PHOTOS: Metro East Pride, After Olrlando

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Apple and Its Gay Ceo Want Nothing to Do With GOP Convention

The tech giant will not aid the Republicans in any way, and their misogynist, race-baiting nominee influenced the company’s decision.

www.advocate.com/election/2016/6/18/apple-and-its-gay-ceo-want-nothing-do-gop-convention

Customer Accuses Owners Of “Promoting Homosexuality” Because Of Bar Sign Supporting Orlando

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This Week’s Most Important And Uplifting Writing On Orlando

For many of us, this weekend particular weekend comes as more of a relief than usual. It holds the promise of an end to what has been an extremely grim week and the possibility of beginning to heal. We will go out to gay bars and clubs to boldly, unapologetically, defiantly celebrate our community, to be among our fellow LGBTQ citizens.

But even as we take the first steps toward returning to some sense of normalcy, it’s worth taking the time to look back at some of the moving and thought provoking writing that was published this week about the tangled intersection of issues surrounding the massacre at Pulse nightclub.

In “What the Orlando Nightclub Pulse Meant to Me As a Queer Teen,” Morgan Cohn paints a vivid, honest picture of the club that’s on everyone’s mind. “This week, there are millions of people who have never been to Pulse talking about the place,” Cohn writes. “A lot of people who have never been to Pulse talk about it as a sanctuary and a haven for the LGBTQ community — a place of celebration and pride. Pulse was all of those things, and I hope it still will be, but it was also a place that was sweaty and shirtless, where people in their underwear sold jello shots, where we made mistakes, where we learned from them.”

Meanwhile, in the New Yorker gay rights advocate Richard Socarides compares the the Orlando club to Stonewall and the Upstairs Lounge: “Pulse, named in honor of a man who died from H.I.V.-aids, will now be remembered as the site of the worst mass shooting in American history and perhaps the worst terrorist attack in the U.S. since 9/11, but it could also—not today or tomorrow, as we mourn, but soon—become a rallying cry for another movement against hate.”

Esquire’s Dave Holmes ponders the assertion by the shooter’s father that he was enraged by the sight of two men kissing in public and come to a chilling conclusion about the simmering, ever-present terror we endure just to be out in public: “Terrorism toward LGBT people is a redundancy.”

Reporting on the massive rally outside the Stonewall Inn in New York on Monday night, New Yorker staff writer Daniel Wegener marvels “at the thousands gathered in the streets surrounding Christopher Park … at the crowd’s immensity and diversity, and also at its calm, its self-possession.” Nick Jonas notwithstanding.

Village Voice associate editor Raillan Brooks parses the “Double Jeopardy” of being queer and Muslim in the aftermath of the Pulse massacre: “The day after the shooting, already sick of the ooga-booga headlines, I saw a tweet from Chicago-based shock jock Joe Walsh — ‘Islam hates #LGBT. Muslims hate gays. If you are gay, Islam wants you dead.’ — and I knew I was about to out myself one more time: ‘As a gay muslim,’ I responded, ‘I very much beg to differ.’”

“I’m a son of immigrants, and a gay man who grew up in Orlando in the ’80s and ’90s. My earliest visits to gay clubs in the city were clandestine operations, and let me tell you, it is difficult to be undercover-gay while dressing appropriately for a night out with the boys,” writes Matt Thompson in his piece at TheAtlantic.com in which he imagines the intersection of ethnic identity and homophobia that may have kept some of the Orlando victims in the closet until it was too late. “I can’t stop thinking about the possibility that someone like us was hurt or murdered at Pulse on Sunday morning, outed in the very worst way, in a phone call every family dreads.”

And with questions about the shooter’s sexuality further complicating the narrative around this tragedy, New York Magazine’s Science of Us blog tackles “The Myth of the Violent, Self-Hating Gay Homophobe.”

And finally, Richard Kim’s essay at TheNation.com reveals why gay clubs are so important to o many of us: “That was my first lesson that gay bars are more than just licensed establishments where homosexuals pay to drink. Gay bars are therapy for people who can’t afford therapy; temples for people who lost their religion, or whose religion lost them; vacations for people who can’t go on vacation; homes for folk without families; sanctuaries against aggression. They take sound and fabric and flesh from the ordinary world, and under cover of darkness and the influence of alcohol or drugs, transform it all into something that scrapes up against utopia.”

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This Gym in Thailand is Staffed Exclusively by Transgender Men

Jyb, the owner of Transfit, at his gym in Bangkok.

Jyb isn’t merely male. He’s an alpha male. Ragged claw marks are tattooed beneath his shredded pecs. It lends the impression that he wrestled with a jaguar and won.

Jyb’s abs, biceps and boy band-worthy smile certainly set him apart from most guys. But the 27-year-old Bangkok model and fitness instructor owes much of his social media stardom to the fact that he’s a transgender man.

And in Thailand, Jyb says, it’s never been a better time to be young, male and trans.

“In Thailand, acceptance for trans people has really shot up in the last five years,” says Jyb, whose full name is Phanyapad Maha-Udomporn. “Of course, you have old-fashioned thinkers who still say it’s wrong. But very few people from the young generation think this way.”

Jyb has a fan following on social media, where he shares selfies like this one.

Thailand, perhaps more than any other nation, is known for its vibrant and visible transgender population. But the spotlight is mostly fixed on trans women, often crudely labeled “ladyboys,” who delight tourists in cabaret shows.

Meanwhile, Thailand’s trans men, while invisible to much of the world, are enjoying more social prominence at home than ever.

Jyb is among a new wave of trans male heartthrobs. Between Facebook and Instagram, he boasts more than 40,000 followers — many of them smitten women decorating his comments section with googly eyed emojis.

Jyb is now translating his online buzz into profit. In 2015, he founded a gym exclusively for trans men and lesbians. Called Transfit — slogan: Not Only Men Gain Muscles — the workout facility is meant to draw in trans men who want to look like Jyb as well as women who want to train with him and his all-trans-male staff.

But Jyb is also appealing to another gender-based identity group that, in the West, might call themselves queer or non-binary. In Thailand they’re called “toms,” a word that borrows from the English word “tomboy.”

“A tom is a woman who dresses like a guy, cuts her hair like a guy and goes out with girls,” Jyb says. Many toms bind their breasts to appear flat-chested. Most prefer the pronoun, in Thai, that approximates “he” instead of “she.”

Some toms do identify as men, but many don’t.

Thais also have a word for women who date toms: “dee,” which borrows from the English word “lady.” (It’s pronounced “lay-DEE” in a Thai accent.) In most cases, Jyb says, a dee exudes mainstream Thai femininity: long, perfumed hair, lipstick, long lashes and so on — and they often exclusively seek out toms for romance.

In urban Thailand, tom-dee couples no longer draw smirks or stares. “You see them everywhere,” Jyb says. “They no longer have to hide in fear of society’s judgment.”

But many still abide by traditional gender norms.

“Toms can be sensitive. They’re like guys in that they can give off a bit of feminine sweetness. But toms have to take care of their girls,” Jyb says. “Just like guys.”

In recent years, an entire industry has sprung up to cater to toms and the women who adore them. A magazine, called @Tom Actz, showcases tom celebrities and tom-friendly fashion.

Another startup sells super-thick “tom bras” that flatten chests. Yet another sells a pomade for toms called“Littlebutch.” Heard of breast enlargement cream? Well, there’s a gel marketed to toms that allegedly shrinks breast size.

Romantic comedies about tom-dee couples screen in Thai cinemas. Love songs by toms routinely play on Thai radio stations.

But Thailand is not transgender paradise.

Unlike in the US, same-sex marriage is not legally recognized. Trans women are too often resigned to low-end service jobs or the entertainment sector. Transgender women and men can also struggle to break into career paths, such as law or government, that demand conformity to idealized notions of old-school propriety.

But unlike the United States — where 11 states are suing the federal government over its insistence that transgender students use the public toilet of their choice — Thailand is hardly balking as its trans population grows more visible and assertive.

Even conservative Thais typically believe transgender people have a role in society — even if they think that role should be resigned to the margins. And practically no one, Jyb says, is vexed about where Thai trans people ought to use the toilet.

After all, transgender Thais have developed a certain public bathroom etiquette without the intervention of lawyers and politicians. When nature calls in a public place, Jyb says, trans men typically use the men’s room. Toms often prefer the women’s restroom — and, obviously, so do trans women.

“People choose whatever restroom fits with what’s in their heart and soul. There’s no big debate,” Jyb says. “Though, honestly? The women’s room is usually cleaner.”

This article first appeared on PRI’s The World.

The post This Gym in Thailand is Staffed Exclusively by Transgender Men appeared first on Towleroad.

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