posting it here to pin
ive found myself at an awkward place with my art
i genuinely dont know where it belongs beyond my personal space
but heres to making more of it anyway!
randomly thought of the time we were talking about caste in undergraduate classroom and this one girl said of course caste still exists we all think about it even while deciding where to sit in class and everyone just went dead silent
Hi. Thai here.
Almost nobody in Thailand uses the term โladyboyโ when discussing trans identity in Thai. The word is an orientalist construction and is a Western projection that exists only within English speaking contexts.
What these viral misinformed takes always leave out is that trans women in Thailand use feminine language in the exact same way cis women do, and they are addressed as women by almost everyone whether they are conservatives, men, women, children, monks etc.
Unlike Indonesia, very few people in Thailand spend time policing other peopleโs use of language, which restrooms they use and how they choose to live their lives.
These hot takes from people stems from one thing: the fact that most of you have never actually known a trans person, listened to a trans person, or opened your hearts to one in real life.
And you certainly donโt understand how Thai language functions either. In Thailand this is almost unthinkable as Trans people are normalised members of society.
You canโt avoid trans people in Thailand because they donโt need to hide. If their family doesnโt accept them, they still have friends and the larger Thai community to lean on.
They are doctors, nurses, business owners, entertainers, teachers, service workers, creatives, athletes, and more. While youโre all busy debating bathroom politics and indulging in religious and political hysteria, the world keeps turning in Thailand lol
I see this discourse often and it really does expose how colonial language hierarchies erase the nuance of non-Western gender systems - systems that, while imperfect and still evolving, have long recognised identities beyond the narrow Western binary and flatten them into stereotypes for global consumption.
Iโve said this before but social media algorithms amplify English-language content to the rest of the world while Thai opinions remain trapped within Thailandโs content ecosystem. That asymmetry is exactly why so many of you speak about Thais instead of with Thais and itโs why your understanding of Thai trans identity will always sound like a mistranslation.
the real tragedy of louis wain was that he was exploited so thoroughly by the businessmen he dealt with they stole everything and he was effectively left penniless and left in a poorly maintained ward until his fans found out and moved him somewhere nicer, leading 2 this image
@phillipcrymble this isn't poetry, it's visual art
not saying i like it or dislike it, just that for me poetry can't exist without music and what's here is light, not sound