Anthropology Worksheet Analysis

Anthropology Worksheet
(1) Contrast Max’s experience of being intersexed in the US. How was defined physiologically? (What he said he went through; how it made him feel = DATA) with (2) Koh’s experiences and emotions of being a katoi (ladyboy) in Thailand. Interviews can provide narratives of lived experiences and, such as, are sources of ethnographic data.

When Max was born, he was born as an intersex. Because he was born with ambiguous genitalia, the doctors stated it was a medical and social emergency that needed to be corrected. Max ended up as a female. He was not aware that he was an intersex and was not allowed to inform others about the surgeries he had to undertake for many years. He felt like he was a “monster” because of the way
Many people with this cultural construct of gender in which there are certain behavior that people recognize as whether someone was a male or female. As Max grew up as a female, he felt like he did not have the qualities of one. After discovering that he was born with ambiguous genitalia, Max went through an operation to transition into a guy and obtained an intersex identity rather than a male identity. He tried to not classify himself with a cultural expectation of a male or female gender. Max could have been known as a man to many, but he decided that he was an intersex. Because many people are unaware of this intersex identity, they would find it very confusing. For Koh, she felt like she was a female. After she transitioned into a katoi, Koh would get certain treatments by her loving partner and his family. They would treat her as a beautiful and fragile girl who needs a lot of protection. Because of those actions that culture has assigned to women, it diminishes the image of women. They are looked upon as weak people that need to be taken care of by a
Instead, there are many ladyboys known as katois in Thailand. Katois are admired by many people as the people in Thailand are more tolerable with transgender people. There are about 300 thousand ladyboys in Thailand. Katois were protected as they do not have violence against them. In fact, many were given opportunities in the art or fashion industry. There were many sexual diversities since there were multiple ways of being katois. Some katois had surgical work and hormone enhancement to be a full transformation and some did not. Some have both parts of a male and female. Many boys would get into relationships with katois. Many katois know what a male would want in a relationship since they have been males before. Thailand is open in which the katois can show themselves off. However, there are some inferiority with katois such as different economic systems. To be a katoi in a poor family, it can be hard to survive if there was no male figure to take care of the