Queer Bangkok

Download or read book Queer Bangkok written by Peter A. Jackson and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Thai capital Bangkok is the unrivalled centre of the country's gay, lesbian and transgender communities. These communities are among the largest in Southeast Asia, and indeed in the world, and have a diversity, social presence and historical depth that set them apart from the queer cultures of many neighbouring societies. The first years of the 21st Century have marked a significant transition moment for all of Thailand's LGBT cultures, with a multidimensional expansion in the geographical extent, media presence, economic importance, political impact, social standing, and cultural relevance of Thai queer communities. This book analyzes the roles of the market and media - especially cinema and the Internet - in these transformations, and considers the ambiguous consequences that the growing commodification and mediatisation of queer lives have had for LGBT rights in Thailand. A key finding is that in the early 21st Century processes of global queering are leading to a growing Asianisation of Bangkok's queer cultures. This book traces Bangkok's emergence as a central focus of an expanding regional network linking gay, lesbian and transgender communities in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and other rapidly developing East and Southeast Asian societies. Peter A. Jacksonis associate professor in the School of Culture, History and Language at Australian National University. "The myriad faces of Thai gender/sexuality culture have been an attraction for both pleasure-seekers and researchers/scholars/activists. Exploring the rapidly changing LGBT cultures and Thai queer identities, the essays collected here provide insightful analyses of historical continuities as well as developing variations within the highly complex erotic/economic texture of Thai society. A must-read for anyone in the booming field of gender/sexuality studies." -Josephine Ho, Chair Professor, Center for the Study of Sexualities, National Central University, Taiwan

Download or read book Imagining Gay Paradise written by Gary Atkins and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This look at gay paradises in Southeast Asia and the men who created them considers the obstacles gay men have faced in securing a voice as citizens, and how they have used images of paradise in Bali, Bangkok and Singapore to create a sense of refuge, construct homes for themselves, and dissent from typical notions of manhood and masculinity. It focuses on Walter Spies, a gay German painter who in the 1930s depicted Bali as an ideal male aesthetic state; Khun Toc, who founded an architectural paradise called Babylon in Thailand; and the "cyber-paradise" of Fridae.com created by a young Singaporean named Stuart Koe. Collectively, Atkins examines their pursuit of sexual justice, the ideologies of manhood they challenged, the different types of gay spaces they created (geographic, architectural, online), and political obstacles they have encountered. Gary Atkins is professor of communication at Seattle University. He is the author of Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging--Página 4 de la cubierta.

Download or read book First Queer Voices from Thailand written by Peter A. Jackson and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a fully revised and substantially expanded edition of Peter Jackson’s highly regarded pioneering study of an Asian gay culture, Male Homosexuality in Thailand (1989). The hero of Jackson’s fascinating narrative is “Uncle Go”, which was the pen name of a popular magazine editor who, despite being avowedly heterosexual, was tolerant of all sexual practices and whose “agony uncle” columns in the 1970s provided unique spaces in the national press for Thailand’s gays, lesbians and transgenders (kathoeys) to speak for themselves in the public domain. By allowing the voices of alternative sexualities to be heard, Uncle Go emerged as Thailand’s first champion of gender equality and sexual rights. Peter Jackson translates and analyses selected correspondence published in Uncle Go’s advice columns, preserving and presenting important primary sources. In this new edition, Jackson has expanded his coverage to include not only letters from Thai gay men, but also those from lesbians and transgenders, thus capturing the full diversity of Thailand’s modern queer cultures at a key moment in their historical development when new understandings of sexual identities were first communicated to the wider community. “How wonderful to see this classic volume printed in a new expanded edition for the 21st century! When first published the figure of Uncle Go became an instant and unique voice in Thai sexuality studies. Peter Jackson’s contributions here are huge and foundational.” —Gilbert Herdt, San Francisco State University “If Thailand is now well known for its unique milieu of sex and gender diversity, it is in large part due to Peter Jackson’s writings. First Queer Voices from Thailand offers a rare archive of non-normative sexualities invaluable for anyone wishing to understand sexual modernity outside of the West.” —Ara Wilson, Duke University “An amazing work. Most valuable for this new edition is perhaps the way in which it documents changes in Jackson’s thinking, and in the field of sexuality studies, over the last twenty years, in response to the methodological challenges of queer and transgender scholarship.” —Susan Stryker, University of Arizona

Download or read book Belonging written by Steve McCurry and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning collection of photographs of the LGBTQ community in Thailand, from one of the world’s most renowned photographers Steve McCurry is the artist behind some of the most iconic images in contemporary photography. His 1984 portrait of Sharbat Gula (“the Afghan girl”) on the cover of National Geographic remains widely recognized to this day. Now McCurry turns his attention to Thailand as part of a series of photobooks on LGBTQ communities around the world. Thailand has long had the reputation as one of the most gay-friendly destinations in Asia, particularly Bangkok with its nightlife and its relative openness and safety. While this may be true for tourists and expats, the idea of Thailand as a haven for LGBTQ people and for same-sex couples, heavily promoted by the tourist industry, does not necessarily extend to Thais themselves. While Thailand is home to the largest LGBTQ communities in Asia, the reality for them is less accepting. Discrimination and exclusion targeting LGBTQ people continues despite a nominally progressive stance on inclusion, and same-sex marriage remains illegal. Against this backdrop, McCurry’s lushly colored photographs take us into the vibrant LGBTQ community in Bangkok, and this beautifully packaged, affordably priced book gives us a series of close to one hundred moving and intimate portraits of people who are no longer welcome in the community in which they grew up, but who have forged a new life and a new meaning of family in the queer community. Belonging was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

Download or read book Boys Love Media in Thailand written by Thomas Baudinette and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past several years, the Thai popular culture landscape has radically transformed due to the emergence of “Boys Love” (BL) soap operas which celebrate the love between handsome young men. Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture is the first book length study of this increasingly significant transnational pop culture phenomenon. Drawing upon six years of ethnographic research, the book reveals BL's impacts on depictions of same-sex desire in Thai media culture and the resultant mainstreaming of queer romance through new forms of celebrity and participatory fandom. The author explores how the rise of BL has transformed contemporary Thai consumer culture, leading to heterosexual female fans of male celebrities who perform homoeroticism becoming the main audience to whom Thai pop culture is geared. Through the case study of BL, this book thus also investigates how Thai media is responding to broader regional trends across Asia where the economic potentials of female and queer fans are becoming increasingly important. Baudinette ultimately argues that the center of queer cultural production in Asia has shifted from Japan to Thailand, investigating both the growing international fandom of Thailand's BL series as well as the influence of international investment into the development of these media. The book particularly focuses on specific case studies of the fandom for Thai BL celebrity couples in Thailand, China, the Philippines, and Japan to explore how BL series have transformed each of these national contexts' queer consumer cultures.

Download or read book Queer Singapore written by Audrey Yue and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Singapore remains one of the few countries in Asia that has yet to decriminalize homosexuality. Yet it has also been hailed by many as one of the emerging gay capitals of Asia. This book accounts for the rise of mediated queer cultures in Singapore's current milieu of illiberal citizenship. This collection analyses how contemporary queer Singapore has emerged against a contradictory backdrop of sexual repression and cultural liberalisation. Using the innovative framework of illiberal pragmatism, established and emergent local scholars and activists provide expansive coverage of the impact of homosexuality on Singapore's media cultures and political economy, including law, religion, the military, literature, theatre, photography, cinema, social media and queer commerce. It shows how new LGBT subjectivities have been fashioned through the governance of illiberal pragmatism, how pragmatism is appropriated as a form of social and critical democratic action, and how cultural citizenship is forged through a logic of queer complicity that complicates the flows of oppositional resistance and grassroots appropriation.

Download or read book Intimate Assemblages written by Hendri Yulius Wijaya and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the aftermath of Indonesia's anti-queer panic in 2016, this book tells the story of local queer movements in challenging the heteronormative society and resisting the homophobic hostility from religious conservative groups and the state. The year 2016 was a touchstone moment for queer issues in Indonesia, marked by the ubiquity of anti-queer campaigns, along with the pervasive use of the term 'LGBT' in public. Drawing on historical archives and his engagements with local queer activisms, Hendri Yulius Wijaya traces the historical shifts of gender and sexual identities in Indonesia, from gay and lesbian, to LGBT, to SOGIE minorities, while exploring their connections with the country's socio-political circumstances and the globalization of queer rights. Using a strategic blend of queer theory and assemblage framework, Wijaya demonstrates how activists refashion transnational sexuality discourses to balance international developments of queer rights against the contingencies of daily life in Indonesia. Equally importantly, he sheds light on emerging practices in activist landscapes, including the emergence of sexuality experts and the professionalization of activisms. In analyzing the rising tide of homophobic paranoia, Wijaya further shows how the current anti-queer campaigns have branched out into a broader assault on feminism and promoted a form of 'aversion therapy' that positions same-sex attraction as a divine ordeal. Intimate Assemblages follows the travails of queer activists in defining what it means to be queer in contemporary Indonesia.