Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights

10 - Capitalism, LGBT Activism, and Queer Autonomy in Thailand

Ambivalent Queer Perspectives on Capitalism and Globalization Queer studies in the West have had an ambivalent relationship to both capitalism and globalization. Alternative accounts variously emphasize the moments of subjection and exploitation on the one hand, and of autonomy on the other, in the intermeshing of queer gender and sexual cultures with globalizing capitalism. Citing Bernstein and Schaffner, Jeffrey Weeks summarizes these tensions when he observes: While the spread of global capitalism has exacerbated social inequalities, fragmented families, and severed individuals from traditional social ties, it has also given rise to transnational feminist activism, a burgeoning lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer (LGBTQ) movement, a renewed commitment to international human rights, and myriad forms of eroticism and community. (Bernstein and Schaffner 2005, xi, cited by Weeks 2007, 199) The studies brought together in Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan’s edited collection Queer globalizations (2002) reflect these tensions in Western queer studies; some contributors see the market as a source of queer subjection and others argue that it provides the basis for movements to enhance queer autonomy in an overwhelmingly heteronormative world. As editors, Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan negotiate these tensions when, in introducing the collection they state: Queerness is now global. Whether in advertising, film, performance art, the Internet, or the political discourses of human rights in emerging democracies, images of queer sexualities and cultures now circulate around the globe . . . In a world where what used to be considered 10 Capitalism, LGBT Activism, and Queer Autonomy in Thailand Peter A. Jackson Peter A. Jackson 196 the ‘private’ is ever more commodified and marketed, queerness has become both an object of consumption, an object in which nonqueers invest their passions and purchasing power, and an object through which queers constitute their identities in our contemporary consumeroriented globalized world. (2002, 1) Early accounts of cultural globalization by queer studies analysts tended to emphasize two main points, namely, that it was a process of Westernizing cultural homogenization and that subjection to globalizing market processes involves a loss of autonomy. These intersecting views are reflected in Chela Sandoval’s succinct claim, “At the turn of the twenty-first century the zones are clear: postmodern globalization is a neocolonizing force” (2002, 26). More recent studies, including the chapters in this book, challenge the presumption that cultural globalization necessarily entails a neocolonizing Americanization or homogenization of the world’s queer cultures. Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan (2002, 6) themselves reject the view that globalization equates with cultural homogenization, pointing out that the rise of intra-Asian and other regional gay networks reflects the fact that globalizing processes emerge as much from the non-West as from the West. As reflected in the chapters here, over the past decade queer Bangkok has arguably been much more influenced by, and become a source of influences for, gay Asia than the gay West. Stuart Koe, co-founder of the Singaporebased gay and lesbian web portal fridae.com, believes that in the 2000s gay America is no longer as important for gay Asians as it was in the 1980s and 1990s, contending that gay Asia is now “feeding off itself” and is increasingly decoupling from Western queer cultures (Interview, 25 February 2008). Dédé Oetomo, founder of Indonesia’s first gay NGO, Gaya Nusantara, argues that Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is a significantly more important cultural influence for gay Indonesians than either the United States or Europe (Interview, 25 February 2008). However, the studies here provide a less clear-cut answer to the question of whether the market provides more avenues for queer autonomy and institutionalizingLGBTrightsorwhetheritoperatesasasystemofsubordination and exploitation. Thailand’s communities of gay men, lesbians, and kathoeys each have somewhat different relations to the market, and their lives and distinctive cultures are not affected in uniform ways by the commodification inherent in capitalism. This diversity and the absence of uniformity among Thai gay, lesbian, and kathoey cultures is indeed a general feature of their respective relations to Western queer cultures, not only of their relations to global markets and transnational processes (see Jackson 2004c). Capitalism, LGBT Activism, and Queer Autonomy in Thailand 197 Overall, Thai gay and kathoey cultures are more highly commodified than tom-dee lesbian culture and, at the risk of overgeneralization, it is perhaps the case that Thai gay men are more anxious about their cultural-financial status as consumers than they are concerned about their role as homosexual citizens. Interestingly, as...