Toms and Dees: Toms & Dees Paper: 31 (Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning and Memory) - Hardcover

Megan J. Sinnott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0824827414 ISBN 13: 9780824827410

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press, 2004

Synopsis

A vibrant, growing, and highly visible set of female identities has emerged in Thailand known as tom and dee. A ""tom"" (from ""tomboy"") refers to a masculine woman who is sexually involved with a feminine partner, or ""dee"" (from ""lady""). The patterning of female same-sex relationships into masculine and feminine pairs, coupled with the use of English-derived terms to refer to them, is found throughout East and Southeast Asia. Have the forces of capitalism facilitated the dissemination of Western-style gay and lesbian identities throughout the developing world as some theories of transnationalism suggest? Is the emergence of toms and dees over the past twenty-five years a sign that this has occurred in Thailand? Megan Sinnott engages these issues by examining the local culture and historical context of female same-sex eroticism and female masculinity in Thailand. Drawing on a broad spectrum of anthropological literature, Sinnott situates Thai tom and dee subculture within the global trend of increasingly hybridized sexual and gender identities.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0824827414
• ISBN 13: 9780824827410
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 261