Metro Weekly

Thailand to require transgender surgery candidates to wait one year

”It is not necessary. I really didn’t want to go through that process, so I decided to have the operation… before the law is enforce…. I don’t like this part of me because I don’t use it. I don’t know why I have it. If I had a vagina, I would use it.”

Punlop Tongchai, 27, and a newly post-operative transgender woman who works as a cabaret dancer in Thailand, a country that has a reputation for developing something of an affordable sex-change industry. She is saying she would rather not have to comply with rules going into effect last week that will require psychological counseling, a waiting period of one year, hormone therapy, and the experience of living as a woman for a year. There has been a fear that some men have rushed into unnecessary “castrations.” (Telegraph.co.uk) (Associated Press)


”I got so many calls where they said they are so sorry that they did a sex change. They make a big mistake and they want to come back and be the same. But they cannot!”

Nathee Teerarojanapong, a gay rights campaigner in Thailand who thinks a new law requiring transgender people to wait one year before having gender reassignment surgery. (Telegraph.co.uk)

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