The other trap in femininity

My big-bodied female friend loves to overact, so she's always being teased about sounding like a katoey, much to her annoyance.

Lately she's even more worried because an astrologer gave her a new gender-less name that he said would improve her life. Now she's afraid people she's introduced to will think she really is a katoey,

It reminds me of the public announcement that was made during the Plaek Pibulsongkram regime: People's given names had to match their gender, so men couldn't be called Patcharapa, for example, and women couldn't be Teeradech. Any name connoting beauty, sweetness or timidity was automatically female, while names suggesting bravery, strength and power belonged to men.

It seems like another time and another place, but that policy is still having an effect in Thailand. You can't register with government agencies using a name that doesn't fit your gender, and transgender women can't change their names to suit their preference.

"Neutral" names might seem a good choice, but you're still stuck with the stigma of a gender title, even though titles are rarely heard now in daily life.

So women play with their appearance. If you look like women and use a neutral name, people won't think about your birth gender. On the other hand, being "too feminine" will draw suspicions that you weren't born a girl.

There's nothing my friend can do about her big body, so she needs to change her behaviour to stop people jumping to the wrong conclusion. She frets, though, that changing the way she acts means giving up part of her identity.

I told her it's like a male stage actor pretending to be a woman - it's not about your actual gender, just the performance. If her identity is more important to her than people's opinions, she needs to tough out the social stereotyping and wait for society to change.

Otherwise, she can manipulate the situation by acting like other women, and she can still be herself among close friends.

Why, she wondered, do people always think overacting is a katoey trait? I blamed it on our patriarchal system, which will take a long time to shed its prejudices. It's the same with katoey not being "allowed" short hair, trousers or a day without makeup.

I too ended up advising my friend to change her name - back again. I told her to carry on acting like she always does. Thai society is too strict in a world of diversity. Be proud of your freakishness, I said, and help the world see every possibility.