Customer Reviews

Male Bodies, Women's Souls: Personal Narratives of Thailand's Transgendered Youth (Human Sexuality)

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Male Bodies-Women's Souls is a social anthropology treatise on the kathoey of Thailand (basically transgender, ostensibly feminine natal-males who either transition to female or 'third-sex' social roles). The authors, LeeRay Costa (who's from a background of Women's Studies) and Andrew Matzner (a clinical social worker who's also written about trans populations in Hawaii) prefer to use the term 'sao braphet song' (second type woman) since kathoey has many negative connotations in Thailand (similar to 'tranny' or 'queen').

The core of the book are a series of brief autobiographical narratives from people of sao braphet song background connected with Chang Mai University in Northern Thailand (usually considered to be the more conservative, traditional part of Thailand). This presents one of the books many flaws. It only shows an extremely limited sampling of narratives, none of which are more than a few pages in length and get into few particulars of the participants lives. All except one of them are currently students. Mostly importantly, while they've all had parts of their lives intersect sao braphet song, from what I can tell, NONE of them (except one non-student) have really transitioned to a 24/7 woman's life. None of them have had any kind of surgical procedure. The authors mistakenly try to make some conclusions about gender fluidity (they do mention that a couple of narratives are by people who identify as women even if they don't currently live as one) from this absurdly narrow sample. They spend a considerable amount of time musing over different academics' take on the difference between sao braphet song and 'gay'. They seem to have next to no perspective on how sao braphet song correlates to the equally over-generalized term 'transgender' in our own culture... that it encompasses an absurdly wide range of phenomena that have little to do with one another, except that, in reacting to rigid social ideas on gender, sometimes people investigate several of these categories before gaining a clearer view of their own situation (ie. crossdressers or drag queens who eventually transition mtf). The authors seem rather naive about transitioners (from many cultures) and stages of transition they often encounter. I won't even belabor the fact they use the term 'male transgenders' to refer to people who might have a very female core identity and understanding of themselves.

Moreover, they make a big point of how Thailand might not be as progressive about their sao braphet song population as is typically thought by academics and western outsiders. My response would be 'duh'... look at what these women do in Thai society and you can see they're very much as objectified as transwomen are in western society... as Julia Serano states, either as sexy-obsessed deceivers/narcissistic wannabes or as pathetic losers on the outskirts of society. I think the authors need to do more first-hand social research and read fewer academic articles by people with limited exposure to the realities of this population.

This is a fascinating subject which deserves a well-written, first person treatment. Instead, Male Bodies, Women's Souls joins many other academically-aimed works on gender as being poorly organized, barely researched books by outsiders trying to make a point from their limited observations. In any other area of social research, such a study would be laughed at as ill-conceived. Unfortunately, in the embattled world of gender studies, any writer with tangential academic credentials can pretty much come along and make generalizations about transpeople despite their limited knowledge and libraries and gender studies departments will still buy it and promote it as an important addition to the literature. I'm sorry to say, Male Bodies, Women's Souls was a big disappointment for me.

When it's safer to camouflage a trans person's story in fiction, fashion, or faux pas, LeeRay M. Costa and Andrew J. Matzner lift away mask, makeup, and make-believe in "Male Bodies, Women's Souls: Personal Narratives of Thailand's Transgendered Youth" (The Haworth Press, 2007). While living in Thailand, Costa and Matzner invited several Chiang Mai University students who identified as sao braphet song, or "a second type of woman," to write narratives about their lives.

Costa and Matzner bring an incredible transparency and thoroughness to this project by contextualizing their research within the Thai sex/gender system and other research on gender crossing and Thai sexualities, consequently providing points of entry and analysis into the voices and lives of sao braphet song themselves. They review the presence of kathoey in creation stories, early traveler's tales, religious ritual (as shamans or mediums in northern Thai culture), mass media, and western academic research, all in an attempt to highlight the need for sao braphet song's own voices. Their work moves away from perpetuating totalizing identities for those considered "third sex" and instead uncovers the heterogeneity, situatedness, individuality, and agency within gender transgression.

Costa and Matzner clarify the similarities and differences between the terms sao braphet song and the more popularly used kathoey, which are often used interchangeably yet carry a variety of meanings dependent on context. They debunk the ever popular notion of Thai society's "tolerance" of gender variance and complicate the Thai gender/sex system. Costa and Matzner's fluency in both written and spoken Thai adds to the decentering of authority that grounds their process and methodology. The question of power and their position is frequently discussed in terms of translation and ethnography itself and surfaces in their refusal to present a "conclusion" for their work, instead choosing to center marginal experiences in order to humanize them.

What makes "Male Bodies, Women's Souls" an important work is its focus on a textual approach, using the personal narrative within an ethnographic construct. Costa and Matzner present the voices of Thai transgendered people themselves, without exporting or superimposing western categories or interpretations. Since sao braphet song "have often served as symbols," the personal narratives "allow readers to engage with them as individuals rather than as a homogeneous group" (2). Capturing an "identity in flux," the narrative allows sao braphet song to come into focus without becoming fossils, and to "imagine themselves anew" (43). As a re-imagining, the act of writing or telling one's own story transforms both the self and the world.

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(January 5, 2008)

I had to read this as a mandatory book for my class. Not too bad, as far as scientific reviews into sexual identities go.