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from :
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/24bef3da-aab1-11dc-a779-0000779fd2ac.html
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'I'm saving Thailand's gay history'
By Isabel Berwick
Published: December 15 2007 02:00 | Last updated: December 15 2007 02:00
In 1983 I was an Australian PhD student visiting Thailand to do research on Buddhism when, by chance, the first Thai-language gay magazine appeared on the newsstands. I bought it, and since then I have built up a personal collection of about 2,000 Thai gay magazines. Now, with funding from the Australian Research Council, I am developing an archive in Bangkok of gay culture and literature.
I am doing this to give something back to the Thai gay and transgender community, whose members I have been interviewing and studying for the past 25 years. I am an associate professor in Thai history at the Australian National University, and the archive will help younger gay and transgender people in Thailand, now in their 20s and 30s, who want to study their own history. The magazines are a unique record of how gay culture has developed in Thailand.
My aim is to develop the Thai Queer Resources Centre as an archive that can eventually be donated to a university in Thailand for safekeeping. There's a rich history in these magazines, and apart from a few private collectors in Thailand, no-one has kept them. The police regularly destroy gay magazines - as supposedly pornographic - and mount raids on newsstands.
The previous political regime of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had conservative moral policies, and magazines and other gay businesses were often raided. Somewhat ironically, since the military coup that overthrew Thaksin in September 2006, the climate for homosexual people has improved markedly. There's been a boom in gay businesses, including new gay magazines.
We have put ads in the gay press and on gay websites, asking people to donate magazines to our archive, and we have used the network of people working in gay rights and HIV prevention NGOs (non governmental organisations) in Thailand to get the message out. I have been stunned by the positive response, and by the sense of community history they have. So far we haven't had to pay for any of the several hundred magazines that have been donated.
There are many people in Bangkok who collect gay magazines. One man rolled up in a taxi with three huge boxes - he had kept them in a storeroom for years. One closeted man e-mailed, saying he lived with his parents in the suburbs and they had no idea he was gay. He said it was fine to go and pick up his collection, but asked that nobody came in drag, which would have given the game away.
I now have an assistant working full-time on archiving the magazines. She's the first transgendered academic in Thailand and it hasn't been easy for her to get a job. I really hope she can get a teaching job in Thailand. Things are changing, slowly, and in 2005 I organised the first international conference of Asian Queer Studies in Bangkok.
We had Ford Foundation support and more than 500 registrations, 80 per cent of them from Asia. It's encouraging, but we have a long way to go to get acceptance in Thai universities for gay, lesbian and transgender history. I wrote one of the first books on Thai gay history, 20 years ago, and I now get e-mails from many Thai students who want to study the subject, but who can't find a supervisor in Thailand.
The archive is part of my wider research looking at capitalism and gay history in Thailand. A lot of people look at the politics of gay issues but relatively few investigate the history of the gay scene. The truth is that without these spaces - the bars and saunas, and the magazines sold and given away in those places - there would have been nowhere for gay people to meet. Businesses and entrepreneurs have been vital in the emergence of gay history, and have often been brave in the face of official opposition and police raids.
I hope I can preserve that history, and pass it on to the next generation.
As told to Isabel Berwick.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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Comments
terjemahin dong!
Lagi males mikir! 8) 8) 8)
yang artinya........
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Mereka ngumpulin majalah Gay thai???
Ih, gw kecewa!!!! Gw kira tuh majalah bakal disumbangin ke anak2 miskin yg ga mampu sekolah. LOL
brb di transtoolin dulu de pake rekso translator software original yg
hargnya 1 jutaan dolo ah....
Karna englih ya mbak?