Improvement in treatment of transgender women in military recruitment

The Thai Transgender Alliance (TGA), the Foundation for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Rights, and the Justice and Asia Pacific Transgender Network yesterday launched a video clip about transgender military personnel, at a Bangkok press conference.

The move aims to help transgender women know their rights and better prepare them for the conscription process.

TGA chairman Ronnapoom Samakkeekarom revealed that there had been improved treatment of transgender recruits, but he insisted the sexual equality campaign had to continue so there was a better understanding of the LGBT community.

Ronnapoom said that transgender groups had for years been campaigning for the proper treatment of transgender women during military recruitments, resulting in “fruitful results of our work in the recent monitoring on the conscription”.

“However, there was some discrimination against gay attendees from the cheering crowd,” Ronnapoom said. “We also realise that not all military officers understand transgender rights, and some transgender women still don’t know how to prepare themselves for recruitment. So we had to produce this video clip.”

Tarinda Srisutat, a transgender student at Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University, said that she mostly received fair treatment from officers during her conscription process two years ago.

“I attended the recruitment event in my hometown in Muang Sakon Nakhon district,” she said. “The military officers at my recruitment arranged chairs for the transgender women to sit on that were separate from the men and I received good treatment from all the officers.”

But on the downside, she said that the transgender recruits were forced to wait all day after officers let the men undergo the recruitment process first.

She also said a transgender friend of hers complained about being unpleasantly treated while being recruited last year after a doctor told her to get on a tripod in order to check her sex organ. 

What the doctor did, however, is a standard test for gender dysphoria, which Wikipedia describes as the “formal diagnosis used by psychologists and physicians to describe people who experience significant dysphoria [distress] with the sex and gender they were assigned at birth”.

Each year, Thailand’s armed forces arrange the conscription process for healthy men aged 21 to 30. By law, all men who do not volunteer for military service must attend the conscription lottery at least once after they turn 21. 

Ronnapoom said that hundreds of transgender women avoided being conscripted each year after the military diagnosed them as suffering from gender dysphoria.

Colonel Trijak Nakapaiboon, director of the Army’s Recruiting Division, explained that transgender women were classified into three groups during the recruitment process. 

They are transgenders who have undergone sex reassignment surgery; transgenders who have adopted a female appearance but have not undergone sex reassignment; and transgenders who still have a male appearance.

Trijak said the first two groups automatically were not recruited, but members of the third group had to undergo a medical test to determine if they were really a transgender before they were recruited.

“I’d like to warn that even though the transgender women will not be recruited [the first two groups], they still have to come to the recruitment event or they will be in violation of the law,” he said. “And after they receive the punishment for skipping the recruitment, they will be forced to join the Army.”