Cross-dressing students get own bathrooms at rural Thai school

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Some students at a secondary school in rural northeastern Thailand want the new restroom doors painted pink, with purple flowers planted nearby - not the girls' toilets, nor the boys'.
It's the transvestites' bathrooms they want to have redecorated.

Most rural Thais are conservative in many ways, but the trailblazing toilet initiative at Sisaket province's Kampang school reflects another aspect of Thai society: its acceptance of the country's very visible transsexuals and transvestites.

After a survey showed that more than 200 of the school's 2,600 students considered themselves transvestites, it decided to set up restrooms for them.

The signs on the doors depict a human shape split into half a male in blue, and half a female in red.

?These students like going to female bathrooms because they are harassed when they go into male ones,? said school director Sitisak Sumontha. ?They want to be able to go to the restroom in peace without fear of being watched, laughed at or groped.

But some female students felt uncomfortable sharing their facilities with transvestites, Sitisak said.

?They don't have problems with transvestites but going to the same private area, like a toilet, makes them uneasy,? he said. ?The transvestite kids may behave even more effeminately than the girls, do but their anatomy is still like that of a boy.

He said the concept reflected a growing need at Thai schools and universities.

Kampang is not Thailand's first educational institution to set up transvestite washrooms - a distinction that might belong to a 1,500-student technical college in the northern province of Chiang Mai, which set up a ?Pink Lotus Bathroom? for its 15 transvestite students in 2003.
Deputy Education Minister Boonlue Prasertsopar recently said the ministry plans to count the number of transvestite university students.

He said he was not promoting transgender interests, ?but if there are a lot of them in a university and it's a problem, we may have to consider building toilets and dormitories for them.

Transsexuals and transvestites are often seen in Bangkok's office buildings, on TV soap operas and at department store cosmetics counters, where they often work as makeup artists. Some join a special beauty pageant circuit.