Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing

Rest Stop: Thai Students Get Transsexual Toilet

208 Rest Stop Thai Students Get Transsexual Toilet W I T H S PAC I O U S , T R E E - L I N E D 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 8:00 a.m. 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 for 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 head teacher, Sitisak Sumontha, estimates that in any year between 10 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. Triwate Phamanee is a slightly built thirteen-year-old who is adamant Rest Stop: Thai Students Get Transsexual Toilet 209 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, fifteen, agreed. “People need to know that being a transsexual is not a joke,” he said. “It’s the way we want to live our lives. That’s why we’re grateful for what the school has done.” Tolerance, said transgender rights activist Suttirat Simsiriwong, is not the same thing as acceptance. Despite the high profile of transsexuals in Thailand, they complain that they are still stereotyped—they can find work easily enough as entertainers, in the beauty industry, in the media, or as prostitutes, but it is much harder to become a transgender lawyer or investment banker. Text used with permission from BBC News; original article by Jonathan Head. Transsexual bathroom sign at school in Thailand. ...