Ladyboys Are Everywhere

The total population of Chiang Mai (where I live about half the time) is hard to assess as the city is very spread out and is subject to huge variances in population over a typical year, with both locals and tourists (we get around 5 million visitors per annum) coming and going. The generally accepted figures are between 800,000 up to 1 million as resident population.

As I mentioned in my last article, give the generally liberal attitudes in Thailand as a whole (albeit with latent restrictions on career opportunities and lingering covert prejudices), it’s not that surprising or unusual to come across Ladyboys here there and everywhere, often when you least expect to find them. There is certainly a fair sprinkling of such ladies throughout the city!

Of course, Chiang Mai (often known as the “Northern Capital,” albeit a relatively small city by Thai standards) is a magnet for all sorts of people from the surrounding towns and provinces, some of which are very poor. Many nearby villages and towns offer little in the way of career opportunities or the chance to earn a reasonable wage — for anyone, not just Ladyboys — and every year many make their way to the “big city.”

In the past I’ve been involved with looking at the demographics and percentages of the LGBT populations in a number of the so-called first world countries (where surveys on this sort of thing tend to get carried out either for governmental statistics, to assess social services to be provided, but more often by advertising companies for marketing purposes!) and the percentages seem to regularly fall into the 5-7% range of the population of any given country being either L or G or B or T. Sadly, there’s no breakdown for T’s alone (the forgotten minority) but if one roots around and extrapolates, and make some key assumptions (oh, and leaves aside some of the more outrageous claims that at least 50% of all of men have at some time or other tried on or worn female clothing) then a figure in the range of 0.3-0.5% of the total population or 3-5 per 1,000 could well be T people. Of course, such figures are truly hard to certify as, firstly, as we know, most T people are covert and, secondly, what actually is the definition of a T person — i.e. should the numbers include CDs, TV’s, TS’ and so on?

Still, from my own observations from around the city, the country and the region, meeting different people and seeing the huge varieties of human beings in Thailand and in other Asian countries such as The Philippines, Vietnam or Indonesia, to me these percentages seem low. As I said earlier, Ladyboys seem to be everywhere….

Using simple math, if the populations in the major Asian countries are fairly equally divided between male and female at say 50/50 (even though some countries do have a few percentage points more males) and Asia (including India and China) is home to over half the world’s population, then keeping the numbers nice and round we have some 3 billion people of which 180 million might be gay and some 12 million or so might be T.

As I said above, I’d argue that the percentage in Asia for T should be higher, especially given my recent visit to Bangkok (and yes I know that Ladyboys and other people who tend to not to fit into local societal structures gravitate to cities seeking relative anonymity) where (or so it seemed), Ladyboys were absolutely everywhere!

I met girls in hair salons, doing cosmetic promotions, demonstrating products in shopping centres, serving in shops, working in restaurants as waitresses and also supervisory staff; buying things in the market, in shops. Then there were the cabaret shows with up to 30 girls in some of the larger shows. Ladyboys of all shapes and sizes, some stunning, some not; some flamboyant, some just like “regular” girls.

So, given that we have the numbers to be more visible, more vociferous, all we need now is to have a common voice, a common sense of purpose so that the T in the LGBT can catch up lost ground on the advances made by other minorities over recent years.

I can but dream!

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Tags: featured, Identity, Ladyboy, Thailand

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion