migca

Hey everyone,

I would like to bring your attention to a new petition that is being supported by a bunch of VIPs so far, like Meryl Streep and Salman Rushdie, for the decriminalization of homosexuality worldwide through a UN resolution. It's gotten a fair amount of attention in the media but it's still got only about 1500 signatures from common people. Thailand is a fine place to be gay, and while in the West we are fighting for gay marriage and etc., in over 70 countries homosexuality is still illegal, with penalties ranging up to death. So please take the couple of minutes to sign, and if you can e-mail your supportive friends and family for them to sign, since this isn't just for gay people to sign but everyone who supports basic human rights. The media attention is helping and about 300 signatures were added in just the last 24 hours, so spread the word!

The link is:

http://www.blueceltis-world.co.uk/idaho/view.htm

Thanks

Yes, that is no news by now -- especially in the US.

Instead of finding it comforting news it just makes me wonder: Why the ###### in the US, we, with 514 billion a year, cannot get regular gay people all over the country to contribute heavily (heck, 0.5% of our incomes would already be a monstrous war chest) to a cause that involves our fundamental rights, and use that money to really turn the tide around. The christian fundamentalist institutes and think tanks are practically turning away donations because their coffers are completely filled up. The main gay lobbying group in the US, the Human Rights campaign, has a budget of around 30 million... what are we spending our money on? another pair of Ferragamo shoes?

It's a miracle we have gotten this far. It calls for some self-examination of most of our community's values and priorities.

Here are a few of my picks:

-- Gods and Monsters

-- Food of Love

-- Maurice (Merchant Ivory)

-- My Own Private Idaho

-- Wilde: Jude Law is almost as beautiful as Lord Alfred Douglas was, if you like that type...

-- a really good documentary on gay themes in cinema: The Celluloid Closet

-- and I recently saw a really good low-budget movie made exclusively for SHOWTIME in the US, that probably will not get released on DVD, which is a pity since it was very good: Mudge Boy. Worth searching out.

Steve2UK,

First of all thanks so much for the text you sent me; I was planning to just skim it as it was rather long but ended up reading the whole thing and it was very informative, especially the history and customs sections. My thai bf was quite thrilled when I started discussing all my new knowledge with him, and a lot of things have become a lot clearer.

As regards your critique of my use of historical examples I will try to defend them nonetheless; my assertions were based on some wide reading resulting from an interest I have had in both periods for some years. The SA/Roehm example: I just finished a rather impressive tome, a bio of Hitler by a famous historian, and there he specifically asserts that there was a pervasive homoerotic ethos to the SA, not just to the leadership clique around Roehm, and indeed I have seen satirical caricatures from the German press of the time very explicitly to that effect. Furthermore, the Viconti scene IS based on the actual capture of Roehm by Hitler. It happened on a lake-side resort somewhere in Germany, and when Hitler's minions erupted into the rooms to capture Roehm plus his small entourage about half of them WERE sleeping with younger male companions, not including Roehm though. Plus Germany in the 20s and 30s was a place that somewhat accepted homosexuality, often linked to a martial spirit obssession. That's why Isherwood and co. moved there.

Concerning the Ancient Greece example: sure, the type of homosexual relationship that was most extolled was the pederastic type you described, but that was simply what got most lip service, just like lifelong monogamous heterosexual marriage without pre-marital sex is what gets the most lip service in the US, for example. The reality: many humans have all types of relationships with all kinds of people throughout their life. The same way the acceptance of only one type of homosexual relationship in Ancient Greece was more theoretical than practical. Just read Plato, his dialogues are like plays were you can look at the sex habits of the upper class Athenians: in the Symposium, in Phaedrus, which are the dialogues most concerned with love, most of the characters that appear have homosexual relations with other adults or want to, there aren't any adolescent boys present. In Symposium Alciabides (in his 20s) is pursuing Socrates (50s?), Agathon who is in his 20s seems to have a relationship with another guy his age whose name I can't remember. The more egalitarian strain of homosexual realtionships had a great tradition in Ancient Greece: Achilles and Patrolucus in Iliad were about the same age, and the Athenians had statues all around town of a pair of heroes they revered: Harmodius and Aristigion (not 100% on my memory of the names) who were lovers and roughly the same age and together were martired while trying to kill a tyrannt Athens had in the 6th BC. They were upheld as symbols of democracy.

That said, this thread has really produced some really interesting posts. The nature/nurture is still an open question but probably both have some effect, the thing is the nature argument is easier to prove and it forestalls any attempts by wackos to hijack nurture as an excuse to cure people. To my knowledge, though studies have been proving more and more so that genetics play a big part as do hormonal and other factors in the womb, not many studies have been done to show the validity of Freudian theory, or any other concerning nurture factors to homosexuality. Those studies are the domain of social sciences which a lot less exact than studying genes and etc.

Another thing I've wondered about is this: the stories of some of the more senior members in this thread showed they had sometimes went through a heterosexual period before coming to homosexuality. Was this a kinseyan natural sliding around the scale, or was this simply because the climate in the West was very hostile to hmosexuality until not too long ago and people without much information and lot of deterrent were more liable to try to fool themselves and play the society game, as someone here called it, by marrying, etc. I mean no offense, but I am curious because gay males of the younger generation like me, most seem to just come out pretty early and that's it. Do the members I'm refering to feel that it was because of society's pressures or just because of a natural shift in sexual interest that this occured to you?

A final point that proceeds from the nature/nurture and which is quite fascinating to me is the question of gay identity or lifestyle. Having a propensity to love and/or have sex with mainly people of the same sex is translated in its bare bones in just acts or in something more? Does this group of different people just happen to all like members of the same sex romantically or do they actually have something in common? This came to my mind for two reasons: PTE's comment that he did not lead a gay lifestyle, that he just lived the same way with his thai as he had with female partners; the second was a discussion I had with my father who came to visit me recently. We were discussing the latest books we had read. He had read Gore Vidal's (who is gay) latest book, and after a while he said "you know, Vidal has a good attitude towards sexuality, he believes in individuality, that sexual preferences are just acts not an identity, and that all this turning simple natural preferences into more than that is silly". He then said that great artists were just themselves, great in their individuality, and that Proust being gay, or Forster, was just an incident, and that any literature that was specifically "gay" would be impoverished because it would be sectarian and propagandistic.

I countered that most literature is sectarianly heterosexual but that is not noticed because that is the norm. Plus saying that sexual preferences should just be looked at as individual characteristics not as an actual identity, was the same as someone who plays golf often identifying as someone who likes to hit a small white ball with a club on a lawn, rather than the broader identity of golf aficcionado. There is more to golf than hitting the ball with the club, all golfers inclined people have the shared experience of using carts, of walking on the grass, etc.

Shouldn't this be the same with gay people? Plus when a group of people is attacked even if they are perfect strangers and have just met they will band together and fight, and that will lead to the development of an identity. Also, aren't there different mating and courting rituals for homosexuals than heterosexuals, common parallels to all gay relationships? I'm not sure.

As regards art I think it's long overdue a gay presence. For some reason gay people have a disproportionate representation in the art and creative worlds, so why should gay writers write only about straight characters like Forster and others? Plus we have reached a level of acceptance in some western countries that permitts gay artists to just create without having to do propaganda anymore. A good example is Alan Hollinghurst who writes mainly about gay characters but is a good writer nonetheless and is being read by gay and straight alike for the sheer quality, nothing else.

David Leavitt who is another such writer was once asked in an interview "mr. leavitt, why do you have so many gay characters in your books?", and he retorted "i read an interview you did with mr. Updike recently, why didn't you ask him why he has so many straight characters in his books?"

sorry typo escaped me at the top of my post: "..when meeting me as a young out gay man who does NOT have a stereotypical....etc"

Hello Everyone,

PTE's response really provided a lot of food for thought.

To start off I do agree that factors later on after birth, even during adolescence, may push things one way or another. Also, let us not forget that the Kinsey study showed that many people slide along the kinsey sexuality scale (1-completely hetero, 6 completely homosexual) during their life, sometimes quite a lot indeed. Human sexuality is a lot more fluid than is commonly assumed or rather openly discussed. For example, I don't know if any other gay members out here share this experience, but something that has always astounded me is the quantity of men that I have met professionally and in my private life that being typically married and some reputed as ladies' men who, when meeting me as an young out gay man who does have a stereotypical "gay" demeanour, will make me propositions or confess in private a desire to experiment in gay sex.

A great deal of people have a potential for bisexuality, and in Ancient Rome and Greece it was the assumed norm. However, I do believe there are people who are and remain all their life at the extreme ends of the scale and never budge. Even in Ancient Greece where homosexual sex was rather widespread and extolled and most men indulged in it there were still a few that we know had no interest in it though society practically promoted the practice: Pericles and Aristophanes reputedly only liked women.

What I do fail to see is how the whole distant father - dominant mother freudian thing works. I think simply through the way society reacts to homosexuality it might be something that is self-fullfiled post facto -- what I mean is an adolescent comes out or gives signs of homosexuality, and most western parents might react by the father distancing himself in reaction and the mother being overbearingly protective in response.

What I do not agree with in PTE's post is the way he seems to treat homosexuality as arrested development, as something that goes wrong. I think homosexuals fulfill roles and are a result of a mutation or variation that exists because it is useful. Homosexual members of any community of any species can take care of other members instead of just concentrating on passing on their own genes, they curb the risk of overpopulation, and in complex human societies they can have occupations that require greater freedom and liberation from some responsibilities: how else can the fact that such an overly large proportion of creative artists including many of mankind's geniuses were homosexual. Supposedly we are just 3% of the general population. By the way one of the intewresting developments in sexuality research of the last 3-5 years for me has been the discovery of the prevalence of exclusively homosexual members in many species: an article I recently read put out by a team from Oregon State U. looking at sheep herds anounced that they had found in the various herds a couple of "male-oriented", as they called them, groups of rams " who consistently ignore females and become amorous to members of their own sex" (quoting). The San Francisco Zoo even has a penguin gay couple for a few years that is a big attraction, naturally in that town.

The final thing I would like to react to in PTE's post is the whole effeminacy/testosterone: I don't see why male homosexuals should have on average a lower level of testosterone, I don't believe there has ever been any study to that effect. As regards effeminacy l have several times in my life met quite mannered and effiminate men who I assumed to be gay and then found out were either married or had reputations as bedding quite a few women. Stereotypes of homosexual men as effeminate or flamboyant are a fairly recent invention -- in ancient greece homosexual men were assumed to be the most virile and manly because no part of them had interest in what was feminine; let us not forget that a few armies like the Theban band were made up exclusively of male couples and were considered the most crack elite military corps. A good read on this is Plato's symposium, where Aristophanes during the banquet expounds a theory/myth of sexuality that is very modern-sounding and fun too: that humans used to have 2 heads, 4 legs and 4 arms and were very powerful beings that could run very fast rolling like a ball. One day they were so convinced of their power that they built a very tall tower to be able to storm the skies and take the place of the gods by defeating them. Of course the gods checked their revolution and Zeus as punishment divided them in half. So, the two parts would look for the other part that complemented it. The pre-human beings had come in 3 types, female, male, and hermafrodite -- once divided the first became two halfs, each a lesbian female, the second, each half became a gay male, and the third, each half became, one a straight male, and the other a straight female. It's a quirky but strangely plausible myth.

The whole thing of effeminacy and homosexual men is quite new, in the 18th century dandified effeminate men were assumed to be straight men who learned the ways of women so they could more easily seduce them. Other historical examples: in the early 17th century in Rome groups of homosexual youths were known to have drinking clubs and like to pick brutal fights on the streets and fight duels. The great homosexual artist Caravaggio was part of one of them, and his group's motto was "Neither Fear nor Hope". Not very effeminate...

And, by the way, the brutal paramilitary SA group that served as Hitler's tool to get to power and was disbanded by him in 1935 was mainly composed by homosexual militaristic young men...

Just a few thoughts to kindle the fire of more contributions... definitely a lot complex issues in this whole question.

I think that the case for "nature" is being reinforced every day. As you mentioned there have been numerous studies on twins that show consistently that if one twin is gay the other has almost a 50% chance of being gay as well. Some of these studies looked mainly at twins that had been separated at birth or close to birth and raised apart and in different types of households. Nonetheless even in these cases where nurture was completely different for each of the twins their genetic similarities still ensured that if one was gay the other had an over 50% chance of being so. That's a clear case for nature as far as I can see.

Plus many new studies are being made that look at specific sexual traits or at the actual brain -- recently a Swedish study sprayed sexual pheromones (am I spelling it right?), our "sexual" smells, both male and female, on a different groups of subjects (gay males, straight females), while scanning their brains and looking at activity centers. The conclusion: gay males' brains showed immediate activity in the "sex center" areas of the brain when they smelled the male pheromones. This happened in fractions of a second, which made the scientists think that gay sexuality is highly biologic since the response was so "intrinsic" and took place at such a primary level of the brain.

Now, there might be a nurture aspect to it, but it's a lot more difficult to study. The theories that gay men were treated like girls by their mother, or the Freudian theory that it's the dominant mother-absent father are simply not true if you just talk to a few gay men.

Personally, I always liked men as far as I can remember. Also, look at my family, which is an interesting case study for the nature case: I have no brothers but I do have 9 cousins in the first degree (i.e. sons and daughters of my father's brothers and sisters). 5 are male, 4 female. 1 female and 1 male are bellow 10 yo but the rest are over 20. 3 of the males including me are gay. That's a pretty big coincidence.

Best

Miguel

Thanks so much Chris, it sounds interesting. I'm away on a trip right now but as I soon as I get back I'll order it. When I finish perhaps we can have a discussion about our thoughts on it.

Miguel

Thanks so much, Steve2UK. Very enlightening link.

Miguel

Thanks for your replies, everyone. I got much sensible advice from you:

I agree with PTE that a healthy dose of fatalism might help intead of such an intensely western analytical attitude. Your cynicism (I mean that in a good way) Ijustwannateach is also sobering -- I will watch my back when I come into Thailand and look into things; although my thai has never given reasons to distrust him, and saying I'm the first foreigner he's dated might be the oldest trick in the book but in this case I do think it's true. For several reasons: his english is strong on grammar and vocabulary but until recently horrid in pronunciation, so that I don't think he had had any real practice before, i.e., had to talk it with foreigners; also he expresses naive wonder with certain western aspects of myself and the more highly western places I've taken him to London that tell me his exposure to western people and certain practices was very low.

Steve2UK: thanks for your detailed reply to some of my concerns. What's is that whole "face" issue about, I don't understand it? And, yes, the "feeling good?" query is a constant.

Best,

Miguel

Thanks for the responses so far.

In reply to petter991's question: the answer is that S. handled England's winter badly. He kept getting colds and complained of getting tired easily. Even now in June when the weather's pretty nice by London standards his complaints about how cold it is at night are a constant refrain. He insists on wearing gloves sometimes, with temperatures around 18-20 celsius, and he puts on tons of t-shirts, sweatshirts, and long pants to go to bed -- and nightly pesters me when I sleep in either the nud_e or underwear. He doesn't seem to understand I'm hot even though I repeat it over and over and now I often compromise on wearing a t-shirt just so he'll leave me alone. I grew up in a part of the US that has fairly cold and snowy winters so I'm rarely cold in London. Eventually I wake up in the middle of the night sweating and I'll take off the t-shirt, and in the morning he'll scold me for removing it.

As regards anger and the replies concerning it -- I've never felt the simmering Thai anger you refer to. He's very calm usually, but he can be very jealous only in a quiet insistent way. He's always afraid of making me "angry" which I rarely get, and will ask me if I'm just silent for a bit if I'm angry with him. The main extreme emotion he displays is sadness with crying when I go for work-related trips: he'll hang on to me tightly crying and in a mournful voice forecast that I won't return, that I'll find another boyfriend, that I'll decide to throw him out of the house when I return.

That's his main disagreeable trait in fact: that he voices horrible suspicions, almost certainties that I'll abandon him or/and that I'm cheating on him. None of those are remotely true and in my view I've never given him any reason to think so. Even though I deny everything and try to convince him of my honesty he constantly repeats the allegations and is very jealous. That's where I would really like some help from all of you here: how to convince him of my honesty, because the constant jealous interrogations and carping are very annoying. Petter991, you managed to defuse that jealousy situation but I've tried heart-to heart talks. Help!

As regards money matters I think I'm very lucky after reading many of the older postings. He definitely is very enterprising, hard-working, and capable of budgeting. He gets 700 pounds per month from his restaurant job. He saves 350, sends 100 to his family, and spends the rest on movies, restaurants, etc. He nevrr asks for money, though he does not pay for living with me, and I buy most of the groceries and food. At first it was a question of pride for him to pay his part in the outings we did to restaurants, movies, concerts, daytrips, but of course with London prices, my more extravagant tastes and his salary, he has with time begun to let me pay for those things. He keeps a little book where he jots down all his expenses.

As I said he bought a 1 million baht house in the outskirts of bangkok and is renting it to pay for the mortgage. His goal in the UK is to stay for a while and save at least 2 million baht and when he returns to bangkok to open a small business, a minimarket or something similar he says -- how realistic is this I would like to know?

This whole pride thing of his about expenses and paying his own share relates to another theme of his. Despite his often subservient attitude that I described in the last posting he often worries aloud that I would look down on him, and especially my family, which he feels nervous about meeting. He tells me often "I'm from poor family, but I got degree, I worked in bank, etc, etc., your parents must not look down on me".

Now, another question that has popped up in our relationship is the whole differences in concepts of gay, openly gay ,and etc. in thailand vs. europe. When we met he asked me " are you real gay or passive gay?". I think that meant he wanted me to be a top, but I'm not sure. He insists on playing a mainly passive role throughout sex and focuse on "pleasing me" as he says, and when I try to look after his needs he says don't worry. At the same time the other day we were having a talk about preferences in bed and he said "the perfect gay" plays both passive and active roles. I'm a bit confused naturally about his ideas.

He's not openly gay with his family but he says he'll tell them and present me as his boyfriend once his father, who's very old, dies. His father had children into his sixties and S. was the last, and the father is apparently chinese while the mother's thai -- he says "chinese don't understand gay and father's very old". S. is however very openly affectionate in public holding my hand in the middle of central london, or insisting that I lay on the grass with my head on his lap while in a park. I also love what I now know to be thai kisses (I had no idea what they were at first, I started wondering if my deoderant wasn't powerful enough), when he sort of sniffs me. It's such a delightful and novel thing, more intimate than "real" kisses in a certain way. It's like he wants to breath me in, and it's usually accompanied by a soft nudge.

Another thing that puzzles me is that he keeps saying everything will be perfect once he takes me to some temple in thailand and we "swear in front of the Buddha". He's unable to explain clearly with it means so if you have any idea...

He was planning to take me to thailand next december and was very enthusiastic, and so was I, but now he's not sure he wants to go though he misses it because (get a load of this): "I think better and I'm afraid. Many handsome gay in thailand, they will steal you". Again any amount of reassurance doesn't change his mind.

But he does want me to go and live with him in thailand eventually (5-10 years on), which is why I'm anxious to go there and get an idea what it's like. I have some reasonable inherited financial resources and I have a good job besides which allows me to save, and some qualifications if I need to get a job in thailand. I've never lived anywhere but western countries though and I do worry if I will like thailand. He says we could live in his house in the outskirts but I've always liked to live in central areas and I wonder how good the house is -- it's worth 1 million baht he says. What do you think? Is it very crummy probably?

I've looked at flats in central bangkok on the net and some seemed very nice and ridiculously cheap compared to London. I'm wondering if I should buy. My price range would be 3-5 million bt. Is it easy to rent them out a few months a year ?

Moving on, there's another aspect I find fascianting which is buddhism and his practice of it -- I took a class on buddhism and hinduism in college so I do have a little bit of knowledge. His practice of buddhism is a lot different from the more philosophical bare bones buddhism I studied; he talks about praying to the buddha for things and has a bunch of superstitions with the whole central thing of "life is suffering, gain detachment, etc". For example, I bought a flat in london, a renovation of a victorian house. He found it very odd that I didn't prefer a completely new modern "first hand" flat, and then worried for weeks about the "spirits" of all the former owners. He asked what I believed and when I explained I was an atheist and what that meant he was very silent and pensive. Now every time I pass by the restaurant where he works he motions me to a buddha statue in a corner and says " look" or "you show respect". I wonder if it's the beginning of a conversion campaign..

Well this is it for now. any further comments on any thing very appreciated.

I don't know if I should post here since I've never been to Thailand, let alone lived there like the members of this forum.

Here's my story and the help I would like from any people out there that can supply it: I'm in my mid 20s, originally from southern Europe, but lived most of my life and was educated in the US. After college and an internship I realized I was fed up with the US and decided to return to Europe -- I travelled around and ended up settling in London and getting a job.

That was 2 years ago. Six months ago I met a thai guy in a soho pub and details aside we ended up developing a relationship and moved in together. I like him quite a lot and the relationship is good but sometimes I do feel there's a cultural barrier I cannot begin to understand. I've read a lot about Thailand and on Thai people in books and on the net and have garnered quite a bit of knowledge that has proved very demystifying.

However, there are many things in him, his thainess so to say, that baffle me, and that definitely contribute to the relationship dynamics. So, if any of you guys out there with more experience in thai culture and also thai boys can perhaps elucidate me on any points I would be grateful.

He, as far as I know, comes from a fairly poor family from Bangkok itself, not the provinces. He's about my age and with the help of his brother he tells me he put himself through college in bangkok and got a degree in accountacy. He worked for a few years in a bank and then a import-export co., where he tells me proudly he used to earn almost 30,000 baht (I'm guessing that's pretty good), and managed to buy a 1 million baht house in the outskirts of bangkok. A year ago his brother, who owns a business, went bankrupt, and S., as I'll call my boyfriend, felt obligated because of the help his brother had given him with schooling, to use his savings and I'm guessing perhaps more than that to bail him out. Then, after this crisis which left him financially unwell he jumped at an invitation by a former schoolmate to come work in a thai restaurant that the schoolmate had opened in london -- he's now a waiter there and after five years he hopes to get a residence visa.

Now from the stories I've read here in the forum I know catastrophe stories are frequently made up by thai boys, but the fact is that though I have a lot more money than he does he consistently resists any benign attempts of mine to pay for things in any circumstance, be it restaurants, groceries, etc.

Another thing I have seen several times is the comparison of thai-farang relationship to those of victorian times. Now in financial terms that does apply in my case, since the only financial benefit he gets from the relationship is living in my flat, which I already had and can afford, free of charge, and the odd gift.

But, in other ways there is something oddly old-fashioned about the relationship and sometimes I feel very ambivalent about that: he does act a bit like a victorian wife, fussing over me, doing all housework, cooking, laundry, while dogmatically refusing to let me do any of it. When I confront on why he tells me repeatedly that he is supposed to take care of me. He also tells me at times that I should stay with him because no western boyfriend will "follow me" (his words) like he does, which to him means that I can make all decisions -- for example when I propose doing something he immediately agrees, he always insists I pick any movie we go out to see, or any restaurant we might go to. Used as I was to western men this is all a bit shocking -- it's like he assumes I'm the superior partner in the relationsip which to westerners is a bit of a troubling concept nowadays.

Another thing is jealousy, which I have also seen talked about in the forum -- he's very jealous but not in a loud or angry way, more in a insistent and insidious manner. He'll quietly ask me about all the things I did during the day and when I provide no specific task done for one or two hour slot during the day he quietly suggests I was "with another boyfriend".

Another element that ties into jealousy is the sex: he likes a lot of it every day, and always with him concentrating on my needs. Sometimes I feel like he wants to make me orgasm enough times each day that I won't be able, which I don't want, to have anymore sex with anyone else. And when I'm exhausted from so much daily sex plus work and not much in the mood some night or another he still insists on trying to arouse me although I tell him I don't want it -- and when he fails to he insists I've been having sex with other people.

The other day I got frustrated with those accusations and while asserting that I wasn't seeing anyone else and didn't wish to do so, I grabbed his chin to lock his eyes on mine so he would finally understand my sincerity. That only led to him becoming quiet and submissive and asking me repeatedly during the next few days if I was angry. That's another topic popular here in the forum -- anger: I am a very cool guy temper wise, and I wonder if that's why he respects me so much. I was amazed that he would interpret my gently forcing his chin to the side to look into his eyes and show my sincerity as a violent or angry gesture.

Another element is the language issue. At first I thought his english was relatively poor but since then I've discovered that he learned most of his english in thailand through book language courses so that his grammar is very good and his vocabulary rather wide but his pronunciation very bad making the words difficult to identify -- but that has been changing slowly.

He also seems to have a great predilection for western people. He told me he always wanted a westwern boyfriend, and when I asked him why he didn't get one in thailand he said foreigners there were too old (I hope I'm causing no offence out there) and that they prefered dark skinned boys.

Well this is it for now, I have other issues to go over, so I'll do another posting soon, but feel free to comment and provide me any insight into the thai mind. Thanks