From the late 1980s until the 2010s, the Anjaree Group was among the first organisations in Thailand to publicly advocate for gender and sexual rights, and one of the only civil society initiatives to focus on the experiences of women-loving women, lesbians, thom (from ‘tomboy’) and di (from ‘lady’, meaning cisgender women who have romantic relationships with thom). The Thai terms ‘thom’ and ‘di’ can be traced to the late 1970s and still exist today as categories of self-identification.

While modern Thailand is cast in global imaginations as a kind of paradise for gender and sexual expression, struggles for basic rights are ongoing. Some of the issues currently facing gender and sexually diverse communities include equal rights to marriage registration, greater access to fair and affordable gender-affirming healthcare and enacting legal protections against sex- and gender-based discrimination at work and in schools. The recent protest movements of 2020 and 2021 combined the fight for democracy, justice and state accountability with issues of sexual discrimination, bodily autonomy and state-enforced gender binarism with near unprecedented and courageous clarity. As gender politics draws greater public attention, efforts are underway to build a new archive of the history of Thai gender rights activism.

• Tags: Anjana Suvarnananda, Emi Donald, Issue 32, Thailand