Tom / Trans / Thai Winter Travel Diary

THE NEWS!

LOS ANGELES PREMIER, FEBRUARY 25! I will be installing Tom / Trans / Thai as part of PAST PRESENT | FUTURE IMPERATIVES: QUEER SPACE TIME at Sabina Lee Gallery in LA Chinatown! I am honored to be in this past/present/future dimension of Queer Asian American Hotness with the Fabulous SuperStardom of VIệT Lê, GENEVIEVE ERIN O’BRIEN and TINA TAKEMOTO! The show opens on February 25 and runs until March 24. My experimental karaoke music video cover, FAN CHRISTY, will also debut at the opening! I will be traveling down to LA early to give an artist talk at Claremont Colleges on February 22. Many thanks to Viet and Erin for this remarkable opportunity!

THE RE-CAP!

PITTSBURGH, NOVEMBER 8: The film screened as part of the My People Film Series in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last November. I joined the audience for a Q&A via Skype from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in California, where I was on residency. Thanks to Soham Patel, Colleen Jankovic and Joseph Hall for this amazing invitation!

IN THE CLASSROOM!

Tom / Trans / Thai will be taught in courses at SUNY Binghamton (New York), Pitzer and UC Irvine (California) this spring, and was also requested by a student doing an independent study in the UK!

THE CRITICAL ESSAY!

I finalized a draft of my critical essay, Tom/Gay, Trans/Queer: Mixed Translations Across Thai and Thai American Trans-Masculinities, which I am sending to instructors along with the film. Below is a short paragraph from its opening pages:

I am interested in bridging critical discussions regarding trans-masculine gender identity formation within Thailand and the US through analyzing the ways gender and queerness are linguistically and culturally conceptualized and communicated. In other words, I want to look at how people think and talk about gender, how people communicate and embody gender (Is gender talked about as a concept? Is gender talked about as an identity?) and the existing language around gender. I want to look at how language impacts cross-cultural recognition and connection between toms and Thai FTMs, and how language contributes to the invisibility, isolation and silencing of Thai transgender men and trans-masculine people. I also want to look at how language can be the site of building self and community.

THE CONNECTIONS!

I’m excited about Children of Srikandi, a new film project by queer Indonesian women breaking the code of silence. Watch the trailer here!

FOR MORE INFO!

Tom / Trans / Thai is a short experimental film that approaches the silence around female-to-male (FTM) transgender identity in the Thai context by addressing tom and trans-masculine identities in Thai and Thai American communities and the transnational relationships between gender and language. To view the trailer or request a DVD, please visit the project page.

Tom / Trans / Thai: Summer Travel Diary!

It was the rainy hot season in West Virginia, too.

MY LITTLE FILM FLEW (FLOODED!) from Thailand’s rainy hot season and landed in the grit dust of the San Francisco bay — rushing into the arms of queer fams!

Here’s what the film has been up to this summer!

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Screenings…and preenings!

MAY 14, LOS ANGELES: One of the project participants hosted a sweet house screening. We talked about “not getting” and coming into/refusing recognition. Plus we ate tasty K-town treats, like mammoth bread! Much love to those folks for offering a warm place to land.

JUNE 19, SAN FRANCISCO: The film showed at the closing performance of Dirtstar, an art and activist project that addresses issues of queer sustainability. Thanks to m.a. brooks and Amar/a Puri for hosting this official US premiere!

JULY 16, CHICAGO: I cut together some clips from the project and read parts of แล้ว and then entwine over them at a Red Rover Reading Series event hosted by Jennifer Karmin and curated by my good friend Marissa Perel! It was the first time I let these two projects coexist in a performance, and this activity was really instructive in terms of learning how to approach the text of the book in the now, threading together the old trip of gender and Thailand with the new. I slipped and said “Gaw’s tongue was pricky…” Indeed! Plus I got to meet and witness the ridiculously awesome work of Zihan Loo and Oli Rodriguez — like whoa.

A poster for Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Tropical Malady" at SAIC

JULY 23, BERKELEY: I had the most amazing community screening at a great big queer house! It was important to me to create a healing ritual around the project, and this night was it, big time. Being validated by queer family filled me with so much warmth and strength to continue! We celebrated with chocolate cake and I blew out a candle (cuz I thought it was my birthday)! I even met Aren Aizura, author of “Where Health and Beauty Meet: femininity, cosmetic surgery and racialization in Thailand”, which I cited in my talk, later realizing that Aren was in the room!

AUGUST 24, BERKELEY: I shared the film at the FTM Peer Support Group’s movie night at the Pacific Center, where I discovered Falling in Love with Chris and Greg!

AUGUST 27, SAN FRANCISCO: I’ll be launching my first full-length book of poetry and screening the film at this joint reading with the amazing Margaret Rhee and Kevin Simmonds, hosted by the fabulous Truong Tran!

Submissions…and transmissions!

I submitted the film to the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, and will be submitting it to the Los Angeles Transgender Film Festival too!

Research…and re: search

If you know me, you know I love to get all “critical theory!” I’m writing a paper from my research and interviews, which was accepted to the Thai Studies Conference in Bangkok this past July. Since I couldn’t afford to travel back there again I wasn’t able to attend, but I’m working on the 3,000 fairly cohesive words I have so far and hope to submit it as an essay/article somewhere soon…

Postcards…from the future!

Best lunch ever - sushi and mango coconut smoothie (with boba!)

BANGKOK: One of the project participants is circulating the film amongst his friends as an educational tool. It’s exciting to think about these little steps in creating awareness around FTM identity among Thais. This is what it’s about!

IOWA: Another project participant is going to host a house screening and discussion. What a great idea!

PORTLAND: I’ve never been (despite the fact that there’s definitely some kind of easily accessible portal between here and there) so I’m hoping to visit one of the participants and do a screening and presentation at their college campus sometime in the coming year!

PITTSBURGH: I was also asked to present at a queer people of color film series sometime in November, so hopefully this works out!

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THIS CONCLUDES THE TOM/TRANS/THAI SUMMER TRAVEL DIARY! It’s been an exciting few months, in which I did more traveling than I have ever done before in my entire life! Take some more pictures next time, won’t you?

Tom / Trans / Thai: Week 7

When I tried to register for the Thai Studies Conference, I got an “Error Gid.” This is what happens when you are required to select either “Professor,” “Associate Professor,” “Assistant Professor,” “Dr.,” “Mr.,” “Mrs.” or “Ms.” and all you have is an MFA.

Last week I bought my train ticket down to Bangkok, and the person behind the counter selected “MAN” without asking. I say “khrap,” usually quietly, not really expecting people to take me seriously. Even though they didn’t check IDs last time, I am still anxious about whether I should be passing as male today, and triply anxious about whether I’ll pass as female for tomorrow night’s journey through airport security. Last time I was asked “Is this you?” of my passport photo. Twice. It’s from 2003. I had really long hair.

From SFO to BKK I was “Ms.” at the check-in counter, “Ma’m” in the security body scan chamber, “Sir” when I was waved through for boarding and “Sir” when I wanted some orange juice. In Suvarnabhumi I used the women’s toilet, trying not making eye contact with anyone, a white kid staring at me the whole time.

I don’t like passing as male, and it’s been hard these past two months accepting the reality that, when people aren’t looking at my ID, I do. I don’t feel male, I don’t feel like anything. Meaning, I don’t feel like either. I feel like a man joiner.

Thailand is made out of plastic bags and 7Eleven. White people love it here. White people never want to leave. I’ll miss the soya bean milk/fruit shake stall boy and the kao mun gai stall and the kanom si grok from Warorot Market. But I’m Thai and I’m White and I’m ready to go.

Tom / Trans / Thai: Week 6

“Under erasure.” I was reading Aren Z. Aizura’s essay “Where Health and Beauty Meet: Femininity and Racialisation in Thai Cosmetic Surgery Clinics” when I stumbled upon this “Derridean term to denote using a word when it does not quite fit, but acknowledging the impossibility of finding the ‘correct’ word or pinning down meaning absolutely” (Aizura, Notes).

I first encountered Derrida in Akilah Oliver’s “Eros and Loss in Poetic Construction” seminar at Naropa. We were reading Aporias. Recently Akilah was in my dream, and it was as if she actually hadn’t passed. We were opening the lock on a door to a secret part of her apartment, the place where she had stayed.

Before traveling to Thailand, I drew the Goddess cards Ianna, Venus and Hel. These last few weeks I’ve realized the great effort needed just to break the surface. Each day spirits lead me through the underworld, up through the politics of representation and vulnerability, across constant investigation and negotiation, opening up some secret way.

Last Tuesday I showed the film and gave a talk at an Informal Northern Thai Group meeting at the Alliance Francaise. In order for people to understand what I was talking about, I spent a lot of time defining terminology. FTM, MTF, trans-masculine, trans-feminine, transgender, cisgender, se/hir. Most people in Thailand ask, Why are you categorizing people? Why are you putting them into boxes? Are you seeking definition for yourself? Here, people go with the flow.

I say, I’m seeking a space outside binary thinking. I want to question the silence, invisibility and isolation of Thai transgender men/trans-masculine folks. I want to look at the failure of language in conceptualizing and communicating who we are in the Thai cultural context.

Aizura writes, “…as a standard-bearer for Thai nationalism….The feminine body is often the site at which the conflicts arising from this straddling of tradition and modernity play out. From the perspective of the non-Thai tourist, these same images of ‘Thai beauty’ represent a form of idealised femininity that is both desired as exotic and cultural appropriated or ‘eaten.’”

Is the silence around the existence of Thai transgender men due to the ways we reject and/or refigure this Thai nationalist feminine ideal? Is it because we cannot be commodified?

I want to know about Akilah’s question, “What is the primary duty of repair?”

The poverty of language, but I’m still speaking. Still seeking to articulate a vocabulary. Under erasure, but I’m still standing. Still making meaning.

Tom / Trans / Thai: Week 5

When I asked for internet, I didn’t ask for internet + mosquitoes. Although internet + steak, internet + massage and internet + coffee are all readily available. I can’t get a date with a human, but hella bugs are into me. Mosquitoes, beetles, flying termites – all up in my grill.

Renting a room in Chiang Mai during Songkran, Thai new year, is maybe one of the most difficult things to do. The only tasks more difficult? Staying dry, and avoiding wet hippies. I walk out of GG Somphet guest house in my fluorescent orange poncho with only one agenda: Banana smoothie.

It’s true. Farang LOVE smoothies. They also love chalkboards with color-coded listings of Fresh Dragonfruit, Kiwi and Pineapple. But I like smoothies too. And the woman in the market sells Banana smoothies for only 15 baht. So as I approach in my orange poncho the farang convention in front of her stall, waiting for their yogurt and muesli, I feel embarrassed. 15 baht, I tell myself. 15 baht.

This week I’ve been hiding out. Recovering from the midnight bus ride from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, which sped through a massive lightning and thunderstorm with some small-scale flooding, and avoiding water fights. I’m also working on my presentation for next Tuesday’s Informal Northern Thai Group meeting.

It’s not that I haven’t felt like celebrating. Since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, weather in Thailand just hasn’t been the same. It’s cold, rainy and cloudy, and I didn’t come to Thailand to wear my requisite bay area black hoodie. It’s supposed to be the hot season, people. Drinking beer and slinging buckets of canal water in the street (while it’s raining) is not my idea of a great time.

This Sunday is my 28th birthday, and I remember, vaguely, the kind of person I was seven years ago, when I turned 21 in Chiang Mai and had a tequila sunrise in a gay bar, none of which was particularly special. It’s called grenadine, my friend said. I accidentally walked away with a purple napkin from the restaurant, now stained with seven years of snot.

As I walk back to my room with 10 baht bags of watermelon and papaya, my orange poncho one giant force field against nonconsensual water-throwing, I think, I really do want to love Thailand like all the white people do. I really wish I could. But as they fade in and out of view in heterosexual groupings and hefty super soakers, their wet flip flops squishing on tile, I kind of feel like this city, this whole country, should just be theirs. Go ahead. Enjoy yourself.

Tom / Trans / Thai: Week 4

Taking the night train down to Bangkok, I had a heaviness in my heart. At 6 AM the outskirts of the metropolis slid by – shacks, station platforms – and I thought – who am I, to be “representing” Thainess? To be “representing” tomness? When the faces of Thais on the BTS – bored, vacant, watching commercials on flat screen TVs – many of whom I read as tom – come into proximity without any recognition. I am “from” this. That morning I didn’t want it.

My film “tom / trans / thai” is installed now as part of the “Chiang Mai Now!” exhibition at the BACC in one corner of the 9th floor. I feel insecure about the ways my difference is marked in the show – as American, as genderqueer, as half. My body inhabits the screen, carrying the vulnerability of my experience and the experiences of each person I interviewed.

I don’t think that a dialogue between tom and trans and transgender men in Thailand has yet to reach popular discourse. Every Thai trans-masculine person I talked to said they didn’t know any other Thai trans guys–and every tom I talked to didn’t know any transgender men, besides the odd newspaper or TV story. What I begin to do here, with this film, is open that door, to connect us. To remove the hinge. I don’t attempt to define “art.”

Out of place, perhaps. But yesterday I went back to the BACC to meet one of the project participants. We sat on the bean bag chairs, and without speaking my experience of watching myself, this time, was filled with so much warmth, knowing I was sitting next to someone who understood, who cared, who shared in the complexity and pain and unspokenness of what I chose to visually represent.

My new friend – new brother – and I walked and talked, around the 9th floor, down and outside, across the BTS bridge and over into Siam Square, through sidewalks packed with planters meant to deter the vendors who packed around the planters anyway, discovering we like to walk and like parks and carry water bottles, and that Thai people don’t like walking and don’t like parks and don’t carry water bottles. Are we still Thai, or what?! We got a Singha at the Seven Eleven and sat on the posts outside talking even more. I was filled with so much joy – so much joy. To know myself, here.

After my friend and I departed I wandered back, stumbling upon a “Hello! Korea” audition in front of the MBK. From the BTS bridge I watched boys in tight jeans and high tops rehearse their dance routine, and I thought – Bangkok, Krungtep, this – this part I take as mine.

*View the Tom/Trans/Thai trailer!

*If you would like a DVD of the film, please leave a comment or email eucalyptusravenATgmailDOTcom

*See the project page for upcoming presentations and more info!

Tom / Trans / Thai @ ComPeung: Week 3

Aftershocks from the earthquake in Burma, rain forebodes yet again, but my camera is actually working! Anyways…

This Friday a draft of my short film is due for review by the exhibition folks. Even with nearly 20 minutes of footage gathered in a rough edit, part of me feels like I barely started. I’m overwhelmed by the task of synthesizing the material I’ve gathered so far and teasing out the text I want to highlight in the film from the larger paper I’m writing. I want to visually represent the complexity of our experiences in the film, despite the fact that sometimes it feels like there really are only two ways to turn when you reach the road.

I met some folks in the administration at Payap University, where I studied abroad in 2004, and saw how much the campus has changed and grown. I will hopefully be presenting the film and project to some students there near the end of April. Additionally, the Library of Congress Bangkok office emailed me wanting to acquire a copy of the film. I said, “Well, it isn’t finished yet…”

We went to a restaurant in town to meet a worker there who might be interested in being interviewed for the project. A person who I think was their partner walked me around the corner to a tom working on a computer. She asked them if they wanted to be interviewed and they basically said, “No! I’m not interested,” and kept working. Too bad though–they were super hot.

FYI: There are too many white people in Chiang Mai!  I am incredibly glad to be avoiding the 24/7/365 tourist vay-cay party zone for now, and am feeling quite at home in Doi Saket, the gay country boi that I am. I don’t know that there are really people here who I can befriend outside the restrictions of language and gender, who can really understand my kind of queerness. But downloading the rest of Zee’s songs and watching the new video on repeat make me feel like this virtual desire could be a start.

Tom / Trans / Thai @ ComPeung: Week 2

I went to pay respect to the Buddha at a meditation center, which obviously didn’t work out. I dropped my flipcam there and now it won’t turn on. Extremely annoyed at having paid 200 dollars US for such a piece of shit, the only things curing my mood are the clear skies and skyping with genderqueer Thais on the other side of the world. Friends, I wish I could bring you here.

It’s Ostara, and the weekend-long temple fair, and the time when the Moon is full and as close as it will get to Earth. Amidst booming night music and flying termites I feel a bit frantic, overwhelmed and in need of solitary work space in which to process the conversations I’ve had with participants so far.

The windy country road out to Doi Saket hot spring reminds me of West Virginia again. I often feel nagging periods of deja vu and the quickly arising normality of my day to day, with insect-bite-swollen feet to prove it. Yesterday I ate ant eggs (kai mot) and am enjoying sit ua and ahan nuea–the food of the north.

At Chiang Mai Airport Plaza, I passed the TOM professional laycut barbershop. In the B2S (Books, Music, Stationery), the first song that came on was Calories Blah Blah from “Bangkok Love Story” soundtrack–”I want to know, but I don’t want to ask.” I found issue 24 of @tom act, for which I eagerly paid 125 baht. I looked for Zee and “Yes or No อยากรักก็รักเลย,” but couldn’t find them.

As Thai American trans-masculine folk, we live with separation, dissonance, ambivalence and constant negotiation. I read tom identity as trans-masculine, while translating “trans-masculinity” as a concept, an experience, a practice, to other tom-identified folk is maybe impossible. However, the discovery of the existence of @tom act and Zee have helped me uncover a space for my own embodiment of genderqueerness and Thainess–they opened the gate.

Inside is a restaurant where we can all meet together to eat. Here our Thainess and genderqueerness are not exotified. Here we are free to have our own “tastes,” whether rice, sticky rice or bread. Here we are neither gendered nor pressured to gender ourselves. Here language does not demand we make ourselves visible, unless we choose to do so.

Here, you know the food will be hella good.

Tom / Trans / Thai @ ComPeung: Week 1

It’s already the end of my first week at ComPeung, an artist-in-residence program in Doi Saket outside Chiang Mai, Thailand. It’s a short bicycle ride around the lake into Doi Saket market, the cafe with wifi and Seven Eleven. On my first day I flew kites and fell full-on into the rice paddy ditch–my muddy “welcome back” Thai baptism. It’s been seven years since my first visit to Thailand and this time I’m prepared–prepared for being read as farang, prepared to say “khap”–ready to work.

ComPeung invited me to create my short experimental film “Tom / Trans / Thai” for the “Chiang Mai Now!” art exhibition, which opens April 7, 2011 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre and runs through June. My goal is to bring the cultural categories of “tom” and “FTM transgender” into conversation among Thai nationals and Thai Americans through interviews with Thai toms and Thai trans-masculine folk and my response to those interviews.

So far I have been interviewed by Gavroche, a French magazine in Bangkok, by folks making a documentary on the art exhibition and by Citylife Chiang Mai magazine for their upcoming May issue on “the body.” I will be presenting the film and my related research at the April 19 Informal Northern Thai Group meeting in Chiang Mai, and perhaps a couple other places. Additionally, I was recently accepted to present a related paper on the project at the Thai Studies Conference in Bangkok at the end of July!

It seems that many folks are interested in the work I am trying to do, in the sense that a discourse around Thai tom and trans-masculine identity (relative to kathoey and trans-feminine identity) is in the early stages of being built. Returning to Thailand as a trans-masculine person is the ultimate in “self-building,” as Bo Luengsuraswat writes. In this project I am reaching through our isolation and alienation as Thai American transguys and Thai American queers and building a community for each other.

For the past few days it’s been very rainy, highly unusual for this time of year, which has been putting me in a miserable mood. Fortunately I was finally able to interview one of my participants this morning on Skype and now I’m feeling up! That and a good dose of @tom act magazine and Zee’s MVs and I’m already forgetting about the bike ride home in the rain! Head over to my resource page for more tom / trans / thai related things!

Call for Participants: TOM / TRANS / THAI Project

Call for Participants: TOM/TRANS/THAI Project

Ongoing…Please forward widely!

I am a Thai American and luk kreung (half Thai) writer, dancer and performing artist. I was invited by the artist-in-residence program ComPeung in Doi Saket to make a short experimental film on Thai toms and Thai FTM (female-to-male) transgender people. The film is screening as part of the “Chiang Mai Now!” art exhibition at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, which opened April 7 and runs through June 19, 2011. I am also writing an academic paper, which has been selected for presentation at the International Thai Studies Conference this July.

My goal is to connect with toms and trans-masculine (including queer, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, butch and FTM spectrum) Thais living in Thailand and the US (and elsewhere) to discuss the connections and disjunctions between gender in Thailand and gender in the US among Thai people. Participants will be interviewed via phone, email or in person off camera and remain anonymous. Unfortunately there is no funding to compensate participants.

Please visit the TOM / TRANS / THAI project page for more information and to view the trailer. If you have questions or are interested in participating, please leave a comment or email eucalyptusravenATgmailDOTcom.

Thank you!

Jai Arun Ravine

ทอม / ทรานส์ / ไทย

ข้าพเจ้าเป็นลูกครึ่ง ไทยอเมริกัน ชายข้ามเพศภาวะ นักเขียน และศิลปิน ข้าพเจ้าได้รับเลือกเป็นศิลปินในพำนักในโครงการคำเปิง (www.compeung.org) ดอยสะเก็ด เชียงใหม่ เพื่อสร้างสรรค์ภาพยนตร์ทดลองสั้นเกี่ยวกับประสบการณ์ของการเป็นทอม และ ชายข้ามเพศภาวะ ในเชียงใหม่และสหรัฐอเมริกา ภาพยนตร์นี้จะนำไปเผยแพร่ในนิทรรศการศิลปะ “เชียงใหม่นาว!” ณ หอศิลปและวัฒนธรรมแห่งกรุงเทพมหานคร (BACC / www.bacc.or.th/ ) ซึ่งจะเปิดในวันที่ ๗ เมษายนนี้

ข้าพเจ้าอยากจะพบทอมและ ชายข้ามเพศภาวะ ชาวไทย เพื่อสนทนาเกี่ยวกับประสบการณ์และความเชื่อมโยงระหว่างเพศในเมืองไทยและสหรัฐอเมริกา ผู้ที่สนใจร่วมโครงการจะได้รับการสัมภาษณ์นอกกล้องโดยไม่ระบุชื่อในภาษาไทยและอังกฤษ รายละเอียดเพิ่มเติมโปรดดู http://jaiarunravine.wordpress.com/tomtransthai/ หรือเขียนถึงข้าพเจ้าได้ที่ eucalyptusravenATgmailDOTcom

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