The Bhutanese Leading the way.
By Mark LaPrairie
In the late 1980s, one of my students at a school in eastern Bhutan, a grade 7 boy, was teasingly called “Pho-ley Mo-ley” by other students. He had a feminine walk, soft voice and made facial and hand gestures like a girl. Today, he would likely identify as ‘transgender’.
Nearly four decades on, sexual minorities in Bhutan are openly discussed, covered regularly in the media and are increasingly accepted in open society. The ‘LGBTQI+’ acronym regularly appears in newspapers, including in last week’s article here about Aum Penjor, an aging transgender person in Thimphu.
As this acronym becomes more frequently used, let us recall what it means: Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer-Intersex-Plus (‘Plus’ being catch-all for ‘everything’ else). Canadians add ‘2S’, or ‘Two-Spirited’, reflecting aboriginal beliefs that people may embody both male and female ‘spirits’.
The problem with this acronym, however, is these groups may not at all belong together.
The first three letters, LGB, mean lesbian, gay and bisexual, or people who are same-sex attracted, yet do not question their sex/gender identity. The other letters, starting with ‘T’, are people who self-identify as something other than their birth sex/gender (except ‘I’, or Intersex, people born with ambiguous genitalia, a very rare condition).
Last week’s story about Aum Penjor, like most media coverage of the “LGBTQI+ community” in Bhutan, mixes these two groups under one ‘LGBTQI+’ umbrella. However, most of the article’s statistics likely only apply to TQI+ people, such as, “many ageing LGBTQI+ individuals rely on informal work in bars, entertainment, or other precarious sectors” and “51.2% of LGBTQI+ individuals report having no income”. Despite that many LGB people in Bhutan remain closeted, especially those over 30, it is unlikely that these disturbing facts would apply to them.
There’s a movement in the UK and US to separate LGB from TQI+. A group called the ‘LGB Alliance’ believes that transgender controversies over pronouns, bathrooms, sports and youth medical transition are reversing hard-won gains of lesbians and gay men over the last 40 years, including gay marriage, support for which is now on the decline in the US. Similarly, the rainbow flag, Pride parades and ‘Pride Month’ are again becoming controversial, not because of LGB, but because of TQI+. The ‘Harry Potter’ author, J.K. Rowling, has been pilloried for speaking out to protect women’s spaces for biological women.
Last week’s article notes that nearly three-quarters of Pride Bhutan’s membership is age 15-26 years. This comes as no surprise given the impact of social media on the spread of transgender and gender-based ideologies, especially among teen girls who are particularly vulnerable to social contagion.
As for LGBTQI+ media coverage in Bhutan, when might we see an article about two ‘regular’ guys — one an engineer in a government ministry and the other a math teacher in a secondary school – who are in a committed, loving relationship, share a flat in Thimphu and have no issue with their sex or gender? They just want to live their lives like everyone else, pursuing professional ambitions, socializing with friends and family and devoting time to various interests and pursuits. I’m sure they would not see themselves reflected in most of the ‘stories’ of the ‘LGBTQI+ community’ which regularly appear in the media. Those seem only to be about transgender people and their (very real) struggles.
I wish all who identify as TQI+ happy and fulfilled lives, free from discrimination and hate, and full of opportunity and love.
That said, it is time for a more nuanced understanding of what ‘LGBTQI+’ means, what it does not mean and, perhaps, to start using it in ways that better reflect reality.
Mark LaPrairie is a friend of Bhutan who lives in Washington DC.