ADVOCACYNET 412, July 29, 2024
Facing a Common Foe, Burmese Resistance Welcomes LGBTQ+ Recruits
By Madeleine Ekeberg Schneider
First of two articles. Names have been changed to preserve confidentiality
Earlier this year, in an effort to reverse growing losses in its war against ethnic rebel forces, the military Junta in Myanmar/Burma introduced conscription. The decision sent thousands of young Burmese fleeing to Thailand and intensified an already brutal conflict. The author of this blog, Peace Fellow Madeleine Ekeberg Schneider, is a student of conflict resolution at Georgetown University and has spent the summer in Thailand developing a partnership between The Advocacy Project and the Pa-O Youth Organization (PYO), a Burmese group that also works with refugees in Thailand. In tomorrow’s post, Madeleine looks at the impact of conscription on transgender people. Read Madeleine’s blogs here.
Early in my fellowship, I wrote about how the current revolution differs from previous conflicts in Myanmar (also known as Burma) – and how the military coup in 2021 has created stronger opposition and more solidarity among the Burmese people, including between the Bamar (majority) and other ethnic groups.
This also seems to be the case for the LGBTQ+ community and resistance groups, although very little has been written about it.
Burmese society is generally very conservative when it comes to gender and sexuality. These attitudes are attributed to Buddhism, compounded by British colonial policies.
I learned more about this from Hom, a young trans man (born female) and activist who still lives in Myanmar. When I finally reached him through Zoom, Hom told me about his experience as a queer person in Myanmar. His childhood nickname, he said, was “the one who even the monks feel the need to shame.” The name hardly rolls off the tongue – at least not in English – but I find it reflective of the extra lengths to which Hom’s community went to humiliate him.
Growing up during the military regime in the early 2000s, Hom felt intensely uncomfortable in girl’s clothing, so he dressed as a boy and kept his hair short. In response, he told me that at every opportunity – community gatherings and village events – the monks and other authority figures took time to call him out on the loudspeaker, telling everyone that Hom was wrong and “unnatural” and that the community should be ashamed of him.
During periods in the 2010s when Myanmar experienced unitary democracy, some progress was made regarding attitudes toward gender and sexuality. Some LGBTQ+ events and festivals were permitted. But little legislative progress was made. (For example, same-sex rape and the rape of LGBTQ+ people are still not criminalized.) And since the 2021 coup, the military junta has once again demonized the LGBTQ+ community.
Hom faces discrimination on a daily basis. A couple of weeks ago he went to the market to buy a whole pig. Knowing that Hom is biologically female and in a relationship with a woman, the people in the market asked if the pig was to be their child since they couldn’t have children of their own.
Hom also told me that if he has trouble lifting something heavy – the sort of thing that a man might expect to lift – people ask if he is pregnant in a dig at his gender and relationship. He said such comments are mostly framed as “jokes,” but the distress and hurt in Hom’s voice was clear.
As Hom shared these stories of discrimination, he emphasized that others in the LGBTQ+ community have it much worse. He is grateful not to be in prison for his activism and not to be a trans woman (born male) because, he said, it is much more dangerous for them.
According to a recent article in the Bangkok Post, LGBTQ+ people have been active in protests against Myanmar’s military junta and faced severe repression as a result.
Quoting from a report by the Ministry of Women Youth and Children Affairs, in the opposition shadow government, the article estimates that 62% of LGBTQ+ activists in Myanmar have been arrested or abducted. Twenty-four per cent were in hiding, 5% were seriously injured, and 9% were reported dead.
Their treatment is often brutal. Ma Saw Han Nway Oo, a transgender activist who was among those arrested after protesting the coup, described the horrors she went through as a trans woman in Mandalay’s notorious prisons. She explained how she was tortured and sexually assaulted when she refused to use masculine pronouns after her arrest. At the same time, other prisoners treated her “very kindly” because they realized they faced a common enemy.
This kind of solidarity and support for the LGBTQ+ cause has grown since the coup. The contribution of LGBTQ+ activists to the opposition and the increased visibility given to queer people who are putting their lives on the line for resistance groups, has begun to shift attitudes.
One woman from rural central Myanmar is quoted in Burma News International as saying, “in the rural areas people didn’t like LGBT before. Villagers thought that they were disgusting… that most people in same-sex relationships had AIDS. But when LGBT people joined the revolution, people started accepting them and working together with them. Now, they want to help them and encourage them.”
This attitude was depicted in the powerful film Lose and Hope that I watched at the beginning of my fellowship and wrote about in an early blog.
The film is about young Karenni resistance fighters. The stereotypical gayness of one character provides comic relief, but he is also portrayed as an excellent shooter and valuable resistance fighter. When his best friend dies at the end of the film, his grief is not mocked or depicted as unrequited love. Instead, it makes him more motivated to win the revolution.
Tomorrow: The threat to transgender people from conscription
Thousands have fled fighting in Myanmar/Burma. Donate to the PYO humanitarian appeal here
Read more:
Click here for background on the conflict in Myanmar
Myanmar’s Troubled History: Coups, Military Rule, and Ethnic Conflict
Nine Things to Know About Myanmar’s Conflict Three Years On