First Queer Voices from Thailand

This is a fully revised and substantially expanded edition of Peter Jackson’s highly regarded pioneering study of an Asian gay culture, Male Homosexuality in Thailand (1989). The hero of Jackson’s fascinating narrative is “Uncle Go”, which was the pen name of a popular magazine editor who, despite being avowedly heterosexual, was tolerant of all sexual practices and whose “agony uncle” columns in the 1970s provided unique spaces in the national press for Thailand’s gays, lesbians and transgenders (kathoeys) to speak for themselves in the public domain. By allowing the voices of alternative sexualities to be heard, Uncle Go emerged as Thailand’s first champion of gender equality and sexual rights.

Peter Jackson translates and analyses selected correspondence published in Uncle Go’s advice columns, preserving and presenting important primary sources. In this new edition, Jackson has expanded his coverage to include not only letters from Thai gay men, but also those from lesbians and transgenders, thus capturing the full diversity of Thailand’s modern queer cultures at a key moment in their historical development when new understandings of sexual identities were first communicated to the wider community.

Peter A. Jackson is emeritus professor of Thai history at the Australian National University and editor of Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights (HKU Press, 2011).

“How wonderful to see this classic volume printed in a new expanded edition for the 21st century! When first published the figure of Uncle Go became an instant and unique voice in Thai sexuality studies. Peter Jackson’s contributions here are huge and foundational.” —Gilbert Herdt, San Francisco State University

“If Thailand is now well known for its unique milieu of sex and gender diversity, it is in large part due to Peter Jackson’s writings. First Queer Voices from Thailand offers a rare archive of non-normative sexualities invaluable for anyone wishing to understand sexual modernity outside of the West.” —Ara Wilson, Duke University

“An amazing work. Most valuable for this new edition is perhaps the way in which it documents changes in Jackson’s thinking, and in the field of sexuality studies, over the last twenty years, in response to the methodological challenges of queer and transgender scholarship.” —Susan Stryker, University of Arizona