Being A Gay Expat in Cambodia

This month Phnom Penh celebrates Gay Pride 2009. Images of male drag and transsexual artists performing venues like Blue Chilli, Salt Lounge and Pontoon Lounge will fill daily newspapers and monthly magazines like this one. The presence of such images in the mainstream media, along with the attendance of politicians at gay and lesbian awareness events, indicates the strides that Cambodia has taken in accepting sexual diversity.

However, within this tolerance lies a stereotypical assumption that is misleading, though seemingly commonplace throughout the region. Most homosexuals are not transsexuals, they do not cross-dress and they certainly do not perform on stage for a living. They are doctors, nurses, teachers and business people just like in the heterosexual community. What has been the impact of the cultural dominance of the katoy (or ladyboy) on the perception of homosexuality within the Kingdom? Johan Smits talks with gay and lesbian expats, single and married, from various cultural backgrounds to find out whether being homosexual in Cambodia is any different than it is in the West.

“I haven’t really encountered anybody who’s bothered about it,” says Lee. “Maybe that’s because they [Cambodians] don’t understand what it’s about.” Lee is twenty-nine and has lived here for over a year. She is gay. The “it” she is referring to is her sexuality. Lee is far from alone in feeling that many Cambodians just don’t quite get it. Michael is a forty-year-old New Zealander working in education. He has been in Cambodia for longer than Lee – six years. Like Lee, he believes the way he is being perceived here is all to do with novelty.

“It’s different from what the Cambodians know,” he says. Despite this lack of understanding he detects a different kind of criticism here than at home. “In the West, kids are trained, early on, to be homophobic,” he says. “Walking around with your arms around each other was just normal till you got to be about the age of ten, and then teachers and parents would tell the kids, ‘don’t put your arm around your mate, that’s kind of gay’.”

In Cambodia, it is commonplace for couples of the same sex to go out holding hands in public, whether they are gay or straight. This makes it easy for gay couples to move around in public, as if they were just ‘brothers’ or ‘sisters’, but is this really what they want? Isabelle is a thirty-year-old yoga teacher from Canada. While she may feel liberated walking along the street holding her girlfriend’s hand, she regrets the lack of clear context in which her gender identity can be placed. “There can be something safe and comfortable when you know ‘this is who I am, this is how people are going to read me, this is the context they’re going to give me’, and I know how to work with that,” she explains.

Taboo or Not Taboo, That’s the Question

For many expats, even discussing their sexuality is just not yet possible. Bob grew up in Myanmar, but is familiar with western society too. He has lived for seven years in Australia and is now in a relationship with Thomas from Germany. They’re both around the same age, respectively thirty-two and twenty-nine. Bob thinks his native country and Cambodia are pretty similar in terms of cultural values and society. “It’s never threatening towards gays and there’s no hate, but at the same time it’s very conservative, it’s a taboo subject,” he says.

While Thomas did not wear his love on his sleeve back home, it was at least a forum for discussion. “In Germany I wouldn’t go around declaring, ‘I’m gay,’ but there always comes a point when you talk about it with colleagues or people you hang out with,” he says. “This, you don’t do here,” although he is quick to add that it is not a subject that keeps him awake at nights.

Guillaume goes further than Bob and Thomas. Better known by his nickname ‘Bébé’, he has run several bars in Phnom Penh over the past ten years, as well as running guest houses in Kep and currently in Sihanoukville. Bébé regards Cambodians’ “misconception of homosexuality” more an “incomprehension” than a taboo. He attributes it to a lack of cultural understanding and a social evolution that is still nascent. “The absence of culture with regards to sexual orientation makes being gay in Cambodia a subject of mockery, not opinion,” he says. He believes that clichéd images of the effeminate gay are still very much in evidence here.

What’s in a Name?

Bébé’s observation is reflected in the stereotypical gender roles foreigners feel are assigned to them here in same-sex relationships. “If I’m a woman who sleeps with women, then one of us has got to be the man,” says Isabelle. She finds that whereas being gay in the West it’s very much about sexual identity, in Southeast Asia it is much more about gender identity. “People aren’t going to associate you so much with whom you’re sleeping than with the gender that you represent,” she says.

Michael compares it to the time of his grandfather who never knew that he was gay because he didn’t fit the cliché of the man in drag, the prevalent image of gay men at that time. “To me I think it just shows a young culture – they haven’t been exposed to lots of diversity and different ways of living,” he says. “It just shows the immaturity of things, not in a patronising way, but that they’re still young and formulating their ideas of how people are.”

This view is echoed by Holly. Originally from the U.S., she has lived here for six years. A lot of the time local people think she’s a guy, though this is something she has encountered before. “I had the same in West Virginia – I used to shoot pool with guys with shotguns in their trucks, who thought I was a boy – they’re just so clueless,” she chuckles.

The fact that in the Khmer language there is no word that means ‘gay’ the way it is understood in the West, underscores the focus on gender identity. With no real definitions for heterosexuals, homosexuals or bisexuals, roles of sexual identity seem to be more fixed. “I think they struggle with the concept of two straight-looking guys sleeping in the same bed and having a sexual relationship on a regular basis,” says Bob. He relates an anecdote where he and Thomas ordered room service in a hotel, and the girl who served them didn’t want to leave. “She was standing there, just out of curiosity,” he laughs.

The drag figure and the ‘katoy’ [transsexual] is much more understandable in this society. As a result, many Cambodians would only perceive the ‘feminine’ guy as being gay, but not the ‘masculine’ one, claims Thomas. Would a clearer terminology eventually lead to a better understanding of what being gay means? Fred is wary of superimposing a whole vocabulary that was created in the West. The forty-nine-year old American feels that some Asians may not want to buy into it. As the director of one of Cambodia’s leading performing arts companies, and having lived here for almost thirteen years, he is very much aware of the Cambodian cultural reality.

“We developed all this terminology,” he says. “We’re the ones who created the gay, the straight, the bisexual and so on, and now we’ve made other sub-terms of it – there’s the rice queen, the potato queen etc.” To him it’s the very absence of those labels that is part of the beauty about Asians. “In fact there are many men who are very happily married, who also want to have sex with men sometimes. It’s a very Asian reality.”

Love’s Labour Won

Michelle, thirty-two and Anandi, twenty-four, are both from Canada. They met here in Cambodia and tied the knot last month during a wedding ceremony on a boat on the Tonle Sap River. For Cambodia this is not like your everyday party, but the newlyweds received nothing but positive reactions from their Khmer friends who were invited and who took part in the celebrations.  “They were really congratulatory,” says Michelle. “We were given cards, flowers and all kinds of stuff,” she recalls. “They also giggled a lot of the time,” Anandi adds.

This kind of reaction did not just come from people their age but from across different classes and genders who were all somehow represented by one person or another. I asked them if that also meant people understood what their gay marriage was really all about. “I think the people who were at our wedding understood that it was love,” says Michelle.

She suspects that a lot of the time people focus only on the sex element when they discuss about being gay or straight, both here and in the West. “I believe it was a nice thing for them to see that it’s about so much more than that, that it does involve love and emotions and feelings just the same way as between a boy and a girl.”  I wondered if that made them confident enough to introduce one another as ‘my wife’. For Michelle, at least in Cambodia, it would depend on who the people were, but back in Canada she would automatically introduce Anandi as her wife. Anandi was more reticent. “Sometimes it’s better to ease that into a person,” she explains. By way of example she recounts how on her recent visit back home one of the first things she told her parents was that she was getting married. When asked what his name was, she answered ‘her name is Michelle’. Anandi laughs at the memory. “They were like, ‘so, you’re getting married and you’re gay? One at a time, kid!’”

Woman’s Best Friend

Despite the success of their wedding, Michelle and Anandi’s story is an exception to the rule. The relationship issues that both gays and lesbians are facing in Cambodia seem to be no different than those of people looking for a straight relationship. When it comes to western-Khmer dating, gaps – both in culture and age – are immediately cited as obstacles. To Lee the very opportunity of meeting local lesbians hardly exists. “Maybe I’ve met two,” she says. “I’ve been here for a while. You’d think you’d be able to meet a few more.” Not so for Holly – she reckons she knows more than forty Khmer lesbian couples. “I meet them at WAC [Woman’s Agenda for Change] functions and they all go to Gay Pride, drag shows and stuff,” she says. “But they’re culturally different from what I’m used to – I don’t hang out with them, I just meet them.”

Even, if you do manage to cross that cultural barrier, like with many straight relationships, the age difference kicks in. “They’re all young, in their mid-twenties,” says Michael. “People our age have probably been forced to get married,” the 40 year-old opines. Even when meeting other gay expats, age still comes up as a big spoilsport. According to Holly, most expat lesbians who are here bring their girlfriend with them. “If you’re in your late twenties, it’s no problem,” she says, “but I’m not looking to get into a relationship with someone half my age.” Michael agrees. He faces the same problem with men and is considering moving to another country because he doesn’t want to end up alone.

Another exception to the rule is Helen. She’s British, in her mid-thirties and met her Irish partner here in Cambodia. This month the couple will travel to the U.K. to enter a civil partnership. However, even she agrees that it’s difficult to meet other lesbians of her age. She compares her Cambodian experience with other countries where she has lived. She claims there’s a real lack of a formalised network here. “Usually there’s been a reasonably active NGO that is working a lot to try and raise awareness around the country to support people that are coming out, need help or counselling or whatever,” she says. “I’m not really aware that there’s anything like that in Cambodia, and yet the NGO scene is so active in so many other areas.”

She too thinks that if you come here as a foreigner and want to be pro-active or just have the confidence to put yourself out there, it would be hard to get connected and make friends. Holly sums it all up in a down-to-earth way. “I have to speak as a woman my age, right?” she says. “If you’re a lesbian and you come to Cambodia – A, bring a partner; B, import a partner; C, get a dog; or D, don’t come.”

It’s a Young Woman’s World

So it seems the world belongs to the young. It does for some. Anandi found it very easy to meet Michelle because she was ‘in the scene’, running a bar. Within three days of moving here, her social network was formed. She claims Cambodia to be the easiest place to meet girls, even better than Toronto. Isabelle smiles when the topic arises. “You hear so much from single, straight women about how frustrating it is to be in Phnom Penh, and I just laugh and say, you should try women because there are so many gay women here.” She thinks it’s probably much easier in Phnom Penh to be a single gay woman than a single straight woman.

As for the men, Bob and Thomas find it no trouble making contact here because it’s a small community. Bob also mentions heterosexual friends who, when they know you’re gay, may network for you and introduce you to other gay friends. To Bébé, the new opening of gay businesses makes it more and more possible to meet other gay expats.

Pride and Integrity

Holly, Lee and Michael are very enthusiastic about this month’s Gay Pride. Michael hopes the event may help bring people together and establish more of a community. Michelle voices similar expectations. “It’s such a transient life here, expats come and go. It’s great Gay Pride is happening this year and I hope it can become something that will carry on,” she says. Fred too thinks it is fantastic.

He sees very strong parallels between the evolution of the gay community in Cambodia and that of the work he’s been doing here in helping to revive Cambodian performing arts. “Even though our dance is very contemporary, it’s still very much rooted in the classical form,” he says. “The fact is that I can do that now, even when some people are mad at me, but that’s normal, that’s good, that’s the actual discussion that needs to happen.” He applies the same to the gay world and feels that some things can happen now that were not possible three to four years ago. At the same time he believes that people need to be respectful. Change, he says, comes out of just being who you are. “It comes from a source of real integrity and a real desire to move forward. Then people will follow, because it’s not being superimposed and it’s real.”

Not that everybody will be open to it. “Are they all going to tune into the TV station when it comes on television? Of course not. But I think more people will than you expect, because some of them are interested, some people are intrigued, and that will give them a chance to take a look inside that world.” A world, he says, that not only consists of ‘katoy’ and drag shows. “Transgender and all that, it’s fine, that’s part of who we are, but they should also see a slice of people who look just like them, who dress just like them, who have a good job, but they’re gay, they’re comfortable and they have a boyfriend.”