I don't really have anything to do with the transgender conversation that is taking place in the United States or UK or wherever else. I am quite happy to sit that play out. Here in Thailand though, transgenders, ladyboys, or "katooey" have been an accepted part of Thai culture for possibly 100 years, maybe more. I appreciate this about Thai people as they are a people of "let people live however they want" and I agree with this notion... well, that is until they start to harm other people.
Such is the acceptance of alternative lifestyles here in Thailand that they have had "most beautiful ladyboy" competitions for many years here and they didn't do this because of some sort of social justice scheme enacted by social media either. Either you are interested in that sort of thing or you aren't. For me, I know a couple of ladyboys and I'm just like "whatever." I refer to them as "she" and there isn't an ounce of politics in this. They are simply a part of society here.
Well that is until they resort to crime and it is revealed that they are considerably stronger than genuine women.
In Phuket recently, a ladyboy stopped by a Thai household high on meth and demanded a women who lived there hand over the keys to her motorbike despite the fact that the unidentified ladyboy arrived there on a motorbike. The motivation for this is unclear and honestly, this only made the news because it was a ladyboy. Petty theft of this sort happens all the time here in Thailand and I know quite a few people who have had their bikes stolen. It isn't often done where the perpetrator is clearly visible to the victims though.
According to reports, a ladyboy turned up at a Thai household in Phuket demanding the keys to a motorbike that was parked out front. As you would expect the owner of the bike refused only to have the methed up "woman" come back about 20 minutes later, force their way into the house and then steal the key to the bike. It was a 4-year old that spotted the raiding person and just said "what are you doing here?" The 19 year old relative of the young person called her brother in law and since he lived nearby he was able to get to the house before the ladyboy was able to get away. The brother in law pursued the fleeing ladyboy but kicked the bike over, crashing it.
You can see the ladyboy fleeing on foot on the left side of the above pic.
Here is where things get funny and a bit disappointing. Unsurprisingly, the stoned out of her mind ladyboy returned to retrieve the crashed motorbike, which was the one they arrived on. By that time the police were there yet the ladyboy paid no mind to this. When the police told her that she needed to come with them to the police station the ladyboy jumped at the opportunity to get back on the motorbike that she arrived on and somehow get away. It was only through license plate tracking that they found out the bike belonged to the ladyboy's mother and what a proud mother she must have been to get that particular visit from the boys in brown uniforms.
Here's the thing about Thailand. I have never heard of a high-speed chase happening here. Most of the time the police have old and slow pickup trucks and when you do see them on motorbikes they are the same cheap 125 CC motorbikes that everyone has. One of the funniest ones I saw a copper on was pink and had Hello Kitty decals on it. It is just kind of difficult to take them seriously as law enforcement when this happens.
They ladyboy has not yet turned herself in but it is only a matter of time. For whatever reason, and despite the cops being damn near useless in this country, there isn't a lot of crime and even when there is crime, it tends to be mostly non-violent things like this. The idea of masked intruders robbing a bank and stuff like that which we see in western movies just really doesn't happen here and perhaps this has something to do with the country being primarily Buddhist and believing in Karma.
I would be willing to bet that this home invader doesn't spend a single minute in jail and the police will just file a report, award the victims a couple thousand Baht, and that will be the end of it. Is this an effective method of dealing with crime? Not at all, but for whatever reason, Thailand is still much safer than USA with our police officers ready for war in supercharged vehicles.