Seminar: Bangkok`s 21st Century “Gay Boom” - Markets, Media, and Rights in Thailand’s Homosexual Cultures

Primary Information
Date:	Friday, 29 May 2009
Time:	1:00pm - 2:30pm
Room:	Room 213
UQ Location:	Chamberlain Building (St Lucia)
Event Information
Description:	Sexual and gender cultures change constantly in response to shifts in social, political, and economic forces. Previous research on Asian homosexual cultures has described premodern forms of same-sex eroticism and cross-gender behaviour and the emergence of modern queer – i.e. gay, lesbian, and transgender -- identities in the region in the second half of the 20th century. In this presentation I consider recent changes that have taken place in Thai queer cultures in the first decade of the new century. Bangkok has been known as the `gay capital` of Southeast Asia for several decades. Recent years have seen a further multidimensional expansion in the geographical extent, media presence, commercial importance, and political relevance of Thai queer cultures, which were already among the largest in the region. Since 2005, the number of Bangkok gay saunas has doubled to more than 50, ten new commercial gay and lesbian magazines have been published, almost a dozen queer-themed movies have been released, and issues of LGBT rights have been debated in mainstream political forums. This queer boom has not all been good news. Rates of HIV infection amongst Bangkok men who have sex with men (MSM) have also increased substantially. Bangkok`s 21st century queer boom is especially interesting because it has taken place in the context of the political instability of the 2006 military coup, a generally sluggish economy, and a plateauing in the numbers of Western gay tourists. In explaining the sources of Bangkok`s recent queer boom I consider the impact of new electronic media, the rise of Asian gay tourism, the expansion of local Thai gay and lesbian markets, the successes of Thai queer NGOs, and the role of international HIV/AIDS agencies. In tracing the 21st century transformations of Thailand’s vernacular queer modernities I also ask whether contemporary Asian queer cultures may be diverging or decoupling from those in the West. Presenter bio: In 2001, Peter Jackson co-founded AsiaPacifiQueer (http://apq.anu.edu.au/), an Australia-based network of scholars and postgraduate students researching homosexuality and transgenderism in Asia. AsiaPacifiQueer has organised several conferences in Australia, and in July 2005 the network organised the international conference “Sexualities, Genders and Rights in Asia: First International Conference of Asian Queer Studies” in Bangkok. Peter Jackson is also a member of the editorial collective of the new “Queer Asia” monograph series published by Hong Kong University Press. He is currently working on a new edited collection, Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights.
Event Category:	Diversity-Week / Featured Events / Seminars & workshops /
Contact Information
Name:	Dr Barbara Hanna
Phone:	52273
Email:	b.hanna@uq.edu.au
Org. Unit:	Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies
Export Event To Your Electronic Calendar
Export Event:
Directions to UQ
Directions to St Lucia Campus, UQ Ipswich, and UQ Gatton.