws, are akin to those about women. But they aren't women: they are essentially neuter. (Tangentially relevant, is the fact pandaka as a concept, also came to be used as an explanation for unmanly sexualities, like voyeurism. Texts about pandaka, in fact, blur into proto-sexology.)

So, kathoey means something between eunuch and intersex. It doesn't mean homosexual or transgendered. At all. Except where stereotypes might intersect.

 

[Karolyn]

Actually it's worth critiquing the notion of a 'third sex' - basically any concept that there are people outside of the male-female spectrum. When used cross culturally, it's basically exotic ism. Because look at British urban legends about ladyboys/shemales.

The bathos in the humor, refers to the incongruous male organ, upon an otherwise female body: the popular image comes close to hermaphroditism, and of course, it is female-attracted men who develop the lady boy fetish.

Well it's very close to the Thai concept of a kathoey. English doesn't really have a word for it, excepting  pejorative language. But is it correct to say the Thai possess a third sex category, and the English do not? Remembering the concept of kathoey is based on this kind of ambiguity.

 

[Marc26]

22 hours ago, ThaiFoodGuy said:

I'm not a fan of his at all, because of his insistence on using his religion to be "correct" about all of his arguments, but Matt Walsh's "What is a woman" documentary is actually very good and describes very accurately the problem you're referring to.

It only flows in one direction - pushing women out of women's spaces. Of course there are trans men (female to male) but they aren't shoe horning their way into every men's space. Women, for some reason, are being pushed out of their spaces, whether it's sports, changerooms, bathrooms, or even the terms to define them such as replacing "mothers" with "pregnant people" or "people who menstruate" or "birthing people".

The Bud Light "freakout" you refer to was, I think, less of an unmitigated freakout and more of a collective bemoaning of people who have simply had enough and want it to stop or at least ease up. Dylan Mulvaney is an insufferable troll and Bud Light could easily have tried to appeal to the trans community without partnering with such a foolish character. Also, his audience is mostly young girls, so Bud Light missed the mark on several fronts and just shot themselves in the foot. The customers voted with their dollars.

The problem with Matt Walsh, which I agree with him a lot on the subject, is that he often does put out misinformation even in a message I agree with 

"What is a woman" does have a lot of misinformation, even if I agree with a lot of the premise

 

And, Matt Walsh is good at making statements and debating amatuers, but he folds pretty fast when faced with facts, when he can't just riff on his podcast