Thai university introduces mandatory class on transgender issues

[webfact]

Thai university introduces mandatory class on transgender issues
By Saksith Saiyasombut & Siam Voices
By Saya Oka

BANGKOK: -- AS the academic school year gets into full swing in Thailand, Thammasat, one of the country’s most prestigious and progressive universities is making a Social Life Skills class mandatory for its incoming freshman.

This new course aims to ensure students have the skills to lead a successful life and covers a wide range of subjects, including music, art, sports and a three hour session on sex, where part of the focus is on gender identity.

Kritipat Chotidhanitsakul (Jimmy) has been invited to sensitize students about transgender issues and by the end of the school year is expected to have lectured to 8,000 students. This is the first time Thammasat has made such a topic mandatory for new students.

Jimmy, a transgender man and the President of the Transmen Alliance of Thailand, is glad to be a guest lecturer: “I am very happy to be teaching so many students. I hope they will mature into adults who understand transgender issues and set a new trend for society.”

On the first day of the course in early September, Jimmy stood before nearly 300 students and was interviewed by Associate Professor Atiwut Kamudhama about what it was like to be a transgender person.

Full story http://asiancorrespondent.com/135367/thai-university-introduces-mandatory-class-on-transgender-issues/

-- ASIAN CORRESPONDENT 2015-09-08

[zaphod reborn]

Sounds like an unstructured sociology class. I would expect more out of Thammasat. I don't think there is anything wrong with incorporating transgenderism into a class, if it fits within a proper course structure. This class just looks like a bunch of disorganized topics from which students will gain no focus on an important area of study.

[Caitrin]

Good. Cis people can sometimes have great difficulty grasping what is to a trans person obvious, and usually obvious from a very young age.

Now if only the Thai government would actually get on with the business of passing a law allowing one to change their gender assignment on documents. That would be more immediately meaningful.

[aircut]

This new course aims to ensure students have the skills to lead a successful life and covers a wide range of subjects, including music, art, sports and a three hour session on sex, where part of the focus is on gender identity.

So.... 3 hours session on sex..... 10 minutes on transgender issues .... who needs the headline?

[Hawk]

Isn't Thailand fun?

[h90]

crazy?

University should teach mathematics, physics, engineering, etc etc.....gender/race/religion should be of no importance....

sex and transgender only if you study medicine....

[Jon Wetherall]

Thin end of the wedge. They'll make it compulsory next.

[toybits]

Transgender issue? Would they be better off teaching plagiarism issues as well?

[h90]

Transgender issue? Would they be better off teaching plagiarism issues as well?

Normally they have already outstanding skills in plagiarism.....don't need to teach more.

[Basil B]

Just do not accuse a Thai of Plagiarism...

[h90]

Good. Cis people can sometimes have great difficulty grasping what is to a trans person obvious, and usually obvious from a very young age.

Now if only the Thai government would actually get on with the business of passing a law allowing one to change their gender assignment on documents. That would be more immediately meaningful.

you can't change your gender, you can only change your appearance.

If you modify a man till he looks like a woman, he is still XY genome and is not even theoretically able get children.

He is than a man who feels himself like a woman and looks like a woman, but still he is a man.

[Howitzer]

isn't thailand choke full of kathoey? I am sure many thais knows of one trans personally and i see them being treated normally.

[dean008]

I still wonder why it is so prevalent in Thailand.

[Caitrin]

Good. Cis people can sometimes have great difficulty grasping what is to a trans person obvious, and usually obvious from a very young age.

Now if only the Thai government would actually get on with the business of passing a law allowing one to change their gender assignment on documents. That would be more immediately meaningful.

you can't change your gender, you can only change your appearance.

If you modify a man till he looks like a woman, he is still XY genome and is not even theoretically able get children.

He is than a man who feels himself like a woman and looks like a woman, but still he is a man.

And this is why you need the class!

Gender != sex, and even if it did, there are multiple types of sex. Were you aware there are XY individuals born with vaginas? I bet you didn't, but now you do! Do you know about XXY or X0 or even XXXXY? How about the difference between MAIS and CAIS? How about hormone levels during fetal development and/or during puberty? How about brain structural and developmental differences? Did you know that approximately 1 in 1000 people have nondimorphic traits?

No? Then stop talking about it like you know this stuff.

[speedtripler]

The class should be mandatory for farangs too...

Tips on How to spot a ladyboy in the dark when you've been sinking bottles of Leo since early morning...

[AZBill]

"Sensitize" is a code word for indoctrination. If you want to be gay then be gay. I won't bother you or question your lifestyle choice, but don't ask me or my children to buy into it or accept it as normal.

[Caitrin]

"Sensitize" is a code word for indoctrination. If you want to be gay then be gay. I won't bother you or question your lifestyle choice, but don't ask me or my children to buy into it or accept it as normal.

1) sexual orientation and gender identity are not the same. Trans people can be found across the sexuality spectrum.

2) neither sexual orientation nor gender identity are choices. When did you decide to be straight and/or cisgender? If you did, does that mean you, personally, could choose to be gay or trans (or to blow your mind here, both?)?

Considerable evidence now shows, and the vast majority of medical and psychiatric professional associations and their members agree, that sexual orientation and gender identity are a part of the human experience. Straight is a sexual orientation. Cisgender is part of one's gender identity.

You're not "normal," dude, because there is no normal. You're just more common.

[Prbkk]

isn't thailand choke full of kathoey? I am sure many thais knows of one trans personally and i see them being treated normally.

Often seen working in restaurants and coffee shops ( other than that poor excuse for coffee the Americans seem to favour) and treated like everyone else ( ie lousy pay and conditions but at least its an income). No one takes much notice.

[Jon Wetherall]

I still wonder why it is so prevalent in Thailand.

Without commenting one way or the other on why it is so prevalent in Thailand, there is a fairly large corpus of evidence to suggest the main trigger is psychological, though I don't have specifics. Hence gender re-assignment is often done solely to align the physicak body with the psychology of the individual.

It's not at all politically correct to say so, and many won't agree but it is my view, so if you don't like it you can flame away.

Many Thais are what I would suggest is a bit odd (in my opinion it's largely the consequence of a repressive culture and a sub=par education), and the incidence of mental illness in Thailand is huge (though the government denies it - which they would do, it's a really serious loss of face for a government of any persuasion).

Coffee time...

[lildragon]

Good to see but if it should NOT me mandatory. That is forced rather than organic progression.

[robertthebruce]

The class should be mandatory for farangs too...

Tips on How to spot a ladyboy in the dark when you've been sinking bottles of Leo since early morning...

You will soon find out soon enough....calm it with the Leo's...

[speedtripler]

The class should be mandatory for farangs too...

Tips on How to spot a ladyboy in the dark when you've been sinking bottles of Leo since early morning...

You will soon find out soon enough....calm it with the Leo's...

I thought that's what the valium and viagra were for... (embarrassed)

[TimmyT]

why students at Thammasat are OBLIGATED to "understand transgender issues"?

may be they came to study something useful for their future job and not to be "sensitized" by a fake man?

[Caitrin]

I still wonder why it is so prevalent in Thailand.

Without commenting one way or the other on why it is so prevalent in Thailand, there is a fairly large corpus of evidence to suggest the main trigger is psychological, though I don't have specifics. Hence gender re-assignment is often done solely to align the physicak body with the psychology of the individual.

It's not at all politically correct to say so, and many won't agree but it is my view, so if you don't like it you can flame away.

Many Thais are what I would suggest is a bit odd (in my opinion it's largely the consequence of a repressive culture and a sub=par education), and the incidence of mental illness in Thailand is huge (though the government denies it - which they would do, it's a really serious loss of face for a government of any persuasion).

Coffee time...

Put your flamesuit on if you wish, but just because you're entitled to your own opinions does not mean you are entitled to your own facts.

The corpus of evidence is actually increasingly suggesting the opposite. That there are a number of physiological and biological reasons for how gender identity develops in humans.

Much like so-called "ex-gay conversion therapy" the evidence shows that attempts to "fix" gender identity to conform to a badly flawed idea that humans are 100% perfectly dimorphic (we're not) causes irreparable psychological trauma. You can't "fix" what isn't broken, and when you try, that's when you start breaking things. Our sense of self, our personalities, our every existence as sentient being exists in the brain, and yet we still know very little about it.

Psychiatric professionals realise that changing the body (often more accurately, helping it be more dimorphic one direction or the other, vs a nondimorphic middle ground) in a society that expects a person's gender expression and presentation to match a certain dimorphic body type is the only way to minimise the outside stressors associated with gender dysphoria.

Trans people are perfectly normal, and the treatment is medical. It's just taking the majority, cisgender people, an awful long time to get onboard with that.

[Jon Wetherall]

I still wonder why it is so prevalent in Thailand.

Without commenting one way or the other on why it is so prevalent in Thailand, there is a fairly large corpus of evidence to suggest the main trigger is psychological, though I don't have specifics. Hence gender re-assignment is often done solely to align the physicak body with the psychology of the individual.

It's not at all politically correct to say so, and many won't agree but it is my view, so if you don't like it you can flame away.

Many Thais are what I would suggest is a bit odd (in my opinion it's largely the consequence of a repressive culture and a sub=par education), and the incidence of mental illness in Thailand is huge (though the government denies it - which they would do, it's a really serious loss of face for a government of any persuasion).

Coffee time...

Put your flamesuit on if you wish, but just because you're entitled to your own opinions does not mean you are entitled to your own facts.

The corpus of evidence is actually increasingly suggesting the opposite. That there are a number of physiological and biological reasons for how gender identity develops in humans.

Much like so-called "ex-gay conversion therapy" the evidence shows that attempts to "fix" gender identity to conform to a badly flawed idea that humans are 100% perfectly dimorphic (we're not) causes irreparable psychological trauma. You can't "fix" what isn't broken, and when you try, that's when you start breaking things. Our sense of self, our personalities, our every existence as sentient being exists in the brain, and yet we still know very little about it.

Psychiatric professionals realise that changing the body (often more accurately, helping it be more dimorphic one direction or the other, vs a nondimorphic middle ground) in a society that expects a person's gender expression and presentation to match a certain dimorphic body type is the only way to minimise the outside stressors associated with gender dysphoria.

Trans people are perfectly normal, and the treatment is medical. It's just taking the majority, cisgender people, an awful long time to get onboard with that.

The corpus of evidence is actually increasingly suggesting the opposite."

Hmmm. well "increasingly suggesting" doesn't mean "my facts". Except maybe to an optimist.

"That there are a number of physiological and biological reasons for how gender identity develops in humans."

OK, What reasons? What certainty of causality? Otherwise, you aren't entitled to infer they are facts of any kind. Not yours. not mine, not anyones' Conjecture is fine but you should really be more honest and say it is just conjecture.

"Much like so-called "ex-gay conversion therapy" the evidence shows that attempts to "fix" gender identity to conform to a badly flawed idea that humans are 100% perfectly dimorphic (we're not) causes irreparable psychological trauma."

Agreed. Most of them appear to have been religion-inspired, never a good sign.

"You can't "fix" what isn't broken"

Well, we wouldn't agree on what 'broken means' Frankly, if my car decided it wanted to drive on the right-hand side of the road in opposition to everyone else, then I would get it fixed. That kind of 'not broken'? You quite like to use loaded language I think. Transgenders are very far from being normal, that does appear to be a fact, at least the statistics say it is.

"Our sense of self, our personalities, our every existence as sentient being exists in the brain, and yet we still know very little about it."

Indeed, As my Mom used to say "If you don't know about something, you really shouldn't talk about it or else people will think you're pretending to be something you're not.

"Psychiatric professionals realise that..."

Quoting psychiatrists probably isn't the way to go. Psychologists would be better. IMHO. In any event, I question the usefulness of compulsorily familiarising university students with a disorder (yes, it's a disorder - meaning 'broken') that affects about a half of one percent of all people. Doing so is on a par with forcing a study of the conspiracy theories behind the 9/11 atrocity. There's rather more of those (estimated at 2% of people)

"Trans people are perfectly normal"

Oh please. Of course they're not unless you use a very strange survey sample. Not even close to normal but you may have a different definition of what 'normal' means.

Apart from all that, it was a good attempt at rebuttal - well, muddying the waters and peddling an agenda.

[tookwan cottage]

I still wonder why it is so prevalent in Thailand.

Without commenting one way or the other on why it is so prevalent in Thailand, there is a fairly large corpus of evidence to suggest the main trigger is psychological, though I don't have specifics. Hence gender re-assignment is often done solely to align the physicak body with the psychology of the individual.

It's not at all politically correct to say so, and many won't agree but it is my view, so if you don't like it you can flame away.

Many Thais are what I would suggest is a bit odd (in my opinion it's largely the consequence of a repressive culture and a sub=par education), and the incidence of mental illness in Thailand is huge (though the government denies it - which they would do, it's a really serious loss of face for a government of any persuasion).

Coffee time...

Put your flamesuit on if you wish, but just because you're entitled to your own opinions does not mean you are entitled to your own facts.

The corpus of evidence is actually increasingly suggesting the opposite. That there are a number of physiological and biological reasons for how gender identity develops in humans.

Much like so-called "ex-gay conversion therapy" the evidence shows that attempts to "fix" gender identity to conform to a badly flawed idea that humans are 100% perfectly dimorphic (we're not) causes irreparable psychological trauma. You can't "fix" what isn't broken, and when you try, that's when you start breaking things. Our sense of self, our personalities, our every existence as sentient being exists in the brain, and yet we still know very little about it.

Psychiatric professionals realise that changing the body (often more accurately, helping it be more dimorphic one direction or the other, vs a nondimorphic middle ground) in a society that expects a person's gender expression and presentation to match a certain dimorphic body type is the only way to minimise the outside stressors associated with gender dysphoria.

Trans people are perfectly normal, and the treatment is medical. It's just taking the majority, cisgender people, an awful long time to get onboard with that.

The corpus of evidence is actually increasingly suggesting the opposite."

Hmmm. well "increasingly suggesting" doesn't mean "my facts". Except maybe to an optimist.

"That there are a number of physiological and biological reasons for how gender identity develops in humans."

OK, What reasons? What certainty of causality? Otherwise, you aren't entitled to infer they are facts of any kind. Not yours. not mine, not anyones' Conjecture is fine but you should really be more honest and say it is just conjecture.

"Much like so-called "ex-gay conversion therapy" the evidence shows that attempts to "fix" gender identity to conform to a badly flawed idea that humans are 100% perfectly dimorphic (we're not) causes irreparable psychological trauma."

Agreed. Most of them appear to have been religion-inspired, never a good sign.

"You can't "fix" what isn't broken"

Well, we wouldn't agree on what 'broken means' Frankly, if my car decided it wanted to drive on the right-hand side of the road in opposition to everyone else, then I would get it fixed. That kind of 'not broken'? You quite like to use loaded language I think. Transgenders are very far from being normal, that does appear to be a fact, at least the statistics say it is.

"Our sense of self, our personalities, our every existence as sentient being exists in the brain, and yet we still know very little about it."

Indeed, As my Mom used to say "If you don't know about something, you really shouldn't talk about it or else people will think you're pretending to be something you're not.

"Psychiatric professionals realise that..."

Quoting psychiatrists probably isn't the way to go. Psychologists would be better. IMHO. In any event, I question the usefulness of compulsorily familiarising university students with a disorder (yes, it's a disorder - meaning 'broken') that affects about a half of one percent of all people. Doing so is on a par with forcing a study of the conspiracy theories behind the 9/11 atrocity. There's rather more of those (estimated at 2% of people)

"Trans people are perfectly normal"

Oh please. Of course they're not unless you use a very strange survey sample. Not even close to normal but you may have a different definition of what 'normal' means.

Apart from all that, it was a good attempt at rebuttal - well, muddying the waters and peddling an agenda.

"As my Mom used to say "If you don't know about something, you really shouldn't talk about it or else people will think you're pretending to be something you're not."

If you actually followed your "Mom"'s advice instead of forcing it upon us, then we would not need to put up with your ill-informed garbage—people like you are why the term "willfully ignorant" was introduced.

[Howitzer]

you can't change your gender, you can only change your appearance.

If you modify a man till he looks like a woman, he is still XY genome and is not even theoretically able get children.

He is than a man who feels himself like a woman and looks like a woman, but still he is a man.

And this is why you need the class!

Gender != sex, and even if it did, there are multiple types of sex. Were you aware there are XY individuals born with vaginas? I bet you didn't, but now you do! Do you know about XXY or X0 or even XXXXY? How about the difference between MAIS and CAIS? How about hormone levels during fetal development and/or during puberty? How about brain structural and developmental differences? Did you know that approximately 1 in 1000 people have nondimorphic traits?

No? Then stop talking about it like you know this stuff.

wow i am certainn the majority of TV's well educated non thai farang pundits around here don't even know about this. They probably know about say XXX or XXY for example and think that they are geniuses especially compared to thais whom they assume wouldn't even have any clue or could fanthom what XY or XX is.

"Sensitize" is a code word for indoctrination. If you want to be gay then be gay. I won't bother you or question your lifestyle choice, but don't ask me or my children to buy into it or accept it as normal.

1) sexual orientation and gender identity are not the same. Trans people can be found across the sexuality spectrum.

2) neither sexual orientation nor gender identity are choices. When did you decide to be straight and/or cisgender? If you did, does that mean you, personally, could choose to be gay or trans (or to blow your mind here, both?)?

Considerable evidence now shows, and the vast majority of medical and psychiatric professional associations and their members agree, that sexual orientation and gender identity are a part of the human experience. Straight is a sexual orientation. Cisgender is part of one's gender identity.

You're not "normal," dude, because there is no normal. You're just more common.

On the issue of gender identity/orientation being described in terms as common or uncommon can this be applied to say a child born with a rare genetic disease being uncommon instead of abnormal then? You see my point?

[Caitrin]

Okay, I've tried the reasoned argument route, and clearly that isn't working. So let's just call out the crap.

Let me be blunt, unlike the majority of people here, perhaps all of them, as Howitzer correctly surmises, I do happen to know about this, as I'm on record as saying the last time this bullshittery about trans people came up. I have an academic and journalism background in covering these particular issues. The knowledge is out there if you want to actually bother doing the research yourself, or speak to professionals yourself, or, heaven forbid, speak to trans people about their own experiences.

And gender dysphoria is no longer classified as a disorder. It was removed from the list of disorders in the DSM and relisted as "gender dysphoria" in the DSM V. Why? Two reasons. The first is because the description dysphoria turns the source of stress a trans person experiences from an internal disorder to a reaction to terrible treatment in society. The problem isn't trans people, the problem is cis society. Basically, the people in this thread spreading misinformation and being openly transphobic? You're the problem. You're the cause of the stress! The second reason that it was relisted, as opposed to completely removed like homosexuality, is because many insurance companies rely on a psychiatric or psychological referral in order to agree to pay for the medical treatment. The insurance companies need to be reformed to accept that other physicians (like say an endocrinologist) are capable of making a medical diagnosis on a medical issue. But we're not there yet, so the decision to relist gender dysphoria was made for that reason. However, the choice to relist it should not be seen as a continuation of the earlier decision to consider it a disorder. It's not. That was the whole point of changing its diagnostic classification and, more importantly, changing the name.

Those are facts. Not opinions.

[Tep]

I still wonder why it is so prevalent in Thailand.

Without commenting one way or the other on why it is so prevalent in Thailand, there is a fairly large corpus of evidence to suggest the main trigger is psychological, though I don't have specifics. Hence gender re-assignment is often done solely to align the physicak body with the psychology of the individual.

It's not at all politically correct to say so, and many won't agree but it is my view, so if you don't like it you can flame away.

Many Thais are what I would suggest is a bit odd (in my opinion it's largely the consequence of a repressive culture and a sub=par education), and the incidence of mental illness in Thailand is huge (though the government denies it - which they would do, it's a really serious loss of face for a government of any persuasion).

Coffee time...

Put your flamesuit on if you wish, but just because you're entitled to your own opinions does not mean you are entitled to your own facts.

The corpus of evidence is actually increasingly suggesting the opposite. That there are a number of physiological and biological reasons for how gender identity develops in humans.

Much like so-called "ex-gay conversion therapy" the evidence shows that attempts to "fix" gender identity to conform to a badly flawed idea that humans are 100% perfectly dimorphic (we're not) causes irreparable psychological trauma. You can't "fix" what isn't broken, and when you try, that's when you start breaking things. Our sense of self, our personalities, our every existence as sentient being exists in the brain, and yet we still know very little about it.

Psychiatric professionals realise that changing the body (often more accurately, helping it be more dimorphic one direction or the other, vs a nondimorphic middle ground) in a society that expects a person's gender expression and presentation to match a certain dimorphic body type is the only way to minimise the outside stressors associated with gender dysphoria.

Trans people are perfectly normal, and the treatment is medical. It's just taking the majority, cisgender people, an awful long time to get onboard with that.

The corpus of evidence is actually increasingly suggesting the opposite."

Hmmm. well "increasingly suggesting" doesn't mean "my facts". Except maybe to an optimist.

"That there are a number of physiological and biological reasons for how gender identity develops in humans."

OK, What reasons? What certainty of causality? Otherwise, you aren't entitled to infer they are facts of any kind. Not yours. not mine, not anyones' Conjecture is fine but you should really be more honest and say it is just conjecture.

"Much like so-called "ex-gay conversion therapy" the evidence shows that attempts to "fix" gender identity to conform to a badly flawed idea that humans are 100% perfectly dimorphic (we're not) causes irreparable psychological trauma."

Agreed. Most of them appear to have been religion-inspired, never a good sign.

"You can't "fix" what isn't broken"

Well, we wouldn't agree on what 'broken means' Frankly, if my car decided it wanted to drive on the right-hand side of the road in opposition to everyone else, then I would get it fixed. That kind of 'not broken'? You quite like to use loaded language I think. Transgenders are very far from being normal, that does appear to be a fact, at least the statistics say it is.

"Our sense of self, our personalities, our every existence as sentient being exists in the brain, and yet we still know very little about it."

Indeed, As my Mom used to say "If you don't know about something, you really shouldn't talk about it or else people will think you're pretending to be something you're not.

"Psychiatric professionals realise that..."

Quoting psychiatrists probably isn't the way to go. Psychologists would be better. IMHO. In any event, I question the usefulness of compulsorily familiarising university students with a disorder (yes, it's a disorder - meaning 'broken') that affects about a half of one percent of all people. Doing so is on a par with forcing a study of the conspiracy theories behind the 9/11 atrocity. There's rather more of those (estimated at 2% of people)

"Trans people are perfectly normal"

Oh please. Of course they're not unless you use a very strange survey sample. Not even close to normal but you may have a different definition of what 'normal' means.

Apart from all that, it was a good attempt at rebuttal - well, muddying the waters and peddling an agenda.

There is no body of evidence suggesting transgender people have any psychological disorder, otherwise you would have provided specifics to justify your nonsense. You then proceed to spray around your generalisations about an entire culture. This 'disorder' as you improperly and arrogantly describe it is not more prevalent in Thailand than anywhere else. Provide evidence of this or withdraw you comment.

Tell me, how did Mommy validate your 'normalcy'? By putting you in short pants? Buying you a toy dump truck for your birthday? Pity Mommy didn't teach you any manners. Your uncomfortableness with Transgender issues is no justification for vilifying them irrespective of what percentage of the population they comprise. Your analogies are specious and spurious. Left hand drive vehicles? Garbage.

A transgender person being transgender is normal for that person. You have zero right, authority or justification for saying otherwise. Your definition, or at least Mommy's definition, is entirely irrelevant to that person's life. You cite statistics? Claiming that a certain population occupies such a small proportion of the whole that this entitles you to invalidate and diminish their lives.

It would be better if you went off and dealt with your own issues and prejudices before coming amongst normal people spreading your bile. Mommy certainly would not be proud.