Review: Benjamin Law: Gaysia: Adventures in Queer Asia (2012)

Benjamin Law: Gaysia: Adventures in Queer Asia: Collingwood: Black Ink: 2012.

Benjamin Law is a gay Chinese-Australian journalist and over the last year or so, has travelled to several East Asian and South Asian societies, discussing local LGBT lives and experiences with several correspondents, and assembling a kaliedoscopic set of references within several different societies.

In Thailand, he surveys the glamorous contestants of Miss Tiffany?s Universe, an international beauty pageant for transsexual women, and discovers that given unrestricted access to pharmaceutical help for their gender dysphoria, young transwomen can discover their gender identity at secondary, or even primary school, start taking the neccessary reassignment drugs and progress onward to full surgery later.?

In Bali, he gets temporarily naked at the Spartacvs gay clothing optional resort. Given its religious pluralism, Bali is a tourist destination of preference, although at the time that Ben was sunning himself all over at the resort, most of his fellow tourists seemed to be older Caucasian men, in temporary holiday relationships with local gay men, in return for monetary expenditure given the generous exchange rate. Like Thailand, Bali is quite inclusive and laidback insofar as sexuality and gender identity goes, although this is only a recent development according to several of his respondents.

In China, there?s an uneven rate of change. Granted, the Chinese government removed homosexuality from its list of psychopathologies, and China has had Internet access and rapid urbanisation since the late nineties, which has enlarged social opportunities and community possiblities and scale for metropolitan and provincial city lesbians and gay men. However, there are still old-guard psychologists who believe that it is a pathology, as well as conservative older parents who try to discourage relationships- that is, unless the lesbian or gay man conducts a sham ?marriage? to trick their elders, which happens more often than not. And unfortunately too, there?s also the plight of the tongqi (straight wives of men who have sex with men), given the stigmatisation of divorce and sadly, their experience of domestic violence.? Still, despite government neutrality, there still seems room for optimism.

Much the same can be said about India.? In this chapter, Ben starts off by telling us about the antigay yogini and guru Ramdev, whose teachings are taken seriously amongst the uninitiated. But like China, India is a rapidly modernising society, and such traditional sources of religious authority (or opportunist entrepreneurial adaptations thereof) must conflict with feisty and resolute opponents like Dr. Anjali Gopalan, one of the founders of the Naz Foundation, India?s major national HIV prevention group. Along with other Indian LGBT lobby organisations and the Lawyers Collective, the Naz Foundation was responsible for the landmark Delhi High Court case that struck down Section 377 of India?s colonial era Criminal Code, which had previously criminalised male homosexuality. While there?s a burgeoning gay male community, there?s also the matter of caste differentiations and the high cost of the Indian commercial scene that has arisen since the fall of Section 377.

Unfortunately, China, India and Bali are at the high end of East Asian tolerance. Oddly enough, Ben didn?t make it to Singapore, given its burgeoning LGBT communities, active LGBT movement and pressures for decriminalisation in the city-state. Nor did he explore matters in the Philippines, or Vietnam. However, he did travel to Myanmar and Malaysia.

Myanmar is a nightmare. It has wretched levels of poverty, maldistribution of wealth, rampant and obnoxious predatory western pedophiles, and appallingly high levels of HIV amongst its general population. Granted, the military regime appears to be relenting and allowing Aung San Kyu Chi greater latitude in opposition due to overseas pressure, but there are years and decades of cumulative neglect of sexual health amongst gay men and MSMS within the nation in question.

As for Malaysia, much the same prevails, only its problem is religious. Oddly enough, Ben started his chapter on Malaysia with reference to Real Life Ministries, a Pentecostal fundamentalist Christian exgay ministry in Malaka, but soon moved on to the far more sinister Malaysian Islamic Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality. As the name suggests, it is an Islamic associate of NARTH, who provided its Muslim founder with considerable assistance. Despite this, though, there are heroic liberal Muslims, and even a Metropolitan Community Church branch, fighting back.

It was interesting to compare this volume to the account of another gay expatriate, Beijing Blur. Like Ben, James West was gay, although unlike him, he was permanently stationed at China Radio International as part of an ABC exchange programme, and also Caucasian, which led to much groinal comparative measurement and socialising with the inhabitants of the Beijing, Shanghai and other gay commercial scenes. Both are a fascinating look at emerging LGBT communities to our northwest.

Also Recommended:

James West: Beijing Blur: Melbourne: Penguin: 2008.

Source: http://www.gaynz.com/blogs/redqueen/?p=1907

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