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'Of all the continents, Asia is the gayest. Deep down, you've probably had your suspicions all along, and I'm here to tell you those suspicions are correct.' So begins Gaysia, Benjamin Law's wildly witty investigation of gay life in the biggest continent. We follow him as he takes an in-depth look at resorts for gay nudists in Bali; transexualism and three formal genders in Thailand; China's underground gay resistance; Japan and 'the most breathtakingly messed-up porn'; religious fundamentalists of all persuasions keen on 'curing' homosexuality in Malaysia; sex workers and the spread of HIV in Myanmar; and the decriminalisation of homosexuality, gay pride parades and encounters with gay royalty and a popular spiritual guru in India. Hilarious, perceptive, and poignant, Gaysia is a refreshing look at an aspect of Asia that has gone ignored too long.

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Sociologie, société et politique

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	29 novembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9788184005059
Langue	English

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GAYSIA
GAYSIA
ADVENTURES IN THE QUEER EAST
BENJAMIN LAW
Published by Random House India in 2013
Copyright Benjamin Law 2012 All rights reserved
First published by Black Inc., an imprint of Schwartz Media Pty Ltd 37-39 Langridge Street Collingwood Vic 3066 Australia email: enquiries blackincbooks.com http://www.blackincbooks.com
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, UP
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184005059
For Scott Spark
CONTENTS
Author s Note
INTRODUCTION
INDONESIA
THAILAND
CHINA
JAPAN
MALAYSIA
MYANMAR
INDIA
Acknowledgements
AUTHOR S NOTE
This is a work of non-fiction. For brevity or clarity, the chronologies of some incidents have been condensed or altered. Some names have been changed to protect the identities of people or organisations.
The meaning and usage of the terms transgender and transsexual vary between countries, communities and individuals. In this book, transgender generally refers to people who express their gender in non-conforming ways through behaviour, dress and appearance. Transsexual refers to people who have undertaken hormonal and/or surgical procedures to physically affirm the sex with which they identify.
The choice between the names Myanmar and Burma - and the names of the country s former capital (Yangon and Rangoon, respectively) - is subject to debate and often contested. Usage varies among countries, and even among news organisations within the same country. (In the United States, the New York Times and Reuters use Myanmar ; the Washington Post and Time magazine use Burma .) I have used Myanmar for several reasons, including the burgeoning democratic reforms that took place shortly after I left the country, and the fact that every local person I spoke to called their country Myanmar .
INTRODUCTION
O F ALL THE CONTINENTS , Asia is the gayest. Deep down, you ve probably had your suspicions all along, and I m here to tell you those suspicions are correct.
Let s do the maths. Of the world s ten most populous countries, six of them (seven if you count Russia) are in Asia: China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan. Across the continent are close to four billion people, making Asia home to the majority of the world s people. So doesn t it stand to reason that most of the world s queer people - lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and transsexual folk - live in Asia too, sharing one hot, sweaty landmass and filling it with breathtaking examples of exotic faggotry? I would think so.
Perhaps I m biased. You tend to reach for massive generalisations after spending nearly a year skipping between seven Asian countries, sitting backstage with Bangkok ladyboys prepping themselves for beauty pageants, chatting to Tokyo s celebrity drag queens, marching in the heat with Mumbai s fierce queer rights activists, listening to the testimonies of Melaka preachers who claim they can heal homosexuality, and hanging out with Bali s moneyboys and the old foreigners who hire them.
But in 2009, Time magazine ran a major story, Why Asia s Gays Are Starting to Win Acceptance . It was an interesting piece about globalisation and a region in flux, one exploding economically but still wedded to strict religious and cultural traditions when it came to sex and marriage. The story started in Nepal and moved through developments in China, Japan and India, and argued that when it came to gay rights, momentum was building.
If nothing else, people aren t denying the existence of homosexuality anymore, said one commentator. The Asian social institutions and beliefs that often stood in the way of tolerance - religious conservatism, intense emphasis on marriage and having children, cultural taboos against openly discussing sexuality - are weakening.
Was that true? Eventually, I would discover nothing is ever so straightforward, especially in Asia. Some countries embraced their transsexual people, but didn t care for lesbians. Other countries didn t hate homosexuals as such; they just didn t really get them. Some celebrated transsexuals but denied them basic rights; others didn t mind if you were a gay man, just as long as you married a woman.
I might have been Australian, but I was ethnically Asian too. For me, it was time to go back to my homelands, to reach out to my fellow Gaysians: the Homolaysians, Bi-Mese, Laosbians and Shangdykes. I would journey through their cities by foot, plane, cross-country train, bus, rickshaw, trishaw, tuk-tuk, taxi, motorcycle, scooter and a utility truck that was originally designed to carry livestock. I would experience the deathly cold of Haridwar, get drenched in Bangkok s downpours and feel my face melting off in a Beijing heatwave. I would contract heat rash, whooping cough and dehydration from Indian food poisoning so intense that, by the end of it, I saw the eye of God. (From what I remember, it was brown.)
Asia is a big place, a sprawling and intoxicating mix of landscapes and languages. Where to start? I decided to begin where most Australians did: taking it easy on the Indonesian island of Bali, leisure-filled paradise and island of the gods. But first, for reasons you will soon understand, I would have to get naked. Very, very naked.
INDONESIA
In which we travel to Bali and stay in establishments catering to foreign homosexual nudists, and encounter various local moneyboys and the men who love them. Things we learn: (1) how to roster several international boyfriends at a time; (2) sometimes sex work ain t so bad (you get a motorcycle!); (3) every man in Bali - at least according to one local - is a slut.

W E COME TO B ALI after reading Eat, Pray, Love , but most of us just come here to eat, drink and fuck. We come for the nasi goreng and Bintang, the towering Kuta waves and luxury resorts, the ten-dollar spa treatments and surf lessons. We come to scuba-dive, bird-watch, elephant-ride and monkey-gawk. We come to trek through sun-drenched rice paddies and find our inner selves at yoga retreats, or have foreign strangers drunkenly fondle our inner selves after too many drinks.
Holiday budgets don t matter in Bali. If you ve ever felt poor, come to Bali just for the feeling of going to an ATM and withdrawing a million of something at one time. One million rupiah will get you around 100 US dollars, which will yield a week s worth of food and drinks on this island if you re smart. Here is a currency so devalued and littered with zeroes that shops give breath mints when change gets impossibly small.
Bali itself is also small - on the right roads, it takes just over three hours to drive across the island - but it manages to cater to every imaginable urge and need. For gay visitors, those needs might include clothing-optional, male-only resorts, gay night clubs, drag performances, go-go boys, 24-hour house staff, nude sunbathing spots and a cute Indonesian moneyboy you can fuck until you re utterly spent and walking like a duck. It s rumoured that there is a place near Denpasar airport where you can go for a special eight-hand massage, where two men massage you while another two masturbate each other for your visual pleasure, and all for a cheap, cheap price.
It wasn t always like this. In a single decade, Bali s gay scene went from almost nothing to being the premier hotspot for fabulous homosexuals the world over. If you were a foreigner, especially a bul - a Caucasian Westerner with pockets presumedly lined with cash - you could buy anything you wanted. Or anyone.
A lot of the gay bul s in Bali ended up where I d been invited to stay: Spartacvs Hotel, a men s-only nude resort in the beachside tourist area of Seminyak. What started in 2007 as the only Hotel in Bali dedicate [sic] to those who enjoy an alternative lifestyle had become the region s only exclusively gay resort that provided a 100 per cent clothing-optional environment. Women and children weren t allowed and neither were ladyboys. It said so on the sign as you walked in.
Everything about the place made me nervous, not just the clothing-optional thing but also the purposeful misspelling of Spartacvs with a V instead of a U (apparently the V made it more edgy). There was also the email I d gotten from the owner who had invited me to stay. When I assured him I didn t have a problem with public nudity - looking back, maybe I was trying to convince myself - he responded by simply saying: So I might get to see you naked around the pool, hmmm nice .
The driver who picked me up from Denpasar airport was Ketut, a big-toothed, goofy-faced guy in his early thirties. Ketut had worked at Spartacvs since it opened and he d been promoted over the years from simple housekeeping duties to admin and management. Working at Spartacvs was a good job, Ketut said, but getting there every day was a killer: a two-hour drive and another two back, sometimes in traffic that refused to budge.
Like most of the male staff at Spartacvs, Ketut was straight. He was also local, while most of the other workers had moved from Java, Jogjakarta or Sumatra to find better jobs in Bali. Some of Ketut s friends knew he worked at a nudist hotel for gay men, but his parents didn t. Guests were usually naked, he said, but staff remained uniformed the whole time. I asked Ketut whether the male guests ever hit on him, and he giggled and squirmed, k