EXAMINING THE AMBIGUOUS ALLURE OF THE

FARANG -

THAI MIDDLE-CLASS WOMEN AND FARANG MEN

By

CHRISTINE WESTER

MSc Contemporary Asian Studies

Graduate School of Social Sciences

University of Amsterdam

2016

Student No. 11129158 [email protected] Word count: 25,194 Dr. Olga Sooudi Supervisor ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is not the thesis I thought I was going to write and my endeavour turned out to become challenging on both the academic and the personal level. I have been interested in transnational relationships - not only romantic relationships - for a long time and by starting this study I was able to commit myself to this topic for many months. Soon after engaging in academic literature and numerous conversations with people in the field, I changed my approach and began rethinking my own conceptions about people´s relationships and orders. Writing this thesis about transnational relationships would not have been possible without the work of other researchers on whose work I relied and who I mention and quote throughout this thesis. I owe special debt to the following people whose support is crucial to this study and the completion of my thesis: my thesis supervisor, Dr. Olga Sooudi, for her academic guidance, dedication, and mentorship much needed throughout the process, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom for its financial support without which I would not have been able to finish my studies, but also for the valuable network it provided me, and my for her steady support in various ways during my studies.

My biggest "thank you" goes to the women and men who shared their experiences of city life with me and to the many people who introduced me to these wonderful places and sources of information and inspiration. I was often surprised and deeply touched by their stories. My hope is that this thesis does them justice.

LIST OF FIGURES

1 Sky Train station Chong Nonsi and Empire building ...... 10

2 Textbook I used during my course ...... 14

3 Girls taking selfies in front of Siam Paragon ...... 15

4 Bargirls in Sukhumvit Soi 11 ...... 20

5 Sririta Jensen, a Danish-Thai model ...... 33

6 How to behave like a lady as taught in schools...... 44

7 Vocabulary chart teaching children that dark skin is ugly ...... 51

8 Bridging the language barrier ...... 56 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Motivation and relevance ...... 1 Research question and objectives ...... 4 Thesis outline ...... 5 Methodology ...... 5 Interviews ...... 6 Participant observation ...... 6 News articles, blogs, and online forums ...... 7 Research site ...... 8 Research population ...... 10 The researcher as the "Other" ...... 13

II. GENDERED EXPERIENCES IN A METROPOLIS ...... 15

Class is in everything and everywhere ...... 17 "Women are like candy" ...... 19 "My puts pressure on me" ...... 21 "They don´t treat women with respect" ...... 22 Discussion and conclusion ...... 26

III. FARANGNESS AND FARANGIZATION ...... 28

The imperialism of gender and sexualities ...... 30 Transforming Thai-Farang intimacy ...... 32

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IV. IN BANGKOK ...... 35

Relationship status and idioms of practice ...... 35 Don´t eat fruits before they are ripe ...... 39 Discussion and conclusion ...... 43

V. BEING SINGLE - CHOICE OR FATE? ...... 45

Women´s expectations toward a partner ...... 46 Society´s expectations toward women ...... 50 Not all farang are good ...... 54

VI. THE MIA FARANG DILEMMA ...... 53

The origin of mia farang ...... 56 Strategies to avoid stigmatization ...... 62

VII. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION ...... 65

REFERENCES ...... 70

APPENDICES ...... 83

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Motivation!and!relevance! I was already in Bangkok for my field research when I found an article on the thaivisa.com forum1, which incited a lively discussion within the community. A member of the community posted the findings of a Thai researcher, which indicated the emergence of a trend of young, educated women marrying white men. “Before I conducted this research, I thought that Thai women marry white men from economic necessity, but after I studied the situation, I changed my mind,” said Supichaya, who studied the trend through matchmaking websites, targeting Thai women and white men. Supichaya2 further elaborated that these women are well educated and financially quite independent in comparison with the former generation, which mostly came from the working class in Isan3 (Thaivisa: website 2016).

Popular opinion about Thai women entering relationships with white men from a Western country4 have been dominated by a set of , which are that marrying a foreigner is primarily motivated by economic security concerns, the desire for upward mobility (), and is the product of structural inequalities between different parts of the world (Constable 2003:13). Moreover, stereotypes are derived from what scholars traditionally refer to as "Orientalism" (Said 1978), which is an entrenched structure of thought and a pattern of making certain generalizations about the part of the world known as the Orient. In the colonial period, images of the Orient were largely aimed at depicting the people as inferior and backward in order to explain the righteousness of colonization. These images persist in the post-colonial era although in more subtle forms and may not directly be recognized as the legacy of colonial !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 thaivisa.com is probably the biggest expat website in with a mailing list of more than 300.000. 2 I tried to get in contact with the researcher, the faculty that was mentioned in the article, and her supervisor, but was not successful 3 The Isan region is in the northeast of Thailand. It is one of the poorest regions in Thailand. I will give a more detailed description of its relevance in chapter 5. 4 In this thesis, the term "Western countries" includes Europe and countries of European colonial origin with European ancestral populations (North-America, Canada, and Oceania).

1!! ! attitudes (Pissa-ard 2009:8). Furthermore, Mohanty (1988) outlined in her study "Under Western Eyes" the ways in which Euro-American scholarly studies of Third World women tend to reduce them to essentials in a way that deprives them of agency and that reasserts superiority of Western countries. One of the most prominent features of Thailand´s global image concerns the prostitution industry, which has inspired a disproportionate amount of literature on women in Thailand and dominates Euro-American scholars´ perception of gender analysis (Cook and Jackson 1999:12), which is offensive to both Thai women and men, and reveals one of the failings in these narratives as they neglect the experiences of a substantial proportion of the population in Thailand.

The interest in the topic of my thesis had been in my mind long before I began my studies at the University of Amsterdam. It was conceived after a series of conversations I had with Thai women I met at events while living in Bangkok temporarily in 2014. They disclosed that they viewed farang, as more desirable than Thai men. The term farang is used in Thailand to refer to of European descent without specifically referring to any nationality, language, or culture (Thongchai 1994, 4-5) and to the exclusion of other races. In this thesis, I will use the term farang accordingly, although my informants also used the terminology "Westerner" interchangeably.

According to Sunanta and Angeles (2012), marital relations and romantic and intimate actions take place on the personal level involving a complex combination of factors, which cannot be reduced to simplistic explanations around poverty or necessity, force or compulsion, and agency or free will alone. They are more than personal or private as social, economic, and political worlds are built around them (Pratt and Rosner 2012: 8). Situating the trend in the context of Thailand´s industrialization and globalization, reveals an often-omitted connection between a crisis in intimacies and the global gender order. With the economic and political expansion of European states and by the creation of colonial empires, hegemonic masculinities were constructed in relation to subordinated masculinities and have globalized as part of a "world gender order" since colonial conquest and settlement (Connell 1987: 39,183-186). Within the past 40 years, Thailand has been drawn increasingly into the global economy, which spurred an influx of transnational investment, multinational corporations, products, and ideas. Appadurai (1996)

2!! ! calls flows of people, technology, finance, mass media, and ideology "-scapes". Ideas as "ideoscapes" (Appadurai 1996: 33-36) travel into nations, carried by migrants and media, facilitated by new technology, and financed by recently generated wealth. Because the cultural flows also unlock imagination, ideoscapes become a source of inspiration. Some studies have documented the importance of these gendered images, meanings, and values. For instance, Kelsky (2001) found that professional Japanese women drew heavily on ideologies and imagery to esteem white men as the globe´s most desirable men. In a similar vein, in studies about women in Thailand, women define white men as treating women better than Thai men (Esara 2009). Yuh (2002) found that between the 1950s and 1980s, many of Korean military brides did not marry white American soldiers solely to escape poverty or prostitution but because of their idealization of them as prince charmings and derision of Korean men as patriarchs.

This study looks at two interrelated parts of the phenomenon of Thai women being interested in Western men and focuses on the local meanings and circumstances that foster and legitimate certain preferences for relationships. In chapter two to five, I attempt to answer the questions relating to the women´s choices: Why do some Thai middle-class women favor farang men? What role do the constructions of sexuality and gender play in their choices? How does the concept of farang inform them throughout their choices? The second part (chapter six) deals with possible consequences of Thai women choosing a farang or . My findings suggest that urban middle-class women hold certain convictions about white Westerners´ Thai (mia farang) and how society views women in relationships with farang men based on historical connections to the sex industry, the historic origins of mia farang, and stereotyping of farang men that emerge from a body of knowledge of Thailand´s interaction with the West. Middle-class women acquainted with a farang man risk moral compromise. They attempt solving the problem at hand given their definition of class boundaries and gender at play. Considering Thai middle-class femininity, the concepts of class and gender entail a broadening of the notion that one´s gender is constructed through one´s own repetitive performance of gender (West and Zimmerman 1987; Butler 1990). Borrowing from Liechty (2003), I argue that middle-class-culture in Bangkok can be best understood as a sociocultural project, wherein class, gender, and consumerism are interactive and mutually constitutive. The project encompasses a wide range of beliefs and behaviors that allow middle-class people to define social and moral boundaries,

3!! ! inclusive of all who "perform themselves into cultural existence" (Liechty 2003:265) and to the exclusion of those who cannot perform accordingly. In this vein, Thai middle-class women strive to construct and maintain a sociocultural space on their own that locates them in contradistinction to class others.

In conversations and interviews, middle-class women often placed the current generation of Thai middle-class men in a direct confrontation with their idea of an ideal husband, whereas images of farang men depict them as better for Thai women. However, Thai society stereotypes women dating Western men. This situation elucidates the problem at hand for Thai middle-class women. I argue that their choices to pursue a relationship with a farang are a result of images and occur through the exercise of agency.

Research!question!and!objectives! Initially, I began my research with the question "What are the motivations of Thai middle-class women to pursue a relationship with a farang?" In preparation for the fieldwork I engaged with migration and globalization theories since scholars, for example, Constable (2005) have noted that such relationships have become increasingly common due to new expanding forms of globalization and increased time-space compression. Harvey (1990) coined the term "time-space compression to refer to the way the acceleration of economic activities leads to the destruction of spatial barriers and distances. Such are especially interesting because they do not represent a global free-for-all in which all combinations, regardless of class, nationality, ethnicity, or gender, are possible. The majority of international migrants are women, and most of these women move from poorer countries to wealthier ones, from the less developed global "south" to the more industrialized "north" (Constable 2005). When I first arrived in the field, I realized that couples consisting of a farang and a Thai woman are a rare sight in downtown Bangkok. After a few interviews, I found that the women constructed farang masculinity in direct relation to Thai masculinity and, although many of them embraced the idea of being in a relationship with a farang, they rejected the idea of moving to another country. Another peculiar feature of our conversations was that women emphasized the need to distance themselves from the mia farangs, revealing attitudes of the middle-class towards lower class women (and men) complicating Thai middle-class women´s desires to marry a farang. The evidence presented makes

4!! ! it necessary to give due consideration to the globalized and localized imagery of gender and class. Global flows of images, ideas and people reinforce and extend old colonial hierarchies structured by the ideology of (Persaud 2005). Within my research, it was salient how masculinity and femininity are determined by class and ethnicity and informs men´s and women´s strategies towards sexuality within and outside marriage. In this sense, this thesis combines methods and perspectives of race, feminism, and cultural studies. The overriding theme is that gender (both masculinity and femininity) takes shape in different and overlapping webs of power. I address three interrelated issues: How do Thai women construct farang masculinities in relation to Thai masculinities and how does this reveal larger hegemonic contexts? How is Thai middle- class femininity constructed and in what ways are women discriminated against? How does the belonging to the middle-class affect Thai middle-class women´s marital choices and strategies?

Thesis!outline! The thesis is organized into three main sections: Chapter 2 and 3 provide the context of this thesis. Chapter two outlines the urban life of middle-class women in Bangkok and discusses in which ways gender identities are lived and experienced by middle-class women in Bangkok. Chapter three will provide an overview of the history of farang and Thailand´s interaction with the West. In postcolonial Thailand, the construction of the "new male" reveals the entanglement of gender in larger hegemonic contexts and how images about farang are shaped. Chapter four explores how young women in Bangkok act out courtship and chapter five will describe women´s imagination of foreign and local men. Chapter 6 demonstrates that social stigmatization of mia farang is embedded in gender, ethnic, and class bias and how middle-class women have to navigate class-based lines to avoid stigmatization when they pursue a relationship with a farang. In chapter six I revisit important concepts elaborated throughout the thesis.

Methodology! This thesis is the result of a one-year master program Contemporary Asian Studies with a fieldwork period of three months in Bangkok, Thailand. The fieldwork was conducted between the 16th of December 2015 and the 26th of March 2016 with small breaks for visa renewal every thirty days during which I left the country. The data that can be found in this research are either derived from interviews, casual conversations, and observations conducted in the field and

5!! ! scholarly books from secondary literature, and online sources, such as online newspapers, blogs, forums, and youtube-videos.

Interviews! My primary source of information were semi-structured interviews with topics I wanted to talk about, but I found it important to listen closely to what my informants had to say and react on it. All interviews were planned in advance and took place in an informal setting. I used a voice recorder to record the majority of the interviews and transcribed them afterward. The majority of the interviews were between 60 and 90 minutes long, some were up to two hours long. All interviews were conducted in English and most of my informants spoke English on a high level as the result of their education or their work in international companies. Nonetheless, I feel that had I had the ability to conduct the interviews in Thai, I would have probably generated rich and productive notions and expressions Thais use in the realms of sexuality, which I could not do in English. Thai speakers are confronted with multiple ways of addressing people and the self, each with particular resonances and connotations of deference, social status, intimacy, formality, and similar interrelated factors and the use of certain notions could give more useful insights about themes of identity, dominance, and even aggression, and their relationship to gender issues (Chirasombutti and Diller 1999). Especially, in urbanized and educated circles, subtlety in the Thai language is valued and refinement constitutes a class marker (Sunanta 2009, which became an important theme in this thesis.

Participant!observation! I used participant observation as a method to gain a better understanding of the experiences of middle-class women in Bangkok. By accompanying women to events, shopping, dining, and watching movies, I could observe consumption patterns and their interactions with other people. Dancing events, to which another fellow researcher I met in Bangkok invited me, proved to the most successful source for acquiring informants. I attended several Salsa and Swing events that were held in different locations in downtown Bangkok. At the beginning of each event, organizers would give dance lessons free of charge and encourage the participants to change their partners every few minutes. In this speed dating like environment, participants quickly lost their inhibitions and I was able to talk to a variety of people I would have otherwise not met.

6!! ! Furthermore, I conducted a small part of my participant observations online and, for this, created accounts on Tinder, meetup.com, and internations.org. The latter two have several subgroups dedicated to dating and singles. While I mainly used the sites to acquire informants, I also received messages from Thai men and women with which I interacted and met up on a few occasions for interviews and casual conversations. The huge majority of my informants have never used dating websites or smartphone applications, if they did, they would use English speaking websites and apps. One woman used OKCupid.com and another one tried Thaifriendly.com. I decided against creating accounts on these websites because I met these women at the end of my fieldwork when I scheduled and conducted my last interviews and thus would not have had enough time to incorporate these media in my fieldwork. In prior interviews, the women denied having used any websites or applications and reported that they would rather not be acquainted with such a service. The other reason is that Thaifriendly.com is for Asian women interested in foreign men. I am not an Asian woman and did not want to set up a fake account. In all my interactions, I was upfront about my status as researcher and intentions in order to let people decide whether they would like to interact with me.

News!articles,!blogs,!and!online!forums! During my fieldwork, I read different newspapers, blogs, and forums, such as the Bangkok Post, Asian Correspondent, Bangkok Coconuts, thaiwomantalks.com, mythai.org, thaivisa.com, stickmanbangkok.com, and the Thailand forums on reddit.com. These sources were useful to keep me updated and several articles became subjects for discussions and questions in my interviews. It was also an effective way to discover how the Thai media present subjects relating to gender and how readers view theses issues since online sources can be commented upon. Many English language blogs translate the contents from Thai-language newspapers and forums, therefore, I believe that the most pressing issues were brought to my attention; nonetheless, being able to read the Thai language would have been valuable since I assume that the selection of articles reflected the interests of its readers, of which the majority might be male foreigners living in Thailand. Howard (2009) estimated that there were 100.000 Westerners in Thailand in the mid-2000s, with the largest proportion coming from the UK, Germany, the USA, the Netherlands, France, Canada, and Australia. In his survey, he found that virtually all were men (96 %). This thesis is concerned with opinions of women.

7!! ! Research!site! Before the kingdom came into being as it is today, an ethnically diverse population of Thai, Lao, Malay, and numerous hill lived in independent states in the north, northeast, and south. These formerly autonomous territories were colonized by and integrated into Siam, as Thailand was called until 1935, in the 20th century (Loos 2006: 2). Thailand´s capital Bangkok was originally the site of a French fort in the mid-seventeenth century and a largely Chinese trading and customs post until the late eighteenth century (Smithies 1986:4-5). One hundred years ago, the city began to reflect modernizing policies of King Chulalongkorn who created the preconditions for Bangkok´s contemporary modernity. Canals were filled in to make roads, brick buildings replaced floating houses and many new buildings were constructed which reflected a blend of European and Thai sensibilities (Hamilton 2000: 462). As Thailand industrialized, migration to industrial sites occurred rapidly, especially to the Bangkok metropolitan area and adjacent provinces. Subsequently, Bangkok has undergone vast transformations and in the process manifested more dominant and exaggerated elements in the economy, society, and culture compared to other urban areas in Thailand. The city dwarfs other urban centers like Chiang Mai and Surat Thani with its population of more than eight million (or more, considering illegal immigrants and circular immigrants) making it more than twenty times larger than any other urban settlement in Thailand. At a first glance, Bangkok may seem like a metropolis defined by spatial chaos. Bustling markets, smelly canals, shiny shopping malls, gracious temples, tall buildings and twisty sois (minor roads) seem to constitute a conglomeration of features without an identifiable pattern. Yet, as O´Connor (1990:61) observes, Bangkokians see their city more as a patchwork of places defined by activities, communities, and historic events, rather than a grid of streets. Vorng (2011) argues that Bangkok consists of two centers: the old city center located on Rattanakosin and the modern downtown nexus radiating outwards from Siam and Ratchaprasong. Central to the old centers are the palaces, temples, and ceremonial grounds, which remain important as the material and symbolic embodiment of the monarchy and religiosity. Central to contemporary urban life are centralized nodal points in Bangkok´s new "downtown". The emergence of new middle-class sectors of society affected urban space in various ways, with two main spheres being the intense development of commercial consumption and residential enclaves catering to the elite and the new middle-classes.

8!! ! The choice for Bangkok as my fieldwork destination was based on six considerations: 1) Bangkok is the most cosmopolitan city in Thailand in which a large number of advanced industry professionals are employed in national and multi-national companies (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Since I began my research to find out about women´s motivations to pursue a relationship with a Western man I suspected that Bangkok rather than any other metropolis in Thailand would be an ideal setting to meet middle-class women in relationships with farangs. 2) The growing mobility and independence of a younger generation of women who migrate to Bangkok to pursue higher education or for work who live autonomously from , kin, and village elders. This modifies traditional gender expectations. As youth migrate away from their and communities of origin, parental involvement in children´s marriages is reduced and parents have less control over the sexuality of their adolescent children (Esara 2009). 3) Thailand´s reputation abroad as "sex capital" colors Western perceptions of Thai sexuality and obscures cultural ideals of female sexual modesty (Bishop and Robinson 1999:191-204). 4) Thai women´s preferences for farangs rely upon particular expectations and idealized assumptions about farang men. These men, in turn, bring their own expectations about Thai women and sexuality (Esara 2009). 5) Amidst the height of nationalist sentiments after the ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin in 2006, national initiatives and policies around women marrying foreigners have turned into teaching morality to women (Sunanta 2009). Although theses teachings are aimed predominantly at rural women, initiatives are carried out nationwide. Furthermore, Thailand´s current military government attempts to control (female) sexuality through ideological campaigns linking morality, national identity, and marriage.

9!! ! During the nearly four months I stayed in Bangkok, I rented a small condominium in Sathorn, which is the financial business district and one of the "better" addresses in Bangkok with upscale hotels, condominium, and office buildings. The house was located in a small soi (minor street) close to the Empire building and the BTS station. One of my friends helped me with the process since the manager of the building did not speak English and my Thai is not useful for complex negotiations. In order to get around, I used mainly the Sky Train (BTS) and the metro (MRT).

! Figure 1 Sky Train station Chong Nonsi and Empire building. Source: flickr

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Research!population! Besides the sampling criteria of Thai ethnicity, "educational level" (university or above) and "social class" (middle), the rest of the sampling criteria was left to be relatively open to ensure that concepts could emerge from the data. I was able to gather 24 Thai middle-class women and six males with different backgrounds as informants. I met 14 of the women on more than one occasion, most of the times they would invite me for some activities, such as going for dinner, watching a movie, or shopping. With two exceptions, the women shared similar strategies for and outcomes of intimate relationships. The majority of my informants was single and had a positive attitude towards getting married; few had settled with the thought of remaining single because no suitable mate was available. The minority of women was actively searching, either with the help

10! ! ! of online sources or through friends or family. Some women were looking for a progressive Thai man, with a "westernized mindset" and others rejected the idea completely to date a Thai man, while other women would either date a Western man or a progressive Thai man. One of the women has been in a relationship with a "traditional" Thai man but mentioned that she did not plan on marrying him soon because he did not live up to her expectations of a responsible partner. In her opinion, Western masculinity was superior to Thai masculinity within certain realms, which did however not translate into her wanting to date a farang. One of the women had been in relationships with men and women. Another woman vocalized adamantly that she was interested in black men and actively pursuing them on dating apps. Our interview, held in a highly frequented Starbucks cafe close to her workplace, was at times a bit awkward for me. Although I found her opinions very interesting, she spoke loudly about her desires and experiences with black men. I was a bit concerned for her reputation and wondered whether she was aware that people were listening in on our conversation. The mentioned stances towards intimate partners are interesting since they highlight to what extent white masculinity is idealized and whether the notion of white masculinity is central to Thai women´s "plan of action". Even the women who were looking for a Thai man stated they were looking for someone with a "Western mindset", however, favored a hybridized form between a farang and a Thai man.

The largest group of interviewees (17) had migrated to Bangkok from adjacent provinces or provinces further away from Bangkok. All of them migrated to Bangkok because of better educational and professional opportunities than offered in their home provinces. Within this group, most people (23) lived alone and some with their kin (5) - all men lived with their kin. One of the women lived together with her Australian boyfriend to whom she got engaged during the time I was there. The second largest group comprised of people who were born and raised in Bangkok and whose parents were either Bangkokians or had migrated from other provinces. The third group was return-migrants from Australia, Canada, and the USA. They grew up in Thailand and had moved at some time to another country for education or work. Each of them got married to a foreigner abroad, two of them were divorced or in the process of getting divorced and one woman was living together with her foreign husband who was a stay-at-home dad and cared for their 5-year old daughter. Education levels were from currently in tertiary education to master’s degree and some were in the process of relocating abroad for further studies. The ages

11! ! ! ranged from 22 to 45. The majority was in the 24 to 32-age bracket. The informants were sourced through personal contacts, by recruiting women on professional networking and cultural events, and via social online networking groups. This ensured the diversity of the sample. According to Herzfeld (2010: 175), anthropological studies in Thailand have been rural in emphasis, devoted to the Thailand´s sex industry and neglected the middle-class (Cook and Jackson 1999: 13). Due to limited knowledge of Thailand´s middle-class women and the fact that women do not constitute a homogeneous category, I do not claim that their experiences described by my interviewees can be generalized to Thailand´s middle-class women. However, based on data collected from in-depth interviews, my first-hand experience and observations, interaction and conversations with countless people in the field as well as local press coverage, I can reasonably assert that the accounts of my informants presented here are illustrative and typical of experiences and perspectives shared by many middle-class women in Bangkok today. For confidentiality reasons, I will use pseudonyms. Appendix 1 depicts the full demographic information relating to all informants.

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12! ! ! The!researcher!as!the!"Other"! !

"I would call you an alien; someone who does not belong here." (Bart, 305)

As Bart´s statement indicates and my explanations in chapter three describe in more detail, as a farang I represent the cultural other in the Thai imagination and my farangness is surrounded by a set of stereotypes that shaped and influenced my research. I am a German woman. I was born into a farming family in a rural, Catholic enclave, close to the border of the Netherlands. Religion and patriarchal family values played an important role in my upbringing until my apprenticeship in a governmental department allowed for a new form of freedom by moving out of my family´s influence, both spatially and financially. At the time I am writing this thesis, I am in my thirties and traveled and worked in several countries around the world. During this time and through conversations with locals and other travelers, I was introduced to differing concepts of dating and relationships, characterized by misunderstandings, varying values, and differing idioms of practice. I believe that my upbringing and my experiences have provided me with valuable insights for this project and enabled me to empathize on various levels with my informants.

During each interview, I gave my informants the opportunity to ask questions about me. Although all of the women knew that I was a researcher from the Netherlands who would eventually write about their lives, this did not seem important to them. They cared more about my family history and my life in Europe, probably wanting to situate me in their mental universe, but also ask pressing questions about their observations of farang men and farang customs. Even though some of my informants concluded a bit astonished that my life was not so much different from theirs, my "otherness" has had an impact on the outcomes of this research in various ways. To begin with, I had issues in acquiring informants. I discussed this with several of my Thai contacts and they mentioned two possible reasons: many Thais feel intimidated by farangs and thus try to avoid too much contact, and they are afraid of the questions I might ask since relationships and are highly personal. For instance, Kaew, an informant who is mentioned in chapter two said:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Interview 13.02.2016: Bart is a 30 year old Thai-Chinese man. He worked in a property company in Bangkok at the time I interviewed him.

13! ! ! "When you are white and come from a foreign country, people think that you are probably smarter and probably richer ... in some cases that´s true but not always. I usually tell my staff they should not be scared of white people."

Moreover, my farangness might have had a big impact on the answers of my respondents. For most Thais, I belong to a culture6 that is viewed as "sex mad" (Cook and Jackson 1999:19) and I believe that some of the answers I got are an expression of racialized expectations within the realms of relationships, rather than an expression of the kind of questions I asked. I provide an example in chapter 4.

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Figure 2 Textbook I used during my Thai language course. Foreigners are called "aliens". Source: own photo

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 6 I am aware that "West" is not a culture, but the homogenized category of the farang conflates "" and "Western culture" and Thais would usually use the notion "Western culture" in conversations with me rather than talking about nationalities or ethnicities.

14! ! ! CHAPTER II

GENDERED EXPERIENCES IN A METROPOLIS

"Buzzing, humid and exotic, Bangkok is the larger-than-life city where magnificent temples, historic markets, skyscrapers and rooftop bars create an intoxicating vibe that’s hard to resist." (Worldtravelguide: website 2016)

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Figure 3 Girls taking selfies in front of Siam Paragon, a Bangkok shopping mall that was the world´s No. 1 spot for Instagram posts in 2013 and the No. 1 spot for my interviews. Source: Asian Review

15! ! ! On a Wednesday evening, around 8 o´clock, I am waiting on the second floor of the Siam Paragon mall in front of a Starbucks for one of my informants who asked me to meet here. Two months into my field research I have become very familiar with many of the locations of this multi-national coffee chain that always seems to be busy no matter what branch. Since I made this arrangement via the Line app7, I have only a vague idea what my informant looks like. Therefore, I am looking around nervously, watching the passing people for some sign that someone in this crowd might also look out for someone. Most of them stroll around in groups, chatting, and gazing at the offers of the various food stalls. It is a bit chilly so I am reaching for my cardigan that I am carrying around in my bag for the many occasions I am indoors with air conditioning cooling down the building to what feels to me like the wintery weather in Amsterdam I left shortly before. Like always, I had messaged my informant what I look like and what I am wearing, hoping that it will make it easier for us to recognize each other. I don´t have to wait long until I see a Thai woman separating out of the mass of people and smiling at me.

This snippet from my fieldwork is revealing of some of the themes I identified when looking back at my field research: I spent much of my time in the Sky Train traveling to and from meetings with women who chose to meet up in one of the modern malls connected to the Sky Train, usually not far from their workplaces. Most of the interviews took place late in the evenings or on the weekends because the majority of women I talked to work long hours. At the beginning of each interview, I would ask them about their life in Bangkok: Where do they come from? Where are they going? What are their professions, daily routines, and aspirations? How do they perceive life in Bangkok? These questions served two purposes: firstly, I wanted to make them warm up to me and feel comfortable while talking about themselves and their lives. Secondly, I wanted to know what it means to be a middle-class woman in Bangkok.

My research reveals that higher education and work outside the family household helped to women to realize their potentials and generate incomes with which they are gaining access to cultural forms that have been shaping their lives in various ways. Spending time shopping and eating in shopping malls away from the overpowering heat, crowds, and traffic fumes of the wider city have become an intrinsic part of the modern urban experience of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7!Line!is!a!communication!application!for!smartphones,!which!allows!to!send!messages!and!make!voice!calls.!!

16! ! ! Bangkok middle-class. In an overcrowded city with few venues for recreation, shopping malls have become the predominant spaces for leisure and recreation (Wilson 2004: 106). Shopping was largely carried out in formal and informal open markets and Chinese-owned shops until recently. Nowadays, the air-conditioning in the shopping malls adds comfort and a sense of luxury that represents modernity for many (ibid: 29-67). Consumption played a key role in the lives of my informants. This must be seen as much more than simply the act of purchasing some product; as Liechty (2003:31) states, middle-class culture is uniquely embedded in the social trajectory of things. What things people desire, the meanings they attach to them, and the class-cultural practices they construct around consumption becomes the primary mode of cultural production of the middle-class. Despite considerable material and social gains, women struggled against gender inequality. In the following, I show women´s views on middle-class life in Bangkok and revealing the common imbalance between men and women which manifests in everyday life. I chose the stories of by four women in which they are talking about class, fashion choices, and their work in the professional and domestic sphere. Their stories are exemplary for the women in my study.

"Class!is!in!everything!and!everywhere"! Khem is a 24-year-old student at Chulalongkorn University and had nearly finished her studies in Political Sciences. She planned on commencing a Master Study program in Women´s Studies in Europe at the end of the year and had been awaiting a positive answer from the chosen institution when we first talked via skype and then met for a short tour around the Sala Daeng area8 and later sat down in a cafe in a shopping center. American-style shopping centers represent a relatively recent development in Bangkok and have since become a defining space for contemporary urban experience. Malls, which have mushroomed throughout the city in the last three decades, are designed as a one-stop complex, in which Thais might spend hours to meet people, shop, work, run errands, or spend leisure time alone or with family and friends. A footbridge system connects several malls in the downtown area with the BTS (Sky Train) stations and the areas around Lat Phrao, Chatuchak, Phrom Phong, Ekkamai, Asok, Ari, Surasak,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8!Saladaeng!is!located!close!to!Silom’s!shopping,!dining!and!nightlife!scene!at!,!a!famous!red!light!district.!Some!of!the!minor! streets!are!known!for!their!"massage"!parlors!catering!to!the!gay!men´s!scene.!Since!prostitution!is!officially!illegal,!much!of!the!sex! services!are!provided!in!restaurants,!massage!parlors!and!karaoke!bars!(see!Bao!1999).! !

17! ! ! Victory Monument, and Chong Nonsi train stations are packed with condominiums, apartment blocks, and homes. Shopping complexes and department store chains generally target specific class ranges of consumers, demarcated into upper, middle, and lower segments (Vorng 2011). Many stores such as Zen Central and Siam Paragon target the upper segment of wealthier Thai or foreign customers. However, as one of my taxi driver remarked, upscale malls like Siam Paragon are a place where the rich shop, the middle-class people go to eat and working class people go to escape the heat. Over coffee, Khem explained how she would describe a middle-class person:

"Here in Thailand, if you don´t have a bachelor´s degree then you are considered lower class. (...) and it is also about the products that you use, for example, Thailand is crazy about brandings and shopping, (...) and if you go on holiday in Europe, Japan or some kind of civilized country once in a while. Middle-class people have the for something international and kind of denounce themselves as being Thai, I mean it´s not that they say they are not Thai but they try to live the lifestyle that makes them different like the lower class or rejecting what the grassroot class is."

Her elaborate statement evidences many significant issues concerning class membership, which have been mentioned in a similar way by all my informants. Khem defines class-membership not only based on wealth and material standards but also based on social performance in everyday life. As Vorng (2011) argues, most Bangkokians would agree that a white-collar occupation could sufficiently define an individual as being of middle-class status, however, there are status and lifestyle differences between members of the middle-class. Giddens (1991:81) argues that consumption gives material form to particular narratives of self-identity while Young (1999:71) contends that consumption practices are repetitive and concrete manifestations of people´s visions of modernity and their own place in the social order. One´s position in a status hierarchy in Thailand is linked with the consumption and of prestige markers of cosmopolitanism and modernity, many of them European and North-American, including cosmopolitan lifestyle, education in an international school with a European or North American curriculum, and schooling abroad, preferably in an English-speaking country (Thongchai 2000). Within Bangkokian status relations people tend to relate to one another based on external attributes - from personal presentation to the mode of speech, to manners and behavioral conduct. In this

18! ! ! regard, it is interesting that all my informants chose an air-conditioned café for our meetings. Mills (1997) found that these venues and the beverage, hot coffee, reflect distinctive signs of urbanity and middle-classness. When looking at Khem´s statement, she further stresses out is that it is important to distinguish oneself from a lower-class person by rejecting what is considered lower-class lifestyle. According to Bourdieu (1984), social classes display different patterns of cultural taste and consumption and also of distaste and aversion as part of their characteristic lifestyles, along with closely related patterns of material consumption, for example in food and dress.

"Women!are!like!candy"9!! In fact, for members of the middle-class, wearing the right clothes and the right brands are a big deal and constitute a big part of their claims to membership in the urban middle-class. Clothes and accessories are a sign of being civilized and are used to preserve and show status. Conversations with many women in Bangkok indicated that there was a set of shifting and ambiguous rules that guided middle-class women´s decisions about how to dress. They had to pay attention to how they display their bodies or risking to be morally compromised. One´s dress could show too much skin or be deemed too casual, which was associated with the lifestyle of a lower class woman, especially when accompanied by farang men.

Kaew´s experience with fashion choices is a rather insightful example of these struggles. I first encountered her at a cultural event where she gave a presentation about what it means to be a Thai businesswoman in Thailand and in which she talked about that she had to deal with lots of stereotypes because of her ethnicity and gender. We met in a French café close to her office in Soi Sukhumvit 1110. She is a 29-year-old business owner and focuses on two connected business segments; one of her companies publishes a magazine directed at hotel businesses in Asia; the other company provides hospitality businesses with uniforms. She is a very feisty person who constantly fiddled with her phone to answer incoming messages, regularly cursing and railing against people who sent her messages during our interview. She is aware that her appearance not !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 Quote from Thailand´s Prime Minister Prayuth. Full quote: "During Songkran (Thai New Year), I ask that women wear proper clothes, Thai style, so they would look good and civilized (...) women are like toffee or candy, which people would not like to eat if already unwrapped". I see similarities between the administration of Prime Minister Prayuth and that of other state regimes, which have attempted to control female sexuality through ideological campaigns linking morality, national identity and marriage (see Ong 1995) https://asiancorrespondent.com/2016/04/thai-pm-prayuth-compares-skimpily-dressed-women-to-unwrapped-candy/ 10 Soi Sukhumvit 11 is a popular hangout for expats with many bars and restaurants that cater to expats

19! ! ! only reflects on her business, but her fashion choices are important to protect herself from being stereotyped and discriminated against. She became visibly upset when she elaborated on incidences where she felt disrespected because people assumed that she was an escort of one of the farang males when attending business events. Interesting was that she perceived to be more condescending than Western people. "I get that from Thai ... from my people!" On elaborating on her fashion choices, she made remarks that she needed to distance herself from women working in the loosely structured sex industry in Bangkok. "When you dress like a prostitute, you will be treated like one." She set forth that she wears heels in order to appear taller, however, the right type of heel is important and she illuminates that she avoided those heels that were too "slutty". While trying to explain what "slutty" means, she mentioned the shoes of the working girls in the bars we passed earlier as an example. The type of shoes these women wore was so-called stiletto heels or platform shoes. She said she wears shoes with more elegant heels that are available in international shoe stores in downtown Bangkok. Furthermore, the right type of suit is important as well. She said that most of her clothing items are black. While she Figure 4 Bargirls in Sukhumvit Soi 11. The woman in the front wears shoes that are "too did not give an explanation for the choice of the slutty" and her dress is too "showy" for women like Kaew. Source: Thailand Redcat color, she showed me a photo of a recent meeting with hotel managers to demonstrate her fashion choices. Earlier, she had remarked that the industry was male-dominated, which was reflected in the picture; she was the only woman in the picture next to a couple of farang males who all wore dark suits. For her, it was crucial to wear business-like clothes to prevent people from thinking that she was with one of the men who "picked her up in a bar". Her preferred suits consist either of long trousers or a skirt that reaches the knees with a blouse. Although her clothes were body conscious, they did not reveal much skin, especially not the shoulders and cleavage, unlike the women in the bars, as she pointed out to me.

20! ! ! "My!family!puts!pressure!on!me"! Noon´s story highlights that Thai women are living within a sociocultural environment in which extended family, society, and the state continue to strongly emphasize the role of women as being primarily responsible for nurturing and maintaining a happy family. 11 The gendered image of the "good daughter" entails obligations of respect and gratitude owed by all children to their parents, which is especially significant for women. Unlike their brothers, they cannot serve as a Buddhist monk to earn religious merit and are raised to express their gratitude and loyalty by attending to the day-to-day needs of household members (Mills 1997). Most of the women I interviewed lived alone and were not married; nonetheless, they had something to report in this area. Noon is a 28- year-old woman who was born and raised in a city in the south of Thailand; she has an older sister and has been working in a marketing office in Bangkok since her return from Japan where she studied. She is a very lively and open-minded person and talked about how much she liked her life in Bangkok, how much she enjoyed living together with one of her friends, and overall was very content with her job. Nonetheless, she contemplated leaving Bangkok to attend to her . She explained that a few years ago, her mother became very sick and at that time, members of her extended family began putting pressure on her to move back to take over the household. "But I had just gotten a new job. My dad told me not to quit it and that he would take care of her." Unfortunately, her mother died shortly after. Noon´s father reassured her that he could take care of himself "but I get the pressure from the rest of the family to live with him and care for him."

Noon explained that the influence her extended family had on decisions that affected her nuclear family has always been rather high, although her mother had attempted to reduce it when she married her father. Her parents both worked as police officers and her mother agreed to a marriage on the condition that they would not move into his parents´ house12, but rather buy one further away from the extended family. The insistence of Noon´s mother for a neolocal residence is similar to a phenomenon observed by Kyung-Sup and Min-Young (2010) who found in their research among South Korean women a tendency to restructure family relations and thereby

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 The Prime Minister mentioned in speeches during the time of my field work that men and women cannot be equal and that a woman´s role is centred around the household: "Women are the gender of motherhood (...) women take care of the kids and everything else in the household" https://asiancorrespondent.com/2016/02/tongue-thaied-prayuth-and-the-ladies/ 12 patrilocal residence is found to be most prevalent in the urban South, the Central region, and Bangkok. This reflects a large proportion of the Chinese in the areas. On the other hand, living with the ´s mother (matrilocal residence) is more common in other urban areas (Limanonda 1995).

21! ! ! reducing the effective scope of family relations. Families in South Korea become functionally overloaded attributed to compressed modernity, which has become a universal feature of contemporary national societies due to globalization. It is a civilizational condition in which economic, political, social, and/or cultural changes occur in an extremely condensed manner in respect to both time and space (Kyung-Sup 2010). Such familial burdens and risks are particularly onerous to women as a result of the fundamentally gender-based structure of family relations and duties in South Korea and Thailand.

Noon remembered that family members would often argue with her mother and that her father was merely a bystander who never defended decisions her parents had made together. For instance, she remembered that her mother had been criticized much before Noon went to the USA to attend high school. "The whole family wanted me to stay in the south and go to college here, but my Mom told me that if I want to go I should go." Traditionally, daughters leave their natal family one by one through marriage. The last daughter usually stays on, looks after the parents, and inherits the land and house after the parents´death (Limanonda 1995). Noon was the youngest daughter and it would have been her duty to stay and care for the parents, especially after her sister got married.

Not all women encountered the conflicting expectations of familial obligations and having their own aspirations in the same fashion as Noon, but many were confronted by similar dilemmas and recognized the moral force of family obligation either from their own family or that of (possible) and .13

"They!don´t!treat!women!with!respect"! Work represented a large portion of the lives of most of the women in my study and almost all of them revealed being concerned about issues in the workplace. I met Somchai through an organizer of an event I attended. She is a 45-year-old return-migrant from Canada where she was married to a Canadian man. She had left Canada 10 years before and since then had no contact with her husband. Her husband was her neighbor during the time she studied in Canada and when he asked her to marry him she agreed. She confided in me that she only got married because she had reached an age where she thought it was the right thing to do and that it was !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 13 I will give another example in in chapter four.

22! ! ! expected from her. Marriage is considered a woman´s natural path in Thai society and a proper woman has to get married (Bao 2008). However, they did not get along well shortly into the marriage and, therefore, she returned to Bangkok. She never got formally divorced but assumed that her husband had terminated the marriage in Canada, as this is possible after two years without contact. Upon her return, she opened a shoe retail business with one of her friends, which was successful and growing. They expanded and opened several stores throughout Bangkok. Nonetheless, she wanted to try different things and looked for a job in an office first and then became a freelance language trainer for corporations later. She said:

"I feel uncomfortable when I go and work in Thai corporations. I usually work with a company for three months and I must say I don´t like that much. They don´t treat women with respect and women have to pretend to be stupid and keep a low profile. Women are expected to be nice and not speak up. I believe in equality and that is why I prefer to work with Western companies."

All women I talked to felt to be in a double-bind dilemma when working in Thai companies. Femininity and competence are defined as exact opposites creating unrealizable expectations for them (Jamieson 1995: 18). Women in Thailand are expected to be silent because women, who speak up, are considered too bold (Hobbs et al, 2011) and most women said they needed to "dumb-down" when interacting with men to not be perceived as a butch (mannish woman). According to Somchai, Thai companies cling to traditional gender relations making it impossible for many women to thrive, meaning being taken seriously and being promoted into higher positions, and thus it would be better to work for a Western company. Most women assumed that Western companies do not discriminate against women and that women will be treated as well as men when working in one. Something similar was observed by Kelsky (2001:114). Japanese women believed that foreign affiliated firms would bring with them allegedly non-discriminatory hiring policies of their home companies in the West. Most women, however, concluded that companies that have been too long in Thailand begin assimilating and adopting "the bad attitudes of Thai managers" towards work and women rather than remaining true to their conception of the gender-egalitarian Western company.

23! ! ! Another example for a double-bind situation was reported by Duan. She was one of the women I met on several occasions and who helped me with some translations. She is 34 and single and we would sometimes meet up for lunch and dinner and discuss "women stuff". She works as a manager in a transnational company. The CEO is a farang man, the lower level manager and other employees are Thai women, which is a composition found in many of the companies my informants worked for. In our discussions, she talked often about her relationship with her co- workers that soured over time. She had worked for the same organisation for a couple of years, but was only recently promoted to the position of a manager, which she blamed on "office politics". As an example, she mentioned being called into her boss´ office after a networking event her organization hosted. Her boss, a British man, told her that someone in the office had mentioned she would use these events to "find a Western boyfriend", which he asked her to refrain from. Such events require mixing and mingling and employees are expected to attend them in the evenings after their regular work. "It was my job to talk to people and how ironic that 90% of the attendees are Western males!" Noticeably upset, she suspected that one of her female colleagues, who she described as "backstabber", had talked to her boss to tarnish her reputation. She said she was not her first victim. Earlier, one of her other colleagues had caused her trouble by disclosing something she jokingly said about her CEO in a private conversation. She viewed this as an attempt to make her appear in a negative light among her work colleagues and supervisors and began reducing contact to them to a minimum. Seeing no other possibility to not get acquainted with farang males in a work-related environment, she would also stay away from thee networking events they organized. This was not received positively either as she was expected to grow her business network. Female rivalry is a theme in many women´s lives (Barash 2006) and women often perceive other women as a more direct threat to their advancement in the workplace than men (Sills 2007). Moreover, women bully other women at work more than twice as often as they target men. Ludgen-Sandvik et al (2012:61) situated gender centrally in the study of. They argue that a failure to conform to traditionally gendered roles could trigger bullying at work and Tannenbaum (2003) points out that women are conditioned to view each other as rivals rather than allies. As few women rise in masculine hierarchies, they will, as Freire (1970: 29-30) suggests, "almost always... instead of striving for liberation become oppressors or sub-oppressors of others similar to them." Such examples were brought up strikingly often in my conversation and were

24! ! ! one of the reasons some women were unwilling to work with or for Thai companies and why they decided to quit their jobs to either become self-employed or, as one of my interviewees told me a few months after we first met, to consider getting married.14 "At least I would not have to worry about paying my bills if I were married", she said in a bitter tone. She had just lost her job because of bullying and struggled to find a new one.

Some women in my study brought up another issue; they reported feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place when it came to sexual harassment. Prae was one of the women who talked about enduring harassment at the workplace:

"There is a lot of verbal and physical harassment at the workplace ... but women would not talk about it because they do not see the point of talking about it. I talk with you about it, but I would not talk to my colleagues about it.... in Thai society it is not only the guy who would look bad but also you as a woman would look bad too."

Studies have documented that sexual harassment is generally directed toward women and perpetrated by men. This situation conforms with social norms about sex roles in general and thus appears to be "natural". The phenomenon of blaming the victim in sexual harassment cases rests upon differences in perceptions and differences in power between women and men in organizations. Men are more likely to subscribe to the view that sexual behavior at work is "only natural" and to believe that women simply overreact to that natural behavior (Baugh 1997). Violence against women in Thai society is pervasive not only in the workplace but also in intimate relationships. According to a study, 41% of ever-partnered women in Bangkok had encountered physical or by their male partners (Archawanijakul et al., 2003) and most of the problems concerning sexual assault, sexual harassment, and date were rarely reported. Chinlumprasert (2001) views this issue as a deeply hidden problem embedded in Thai society because of patriarchal structures. A patriarchy, as noted by Gamache (1998), is "the institutionalization of male dominance over women in both public and private spheres". Women learn that men have greater power and greater access to resources and ability to define and control social rules and accept these as normal and natural. Thus, Thai women have few perceptions of inequality in social activities. Through gender role socialization, they learn to obey !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 Duan informed me that she moved to another company while I was writing this thesis.

25! ! ! the authority and "rules" that reflect the social norm and perceive it as important for them to stay out of trouble, to ensure their own survival and to be accepted as "good" women (Chinlumprasert 2001). That sexual harassment has been normalized in the everyday life of women became obvious in nearly all of my interactions during my fieldwork. For instance, most women provided unsolicited advice on how to deal with catcalling ("pretend you did not hear them") and how to avoid situations in which I could get harmed by men, especially when traveling by taxi or public transport or when passing groups of men sitting outside and drinking since "boys will be boys, right?".15

Discussion!and!conclusion! In this chapter, I have focused on what can be learned about women´s experiences as middle-class women in Bangkok through their consumption practices, more specifically through their fashion choices, and their encounters with patriarchy. My research reveals that higher education and work outside the family household helped to empower women to realize their potentials and generate incomes with which they are gaining access to cultural forms that have been shaping their lives in various ways. Consumer society plays an important role in defining what it means to be an urban middle-class woman. Their consumption is not simply a reflection of material interests but a cultural process, and constitutive of young women´s sense of themselves as a middle-class woman. However, the increased importance of consumerism and class-hierarchy burdens middle-class women significantly more than their male counterparts. For women, there is more at stake when failing to locate themselves in contradistinction to lower-class women, who are believed to be culturally distinct and morally compromised.

The purpose of this chapter was not to argue that urban middle-class women have bad lives, most women felt quite the contrary and reported feeling content with their lives. They were adamant in their wish to stay in Thailand, even if they would find a foreign husband. Nonetheless, many women thought about settling outside of Bangkok in smaller cities or closer to the place of residence of their families. Bangkok was described as "mentally draining", but it offered the best job and leisure time opportunities when compared to other urban areas in Thailand. I found a lot !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15!There were many reports (and videos) of women being raped or masturbated to when taking a taxi and the public transport during the time I did my fieldwork. The uncounted numbers of sexual assaults might be substantially higher than the official statistics, because women fear stigmatization when reporting incidents. Unfortunately there have been many incidents where women lost their jobs or were publicly shunned because they became victims.!

26! ! ! of pride among the women for their achievements in education and in their professions and many of them had very ambitious goals, such as starting their own businesses or aiming for higher education at prestigious universities in foreign countries. They often mentioned they "deserved" to be admitted to high-ranking universities or getting a promotion because they worked hard and achieved good results. Nonetheless, they often encountered obstacles that held them back from advancing in their careers and in their private lives, which can be indirectly and directly attributed to patriarchal structures.

My purpose here has also not been to argue that urban middle-class men in Bangkok had it easy, so to speak. Feminist scholars, such as hooks (2000:ix) point out that maintaining the apparatuses of patriarchal systems is work that comes with its own negative effects. Some societal standards are detrimental for men as well and men who do not live up to the expectations of Thai masculinity risk being ridiculed. Bosson & Vandello (2011) argue that manhood is a social status that is both elusive and tenuous. The elusiveness of the status lies in the fact that the transition from boyhood to manhood is not a given, but instead must be earned and is conferred by a given society. The tenuousness of manhood lies in the fact that this status can easily be lost. Men have historically occupied social roles that involve status-seeking and resource acquisition and thus have become associated with competitiveness, defensiveness, and a constant struggle to prove worth and status. One of my male informants reported that he did not like the expensive drinking sessions with his friends, which often ended in brothels. He did not like to have sex with prostitutes, but if he would not participate, his male peers would belittle him as not manly enough. Moreover, not only ethnic men put pressure on them and their identities. In the next two chapters, I will elaborate more thoroughly on the world gender order in which Thai masculinity is constructed as inferior. Men also do not live worry-free and it would be unfair not to acknowledge that modernity and globalization put pressure on them as well.

In the next chapter, I will describe how colonialism, imperialism, and globalization influenced traditional gender roles and how the farang became an object of desire for a substantial number of Thai women.

27! ! ! CHAPTER III

FARANGNESS AND FARANGIZATION

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet (Rudyard Kipling, 1889)

On a trip from Bangkok to Pattaya with the public bus, I befriended Tranh, a young woman from Vietnam. She was traveling in Thailand and wanted to spend a few days in Pattaya before leaving for Cambodia. She was a lively person and highly interested in the "Western" lifestyle. During the six hours we sat next to each other, we exchanged impressions of the countries we had traveled, chatted about economy and politics and finally realized that our hostels were in the same area and concluded that we could continue our way together. When we arrived in Pattaya, motorcycle and minibus drivers quickly surrounded the bus to offer their transportation services to disembarking passengers. They went on and on to persuade us to accept their services while competing with each other. Getting off a bus has never been my favorite part of traveling since I felt usually overwhelmed by this bedlam. When Tranh and I had collected our luggage we asked one of the pickup drivers for the price. He answered pointing at me "80 Baht", pointing at Tranh "50 Baht". I sighed internally, but Tranh was puzzled and asked why I needed to pay more: "Because she Farang, you not. She rich." It was obvious that Tranh never encountered this type of treatment, for me; however, it was nearly a daily occurrence in Thailand. Most European and American visitors to Thailand become quickly familiar with the word farang, which refers to a "white person" or Caucasian, though it emerges more broadly from a set of Thai identification markers for the West, Western peoples, and Western-derived things. According to Thongchai (1994:4-5), it is an ill-defined Thai reference to otherness without any specification of nationality, culture, or language. Dual pricing is merely one result of the stereotypes surrounding farang-ness as most Thais think that farang "have tons of money" (Esara 2009). Kitiarsa (2010:58) draws on

28! ! Said´s thesis on Orientalism (1978) and proposes that farang is an Occidentalizing project conceived and conducted through Siam´s constantly changing historical and cultural experiences with and against the West. Edward Said is well known for his work on colonialism and orientalism in which he criticizes how knowledge about the Orient has been shaped. He directly challenged what Euro-American scholars traditionally referred to as "Orientalism", which is an entrenched structure of thought, a pattern of making certain generalizations about the part of the world known as the Orient. Orientalism is a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient´s special place in European-Western experience. It has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, and experience and has become an integral part of European material civilization and culture. According to Kittiarsa (2010:58), the same holds true for Occidentalism. Farangs are often portrayed as the wicked "Other" of the Thai (Pattana 2010:57) and the meanings have shifted over time as the character of Western involvement in Thailand and changed (Kitiarsa 2010:73).

In this chapter, I provide a historical background for the reader to understand how farang influences have shaped Thailand´s identity, the perception of the farang, and the existence of certain stereotypes toward Thai women and farang men and their relationships. I am focusing here on local constructions of gender and sexualities. One fact that dominates the historiography of modern Thailand is that it was never colonized by an imperial power, unlike its neighboring countries. All narratives about Siam are fundamentally structured around this national independence (Loos 2006:13-14). Nonetheless, it experienced significant influence from imperial powers starting in the mid-nineteenth century when Euro-American world dominance emerged after several centuries of growing influence and became the context in which Thai culture, Thai self-understandings, and forms of knowledge about Thailand were molded (Jackson 2010:37). Before the farang arrived, Siam has had relations with cultural others, most notably China, whose influence declined after the defeat through the British. A strategy to save Thailand from colonialism included adopting certain farang ways of life and consuming farang things to civilize and to build the "New Siam" empire (Pattana 2010:66) and stake claim to social, cultural and technological parity with the West (Harrison 2010:17). Farang things such as education and material goods became highly valued among the royal elites and this trend spread to ordinary people. By the end of the 19th century, farang culture had become firmly established as an object

29! ! of desire and the basis of fashionable identities. However, Herzfeld (2010: 178) argues that Thai cultural practices did not appropriate elements of the "West", but rather engaged in cultural borrowing by investing meanings of predominantly local relevance. One of the examples is provided by the notion siwilai, a transliterated term from the English word "civilized". Siwilai indicates the sense of transformation into the new age, or modernity, as opposed to the traditional, the ancient, or the bygone era. Siwilai was a transcultural process in which ideas and practices from Europe, via colonialism, had been transferred, localized and hybridized in the Siamese setting. The meaning itself is slippery and ranges from etiquette to material progress (Thongchai 2000). With the rise of American power in Asia after World War II came a radical reorientation and reconfiguration of Thai political, economic, and cultural relations from Europe to North America.

The!imperialism!of!gender!and!sexualities! The field of gender studies in Southeast Asia has tended to focus on women, despite the fact that masculinities are also impacted by what Connell (1987) considers "globalized masculinities of empire". Academic and public discourses around the construction of masculinities made them appear as invariant, fixed, static, and normal. However, although masculine dominance is almost always universal, there are multiple forms of masculinities in different cultures and within a given society (2005: 40,43). Neither masculinity nor femininity are monolithic and unchanging categories and which attributes count as masculine or feminine depends on circumstances and is subject to change and struggle. Masculinities are constructed in a field of power and men´s power over women is relatively straightforward. Nonetheless, Hooper (2001: 43) notes that not all men benefit equally from male dominance, nor do all women suffer equally. Connell argues that there are many masculinities and femininities in existence at the same time, but there are dominant patterns of masculinity, that operate at the level of the whole society (Connell 1987: 183-188). The concept of hegemonic masculinity is derived from the theory of cultural hegemony by Gramsci (1971), which analyzes the power relations among the social classes of a society. In Gramsci´s terms, hegemony means the ideological predominance of bourgeois values and norms over the subordinate classes, which accept them as normal. In this gender hierarchy, gender intersects with other factors, such as class, race, and sexuality. Hegemonic masculinities have globalized as part of a world gender order, a process that began with the economic and political

30! ! expansion of European states and by the creation of colonial empires (ibid: 39). Imperialist white men have defined their masculinity as more superior and virile than the masculinity of the subordinated. In Asia for example, they have constructed the masculinity of Asian men as weak, asexual, and traditional in addition to being patriarchal, which does not make them ideal husbands (Chen 1999).

The cases of and produce valuable insights on the importance of gender and sexual behavior in international relations. In light of Western countries´ critique of polygyny, which extended into the critique against prostitution, men´s gendered identities became a cause of concern and living up to the standards of Western nations became a central theme when Siam fought for sovereign status and international respect. Before colonial time, Siam´s politically and economically powerful classes practiced polygyny, which was an integral part of national and international politics in which women played an important role in consolidating ties between rulers and providing a bond in a state and inter-state system (Jeffrey 2002: 4). European and American observers interpreted polygyny as sexual slavery and sexual perversion as they understood the purpose of the practice as exclusively a sexual outlet for monarchs rather than seeing its wider role in political alliance formation and integration. Within the ideology of nineteenth-century colonial modernity, modernity was associated with a monogamous family structure, which was reflected in a legal standard that was monogamous and heterosexual. A society that did not abide by this standard was not considered fully modern (Loos 2006: 7). Polygyny was abolished shortly after absolutist rule in Thailand ended, however, Bao (2008) argues that it was only done to improve Thailand´s image internationally and it did not change men´s attitude towards having mistresses.

In the 1990s, Thailand´s image was threatened because of a growing international concern about the Thai state´s failing to efficiently deal with its prostitution problem. The middle- class was increasingly dependent upon international business and global markets and thus sensitive to this issue. The deeply gendered language of the problem gave rise to a new discourse on masculinity. The Thai state was presented as not being properly masculine as it failed to protect and provide for the nation by protecting Thai culture and national identity - embodied in women - rather than selling them to foreigners and abusing them. Prostitution had become a

31! ! central example of the kinds of masculinity and political behavior that were no longer acceptable to the middle-class, which drew on Western images of masculinity to challenge old-style masculinity (Jeffrey 2002: 105). The properly masculine "new man" was constructed as a rational, efficient, and fatherly defender (rather than user) of women and protector of children in a monogamous marriage. Within this change in patterns of family life in the middle-class, the "warm family" (monogamous, committed) became an ideology for the middle-class and new expectations towards male behavior were formed (ibid: 107).

Transforming!ThaiIFarang!intimacy! The phenomena of luk-khreung (mixed-race children) and the phua farang16 phenomenon reflect a change in the Thai-farang relationship. Interracial marriages between Farang and Thai are known since the Ayutthaya period but did not become a widespread phenomenon until later decades of the twentieth century. In earlier periods, interracial marriages were limited to small groups of people involved in the main cultural contact zones such as the Christians, the Chinese, and those working closely with the farang. In some rare cases, farang-Thai unions happened among the elite or high-ranking couples. Interracial Thai-farang relationships only became a wide-scale social practice in the decades after the 1960s when American GIs were stationed at the US military bases in upcountry Thailand. During the war in Vietnam, extant prostitution services organized themselves around military bases and catered to US soldiers stationed in the country or on brief periods of leave. It was also common for soldiers to "rent" women to be their live-in sexual partners and housekeeper (Esara 2009). In the 1970s, when the first cases of interracial marriages occurred, they signified a break from the village norms and expectations around morality and courtship practices. The relationships that formed between US servicemen and poor Thai women from the countryside were resented by Thai society. Many scholars, for example, Sunanta and Angeles (2012) and Esara (2009) argue that this view changed when industrialization in Thailand reached its peak in the 1990s and marriages between Western men and Thai women increased. This was partly due to a change of the type of Western coming to Thailand, which came now from different strata of society and cultures. Unlike the military personnel of the 1960s, many of the "new" foreigners were expatriates in respected vocations and could be considered wealthy by Thai standards. Next to expatriates, many tourists arrived that would stay for a limited or !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 16 phua farang literally means white Western husband

32! ! extended time and sometimes stay in contact with the women leading to long-term commitments and marriages. The stigma first lessened and later marriages gained community acceptance, because of the exercise of the good daughter role and the opportunity to hypergamy, the exposure to Western media, observation of foreign tourists and through contacts with women who had married and lived abroad. Despite a long association between Thai women´s sex work and relationships with Western men, marrying a Western husband is increasingly viewed as a legitimate path to life-long happiness, which women may achieve without undertaking sex Figure 5 Sririta Jensen a Danish-Thai model. Many actors and models are luk-khreung. Source: work or visiting tourist venues. Sunanta (2006) mars magazine calls the phua farang phenomenon an example of "transnationalism from below" - the action of the ordinary, often marginalized, people to escape domination from above by capital and state (Smith and Guarnizo 1998). By marrying foreign men from wealthier countries, village women gain access to resources from overseas that open up possibilities that are not available to them otherwise and opened existing local gender relations for re-negotiation (Sunanta 2009).

Children resulting from relationships between Thai women and foreign men are called luk-khreung. The luk-khrueng from the American War era were not seen as desirable, especially those whose were of African-American descent, and many endured discrimination. Since the 1980s, Thailand has redefined luk khreung, whether born to a Caucasian father or mother, as representative of a modern form of Thainess. The Thai craze for things farang became deeply articulated in material, mental, and physical terms, and the luk-khreung phenomenon can be seen as the latest step in the farangization of the Thai at both the individual and national level (Pattana 2010).

33! ! As shown in this chapter, the West emerged as a key reference for Thai modernity and put pressure on local constructions of gender roles and marital standards, which changed in the process of interactions with the West. In Thailand exist varying and competing forms of masculinities and within the next two chapters I will focus on how the women in my study perceive these masculinities and how the global gender order informs them in their choice. The next chapter is dedicated to explaining local courtship behavior. In chapter five, I am going to focus on the women´s motivations for choosing a farang boyfriend by examining what they want from a relationship and how they react to pressures from society.

34! ! CHAPTER IV

COURTSHIP IN BANGKOK

"Oh, I guess he is with you!" Pit giggles while she is looking at my phone. I look at her then back on the message that just came in. "He´s just asking how I am?" I am confused. "But he has been doing that very often as I see." Pit tries to contain her laughter. "Yes, he messages every day, but he is only asking how I am. Nothing more." "That is how guys develop intimacy here. He likes you."

My Thai respondents and I share the aspect of navigating different cultures and idioms of practice that often lead to misinterpretations and frustrations. In this chapter, I am attempting at describing the sexual culture of unmarried middle-class women in Bangkok by concentrating on their dating lives and personal intimate stories. My concern is with the cultural practices that represent contemporary courtship culture and how these practices reflect the social identity and defense of moral and social boundaries.

Relationship!status!and!idioms!of!practice! Traditionally, the local community was the basis for people´s social interactions. Most people´s friends resided locally and face-to-face communication was the predominant mode of communication. Moreover, unmarried women´s mobility was restricted to the village and daily activities were centered around the household and local community (Esara 2009). In many rural communities, traditional courting patterns took place under the watchful eyes of parents and elders. They were part of everyday village interactions and provided opportunities for young men and women to assess potential as well as for their families to encourage or discourage particular directions of romantic attachment. By the late 1980s and 1990s, with many people moving to Bangkok for employment or education, these practices began to erode (Mills 1999). Nowadays, courting practices of Bangkok middle-class women are influenced not only by a new social geography of courtship (Farrer 2002:153) but also by technological advancements, such as mobile phones and access to the internet.

35! ! My informants would usually refer to their relationship status as single-single, single, or in a relationship. "Saying you are single-single!means that you have also no one you are talking to. It is more than single."17 Pit was one of my single-single informants who had just left her job as an architect to focus on her application for a Master´s degree program in the USA. We talked for nearly two hours in a café, beginning with my usual questions when she suddenly stopped in her narrative and demanded jokingly that I would answer her questions after she answered mine. Shortly before we met, she did a project for a Dutch company where she met a Dutch man. She tried to make sense out of their interactions with him and thought I might be able to shed some light on his behavior towards her. One of her colleagues drew attention to the fact that this Dutch man was interested in her. She laughed and said that she was not aware that he "liked" her "because he never texted". Nonetheless, they began spending time together. When the project was nearly finished, there was a celebration in the office among the group members.

"After the party, he left for one week to go on a business trip and when he came back he texted me if I would meet up with him and I asked: where were you? Why did you not text me for one week? How can he not text and expect me to be with him?

My informants agreed that any relationship starts with the process of "talking" to someone who is in their circle of friends or in one of their friend´s circle of friends. This could also be someone they met at work, in school, or in university. Like the majority of women in my study, Pit perceived the phase of "talking to" as crucial to evaluate whether the other person matched her criteria for a relationship and as an important indicator whether this person had a serious interest in her. Talking to is repetitive and expected to happen every day. For this, the young generation has embraced the internet for social interaction and communication (Purcell 2006) and social media and messenger apps, such as facebook and Line, are used to keep in touch with existing friends and to develop new . Idioms of practice vary and emerge out of shared practices whose implicit assumptions do not become apparent until someone violates an expectation (Gershon 2010: 6), which happened when the Dutch man did not text Pit during his absence.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Interview with Pon, March 2016

36! ! Women are expected to not express their sexual desires or interest in the opposite sex and close proximity to a man can imply sexual relations (Esara 2009). Online spaces are a way to escape the moral policing of social institutions, such as families, as they allow women to talk to men without tainting their reputation. However, such interactions do not work by themselves but rather complementary to offline connections and relationships because they are only connecting to people who are somehow acquainted with their friends. In various conversations, my informants would mention the importance of their friends as informal matchmakers and gatekeepers. For instance, Bart told me. "If I decide I want a , my friends will find me one that fits my requirements."18 Bart liked the idea of an arranged marriage based on rational considerations, but his parents refrained from getting involved and thus he hoped his friends would overtake this role. Khem said that it was also common for men to access profiles of women they became interested in after they saw them commenting on or liking status updates of their friends. They would then inquire about her with their friends who then either endorsed or discouraged a contact with the person of desire. This reflects more traditional courtship rules, which mandated that men seek out female partners rather than the reverse and that a potential husband initiated marital negotiations (Esara 2009). The usage of Tinder19 or other dating apps, where one can get in contact with complete strangers was viewed negatively. "How would I know that the guy is ok?"20 Boonmongkon et al. (2013) found in their study of Thai women´s online activity that women believe that true love cannot be found online and that online spaces put them at risk of being sexually violated. They view this as a result of social institutions producing discourses aimed at young women´s online sexual expressions by emphasizing negative effects of online interactions. This is reflected in the usage of online dating websites among my informants. Only a few women had used websites or apps for dating purposes and most women viewed these websites very negatively as they believed only "creeps" would be there and that desperate women might become the prey of scammers.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Interview with Bart, male, 30 years old, 13.02.2016 19 Tinder is a a mobile dating app following the "hot" or "not" principle. Users are shown profiles of other users and if they are interested they can "swipe right". If the other person also swiped right, both users are informed that they "matched" and can start a conversation on this app. 20 Interview with Pim, February 2016.

37! ! The period of "talking to" varied from person to person. Most of my informants would narrow it down to three to five months before they would meet up for a date for the first time. Lin, a single- single 25-year-old Thai-Chinese student I met on a business-coaching event, described what she tries to find out during "talking to":

"I am very concerned with it. When I want to have a boyfriend I must ensure that he is good. My opinion about him and his family... Maybe you don´t like the boy´s opinion. Sometimes you find out that you don´t like certain topics they are talking about."

"Talking to" is a way to choose and test a partner and search for signs of commitment. For the majority of women in my study, courtship was clearly about finding a husband. Thus, casual dating was condemned and viewed as a waste of time.21 In this phase, women tried finding out whether they had shared interests and opinions on topics they cared about. With persistently strong social and familial pressure and patriarchal structures, women also had to find out about attitudes of possible boyfriend´s families, which embodies the conflict between pragmatism and romantic feelings. Lin dated within the Thai-Chinese community and her last boyfriend was the oldest son of a family that Lin described as a rather traditional family. Whenever she visited, she was expected to overtake duties in the household like cleaning and serving food. Although she liked her boyfriend, she did not want a life tied to the household, but rather pursue a career outside the family. She had the feeling that this would be impossible if she stayed with him and, therefore, chose to break up the relationship. For her, getting to know the family of a possible boyfriend was as important as getting to know her prospective husband.

Don´t!eat!fruits!before!they!are!ripe22!! One day before Valentine´s Day, a celebratory day with origins in the USA, which young, urban Thais eagerly adopted, one of my informants took me out to one of the flower markets. The market packed with flower stalls offering all sorts of special Valentine´s creations and masses of people walking between them. The day after, I spent some time in the Siam Paragon Mall, which was decorated with thousands of pink balloons and red roses. The whole atmosphere in the mall

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Casual dating is something pointed out by some of my informants who had made the experience that Western men would enter and leave relationships easily without much attachment, but this is also something they saw in American movies and TV shows, where they perceived that dating was more of a leisure time activity. 22 Thai proverb meaning "don´t have sex before marriage"

38! ! was cheerful and young women and men paraded happily with flowers and soft toys while taking selfies and photos of each other. Valentine´s Day is a rather small-scale event on which small gifts are given from the men to the women. This ritual has significant symbolic implications for both the giver and the receiver and the Valentine´s Day gift giving occasion sets itself apart from other gift-giving occasions as it represents exclusively an occasion when individuals in a romantic relationship express their love and affection through symbolic gift giving (Wooten 2000). Later that day, I met Pim, another of my informants in a cafe. Pim is a 24-year-old Politics student, who I met a few days earlier for an interview when she asked me to hang out with her and some of her friends for a countercelebration for "unloved" single women. Contrary to our not so serious "celebration", Valentine´s Day and what might happen between young people seemed to cause furrowed brows among the political elite. Ahead of February 14, the Cultural Ministry issued a warning to young people to avoid sex outside marriage. As a poll among young Thais revealed, 83 % planned on having sex, which triggered a heavily publicized campaign with a Twitter hashtag called "Just a Meal for Valentine's Day" by tweeting #DinnerOnly in Thai.23 The Moral Promotion Center's director said: "Instead of engaging in intimacy, young people should show love to their family, society, themselves and the country" (Rahman 2015). Although the campaign was directed at all young people, Pim said that only problematizes women’s sexuality, which remains a sensitive issue and continues to determine whether a woman is perceived as a “good” or a “bad” woman. The ideology of the good Thai woman places women firmly in the nurturing practices of family life (Harrison, 1997). The Buddhist religion plays an important part in the conduct of Thai family life and the Three Seals Law of the Buddhist doctrine states that a good woman should not let more than one man gain access to her body (Hantrakul, 1983). When female sexual activity is not contained within a conjugal relationship, it is considered immoral and the social equivalent of prostitution (Mills, 1995), with a great impact on the woman’s reputation and that of her family (Ford & Kittisuksathit, 1994). Thai nationalist sentiment and image consciousness have focused on promoting the image of the morally and sexually "good" women, which has been observed in the extensive literature on gender and nation/nationalism in various nations. While women are subordinated politically in nationalist

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 23 The high number is surprising and does not represent my sample According to a recent study, attitudes towards sex outside of marriage are changing slowly. Nonetheless, women have sex later in life than men and only few have (outside of a ) (see Techasrivichien et al, 2016).

39! ! movements, they are taken to represent tradition and are required to carry the burden of representation (Yuval-Davis 1997: 45) and embody family and national honor (Valerius 2002: 49).

One aspect I tried to find out in my interviews were the confines of "talking to" and "dating" since it did not become clear to me what they entailed and how these phases differed. Interesting was that some of my informants told me what they do not do instead of what they do. For example, Khem:

"We don´t have sex. Because I think physical things is very difficult [sic] to Western culture. People still value and sex is for marriage. Girls should only have sex with someone they are married with. Sometimes, people have sex or kiss after they dated for some time and have become girlfriend and boyfriend. People hold hands, but not hugging or kissing in public .It is still not acceptable to show public affection."

I never directly asked in my interviews whether sex is part of a relationship, however, my informants brought it up by themselves, for instance when I asked them to describe a typical date or when I asked where they see the main difference between having a relationship with a farang or a Thai man. Khem and some other informants would often assume that farang have sex when they date. I often found that their ideas about dating in the “” were received through media, such as American movies. Two of my informants mentioned children´s movies as an example: "even in Disney movies they like to kiss", while others recalled movies they had watched in the cinema. Virginity is deemed important in Thai society and many women in my study abstained from physical relationships. Lin adamantly expressed that she would "wait" until marriage. She was very critical towards men who would try to have sex with her: "In Thailand, the guys would like it (have sex), but they easily break up after (....) if they love me they wait."24 Several women in my study shared her view that men who want to have sex with them are not really in love and one woman said, "If he would initiate, I would dump him."25 I view their brusque reaction to male overtures as a survival strategy and the result of pressure to adhere to societal expectations. Thai society supports a sexual double standard for men and women. Premarital sexual relationships are prohibited for women but are usually acceptable for men (Chinlumprasert 2001). Moreover, as outlined in chapter two, dating situations have potentially bad consequences for women. According to a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 Interview Lin, March 2016. 25 Interview Somchai, March 2016.

40! ! study about date rape, Thai men assume that sex is consensual if women are willing to be involved in a dating situation and they perceive resistance of women as token resistance (Chinlumprasert 2001)26. The fact that many men do not think that women mean "no" when they say "no", that women are held responsible by society for failing to avoid the significant factors contributing to sex, and the widely shared opinion of women that these men lack interest in a serious relationship, might explain their rigorous reaction to advances.

Many women avoided the word "sex" and rather made gestures, like moving their brows up and down, in the hope that I would understand what they wanted to tell. Other women would distinctly lower their voices and merely whisper. For example Pit; we developed a trusting relationship during our meetings and she worked up the courage to talk to me about her eight- months-long relationship with a Dutch man. She met him during a student exchange program in Japan and had long-distance-relationship with him when the program ended:

"There happened something between me and him. As you might know, it is not ok to have something with a guy. This is something for after marriage. I just told my mom about it and she was furious."

Pit contorts her face while telling me about a statement a friend made:

"One day one of my (male) friends told me that he found out that another girl had sex with her boyfriend. He said really mean things about her and that he could not be with such a woman and that she deserved to be dumped."

Pit was very critical about his statements, but she said that many of her friends think like him and I could sense her fear that someone would find about her "loss of virginity". First sex or the "loss of virginity" in particular is a gendered phenomenon (Carpenter 2001). Women´s sexuality attains moral acceptability within the confines of marriage only (Harrison 1999: 168) in contrast to men who are expected to express their sexuality at any time. Not only was Pit hurt tremendously because her boyfriend broke up with her, but the fact that he broke up with her after they had sex was something that enraged her: "Are you people in the Netherlands like that? Sleep with someone and then !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 26 During the time of my fieldwork several bloggers wrote about the issue of date rape and its prevalence and depiction as act of love in the media. For example https://undertheropes.com/2016/04/01/rape-culture-in-thailand/. In Thai language exist two words for rape, similar to the English language, in which "date rape" and "rape" exist. I mention this detail as in my mother tongue (German) there exists only one word. Thais usually view the equivalent of date rape as not very bothersome (see Chinlumprasert 2001). !

41! ! walk over to the next?". Women in Thailand, who sleep with boyfriends, do this with the understanding that marriage is immanent and sex need not be postponed (Lyttleton 1999: 35). Many women in my study condemned the sexual double standard in Thai society, but felt powerless because it was deeply indoctrinated into their consciousness through their education, which affected them in various ways as Noon explains:

"I am interested (in sex) but I just could not go through with it. It just felt wrong (...). It is hard to change the mindset from my upbringing. Since I was born, my mother would tell me that I could not have sex before marriage. Although I tried, I could not. I do not know why I feel guilty."

Noon dated an American man a few years ago while she was in the USA. She laughed while she told me that he invited her for "movie and chill" and that she did not know that it was a euphemism for having sex. "We kissed and so on but then I asked him to stop. Somehow, I heard my dead mother´s voice in my head and it did not feel right for me." She giggled while recalling that situation. Shortly after, she saddened because she believed that the possibility of having a relationship with the farang ended that day:

"I guess he felt rejected. We talked about it but he did not believe that I was a virgin. He was angry with me that I would not tell him the real reason and accused me of lying. He did not want to meet me again after that."27

Noon was understanding of his decision. According to Borthwick (1999:217), especially middle- class women have accepted that a degree of was required in order for them to realize the ideal of being a modest woman and being sexually expressive is for "bad" women. On the other hand, many men (and women) from Europe or North America hold certain perceptions about Thai women, which is a feature of Orientalist depictions of women being preoccupied with sex and available for white men (Hasan 2005) and a result of media representation of the Thai sex industry (Van Esterik 2000: 169). This became apparent anytime I talked to farang men who would almost always tell me their own preferences regarding women when they heard about my research. Basing on common stereotypes about Thai women as being hyper-feminine and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 A comment she made after this was rather shocking for me. She said in a light-hearted tone "he could have raped me, but luckily did not.", suggesting that women view date rape as legitimate threat in dating situations and that it is their responsibility to avoid these situations. In chapter 2, I give a more detailed description of the phenomenon.

42! ! subservient and women from Europe or North America being more liberated, they would either reject or favor being with a Thai woman. Farang men in relationships with Thai women also felt the urge mentioning that "she is not one of them", which is probably a result of the "sexpat" reputation many farang men encounter no matter how their relationship began. Moreover, it happened on several occasions that farang men sexually objectified Thai women in my presence while assuring me "that I am not one of them". I view this stereotyping very critical and as offensive because they emerge from a gendered and sexualised image of women whose defining characteristic is their race and makes Thai women particularly vulnerable to mistreatment (Pyke 2003).

Discussion!and!conclusion! Most of my respondents were single and thus I put more focus on finding out how women would choose a partner. Thai courtship conventions and marriage practices are changing due to new geographies of courtship (Farrer 2002:153) and time-space-compression (Harvey 1990); however, practices still reflect traditional courtship and sexual behavior in which women are expected to be passive. Underlying the construction of the modern woman is an older tradition of the feminine with its emphasis on grace, physical beauty, and virtue and women are expected to protect their virtue and innocence. Most of the women had positive attitudes towards relationships and marriages and expressed they wanted to get married some day. Marriages between a heterosexual pair function to create alliances, to confer social status, to structure social relationships, and the distribution of resources (Cherlin & Chamratrithirong 1988). For women, their status as an adult was traditionally dependent upon their status as wives and was successfully achieved with the birth of the first child (Yoddumner-Attig 1992). None of my interviewees indicated that this was the reason for them to get married; they rather measured adulthood in terms of being economically independent from their parents and taking up responsibility for themselves and for others when an own family was created and this is what they expected from their partner as well. For many women, being single was also not devastating. They lived by the Thai saying "Children disturb the body, husband disturbs the mind" (Kaewmala 2009). The idea of working full-time while also running a household serving a man and probably his family is not enticing for them. Thus, the women spend significant effort into "talking to" prospective boyfriends while also finding out about their families. In the next chapter, I will determine what expectations women

43! ! have towards a husband and boyfriend and focus on how farangness informs them throughout their choice.

Figure!6!How!to!behave!like!a!proper!female!as!taught!in!schools.!Being!a!"lady"!means!to!do!the!chores!in!the! household,!wear!decent!clothes,!being!polite,!and!to!stay!away!from!men.!Source:!an!English!teacher!I!met!in! Bangkok!sent!the!photo!from!one!of!their!textbooks!to!me!

44! ! CHAPTER V

BEING SINGLE - CHOICE OR FATE?

! In the past century, Thailand boasted nearly universal marriage rates with over 95 % of the population having married at least once (Knodel et al, 1984: 37). Marital behavior has shifted in the last decades with an increasing number of people delaying and more women remaining single (Limanonda 1995). Changes in attitudes towards marriage and relationships are multifaceted and can be rooted in economic and/or socio-cultural dimensions. They can be the result of shifting political and economic relations between nations (Constable 2005: 81) or they might point to the transformation of society into a more individualistic culture (Williams and Guest 2005) and changing gender-power-relations (Bélanger and Linh 2011; Sunanta and Angeles 2012). Moreover, they reflect persisting gender roles in society and women´s will to flee cultural constraints (Dhar 2012). High levels of education and work and wages have an impact on the timing of a marriage, which is postponed in order to pursue a career as it gives women a degree of authority over themselves and women do not have to get married to be financially secure (Mills 1998). Although academic writers often portray women as the driving force behind the "marriage revolution", postponing or foregoing marriages might be supply-driven rather than demand- driven (Williams and Guest 2005). For example, for certain women, finding an adequate partner locally might be nearly impossible because they are too old, divorced, or too experienced to be considered a good wife (Constable 2005: 12). For women, who are employed in high positions or who obtained a high degree of education, the pool of marriageable men is reduced because some societies dictate that they should not marry men that are less qualified than them (Williams and Guest 2005). In this chapter I am focusing on women´s foregoing arguments which help to explain to what extent being single is a choice and to what extent is it happening despite women´s desire to be in a relationship as a result of circumstances beyond their control.

45! ! !

Women´s!expectations!toward!a!romantic!partner! In their descriptions of characteristics what they were looking for in a partner, women often used the themes sameness in social class and status, "responsibility", and companionship. Nim, a 35- year-old Thai-Chinese manager in a Japanese trading company, was one of the few women in my study who was in a relationship and the only woman who was in a relationship with a Thai man at the time I interviewed her. Her boyfriend studied Public Relations in Bangkok and currently works in the administration of a Thai company. They were introduced by friends more than nine years ago. Nim explained that a Thai man with the same educational and economic background like her would fit best into her life as she feared culture clashes in a marriage. She also believed that a relationship with a lower class man would not be successful because "I don´t think he would be able to talk about things I care about."28, which is a negative attitude many educated Bangkok residents have towards the lower classes who are often assumed to be uncultivated, uneducated, and stupid (Taylor 2012). Ironically, Nim confided in me that her boyfriend had proposed to her, but she considered not marrying him as he lacked "responsibility". She explained her criticism:

"One aspect (of responsibility) is money, another the future, liking to be the leader and to take care (of the family). He does not make plans and he does not think about the future. He spends much money and he does not want to improve himself. He does not progress and has no interest in doing so. My income will not increase when I have a family and, therefore, he needs to improve." (emphasis added)

Nim´s strategy was to stay unmarried and further pursue her own goals instead of settling with her boyfriend who she felt had not matured yet. While we were talking, she seemed emotionally distant to her boyfriend and explained that she had not seen him in weeks because she was busy with her work and hobbies and she did not feel like meeting him. She was planning to open a small restaurant while working part-time for her current employer and complained that her boyfriend let her organize and manage everything. He preferred to hang out with his friends and play video games instead of saving money, which was a common critique about men among the women in my study. Nim strikingly said, "when I have a family" rather than "when we have a family" which emphasizes her domestic responsibilities and a husband´s responsibility mainly as !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 Interview with Nim, January 2016

46! ! an economic provider, which form the core of her understanding of masculinity. She believed that settling down and marriage is an expensive endeavor requiring economic resources. Most of my informants also linked marriage closely to having children, which is something that Townsend (2000: 30) refers to as a "package deal", a notion that combines expectations of having children with marriage and for instance homeownership for which economic resources are needed. Esara (2009) states that the notion of "enough" money is particular to the current era because marital expectations of financial stability are associated with consumerism and Bangkok´s high society and particularly for women there is an expectation of marriage as a vehicle for upward mobility.

Many of my informants would point to the fact that they identify as Thai-Chinese (jin kao 29) or that someone is Thai-Chinese to emphasize points they made earlier. 30 The concept of responsibility is considered the chief moral criterion for a good husband in Thailand, however, it is especially important in the Thai-Chinese community. Bao (1999: 66) argues that sexuality plays a crucial role in the process of constructing the identity of ethnic Chinese in Thailand. The majority of migrants from China in Thailand were men with low socio-economic status from impoverished villages. To become a "wealthy man" was a lifelong goal for them and their degree of commercial orientation and business success is taken as a major criterion of Chineseness. In their strategy to reproduce their ethnic identity they constantly problematize Thai men´s earning power and irresponsibility toward their families because they gamble, drink, and "lay eggs" everywhere (meaning: have children with different women) (Bao 1999: 68). The "lazy native" constitutes the central part of ideologies of European colonizers who viewed their society as superior (Alatas 1977: 3) and the Thai-Chinese contrasted their "industriousness" to this idea to create class- and ethnic-based strategies to reaffirm their masculine power over Thai men (Bao 1999: 71). Responsibility includes supporting the family, earning money, and doing business. For Thai-Chinese men, the concept of responsibility does not include fidelity and is viewed as economic responsibility solely. Having the ability to successfully run a business or paying the bills is translated into the belief that men are entitled to sexual entertainment outside the family (ibid:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29 elderly Chinese - refers to Chinese who immigrated before 1949. When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, diplomatic relations between Thailand and China were interrupted. For decades, migration from China to Thailand slowed to a trickle (Bao 1999: 74). 30 That my informants made a distinction between Thai and Thai-Chinese was something that became clear to me after a couple of people I talked to casually mentioned their ethnic identity. Unfortunately, at the time I interviewed Nim, I had no knowledge about this and was unable to contact her to ask for her boyfriend´s ethnic identity.

47! ! 68). Thai-Chinese women exclude themselves from the discourse of sexual pleasure as feeling sexual pleasure is thought to be unfeminine and improper (Bao 1999: 71). They believed that values around marriage had changed in the last decades and their had been accepting of their husband´s philandering, whereas they viewed it as disrupting the marriage and do not want to accept it. Indeed, a much-communicated complaint about Thai men was in the area of fidelity. Some women had made first-hand experiences when they found out that their boyfriends had other or sexual liaisons next to them and other women knew that their male friends had more than one girlfriend. Bao (1999) indicates that sexual prowess is a positive aspect of masculine identity. Visits to massage parlors, participating in the exchange of sexual banter, drinking, and gambling are features of male peer group activity and act as markers of masculine strength and sociality. A man, who has many girlfriends, is an object of admiration, especially among other men (Mills 1995). Jeffrey (2002: 56) states that the practice of polygyny remained in place as a symbol of a man´s status and wealth although it was no longer legal. The consensus of the women in my study was that this practice was unacceptable and they emphasized that fidelity was a significant aspect of this definition of responsibility. Farang men are believed to not engage in these practices and thus many women would prefer a farang as a partner. Women often linked the ability of men to be promiscuous to the perception that there is a surplus of women in Thailand. For example Nai:

"I feel right now in Thailand there are more women than men. I guess for each man there are eight women. All of the women in my office are single and we are all successful and good-looking women there."

Nai is a graphic designer who worked for around ten years in the USA and returned to Bangkok when she ended her relationship with her American boyfriend four years ago. She had been actively looking for a new partner but remained single for most of the time.31 Her estimation does not represent reality since the gender-ratio in Thailand is rather balanced with 1.05 males to females at birth (CIA: website 2016). Nonetheless, it underlines a different issue: more women have entered tertiary education within the last years (World Bank: website 2016) and traditional attitudes towards marriage of women to not "marry down" and men to not "marry up" (Williams et al, 2006) make for a marriage squeeze leaving well-educated women "stranded".

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 I will go into more detail about Nai later in this chapter.

48! ! In contrast to Nim, the majority of women in my study subscribed to the opinion that a Thai man would not be a suitable partner for them. Pim is one of the younger women in my study who were mainly interested in dating Western men. She explained it as follows:

"For me, I would like to have a combination between a friend and a partner so that I can connect mentally. I want to find someone who can challenge me. But in Thailand, boys want someone without strong opinions. When I am talking to boys they would tell me to stop talking or expressing my opinions. That might be the problem why I am still single. I talked to many boys but most of them have no brain at all."

Pim´s opinion was exemplary for most of my informants. Her ideal of a marital relationship is companionate-based and focusing more on intimate partnership rather than an obligation. The most important traits of a good partner for her was that that a man would put their relationship first before their family and friends, and share the same values and interests as well as housework. Kelsky (2001: 88-90) calls this a consciousness gap between, in her study Japanese men who were said to want a stay-at-home wife to fulfill traditional duties of childrearing, cooking, and housework, and women who wanted an "equal partner". Women viewed the culprits for their singledom in the inadequacy of Thai men as suitable partners and in the alleged fact that men harbored male superior norms. Marriages crises are discussed in many countries and each region blames its crisis on a different cause. Coontz (2005: 3) states that many scholars argue that the crisis in family life is caused by too much gender equality. But in Thailand, many women said they avoided marriage and childbearing because of the lack of equality within the sexes, which is comparable to the situation in described by Kelsky. Thus, the construction of hegemonic and subordinated forms of gender sets up a situation where Thai women feel they must choose between Western worlds of gender equality and Thai worlds of gender oppression. In this context, Thai women often constructed Thai masculinities vis-à-vis Westernness, which they linked to being more relaxed about male superior norms. Such images encourage them to reject Thai men and embrace the Western world. However, although the majority of women viewed Thai males as naturally inferior, some women did not view Thai masculinities as static. For example Prae:

"I usually crush on foreigners, but I had a crush on him and he is Thai. But the thing is he is not Thai- Thai, when you understand what I mean? He went to an international school, his English is perfect, and he has a very broad mind. If I would not see his face and ID card I would think he is a Westerner."

49! ! With his international education and his English language skills, Prae´s "crush" sets himself apart from other Thai men. Persaud (2005) argues that politics of race colors every facet of life in Thailand, including international/English education, which can be seen in marketing, staffing, curriculum, and school cultures. The Thai educational scene is positioned as deficient and English/international schooling as superior reinforcing and extending old colonial hierarchies and promoting .

Society´s!expectations!toward!women! Some of the conversations with women in the field have been stuck in my mind for weeks, for example, the interview with Ploy. I recruited Ploy by contacting her on an online meetup group for singles. She agreed on meeting me after a short exchange of information via email and we finally met in a Starbucks cafe in a mall close to her workplace. We sat down and I introduced my research and myself and explained why I chose to contact her. Before I ended my introduction, Ploy blurted out "I am on this dating site because I am not beautiful Figure 7 Vocabulary chart teaches children that dark skin is ugly. A enough for Thai men!". In my woman with Caucasian features embodies "beautiful". Source: Coconuts Bangkok puzzled state, I was torn between the instant urge to dismiss her statement and continue with my order of questions and the urge to console her. Her statement overshadowed our interview and lingered with me for a couple of days. This became one of the issues I would discuss in casual meetings with friends and other contacts. One of the Thai women tried to reassure me that I should not feel bad on behalf of Ploy:

"Don´t think about it too much and don´t feel bad. We are constantly evaluating our looks. Every woman knows where in the hierarchy she can place herself. There is not much to it."

50! ! How much value and thought Thai people assign to beauty was something I was reminded of daily. Streets and public places were packed with billboards and advertisements showing beauty products for women promising a happier life. Some of the first words I learned in my Thai language lessons were "beautiful", "ugly", and "sexy". Complete strangers would comment on my skin when in public places and one of my male respondents messaged me a couple of times after we parted that he was happy to meet because I was "pretty". His messages were probably well- intentioned, but I do not want to disguise that they irritated me. Most strikingly, however, in almost all interviews or casual meetings, women would evaluate their outer appearance and mention characteristics that decreased their perceived value in the Thai dating pool or made it impossible to get married. According to Chaipraditkul (2013), beauty is of great concern for Thai women as it is viewed as a means to acquire love and attention from their husbands and maintaining a happy life. Pale coloring is perhaps the single most important criterion of beauty (Mills 1995) and women are often reduced to the color of their skin while evaluating and commenting on them (Persaud 2005). The concept of the face is one determinant for defining morality and beauty of a person. Bourdieu (1994: 103-104) observed that women´s bodies are experienced as objects, while men´s bodies are experienced as subjects. Women are expected to be physically beautiful and are constantly reminded of their physical appearance, which destabilizes them emotionally because it reduces them to exhibited objects that have to strive to be attractive. Connell (1987) argues that objectifying female bodies originated to create, maintain, and express patriarchy. It is one form of gender oppression, by which women are treated as a body (or a collection of body parts) and valued predominantly for its use and consumption by others. Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) asserted that women to varying degrees internalize this outsider view and begin to self-objectify by treating themselves as an object to be looked at and evaluated on the basis of their appearance. Graham et al. (1994) explained that the oppressed are likely to form a relationship with oppressors who have authority over them. First they are submissive and later come to share the same ideals with their oppressors in order to survive (Jeffreys 2005: 24-27). Many of the women in my study found it to be a given that men would not be interested in them because they were too big, their skin was too dark, or because they did not have a "cute" face. Some would mention that their parents and friends would encourage them to lose weight or do something about their appearance in order to find a husband implying that they

51! ! are the ones to blame for their singledom and that they had to change in order to find love. However, many women rejected this sentiment. Prae´s opinions on the topic are exemplary for many women in my study. She is 28 years old and currently working as a freelancer for marketing companies and prepares to commence her studies in English literature in the USA. She spent some years as an exchange student in Venezuela and participated in a work and travel program in the USA. She elaborated on her singledom:

"I am not a girl a Thai guy would flirt with. I am considered big and I talk like I don´t give a shit and I am straightforward. Another thing is that I am not white enough and I am not into makeup and I am not cute. They (Thai men) don´t know how much effort goes into looking pretty. I don´t want to spend hours in the bathroom just for a guy. That´s also why I think I don´t have a boyfriend. I want someone who can accept me the way I am."

In her statement, Prae touches on outer appearance, but also behavior. The urban elite´s notion of ideal Thai femininity portrays the traits of upper-class women - delicate, fair-skinned bodies, and gentle, subtle, and sexually reserved gestures (Van Esterik 2000: 129). She explained that she began to challenge the discriminatory expectations of Thai men during her work-and-travel-stay in the USA when a man asked her out on a date:

"I met him when I was completely messed up. I had not done my hair and I wore my ugly work uniform. And then I thought: why not? When he thinks I am attractive, why can´t others not think I am attractive? I don´t feel Thai guys could do that. (...) they (Thai men) expect us to be everything. You want me to be white? Look at the sun. You want big boobs? What are you thinking? We can´t naturally!"

Prae presents farang men as more accepting than Thai men and experienced this as empowering. Contrary to Thai men, who are believed to only be interested in her outer appearance, farang men are thought to be more realistic toward beauty ideals. Van Esterik (2000) argues that Thai society is concerned with surfaces in this context performance as a woman is defined by focusing on surface aesthetics (hair, clothing, make-up) rather than social narratives. Western men are presumed to accept their beauty although they have darker skin, which deranges local hierarchical aesthetics of beauty with "whiteness" at the top and "darkness" at the bottom (Esara 2009). Prae further lists positive characteristics of farang men:

52! ! "When you talk to them you can be yourself. You do not need to be naive and submissive. I think foreigners are more open to opinions as well. You do not have to adjust yourself to someone. It is ok in a relationship to be just you. I mean you have to adapt to your partner, but just slightly not everything. And the other thing is you don´t have to be that slim."

Prae juxtaposes Thai and farang men´s expectations towards women, which was a recurrent theme throughout my research. Repeatedly, women said they could not be who they really are when they are with Thai men and the enactment of an authentic self could only take place when with Western men. Gendered behavior in Thai courtship was often described as fake, unnatural, and performative, while that in farang-dominated settings was a reflection of their true selfs. The limitation of not being light-skinned, skinny, or soft-spoken and the lack of various qualities of Thai men create a context where Western men are often viewed as ideal partners.

After each interview, I gave my informants the possibility to ask questions about me as a person or about Europe in general. Most of the women were heavily interested in my relationship status and what I would think about Thai men. Many thought it natural for women to be attracted to Western men and completely disregarded the possibility that I might find Thai men attractive or adequate as a partner. Although they believed that Thai men were attracted to farang women, they thought it would be common sense that there would be no mutual attraction because Thai men are not tall and manly enough and lacked the confidence to approach farang women. Thai women often mocked Thai men´s preferences for "cute" women who "dumb down" for them so they could feel important and strong. Such narratives illustrate how Thai women constructed farang masculinities as superior to Thai masculinities, but also might view farang femininities superior to Thai masculinities.

Not!all!farang!are!good! Women did not believe that all farang are the most ideal partners. Nim, for example, believed that the Western men who came to Thailand were often "low-quality-foreigners". I recruited Nim via a dating meetup group and she replied two days later that she liked to meet up with me. Prior to our meeting, she sent me various messages explaining that she was "hurt" because she recently broke up with her boyfriend. When we met, she spent the first twenty minutes talking about her ex-boyfriend with whom she was in an on and off relationship for the last couple of months. She

53! ! met him, an American businessman, on OKCupid. After a few days of chatting, they went on a date and the next day he introduced her to his mother. He managed construction projects in Thailand and in Myanmar, which meant he was traveling back and forth between Myanmar, Thailand, and the USA a lot. She explained that she was attracted to him because he seemed very intelligent and ambitious - just like her as she emphasized - but after a few weeks, he began to show controlling, abusive behavior and she found out that he had met other women. Nim explained that she had worked in the USA as a graphic designer for around ten years and had seriously dated a white American man before she returned to Thailand. Since then, she used dating websites to get to know farang in Bangkok. However, she complained that the quality of men on these websites was very low and the few men she had communicated with seemed to be more interested in sexual relationships or sent her "perverted" messages. She and some other women concluded, "the good ones do not come to Thailand - they stay in their countries". Overall, they did not challenge the hegemonic masculinity of farangs as they viewed the men coming to Thailand as an exception rather than the rule and Nim emphasized often that her boyfriend in the USA was very committed to her and overall she perceived American men as dependable and trustworthy.

The glorification of Western masculinity can lead Thai women to believe that freedom and equality can only be acquired when dating a Western man. The next chapter will explain how the stigma surrounding Thai-farang relationships complicates middle-class women´s choice for a farang partner and how they are trying to navigate this stigma.

54! ! CHAPTER VI

THE MIA FARANG DILEMMA

During my fieldwork, I attended a Thai language course, which offered several interesting insights. My teacher, Kru Chin, a 30-year-old Thai-Chinese man, had been teaching in this small school for a couple of years. During the time I attended the course, Thailand experienced a period of unusually chilly weather with temperatures dropping to 18°C and it might have been one of the rare occasions in which the air conditioning in the classrooms was switched off. The classroom windows faced a busy road and opening the windows was no option since the noise from the streets would have made any attempt at having a conversation impossible. Because of that, we kept the door to the hallway open to get some fresh air. Although Kru Chin would get upset when he was interrupted or when someone expressed that he or she did not understand something, he was happy to answer questions about Thai culture. I was grateful for these opportunities as it meant to get a break from the constant repetitions of sentences and phrases whose meanings we did not understand yet, but had to repeat anyways either as a group or alone. On one of these days, I asked him about mia farang. His reaction was striking; with widening eyes, he walked silently over to the door, peeked out, and then closed it before turning around. With a serious expression on his face, he told me not to use this word; it would be very impolite to call someone a mia farang and then he addressed the whole class with the plea to be careful what kinds of words we would use in public since it would make him look bad. One of my classmates was puzzled and asked why I would know this obviously bad word. Kru Chin chimed in and explained that it would be a derogative term and no one should call a woman a mia farang. His strong reaction was excessive, however, most of my informants shared his opinion in some way or another. Nune, a 24-year-old architect, expressed following views:

55! ! "I think that term refers to something insulting. Because they were prostitutes and ... they had farang husbands or lovers ... we used to refer to bargirls that hung out with farangs as mia farang. It used to be common to see foreign guys with Thai girls who worked at bars. Nowadays, it might be also ... I don´t know ... let´s say there are foreign guys that do not come here for business but for the girls and these girls are receptive to them."

Nune´s statement is revealing of what many women in my study expressed when I asked them about mia farang. Their views are based on stereotypes about Thai women and Western men and Thailand´s sex tourism markets, a history that continues to shape the perception towards men and women in Thailand nationally and internationally. Thai women who date or marry Western men are often presumed to be sex workers and to be of Northern or Northeastern origins and the men they choose are presumed to be sex tourists. This is partially based on Thailand´s role in the global intimate and the history of the development of Thailand´s sex tourism markets beginning after World War II.

The!origin!of!mia(farang( Prostitution did not begin with US military bases, but American military men changed the public display, as they, unlike the more discreet Chinese or Thai customers, would openly flaunt with their "rented wives". Figure 8 Bridging the language barrier. An upscale bookshop in Siam Paragon offers a The USA established military bases in Thailand as part variety of dictionaries for sex tourists in Thailand. Source: own photo of its Cold War strategy, placing most of its troops in the northeastern region of Isan. Furthermore, the USA negotiated a treaty allowing US soldiers stationed in Vietnam during the war to come on Rest and Recreation (R&R) leave to Thailand, mainly to Bangkok and Pattaya. When US troops started withdrawing from the region, the established entertainment areas created for R&R were transformed into a global tourist industry (Van Esterik 2000). The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) played an active role in generating sex tourism through various campaigns targeting sex tourists (Bishop and Robinson

56! ! 1999: 194) resulting in the flourishing of the entertainment industry, and particularly of sexual venues in Thailand. The early days of the Thai tourism industry were therefore marked by an emphasis on the exotic and erotic, which has continued to dominate the perception of Thailand and Thai women, whose images were chosen to represent Thailand´s character and tourist appeal among foreign visitors (Van Esterik 2000). Sex tourism has been a vital part of Thailand´s rigorous tourism industry, although no state official wants to admit this publicly (Sunanta 2009).

The phua farang phenomenon in Northeastern villages is closely linked to international tourism and fundamental changes in Thailand´s economy. Thailand´s economic growth in the period of economic boom was marked by a shift away from agriculture and towards the service and manufacturing sector. Until the turn of the 20th century, the economy of the Northeast provinces was pre-capitalist and based on agriculture. The declining role of agriculture and the concentration of capital investment in cities foster patterns of out-migration from the Northeast provinces. Isan is the main regional source for rural to urban migration because farming productivity and the average income is the lowest in this region and because farmers cannot work during the dry season (Sunanta 2009). The majority of rural to urban migrants are unskilled workers with minimal education who often work in poorly paid jobs in the service sector, in factories, and construction sites. Unmarried women constitute the preferred workforce of many employees as they are expected to be easily controlled and put up with low pay, limited benefits, and low job security (Mills 1997). Many women began working in the sex industry because the earnings could be up to twenty-five times greater than those in other jobs open to rural women (Askew 1999) and tourist sectors are among the most likely places for women to meet Western men. Migration to tourist districts and the relationships that ensue rest not only on economies but also on racialized cartographies of desire (Constable 2003). Many of the women working in the tourist-oriented sex industry are migrants from the Isan region with an ethnic Lao majority that is racialized as dark, indigenous, and culturally unsophisticated by urban Thais (Maher and Lafferty 2014).

In chapter three I layed out that transnational marriages have gradually shifted from being disapproved to being accepted within the rural communities. However, although aspirations for social and economic mobility through the phua farang phenomenon have received

57! ! acceptance from the women´s communities, they are often met with overt resistance from the wider society. Sunanta (2009) argues that for a significant part of the general public, certain academics, and some central and provincial government representatives, the phua farang phenomenon signifies a moral problem caused by materialism and consumerism, which threatens to degrade Thai traditional culture. The notion of saving "national tradition" from "foreign immoral values" has gained more strength with the revival of nationalism in Thai politics surrounding the military coup in September 2006. Within Thai cultural nationalist discourse, the phua farang trend is concerning because women in rural populations are endowed with the ascribed role and responsibility for national and social reproduction and cultural preservation. Feminists have long been aware of gendered discourses in which women bear the burden of reproducing the nation and embodying national identity so that women´s dress code, sexual behaviors, and values around marriage and family become matters of moral and national interest (McClintock 1995). Poor working class women and rural Isan women, who constitute the majority of mia farangs are distant to the ideal of Thai femininity because of their peasant background, low education, dark complexion, bold manner, and in some instances past employment in the sex industry. Discourses around the phua farang phenomenon differ on the rural and national level. Mia farangs outside the village community are stigmatized. This class bias is dominant and as I have found overly present in the mindset of my informants. However, as mia farangs are perceived to marry for economic reasons, they are also perceived to accept the so- called "rejects" of the Western world (Mai Sims 2012). The view towards such couples is expressed in Pit´s statement:

"Foreign guys have some bad reputation. My mother thinks that foreigners32 are only interested in sex. ... If we see them (couple consisting of a farang man and a Thai woman), the first perception is that she must be one of those girls and she must be poor and that she is with the guy to get the money. My parents did not want to me to look bad and so they did not want me to bring home a foreigner. My dad was afraid that someone would see me as one of them."

Pit is a Political Sciences student and had been in a relationship with a European man before we met. At the time we spoke, she was talking to another man from a European country. After she

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 32!in!this!context!she!talked!about!white!Westerners!(farang)!when!mentioning!foreigners.!

58! ! broke up with her first foreign boyfriend, her mother tried to discourage her from trying again. "She hates them even more now", said Pit. !

One evening I met two of my informants and some of their friends in a restaurant close to Soi Cowboy33. While looking at the couples, mostly older Western men with younger-looking Thai women, we began discussing what my perception and their perception of these couples were:

"From my point of view you differentiate a decent guy from another one by the clothes and you look at the woman he is with. If the girl dresses properly and speaks English fluently, the girl might be decent. No one would look down on her." (Pit)

Pit´s statement exemplifies the dichotomized characterisation most of my informants brought up when talking about foreigners in Thailand and the relationships between foreigners and Thai women. Foreigners are either low-quality or decent foreigners. The label "low-quality foreigner" - sometimes called farang ki nok34 - literally translated to bird droppings white Westerner - is mainly applied to Western men who move on their own initiative, for instance, to teach English or to retire, in contrast to those tied to the movements of global capital. What Pit´s statement also reveals is that Thais put the burden on women to communicate to others that their relationship is legitimate and that they are not "one of those girls". This is done via cultural capital, such as language, manners, and appearance. Pina told me that she would put much thought into how she dresses when she went out with her boyfriend. She would dress more business-like instead of casual and avoid revealing clothes. Despite all efforts, some women reported that people would still assume they would belong to the category of a bar girl:

"There was a one night that I took a taxi with my boyfriend and his friends and the taxi driver asked me if I work in the club. I said to him like nooooo!!! I am an architect and they are all my friends studying architecture. I m not a girl like that; I do not dress like that, why you think like that? And he said like he does not know he thought like that just because I was with farangs." (Pina, 24) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 is a minor street with mostly go-go bars, similar to Nana Plaza and Patpong. It caters mainly to tourists and expatriates. 34 I asked one of my informants to explain the meaning of the notion farang ki nok. He mentioned that it connotes that certain farangs, like birds, fly in, eat up a rice field and all they leave behind are droppings.

!

59! ! Pina is an architect I met on a swing-dancing event where we talked briefly about her long- distance relationship with a French man who came to Thailand as an exchange student. Pina said she always liked the sound of the and when she heard that there were French students in her faculty she tried to get in contact with them. She explained that most of her fellow students avoided the international students because of the language barrier, but also because women did not want to be acquainted with a foreigner as this can have negative consequences for them. Nune told me about a girl she knew when we chatted via Line messenger:

"In my community, there was a girl who was in a relationship with a Caucasian guy. She hid this fact but finally was found out and it became a derogatory gossip all over. One of the stereotypical gossips couldn’t be anything but “Surely that girl must have been xxxed and not a virgin because her boyfriend is Ang Mor35 (...) A few others would be: What happened to that family? Why daughter goes out with Ang Mor? Are they in debt now?"

Nune wrote that most of the women she knew would "avoid farangs like the plague" and her statement reveals that many people assume that such relationships happen for economic reasons, are morally compromising, and it would not only have a negative effect on the reputation of the woman but the whole family. Many of my informants shared similar experiences fo stigmatizing or discriminatory behavior towards them or women they knew. For instance, one of my informants told me about her sister who constantly has to deal with condescending behavior, such as being refused service or sneery comments directed at her when traveling with her German husband. She said this never happens when she travels with her Thai friends or family. Although she did not approve of this behavior, Pin explained what she thought happens:

"I guess they think that is because they assume these women are ... you know, we call them mia farang. (...) These women come from the lower class and marry a rich guy and suddenly they travel first class or stay in nice hotels. They feel as if they are better now."

Mia farangs tend to receive a disproportionate share of moral criticism and scorn from urban Thais as they are accused to digress from right values and traditions for personal gain. The discourse around morally corrupt mia farang is closely linked to the love/hate feeling towards modernity. In

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 Ang Mor is a derogative term for Caucasians in the Thai-Chinese community

60! ! the same vein as modernity brings comfort and progress, it threatens the traditional way of life and corrupts Thai society with lavish material consumerism (Sunanta 2009). As I laid out in chapter 2, the ownership and display of new technologies and consumer commodities are increasingly valued as symbols of modern success and social status throughout Thailand (Mills 1997) and the urban middle-class women in my study enjoy the privileges of modern comfort. Sunanta (2009) states that the cultural nationalist discourse around the "precious and unique" Thai culture have been produced and reproduced by popular media as well as institutionalized by the state. Discourses are gendered and classed because they expect two - sometimes overlapping - groups to be responsible for the preservation of the Thai tradition: women and rural people. Rural women´s sexual behaviors and values around marriage and family become matters of national interest and thus the transnational marriage trend among Thai women is viewed as an offense. When discussing the issue with a fellow Thai researcher in Thailand, he remarked:

"I rarely hear something like this from my Thai male friends, but heard more from Thai girls. Thai women need to work harder to prove themselves that they are not a bar girl, but a well-educated one who just happens to be with a Westerner." (Kan, 28)

Women have to prove that they are not a stereotypical mia farang and Kan´s observation that it is mainly women who stigmatize other women is interesting. In my respondents´accounts, women would often talk about how other women made sneery remarks or were condescending towards women accompanying farang men. Drawing from the work of Collett et al. (2014) and their research about slut shaming practices in college communities, I see a connection to the stigmatization of mia farang. As deduced from the comments, mia farangs are almost always linked to the sex industry and women in relationships with farang men are assumed to be involved in physical relationships. It is not important whether it is true, but what people communicate and believe. Bourdieu (1984:102) argues that sexual properties are inseparable from class properties, which suggests that women´s deployment of slut discourse may be partly about negotiating class differences. Collette et al. (2014) argue that women use sexual stigma to distance themselves from other women, but not primarily on the basis of sexual activity. Women use slut discourse to maintain status distinctions that are in this case, linked closely to social class.

61! ! Slut-shaming is the practice of slandering women for presumed sexual activity and is based on sexual double standards in a patriarchal society. Women are permitted sexual activity only when in committed relationships and "in love" (Crawford and Popp 2003) while overlooking male sexual . Women are vulnerable to slut stigma when they violate this sexual standard and consequently experience status loss and discrimination (Philipps 2000). Stigma is characterized by labeling a promiscuous female as dirty and undesirable and outcasting her from respectable society; generally by imposing undesirable labels upon her. I view the term mia farang to be such a label. Women´s participation in this practice is only indirectly related to judgments about sexual activity. Instead, it is about drawing class-based moral boundaries that simultaneously organize sexual behavior and gender presentation and about distancing themselves from the stigmatized category (Collette et al 2014). According to Eder et al. (1995), the "doing gender" tradition suggests that slut stigma regulates the gender presentations of all girls and women and how women are sanctioned for failing to perform femininity acceptably. Labeling women as good or bad is about status. Performances of femininity are shaped by class and race and ranked in ways that benefit women in advantaged categories (McCall 1992). This suggests that high-status women have an interest in applying sexual stigma to others, thus solidifying their rank. Another approach highlights the symbolic boundaries people draw to affirm the identities and reputations that set them apart from others. Through boundary-work, people explicate and emphasize similarities and distinctions between themselves and others (i. e. specific persons, groups, or hypothetical people). The development and maintenance of symbolic boundaries reflect perceived disagreements regarding the importance of certain values and how to live up to them. Therefore, people can position themselves morally by drawing boundaries against others whom they construe as prioritizing the wrong values (Lamont 1992).

Strategies!to!avoid!stigmatization! Nune works for a recruiting agency and during our interview, she decided to write a blog about my questions and her answers and publish it on the thaivisa forum.36 She anticipated that she might receive criticism from the expat community because she wrote about the myth of "normal" Thai girls being interested in Western men. Maher and Lafferty (2014) found in their study

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 36 Nune´s blog: https://beauuaeb.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/a-politically-incorrect-telling-of-how-relationship-of-thai-chinese- works/

62! ! among Western migrants in Thailand that Western men found it natural that Thai women are attracted to them because of Western masculine ideals centered on body size and hair. The comments on her blog on the thaivisa-forum proved her right. Most of the commenters said it would happen to them all the time that Thai women would approach them and with their comments it became clear that these men rejected the idea that women might not find them attractive37. However, the women in my study revealed that courting foreign men in public would overstep the lines of female modesty (Esara 2009) and that "if a woman approaches a man in a bar, she is definitely a prostitute or wants to hook up for some benefit."38, but she would definitely not be a higher status woman. The opinion of my respondents was that farang men, who do not realize this, are simply naive.

Somchai, was very critical, nearly infuriated, when we talked about Western men marrying lower class women:

"! I know a lot of Farang men that marry Thai women - the lower class women - and I do not feel comfortable with that. It´s like they are getting pets. They should marry someone within their own class. (...) they (the farang men) later complain that the women are stupid (...) and the women are only nice with the farangs because they have money and buy them things."

Somchai´s depiction of lower class women as "pets" for the Western men is rather dehumanizing but exemplifies often slightly hostile reactions towards these women. Lower class women are often depicted as having low intelligence with their main interest in the monetary benefits of a relationship because of their greedy appetite for consumption (Sunanta 2009). Somchai´s narrative reveals interesting and conflicting discourses in Thai society in which the rural classes are represented as inferior, but nonetheless responsible for preserving the "unique" Thai traditions. Sunanta (2009) criticizes the flawed logic and hypocrisy that lies behind the criticism of Thai rural women marrying foreigners. On the one hand, they should not participate in modernity and love marriages, rather than marriages based on rational thoughts, are associated with modernity that middle-class women want for themselves. According to Coontz (2005: 1-5), love marriages are in fact a rather new development. Most societies around the world viewed !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 I can only guess by profile photos and names that commenters were farang. Furthermore, the thaivisa-forum is directed at foreigners in Thailand. Nune has deleted her entry. The contents can be read on her blog, just without the comments. 38 Interview Noi, February 2016

63! ! marriage as far too important for economic and political reasons to be left entirely to the free choice of the two individuals. On the other hand, Thai women should fulfill their role in society as caregivers of the family. The phua farang phenomenon is a result of an agrarian crisis in the countryside and Thai women marry Western men in order to be able to fulfill this exact role through the practice of the good daughter role. Although the notion of true love is also thought to be incompatible with economic transactions, Thai women marrying for economic reasons to be able to preserve Thai traditons in the rural areas are nonetheless criticized to be selfish in addition to being greedy.

Thai women enter into long-term relationships with Western men in contexts entirely unconnected to the sex industry; however, the pattern of Thai-farang relationships is so prevalent that women from the urban middle-class fear that marrying a Western man would tarnish their reputation and social status (Maher and Lafferty 2014). Therefore, many Thai women "avoid Western men like the plague"39. Middle-class women wanting to enter a relationship with a Western man have to carefully navigate the boundaries of feminine morality and middle- classness. As various women pointed out, much of the burden to prove to outsiders that their relationship is legitimate is on the women. In order to avoid being stigmatized, women would carefully locate themselves in contradistinction to lower class women by avoiding manners and behaviors that are connected to mia farang, such as dressing in revealing outfits, flirting in public, and engaging in casual intimacy. Furthermore, middle-class women put much emphasis on how their cultural capital, such as language skills, would distinguish them from uneducated lower class women. Ultimately, in the process of devaluing lower class Thai women, these women reinforce given constructions of classed and gendered performances of women in Thailand to their own damage.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 39 Interview Nune, March 2016

64! ! CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

Kelsky (2001: 133) cites in her book the president of an international dating and marriage service in Tokyo who describes international marriage as a "circle of the weak" in which "the weak of the world always look for women outside their country - weaker women." In her narrative, weak white men marry Japanese women, middle-aged Japanese women pick up Middle Eastern men, although they would rather have young, sexy Japanese women, but cannot have them. Middle- aged Japanese women want Japanese men but cannot have them. Meanwhile, white men feel they have a right to choose for a young and beautiful woman because of the woman´s alleged lower status. Knowingly or unknowingly, the president describes the presence of dominant and subordinated masculinities and femininities in a social hierarchy. Persons belonging to the subordinated (weak) group pursue weaker persons in or from other countries. Thailand´s phua farang phenomenon, where Western men marry poor Thai women, is an example of people who are perceived as weak in their societies trying to escape their marginalization. Although the women in my study are not the women commonly defined as mia farang because of their privileged social and economic position, they nonetheless are impacted by stereotypes and critique toward these women. Relationships between Thai women and farang men are stereotyped among elite and urbanite Thais as well as in Europe and North America because poor and rural Thai women, who are presumed to be materialistic and greedy, are also presumed to put up with men that are not desirable in their home countries (Mai Sims 2012). The mutual attraction between Thai women and farang men rests on racialized "cartographies of desire" (Constable 2003), in which women in various contexts imagine white Western masculinity as progressive, modern, or an agent of liberation (Constable 2003) and desire the lifestyle he represents (Wilson 2001: 134). Lan (2011) argues that in Taiwan, the widespread conflation of whiteness with Westernness and modernity makes white privilege omnipresent and that it translates into assets and advantages in the field of when compared to their experiences in their home countries. This applies to Thailand´s tourist zones of Pattaya and Isan in which many farang men experience an increase in

65! ! status and feel emancipated from social norms at home that had marginalized them as men based on class, age, body type, or physical appearance (Maher & Lafferty 2014). In the meantime, the farang draws on a male fantasy of the Oriental woman (Hobbs et al. 2011). Thai lower-class women consciously enter into transnational marriages to redefine marriage possibilities and their choice for a Western husband provides them with new opportunities to overcome their status as marginalized women (Esara 2009).

I studied the opinions and experiences of Thai middle-class women in Bangkok being interested in a relationship with a farang man to find out what motivates them to pursue a relationship with a farang. My analysis reveals that their motivations and experiences are in certain ways similar to the phua farang phenomenon as they are the product of a specific social and historical context under given relations of power. I view the main difference in the fact that farang differ in their reception across social and geographic spaces within Thailand and being a farang does not automatically award high status in Bangkok. Quite the contrary as elite Thais in Bangkok widely despise farang tourists and migrants, women being acquainted with a farang man risk tarnishing their reputation.

The women in my study had a privileged socio-economic position as most of them had well-paying jobs and/or a rather wealthy family background. Nonetheless, they find themselves in a disadvantaged position in a society that gives greater authority and value to the roles of men and ranks women according to Thai beauty standards. Thai middle-class women felt great pressure to behave, dress, and talk in particular ways. Much of this was connected to consumption and fashion choices as within Bangkokian status relations, people tended to relate to one another based on external attributes and they often emphasized the need to distance themselves from lower status women. This would require wearing the right brands of clothes and accessories and more importantly to present themselves as good-looking and fashionable but not sexy as they risk being morally compromised when displaying their bodies. Well-educated women, who do not fulfill these beauty ideals or traditional gender roles of Thai society, also find themselves in the position in which they possess few options in the marriage market. My discussions with both sexes revealed that women are expected to conform to higher moral standards when it came to nearly

66! ! all matters of the body. This burden increases considerably when women have to prove that they are not a mia farang.

I found that the women in my study critique Thai men and patriarchy and used the ideal of the gender progressive farang as the bar against which they challenged Thai men as patriarchal, hence backward and bad for women. The underlying critique depends on hierarchic binary oppositions in which farang and Thai masculinities are constructed as opposites. Women associate farang masculinity with a positive value and guided by this masculinity hierarchy, women were seeking farang boyfriends/husbands or Thai men who enacted culturally white gender norms. Despite most of the women´s tendency to racially dichotomize farang and Thai masculinity, women did not characterize the so-called "sexpat" masculinity to be more gender progressive than Thai men´s but used notions of higher status white men. Thus, they are inspired by the hegemonic form of white masculinity rather than the subordinate form of it (Connell 1987), which demonstrates the existence of a class hierarchy within the category of farang.

Although some women stated that they view themselves as more western and more modern than the previous generation and parts of the current generation, I view their desire for a Western husband as an adherence to Thai values as they are attempting to fulfill Thai social ideals for matrimony despite the social constraints they face. As noted earlier, most women would like to get married and would like to have children. They were proud of the parts of Thai culture outside of patriarchy and most of the women´s social circles and organizational activities were also ethnically Thai. The majority of them placed a high value on staying in Thailand when finding a mate and would rather stay single than migrating. One of the reasons was that they were aware that their status in the receiving country could decrease since they might not be able to work in the same positions and would not have the same network as in Thailand. Another reason is that they found it important to be close to their families.

The majority of my respondents were single and the reasons are both supply- and demand-driven. On the one hand, women had certain requirements toward a potential partner and they felt that not many men in Thailand fulfill them. On the other hand, Thai men preferred women who fulfill a beauty ideal which many women felt were neither obtainable nor worth striving for. Women resist one form of hegemony, the Thai patriarchy, by reinforcing another

67! ! form of hegemony, namely farang male dominance. In other words, women largely upheld farang men´s hegemonic dominance by using it as the bar against which to denigrate Thai men´s masculinity. Such a limited form of resistance could reflect what Ong (2001) considers the deeply felt tension between the notions of tradition and modernity with which non-Western women must constantly grapple (p.114). On the other hand, their deflection is also an expression of their awareness of familial burden and risks due to compressed modernity. Women bear the brunt of family life because of the fundamentally gender-based structure of family relations and duties. Thai men were often described as immature, irresponsible, and passive and thus potentially adding to the burden women have to carry instead of being a source of support. By deciding against an ethnic husband and marrying a farang they are hoping to structure family relations in their favor.

Other pragmatic motives for having a relationship with a farang were potentially beneficial aspects of a marriage, such as being able to send their children to the country of origin of their husbands for schooling. Education is important for the middle class and most of my informants believed that the Thai educational scene is deficient, whereas English/international schooling promises success. Moreover, women viewed being mixed-raced as an asset that would elevate their children´s status. Hegemonic masculinity and cultural hegemony were consciously promoted by an implied means of power; however, I also view it as being sustained through unconscious identification and collaboration of the majority as it is constitutive of and embodied in, numerous practices, such as education and the privilege of whiteness that shows in the phenomenon of luk- khreung.

The implications of women´s gender ideals and strategies are striking and provide considerations for future research. For instance, future research might seek to capture Thai middle-class men´s perceptions and opinions about the addressed topics and whether they construct their masculinity vis-à-vis Westerners. Furthermore, Maher and Lafferty (2014) argue there has been virtually no work done on Western migrant masculinities. It would be interesting to research the opinions of farang men in a relationship with Thai women to find out about how they deal with the sexpat stigma, how their migration transformed gender relations and identities, and whether they view their masculinity as superior to Thai masculinities. Such a perspective

68! ! might reveal how racial hierarchies and power inequalities persist, as well as how they are being reconfigured and challenged. Furthermore, the usage of social media is an obviously interesting field of study. Next to its importance of being able to connect to their friends and making new friends, women use social networks for many other reasons, for instance as a means for shaming men. Women often shared videos of women who documented sexual harrassment, for instance a video from a woman in a taxi who endured verbal and physical harrassment by the taxi driver. Instead of calling him out on his behavior or reporting him to the authorities, she made a video in which she included his data from the taxi license and shared it via social networks, which resulted in him having his license revoked. I view this as a questionable practice, but my informants were grateful that they had this powerful tool to draw attention to their causes.

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84! ! No Name Gender Age Marital0status Education0level Education0or0living0abroadOccupation Thai/Thai