Thailand Misconstrued

Thailand Misconstrued: Tracing the Secular Western Discourse on Sexuality, Modernity, and Secularism to an Unexpected Place Aryeh Cohen Abstract This paper uses examples from media, personal experience, academic research, and theory to examine Western perceptions of Thai sexuality and Thai Buddhism, and how they are informed by a Western discourse on sexuality, modernity, and secularism. The relationship between sexuality and religion in Muslim communities, around which this Western discourse is so often focused, provides a context for me to gain scholarly insight into this discourse, and for me to analyze its presence in a deep common Western misrepresentation of Thai sexuality and religion, revealing some of its basic inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Cohen !2 Introduction In the weeks before I left for a semester in Thailand, many of my send-offs included a jovial comment or anecdote about lady-boys or happy endings. I had no intention of exploring the sex tourism industry, but naturally I grew curious about the significance of these features that seemed to define every expectation of the Thai experience. Indeed, I encountered kathoeys (transgender or transsexual individuals) on a daily basis, but the aggressive sexuality of which I was warned only occurred in tourist districts. Over time, I began to realize how apparently non-sexual the society around me was through local Thai friends, Thai film, Thai television and advertising, and Thai music. In my last week there, nonetheless, I received a shocking and embarrassing reminder of the Western perception of Thai sexuality as I sat in a theater full of Thais, watching Hollywood depict their city as a hub of sex and sin in The Hangover II. With a worldwide gross of over $581 million, The Hangover II offers what is easily the most widely viewed media representation of Thailand. The majority of the film takes place in Bangkok, the location chosen for the premise of an unintended bachelor party in the craziest setting possible. Throughout the film, the audience follows a hung- over, amnesic group of friends in their search for evidence of their drunken night-prior. But what made Bangkok the choice city for the creators of The Hangover II? The answer is shamelessly revealed halfway through the film when a kathoey prostitute, baring her sexually ambiguous body, calmly informs groom-to-be Stu of their ‘magical’ sex the night before. And, in case the audience has somehow forgotten this crucial scene, the closing credits roll beside photos of the wild night, many of which feature prostitutes, strippers, and sexual performers. It is this shocking and exotic sexual world that earns !2 Cohen !3 Bangkok its role in The Hangover II. Yet juxtaposed to the focus on Bangkok’s sex, crime, and grime, the film also features a Buddhist monk—another ubiquity in Thailand. However, instead of using the monk as a realistic representation of Thai Buddhism, the filmmakers opt for more shock and irony as the monk is depicted participating in the night’s events. While it is understandable for fictional, shock-comedic filmmaking to hyperbolize and fabricate aspects of a culture, in doing so The Hangover II accepts and re-projects a misconstruction of Thai sexuality and Thai Buddhism. My purpose is not to critique the film—although I will occasionally—but to use it as a reflection on Western perception and construction of sexuality and religion in Thailand. I begin this paper by looking at the ways in which the West perceives Thailand to be a host for free sexuality. I then link the Western perception of Thai sexuality to the Western ideals of tolerance and modernity, using Wendy Brown’s discussion of tolerance and Judith Butler’s discussion of sexual freedom and modernity. From there I emphasize the roles of secularism and sexual freedom in Western modernity discourse, drawing from Joan Scott’s writing on the headscarf controversy in France and Jospeh Massad’s writing on the concept of “The Gay International” and its effect on Islamic societies. These texts offer conceptual grounds through which I present and analyze the Western construction of a secularized Thai Buddhism that Westerners appreciate and often appropriate. The final section addresses how this construction contrasts to and interacts with the realities of Thai sexuality and Thai Buddhism. I conclude that examining Western perceptions and constructions of Thai sexuality and Thai Buddhism reveals far less about the actualities of Thai culture than it reveals about the fogged ideological lens of interpretation offered by Western sexual and religious discourse. !3 Cohen !4 Sexual Freedom: A Western Marker of Tolerance and Modernity A young man named Joe begins researching for his upcoming Thai vacation on Google. After looking into travel logistics and potential locations, he investigates the evening entertainment, searching “Bangkok nightlife” and “Thai nightlife.” The top hit for “Bangkok nightlife” is bangkok.com/nightlife, a website whose home page features links to four main webpages, “Top 10 Nightlife experiences,” “Where to go,” “Gay Bangkok,” and “Go-Go bars.” He visits the “Top 10” page, on which he finds “Naughty Night on the Go-Go trails,” “Bangkok Ladyboy Shows,” and “Gay Night: Tickled Pink.” His search on “Thai Nightlife” yields results such as thainite.com, where self-proclaimed “resident sleaze hounds” offer wisdom on bar girls and massage parlors. A month later, his friends offer him the typical bon voyage, “watch out for the ladyboys,” and send him on a plane across the pacific. He arrives at night, and a taxi takes him to Bangkok’s Khaosan Road, where Tuk-Tuk drivers greet him in a chorus of “Ping-pong show? Ping- pong show?” While Joe is hypothetical, the Google results, bon voyage, and Khaosan Road experience are real. For any tourist staying on the beaten track, a Thai experience will be infused with talk or offers of sex tourism and encounters with aggressive kathoeys, creating a highly sexualized Western non-academic discourse about Thailand. The advertisement and large presence of transgender and gay nightlife opportunities additionally create a sense of openness in terms of sexual orientation. Many Westerners would consider this non-restrictive sexuality and sense of openness as indications of tolerance, a word Wendy Brown examines closely in Regulating Aversion (2006). !4 Cohen !5 Brown quickly introduces tolerance as not just a word, but a broad concept and lively discourse that has been revived and reoriented over the past thirty years. While at its root the word tolerance simply implies endurance, Brown discusses how the recent discourse surrounding tolerance marks it as a “fundamental component of universal human dignity” (Brown 2006). She explores differences in the function and modality of tolerance discourse when addressing domestic issues of multiculturalism, sexuality, or religion, and also the broader categorical assumption that entire nations or cultures can foster or repress a general ‘tolerant’ ideology. Notably, Brown acknowledges the “Euro- Atlantic political imaginary within which the nation-states of the West are presumed always already tolerant” (Brown 2006). In the same political imaginary, Islamic nations are typically presumed intolerant due to political implementation of Sharia law and “repressively” modest clothing. The Western perception of nation-states or cultures as tolerant or intolerant often stems from the Western perception of non-Western treatment of sexuality, in terms of both sexual orientation and freedom of sexual expression. In “Sexual politics, torture, and secular time,” Judith Butler scrutinizes cases in which Western nations use sexual freedom to boast modernism and progressive values, while simultaneously presuming the lack of such values elsewhere (Butler 2008). Butler illustrates this through a portion of the Netherlands’ new immigration test. Applicants are shown photos of two men kissing, and one’s response to the images determines whether he or she is culturally advanced enough to become a citizen of Dutch sexually progressive democracy. It appears, however, that the test was not so much designed to normalize homosexuality in Holland, but rather to eliminate the flow of immigrants from cultures with differing norms. The test is clearly targeted at individuals from !5 Cohen !6 presumptively pre-modern, intolerant cultures; European nationals, citizens of the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, and Switzerland, and individuals earning over 45,000 Euro per year are exempted from the obligation. Butler challenges the policy on several grounds, arguing that this “civic integration exam” aims more toward cultural coercion than diversity. She questions whether “the exam [becomes] the means for testing tolerance,” or instead “[carries] out an assault against religious minorities…[demanding] coercively that they rid themselves of their traditional religious beliefs and practices in order to gain entry into the Netherlands” (Butler 2008). The Western presumption of its own modernity and tolerance in this instance is displayed by the presumed lack of homophobia in wealthy secular democracies, but contradicted by the policy’s intrinsic racial and cultural generalizations and preferences. By presenting an immigration test that targets a specific ideology, and exempting individuals of certain nationality and income, the Dutch government is undeniably conflating ideology with nationality and economic status and openly declaring intolerance for individuals of conflicting ideology. Brown and

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