[Video] Bodies that (Un)bind: The Production of Tomboy and Transgender Knowledge in Thailand

Recorded on February 6, 2025

This talk by Emi Donald, History Ph.D. Candidate at Cornell University, explores and analyzes how tomboy (thom in Thai) and trans man came to constitute two distinct but bounded modes of embodiment in contemporary Thailand. From the mid-2000s onwards, Thai trans men gained wider social recognition, partly, they argue, by publicly distinguishing themselves from the older idea of thom. Thom and transman are bound to each other in experience and personal history but also repel each other according to newly founded modes of knowing the body.