It may be fake, but it's still real

I was suspicious about reports this week of the attempted rape of a katoey in Pattaya. I haven’t been able to find the story in any newspaper or on any news website. It sounds more like a yarn from a porn magazine. 

Supposedly two katoey were chatting in the street one night with two muscular guys whose erections were visible because they were wearing only underwear. The men asked one of the katoey to accompany them while they stepped away to urinate, then tried to rape her, only to discover she wasn’t a natural woman. So they robbed her instead. 

Evidently a lot of people found this sorry tale funny.

But it just didn’t sound realistic. Who were these women and what did the guys actually want? 

Fake news or not, I could see the prejudice in the storytelling itself. It’s got the same poor taste as Mor Muanchon’s latest TV commercial, in which a big bearded man wears a women’s uniform and acts effeminately. 

What’s really under attack in both of these stories is transgender people. The discovery of the main character’s true gender is supposed to evoke laughter, but the laughing only serves to reveal personal attitudes towards gender values in society. 

Being or behaving like the opposite sex is considered weird. People laugh at it. It makes no difference whether the katoey is real or just an actor – you hear the giggling.

The retelling of these tales reflects the prejudice of heterosexual people, devaluing alternative genders by making them objects of derisive laughter. When the supposed “humour” builds into a consensus, it becomes a silent killer, poisoning listeners’ inherent humanity, curdling their sense of compassion. Fellow humans are no longer seen as sharing the same value that “we” have.

I’ve seen countless stories in writing and on the airwaves about transgender “weirdness” and how society judges them. The prejudice is repeated over and over and spreads further and further – it carries on not always overtly but so often surreptitiously. 

So we have a news hoax, and yet people seize upon it because it lets them express their bigotry. 

Our society is in fact graced with much tolerance and generosity, but too many people harbour ill will all their lives. And that’s dangerous for all of us.