Jeab and Joom, a lesbian couple, build a family of “mother, mother, and daughter” in a society where family diversity is not accepted. Even though they face hardships on all fronts, gender-based hate crime, schools that do not teach about family diversity, laws that do not protect same sex relationships, they carry on.
This family is defined by the words love and courage. “We build our family with love and genuine courage. We do not fear anything and we always carry on, and our daughter sees how we persist,” Jeab says.
Back when she was young, Jeab grew up in poverty. Her family was from Isaan, her mother was a single mother, and Jeab almost missed the chance to pursue education, “as someone from Isaan, I was living in poverty, we were rice farmers and there was domestic violence. My mother fought to be a single mother and she encountered the violence that single mothers faced raising seven children on her own. We did not have any welfare, there was no financial support, no scholarship, thirty years ago there was nothing to support children’s education… I was a girl and the family and the community didn’t support girls going to school. When I told my mum I wanted to pursue seventh grade, note that I did well in school, but the secondary school was eighteen kilometres away from home, there was no transport, I had to ride a bicycle but my family didn’t have the means to buy one, so at first I walked to school and I worked as a child labourer from nine years old so that I got the money to go to school, first I worked on the rice fields, after that I carried bricks.”
But she was not raised according to the binary gender norm, “with the absentee father, gender role wasn’t there and we did everything for survival regardless of gender. But when I didn’t fit into the gender norm myself, my mum said since I was young that ‘I don’t have a daughter,’ because I didn’t care about the gender norm, I was myself. My mum and I were like friends and she didn’t use any power over me since she’s also someone outside the norm.”
Jeab recounts that homophobia evidently manifested when she decided to adopt a child together with her same sex partner. “When my partner and I decided to take care of our child together, we realised how deep homophobia is rooted in society. Our family didn’t believe in our partnership, they didn’t think it was possible for us to settle down. There is also this discourse about how same sex couples negatively affect children. And our girl is bullied because she has two mothers. But the fault does not lie in our parenting. She is bullied because schools do not teach about family diversity, because society does not understand.”
When asked about how she stands strong in the face of adversity against her family, she says “we’re out and proud, our identity is visible, we don’t shy from public display of affection, Joom [her partner] and I always hold hands and hug. We truly build our family on love and courage, we never fear anyone. So my daughter sees how courageous we are.”
Her family’s safe space is built on love and understanding. “We try to create a safe space where our daughter can tell us anything. We raise our daughter like a friend, have a safe space for her, so we’re close. When something’s up, she doesn’t have to say a word and we know. It’s an understanding relationship we have. If our daughter is bullied, she will tell us, then we solve the problem together.”
Still, being in a same sex relationship in a society deficient of gender equality is always a challenge. Their house was once set on fire, to evict them. “Around seven years ago, our house was once set on fire to evict us from the community, six times in ten days. I went to the police to file charges but the police said it could be simply accidents when in fact it was intended to threaten us. After it all boiled down, the police put the event on their daily report but didn’t file a charge. People in the community all knew who did it. But would we dare go back to sleep in our own home, in that community? I’m traumatised. Do you realise how much two lesbians had to work for, in order to buy a land and build a house, we’re proud of it. Now we lost it, lost our security in life, we have to rent from place to place and lost so much money in the past seven years.”
Despite all that, Jeab insists she must speak out. “I’m traumatised every time I talk about this but I keep on talking. Or else people are going to still be wrapped up in their misconception that Thailand is LGBTI paradise. It’s not. So many LGBTI persons cannot get a job, are bullied, our humanity is not included, the laws don’t recognise us, nor do the public health system. I need to keep on talking about our pain, that we need protection.”
Another major challenge as a lesbian couple unrecognised by the state is that they cannot legally adopt their daughter nor sign any school documents. “This is what our daughter has been through since middle to high school. Even when entering university when she had to fill in parents’ information, we cannot be her parents on paper nor in practice. Imagine an accident happens and the school cannot reach out to us. This is the burden on my daughter’s shoulders just because same sex marriage is not legalised.”
Jeab says that “with or without the law, the LGBTI community is here, but it’ll be different with the law. We won’t have to suffer, I don’t have to keep repeating that my daughter cannot travel overseas, my home wouldn’t have been burnt down, we won’t be discriminated against. Society needs to create a new culture that embraces diversity in order to go on. This society has been frozen for so long that the younger generations don’t feel like they’re part of it anymore.”