Male Homosexuality in 21st-Century Thailand Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Introducing the Research Participants
- 3 Understanding Thai Personhood
- 4 Homosexuality: A Matter of Karma?
- 5 In the Beginning … Exploring Early Awareness of Being Different
- 6 The Important Role of Gender in Understanding Homosexuality in Thailand
- 7 ‘All in the Family’: Tactics for Living and Growing Up in a Heteronormative World
- 8 How Dating Friends Plays a Role in Destabilizing Gender-Based Notions of Homosexuality
- 9 The Role of the Internet in Learning about and Experimenting with New Sexual Identities
- 10 ‘No Money, No Honey’: Love and Sex in Pursuit of a Better Life
- 11 Conclusions and Implications for HIV Service Provision and Sexuality Education
- Appendix: Glossary of Thai Terms Used in this Book
- References
- Index
8 - How Dating Friends Plays a Role in Destabilizing Gender-Based Notions of Homosexuality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Introducing the Research Participants
- 3 Understanding Thai Personhood
- 4 Homosexuality: A Matter of Karma?
- 5 In the Beginning … Exploring Early Awareness of Being Different
- 6 The Important Role of Gender in Understanding Homosexuality in Thailand
- 7 ‘All in the Family’: Tactics for Living and Growing Up in a Heteronormative World
- 8 How Dating Friends Plays a Role in Destabilizing Gender-Based Notions of Homosexuality
- 9 The Role of the Internet in Learning about and Experimenting with New Sexual Identities
- 10 ‘No Money, No Honey’: Love and Sex in Pursuit of a Better Life
- 11 Conclusions and Implications for HIV Service Provision and Sexuality Education
- Appendix: Glossary of Thai Terms Used in this Book
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In this chapter, the focus is on the practice of dating and loving. Three young men are discussed in detail – three men whose sexual life histories were particularly illustrative of personal change. The commonality in the stories of these three young men is that all three of them fell in love with friends in their social circle – a taboo in Thai society, as will be explained in the next section. They were then forced to come to terms with a discrepancy between the beliefs, norms and values they held while at high school and their actual sexual and romantic experiences over the interviewing period.
The Thai Taboo against Having Sex with Friends
Dating friends is not done in Thailand. Every participant in this study rejected the idea of dating people from within one's own group of friends. San illustrated this as follows:
No, you know, I feel like – friends are friends. I don't expect that I want to have something [sex] with them. I, I feel that – hmmmm. I don't feel anything like that, I mean, a friend is – a friend is a friend, I am not like, something like that.
Tam explained that friends are too similar to him to be considered in a sexual or romantic manner:
TAM: No, for [dating] friends. I say, friends who are in my group [กลุ่่ม] – there are only those who are similar to me [มีีแต่่ที่่เหมืือนเรา], and – if I go to secretly like them, it, it won't fly [literally: it will not digest] [จีีบไม่่ลงหรอก]. I don't even think about secretly liking them [ไม่่คิิดที่่จะเเอบชอบด้้วยซ้ำ ].
INT: Yes. Because they are too similar to you?
TAM: They are like me. If they were not like me, they probably wouldn't befriend me. Yes.
Tam reasoned that if his friends were not like him, they would not be his friends. And because his friends were like him, they are automatically disqualified from the potential status of lover or sexual partner. This explanation is at the core of the taboo against dating friends in the gender-based model of love and sexuality: friends have to be of the same or similar gender category – this is what makes them friends.
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- Information
- Male Homosexuality in 21st-Century ThailandA Longitudinal Study of Young, Rural, Same-Sex-Attracted Men Coming of Age, pp. 103 - 128Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2021