Building more inclusion and feminist politics in the Thai pro-democracy movement
Yanisa Vararaksapong on what young feminist pro-democracy protestors are bringing to the collective discussions and a deeper societal transformation
Photo credit: @GoodMondayShoot: “In the moment, I felt proud of this new generation. I felt proud at how they were using the power of their youth to move the country forward and I felt in awe of the speaker and how powerful she had spoken.”
From my vantage point in Hong Kong, we have been following and supporting the Thai youth-led movement critiquing the monarchy and the military coup d’état since earlier this year. Like many others in Hong Kong, I entered the conversation through #MilkTeaAlliance memes over Twitter, which I personally thought was a cute food-themed solidarity thing. I mean, I’d support many kinds of solidarity campaigns through food, so I do still think it’s a solid strategy. It turns out that #MilkTeaAlliance is a potent political alliance and actual social movement, with the parallels, influence and exchange between Hong Kong pro-democracy and Thai pro-democracy protestors clearly established, and other countries in Asia joining. It’s redundant to say that these movements are driven by young people, but what I often find missing in coverage of these protests is what young people we are talking about and who they really are.
Most of my career has been researching and writing about young feminists, but I began my career in the “youth development” sector, which encompasses child rights, youth policy, international development, and today, increasingly common, youth-led organizing and self-led activism. Within some of these spaces, the word “youth” gets thrown around everywhere, which frustrates me to no end as it’s such a large and diverse group of people.
So you can imagine that in a youth-led pro-democracy movement, there is great diversity of factions, politics, and identities. What is most impressive and always gets most coverage is the unity of demands and the strength of the support, normally represented by numbers of protestors in a single public area, petition signatures, and hashtag users. But this belies the specificity and intersecting identities and realities of these young activists. In Hong Kong, this is the case, and I am certain it is also the case in Thailand.
Young women are being recognized more than ever before for their contributions to modern social movements. And within some of these young women who are active in protests from Lebanon to Laos to Thailand, some are young feminists, LGBTQ, and bring a different nuance to their discourse around democracy than just the core demands.
Yanisa Vararaksapong, is a 18 year old, first-year political science student at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. She graduated from Triam Udom Suksa School earlier this year. As a senior in my high school, she co-founded an organization called Kiamudom Against Dictatorship to create social movements on a high school level. She considers herself a feminist and has been vocal about different issues, including but not limited to abortion and sex work. “I also see the importance of intersectionality. I firmly believe that when talking about feminism, we must bring into the equation class, disability, gender (LGBTQ+), race, religion, and many more.”
When did you begin to become involved in feminist activism?
It was around the time that I was graduating from high school, I was beginning to work in politics. During that time, university students began to come out and protest on the university campus. Back then, I felt like I needed to do something. I was fed up with everything that was going on. So I started asking around friends and we formed a core group of students from my high school. A lot of what we did was against the military regime. That was how it started. After that, we kept on doing it. We organized more protests and we did more campaigns, talking about the coup d’etats throughout history and how they have affected everyday lives and the fear and the culture inside it. The conservatism. That was my main focus.
So now that you graduated high school, are you still involved in the group?
Yes, they are still active. I’m giving them advice and helping them organize stuff. I’m planning to pass it on to other generations. We plan on recruiting more members too.
And so when you go into this new university, do you also know any of the pro-democracy networks or affiliations in your new school? Are you planning to get involved in that way now?
I want to. The university I’m entering, I don’t really know people there. But, I still plan on working with the students there.
The conversations are: tell the people what we are protesting against affects their lives. We’re not just talking to friends and peers - we’re also calling out for people with a platform, musicians, Youtubers to come out and speak. Especially about how the regime affects different areas of life. For example, this gamer - he has quite a huge platform - some of his fans were calling out for him to speak out. Afterwards, there was this bill passed about gamecasting that kind of directly affected him - everything has shown up and revealed itself about how it affects every one of us. Everything is political and it’s really important that we get involved.
What has been your involvement in or opinion of all of the young feminists particularly in the protests? What do they bring, especially those that identify as LBTQ - do you see a particularly strong feminist participation in the protests in the general? Are you organizing with other young feminists?
Certainly. Throughout Thai history, there’ve been feminist movements. For example, the law about giving pregnant women time off from work - those laws were pushed by feminist movement. But even with that, we can see that feminists and LGBTQ community are quite erased from the mainstream democratic movement. For example, even right now, the most recent big protests at the royal plaza, of all of the speakers on the main stage, three people were women. There were one or two - I’m not sure about this - even on the stage, one of the women was talking about gender and equality. And afterwards, another speaker went up and talked down to the earlier speaker and made fun of her point about feminism. I think it’s really sad because women and the LGBTQ community is such a big part of this current movement. Most clearly - recently, there was this campaign that collected signatures to call for a constitutional amendment and there were more than 100,000 people who signed up and 70% of them were women. So I think that really shows a lot. Women are really, really involved in this movement and we can see that in other smaller protests, a lot of the participants are women and LGBTQ people, and a lot of the organizers are women. Even in my group, currently, there are 5 or 6 of us, most of us are women and people who identify as female. I think part of the reason is because we are oppressed in some ways - that’s why more of us come out against [oppressive governments] - this is just my opinion.
I’m pretty sure you have heard about the women - Women for Freedom and Democracy - they’ve been quite active. They’ve been speaking on the main stage recently and they’ve gotten popular support from people. But even in the Thai democratic movement, there’s been some kind of anti-feminist trend going on, even from fellow democratic activists and supporters. I think it’s there - it’s growing. But there is still a lot of opposition from within the movement.
What have been some of the feminist demands [in the context of the pro-democracy movement] that some people are supporting? I’ve been following the campaign to legalize sex work - and if feminists are the minority of the protests, maybe they are more radical in what they’re asking for? Do you feel that the feminists and LGBTQ community are making demands that are more radical than the democracy movements? Are there any differences or do they have the same agenda?
Most of all, they are different people in different groups. There are feminists who are more radical, there are feminists who are more moderate from what I can see, and there are people who fight for LGBTQ issues who are more radical and those who are more moderate. I think we can really pinpoint and say that - people who fight for gender equality are more radical but there are fewer of them. But certainly there are people who are more radical - and not just about the gender issues. You can see that there are feminists, socialists, and those people [all active in this pro-democracy movement], and especially on the gender equality issue, within the community, there is quite a consensus of what we are asking for. There is [the legalization] of sex work, abortion, and marriage equality. These are, I think, the major concerns. The issue with gender equality is that it’s not just all about laws. It’s also about the norms and the perception of people. There’s no change from yes to no or no to yes. It’s more abstract. I think that’s the main obstacle for the gender equality movement. Most of the arguments against the [feminist] movement is that Thailand is no longer patriarchal, no longer discriminatory towards LGBTQ people. Those are the arguments.
That must not be true if you especially talk to trans women or men, or sex workers [in Thailand]. That must definitely not be true if they’re protesting right now for their rights.
Yes. Some say, women are allowed to work. And some believe that LGBTQ people aren’t denied opportunities just because of their gender. They believe that there are places for everyone like this. When in reality, there aren't. It’s kind of harder to show them because of how much we’ve evolved as a society. The issues become harder to see, in some sense, you know?
Absolutely. What do you think a feminist pro-democracy agenda looks like? Is it more inclusive, would it have a different movement than the mainstream pro-democracy movement right now?
You mean within the movement?
I’m sort of asking you to imagine if the entire pro-democracy movement were just feminist. The leadership, the issues, and the way that people are organizing.
I think it would be ideal. It would be more inclusive. That is the main point. Because of what we’re talking about. And most of the arguments against feminist movements is that ‘Oh, we have to fight for democracy first.’ And our argument is that we have to fight for everyone. If mainstream pro-democracy movements become more inclusive and not just generalized groups, it becomes ideal. I mean, because there is sexism within pro-democracy protests. There are groups of people being denied, being not listened to because of their gender and stuff. If the movement became feminist, I think those problems will likely go away. Our goal will become more long-lasting and more ideal. Because you see, in my opinion, if we continue to fight [for democracy] while these issues are ignored, even if we achieve what we are asking for, it’s not going to last because even with that law, we haven’t changed the perception of the people regarding these [other] issues. Those thoughts are exactly what constitute the unequal society that we live in today.
I completely agree. How have these marginalized groups been participating in the protests?
From what I can see, there are people who have been marginalized from many different areas. Those people certainly participated in the movement. But whether they have the platform to campaign for their specific issues, they don’t have that platform yet. But I can see from people - there have been conversations going on about other people who are oppressed in many different ways. Indigenous people, people from the deep south, Muslims, women in rural areas, and more. From what I can see, there aren’t any official campaigns from them and for them. Yeah. In a way, we try to… even just the topics of sex work or abortion, we don’t really gain that much attention from the masses.
I know that the pro-democracy movement in Thailand was influenced by the one in Hong Kong, but do you also feel like there is dialogue and connection with other places as well? How do you see that connection?
I think that’s an interesting one. The #MilkTeaAlliance is so interesting, and I think the most recent addition is India? I think it’s quite impactful. With these alliances, Thai people could see that these issues aren’t just happening in Thailand. It’s a global phenomenon. It’s something that is experienced by all the people in the world as well. We can see that exchanges of information and tactics to protect yourself, police gear, translations of guidances from the Hong Kong protestors - I think that’s really important, these exchanges of information.
This interview is excerpted and edited for clarity.
What I’m reading:
After the phenomenal Transnationally Asian digital conference held by Lausan Hong Kong, New Naratif, and New Bloom, three independent, leftist media collectives across Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia this week, I’m reading most of New Naratif’s archives. Besides journalism and research written by Southeast Asians for Southeast Asians, there is also an entire comics section (!) so do check them out and support an independent media movement.
Feminist Coalition is a young feminist-led collective in Nigeria that formed earlier this year in July in to support, strengthen, and fund the #EndSARS campaign. They have emerged as undisputed leaders in the decentralized youth-led movement, and are especially committed to the well-being, safety, material and financial needs of the protestors. This piece highlights how they quickly pivoted when the Nigerian government began blocking their deposits into protestors’ bank accounts and transitioned into Bitcoin for receiving and dispersing payments. I am basically living for this young feminist group leading, innovating, mobilizing and distributing resources much more quickly than any traditional fund could, and being recognized for their contributions.
With the rise of the #MeToo movement, young and middle-aged women feel more empowered than ever before to speak about their experiences of sexual abuse. But conversations about this issue tend to ignore a growing population — older women. According to a WHO study, only 1 in 24 cases of elder abuse is reported.
TikTok is really being used by lots of young people - including racist teenagers. There’s been a recent surge of racist videos on TikTok, a wave of anti-racist videos to combat them, and a lot of pressure on TikTok to take some kind of action, any action. As Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff writes, “The recent surge in racism on TikTok exposes the lack of infrastructure we have to deal with racist statements and crimes online, the poor education most teens get around race and racism, but also a significant change in our culture, which means that once a racist is exposed on certain platforms, the impact on their life can be significant. Though TikTok is having its moment right now, it is not the first, nor will it be the last, platform to become popular amongst teenagers.”
If you enjoyed this edition, please recommend New Wave to a friend and also consider buying me a coffee! New Wave is currently entirely self-funded.
I’m taking suggestions for future editions, so if there’s anything you’d like to see covered, young feminists you’d like to see interviewed, or any other suggestions, please leave your comments on the web version of this post.