Walk like a warrior:
an interview with Dead Prez
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UNC Asheville to host fifth scholarly
conferenceon GLBT studies
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Transvestite boxer back in Thai limelight

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

Bangkok, Thailand, Mar. 8 (IPS)— Mention the name “Nong Toom”here and most Thais seem to know who she is, this strikingly beautiful woman, with a curvaceous body and graceful gestures to match.

This popularity stems from her (then his) story, which grabbed public attention in early 1998 -- a transvestite, or “katoey” as Thais call them, excelling in the most macho of sports in this Southeast Asian country, Thai kickboxing or “Muay Thai.”

In 2000, after pummeling the men in the ring, Parinya “Nong Toom” Charoenphol decided to fulfill a boyhood dream to become a woman. Now, at 21 years, she is.

It was a story waiting to be grabbed for film given its uniqueness -- this country had never witnessed the presence of a transvestite in the ring before. Nong Toom, in fact, would happily wear lipstick during bouts.

In many ways, the story of Nong Toom -- beyond the curiosity it readily generates -- brought into sharp focus the struggles and triumphs of an individual belonging to one of Thailand’s pervasive sexual minorities.

Thus, film director Ekachai Uekrongtham has set his heart on exploring such themes and more to project this “very humane account” in his film, Beautiful Boxer.

“This is the story of a very warm person who believed that he was born in a wrong body and fights to get what he wishes,” says Ekachai outside a studio north of Bangkok, where filming has begun.

Beautiful Boxer, which is estimated to cost $2.5 million, is Ekachai’s cinematic debut. He has earned a name in this Southeast Asian country as an award-winning stage director.

Nong Toom herself is a consultant in the film and is cast in a minor role as a trainer to top kickboxer Asanee Suwan, who will play Nong Toom in the film.

To give the depth and seriousness the film requires, the narrative of Beautiful Boxer will be woven around Nong Toom’s childhood in a home of a family living on the borders of poverty in northern Thailand, his years as a novice Buddhist monk and his life as the “lady-boy” -- a term often used here -- boxer.

For the real-life star, the film delves with aspects of her life that convey the passion that drove her in her journey from boyhood to womanhood.

“You cannot choose how you are born, but you can choose how you want to be, and make society accept you the way you are. That is the lesson of the film,” said Nong Toom.

But in attempting to immortalize Nong Toom’s struggles through film, director Ekachai is also helping to clarify -- or, some may say, push -- the limits placed by the authorities here on portraying katoey in popular culture.

The medium he has chosen -- a movie for the big screen, rather than television -- helps because in Thailand authorities such as the police censorship board edit out sections they deem unsavory for local audiences.

“The government is more sensitive to the way katoey appear on television, because it is a more popular medium,” said Ubonrat Siriyuvasak of the communication arts faculty at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “Film is where new ground can be broken.”

Currently, katoey are a regular feature on television shows, but often in comedies and in those, too, they have minor roles. Television viewers rarely get to see a portrayal of katoey where their individual struggles and triumphs in life are depicted.

Yet katoey move freely in this society, a mark of tolerance toward this sexual minority. Besides occupations that katoey have been identified with -- like dancers in go-go bars, in hair salons and in the fashion industry -- they work in banks, in department stores and, in a few cases, in the civil service.

The law works in their favor in Thailand, where homosexuality is not deemed a crime, unlike some of the other countries in the region. As significant for the katoey is the ease with which they can get hormone pills, have breast implants and, as in the case of Nong Toom, get corrective surgery here.

The film will be released later this year. A thumbs-up for Beautiful Boxer will mean more space for Thai cinema to shed light on a sexual minority that, despite the openness of society toward them, has no legal rights and, as a result, remains vulnerable to abuse.

Movie graphic courtesy of www.pantip.com

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Walk like a warrior:

an interview with Dead Prez

By Rosa Clemente

Dead Prez blazed into hip hop in 1998 with the politically-charged single, “It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop.” Their Let’s Get Free album spoke about Black self-determination in a way no one else was doing at the time, in hip hop or out. They were signed to Loud Records, but got screwed when Loud closed its doors and DP’s contract was commandeered by Columbia Records, a subsidiary of Sony. Their planned studio album, Walk Like A Warrior, was shelved. After many delays, the studio album will hit the streets on May 20, 2003.

In November, 2002, despite the restrictive terms of their contract, an independent album, Turn Off The Radio, was put out on Holla Black Records under the name DPZ.

If you get the chance to see DP perform, do it, because they bring an amazing show. DP is made up of Stic and Mutulu “M1” Olugabala, and is part of People’s Army, a larger musical and political collective. Rosa Clemente sat down with Stic at his home in Brooklyn to break down the message in the music for Clamor magazine.

Clamor: You guys have shirts that say “Pimp The System.” What do you mean by that?

Dead Prez: There’s a lot of movements that are building for community or self-determination, community control over all aspects of our lives, from the land all the way to the education, etcetera. But we’re not there yet, because that’s a campaign that’s building. You’ve got to win masses of people to really make it work. So in the meantime… people are forced to work 40 hours a week, people are forced to do all kinds of shit, people selling pussy, people pimping pussy, people doing all kind of shit to survive. So the mentality that I see as progressive, that we try to put forth is, when you’re in these situations, understand these relationships and that it’s a pimp situation, and seek out ways to sabotage that pimping relationship. Seek out ways where you can abuse — if they put you on the register, you can get some extra change for your family. If they put you on guard duty, you can let us come get some TVs. You got to pimp the system. And that’s the mentality, not just in theory, but really that’s what we found ourselves doing to survive because the jobs and shit like that that they give us aren’t really for us to survive, it’s for them to survive. So in order for us to survive, until we get full independence, and self-determination, we got to pimp their shit, and milk it and use it. If you go to school, you can’t go to school so you can work to brainwash your people. You got to go to school so you can learn certain information, certain skills and use it to empower your community.

Clamor: Do you think the government of the United States is failing?

DP: I think it depends on what you think their job is. I think the government is on point with what they set out to do — set up a capitalist organization. I think the government, this system, fails black people, it fails oppressed people, the brown people, the red people. But I think this government works in the interest of the majority of white people. I think that’s a failure to human rights; that’s a failure to social development. In the end, that’s going to cause and has caused war and conflict and all of the daily shit we up against as far as poverty, drug abuse, trumped up incarceration, political imprisonment. All this shit is caused by what this system is designed to do. And it’s working.

Clamor: You put out an album recently, Turn Off That Radio, on your own label. Is that album and releasing it that way part of a resistance to that system?

DP: I hope that it can be helpful. At the bottom of all our struggles is the need for economics, so we got to do this music. I don’t think everybody has to use their musical talent, or whatever talent to say the same thing. I think there are people who’ve shown that they can be empowered financially or economically without talking about black self determination. They can demonstrate it, but their rap might be about shaking your ass — you know. Shit, that’s not the worst thing on the planet to do. For us, Turn Off The Radio is a sentiment and it’s really saying, they’re trying to program us with what to think, what’s cool, based off this system. And when we’re saying “turn off the radio,” it’s cause it’s reflected in the music, in the entertainment, and that’s a big weapon the oppressor uses on us. Whether you do that literally or not is not really the mission. But the mission is that you would recognize why somebody would say that, and where that sentiment is coming from.

Clamor: Dead Prez and your crew, People’s Army, seems to be able to bridge the brothers and sisters in the hood struggling for basic food and shelter and the black middle class and college students. What makes you able to bring those communities together that sometimes, because of class issues, are divided?

DP: Most of these things are responses to repression. Some people’s response to oppression is you got to go to school, you got to get a diploma, you got to get a degree, that’s going to put you in a better position so you’re not at the bottom of this shit. That’s some people’s response, like the bourgeoisie. Some people’s response is the white man is the fucking devil ‘cause look how he been doing everybody on the whole planet; we need our own language, we need our own culture, I ain’t wearing no Calvin Klein, I’m wearing a dashiki, whoop-de-woo, I’m celebrating Kwanzaa, fuck Christmas. That’s their response. Some people in the hood it’s like, I ain’t got no options, the motherfuckin’ police dropped this dope over here, I’m gonna sell this dope. I’m a be a thug. And these women got all the jobs and nigger ain’t got no job, so I’m gonna be a pimp. That’s somebody’s response to oppression. So, with DPZ, I understand that it’s all related to like Malcolm says, to the response; these are different attempts to survive. So instead of separating ourself, it seem like we can pull each other together by understanding that that’s all we trying to do. I have a belief in political education in the sense that if we can get a firm understanding of how we got in this social situation, it will unify people to change it.

But I’m drawn to the hood for a lot of reasons: how I was brought up, the environment I was brought up in. I didn’t never go to college. I was kicked out of high school. So I relate to what’s going on in the street, just from my uncles, brothers, whoop-de-woo — shit I was doing. I have more experiences than I have in a college setting, but I also have cultural experiences. I been exposed to Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, being healthy, training in the martial arts, you know. With Dead Prez, we want to be something that black people can find as a link, instead of another attack on black people. We want black people to feel like, I’m being represented. When I listen and whatever these guys try and promote and put out here, they’re trying to include everyone’s concerns as best as they can, as two motherfuckers. And I want people to know that it’s bigger than me and M because, because of our experiences, we’re limited. And M, M1 — that nigger is from the hood and the nigger went to college, so he has a balance. That’s what enables him to relate and to recognize the significance of that sector of the population and be able to communicate.

Clamor: Dead Prez’s music, especially your rhymes, is very up front: it talks about conflicts with your wife, it talks about your drinking, what you were doing as a kid. What gives you the ability to be so honest and personal?

DP: There was a time in hip hop where I used to write brag rhymes, you know: I’m the best MC don’t test me, whoop-de-woo, all that. And then people started saying, keep it real. That became a popular phrase. And I started saying yeah, I like that, I like that real shit. I started thinking about people, I don’t know if they were keeping it real, but things that was real life stories and occurrences — that shit made me say, yeah, if I’m gonna do this shit, that answers, that fulfills what I’m trying to do. I gotta write about the stress I’m going through. I’m inspired by people like 2Pac, his honesty with his mom on crack, whoop-de-woo. He putting that out there, that shit is therapy for him, and it let other people know that it’s not a skeleton in your closet, this is life. The ruling class wanna make a fantasy, but we’re dealing with conflicts and shit all day and if I’m trying to hide it, then I’m not trying to fix it. If I put it out there, I can probably get some answers and move forward. So it’s a strength. I’m not saying in no funny way, but it’s a strength to say what’s really poppin’. Put it out there so people don’t have no illusion. People think because you talk about be healthy you some guru on health — nah. It’s because I’ve been unhealthy a lot and I can appreciate being healthy. I don’t want to just start talking about health, I want to start talking about how unhealthy I done lived, so it can relate. That’s the whole thing. I’m trying to talk to real people about some real shit so I got to be honest enough with myself so you know that’s what I’m really doing.

Source: Clamor: www.clamormagazine.org

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UNC Asheville to host fifth scholarly
conferenceon GLBT studies

Asheville, North Carolina, Mar. 11— The University of North Carolina at Asheville will host its fifth Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Conference Mar. 21-22 on the UNCA campus. The theme of this year’s conference is “Citizen Queer,” with papers, workshops and performances exploring the inclusion and exclusion of GLBT individuals in a variety of social contexts, and GLBT activism and resistance within and outside institutions of higher learning. This national conference brings together scholars from across the country and includes nearly 30 faculty and student presenters, and representatives from universities across the US. The conference is sponsored by UNCA’s Academic Affairs and Student Affairs divisions, the Office of Diversity and Minority Affairs, the Office of the Chancellor, Underdog Productions (a student programming group), and the Drama and Sociology departments.

The keynote performer, internationally acclaimed gay artist Tim Miller, will perform “Glory Box” at 8pm Friday, Mar. 21, at UNCA’s Belk Theatre. The performance, which includes strong adult themes and language, explores immigration rights of gay and lesbian couples, and Miller’s own experience with a society that he believes does not recognize his identity and his own bi-national relationship. Miller is the author of two books, including Body Blows: Six Performances by Tim Miller (University of Wisconsin Press) and Shirts & Skin (Alyson Publications). He teaches theater at the University of California Los Angeles and at California State University Los Angeles and is co-founder of two performance spaces, Performance Space 122 in New York City and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. Miller has performed all over North America and Europe.

While Gay/Lesbian Studies has been an established academic discipline since the 1970s, the use of “queer” in the title of the conference may be surprising to some.

“The use of the word ‘queer’ in academic circles refers to the efforts of GLBT individuals to reclaim their marginalized status through reclaiming pejorative language,” said conference co-organizer Keith Bramlett, who teaches sociology at UNCA.

“The word queer is necessarily ambiguous. The re-appropriation of the word queer is based partially on the idea that its use strips it of homophobic power while emphasizing the difference between what you call yourself and what other people call you. Queer refers to self-identification. In a sense, queer should only be used in the first person,” said Bramlett.

Registration for the conference ranges from $65 for the general public to $40 for undergraduate students, with fees covering all performances, workshops, sessions and breakfast on Friday and Saturday. Advanced registration is strongly recommended. Those who wish to attend Miller’s “Glory Box” but not the entire conference may purchase tickets in advance for $12 at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville. No tickets will be sold at the door. Miller’s performance includes strong adult themes. Those under 17 must be accompanied by a parent and identification will be required.

Visit the conference web site at www.unca.edu/glsc/home.html or call 828-232-5021 for ticket and registration information.

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