Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:671672 DOI 10.

1007/s10508-008-9368-3

BOOK REVIEW

The Third SexKathoey: Thailands Ladyboys

By Richard Totman. Souvenir Press, London, England, 2003, 181 pp., 16.95 (hardcover).
Paul L. Vasey Doug P. VanderLaan

Published online: 10 May 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008

A burgeoning body of cross-cultural research exists that examines the lives of effeminate, often transgendered, androphilic1 males (e.g., Herdt, 1997; Murray, 2000; Nanda, 2000). These males are often recognized as neither men nor women by members of their respective cultures, but rather as occupying a distinct third gender category. Some examples include the woubi of the Ivory Coast (Brooks & Bocahut, 1998), the hijra of India (Nanda, 1998), the xanith of Oman (Wikan, 1977), the travest of Brazil (Kulick, 1998), and the faafane of Samoa (Vasey, Pocock, & VanderLaan, 2006). Totman adds to this literature by providing a book-length treatment of the kathoey of Thailand. Previous sociocultural work on the kathoey has been conducted by an Asian studies philosopher (Jackson, 1997). However, Totman states upfront that his account of kathoey does not take the form of a strict social-scientic study in the conventional sense. Instead, Totmans primary goal was to provide a picture of the lives of these individuals and their place in Thai culture by spending as much time as possible with them and listening at length to what they had to say. Totman states that he sought to set down on paper a biographical style narrative of those individuals who had by a stroke of luck become [his] friends and to present this in the context in which [he] found [him]self and against a backcloth of Thai history, tradition and myth (pp. 89). Totman succeeds in creating an intimate portrait of the lives of four kathoey: two cabaret performers, a waitress/escort/prostitute, and a bank clerk. These mini-biographies represent the core of the book as well as its primary strength. As such, we recommend this volume to readers who are interested in
P. L. Vasey (&) D. P. VanderLaan Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, Canada T1K 3M4 e-mail: paul.vasey@uleth.ca

gaining personalized accounts of the lives of transgendered, androphilic males in non-Western cultures. In addition to the four individual life-history proles he presents, Totman also discusses kathoey in relation to such topics as Biological Accidents, Buddism and a Third Sex, The Kathoey of Modern Thailand and Old Siam, The Sex Industry in Thailand, Transgender in Other Cultures, Kathoey and the Religious Order, and Changing Attitudes East and West. The book, as a whole, is written in a refreshingly comprehensible style that is free of so much of the impenetrable postmodern argot that seems to plague the lions share of cross-cultural literature on gender and sexuality. Nevertheless, the non-biographical chapters are quite uneven in terms of their scholarly content and the insights that they furnish. For example, in the chapter The Kathoey of Modern Thailand and Old Siam, Totman does a nice job of trying to identify historical sources indicating that kathoey represent an ancient cultural tradition. In contrast, other chapters, such as Biological Accidents, come off as quite amateurish. For instance, Totman makes the claim that It does not take a statistical survey to reveal that on average kathoey are taller than other Thai males and females (p. 37). Although we would beg to differ with such a claim, in any case, on the basis of this evidence, Totman goes on to suggest that kathoey may have Klinefelters syndrome because men with this intersex condition tend to be taller than their peers. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, there exist no published scientic reports documenting a higher incidence of androphilia among men with this intersex condition. Most researchers who have studied effeminate or transgendered, androphilic males in non-Western cultural contexts
1

Androphilia refers to sexual attraction to physically mature males, whereas gynephilia refers to sexual attraction to physically mature females.

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have tended to emphasize their unique cultural properties relative to each other, and relative to egalitarian gay male androphiles living in Western cultures (e.g., Johnson, Jackson, & Herdt, 2000). Implicit, and sometimes explicit, in this emphasis on cultural distinctiveness has been the idea that attempts to draw comparisons among androphilic males in these different groups are misguided because these phenomena cannot be understood outside of the unique cultural contexts that give rise to them. As such, the overall impression one gleans from the cross-cultural literature is that a vast array of male androphilias exist. In contrast, a small number of researchers have sought to elucidate cross-cultural universals among male androphiles by comparing these different groups. For example, retrospective studies conducted in Independent Samoa, Brazil, Guatemala, and the Philippines (Bartlett & Vasey, 2006; Cardoso, 2005; Whitam & Zent, 1984) conrm that androphilic males recall signicantly more cross-gender behavior and cross-sex wishes in childhood compared to their gynephilic counterpartsa pattern that has been well documented in Western nations such as Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Bailey & Zucker, 1995). Totman is careful to elaborate on the unique cultural attributes of the katheoy, yet similar information pertaining to cross-cultural universals can be gleaned from the various chapters of the book. For example, with respect to cross-sex wishes, Totman remarks striking is the fact that many boys proclaim they want to be like girls at a very early age (p. 367). Elsewhere, he notes that katheoy are probably more in what may loosely be described as arty careerscostume design, hairdressing, photography and the mediathan in academia or commerce, but a few have ofce and administrative jobs (p. 8). Similar career choices among transgendered androphilic males have been noted in other non-Western cultures (Whitam, 1997). Indeed, Totman draws parallels to the hijra of India, the faafane of Samoa (p. 121), and even to the show girls of London and Paris in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (p. 81). He states that these groups have the reputation of being outrageous in their performance and typically of crossing normal boundaries of etiquette and respectability (p. 118). The overall impression that we are left with is that this book suffers from a bit of an identity crisis; the book seems to be neither sh nor fowl. On the one hand, the book skirts between being part-biography, part-travelogue, part-popular trade book. On the other hand, Totman seems to present the book in the manner of serious social-scientic study (despite claims to the

contrary). For example, a brief chapter of the book, entitled Some Facts, Figures and Observations, contains descriptive statistics on various characteristics of the kathoey. Again, if what you are looking for is some up-close and personal portraits of transgendered, androphilic males from a non-Western culture, then you have come to the right place. That being said, readers looking for deeper academic analyses into the lives of these individuals, be it from a social constructivist or psychobiological perspective, will likely want to look elsewhere.

References
Bailey, J. M., & Zucker, K. J. (1995). Childhood sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation: A conceptual analysis and quantitative review. Developmental Psychology, 31, 4355. Bartlett, N. B., & Vasey, P. L. (2006). A retrospective study of childhood gendera typical behavior in Samoan faafane. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35, 559566. Brooks, P., & Bocahut, L. (1998). Woubi Cheri. [Motion Picture]. San Francisco: California Newsreel. Cardoso, F. L. (2005). Cultural universals and differences in male homosexuality: The case of a Brazilian shing village. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 34, 103109. Herdt, G. (1997). Same sex, different cultures: Exploring gay and lesbian lives. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Jackson, P. A. (1997). Kathoey \[ gay \ [ man. The historical emergence of gay male identity in Thailand. In L. Manderson & M. Jolly (Eds.), Sites of desire/economies of pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacic (pp. 166190). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Johnson, M., Jackson, P., & Herdt, G. (2000). Critical regionalities and the study of gender and sexual diversity in South East and East Asia. Culture, Health, and Sexuality, 2, 361375. Kulick, D. (1998). Travest: Sex, gender and culture among Brazilian transgendered prostitutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Murray, S. O. (2000). Homosexualities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nanda, S. (1998). Neither man nor woman: The hijras of India. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Nanda, S. (2000). Gender diversity: Cross cultural variations. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. Vasey, P. L., Pocock, D. S., & VanderLaan, D. P. (2006). Kin selection and male androphilia in Samoan faafane. Evolution & Human Behavior, 28, 159167. Whitam, F. L. (1997). Culturally universal aspects of male homosexual transvestites and transsexuals. In B. Bullough, V. L. Bullough, & J. Elias (Eds.), Gender blending (pp. 189203). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Whitam, F. L., & Zent, M. (1984). A cross-cultural assessment of early cross-gender behavior and familial factors in male homosexuality. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 13, 427439. Wikan, U. (1977). Man becomes woman: Transsexualism in Oman as a key to gender roles. Man, 12, 304319.

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TITLE: [The Third Sex] SOURCE: Arch Sex Behav 37 no4 Ag 2008 The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher: http://springerlink.metapress.com/content/1573-2800/