Individual Reflection

GEN110
Yan Ting Zhao (43259!2"
Word count: 580
My group decided to research, investigate and make our Wiki about ladyboys (kathoeys) in Thailand. We
found ladyboys to be an interesting and rather controversial topic, and it was highly relevant to the
Gender Studies topic of gender since they are gender ambiguities (ie. feminine men. We e!plored many
aspects of ladyboys such as key issues, legislation, media, society, religion, "ong Toom (prominent
advocate of ladyboys and an analysis of gender.
# contributed e!tensively by researching and writing about religion and its correlation and view of
ladyboys. #n many te!ts, the authors offered parado!ical e!planations of how religion ($uddhism, to be
specific was accepting but also unsympathetic of ladyboys. %ltimately, # decided that $uddhism, the
religion espoused by most Thais was mostly against kathoeys since Thai society is still largely intolerant
of ladyboys despite Thailand&s booming se! tourism trade and industry. # am satisfied with the material #
had compiled for the Wiki and ended up cutting down on long'winded sentences and paraphrasing.
# also wrote about (Thai society and its stance and attitudes towards ladyboys. The information was
easily attainable, and there was plenty to write about since Thai society mainly had an anti'homose!ual
stance. (owever, # had written far too much and ended up cutting the number of words down to satisfy
the word limit. # also ended up doing an analysis on gender to demonstrate the relevance of ladyboys to
Gender Studies. #nitially, # was slightly apprehensive about how to show the correlation between ladyboys
and Gender Studies. )uckily, there was a supplementary te!t on the Gender topic in i)earn and # used it to
e!plain the issue of gender and ladyboys.
My two other group members and # decided to split up the work e*ually. More or less, we all did + or ,
sections and helped in supervising the overall *uality control for the material on the Wiki. The sections #
chose to investigate were religion, society and an analysis of ladyboys in relation to the issue of gender.
-fter reading through the rubric for group work, # realised we had no images and hastily gathered some
interesting and relevant pictures of ladyboys. .verall, # found that working with others to complete group
work was a satisfying e!perience since everyone did their own fair share of the work. We were
responsible for our research areas and referencing our own material though we did work collectively to
ensure that overall referencing was as accurate as possible. We also demonstrated fantastic time
organisation, having finished most of the work at least two weeks before the Wiki was due. Moreover, all
of us also gave each other encouraging comments in group tutorials and online (in the Wiki discussion.
(owever, # believe my other group members could have improved their contributions by checking their
grammar, spelling and proofreading their allocated sections. # ended up correcting many grammatical and
spelling errors and deleting long'winded, unnecessary (and occasional nonsensical sentences. We were
also around /00 words over the word limit of +000, and # had to drastically reduce the number of words
we had to around +0,1 whilst still retaining relevant information. # believe that # could have improved on
making my contribution more concise and more sophisticated. "onetheless, researching ladyboys and
making a Wiki was an e!citing pro2ect to do and # am happy that my group members were also as
enthusiastic as me and diligent in creating this Wiki which we hope will be an interesting and informative
read.