1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 10 Thai (trans)genders and (homo) sexualities in a global context Peter A. Jackson Since the early 1990s many authors (e.g. Plummer 1992; Altman 1996a; Drucker 2000; Jackson 2000) have identified the proliferation of new same-sex and transgen- der identities, such as the Indonesian waria, Brazilian travesti, and Thai tom-dee couples, as a significant instance of cultural globalization. Dennis Altman has labelled this phenomenon “global queering,” 1 (Altman 1996a) and in a 1997 article “Global Gaze/Global Gays,” he observed: “What strikes me is that within a given country, whether Indonesia or the United States, Thailand or Italy, the range of con- structions of homosexuality is growing” (Altman 1997: 424, emphases in original). While we still lack definitive answers to the question of what has produced a variety of apparently similar transgender and homosexual identities in diverse social, polit- ical, and cultural settings, recent research on global queering in Asia has clarified the scope and nature of the phenomenon by challenging some earlier accounts of the globalization of homosexual and transgender identities. In this chapter, I sum- marize key findings of this research as a basis for interpreting the modern histories of homosexuality and transgenderism in Thailand, providing one case study response to the question of what have been the sources of this global queering. Globalization is not homogenising world queer cultures Comparative research on Asia’s diverse queer cultures (e.g. Jackson 1995, 2004; Garcia 1996; McLelland 2000; Sinnott 2004; Martin 2004) has questioned earlier views that “(g)lobalisation has helped create an international gay/lesbian identity” (Altman 2001: 86). Recent studies have revealed a proliferating diversity of sexual and gender identities that in some, but not all, countries have drawn on English identity categories such as “gay” and “lesbian.” As Tom Boellstorff (2007) notes, the adoption of labels such as “gay” in Asian queer cultures more often reflects the emergence of new local patterns of sexual and gender identity than the simple bor- rowing of western models. Jeffrey Weeks observes that recent comparative studies of queer globalization are, “helping to dissolve the idea of a single universal lesbian or gay identity” (Weeks 2007: 219) and he concludes that, “[T]he Western gay is not seated at the top of an evolutionary tree . . . notions of what it is to be sexually different are likely to be radically modified as the ‘perverse dynamic’ at the heart of so many cultures . . . con- fronts the imperatives of global interconnectedness” (Weeks 2007: 218). Research on Asia’s queer cultures confirms Arjun Appadurai’s account of cultural globaliza- tion as a multifaceted phenomenon: “[G]lobalisation is . . . (an) uneven and even 563_10_Sexuality.indd 88 21/10/09 10:06:27