Three Transgender Leaders Changing the Face of Thai Politics

Until recently, Tanwarin Sukkhapisit was known primarily as a film director who pushed the limits of LGBT representation in Thai cinema. But just a few days ago, she was sworn in as Thailand’s first transgender member of parliament.

While Thailand has long been known for its highly visible and diverse transgender population, it’s only in recent years that transgender people have become more visible in the political realm. Tanwarin Sukkhapisit, along with Shane Bhatla, the Transgender Program Manager at Out BKK, and Pauline Ngarmpring, who recently ran for Prime Minister, are three transgender leaders re-shaping advocacy at a crucial time for Thai democracy. The election held in March 2019, the first since a military junta seized power in 2014, proved to be a watershed moment for transgender visibility, where millions of voters supported both LGBT candidates and parties promising to advocate for LGBT issues. Mainstream news outlets and everyday Thais are still trying to sort out what the election held two months ago will mean for the nation’s future, and there has been significant controversy over repressive tactics used by pro-military factions striving to stay in power.

Tanwarin Sukkhapisit, Shane Bhatla, and Pauline Ngarmpring are three transgender leaders re-shaping advocacy at a crucial moment for Thai democracy

While the country as a whole is still figuring out what the new government will look like, LGBT advocates wasted no time in hosting several events to promote awareness of key political and economic issues for the community. On May 17, an LGBTI Business Conference held at the Sasin School of Management brought together advocates from NGOs and businesses. Shane Bhatla helped OUT BKK produce the event, and spoke on a panel about issues facing LGBTI Millennials. On May 23, Chulalongkorn University hosted the Political Empowerment Forum for Change, where both Tanwarin Sukkhapisit and Pauline Ngarmpring spoke. Both events, while hosting different speakers, focused on many of the same issues: ending stigma, protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination, healthcare and HIV prevention, sex work decriminalization, creating a way for transgender people to change their gender designation on identification documents, and same-sex partner recognition. Each of the leaders I’ve profiled in this piece has taken these issues to heart, and in their own ways are working to address them.

Tanwarin Sukkhapisit

Tanwarin Sukkhapisit for many has become a symbol of hope for moving Thailand towards being a society that values the human rights and dignity of all marginalized people. In a recent interview, she stated that she hopes to use her power as a Member of Parliament to “explain to the people about the diversity of people in Thailand” and to “fight for the rights of the LGBT people.” Her party, Future Forward, was formed only a year ago and made headlines for its diverse list of candidates from marginalized groups that also included a labor movement leader, a disabled athlete, and a member of Thailand’s Hmong ethnic minority. The party’s strong performance this election surprised many, coming in third out of seventy-seven parties with 6.3 million votes that seated 80 new Members of Parliament, 16% of all Members. While the future of the party is now uncertain with its leader suspended from Parliament, the new generation of leaders and voters, many of them Millennials, that it helped activate will continue to shake up Thai politics. As Tanwarin has stated, “6 million Thai people vote[d] for our party, because they want to see our country change to be better than the past of 5 years ago.”

One of the lesser-told stories about Tanwarin Sukkhapisit is that she identifies as gender non-binary, an identity she’s worked to make more visible. In an interview about her 2010 film Insects in the Backyard, she stated that “there’s a rigid boundary of what makes someone a man or a woman and that entails a list of social responsibilities…when someone doesn’t operate within that boundary, he’s in trouble. But there are a lot of people who do not belong to those strict boundaries.” Tanwarin’s willingness to break boundaries in her portrayals of transgender people in her films indeed created trouble. It took five years of legal battles for her to overturn a ban on her film Insects in the Backyard from being shown in Thailand for allegedly disrupting “national order and public morals.” Fighting against censorship helped propel her into her current political career, and one of her goals in Parliament is to stop censorship of artists.

Shane Bhatla

Shane Bhatla, the Transgender Program Manager at OUT BKK, finds it inspiring that Tanwarin Sukkhapisit identifies as non-binary, and hopes Tanwarin’s example will help others value diversity, including within the transgender community. Shane’s advocacy career has focused on building visibility for transgender people whose identities are often pushed to the margins, including transgender men and gender non-binary people. Transgender men are far less visible than transgender women in Thai society, and many Thais don’t understand the difference between masculine queer-identified women, referred to in Thai society as toms, and transgender men such as himself. Shane has also helped to build support for transgender and gender non-binary people who choose not to medically transition (i.e. take hormones and seek out surgical procedures). Trans persons when found not to have medically transitioned often face stigma from within the transgender community itself. Lack of visibility and stigma leads many transgender people on the margins to experience poor mental health outcomes, including depression, self-harm, and even suicide. While no equivalent data currently yet exists for Thailand, the 2015 US Trans Survey found that 40% of US transgender people had attempted suicide, with even higher rates for transgender men (45%).

Shane Bhatla believes that improving the ability for Thai people to change the gender on their identity documents regardless of medical history, including the option for a gender-neutral marker, is a key priority for the transgender community. In addition, Shane believes addressing economic inequality is an LGBT issue, which he spoke about on a panel about issues facing LGBT Millennials at the LGBTI Business Conference. “In the last six years of my professional career, I’ve seen the cost of living rise dramatically, while wages and salaries have remained stagnant for most Thais. Millennials now find it very difficult to afford to have a family. The older generation doesn’t realize how bad the economy is for us, and how diluted the job market is.”

Pauline Ngarmpring

Pauline Ngarmpring, Thailand’s first-ever candidate for Prime Minister, may be new to politics in Thailand, but she’s been a familiar face in the Thai media for quite some time. Before transition, she was known as a CEO of an influential sports club, a marketing executive, and reporter, and her transition at age 49 was widely reported. She has often been called the “Caitlyn Jenner of Thailand,” and she’s used her celebrity status and media connections to reach new audiences with her story that transgender people had previously been unable to reach.

While her unsuccessful bid for Prime Minister was a longshot as one of 70 candidates, it generated public attention tolack of LGBTQ and female representation in Thai politics (prior to the election, less than 5% of Members of Parliament were women). Her party, the Mahacon party, put up 20 LGBT candidates, and ran on a platform of “human rights and equality across gender, social, economic and political lines.” While Pauline may have celebrity and business connections, she devoted significant time during her campaign doing grassroots outreach at the many bars and clubs where transgender people from lower-income backgrounds work. Pauline acknowledges that not everyone is born equal in Thai society, and believes that people “should be given opportunities and equal access to resources which will help them develop and realize their potential.” She has helped bring visibility to the dire situation of Thailand’s sex workers, many of whom are transgender, and who regularly face violence, abuse, and exploitation by both the Thai government and business owners because of the criminalization of sex work. Her party believes in creating a system where sex work is decriminalized and sex workers can be treated like any other employees of a business.

Pauline’s advocacy is not without its critics. Her privileged background, including the fact that she was able to live in the United States for three years during her gender transition, has led to other transgender activists claiming she is out of touch with the day-to-day reality of most transgender Thais. In 2018 she made a public post on Facebook where she discussed how “the world has two genders” which many felt denied the identity of Thailand’s many gender non-binary identified individuals. However, the fact that Pauline spoke alongside Tanwarin Sukkhapisit at the Political Empowerment Forum for Change, an event which also promoted a gender-neutral option on Thailand’s identification cards, suggests that her views on that topic may be evolving.

Thailand’s transgender community is making major strides towards demanding human rights, dignity, and political representation. Tanwarin Sukkhapisit, Shane Bhatla, and Pauline Ngarmpring are just a few examples of transgender people in Thailand taking up the mantle of leadership to build a more just and equal society at a crucial moment where Thailand as a whole is struggling with democracy. I’m incredibly inspired to see transgender leaders running for office and advocating for change.

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