In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Camfrog: The Sexual Globalization of Thai MSM Shocking! Thailand ranks third in the world in the use of sex show program Camfrog, following the US and China. (Manager Daily, 14 November 2006, p. 1) In the era of globalization, the Internet strongly influences the lifestyles and behaviour of Thais in both their working and private lives. In particular, many Thai youths and young adults incorporate these technologies into their lives, behaviours, self-identities, and thinking, so adopting technological innovations to seek time and space to explore their identities and life experiences in virtual domains. One of the technologies they use is Camfrog. This programme fascinates its users, mostly male youths, since it enables the sharing of pictures using a web camera and voice communication in Internet chat rooms. It can be used for simultaneous teleconferencing among several people. It blends speech, images, music (including musical performances by DJs), and views of the actions of other people. Camfrog has different rooms using different languages, including Thai, English, Italian, German, and sign language for the hearing-impaired.1 Rooms in each language are further divided into various topic areas. All the rooms used by Thai men who have sex with men, or MSM, have been founded by Thais. However, all users in each room must use the specified language. Many foreign users join rooms such as GAYSpeakGerman, GayforEnglish, or GayFarang. There are both heterosexual and homosexual/bisexual Camfrog users. However, most users are MSM who use Camfrog as a space to express their identities and desires, to find friends, “become someone”, to find sexual partners, to listen to music, to display their bodies, and to find sexual pleasure in different forms. In physical spaces, by contrast, young Thai MSM have limited 6 Cyberspace, Power Structures, and Gay Sexual Health The Sexuality of Thai Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM) in the Camfrog On-line Web-cam Chat Rooms Ronnapoom Samakkeekarom and Pimpawun Boonmongkon Ronnapoom Samakkeekarom and Pimpawun Boonmongkon 122 opportunities for such types of expression (when compared with heterosexuals), because their sexual orientation is judged, interpreted, and controlled through the heteronormative standards of mainstream Thai society, which still regards MSM as sexually abnormal or deviant. This is the main reason Camfrog has become popular among young people, especially MSM. It eliminates spatial barriers and thereby creates virtual spaces that are less controlled, restricted, or judged by external social norms than physical spaces. Sex is one of the topics on Camfrog, often clearly reflected in the names of the Thai chat rooms, such as Gay Stroke2 or Gay Zeed-sard,3 and in the content of conversations in the Camfrog chat rooms. MSM know the rooms in which they can talk about sex or play around for sexual pleasure. This is not different from many other cyberspace media, such as video clips, web boards, or chat rooms using Pirch, which is another on-line chat programme that divides users into different thematically designated rooms. However, mainstream Thai media have represented Camfrog negatively as a technology that young people use obsessively to view, exhibit, or seek sexual content. It has been presented as a technology leading young people into inappropriate sexual behaviour and to a life of crime involving entrapment and rape. It tends to be described and judged solely according to traditional ethics and normative standards and is often superficially linked to social and behavioural problems, such as pre-marital sex, unplanned pregnancies, unsafe abortions, sexual crime, or even the deterioration of national culture and ethical standards. Rarely, if ever, do the Thai mass media seriously try to analyse and understand the behaviours exhibited on Camfrog, the nature of on-line sexual cultures, or the beliefs of Thai youth regarding gender and sexual identity, all of which influence perceptions and awareness of risks and sexual health among young people who choose cyberspace as a domain for their sexual expression and exploration. The negative representations of Camfrog by the Thai media present an unbalanced picture and are singularly linked to calls to prohibit use of the programme among young people; the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications, the Ministry of Culture, and the Royal Thai Police periodically block the servers of Camfrog chat rooms that involve sexual matters. Sexual matters among young Thais of all genders and sexual orientations are suppressed, restricted, and excluded by many discourses in Thai society. However, young people are now able to use Internet technologies such as Camfrog to evade social and cultural restrictions to create their own...

Share