Two leading LGBT activists dismissed claims today that draft-dodgers are abusing the system by pretending to be transgender to avoid military service.
After photos of young trans women at conscription centers dressed like it was Friday night at Beam drew accusations they were faking it, members of the Thai Transgender Alliance dismissed the attacks as far-fetched and harmful.
“I think they are just being themselves,” Kath Khangpiboon said. She doubts there could be many “fakers” because not only is there extensive screening, the punishment for faking is three years in prison – arguably worse than two years in the military.
A quick recap of how it works: When Thais identified as male at birth turn 21, they are required to either serve six months in the army or try their luck in a card draw. If a black card is drawn in the lottery, they go home. Red, however, means two years of service.
‘Angel Boys’
It’s become an annual tradition for the media to churn out photographs of the 21-year-old trans who show up for the lottery, handling their hotness with equal parts awe and ridicule.
Reliably, members of gen net show up dressed to impress. While some have defended that as a simple celebration of their femininity or an attempt to be funny, some online skeptics charge they are playing it up or flat-out “faking it” to get out of conscription.
In the past week, a Facebook page trafficking in raunchy trans content has led a campaign trying to “out” these supposed fakers. Since draft season began Monday, people have been sharing old photos of some draftees they argue prove they just subbed to /r/instantlygay/.
“Stop this is not cute… you’re going to do harm to the transgender community,” the page admin wrote in a Tuesday post shared more than 800 times.
“This girl, she wins,” read a post yesterday featuring an elaborately made-up blonde in a school uniform looking more manga than Thai.That woman, 21-year-old Saharat Jamgrajai, laughed when contacted by Coconuts Bangkok on Thursday. She said the attacks were absolutely ridiculous.
First of all, she said, her normal look is much more fabulous.
“I actually dressed down for the draft … I usually dress very full-out; this was not a special occasion,” she said. A quick browse through her Facebook quickly finds this girl ain’t kidding – she extra.
Transgender Alliance executive director Jetsada Taesombat said testing and evaluation to determine whether someone is legally exempt is much more thorough than looking them up and down.
The exemptions, she said, are for those who have fully undergone transition, begun it with some reassignment surgery (boob jobs count), or fully identified as another gender.
The third category, however, requires more than showing up on lottery day in a sundress. One must undergo a psych evaluation and testing to obtain a medical certificate from one of 20 registered, authorized doctors nationwide. It takes two to three weeks.
Jetsada said requests put to applicants include “drawing” themselves, describing life experiences and more mundane questions such as, “What’s your favorite color?”
“They just want to understand how you think,” she said. While it’s not immediately clear to us how color could determine your gender, Jetsada says that she trusts in the doctors’ ability to draw accurate conclusions.
Saharat told us she was sent home on draft day after showing up without a doctor’s note because her examiners needed no convincing.
“I showed up with no clue about the law or anything, so they told me what I have to do and said to come back next year instead.”
While Saharat took the harassment in stride, another object of online hate was traumatized by the volcanic vitriol.
“These accusations against me are baseless and bogus. I followed every legal procedure to obtain a doctor’s certificate,” said the obviously angry netizen who pleaded for anonymity given the torrent of abuse she was experiencing.
She said the accusations had brought much pain into her life to the point where she had reached out to a lawyer about pressing defamation charges.
Meanwhile, Jetsada, who’s been in the field observing the draft, said she hasn’t witnessed any mistreatment or abuse this year.
“Though there’s no saying what will happen before the [draft ends April 12], every year there’s always a transgender woman who accidentally gets drafted. But don’t panic, there’s a way to sort out the problem,” she said, urging those who believe they’ve been wrongfully drafted to alert the officers.
Of course both activists said all of this would be easily solved with a simple solution: abolishing the draft, a position backed by many of the major political parties in last month’s election.
“We should only draft those who want to be drafted,” Kath said.
“I believe the results would be better for both the drafters and draftees to only recruit those who genuinely want to join the army instead of forcing people to,” Jetsada agreed.
After all, she asked, how can people do well when they don’t even want to be there?
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