Queering Medical Tourism in Thailand: The Discursive Deployment of Kathoey Entertainers

• In Event: 308 - Regular Session. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies

Abstract

This presentation illustrates how tourism and medical technologies concurrently construct new forms of gendered labor and national identity through the case of the transgender cabaret in Thailand. Thailand has become a global leader of medical tourism, or health-related travel, largely by specializing in cosmetic and sex change operations (Connell, 2011; Wilson, 2010). Thai transgender male-to-females (“kathoey”) who undergo these surgeries often work in the sex or entertainment industry (Winter and Udomsak, 2002). The kathoey cabaret is a well-known tourist attraction that explicitly markets kathoey sexuality and beauty to foreign audiences (Manderson, 1997). As medical tourism “trickles down” to create jobs in the local economy (Connell, 2011), it also intersects with entertainment tourism to foster new labor roles, bodies, and identities for local transgender women. By analyzing Thailand’s foreign investments, military history, and discursive practices, this research unveils how kathoey advance medical tourism and state development through their material and symbolic roles in the cabaret. With Thailand actively “rebranding” its national identity from the “blot” of sex tourism (Bandelj, Centeno, & Wherry, 2011), transgender cabaret performers represent globalized ideals of race, femininity, and Thai modernity on a transnational stage.

Author

• Rebecca Farber, Boston University