Gender Variance and Sexual Orientation Among Male Spirit Mediums in Myanmar

Human Rights Quarterly, 2015

Grounded in ongoing fieldwork inside Myanmar and amongst exiled Burmese communities, this article provides the first detailed account of the legal and human rights status of sexual orientation and gender identity minorities in Myanmar, with a focus on the abuses that they suffer. It also examines how Burmese activists overcame repressive laws to form an indigenous LGBT rights movement that has flourished since the start of the country's recent political transition. The research thus sheds light not only on future challenges for LGBT rights activism, but also on the broader political mobilization of human rights in a changing Myanmar. The research also has implications for states during democratic transition.

American Anthropologist, 2019

This article questions the way sexuality has been conceived as constructionism by previous studies of mediumship. I focus on female practitioners in northeast Thailand, seeing in their bodies the potential for the enactment of heterogeneous modes of desire that exceeds the bounds of inquiry set by representationalist frames. This perspective demands a new set of tools that will better resonate with the expressions of the practitioners’ bodies. Engaging with affect theory in the tradition of Brian Massumi, the article proposes an important shift from discourse‐based critique of Thai spirit possession to an approach that accounts for bodily sex and desire, beyond constructions and categories. I argue that spirit mediumship gives rein to a localized register of desire and sexuality that eludes discursive normalization. Ritual performance by spirit mediums materially vocalizes an expanded and more diverse repertoire of desire. Moreover, I take a view of the body as an undifferentiated object to argue, against the hierarchical dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, that the spatiality of the full body is a plane on whose flows the sacred and erotic intensities commingle. In mediumistic ritual, religious and sexual ontologies melt into the same bodily organs and zones of skin. [spirit mediumship, female body, desire, sexuality, affect theory, Northeast Thailand]

Journal of Asian Studies, 2019

Religions of South Asia 13.1, 2019

Keywords: gender, attachment, autonomy, monastic life, monks, social systems, Burma

Dear Reader, This paper is one of several 'sleeping princesses'(of the Shrek variety), work presented at conferences and since dormant. Since the paper is now legally 'adult' at 18 +, I thought I'd set it loose on the world, warts and all. Needless to say, it has not matured in the past 18 years! The paper draws on archival materials concerning Burmese and British women active in colonial women's organizations, from the British Library and the National Library of Australia. These references may be useful to scholars. As the title suggests, a key argument is that Burmese gender identity was mapped by colonial administrators, missionaries and others through the prism of British India. Researched and written in 2000, this paper has since been massively eclipsed by the works of other scholars, notably Chie Ikeya, who has done much more extensive research on the representations and lives of women in colonial Burma, working with

Sojourn, 2013

“Queer” research invariably entails practices of labelling and ascription, often through the adoption of local vernacular categories from the field. In Myanmar, practices of labelling are commonly unarticulated, and local terms are contested. Acts of categorization are thus challenged. The two dominant, non-gender normative subject positions are “open”, denoting a feminine image, and “hider”, denoting a masculine image. An examination of the elements of external image, internal mind/heart and karma and of the boundaries between Burmese “open” and “hider” subject positions permits a better understanding of these positions. While Burmese “queer” categories mark out a field of gender liminality, their use for individual ascription complicates existing conventions.

The Twelfth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 12)

The (First) Prince is gorgeous He controls the earth from the heaven His face looks bright and rosy with elegantly thin eyebrows His skin is as white as snow and his hair is more beautiful than a cloud He wears a brightly yellow costume with a pink scarf … The First Prince is one of queer deities of Dao Mau-a Vietnamese indigenous religion. These deities have been worshipped in public and private temples in Vietnam when they are honoured as the country's protectors. Certain male deities are portrayed with feminine appearance and characters like the First Prince and the Ninth Prince. Some female deities, including the Eighth Holy Lady and the Tenth Holy Lady, tend to be masculine when they are praised to conquer invaders as well as create new livelihoods. Some female mediums are described as vi nam vi nu-being able to turn themselves into men and women in ritual songs to praise their merits. Queer deities get respect of practitioners. To ask for fortune and health, male and female mediums organise luxurious ritual practises len dong that help male and female deities to incarnate into the bodies of mediums. Queer deities only exist in legends and mediums' imagination. This fact creates space for mediums telling different versions about gender and sexuality of queer deities. Based on the theory of gender performativity, I argue that the existence of queer deities in Dao Mau represents religious tolerance toward queerness and gender diversity through analyzing legends and songs about queer deities as well as stories of mediums.

2006

addresses the ways in which power and constructions of gender, sex, sexuality and the body intersect with one another and pervade contemporary Asian societies. The series invites discussion of how people shape their identities as females or males and, at the same time, become shaped by the very societies in which they live. The series is concerned with the region as a whole in order to capture the wide range of understandings and practices that are found in East, Southeast and South Asian societies with respect to gendered roles and relations in various social, political, religious, and economic contexts. Gendering Asia is, then, a multidisciplinary series that explores theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues in the social sciences.

Religion, 2019

Responding to and building upon José Cabezón’s groundbreaking work, Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism (2017), this essay challenges a hermeneutic that capitulates to the androcentrism and misogyny of classical South Asian Buddhist views on female sexuality by suggesting avenues for ‘reading against the grain’ in search of alternative gynocentric views. In particular, it points to glimpses of a female sexuality that is relational, active, and creative in premodern South Asian Buddhist sources, especially vinaya. It also argues that a full and balanced treatment of sexual violence against women is an essential component of any comprehensive study of sexuality in classical South Asian Buddhism.

unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, U of Illinois, Dept of Anthropology, Urbana, Illinois, 1977

In this article I attempt to provide a deeper analysis of northern Thai sexual symbolism and relate it to the identity quests of males and females viewed from the perspective of the life cycle with a focus on middleage. The article begins with a normative description of sexual symbolism in Northern Thai society, followed by a discussion of the social relations between the sexes in a lower-class neighborhood. However, the aim is to throw light on how intersexual relations change across the life cycle and thereby condition some astonishing modifications of normative sexual symbolism. Male-Female Symbolism: The Normative System In the historical elaboration of northern Thai culture the symbols, male and female, have come to represent the powerful divisive tensions that define all sensate life, on the one hand, and the potent unities these antagonistic forces participate in for temporary spans of time. A simple recipe can help us begin to circumscribe the core meanings and nuances that imbue the reciprocal concepts of male and female. Female is fertility; fertility is inherently fragile; and fragility is ultimately protected by enclosing, binding, isolating, keeping within, inside, not allowing to roam.