The "tom gays" of Thailand

Thailand is famous for its tom-dee culture, where "tom" is a counterpart to butch and "dee" is a counterpart to femme. Tom-dee culture has a very sophisticated classification system of female nonheterosexuality. Not only do they distinguish between "tom" (butch) and "dee" (femme), but they also have language for "tom/tom" and "dee/dee" relationships. Toms attracted to other toms are called "tom gay" (butch4butch), while feminine-presenting women attracted to other feminine-presenting women are called "les" or "lesbian" (femme4femme). "Queen" "king" or "2-way" are added as suffixes to the end of these terms to denote role (who is the "top" "bottom" or "switch"). Hence, there are many permutations of "tom gay" and "les":

  • tom gay king
  • tom gay queen
  • tom gay 2-way
  • les king
  • les queen
  • les 2-way
Notably, "tom gay" is recognized as a distinct category from true "tom", especially "tom gay queen". A revealing quote from a self-identified "tom gay" immersed in tom-dee culture:
"Tom gay isn’t really a real tom (tom-thae). They may dress like a tom in general, but when they buy and select clothes, they like the gay style of dress rather than looking like a tomboy. They don’t dress like men... Most toms that like another tom are one of two categories, which are tom gay king or tom gay queen. Tom gay kings at first like dees, but are broken hearted from dees and start to hang out with tom gay queens. Tom gay queens are toms who dress mostly like toms, that is they dress like gays, but have never been attracted to dees and like to check out toms."

The above quote is from the 2010s, so it might be a little dated.

This pertains to discussions of the different phenotypes of female nonheterosexuality, and the phenomena of "butch4butch" and 'hefemale'-philia. There might exist a "pseudobutch" phenotype, that is distinct from the "true butch" phenotype.

EDIT: This post was written in haste. While tom is a rough counterpart to Severi Luoto's description of the butch phenotype, dees are not a counterpart to Luoto's description of the femme phenotype. Most dees would probably belong to the mostly-heterosexual phenotype. 

From Page 30 of Megan Sinnott's (2004) Toms and Dees:

"Dees are a subset of women whose sexual desires are not particularly marked in tom-dee discourses of self or in mainstream society’s discourses. Also, in contrast to gay men, dees have an ambiguous relationship to the category “homosexual.” Toms, dees, and people in general often see dees as necessarily women who are heterosexual but have chosen toms for various personal or social reasons. Dees are consequently not understood by most Thais as “homosexual” in the same way that toms or gays are."

References

Sinnott, M. J. (2004). Toms and dees: Transgender identity and female same-sex relationships in Thailand. University of Hawaii Press.

Sinnott, M. (2012). Korean-pop, tom gay kings, les queens and the capitalist transformation of sex/gender categories in Thailand. Asian Studies Review, 36(4), 453-474. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2012.739995

Luoto, S., Krams, I., & Rantala, M. J. (2019). A life history approach to the female sexual orientation spectrum: Evolution, development, causal mechanisms, and health. Archives of sexual behavior, 48(5), 1273-1308. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1261-0

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