the third sex

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Not that many years ago you seldom found more than one ladyboy in the family, but with far more youngsters now taking the ladyboy route than ever before, I am finding more and more cases of ladyboy siblings. It seems that when an elder child becomes a ladyboy, the younger ones become entranced by the transformation, and decide to follow the same path. I have known families with three ladyboys, which is still a bit exceptional, but two are far from uncommon.

The other evening Bea and her “sister” May came round, and I got talking to them about why they both chose to become ladyboys. Bea is the eldest by 18 months, and she said that right from early adolescence she knew she wanted to become a ladyboy.

The family lives in Chiang Mai and is Chinese. Not too traditionally Chinese, she said, as they tended to be less conservative than Chinese families usually are.

Click!

And in Chiang Mai there is a huge population of ladyboys, many of them making a living in the cabarets that thrive in the Northern capital, and others working in theatre, the media and in the department stores, beauty salons and hotels. So ladyboys are not a rarity there.

Bea’s decision to become a ladyboy made perfect sense to her. She told me she felt comfortable with the ladyboy lifestyle. When she was younger, she had never had any real interest in girls, and once she started taking female hormones she said she felt natural as a girl herself.

May said she followed Bea’s development as a ladyboy with interest. When Bea was a boy, said May, she had done all the usual boyish things like climbing trees and getting into scrapes. But when Bea started to put on makeup and dress as a girl, May said that the transformation was an incredible one.

Suddenly, Bea had gone from being an ordinary brother into a hot little girl who drew looks and admiration from everyone, and who suddenly was the centre of attention in any gathering. May said that Bea became a different person. Being admired and lusted after did wonders for her self-assurance, and although Bea was still at school she was able to earn pocket money doing jobs that girls normally do, such as working part-time in the local beauty salon and waitressing.

May had always felt attracted to boys, and she tried putting on some of Bea’s clothing and sharing her makeup. Suddenly, from being the kid brother, she too was the centre of attraction. Once she started taking female hormones, encouraged by Bea, there was no turning back.

Both Bea and May are small in stature, and have the lovely pale skin that so many Chinese Thais have. On a more intimate level, they both have the most beautiful sexy bottoms. The dick shape is different. Bea has a long, thin one, while May’s is thicker and fuller. Both cum only in small amounts, although they tell me that was the case even before they started taking hormones.

There won’t be any more ladyboys coming from this family, as the only sibling left is a sister. I asked Bea and May what their sister thought about having two ladyboy “sisters”.

“No problem!” they both said. “We share each others’ clothes!”

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Separate toilet facilities for ladyboys have long been provided in many Thai colleges and universities, but seldom do you hear of secondary schools having transgender toilets for the pupils. This item has just appeared on the BBC website.

The comment from the headmaster as to the high proportion of transgender pupils bears out what I have been saying for some time now: youngsters are making the decision to become ladyboys at a very young age.

“With its spacious, tree-lined grounds and slightly threadbare classrooms, there is nothing obviously unusual about the Kampang Secondary School. It is situated in Thailand’s impoverished northeast, and most of the pupils are the children of farmers.

Every morning at 0800 they all gather outside to sing the national anthem and watch the flag being raised. Then they have a chance to use the toilets, before heading off the first classes of the day.

Kampang is proud of its toilets. Spotless, and surrounded by flowering tropical plants, they have won national awards for cleanliness. But there is something else about them too. Between the girls’ toilet and the boys’, there is one signposted with a half-man, half-woman figure in blue and red. This is the transsexual toilet, and outside, in front of the mirrors, some decidedly girly-looking teenage boys preen their hair and apply face cream.

The headteacher, Sitisak Sumontha, estimates that in any year between 10 percent and 20 percent of his boys consider themselves to be transgender – boys who would rather be girls.

“They used to be teased every time they used the boys’ toilets,” he said, “so they started using the girls’ toilets instead. But that made the girls feel uncomfortable. It made these boys unhappy, and started to affect their work.”

So the school offered to build the transgender boys their own facility, and they welcomed it. Triwate Phamanee is a slightly built 13-year-old who is adamant that he will one day change his gender.

“We’re not boys,” he told me, “so we don’t want to use the boys’ toilet – we want them to know we are transsexuals.”

Vichai Saengsakul, 15, agrees. “People need to know that being a transsexual is not a joke,” he says, “it’s the way we want to live our lives. That’s why we’re grateful for what the school has done.”

The transgender boys in Kampang tend to stick together as a group, practising their somewhat exaggerated feminine mannerisms together and generally camping it up. They still have to wear male uniforms, make-up is not allowed (although some manage to sneak in a touch of lipstick and mascara), and of course sex-change surgery is out of the question at this age – the youngest self-declared transsexual is 12.

But they appear to be treated perfectly normally by other pupils and teachers alike. I asked the headmaster whether they were not too young to be making decisions about their gender. He said that, in his 35 years of working in the Thai education system, he had come across many boys like this, and they never changed. Many go on as adults to have sex-change surgery, while others will live as gay men, he said.

Thailand is well known for its tolerance of transgender men, and they are very visible in everyday life. Sex-change surgery has become a speciality of the Thai health industry, and it is relatively inexpensive; patients come here from all over the world for the operation.

The Kampang school’s initiative, far from stirring up controversy, has instead prompted a discussion in other schools over whether they should be providing the same facilities. A ratio of 10 percent to 20 percent of boys calling themselves transsexual in a provincial high school does seem very high, but Mr Sitisak assured me that in his experience it was not unusual.

Which brought up a question that has been rattling around my head ever since I first lived in Thailand seven years ago: Why do so many Thai men want to become women?

I asked Suttirat Simsiriwong, who became a campaigner for transgender rights after she was barred entry to a nightclub at an international hotel in Bangkok last year. Poised, articulate and very feminine, it is hard to tell that she was not born a woman.

“Maybe the numbers of gays, of people with sexual identity issues, might be the same as in other countries,” said Suttirat, “but because Thai society and culture tend to be very sweet, very soft, and the men can be really feminine, if we tend to be gay, many of us tend to be transgender.”

So does building a special toilet in school advance the cause of winning wider acceptance for transsexuals?

“At that age it’s good for them to have a specific place,” she said. “But when they graduate from school or university, they will know how to have medical treatment. They won’t want to go into a transgender toilet because they will want to be accepted as a woman – so they will go to the women’s toilet.”

Tolerance, said Suttirat, is not the same thing as acceptance. Despite their high profile in Thailand, transsexuals complain that they are still stereotyped – they can find work easily enough as entertainers, in the beauty industry, the media, or as prostitutes, but it is much harder to become a transgender lawyer or investment banker.

And their biggest complaint is that they cannot change their legal status. Despite a proposal during the drafting of a new constitution last year, to allow them to change the gender on their identity cards, this has not yet been approved.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7529227.stm

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A 21-year-old student named Nong Noeng won the Miss Tiffany Universe 2008 beauty contest on Friday night, emerging as an easy front-runner from a total of 30 finalists.

Nong Noeng, Kangsadarn Wongdusadeekul to give her her formal name, is a student at Dhurakij Pandit International College.

Pattaya was a particularly lively place during the four days leading up to the contest, because the finalists were trundled around the resort getting the maximum media coverage for the tourist attractions and the venues of the sponsors.

Everywhere the 30 girls went was followed by a media circus, and on the night itself, the show was broadcast live from Tiffany’s Theatre throughout the nation.

This annual event has become big business, and with the coverage extending far into other parts of Asia and in fact the world, the international interest in Thailand’s ladyboys just keeps on growing.

Nong Noeng won some glittering prizes. There was a cash prize of 100,000 baht plus a Honda Jazz car, along with numerous gifts from the sponsors. She now looks forward to a year of conventional beauty queen activities, opening events, modelling and so on.

Thailand’s ladyboy cabarets, of which Tiffany’s was the first and is the most famous, are one of the country’s main tourist attractions. Tourists are brought in by the busload to Tiffany’s and Alcazar, while in Bangkok places such as Calypso, Golden Dome and Rachada Cabaret are generally packed for their twice-nightly performances.

Whereas Miss Tiffany Universe is a pageant only for Thai ladyboys, Nong Noeng now goes forward to Miss International Queen 2008, which will be held at the end of the year.

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I’ve photographed Pattie before, and she is a genuine beauty. I look at her face, and see only female there. There is no trace of the masculine. And she has a very elegant manner about her, and a sparkly sense of humour. Take her to a social event, and she would be a terrific success, as a female, and not as a ladyboy.

“Cock me up too!” She said

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Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis will know that I have a number of thoroughly disreputable friends. The fact that they are such good friends probably says much about myself, come to think about it. A particularly rampant pal, who goes by the name of Jodahunta, was in town a few weeks back, and regailing me with some of his more lurid stories. How would you like to write that down and send it to me, I asked. I didn’t think he would. But he did. So here is the first of Jodahunta’s adventures. He has threatened to send more, and they will appear in due course.

I have such a clear recollection of my adventure with Ae that it seems like just a few months ago, even though it was back in 2005. I will never forget how she came out of her sister’s bar to meet me on Soi 22 because I couldn’t find the place by myself. All legs and bare midriff, a skimpy blouse tied at the bust and the shortest shorts you ever saw!!

We went back into the bar and had some drinks and chatted and got to know each other. We played pool with a couple of the GGs in the bar. I was horny and letting her know it and she was loving it. At one point I leaned against her and let her feel the rock-hard tool in my pants. She laughed and whispered in my ear: “Cock me up too!”… Up ??? Mine was ready to explode! We decided to go to the movies with her gay brother and one of the GGs but I sent her home to change first…I have little shame (perhaps none at all!) but somehow couldn’t see myself walking with her through The Emporium in those shorts. As it was, even with her dressed in more “modest” attire, we turned every head in the mall. I remember the restaurant falling almost silent as we sashayed through!
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