Organizer: The Center for Southeast Asian Studies at University of Hawaii

Description:

The talk focuses on Shan male migrant sex workers from Myanmar who engage in selling sex to gay men clients in Chiang Mai, Thailand. As most of Shan male sex workers identify themselves as heterosexual men, I attempt to understand how selling sex to gay men affects their masculinity and how they redefine and reconstruct their masculinities devalued by selling sex to men.

Based on two sets of in-depth interviews with Shan migrant male sex workers in Chiang Mai, Thailand before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, the research will also discuss how the pandemic shapes the ways in which Shan men engage in sex work.

Amporn Jirattikorn is an Associate Professor at the Department of Social Science and Development at Chiang Mai University, Thailand. She is currently a visiting fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University. Amporn’s research interests are in two areas of media flows and mobility of people across national boundaries. Her recent research involves the (re)construction of masculinity among Shan migrant men who engaged in sex work in Chiang Mai, Thailand and how the Covid-19 pandemic shapes the ways Shan men engage in sex work.

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