Sure, it starts innocently enough with a funny haircut, but we all know where it goes from there. Next they’re developing their own identity and thinking for themselves, and that way lies madness and death.
A Chonburi province school’s new haircut rules targeting homosexual and transgender students have become a target of discrimination complaints
The new rules at Plutaluang Wittaya School, which punish students for not styling their hair in a single, gender-specific manner, have been debated since the school’s announcement was posted Monday night to Pantip.
Betraying a certain depth of ignorance as well as a poor ability to title things, “The additional haircut rules to improve students’ personality” details two different standards of punishment: one for “normal” students and another for “special khatoey/tomboy” students.
The standard haircut rules of government middle schools require girls to conform to a favlorless pudding-bowl bob as short as the earlobe while boys have to keep a short, military crop.
Student behavior is regulated through a point system. Under Plutaluang WIttaya’s new system, those blissfully normal students would only lose 5 to 20 points if they surpass regulations by a couple of centimeters. However their most-certainly abnormal gay friends get hit for 40 points. Oh, and their parents will be asked to transfer them to another school, a sure-fire approach to boosting self-confidence and discipline.
The rules were signed on Friday from the Student Affairs Committee.
Thai netizens were also outraged, with most condemning the school for openly discriminating against students based on their perceived sexuality and forbidding them to express themselves.
“Closet gay and dee (lesbians who remain dressed as a girl) students are not mentioned in the paper because they still act their ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles,” user Ecin commented. “The school might be right that a khatoey who acts out and wears a skirt and a tomboy who adopts a man’s haircut break the school rules. But they didn’t have to make such a loud sexist statement, I completely disagree.”
Meanwhile, a student at the school shared the new school’s announcement on his Facebook profile and discussed the matter of discrimination with his peers, which got his vice prinicipal’s attention.
“The students’ behavior has been out of control lately, so the teachers and guardians discussed this,” Ajarn Thanon said. “It is not about uniform. We just want you to be disciplined and train you to follow the rules, just for your own good. School is your last chance to be trained. When you graduate, nobody can tell you what to do anymore, and you know that.”
The Pantip post, however, certainly got noticed by “Anjaree Thailand,” an activist group which promotes gender and LGBT social justice and equality, which called upon the school to clarify its new policies.
Following the request, the school reportedly issued a new notice yesterday that stating, “Forty points will be deducted from the female students who adopt men’s army hair cut, the female students who slides their hair, and male students who have a skinhead haircut. Those who violate will be punished.”
Related:
Bye bye bowl cut: Thai students embrace looser hair rules
Hairdo Trend: Thai men go for Pee Mak-inspired undercut
