Learning about LGBTQ tourism in Thailand

[AlexCan]

Hey sglad,

The present research is for a masters dissertation, but also serves as ground for a PhD starting in a few months. I've been in Thailand a few years ago for tourism only, and I was supposed to be in Thailand now to conduct the field research. Unfortunately, I had to postpone my fieldtrip in the country because of the Covid. And this is the reason why I'm using this forum. I would have preferred to conduct field research, but instead I am using interviews with people in Thailand and will complement with a fieldtrip as soon as possible.

As for the content of the study, it is indeed a qualitative research. I didn't say that I was planning of influencing policies. What I what to find out is rather if LGBT tourism could influence policy. In the sense that LGBT tourists are such a important market that is sough off by many organisations and government, I'm researching if it is the case for Thailand. Is LGBT tourism some sort of pink washing in Thailand? In the sense that the marketing campaigns are great, but there is not much rights given to LGBT people (even though it is not illegal either, some sort of invisibility).

As for what specific I use within the LGBT is more the LGB. I did not include trans because I think that it is a very specific field that deserve a specific analysis. As for gay / lesbians, indeed there are strong differences since both gender and sexuality influence our travel patterns. Most of the literature focus on gay male and most respondents that I found at the moment are men as well.

As for the demographic covering the research, I do not have an age specific. However, I am focusing on Western tourists. The reason for that is to understand how Western understandings of gayness influence the Thai notions of gayness. Few studies have showed some transformations of local LGBTQ communities accross the world because of globalization of tourism. However, I do not cover specifically sex tourism. Some studies have shown that gay men indeed have more sex in holidays than straight people, but my analysis is not centered on sex tourism specifically, even though it can be a part of the travel experience.

Hope this helps getting a clearer idea of my research.

[sglad]

Morning, Alex.

Thank you for the clarification and expansion of your original post. It does make things a bit clearer. You have some interesting ideas and I appreciate the fact your research is still at a preliminary stage and you will narrow your focus once you have more data. How long is a master's thesis at your university (number of words)?

I think you've come across a couple of research gaps with the pinkwashing idea and the impact of western tourists on the local LGBTQ community. Personally, I don't think the Thais are guilty of pinkwashing in the Israeli sense but they have a tendency of suppressing any democratically elected government that comes up and the military has been accused of human rights abuses particularly in the deep south. Perhaps pinkwashing is also used to cover up a largely feudal, class-ridden society where social mobility is still very difficult and local attitudes towards gays are ambivalent and dependent on class, economics and even ethnicity.

Just beware of the tendency of western academics (and tourists) to extract and extrapolate what they see in the fleshpots of Thailand, mash it up with some pop Buddhism, and then turn it into some general principle which they then apply to the gay Thai population as a whole.

Sorry, it's almost 8 AM here and I need to attend to my partner who's just come home from the hospital. Talk later.