Ten days ago I posted an article by David Gilbert called Familial Transphobia and Kinship of Opens in Myanmar. And I asked if he had it right.
A response from Gillian Fletcher is below.
Other comments?
Jamie
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While it is important that we understand more about sexuality in Myanmar, and I recognise that this is probably a very brief summary of a more in-depth piece of work, I have a few comments on this piece:
Are the terms apwint, apone and thu nge used as identities, or descriptors? Thu nge, as far as I now, is not considered an 'identity'; it's a generic term for partners of apwint and apone who take the insertive role in sex, and who are usually married.
Adopting these as identity terms has the effect of conferring presumed homogeneity (and commonality of experience), whereas the reality is of rich and varied ways of being. I’ve met people who are apwint but who interact as men when returning to their family home, and (according to them) do so with no ill will but, rather, because their family ties are more important to them than expressing individual identity (Wah-Shan writes of this in China, also).
I've also know apwint sex workers who will be the insertive partner, if required (although this is not their preference). And then there are the apwint natkdaws...
The statement 'linguistically positioned as hiding their inner feminine self' is made in relation to apone, but who does that positioning? If people identify as apone (as in, they do not just describe themselves as this but it is an integral part of 'who they are'), do they see this as a 'lesser' form of male femininity than apwint? Is the argument here that apone are, essentially, just internalising transphobia (as we would term it), and apwint, is the fully-fledged, non-hidden form of apone?
Finally, we have long known that there are strict gender norms in Myanmar but we also know that Myanmar families (like most of us) say one thing and live in a far more complex and fluid way.
Gillian Fletcher
