the third sex

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I’m still in cold, windy London right now, missing ladyboys rather badly because there are not many here and those that there are you have to really go searching for. Unlike Thailand, where they tend to come looking for you.

The fame of Thai ladyboys has however spread to the United Kingdom, partly through sites such as this and partly because of a number of ladyboy shows that have been staged throughout the country on a number of occasions over the past couple of years.

A friend, who knew nothing of my preference, was sounding me out in my local pub the other evening.

“These ladyboys,” he said. “What do you make of them, then?” What are they? Male or female?”

I replied that they are neither male nor female, but formed a sex of their own, the third sex.

“Blimey,” he said. “Sounds a bit dodgy. But they look like women. How do you tell the difference?”

The ladyboys are more beautiful, I replied.

He looked at me. “You ever…you know…been with one of them?”

Yes, a lot of them, I said.

He took a pull at his pint of bitter. “What is it like, then?”

Totally addictive, I replied. Then we got onto another subject.

The funny thing is, that a few years ago that conversation would probably have never taken place. My friend wouldn’t have known what a ladyboy was. Plus, I have to admit this, I would never even have hinted that I had anything to do with ladyboys.

When I first discovered ladyboys, back in the days of Singapore’s Bugis Street, I was unwise enough to mention my discovery in the local pub. The hostile reaction I received made me button my lip on the subject for the next 20 years. How times change…eventually.

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When Nan arrived for the shoot it was a cold day in Bangkok terms. The temperature had sunk to 30 degrees centigrade. Brrrrrr!!! Anyway, Nan had slipped on a football shirt to keep warm, and I rather liked the effect. A cute little girl, only just 18 and still in the tom-boy phase.

Click on the image to see all of it.

Visit Captain Outrageous to get the full set

A ladyboy friend had turned up and was waiting for me at the reception area of the apartment. I went down to meet her. She was wearing a very cute short red dress, and with her long hair looked gorgeous. There were a couple of Thai maintenance workers sitting nearby, and they were eyeing her appreciatively. As I approached, I heard one of them say to her: “Doot sooay.”

The phrase means “beautiful bottom” and the worker was complimenting her. This reveals something of the Thai man’s attitude to the third sex. If a man finds a ladyboy attractive, he will probably have no qualms about saying so and, with a bit of luck, having sex with her. The fact that she is biologically male won’t put him off. He won’t feel any remorse or guilt afterwards, he won’t go into an “am I really gay?” agony of self questioning. He would have had an enjoyable experience, and been on to the next thing.

There is something essentially healthy in this approach, or at least I find it so. It also helps explain why young Issan farmboys are happy enough to work in the gay bars of Bangkok and Pattaya. Why do backbreaking work planting rice and mucking out the pigs when on a good night you can earn the equivalent of half a month’s wages by spending the night in a foreign tourist’s hotel room. Gayness doesn’t really come into it. Guilt certainly doesn’t. The need to earn money does. But essentially it is an openness of mind, and self analysis doesn’t really figure.

As I have mentioned here before, the polite Thai phrase for a ladyboy is “sauw prapet song”, which means “second type of woman.” That is how the Thais regard ladyboys. And as ladyboys are in general far more open to a sexual approach than a genetic girl, given that they still have the sex drive of a male, a Thai man will often turn to a ladyboy simply for enjoyment.

So the maintenance worker probably wasn’t gay. He was simply voicing an honest opinion. He thought the ladyboy had an attractive figure and a pert rear. In the elevator, I asked her if she received many compliments like that.

“Yes!” she said. “All the time! If a Thai man like me, he say so! No problem!”