Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same-Sex Relationships in Thailand / Edition 1

by Megan J. Sinnott

Overview

A vibrant, growing, and highly visible set of female identities has emerged in Thailand known as tom and dee. A "tom" (from "tomboy") refers to a masculine woman who is sexually involved with a feminine partner, or "dee" (from "lady"). The patterning of female same-sex relationships into masculine and feminine pairs, coupled with the use of English derived terms to refer to them, is found throughout East and Southeast Asia.

Have the forces of capitalism facilitated the dissemination of Western-style gay and lesbian identities throughout the developing world as some theories of transnationalism suggest? Is the emergence of toms and dees over the past twenty-five years a sign that this has occurred in Thailand? Megan Sinnott engages these issues by examining the local culture and historical context of female same-sex eroticism and female masculinity in Thailand. Drawing on a broad spectrum of anthropological literature, Sinnott situates Thai tom and dee subculture within the global trend of increasingly hybridized sexual and gender identities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780824828523
Publisher:	University of Hawaii Press, The
Publication date:	06/30/2004
Series:	Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory , #31
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	1,063,610
Product dimensions:	6.32(w) x 8.92(h) x 0.73(d)

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	1
Chapter 1	Global Sex	24
Chapter 2	Gender and Sexual Transitions	47
Chapter 3	Gender Ambivalence in Tom and Dee Identities	76
Chapter 4	Thai Norms of Gender and Sexuality	111
Chapter 5	Gender Dynamics between Toms and Dees: Subversion or Conformity?	132
Chapter 6	Anjaree and Lesla: Tom and Dee Communities and Organizations	162
Chapter 7	Discourses of "Homosexuality": The State and the Media in Thailand	182
	Conclusion	204
Appendix	Toms and Dees Referred to in the Text	213
	Notes	215
	Glossary	229
	Bibliography	231
	Index	259