The articles move across sociology, anthropology, and cultural analysis to examine what it actually means to be a woman who loves women in Thailand: how identity forms, how community gets built, how self-expression negotiates with the pressures of Buddhist culture, family obligation, and the social expectation of marriage.
The tom/dee binary—a system that structures many Thai lesbian relationships in ways that diverge from Western frameworks—appears throughout the collection, not as exotica but as a form of self-organisation that Thai women developed on their own terms. The contributors look at lesbian visibility in media and popular culture, the spaces communities have created for themselves, and how economic development and globalisation have changed the landscape of lesbian life.
The anthology also grapples with the political dimensions of Thai lesbianism: how monarchism, Buddhism, and Thai constructions of gender and sexuality shape experience differently than in Western contexts; how lesbian organising intersects with women’s rights movements; what it means to claim identity and community when the dominant social systems weren’t built with you in mind.
What makes this collection significant isn’t just what it documents, but how it documents it—from inside the culture, in Thai voices, resisting the tendency of Western queer theory to treat non-Western sexualities as variations on a theme. It is a primary source for comparative LGBT studies, postcolonial queer theory, and Southeast Asian history, and essential for any collection seeking meaningful international and non-Western representation in lesbian bibliography.
Details
| ISBN: 9789746582568 |
| Subtitle: |
| Genre: Lesbian Studies |
| Subject(s): Lesbianism; Lesbians |
| Publication Date: 2004 |
| Original Publication Date: |
| Publisher: Foundation for Women, Law, and Rural Development (FORWARD) and the Women’s Studies Center, Faculty o |
| Language: English |
| Format: Book |
| Pages: 135 |
| Rating: |
| Notes: This collection represents important scholarship on lesbian cultures in Southeast Asia, a region underrepresented in English-language LGBT studies. The collaboration between Thai scholar Wiradā Somsawat and Western scholar Alycia Nicholas reflects transnational feminist academic partnerships. Published in 2004, this work predates much contemporary mainstream interest in Thai and Southeast Asian LGBT studies, making it a historically significant academic contribution to the field. |
| Book_ID: 106250 |