BANGKOK, JUNE 16, 2013 – When I got my hair washed and cut here in an upscale mall in Bangkok the chatter between the “women” while my hair was being washed seemed odd to me. Of course, my head was tilted back and my eyes were closed since my head was face up in a sink. But while I thought I heard the deep voice of a man speaking (there were four sinks lined up in a row, all in use, and I was in the third one) when I opened my eyes, I only saw women. Turns out the “woman” who was washing hair in the sink next to one where I was getting my hair washed, of course, wasn’t a woman at all.
That’s when I thought how matter of factly Thai culture deals with transvestites and transsexuals. Lady Boys, to use the appropriate term. I remembered doing the same double take years ago when I encountered a pharmacy clerk in another upscale mall here. (Bangkok’s center is chock full of upscale malls, and those malls are chock full of Lady Boys.)
My reaction made me think that despite all our “gay marriage” this and “equality” that in the U.S. we’re really not beyond the point in our society where gays and lesbians are still looked at as being so very different — as different, I recall from my childhood (since I’m reading Passage of Power — finished a quarter of the 600 pages on the flights last night — it’s about LBJ’s rise from Majority Leader to President) as blacks were in 1960s white society or as whites were in 1960s black society. Do you remember the 1960s: when everyone was trying to make out how natural and normal it was for black people and white people to be friends and together in social situations? The expression “some of my best friends are black” at one time was for real! (In the 1973 Broadway show Raisin, the musical version of the play, one lyric from the song “No, We Don’t Do That Anymore” mocks this as one character says: Some of my best friends have…..skin!)
That’s the news from Lake Wobegone.