Pu Mia in Old Northern Thailand
Andrew Matzner
It is extremely difficult even to guess about the existence of kathoey in "Thai society" prior to the 20th century. Nonetheless, we can find some tantalizingly brief clues in books written by European travelers in the late 1800s.
Carl Bock, a Norwegian explorer who in 1881 traveled through what is today northern Thailand published an English-language account of his travels in 1884 in London. He wrote (and I quote at length in order to contextualize his comments):
In Chengmai I saw two albinoes, both with a light reddish skin, white hair, resembling a very pale glossy hemp, and pink eyes, which they were in the habit of blinking much in the daytime, being unable without difficulty to bear the strong light. These albinoes were sisters, with a difference of four years between their ages. Besides these lusus naturae, I heard of several hermaphrodites. The women are always paler in complexion than the men, with rather an olive tint, closely approaching to No. 44 of Broca's types. The hair is coarse and straight, and of a glossy black, with occasionally a brown tinge. . . . (320)
Several years later another book appeared entitled "A Thousand Miles on an Elephant in the Shan States", in which Holt Hallett (who was British) recounted an outing he made in 1876 to a city he calls Zimme (the Burmese name for Chiang Mai). He stated:
Following the road through the western suburb, I entered one of the shops to purchase some Chinese umbrellas, as mine were the worse for wear, and was served by a person dressed in ordinary female costume, who seemed to be very masculine in appearance, and considerably above 4 feet 10 inches in height - a height few Zimme Shan women attain to. On telling Dr M'Gilvary [an American missionary who had lived in Zimme for many years], he informed me that the individual was a hermaphrodite; that this particular form of Nature's freaks was by no means uncommon in the country; and that all such people were obliged to dress in female costume. (99)
Even more than Bock's single line mentioning "hermaphrodites," Hallet's account helps situate the place of kathoey in Lan Na (northern Thai) culture and allows us to make three tentative assumptions about social attitudes towards them. First, it would appear that kathoey (known as pu mia in the northern Thai language) were either accepted or tolerated to the extent that they could work in shops dressed as women. Second, men dressing in women's clothing were apparently not rare in this part of southeast Asia. Third, it was culturally appropriate for "hermaphrodites" (to use the missionary's language) to wear women's clothing. Of course, these three points are generalizations based on a single, non-indigenous source. Nevertheless, Hallet's passage is a starting point for the examination of transgenderism as found in everyday life in this geographical region, and suggests that the ubiquity of kathoey in present-day Chiang Mai might have historical antecedents.
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The Englishman W.A.R. Wood is a key source for information about transgenderism in early twentieth century northern Thailand. Wood first arrived in Bangkok in 1896 as a Student Interpreter for the British Consul. From the early 1900s up until his death in 1970, Wood spent a great deal of time working and living in northern Thailand, particularly in Chiang Mai, the city to which he retired. His autobiographical work, Consul In Paradise (originally published, notes Woods in the Preface to a revised edition, before World War II) provides an invaluable account of transgenderism in northern Thai society. Here I would like to quote at length (because of its inaccessibility) what Woods wrote in a chapter entitled "Oddities:"
In England, if a man goes about dressed as a woman he is arrested, and it seems to be assumed that for a man to have a liking for female dress is a sign of some sort of moral perversion. In certain regulations annexed to the Indian Penal Code a similar assumption is made. In Siam, especially in the north, there are a certain number of men who habitually wear female clothing and grow their hair long. It does not seem to be thought that there is anything morally wrong about this, and so far as I have been able to make out, these Pu-Mias (men-women), as they are called, really possess, as a rule, no moral eccentricities. Physically also, I am told, there is nothing unusual about them. They prefer to dress as women, and that is all there is to say about it.
There used to be a young fellow of good family living near us at Lampang who sometimes dressed as a man and sometimes as a woman, and it was generally believed that during the first half of each month he actually was a male, and during the latter half of the month became a female. I often exchanged greetings with him (or her) and found her (or him) very pleasant and polite, but I never became sufficiently familiar to justify making personal enquiries as to his (or her) sex. To my eyes he appeared to be a young man of very attractive appearance, though a trifle girlish looking. He did not wear his hair long, but when sporting feminine costume was very fond of decorating his head with flowers.
Another Pu-Mia I used to know was quite different, being a great hulking fellow of exceptionally masculine appearance. He always dressed as a woman, wore his hair long, and affected the most ridiculous, simpering manners.
I read some time ago of an English Pu-Mia being chased by an angry crowd across Hampstead Heath, hauled up before a magistrate, severely lectured on the depravity of his conduct, and heavily fined. Here, thought I, is one of the things they manage better in Siam. Why bother about Pu-Mias? So far as I can see, they do no harm, and in Siam, where nobody worries about them or interferes with them, there is certainly very little of the sort of thing which their existence, on the English theory, might be taken to indicate. (P.98-99)
Until oral histories of older kathoey begin to be collected, Wood's observations are priceless. Wood's attitude is refreshing as well, for his generous attitude towards "Pu-Mias" allows him to comment at length about them, a far cry from those Western observers in the past who, because of shame or disgust, erased from their written narratives those indigenous peoples who engaged in non-normative gendered/sexual behavior.
Wood's comments indicate that public cross-dressing existed, and was permitted to occur, in northern Thailand in the early 1900s. Because it is likely that such practices were in existence prior to Wood's observations, we can assume that his observations correlate with Hallet's comments on cross-dressing in the latter half of the previous century. Thus, we can find in Lan Na society and culture a history of transgenderism which extends back in time to at least the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Based on Wood's and Hallet's writing, it appears that pu mia were at the very least tolerated to the extent that they were permitted to cross-dress in public for extended periods of time, although we still have little information about issues such as familial attitudes towards them or how their sexual relationships were structured.
Much as Western writers were to do at the end of the twentieth century, Woods could not help but compare accepting Siamese attitudes towards non-normative gendered behavior with repressive British views. Yet notice Wood's introductory paragraph commenting on the pu mia's lack of "moral eccentricities", as well as his last sentence: Wood's apparent tolerance, as well as the tolerance he ascribes to the Siamese, was apparently due to the fact that "there is certainly very little of the sort of thing which their existence, on the English theory, might be taken to indicate." If one assumes that Woods is referring to homosexual relations, then his comments indicate that he believed pu mia to be asexual, a factor which in Woods' eyes made them harmless and even a bit charming.
Sources:
1. Bock, Carl. Temples and Elephants: The Narrative of a Journey of Exploration Through Upper Siam and Lao (White Orchid Press; 1985; Bangkok).
2. Holt Hallett. A Thousand Miles on an Elephant in the Shan States (first published in 1890; White Lotus Press, 2000),
3. Woods, W.A.R. Consul in Paradise; originally published, notes Woods in the Preface to a revised edition, before World War II; it was revised and republished for the first time in 1965, Souvenir Press, London; my own edition is 1991, Trasvin Publications, Bangkok),