A woman has left a post at the Pantip board asking if it is normal these days for gays to use the women's rather than the men's toilets. She knows two men at work who are gay - though not screaming, in-your-face gay.
They still dress and do their hair like men. But for the slightly mincy walk and the affected way they talk (they opt for the polite sentence particle 'ka,' for women, rather than 'krap', for men) you would hardly notice. So why do they think they can use the women's toilets? One day she saw them both enter the women's, though at different times.
When she told her colleagues at work, they were indifferent (Thais are an accepting lot). But at home, the reaction was hostile.
'One of the men does make-up, and other is a hairstylist. I told my friends at the office, who like me are doing work training there. Women and men alike reacted as if they thought it was nothing special. It didn't seem to surprise or shock them, as if it is something that these days everyone accepts.
'When I told my family, they kicked up a big fuss. They told me I should be careful, because these guys, though gay, are still men. I do not feel so strongly, but I am a little suspicious. How can they be so brazen as to use the women's toilets, when they do not dress like women?'
Readers said they suspected the men were probably really kathoey (ladyboys) rather than gays, or had both had been treated or harassed by real men when they used the male toilets. Between close friends, it was probably an acceptable thing to do.
One guy said he was once with a bunch of kathoey friends, and not watching what he was doing. He blindly followed them into the toilets, thinking he was entering the men's. When he looked for the urinal, he couldn't find one. Just then a woman presented herself in the toilets, and - embarrassed - he realised he had followed his kathoey friends into the women's toilets instead.
As it happens, the post follows another one yesterday, about a secondary school in Chiang Mai which has put in a urinal in the girls' toilets, specifically for kathoey students to use.
Panitchayagan school was presumably responding to student demand, by real men and kathoeys alike, that neither wanted the other in their toilets. However, as the author pointed out, who among kathoey would want to stand to use a urinal, the way real men do, especially when they would be the only group using it?
Kathoey readers agreed, saying that in most cases they prefer to sit.
Ladyboys don't always have a choice. The stern women attendants can tell them they have to go to the ladies room. I guess it depends on how fem the boy is.
ReplyDeleteAh - those same stern female attendants who seem to spend their entire day mopping out the men's toilets, but seldom grace the women's. I know the ones.
ReplyDeleteI am sure they would rather not have to spend so much time in the men's if they had a choice. It's a question of men aiming poorly, perhaps - though Thais generally get up so close to the urinal they almost hug it. In that case there can't be that much risk of spillage, surely.
So why must they spent so much time lurking around there? It's enough to put a real man off.