Korean-Pop, Tom Gay Kings, Les Queens and the Capitalist Transformation of Sex/Gender Categories in Thailand

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, masculine style for queer women in Thailand has been heavily influenced by Korean popular culture, or “K-pop”. K-pop is marked by deliberate gender androgyny and overall gender play. This new aesthetics of masculinity used by masculine-identifying women has been accompanied by linguistic shifts in which explicitly sexualised terms, such as queen and king , themselves products of complex transnational borrowings, have been borrowed from Thai gay male culture. This paper seeks to explore the possibilities of queer cultural transformation through forms of commodified images and capitalist intrusions. It also explores the process of creative borrowings made through transnational, national and local circuits of knowledge. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted in 2009 and 2010 focused on young queer women in Bangkok who have adopted the K-pop style and the new sexualised terms of identity, such as tom gay king and les queen , for example. It is also based on review of printed material including the fashion magazine Tom Act and the NGO publication Anjareesarn.

Keywords:

• Thailand
• lesbian
• queer
• K-pop
• Tom Act magazine
• capitalism

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all those who assisted in various stages of this article and research: Nantiya Sukontapatipark, Chutima Pragatwutisarn, Kallayanee Techapatikul, Alejondro Venegas-Steele, Andrew Reisinger, Evelyn Blackwood, Mark Johnson, the Department of Comparative Literature, Chulalongkorn University, the Women's Studies Institute at Georgia State University, the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University, and the anonymous readers for Asian Studies Review.

Notes

The term “queer” is problematic yet also useful in this context, in which I use it to reference the various sex/gender categories in the Thai context that revolve around same-sex sexuality and transgenderism. This paper, in part, aims to explore the complex and multiple sexual and gender categories in play in the Thai context, so it is useful to have an umbrella term when talking about them collectively. However, I would note that the term is most useful in its ability to reference an analytical perspective that explores the ways in which heteronormativity is challenged and subverted. For discussion of queer theory as an analytic and epistemological position, see Eng, Halberstam and Muñoz (2005) and Butler (1993). For the term's applicability and limits in anthropology and Asian contexts see Boellstorff (2007), Sinnott (2004; 2011) and Wilson (2004; 2005).

The prevalence of soft masculinity, circulating within Asia, was the central theme in the workshop on masculinities in Asia, which was held at the National University of Singapore in August 2011. For a copy of the program see http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/events_categorydetails.asp?categoryid=6&eventid=1127.

The K-pop phenomenon has caused some unease among culturally conservative viewers. Thai authorities have apparently even issued warnings about some of the fads, such as wearing short shorts (claiming it can lead to contracting Dengue fever) and wearing “Big Eye” contact lenses (see Winn, 2011).

Tom Act 15, September–October 2009, pp. 16–17.

One reader of this essay wondered why the title of the magazine was Tom Act since the magazine very explicitly presents the binary tom-dee as central to its content. I speculate that this choice of title reflects the way the term tom has served as a place-holder for queer women in Thailand. In other words, the term tom has signalled the presence of queer female identities and communities within popular and academic discourse. As I have argued elsewhere, dee, or the feminine partners of tom, has been considered a much more fluid identity that is not nearly as marked or pathologised as tom has been (see Sinnott, 2004).

For more on the pathologising images of same-sex sexuality in the mass media in Thailand, see Jackson (1997a; 1999; 2003) and Sinnott (2004; 2011).

For more detailed discussion of Anjaree, see Sinnott (2004; 2011). Issues of Anjareesarn and An are available from the Thai Rainbow Archives website, at http://thairainbowarchive.anu.edu.au, http://thairainbowarchive.anu.edu.au/community/anjaree_san/contents.htm; http://thairainbow archive.anu.edu.au/community/another_way/contents.htm.

Interestingly, the term “lesbian” has been used by gay men to denote the sexual pairing of gender sameness, such as two kathoey (male bodied, feminine-identified) with a sexual relationship (Peter Jackson, personal communication).

For more on the impact of the internet on the development of queer spaces, identities and cultures, see Berry, Martin and Yue (2003), Jackson (2011) and Ronnapoom and Pimpawun (2011).

All names of individuals interviewed are pseudonyms in the form of common Thai nicknames.

http://www.lesla.com/, accessed 16 August 2012; http://www.romanticgals.com/, accessed 16 August 2012; http://tomdy.narak.com/, accessed 16 August 2012.