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ISBN-10: 162778036X
ISBN-13: 978-1627780360
Story Rating: 4 out of 5
Blurb:
Benjamin Law spent nearly a year skipping between seven Asian countries, sitting backstage with Bangkok ladyboys before their beauty pageants, talking to Tokyo’s superstar drag queens, marching in the heat with Mumbai’s fierce queer rights activists, listening to Melaka preachers who claim they can heal homosexuality and hanging out with Bali’s moneyboys and the foreigners who hire them. At once entertaining and moving, Gaysia is a wild ride and a fascinating quest by a leading travel writer. See Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar and India as never before through the eyes of gonzo anthropologist and journalist Benjamin Law.
Review:
“Gaysia” offers an interesting, if highly selective, portrait of gay life across the vast stretch of Asia, home to 60% of the world's population. This was clearly a personal journey for Chinese-Australian Law, but he manages to maintain a very journalistic approach throughout, allowing the people he meets to tell their own stories, with minimal editorializing. Sometimes what comes out is surprising, sometimes funny, and often poignant.
While the book covers a lot of ground and offers a lot of insight into the lives of some gay men and lesbians, it is by no means an exhaustive study of LGBT issues in Asia. That would take a lifetime to write and would probably not be as readable as this entertaining little tome. Instead, the author shines a light on very specific groups or issues in each country. Like a stereotypical Australian, Law ignores the other 15,000+ islands of Indonesia and zeros in on the tiny speck of Bali. With the small Hindu enclave practically over-run with tourists, it's only natural that there are men willing to satisfy the more carnal desires of some of the island's visitors. We get some rather surprising answers as to why these men do what they do.
In Thailand, Law becomes part of the press corps covering the Miss Tiffany pageant, a beauty contest exclusively for ‘ladies’ who were born men, regardless of whether they've had full gender reassignment surgery or not. The final judging extravaganza is one of the most watched television programs in Thailand. The author interviews several of the contestants to get their stories, almost all of which involve fighting hard, even against their own families, to express what they feel inside. Law comes close, but never quite connects the dots to help us understand that there's a big gulf between tolerance and acceptance. These “ladyboys”, as they're often referred to (katoey in Thai), are tolerated in society, and can even be quite popular as entertainers, but they're never really accepted for who they are.
It's a similar story in Japan, where ‘funny’ gay characters are a mainstay on television, but real gay men are practically invisible in real life. Meanwhile, in China invisibility is the name of the game. Web sites helping gays connect have to carefully fly under the government radar, and Law talks to gay couples where one or both partners have entered into sham marriages to avoid family pressure resulting from decades of the one-child policy.
One of the biggest surprises from Law comes in Malaysia, where he talks to a couple of religious organizations that offer some form of conversion therapy. While clearly in no mood to change his ways, Law is surprisingly non-judgmental about the people he meets who both run and use these services. He is a little more outraged at the sad state of HIV care in Myanmar (Burma). The supply of anti-retroviral drugs is so limited that those most likely to benefit from them can't get them. As in much of Asia, those who suffer most are the ones at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder, gay and trans prostitutes. What seems to surprise Law the most is that sometimes these people are apparently victimized by the very aid workers who are supposed to be helping them.
Law ends his journey in India, in the heady aftermath of the court ruling declaring the country's sodomy laws unconstitutional (a ruling that was recently overturned, making sex between men illegal again). The author meets with some of the key figures in the court battle, many of whom were, to Law's surprise, straight. Again, there are surprising answers to the questions about why these people took on a controversial issue that didn't really affect them personally. It's an exuberant end to a journey that is enlightening for what it reveals about the author and the cultures he visits, but this book should probably be read mostly for entertainment rather than for any serious insight into any of these countries.
Reviewed by Michael Joseph
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