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By Root 4729 0

ladyboys don’t even bother going to school, and lately this educational gap in the culture has become huge. You see many gà·teu·i dropping out of school at a young age because they know they don’t have a future in a respectable job. Ladyboys work in the sex industry because they aren’t given the opportunity to make a lot of money doing something else. I feel like a second-class citizen; we are not allowed to use male or female bathrooms! I used to have to climb 14 flights of stairs to use the special ladyboy’s bathroom at my old job! Also, Thai law states that my ID cards and passport must always have an ‘M’ for male because the definition of a female in Thailand is someone who can bear children. It’s hard for me to leave the country because my passport says ‘male’ but I look like a female. They will never let me through security because it looks like a fraudulent passport.

When did you first realise that you might be a transgender person? I realised that I was different when I was about six years old. I always wanted to dress up like my sister and would get upset when my parents dressed me in boys’ clothing. It felt wrong being in boys’ clothes. I felt good in my sister’s outfits.

How does one tell the difference between a ladyboy and a woman on the street? Sometimes it’s really hard to tell…sometimes a ladyboy can be more beautiful than a woman! There is no set way to figure it out, unless you ask them for their ID card. These days, doctors are really starting to perfect the operations, and the operations are expensive – mine was 150,000B! I had the ‘snip’, then I had breast implants, my Adam’s apple was shaved off, and I also had a nose job (I didn’t like my old nose anyway). Other operations available include silicone implants in the hips, jaw narrowing, cheekbone shaving and chin sculpting – to make it rounder. But before anyone can have an operation, you have to have a psych evaluation. The operation was extremely painful. I spent seven days in the hospital and it took me about two months to fully recover. Younger patients tend to heal faster – I was about 40 years old when I had the operation.

Why didn’t you have the operation earlier? I didn’t ‘change’ earlier because I didn’t want to give up my job, and I knew that after the operation I would be forced to quit. I was working as a software instructor at a university, and university teachers are not allowed to be transgender. I also waited until my father passed away so that it would be easier on my family when I made the transition.

How has your family handled the transition? Well, contrary to what some tourists believe, no family particularly wants a transgender child, even a family with only boys. Some of my close friends no longer speak to their families. My mother was always very comforting. A month before my operation she told me, ‘You will always be my child, but never lie to anyone about who you are – accept who you are.’ I have two adopted sons who are now quite grown up, and after I made the change, they bought me presents on Mother’s Day instead of Father’s Day – I thought that was very sweet. My father, on the other hand, was never very supportive. When he found out I was sleeping with men, he…well…let’s put it this way, he practised his moo·ay tai boxing on me.

What was the first thing that passed through your mind when you woke up after the operation? How has life been since the operation? I woke up with a big smile. Life is great. I am happy that I can be on the outside what I am on the inside – I can stop feeling sad every time I look down! Finding a job after my surgery was hard. I wrote on my CV ‘transgender post-op’ so that there would be no surprises in the interview, but I never heard back from any companies. Oh, actually one company asked me to come in for an interview, but they spent the meeting asking me inappropriate questions about my personal life. It was very disheartening. I finally found a queer-friendly company, where I am employed as a hospitality software implementer, meaning that I go around to hotels around