The Ladyboy

On the 12th August 2008 I wrote and published an article entitled 'The World of the Kathoey and Ladyboy'. It is quite a popular article and up to the middle of November 2010 it has recieved something in the order of 13,000 visitors. Why bother to write an article about a Ladyboy in the first place you might ask? I wrote it because some of my friends are Kathoey or Ladyboys and people just fail to understand just what it is all about.

Do a Google search for 'Ladyboy' and your first few pages, with one or two notable exceptions, are entries to do with smut and porn. I know that this does play a part, and often an unfortunate part, in the life of many Ladyboys but it is not the be all and end all.

My article 'The World of the Kathoey and Ladyboy' seeks to redress this wrong. To right the misconceptions, to explain what it is all about and yet my article is penalised because it includes that word... 'Ladyboy' (This article is penalised too for exactly the same reason...use of a word). What other words am I expected to use? Shemale perhaps? Don't do a Google search on that word. It may shock your socks off. Transexual may be a better choice but it is not the word that most people are familiar with and of those some further confusion creeps in. No, 'Ladyboy' it is. This is the correct and inoffensive word to use. Yet Hubpages tell me "Google has instructed us not to................ on Hubs with certain sensitive keywords, and "ladyboy" is one of them."

Read my article. Comment if you find anything that is insensitive, anything pornographic, anything that disgusts you. I have tried to explain the truth, to educate, to explain, to teach and not to shock or titillate. I have written because I owe it to my friends.

In Hubpages themselves you are initially given the opportunity to place your new hub into various categories before you write it. For this I chose 'Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender → Transgender Issues'. These were the Hubpage choice of categories, not mine, but appeared to be the best ones in which to place this Hub.

During my travels I have seen a number of transexuals but never really had anything to do with one till Manila in the Philippines.

I smiled as I passed this rather striking looking girl in Robinson's Shopping Mall. The smile was returned and ten seconds or so later she was on my arm. My hotel did not supply towels and so she helped locate one and negotiate purchase. Her name was Jane. It did not take me very long to realise that Jane was a Ladyboy. My defences went up and probably quite rightly too because Jane earned her living as a prostitute. We had a coffee together and talked at length. I learned a lot about her and her life. We became friends, not lovers, just friends.

Jane was in her early twenties and had previously had quite a steady job in a 7/11 type store. Even then she had supplemented her income through prostitution. The streets of Manila are a hard place to live. Jane found a small child abandoned in the street. Believe me they are not infrequent there. Jane took her home and cared for her. Fed her, dressed her. Jane loved her and Jane was doing what she wanted to do because Jane was a woman, a woman trapped inside a man's body. Jane later took in another two children, older ones, who she taught to beg, to duck and dive, to work the streets. Jane gave up her shop work for full time prostitution and she and the kids worked as a team. When Jane had no clients the kids fed her and she fed them when she did.

Jane and I ate together once every day and sometimes we took the youngest child out to eat and to the cinema. Jane did periodically make passes at me but was firmly put off. Jane fell in love with me and I loved her too but in a different sort of way. I know I missed her when I was not in Manila and sought her out when I returned. In the end I never saw her again. I don't know what happened. Life is cheap on the streets.

There were others too, in Manila, in Thailand and other parts of Asia. Once I got over the hang up of people staring at me with a Ladyboy on my arm, or on each arm, a process of understanding took place. It is this understanding I try to convey in my article. I want people to understand. These are people exactly the same as you and I but they are neither Man nor Woman. They are the Third Sex. The Ladyboy.