how is social media used in negotiating gender identity.pdf

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Background

Owing to the rising Internet penetration rates, social media has been popularly

used by young people for many reasons. One of these is that they use social

media as arenas for self-presentation: the display of identity, the performing of

self (Hjorth and Hinton, 2019; Rui and Stefanone, 2013a). Importantly, it is

evidenced that social media plays a significant role in youth’s daily lives, as the

venue for expressing their sexual matters: sexting, finding (sexual) partners, as

well as performing gender identity (Hjorth, 2009). Social media platforms

potentially provide opportunities for users to upload self-created digital images

through manageable profile pages (Ringrose et al., 2013). They can employ these

platforms to create their self-gender images for social purposes, and create

strategic profiles to manage an impression in accordance with social values and

practices (Seidman, 2014). Many research studies explore social media and

visual communication by focusing on the visual meaning-making resources in

social media environments, such as blogs, Facebook, and Instagram (Adami and

Jewitt, 2016). One of the key themes that previous research has suggested is that

identity construction through multimodal texts is shared online by the individual’s

profiles (Adami and Jewitt, 2016). This critical theme implies that social media

provides a creative space for expressing and constructing the identity of

individuals through shared visual contents – like the ways we express our identity

through clothes and furniture (ibid). With the emergence of social media, gender

studies also have animated recent debates in the new media field, with attempts

to investigate the relationship between gender performance in youth and the

impacts of these on online sites. Online spaces are seen as significant locations

by many researchers who wish to explore how young people use these online

sites in negotiating their gender performance. Thus, due to the high impacts of

social media related to youth cultural identity, this kind of topic can be seen as a

novel social and cultural phenomenon in digital culture, youth culture, and

communication.

In Thailand, there have been many research interests focusing on the exploration

of youth’s gender concerning social media environments (Songsamphan, 2008;

Boonmongkon et al., 2013; Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). Most of

the Thai scholars still suggest the ambiguity and controversy regarding the social

media’s roles in the gender performance of young women. On the one hand, it is

suggested that even though online spaces provide more opportunities for young

women to express their selves and gender identities, girls still cannot escape the

influences of mainstream gender discourses in the offline society (Songsamphan,

2008). On the other hand, more recently, scholars consider that young women

have more choices to perform their multiple and alternative gender identities on

social media (Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). Due to the

controversies, my current study aimed to follow up the critical debates by

investigating how young women employ social media like Twitter, Facebook, and

Instagram to negotiate their gender identities by extending the question of the

social class of girls. Through the multiple lenses of frameworks, the performance

of identity concept (Goffman, 1959), the subculture and resistance in the youth

framework (Hall and Jefferson, 2006), and the social class and capital concept

(Bourdieu, 1970) were applied to serve as the analytical background in

understanding girl’s represented identity in online spaces.

1.2 The rationale of the study

There are many global statistics of people’s social media usage around the world.

These crucially provide an understanding of how the plenty use of the Internet,

the technological communication sites, or the social media platforms plays a

significant role in an individual’s everyday life in several aspects. The global

statistic data regarding social media usage as outlined below will discuss the

significant implications for both global and Asian countries to show the rationale

of the study due to social media’s high impacts on youth culture.

The Internet World Stats indicates that the most Internet users in the world are in

Asia (49.8%), followed by European users (16.3%) (Internet World Stats, 2019).

Thailand, one of the southeast Asia countries, is in the ‘third place’ worldwide in

terms of Internet usage (Global Digital Report, 2019). The online space in

Thailand continues to go from strength to strength with levels of online penetration

and more active smartphones than people across the country. The global digital

survey found that 74% of the total Thailand population are active social media

users, with ‘Facebook’ being currently ranked first in terms of the most widely

used platform in the country (Global Digital Report, 2019). From this survey, it is

unsurprising that social media has significant implications on the study in terms

of individual’s self and identity communication, especially youth cultural

communication. A previous Thai scholar argues that teenage users use these

online sites to constantly make a public declaration regarding their life stories,

perform their gender identities, as well as express their sexual desire and emotion

through their profile pages (Boonmongkon et al., 2013). Thereby, it can be seen

that because of the high impact of social media usage, especially in young users,

it is worthwhile to study the relationship between social media’s roles and the

negotiation of gender identity of youth living in the strongly patriarchal society in

Thailand.

Thai national surveys have found that young Thai women have higher rates of

Internet and social media use, and computer literacy skills than young Thai men

(National Statistics Office of Thailand, 2020). From this, it can be seen that Thai

girls have more engagement with online activities and online interactions than

Thai men. Importantly, there are many traditional public discourses regarding

femininity that put more pressure on women than on men in Thai culture

(Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). For instance, the “rak nuan san guan

tua – รักนวลสงวนตัว” discourse is a traditional form of female value, demanding that

young women should maintain virginity until marriage. Owing to the crucial points

discussed above, I propose that 1) the impacts of social media used by young

Thai women related to their gender identities, and 2) the presence of strict

mainstream discourses regarding femininity in Thailand are both the key

rationales of the study. The study aimed to explore how young Thai women

negotiate their gender identities through the use of social media, as well as, how

they struggle in the sexual matter for sexual autonomy due to the constraints of

traditional dominant discourses in Thai culture.

1.3 Overview of the study

With the complexity of the relationship between young women’s gender

performance and their social media use, the study aimed to offer explanations

regarding social media's role in negotiating gender identity, by focussing on the

process of girl’s adaption and/or resistance to the political social norms and

values of femininity in Thai culture. In other words, the study focused on the

complexity of how young women interact, contradict, or resist mainstream

discourse or dominant culture derived from offline relations. Thus, the study

ultimately elucidated a deeper understanding of the link between online and

offline interactions of girl’s cultural communication in terms of gender matters.

Importantly, a research gap was identified in terms of the ways in which identity

is tactically managed and constructed within different class structures. Hence, the

issue of class structure in Thailand will be discussed to provide a picture of how

Thai society is structured in a complex hierarchy by the sakdina system – “dignity

marks” (Thongsawang et al., 2020). The followings are brief discussions: A.

definitions of gender identity; B. definitions of the concept of class, especially by

Western scholars; C. debates about social class in Thailand; D. my own

definitions of class (as an operational model) in the study; and E. summary of the

thesis, respectively.

A. Definitions of ‘gender identity’

In sociocultural disciplines, gender identity is defined as a complex internalisation

of cultural systems of meaning and subject to variation across cultures and

historical periods (Butler, 1990; Mead, 1949). According to the folk concept of

gender identity, gender identity is “a sense of oneself as a man, woman, or some

other gender” (Jenkins, 2018). This promotes the view that gender terms such as

‘man’ and ‘woman’ should to be understood in terms of gender identity: to be a

man is to identify as a man (or to have a male gender identity); to be a woman is

to identify as a woman (or, to have a female gender identity); to be a non-binary

person is to identify as non- binary (or, to have a non-binary gender identity), and

so on (Jenkins, 2018). In short, gender identity is each person’s deeply felt

internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond

to the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may

involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical,

surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress,

speech and mannerisms (European Institute for Gender Equality, 2021). All things

considered, I note that gender is perceived as social and cultural performances

by individuals within a given society and these performances do not need to

conform to the biological organ of being female or male, called biological sex.

When gender is defined as social and cultural communicative practices in specific

cultural contexts, gender identity is thus used to refer to socially constructed

characteristics and cultural representations in specific communities

(Tangmunkongvorakul et al., 2010). Individuals can construct their own gender

identities through diverse performances via their costumes, hairstyles, manners,

speeches, music, and other physical presentations (Wongpanarak et al, 2010).

Because of these diverse and flexible performances of individuals, I am led to

assume that young Thai women potentially construct their own desired gender

identities through the multimodal texts, such as profile pictures, moving images,

and content status on their social media profiles. This consideration led me to

conceptualise the thesis’s research question “How is social media used in

negotiating gender identity by young Thai women from different class

backgrounds?” This research question emerged for two key research purposes:

firstly, to interrogate how young Thai women use social media to negotiate their

gender identities; secondly, to interrogate how different class structures are

related to these gender negotiations online. To explore how gender and class are

related, a gender lens alone is not sufficient to understand this; rather, adopting

an intersectional approach would be necessary. The theory of intersectionality by

Crenshaw (1989), Collins (1990), and Hooks (2000) can be usefully applied as

one of the analytical frameworks for understanding how young Thai women’s

gender identity relates to their social class. Briefly, intersectionality identifies

multiple factors, such as gender, race, class, religion, disability, appearance, and

etc. to understand how aspects of a person's social and political identities

combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. The intersecting

and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing. In

short, since the intersectional approach is considered as the analytical framework

to conceptualise how the social class is related to gender negotiations, I will

investigate how this can connect with the data in the final chapter of the thesis.

B. Definitions of the concept of class

Definitions of the concept of class have been debated by many scholars since its

appearance in the writings of Marx and Weber in the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries. The concept of class has then been popular through the

works of scholars such as Wright (1980), Bourdieu (1997), Goldthorpe (2000) and

recently of Skeggs (2002), Savage (2000), and Devine and Savage (2000). The

exact definition of the concept of class and its applicability in the study of social

phenomena have been and still are extensively debated. In the thesis’s

introductory chapter, I will address the definition of the concept of class by

applying the recent debates by, for example, Bottero (2014), van Hear (2014),

and Savage (2000). Then, I will discuss critical aspects of this in the Theoretical

Framework Chapter, particular in the section of Social Class and Capital

Theories.

In the definition of the concept of class, Bottero (2014) identified two current

concepts of class: one follows traditional class theories by Marx and Weber,

whereas the other builds on recent works and encompasses both ‘social and

cultural formations’ inspired by Bourdieu’s class and capital concept. In the first

strand, the definition of class inspired by traditional class theorists by Marx and

Weber considers class “as a social category pertaining to individuals or groups

sharing comparable behaviours, characteristics and way of life” (Bottero, 2014).

Class is viewed as “collective, explicit and oppositional” (ibid). This implies that

class is “regarded as a collectivity that acts in pursuit of the common interests”

(van Hear, 2014). According to traditional Marxist theories, class is mainly

discussed by the terms of economic and resource opportunities: it is much about

quantitative materials possessed by individuals such as income, car, land, and

property. Particularly, in the field of economics, these physical materials can

position the individual’s class, which explicitly represents individuals or groups’

behaviours, characteristics and way of life.

In the second concept of class, however, class is viewed as “cultural,

individualised, implicit and hierarchical” (Bottero, 2014). Drawing on recent

perspectives on class, particularly from Bourdieu, the concept of class focuses on

the processes of culture, lifestyle and taste. The concept of class is developed

from the issue of economic inequalities to culture, symbolic, cultural, and social

capital of individuals as Bourdieu argued (1986). This view is in line with the

recent work by Savage (2000), who remarked that the traditional concept of class

still exists, but it is expanded in an inconspicuous and individualised manner.

Hence, in dealing with class issues, it appears important to consider the invisible

forces that reproduce social divisions by looking closely at individual practices,

subjectivities, perceptions, and discourses. These perspectives among Western

scholars should be considered in relation to social class in Thailand, which will be

addressed in the following section. After providing debates of Thai social class by

Thai scholars, I will present my perspectives regarding the definition of class,

which is as an operational model that I adopted to conduct the research

methodology, especially for the criterion of participant recruitment of their social

class.

C. Debates about social class in Thailand

Before we pursue the research question “How is social media used in

negotiating gender identity by young Thai women from different class

backgrounds?”, I suggest that it is worth discussing briefly Thai social class, so

as to understand an overall picture of Thailand’s social hierarchy, structure, and

system as the research context.

Briefly, social hierarchy in Thailand was developed in the late Ayutthaya period

under the Chakri dynasty in 1782 - 1873 (Thongsawang et al., 2020). Thai social

structure is closely intertwined with an emerging capitalist structure of social

classes because of transformations to capitalism and democracy in Thailand’s

political development (ibid). The emergence of social classes in capitalist

societies was not only observed in Thailand, but also in wider Southeast Asia

(Thongsawang et al., 2020). The early Thai scholar Akin (1996), who explored

social stratification in Thailand, argued that Thai population was divided into four

legal categories: chao (lords or king), khunnang (nobles), phrai (commoners) and

that (slaves). The first two categories, chao and khunnang, are the ruling classes,

while prai and that are the subordinates. It was asserted that the classification is

based on a social system called sakdina, which means “dignity marks” (Akin,

1996, cited by Thongsawang et al., 2020). This system was believed to lead to

much social inequality as well as oppression between the privileged and

underprivileged classes in the coutnry –Thailand was claimed to have the third-

highest social inequality in the world (Pasuk and Baker, 2016). Importantly, owing

to the sakdina system, social tension arose in the political arena in Thailand in

2006 between The Yellow Shirts people – mainly from the Bangkok middle to

upper classes, the military and the royal and bureaucratic elites – and The Red

Shirts people – rooted in the rural provinces in the North and Northeast, such as

peasants, cosmopolitan villagers and migrant workers with a rural background

(Keyes, 2014). The political and social tension shows the complicated hierarchy

and social structure in Thailand, as well as the class struggle between the

dominant and the subordinate groups from past until present (Sirikanya, 2014).

Due to this ongoing struggle, I view social class as a salient element related to or

with an impact on youth’s everyday life, especially the matter of gender

negotiation.

D. My own definitions of class (as an operational model) in the study

Previously, we have discussed debates of the social class definitions in Western

and Thai societies. It can be seen that the recent works on social class among

Western scholars, particularly Bottero (2014), suggest critical debates about

social class related to “cultural, individualised, implicit and hierarchical”

dimensions. Class distinction, it is argued, is down to cultural preferences and

individual choices – rather than something that is fixed, explicit, or collective.

While social class in western culture is viewed as social and cultural formations,

which are more fluid, inconspicuous, and individual, the traditional social class in

Thailand is defined by the remnants of the feudal system: a hierarchical structure

encompassing the aristocracy and the (rural) peasantry.

However, there has been the emergence and expansion of a new urban middle

class in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, which is socially coherent, culturally

and intellectually hegemonic, and politically ascendant (Takashi, 2004). Funatsu

and Kagoya (2002) proposed that this new urban middle class has emerged by

educational expansion and advancement of professional careers, whereas the

traditional ones are people who have less than a high school degree in education

and their occupational status is derived from being small store owners or skilled

workers. Due to these two factors: educational expansion and advancement of

professional careers, the new urban middle class possesses more cultural and

intellectual hegemony than they did in the past, and then such cultural hegemony

has been successfully translated into political power in society until now. The

emerging new urban Thai middle class, described as a form of the new

bourgeoisie, exists alongside the industrial proletariat and the cosmopolitan

peasantry in contemporary rural Thailand (Walker, 2012). This new emergent

class could be unsettling traditional rigid hierarchies of Thai society and vestigial

feudal demarcations of class (Keyes, 2014). I consider that this disruption

correlates with increasing forms of resistance to dominant systems, patriarchy,

and traditional cultural values.

Thus, in my own definition of Thai social class, I identify more fluidity and

dynamics in individuals’ cultural preferences due to the emergence of the newly

rich-urban middle class. This raises the possibility, to be explored in my study,

that even though traditional social class in Thailand is a strict hierarchal structure,

there may be room for resistance for young girls, and a place for fluid-cultural

performances for girls to express their identities. Will the ascending new urban

middle class begin to challenge the patriarchal society and rigid hierarchal

structure of Thai society? From this question, I would define the Thai middle class

as the group that begins to have some freedom and social and cultural agency,

economically and educationally. There might be possibilities for them to resist and

push at the edges of the old hierarchies since they are the group that perhaps

aspire to get some of the privileges of the old aristocracy of Thailand.

Nevertheless, it is difficult for working-class people to resist this because they are

still trapped in their economic, education, and welfare issues. For example, they

still await the compensation and/or a raw deal from the state, while studying at

temple schools, which are opportunity expansion schools supported by the

government. Hence, I view the working class, or referred to as the lower or

underprivileged class, as the group that typically aspires to be promoted and to

climb to a further step of the social hierarchy if they can attain more opportunities,

educations, or degrees. The elite groups may not wish to resist or change the old

hierarchical structure since they have plenty of privileges already. Instead, they

typically wish to protect their privilege and social status. In this study, I define

social class in Thailand as something more fluid, individual, and cultural, inspired

by Western models. This is because of the emergence of the new urban middle

class in Thailand. Young Thai women can now push further at the old Thai

hierarchy, potentially resist the rigid structures, and find some of the flexibility to

explore gender differences or new gender roles that we see in Western culture.

To link my definition of class with the classical Marxist theory, I propose that the

Thai working class, or perceived as the lower class, can be defined as

corresponding roughly to Marx’s proletariat, the people who potentially resist the

oppressive nature of the more powerful groups in society, while the Thai middle

class seems more like Marx’s bourgeoisie, or the ruling capitalist class – people

who own the means of production, manage a distribution of economic

opportunities and resources, and perhaps conform to their social norms enacted

by their group. However, it is the parents who conform to these dominant norms

and the youth who are resisting these. According to Birmingham’s school cultural

studies, the “youth” is a kind of class fragment, resisting the conventions of their

parental group (Hall, 1993). Thus, even though Thai middle-class parents are

perceived as bourgeoisie in Marx’s terms, their children seem to be another

fragment separated from parent class and typically challenge the parents’ culture.

Lastly, the elite or upper-class group seems to partly resemble Marx’s

bourgeoisie, and partly the aristocratic class, which has disappeared effectively

in the Western model, but still existed in Thai society. For more details about the

socioeconomic background of each class of participants, the Methodology

chapter has addressed this to clarify how young Thai women as the research

participants were recruited by the SES indicators, which consist not only of their

school types – from temple schools to well-known public high schools and high

calibre private schools – but also their parent’s income, education, and

occupation.

E. Summary about the thesis

To pursue the main research question, the study was conducted in two fieldworks

in Bangkok: the PILOT study and the MAIN study. The pilot fieldwork study –

which was conducted in June 2019 – aimed to develop the research design for

the main study. Then, the main study was conducted in January 2020 and differed

from the pilot in terms of the sampling, the procedure of participant recruitment,

and other research aspects. One of the significant differences is the issue of class

differences of participants, which will be fully explained in the Methodology

chapter.

To sum up, the study explored the relationship between class differences of

young women and their social media usage in gender matters. In other words, the

study interrogated how girls with different class backgrounds deploy social media

to negotiate and express their gender identities. To provide an overview about the

thesis’s structure, chapter 1 is the introduction, featuring the study background,

the rationale, and the overview of the study. Chapter 2 is the literature review, in

which I discuss the social context, the prevailing culture regarding gender in

Thailand, and the previous works of Thai scholars who have explored youth

culture and gender studies. Meanwhile, I separate the theoretical frameworks

from these reviewed works of literature into chapter 3. In the theories chapter, I

categorise the frameworks into three themes: Identity and Gender theories,

Discourse and Power theories, and Social Class and Capital theories to serve as

a conceptual background for the pursuit of the research’s aims and question.

Next, chapter 4 is the research methodology, consisting of two sections

separately: the first section is the research design for the PILOT study, and the

second is the research methodology for the MAIN study. After that, chapter 5, 6,

and 7 are the data analyses of the main study, organised by social grouping into

lower, middle, and upper classes. Lastly, chapter 8 is the discussion and

conclusion in which I discuss the research findings linked with theoretical

considerations and my stated research aims. Additionally, the appendix is a

substantial piece of work in which the five arguments that emerged from the pilot

study are developed.

Chapter 2: Literature review

In prior research studies in Thailand, many scholars have investigated girl’s

struggles in gender matters owing to the impact of the prevailing culture and

traditional form of female values in Thailand. One of the empirical research

studies asserts that girls find alternative spaces as a form of resistance toward

traditional values to gain more agency in sexual expression (Boonmongkon et al.,

2008, 2013). Thanks to this empirical research, my current study built on the

theme of this prior study, but I extended it by addressing the question of social

class in young women. The class difference hence was identified as the research

gap and became the main factor that I mainly focused on in the study. My central

research question is “how is social media used in negotiating gender identity

by young Thai women from different class backgrounds?” and the literature

review chapter shows how previous research studies in the West and in Asia

largely debate the relationship between social media sites and gender

performances in youth, while neglecting class differentiations. In this chapter, I

start to discuss the prevailing culture and the traditional public discourses

regarding gender in Thailand to provide an understanding of social context, social

norms, and other social issues related to gender in Thai culture. Then, I discuss

how social media, as an alternative space for gender negotiation in young people,

interests many scholars both Western and Asian research communities. Next, I

review how research paradigms in gender studies have shifted from psychological

and biomedical perspectives to sociocultural disciplines, whilst suggesting my

contribution to the knowledge in the field. In the last section, the research gap is

identified to show how my current study followed up on the theme of prior Thai

studies, and how my study has filled the gap by addressing the question of social

class.

2.1 Traditional public discourses regarding gender in Thailand

In Thailand, there are many prevailing cultures and traditional public discourses

regarding gender that constrain young women’s gender performances. In the

twenty-first century, various Thai scholars still assert that young Thai people are

struggling to deal with traditional forms of female values and mainstream

discourses in femininity (Jackson and Duangwises, 2016; Doungphummes and

Sangsingkeo, 2020). Although empirical studies consider that the proliferation of

social media, which impacts young people’s lived experiences, can offer more

opportunities to express non-normative gendered practices and sexual desires,

there are still debates that these young people cannot abandon traditional public

discourses that are derived from their offline culture, particularly those rooted in

family cultures. I will advance these debates seeing the potential changes in

young women’s gender performances in both the online and offline worlds.

In this section, to preliminarily understand the gendered culture in Thailand, I will

provide the prevailing concepts of gender in Thai society, such as social norms,

values, and discourses in femininity. At the same time, I will discuss how these

influential discourses impact on how young women embody sexual politics in

society. The following are the themes emanating from gender discourses in Thai

culture, which have been identified by Thai scholars.

1. The ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’ discourse (to preserve chastity) (e.g., Klausner

(2000), Boonmongkon et al., (2013), and Songsamphan (2008)

2. The ‘kalathesa’ discourse (contextual sensitivity) (e.g., Thaweesit (2004),

Jackson and Cook (1999), and Van Esterick (2000)

3. The motherhood and wifehood discourses (e.g., Suriyasarn (2014), Xu, et al.,

(2011), Thaweesit (2004), and Suriyasarn (2014)

4. The parental discourse: ‘dutiful daughters’ in Thai families (e.g.,

Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo (2020), and Angeles and Sunanta (2009)

To clarify briefly, the first is the ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’ (รักนวลสงวนตัว) discourse

refers to young women who should preserve their chastity (or virginity) in relation

to concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women. Secondly, the ‘kalathesa’ (กาลเทศะ)

discourse (or ‘contextual sensitivity’) is the common sense of self-presentation

(including gender) that relates to values of ‘times and places’, particularly in adult

culture. Thirdly, due to the existing patriarchal society in Asia, especially in

Thailand, the motherhood and wifehood discourses still influence gender roles

among young Thai women. Most of these women's discourses put pressure on

young women to perform their selves and identities whilst conforming to gender

roles. Lastly, the parental discourse of ‘dutiful daughters’ in Thai families is

another influential traditional discourse that still has an impact on how young

women perform their gender identities.

Overall, young Thai girls have long fostered the idea that sexual matters must be

kept private, and sex has become a strongly prohibited subject for open

discussion due to the discourse of the inappropriate and distasteful nature of

sexual expression in public areas (The Guardian, 2012). “Sex is still considered

‘dirty’ and adults seldom discuss openly with each other, let alone with their kids”

(UNDP and USAID, 2014). According to the Department of Health (2015), Thai

children seldom learn about sex from either parents or teachers, and when they

do learn about sex at school, it is always restricted to the context of biology, and

rarely touches upon the emotional and sexual desires related to this subject.

However, the parent and educator’s inability to teach and converse about sex is

arguably not at fault as they too grew up in the same culture that frowns upon talk

of sex (The Nation Thailand, 2014). In short, this literature review section will

discuss how each traditional public discourses of gender in Thailand impact

young women’s belief, attitude, and behaviour in terms of sexual matters. It is

essential to understand how these discourses still influence them in the

performance of gender identity, and then the later section will discuss the potential

resistance and negotiation of gender through social media use.

2.1.1 ‘Rak nuan sanguan tua’ discourse (to preserve

chastity)

Needless to say, one of the most traditional public discourses in Thai female

values is to preserve chastity. Young women have been pressured by this

traditional discourse. For example, they need to maintain their virginity until

marriage and they need to follow what adults judge to be right and wrong action

in gender. Within the Asian countries, this kind of normative discourse would be

the strictest value of femininity that influences how young women negotiate their

gender offline or online (Klausner, 2000). In Thailand, the ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’

(รักนวลสงวนตัว) discourse is highly produced and reproduced through adult culture

and many public spheres in Thai society (Klausner, 2000). Specifically, such

traditional public discourse becomes a mainstream value in femininity, which is

always reinforced by teachers at school, parents at home, mainstream media,

and other social institutions in Thailand (Organisation for Economic Cooperation

and Development, 2020). The previous Thai research asserts that even though

we are more acceptable in non-normative gendered practices in public spheres,

there are still difficulties for young women to express their ‘intrinsic’ identity and

gender due to the strictness of the traditional form of female values, that is the

‘rak nuan sanguan tua’ discourse (Boonmongkon et al., 2008; 2013). This

suggests that young women feel constrained and struggle with this conservative

discourse, which is deep-rooted by adult culture. It is affirmed by the previous

study that talking about gender-related issues in Thailand has never been easy

due to the inexpressive nature of Thai people and their attitudes toward sex and

gender as a generally taboo topic in most social circumstances (Doungphummes

and Sangsingkeo, 2020).

Importantly, to maintain virginity until marriage life is one of the most conservative

discourses that directly impact young women’s gender negotiation. This kind of

discourse has been linked to the notion of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women concept in

Thai culture. According to Fongkeaw (1995) and Cook and Jackson (1999), the

concept of maintaining virginity is arguably related to the cultural dichotomy

whereby Thai women are categorised as good (kon-dee) or bad (kon-chua). The

given categories of good (kon-dee) and bad (kon-chua) qualities imply that if

young women perform their selves and gender identities conforming to

conventional works from their parent’s discourse, they will be categorised as

‘good’ women. In contrast, if they are performing vice versa to the normative

discourse, they will be categorised as ‘bad’ women. Specifically, sex before

marriage is deemed a ‘bad’ example. By contrast, by maintaining virginity until

marriage, they will be seen as ‘good’ women (Songsamphan, 2008). Additionally,

if they follow the common sense of mainstream discourses in femininity, such as

being naïve, submissive, and obedient, they will also be considered as ‘good’

women (Songsamphan, 2008). From the concept of ‘good’ (kon-dee) and ‘bad’

(kon-chua) qualities, it is evident that the traditional discourses of women in

Thailand shape and pressure young women to conform and follow the

mainstream norms of feminine propriety.

To give a set of gender research studies in Thailand, many Thai scholars are of

the same opinion regarding the impact of traditional feminine discourses in young

women of Thai culture. For instance, for the very first time in 1995 to 1999, the

studies assert that the ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’ (รักนวลสงวนตัว) discourse puts pressure

on young women, limiting the expression of their gender (Fongkeaw, 1995; Cook

and Jackson, 1999). After that, many studies have been conducted to explore

how the conservative discourse impacts young people in terms of their gender

empowerment, such as autonomy, agency, choices, and embodiment. For

example, Boonmongkon et al. (2008) proposes that the prevailing traditional

discourse in femininity enables young women to struggle for gender matters and

young women need to strive to achieve their autonomy to express their gender

identity. Thus, the study argues that due to the constraint of women discourses,

young women need to find some alternative spaces as a form of resistance

against this traditional value to gain more degree of agency in gender negotiation

(Boonmongkon et al., 2008). This finding is in line with that of another study:

because of the restriction of conventional behaviour in femininity, young people

lack choices to perform their multiple gender identities (Chamsanit, 2008). Moving

to the twenty-first century, many scholars argue that the traditional values of

femininity still are associated with the cultural dichotomy of good or bad qualities

even there are choices of social media sphere (Boonmongkon et al, 2013;

Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). I will discuss this issue in more details

– social media as the alternative platform for gender negotiation – in section 2.2.

See this further to understand the shift of gender practices by young Thai women

when social media becomes predominant.

Based on the reviewed previous scholars, it can be seen that mainstream

discourse in female value is the underlying theme which is interested in many

researchers to explore on gendered culture in Thailand. This section overall

shows the initial concepts of the prevailing culture and traditional public

discourses in Thailand. Since there are other influential discourses regarding

femininity in Thai culture, I consider that ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’ discourse (to

preserve the chastity) is one of the grounded concepts as regard to gender that

impacts how young women negotiate their gender identity both offline and online;

specifically, this potentially leads them struggling in gender matters. From this

point, I thus aim to follow up the process of adaptation and negotiation regarding

gender by young women on social media where I suggest these sites as

alternative spaces offering more opportunity to resist mainstream discourses of

women in society. Additionally, I intend to ask: are they building their subculture

online to subvert toward the dominant discourses? If yes, how do they practise

this through their profile pages? Are there any tactical or strategic ways to do this?

These are some of the issues I explore to understand how young Thai women

use social media in negotiating gender identity.

2.1.2 ‘Kalathesa’ discourse – ‘contextual sensitivity’

Besides the ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’ discourse (to preserve the chastity), the

‘kalathesa’ discourse, or ‘contextual sensitivity’, has been considered an impactful

traditional public discourse regarding gender in Thai culture from the past until

now. There are many traditional forms of female values in Thailand that most

young women certainly perceive as common sense. One of the most influential

feminine practices of common sense is the ‘kalathesa’ (กาลเทศะ) discourse

(Thaweesit, 2004). According to Jackson and Cook (1999), gender culture in

Thailand is a complex web of intersecting patterns, ‘kalathesa’ (กาลเทศะ). The ‘times

and places’ concept is the social framework that highly contextualises gender

norms in Thailand. This framework stipulates that Thai women and men routinely

move between differently structured gendered contexts, in which they know what

is proper in each time and place; thus, scholars call this framework ‘contextual

sensitivity’ (Jackson and Cook, 1999). Similarly, Van Esterick (2000) suggests

that gendered presentations in appearance terms, called ‘aesthetic surface

effects’, are highly valued and take precedence over ideas of inner ‘essences’ of

Thais. The word ‘essence’ refers to a person’s spiritual essence, or a person’s

inner purity, or a person’s inner being (Jackson, 2004). There is a clear difference

between Thai and Western cultural perspectives. In the West, it is the inner being

that is conceived as real with the image being a “mere” surface that expresses or

follows the contours of the inner self. In the Thai case, the relationship is reversed.

It is the surface image that has the power to mold the inner being (Jackson, 2004).

Thus, the ‘kalathesa’ (กาลเทศะ) discourse is a “historically dominant discourse in

Thailand that permits appearances and truths to be radically disjunct” (Morris,

2002, p. 53). Importantly, it is suggested that Thailand is a society in which

“surfaces matter” and where identity is constituted upon "an assumption of the

self as a knowable surface" (Van Esterik 2000, p. 39).

The ‘Kalathesa’ (กาลเทศะ) discourse is what Thai people acknowledge when and

where they should perform their selves and identities according to the social

expectation. In other words, it is the notion that Thais, especially young people,

need to perform their selves and identities according to the ‘times and places’

concept to conform to the social norms and values in society. They are conscious

of when is the right ‘time’ and where is the right ‘place’ to perform something

according to social desirability, especially in adult culture. In terms of aesthetic

surface effects, it is related to the discourse of contextual sensitivity since young

Thai people are concerned with their social images; in other words, they present

their gender identities with the concern of the appearance terms. The aesthetic

surface effects can potentially alter a person’s behaviours and semiotic practices

in any matters, especially in sexual matters. For example, young women may shift

their gender practices and presentations to comply with traditional expectations

and qualities of being submissive, docile, and naïve.!

The ‘kalathesa’ (กาลเทศะ) discourse has become the common sense of gender

practice by which young women alter their performance of gender in different

social contexts (Thaweesit, 2004). From this, it enables the tension of young

women in terms of their gender negotiation: they are struggling in gender matters

between images of what they want to practice and what they practice in everyday

life, due to the concern of ‘aesthetic surface effects’ in Thai culture (Thaweesit,

2004; Van Esterick, 2000). Manderson (1992) calls this tension the discordance

between ideology and practice of individuals in society. Even though the

‘kalathesa’ discourse perhaps allows girls to change and shift their identity

performances depending on times and spaces, I view that it still constrains the

ways in which girls perform their gender diversity. This is because they need to

be aware of what times and which places that society find those behaviours

acceptable, which might lead to struggles in gender expression. Young women

might struggle with their gender identity performances due to the tension between

the social ideology and their own desired practices. Thus, I note that conservative

discourses, like the case of ‘kalathesa’ (กาลเทศะ), or ‘contextual sensitivity’, can

potentially demonstrate the girl’s tension among the state’s ideologies and their

own agency in the negotiation of their gender identities.

Goffman’s terminology of ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage’ through his dramaturgical

model (1959) is in line with when Thais perform their selves according to the

‘times and places’ concept. Specifically, young Thai people are aware of when is

the right time and where is the right place to perform their selves and identities

according to the social context. This accords with the ways Goffman viewed how

individuals perform their selves at the front stage (with the observing by

audiences) and express themselves on the backstage (with more relaxation since

there is no audience watching). It is a kind of desired and undesired images of

selves that individuals select to be presented since they purpose to manage their

impression with their social relationships: friends, family, teachers, and others. In

short, the social framework of the ‘kalathesa’ discourse refers to when Thai

people acknowledge when and where are the proper ‘time’ and ‘place’ to perform

their selves to manage the impression for social interaction.

The distinction of the Thai cultural logics can be made between the surface image/

outward appearance (or referred to as ‘ideal self’ in Goffman’s frontstage term)

and the inner identity/inner essence being/inner truth (or referred to as ‘real self’

in Goffman’s backstage term). Also, as I mentioned previously, Thai cultural

perspectives are different from those of the West. In Thailand, the surface image

has the power to mold the inner being (Jackson, 2004). Thus, most of the Thai

conservative discourses, including ‘kalathesa’ (contextual sensitivity), are

dominant to permit appearances and truths to be radically disjunct” (Morris, 2002).

Similarly, Van Esterik (2000) describes Thailand as a society that "encourages an

essentialism of appearances or surfaces: the real is hidden and unchallenged,

while the surface is taken for real." (p. 4). In contrast to the Western culture, a

performative identity is suggested as the pattern of modern Thai subjectivities,

that is ‘essential Thai identity’ (ekkalak Thai tha), such as being courteous, gentle,

smiley, and genteel (Jackson, 2004). Judith Butler (2000) argues that it is the

performative force associated with the repetition of culturally sanctioned ways of

acting that confers on such behaviours the sense that they are ‘natural’ or

‘essential’ parts of personal identity. Hence, this may be the beginning of a model

for understanding the impact of the surface-directed form of Thai power on

subjectivity, which produces the cultural effect of a set of behaviours that have

come to be perceived as an ‘essential Thai identity’ (Jackson, 2004).

In conclusion, the ‘kalathesa’ concept is considered contextual sensitivity: it is a

person's common sense concerning appropriateness of self-presentation of how

to perform their selves based on the social context of time and place values (Van

Esterick, 2000). It is argued that the common sense of the ‘times and places’

discourse in Thai culture reinforces the ‘aesthetic surface effects’ which limit the

ways young people express and/or perform about selves and identities (Van

Esterick, 2000). Also, Thai scholars highlight the popular point of view that most

of the gender discourses in Thai culture are coherent and dichotomous: as ‘good’

versus ‘bad’, or ‘modern’ versus ‘traditional’ (Thaweesit, 2004). This is similar to

the ways I discussed in the previous section that the discourse of maintaining

virginity (‘rak nuan sanguan tua’) is also associated with ‘good’ or ‘bad’ women.

From this, it is argued that the “gender discourse is a fundamental domain in

which gender identity is negotiated and enacted traditionally” (Thaweesit, 2004).

Thus, the influential discourse, like in the case of the ‘kalathesa’ (times and

places) discourse, is viewed as the limitation of gender practices by young

women. When a social discourse defines what, when, where, and how to present

gender identity or defines womanhood, Thai women struggle to detach

themselves from socially unacceptable images, and they attempt to link

themselves to socially acceptable and respectable images of women (Thaweesit,

2004). This enables the ambivalence and tension between ideology and practice

of individuals as I discussed previously and also leads young people to resist and

challenge the norms. Specifically, when social media becomes significant part of

the young generation’s daily lives at the present, the negotiation of gender identity

in online spaces has been considered to expose ambivalence and tension of

young women and their gender concerns. Even if their gender practices are

incongruent with certain authoritative or ideological discourses in society, online

spaces might be the potential sites to enact new practices and cultural

phenomena. From this crucial debate, it is interesting to follow up on how young

women challenge traditional common-sense norms of womanhood in the offline

society through the affordances of social media – this is the key theme of how my

research question is conceptualised.

2.1.3 Motherhood and wifehood discourses

In Thailand, according to the motherhood and wifehood concepts, the ideological

discourses of the being ‘good’ woman reinforce the qualities of being virtuous,

submissive, and monogamous (Thaweesit, 2004). Women are expected to

tolerate marital problems for their children’s sake; in addition, they are expected

to remain married until death (Suriyasarn, 2014). It is evident that the burdens of

maintaining a married life and ensuring the welfare of the offspring have often

fallen heavily on women rather than men (Xu, et al., 2011). This can be parallel

to dominant discourses on womanhood: that is, women should not be in the

surrounding of adultery and promiscuity (Thaweesit, 2004; Suriyasarn, 2014). If

women commit adultery, they are strongly condemned and are seen as ‘bad

women’ (bid). The term ‘bad woman’ is applied to women who are intimately

involved with more than one man and are therefore considered promiscuous

(Thaweesit, 2004). Even though polygamy and promiscuity have been

discouraged for both men and women, it is women who are expected by society

to follow the rules strictly (Suriyasarn, 2014). Although there is more openness

that the reality of women’s lived experiences is often contradictory to, or even

incongruent with, sexual hegemonic discourses, the discourses of femininity in

Thailand, such as motherhood and wifehood, still shape women’s lives in terms

of gender practices (Jackson and Duangwises, 2016). This is because they live

their lives by following discursive regimes that prescribe gender practices in

society (Suriyasarn, 2014; Jackson and Duangwises, 2016). The implication is

that the social desirability and expectations of gender in Thailand have often fallen

heavily on women more than men. Also, the normative discourses in Thai society

have been reproduced in the same theme of gender stereotype: referring to

women as a figure of motherhood and being submissive, subordinate, and

dependent, while men as superior, active, dominant, and independent

(Thaweesit, 2004). Importantly, when discussing social class in relation to sexual

attitude, the previous study asserts that lower-class young women tend to be the

most comfortable group in discussing premarital sexual experiences (Thianthai,

2004). The girls from this social group seem to accept the idea that women who

have premarital sex are not bad. They think that as long as a girl loves a man, it

is all right to have sex with him (Thianthai, 2004). In the meantime, middle-class

young women display more understanding of the pressures placed on women to

abstain from sex before marriage than upper-class young women do. Certainly,

upper-class girls are the group that is conservative in this respect (Thianthai,

2004).

Other scholar suggests that Buddhism plays a vital role in Thai patriarchal culture,

which places men’s social power higher than that of Thai women (Xu et al., 2011).

Thai men are eligible for ordination while women are primarily limited to

participating in merit-making rituals and domestic work around temples (Xu et al.,

2011; Falk, 2008). This gender hierarchy has been adopted as a practical norm

in social relations in the private and public spheres in Thailand (Xu et al., 2011).

Although the norm has gradually become less influential in terms of

socioeconomic opportunities and employment (UNDP, 2019), its influence on

gender roles and sexual relations remains intact. For instance, there exists a

notion that men are considered as the family’s main provider, while women are

expected to take on a supportive position by handling household responsibilities

(Xu et al., 2011). Followed through these pieces of evidence, the motherhood,

wifehood, and other girlhood discourses seem to put restrictions on young

women’s gender practices and sexual expression offline or online.

In addition to the influence of social discourses regarding motherhood, wifehood,

and girlhood on how young women construct their gender identity both online and

offline, the state and institutional constraints wield significant influence. In

Thailand, gender in young women tends to be controlled by society and the state

(Boonmongkon et al., 2008). For instance, sex education in Thai schools still

revolves around promoting abstinence, especially in young women, and mass

media campaigns also repeat the same theme as regards the traditional form of

female values (Thaweesit and Boonmongkon 2011). This theme is also reinforced

by the women discourses in society, such as the ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’ discourse

(to preserve the chastity), and the ‘kalathesa’ discourse (times and places value)

as I discussed in the last two sections. These conservative sexual values and

discourses shape and pressure young Thai women to conform to and follow

mainstream norms of feminine propriety.

To sum up, the traditional public discourses of women still influence and impact

not only the negotiation of gender identity of young women, but also the

expression of sexuality – sexual feelings, desires, and emotions – as well as the

everyday life of sexual experiences. Additionally, the social control, which exerts

pressure on young women’s gender by social institutions such as families,

schools, and the media, further encourages young women use social media as a

way to escape from the moral policing in terms of gender (Songsamphan, 2008).

Thus, the debates about the impact of the motherhood and wifehood discourse in

young Thai women are still ongoing, but what is clear is that the traditional

common sense of female practices have been reinforced by the ‘bad’ view of

social media discourse in adult culture. This ‘bad’ social media discourse – a

negative view and drawback of media including both traditional and new media in

parental and adult culture – will be further reviewed in the following section.

2.1.4 Parental discourse: ‘Dutiful daughters’ in Thai

families

After we understand the specific traditional public discourse regarding gender and

the prevailing culture in Thailand in the previous section, I will now show more

specific details about the parental discourse as the constraint on young Thai

women. This section will discuss the concept of ‘dutiful daughters’ in Thai families

by highlighting how this parental discourse can control, shape, and impact their

children in terms of sexual matters both online and offline. To clarify briefly, the

notion of ‘dutiful daughters’ is an influential discourse that is highly valued in Thai

families. As young people adopt their position and status from their parent’s

discourse, it is believed that young people are restricted in terms of gender from

the parental discourses, norms, and values in the family setting as well. How

being a dutiful daughter in a Thai family is considered as the constraint on a girl’s

identity performance of gender? My assumption is that being a dutiful daughter is

related to the concept of female discourses: ‘good’ (kon-dee) and ‘bad’ (kon-chua)

women (Cook and Jackson; 1999) – as I discussed in the first section of this

chapter. Being a dutiful daughter is the value that shapes the ways in which young

women behave their selves and identity since they need to comply to the parental

discourses, such as being grateful and being a teachable and docile person, after

which they will be perceived as ‘good’ women.

In Thailand, the ‘dutiful daughter’ discourse in Thai families have a significant

implication in terms of young women’s performace of selves and identities. The

latest study in Thailand argues that the quality of gratitude such as being a

dutiful/good daughter is the highest value in Thai families (Doungphummes and

Sangsingkeo, 2020). Similarly, Angeles and Sunanta (2009) suggest that family

obligation is one of the influential norms in Thailand, especially when female

children need to satisfactorily fulfill their family obligations through many ways.

For example, they must endeavour to ease their parents’ concerns about their

well-being. In other words, children need to have a series of interpersonal

strategies and negotiations to fulfill their family obligations in order to be ‘good’

daughters (Angeles and Sunanta, 2009). The term ‘good’ daughters here implies

the notion of ‘dutiful’ daughters in Thai family life, and many parents pass this

prevailing norm of filial piety to their children. Thus, this norm of ‘good’ daughters

continues to restrict young women’s sexual expression in diverse ways both in

the online and offline contexts, particularly the need to fullfil the expectations of

their family (Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). For example, many Thai

families expect their daughters to present their sexual identity in line with the

heterosexual norm due to the patriarchal culture. Although parents may be not

much distressed about their children being lesbian or other non-normative

identities, non-binary children still experience a sense of failure that they are not

‘good’ daughters, since they cannot gain their parent’s acceptance and satisfy

their expectations (ibid).

The latest empirical study suggests that the dutiful daughter concept includes the

qualities of being submissive, docile, and teachable (Doungphummes and

Sangsingkeo, 2020), which are also associated with the concept of cultural

dichotomy: ‘good’ (kon-dee) or ‘bad’ (kon-chua) women as previous scholars

argued (Fongkeaw, 1995; Cook and Jackson; 1999). Specifically, it is argued that

the mother’s voice on social and cultural matters (particularly in sexual matters)

is highly regarded and conforms to conventional expectations about the

daughter’s duty (Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). Furthermore, due to

the dominance of patriarchal culture in Thailand, the father’s position also

becomes the crucial factor leading the family control in children’s lived

experience. This kind of control and the discourse of the daughter’s obligation in

Thai families result in the restriction of young women’s sexual matters

(Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020; Boonmongkon et al, 2013). For

instance, young women should limit their performance of gender identities and

should conform to normative gender and the ‘girlishness’ of Thai femininity.

Although the latest study argues that the ‘dutiful daughters’ concept is highly

valued in Thai families, which currently still restricts young women’s gender

negotiation and sexual expression (Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020),

there is still a lack of critical understanding of how this concept is dispersed among

different classes of young women. In other words, there are still no explicit shreds

of evidence showing which class of young women in Thai culture is the value of

being dutiful daughters applied to. This is because previous studies explored this

issue with only the middle class in urban Bangkok. There is no clear-cut reference

to other classes of young women. From this research gap, I aim to expand the

understanding regarding the complexity of social class in Thailand related to

sexual discourses and gender performance of young Thai women.

However, other recent studies suggest that the public discourse in Thai society is

considered acceptable in non-normative gender (Jackson, 2011; Sanders, 2011).

Plus, the ‘virtual world’ online, such as Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook is

ubiquitous, leading to more openness for non-binary gender identities and other

non-normativities in gender performances in a global society (Smith, 2018). To

sum up, I consider that, there is still insufficient research in Thailand that has

explored new practices of gender in young women, particularly in digital youth

culture regarding gender issues. Here, I aimed to investigate how the

conventional parental discourse continues to impact young women’s gender

negotiation online. Also, I sought to understand how young Thai women continue

to construct or re-construct their gender identity online and, at the same time, how

they resist such mainstream values and women discourses. Thus, my research

investigated how young women challenge conventional norms, parental

discourse, as well as other traditional public discourses through the use of social

media, whilst living in the dominant patriarchal culture of contemporary Thailand.

2.2 Social media used in the negotiation of gender by young Thai

women

In the previous section, I discussed how the prevailing culture and traditional

public discourses regarding gender impact and constrain how young Thai women

perform their gender identity. Specifically, most of the gender discourses put

pressure on young women to conform to the normative ideas, gender roles and

norms that society has constructed. For example, it is suggested by many

scholars that the parental discourse can control their children in terms of gender

practice. Thus children have been placed in the struggle between what they want

to practice and what their parents set to practice (Doungphummes and

Sangsingkeo, 2020). Additionally, it is demonstrated previously that Thais have

long fostered the idea that gender must be kept private, and sex is a strongly

prohibited subject for open discussion (The Guardian, 2012). I consider that

traditional public discourses in gender limit young Thai women to think about, to

be, and to practise their gender in dynamic and creative ways.

However, since the rise of communication through online platforms has become

increasingly important, especially among teens, it is argued that the major factors

leading to changes in gender culture in Thailand are mobile phones, the Internet,

and social media (Chantong et al., 2009). It is considered that these factors can

provide easier access to information regarding gender; besides, it conveniently

facilitates the initiation of sex and relationships among teens, and it also provides

more private communication between individuals (ibid). From this, I will highlight

that due to the proliferation of social media in young people’s everyday life, these

children find some alternative ways to rebel against the traditional public

discourses derived from the offline society through the use of social media.

Overall, the followings are the sub-themes of this section: firstly, social media as

an alternative space for more sexual autonomy; secondly, the popularities of the

‘manga’ culture in Asia and ‘cosplay’ sexual activities on social media; and lastly,

the controversies over the ‘bad’ social media discourse in Thailand.

Many Thai and Western scholars have investigated the impact of social media on

sexual negotiation of young girls (Ellison and boyd, 2013); Hjorth et al., 2017);

Boonmongkon et al., 2013). In the first strand, Thai scholars argued that social

media is a novel alternative space for sexual autonomy in young people

(Boonmongkon et al, 2013; Fongkeaw and Fongkeaw, 2016). For example, they

claimed that young people use social media to get more opportunities for sexual

expression, sexual relationship building, and gender identity performance

(Boonmongkon et al, 2013). In the second strand, Kang (2017) and Leng (2014)

argued that the popularities of the ‘manga’ culture and ‘cosplay’ activities are seen

as ways of sexual negotiation and gender performance in young people,

especially in fluid identity performers. This is due to the fact that they can switch

their gender identities through role-play characters via many choices of dress,

costumes, props, hairstyles, make-up, etc. In the final point, owing to the

controversies surrounding the ‘bad’ media discourse in Thailand as discussed by

Songsamphan (2008), Chantong et al (2009), and Parker (2009), I view that it is

worthwhile to review how the ‘bad’ media discourse has been debated from the

past until now? How is the media discourse developed and changed now? Do

parents and adult cultures still reproduce this discourse and pass it to their

children?

To sum up, the three strands are significant in the context of my study, which is

defined by the literature and studies from both Thai and Western scholars – as I

discussed above. I view that it is crucial to discuss the impact of social media on

gender negotiation of young people, which has emerged into three sections.

Overall, social media is seen as a novel alternative space for sexual autonomy.

In a detailed picture, the ‘cosplay’ activity is a way of gender performance on

social media showing fluidity and diversity. Lastly, the debates about the ‘bad’

social media discourse can provide a picture that helps understand how the

parental and adult cultures in Thailand still shape and impact young people’s

social media use and its relationship with their gender negotiation.

2.2.1 Social media as a novel alternative space

offering more sexual autonomy

Many scholars in media studies explore the impact of social media on young

people’s lived experiences (boyd and Heer, 2006; Marwick and boyd, 2011;

Ellison and boyd, 2013; Hjorth et al., 2017). Various researchers consider these

online platforms as novel social spaces with which young people engage for many

purposes, such as for self-presentation, for building relationships, for civic

participation, for political engagement, sexual expression, and gender negotiation

(Baker, 2013; Bosch 2011; Hjorth 2010). Also, there are many empirical research

studies on social media and visual communication, and these studies aim to

investigate the visual meaning-making resources in social media environments,

such as blogs, Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram (Adami and Jewitt, 2016). For

instance, research on social media within the field of multimodal studies includes

genre analysis of Facebook publishing (Eisenlauer, 2010), identity work through

repurposing resources (Leppänen et al., 2013), text compositional practices on

Facebook (Bezemer and Kress, 2014), the aesthetic meaning potential of web

design (Adami, 2015), the expression of style in Tumblr and Pinterest (Jewitt and

Henriksen, 2017), and multimodal critical discourse analysis of gendered identity

in stock photography (Aiello and Woodhouse, 2016).

Adami and Jewitt (2016) suggest four themes that are pertinent to visual

communication and social media: emerging genres and practices; identity

construction; everyday public/private vernacular practices; and transmedia

circulation, appropriation, and control. These critical themes allow for a better

understanding that social media provides a creative space for multimodal text

production including “the emergence of new genres, that is, new configurations

of typified communicative forms that fulfil specific and diversified social functions”

(Adami and Jewitt, 2016, p. 265). Furthermore, it is suggested that the identity of

individuals is expressed and constructed through visuals shared online like the

ways we express our identity through clothes and furniture (ibid). From this point,

it is argued that “identity construction is dynamic and can change in viewer’s

perceptions of the very same image over time, through contextual transformations

and layering of information and media discourses” (Adami and Jewitt, 2016, p.

266). Overall, it can be seen that there is a considerable interest by many

researchers in exploring social media and the characteristics of the users, their

attitudes, behaviours, and practices, especially in terms of identity construction.

As we have renewed agency in constructing and projecting our identities through

online materials such as text, image, video, sound (Adami and Jewitt, 2016),

these multimodal texts seem useful to represent meaning-making by users.

Based on these reviewed papers, I aimed to understand how young Thai women

use these multimodal online texts on social media to (re) construct their gender

identity while living in the patriarchal society that characterises contemporary

Thailand.

To discuss social media and gender in youth in more detail, the followings are

scholars who assert that social media serve as alternative spaces that potentially

offer opportunities for young people to deal with sexual struggle as well as their

sexual autonomy. Ellison and boyd (2013) suggested that young people use

social media as tools to express and develop their gender identity and sexuality.

For example, they use these sites to cultivate sexual relations, to express sexual

emotions, and to display feelings of intimacy and desire. Similarly, Baker (2013),

boyd (2014), and Marwick and boyd (2011) highlighted that young people not only

meet new people, foster sexual relations, and express their sexual identities in

their schools with groups of friends, but they also engage in these activities on

online sites where there are more diverse friends, multiple audiences, and new

patterns of social interactions through online activities, such as comments, shared

status, posted pictures, and other interactive features. In Thailand, several

scholars have explored social media's impact on young people’s lived

experiences and these scholars mostly tend to understand the new social

phenomenon in youth culture in the digital environment. For instance, the recent

Thai studies suggest that although the dominant state and social institutions still

pressure young women’s sexual expression in the offline world, young women

can ignore the mainstream discourses and traditional patterns of female practices

in the online world (Boonmongkon et al, 2013; Fongkeaw and Fongkeaw, 2016).

Specifically, the studies argue that young women can express their ‘intrinsic’

gender identity, diverse sexuality, and/or fluid identity through their social media

profile pages (ibid).

As I discussed previously that, in the past, Thai children seldom learned about

sex from either parents or teachers, and when they learned about sex at school,

it was always restricted to the context of biology, which rarely touched upon the

emotional and sexual desires related to the essence of sex (Chantong et al.,

2009). However, Thai scholars have put forward the notion that young Thai

people now live in an information society. The Internet and social media provide

them easier access to information despite the ‘undesirable’ issues, like sex and

gender (Fongkeaw and Fongkeaw, 2016). The 'undesirable' is part of a code of

conduct that Thai parents and adults culture employ to limit their children from

learning about and exhibiting sexually inappropriate behaviour, such as sexting,

watching pornography, and reading erotica both online and offline.

The Internet, social media, and other communicative technology potentially

facilitate the initiation of sex and relationships among teens conveniently and offer

them more choices for non-conventional practices (Fongkeaw and Fongkeaw,

2016). Boonmongkon et al. (2013) consider that social media can help teenage

girls perform their gender identity and other sexual matters with more freedom

since these sites facilitate them to express love, responsibility, intimacy, and

sexual desire easily. It is argued that because social media play a crucial role in

helping young women to restructure values, ideas, and norms regarding sexual

subjectivities, young women can exert agency in negotiating their sexuality and

performing their gender identity on online sites (Boonmongkon et al., 2013).

Similarly, another scholar who explored gender and sexuality in the online space

has found that young women as ‘active agents’ achieve a certain level of sexual

autonomy and construct their gender identities through their profile pages

(Fongkeaw and Fongkeaw, 2016). Therefore, it is apparent that, in online spaces,

young Thai women can display their bodies and express their gender identity and

sexuality within contesting feminine discourses shaped by the dominant state,

social institutions, the mainstream media, as well as by young women’s

discourses (Boonmongkon et al., 2008).

To sum up, I am of the view that even though young Thai women may never

entirely escape the dominant forces of the state inflicted upon them by the media,

family, and school, they can newly create spaces to challenge these forces via

new communicative ways/tools. Online platforms can be seen as social and/or

cultural artifacts that young people can use to play with their identity

performances. For example, they can create multiple social media sites to

diversely negotiate their gender identity through profile pages. This consideration

links to de Certeau’s argument that individuals can contest and challenge the

dominant culture in the city, according to his work, Walking in the City (1980).

When young Thai women can create their norms and dynamic practices through

social media, it is in line with the suggestion by de Certeau (1980) that individuals

can adapt their ends even they are living in contexts where they are constrained

by a dominant cultural order. The work by de Certeau (1980) can be used as a

theoretical framework to better understand the contesting, adapting, as well as

challenging by young women towards Thai dominant culture. The next theory

chapter will discuss this framework in more detail. I conclude my main argument

here that social media used by young women in the negotiation of gender is best

understood as a place of rebelling against hegemonic power imposed by schools

(teachers), families (parents), as well as other forms of adult culture in Thai

society.

2.2.2 Popularities of ‘Manga’ (or ‘yaoi’) and ‘Cosplay’

sexual activities on social media

The previous section discusses the notion of social media as the alternative

platform offering more sexual autonomy for young women. In this section, I will

elaborate more on how young women use these online sites to rebel against

normative practices of gender. In other words, this section highlights how young

women use the online communicative platform to challenge mainstream

discourses regarding gender in Thai society. For example, they might create their

online community on the social media platform to communicate, express, and

exchange their non-normative gender practices. I suggest the popularities of

‘manga’ (or ‘yaoi’) and ‘cosplay’ sexual activities on social media as the alternative

ways that young women perform their dynamic, diverse, and non-normative

gender identities.

Since the late 1990s, the ‘manga’ culture – a popular Japanese comics, cartoons,

and animation – has become popular among young Thai women (Keenapan,

2001). This kind of pop culture is commonly referred to as ‘yaoi’ or ‘cartoon wai’,

which is a specific genre of the much wider category of manga. This sort of yaoi

Japanese pop culture is linked to the Boys Love (BL) culture (a male same-sex

relationship) consumed by many young women. In other words, Boys Love (BL)

is a genre of Japanese popular culture specifically designed for homosexual

female audiences, focusing on the romantic relationships between beautiful male

youths known as bishōnen (McLelland and Welker, 2015). In short, whether called

‘manga’, ‘yoai, or Boys Love (BL), it is a genre of homoerotic media originating in

Japan, which is now widespread in Asian counties, such as Taiwan, Singapore,

Korea, and also Thailand (McLelland and Welker, 2015). In the latest Thai work

that explored the adaptation of homoerotic media (i.e., BL) from Japanese pop

culture to contemporary Thai pop culture, the author suggests that the series ‘wai’

has become a new genre of Thai mainstream media and part of a pop culture

among young women in Thailand (Baudinette, 2019). Additionally, homosexual

young women between 15 – 22 years old are the key audiences of this series

‘wai’ (Baudinette, 2019). Likewise, Kang (2017) considers similarly that the series

‘wai’ in the Thai mediascape empowers Thai BL fans who are young women,

especially in the context of the online community.

This kind of BL fandom has a similar pattern to the case of Star Trek Fan culture

in American and Western culture. The homoerotic and ‘slash’ fan fiction of Star

Trek is a subset of the more general category of fandom. It is argued that young

people can rewrite popular texts to serve different interests. This fan writing is

called ‘textual poaching’ (Jenkins, 1988). For example, many young women

create same-sex fan works, as shown in the Kirk-Spock relationship in the Star

Trek universe driven by their fashion or interest. Jenkins (1988) argues that this

so-called ‘fandom’ is a vehicle for marginalised subcultural groups (women, the

young, gays, etc.).

Exploring deeper into the literature in the area of fanculture, fan art and fan fiction

are created by serious fans who borrow the content from the mainstream media

(Lopez, 2012). Generally, fan fiction authors maintain the setting of the original

story, but they extend the story or change its ending (Bolt, 2004). Fan art and fan

fiction are different from cosplay in which fans dress as movie, comic, or game

characters. Cosplay events require actual meetings in the real-world setting, but

fan art and fan fiction do not need them (Arunrangsiwed, 2016) Moreover, fan art

and fan fiction can also be combined with cosplay events. For example,

Lamerichs (2013) who attended a cosplay event in Japan found that fans were

selling their own copy of artwork during the event. Many cosplayers also called

themselves with the same pseudonym that they signed in fan art and fan fiction.

Slash or Yaoi fan art and fiction are a type of fan creations. They tell the stories

about the homosexual relationship between male fictional characters. Most of

Slash and Yaoi fan creations have been created by female fans (Jenkins, 1992).

More recently, most of the studies have described the criteria for the selection of

characters for Slash and Yaoi creations by applying qualitative content analysis

methods. In other words, they aim to understand how the Slash or Yaoi fan works

are developed, as well as to understand the Slash characters and the impacts of

fanculture in relation to other youth cultures online. The findings from previous

studies suggest that Slash characters are nonhuman beings, and the homosexual

relationship in Slash fan creations is developed from friendship in the original

media (Arunrangsiwed, 2016). Furthermore, more recent research interests have

been devoted to exploring the relation of fan creations and copyright from the

business point of view. However, it is still under debate whether fan fiction writing

negatively affects the business of copyright owners, or instead supports the

original media, just like word-of-mouth advertising (Kalinowski, 2014).

In terms of the ‘textual poaching’ concept by Jenkins (1988), it is a term that used

to articulate the processes by which dedicated fans respond to popular media. In

Jenkins’s argument, fans are not simply passive consumers of popular texts but

“become active participants in the construction and circulation of textual

meanings” (Jenkins 1992, 24). Fans, often constructed as mere dupes of the

official culture industry, are in fact savvy, subversive readers operating outside of

the cultural industry’s paradigms – especially since they are not only readers

(Jenkins 1992). Jenkins emphasises fans as producers of new cultural material:

fans “poach” their favoured texts to create a variety of new analytical and creative

works. Importantly, social media is a powerful tool for fans to share their creations

and to search for creations by other fans – unlike the traditional print/book/painting

artworks of fans in the past (Lam, 2010). Hence, social media platforms can help

fans to publish their creations faster and to reach more audiences as well as to

build the relationship with their fan community online (Lam, 2010).

The above-mentioned Jenkins’s argument and literature can be applied to

understand same-sex communities as well as fan communities in online sites

among young Thai women; in addition, they can help to understand how original

pieces of work, for example manga or yaoi, are transferred as subcultural works

by young women. There is a strong possibility that young women create their

sexual activities online with the intention to rebel against normative gender

practices. It is clear that Boys Love (BL) in Japanese pop culture has come to

influence Thai conceptualisations of gender and sexuality, especially fluid

identities and LGBTQ+ (Baudinette, 2019). Other studies also argue in the same

ways that the conceptualisations of queer gender in Thailand are originally

derived from the social process based on the manga Japanese and Korean pop

culture (Jackson, 2011; Sinnott, 2012). From this, it shows that the Japanese

manga phenomenon is significant for the popular culture in the Thai context since

it can influence the conceptualisation of gender, particularly non-binary gender in

young Thai people. Importantly, the manga culture (often called manga-bunka in

the literature) is the groundwork of many popular cultures and subcultural

activities of young people across many countries. For example, the ‘cosplay’

activity is one of the striking examples originating from the manga culture that

show how teenage southeast-Asian girls perform their non-normative gender

practices. In Thai pop culture, this cosplay is a sort of ‘role-play’ activity that has

its origin in the Japanese manga pop culture as well (Leng, 2014). Many young

Thai women do role-play cosplay by switching their gender with their partners and

they wear cosplay costumes with the aim of mimicking characters from manga

cartoons or animations. When they are role-playing characters, they have many

choices to perform their alternative gender identities through, for example, their

costumes, props, hairstyles, and make-up. These unlimited choices enable them

to perform more playful, creative, and diverse forms of gender identity.

Korean pop culture – a culture that emerged from the Japanese manga culture –

is another influential pattern that leads to diverse gender practices in Thai pop

culture. Kang (2017) suggests that, within Asian cultural flows, gender practices

and performances are transforming in many unexpected ways due to the

presence of the K-pop wave. This K-pop wave includes Korean popular music, K-

pop cover dances, and K-pop artists. For example, many K-pop fans try to copy

choreographed movements, dresses, make-up styles, and characters from music

videos of their favourite boyband artists and then they perform them in organised

events both online or offline. The scholar believe that these K-pop fan activities

have become definitive social activities among Asian ‘sissies’ (referred to as

young women and feminine gay men) (Kang, 2015; 2017). This finding

demonstrates that Korean popular culture is the cultural flow in Asia that

empowers diversity and dynamics of gender as well as transgender performance,

especially in the LGBTQ+ community. At the same time, the author highlights the

personal and national development that indexes participation in a new

cosmopolitan Asian sphere (Kang, 2017).

In conclusion, many previous pieces of research discuss how the Japanese

manga culture influences other pop cultures, and also how the manga-culture

phenomenon can help to conceptualise gender identity and gender performance

in Thai pop culture. In my current study, the ‘manga’ and ‘yaoi’ phenomena, as

well as the popularities of ‘cosplay’ activity and ‘K-pop’ culture, are considered to

be the significant foundation for the quest to understand how young Thai women

perform their fluid identities and other non-normative practices on social media.

The evidence suggests that they use social media to create their subcultural

community online to negotiate their desired images of gender. To sum up, I

consider that when they play with these creative activities online, they are

challenging traditional public discourses, such as normative femininity, normative

gender roles, and heteronormativity in the prevailing culture in Thailand.

2.2.3 Controversies over the ‘bad’ social media

discourse in Thailand

Even though social media offer more autonomy for young women in terms of

sexual matters such as sexual feelings, sexual desires, and gender identity, many

scholars have maintained that young women still cannot escape the influence of

mainstream discourses of women both online and offline. This is due to the

controversies surrounding the ‘bad’ social media discourse promoted by some

adult public discourses and mainstream institutions, such as in family settings,

educational settings, and state institutions. The Thai state continually has tried to

block access to some online spaces because of fears of sexual immorality

(Songsamphan, 2008; Chantong et al., 2009). In Asian countries, especially

Thailand, young women are expected to not express their sexual desires or

interest in the opposite sex. Parker (2009) considers that sexual norms are

reproduced by the diverse and complex relations between culture, power, and

sexual politics in society. These social systems, such as cultural values, power,

and sexual politics, arguably determine young women’s sexual subjectivities and

practices (Park, 2009). He calls these social systems social organisations

regarding sexual interactions, a concept which is in line with the consideration of

the ‘institution discourse’, recognised as the ‘expert’ by Foucault (1998).

When Foucault suggests that ‘institutions’ (seen as the ‘expert’) enact the ‘truth’

in society (1998), we can better understand how the Thai state and social

institutions constitute gender norms and sexual values in young women through

knowledge and power relations. In other words, when the Thai state tries to

embark on a series of processes attempting to control, regulate and suppress

young women’s gender and sexuality, they produce the ‘truths’ through a series

of moral panics and fears of sexual immorality, which are widely popular among

conservative urbanites (Brickell, 2012; Chantong et al., 2009). These moral

panics offer a rationale for state intervention, such as the provision of sexuality

education and the enforcement of a media rating system to evaluate sexual and

other ‘undesirable’ content in advertisements, television shows, movies, and

drama (Tanabe, 1991). All these actions restrain and control young women’s

gender identity and sexual expression, shaping them to be ‘proper’ and in line

with the desired sexual morality of the ‘kunlasatree’ discourse (or ‘well-behaved

woman’) by hegemonic processes enforced through the Thai state (Fongkaew et

al. 2007; Chantong et al., 2009).

Furthermore, it is suggested that social media used by young women in

expressing their gender and sexual interest have resulted in a moral panic, which

is condemned by social institutions, impacting discursive practices and

discourses (Fongkaew et al., 2007). For instance, young women who use social

media for building sexual relationships can be branded as ‘not good women’

(Bosch, 2011; Brickell, 2012). Young Thai women’s sexual expression online is

mostly controlled through mass media or public policies which attempt to criticise

its negative consequences. This results in the assumption that social media used

by young women puts them at risk of developing reproductive and sexual health

problems (Fongkaew et al., 2007).

At the same time, there is the notion that men are trying to take advantage of

women, and women thus are seen as victims in the online society (Chantong et

al., 2009). A previous study highlights the myth that sexualities online are played

out in a space that is full of deceit owing to its anonymity (Chantong et al., 2009).

This leads some young Thai women to believe that true love cannot be found

online (ibid). Likewise, adult people repeat that online spaces put their children at

risk of being sexually violated, and they also believe that building the sexual

relationship in online spaces is not safe (Boonmongkon, et al., 2008).

The literature exposes debates and controversies surrounding the ‘bad’ social

media discourse in young people’s everyday life usage. Specifically, previous

studies have mostly tended to portray young women as victims and focused on

the negative impacts of social media (Chantong et al., 2009; Davis et al., 2012).

In addition, the role of social media in the gender performance of young women

remains vague. A recent study found that the traditional discourse on women’s

chastity, which puts pressure on women to maintain their virginity, still influences

online content, messages, and images among young women on social media

sites in some respects (Boonmongkon et al., 2013). On the one hand, the scholar

considers that young women have many choices to perform their multiple and

alternative gender identities on social media; on the other hand, young women

still need to evade their ‘intrinsic’ gender identity and create the socially desirable

images of female identity on their profile pages due to the significant impact of

audiences inside the platforms (ibid). Similarly, Songsamphan (2008) suggests

that even though online spaces may provide young women more opportunities to

express their selves and gender identities in some ways, young women still

cannot escape the influences of women discourses as well as the common sense

of female practices in offline society. This is not only due to the complex or

collapsed audiences inside the platforms, but also due to our inability to abandon

the mainstream discourses in the online sphere which represents social relations,

interactions, and networks derived from the offline world. From this, the link

between offline and online interactions is demonstrated: although young Thai

women have some degree of sexual autonomy in online spaces, the conservative

values, and mainstream discourses remain significant factors that control,

prevent, and abstain young women from performing their gender identity and

engaging in sexual expression.

In summary, the impact of social media on traditional discourses remains

controversial. Social media could offer more autonomy in sexual matters, or have

a reinforcing role in traditional Thai public discourses, or have other social

functions in youth culture. Owing to these ongoing debates, I hypothesise the

complexity of social media as a contested space by young women: the social

media sphere is considered a subversive space working against normative

discourses in adult culture. In short, to help resolve the controversies, this thesis

aims to pursue how young Thai women employ social media platforms to

negotiate their gender identities, by focusing on how they contradict, resist, or

interact with conventional values of normative gender through their multimodal

texts on online profiles.

2.3. Research paradigms of gender studies in Thailand

2.3.1 From psychological and biomedical discipline

to a sociocultural field

A body of literature in gender studies in Thailand shows that early studies of

gender by Thai scholars were dominated by Western biomedical, sexological, and

psychological paradigms that problematised and stigmatised homosexuals and

other non-binary gender practices as perverted and sexually deviant (Jackson

and Duangwises, 2016). Many early Thai researchers termed the pervert as

‘wiparit’ (วิปริต) or ‘phit-phet’ (ผิดเพศ) and termed the sexually deviant as ‘biang-ben

thang-phet’ (เบี6ยงเบนทางเพศ) (Jackson et al., 1999). Subsequently, in the early 2000s,

a newer generation of Thai researchers debated the earlier biomedical scientific

paradigm that pathologised queer people; they thus shifted from this scientific

paradigm to a cultural and sociological view to understand gender and sexual

diversity, particularly sexual minority status, gender/sex identity, and lifestyles

(Jackson, 2003; Jackson and Duangwises, 2013). More recently, a Thai study

has explored diverse understandings of sexuality, which they referred to as ‘phet-

withi’ (เพศวิถี) (Kang, 2015; Jackson and Duangwises, 2016). At the same time,

many Thai scholars are interested in the cultural and historical specificity of Thai

discourses of gender and sexuality and the differences from Western conceptions

of sex, gender, and sexuality.

Specifically, Thai scholars propose the concept of sex, gender, and sexuality by

applying Western definitions. For example, there is a definition by Thai scholars

that ‘sex’ is a biological characteristic that defines humans as female or male

(Wongpanarak et al, 2010). This conception is applied by The World Health

Organization (WHO) (2006) who refers to the term ‘sex’ as identical to biological

sex, based on one’s sexual organs. While sex is perceived as the biological organ

of being female or male, ‘gender’ tends to denote the social and cultural role of

each sex within a given society (Wongpanarak et al, 2010). Specifically, gender

is used to differentiate the roles of men and women that are determined by social

and cultural attributes and opportunities (ibid). In short, it can be said that gender

is a social construction that is not purely assigned by genetics; rather, people

often develop their gender roles in response to their environment, including family

interactions, the media, peers, and education. Thus, gender varies from society

to society and can be changed to socially constructed characteristics, such as the

norms, roles, and relationships between specific groups (Songsamphan, 2008;

WHO, 2006).

As for ‘sexuality’, many Thai scholars are of the view that sexuality is the

experience and expression in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, values, and

relationships (Wongpanarak et al, 2010). It is argued that sexuality is about who

individuals are attracted to sexually and romantically (Songsamphan, 2008).

People who are attracted to others of a different sex are known as ‘heterosexual’

or ‘straight’. People who are attracted to those of the same sex are known as

‘homosexual’, ‘gay’, or ‘lesbian’. However, sexuality is more complicated than just

being gay or straight. Queer theories explore sexuality as fluid and diverse, as

Butler argues that both gender and sexuality are performative and produced

through millions of individual actions, rather than something that comes naturally

to men and women (1988, p. 132). From these definitions and explanations about

sex, gender, and sexuality, the research paradigm of gender studies in Thailand

has seemingly shifted from the biomedical or sexological discipline to the

sociocultural field in terms of discourses and the social construction of sex,

gender, and sexuality.

An in-depth review of the research paradigm in Thailand, before the 1990s,

reveals that early studies of homosexual or non-binary gender practices were

dominated by psychological and biomedical forms of knowledge as discussed.

Sud Saengwichien, M.D., is an influential medical doctor who started talking about

hermaphrodite and transvestite physiology in Thailand (Jackson and

Duangwises, 2016). In 1961, Saengwichien’s study of the physiology of non-

binary gender people – labeled as ‘kathoey’ – is grounded on scientific paradigms.

At the same time, through his study, he introduces Western sexological concepts

of homosexuality and transgenderism to the modern Thai academy (ibid). After

that, the term ‘kathoey’, which is applied to someone of non-normative gender, is

introduced into other categories by a much newer generation of researchers.

They claim that the framework of ‘kathoey’ in Saengwichien’s study is

misunderstanding and has overlooked the multiplicity of socio-cultural contexts in

Thailand (Tangmunkongvorakul, et al., 2010; Jackson and Duangwises, 2016).

The hybrid Thai-Western sexological knowledge, which combined pathologising

Western biomedicine and stigmatising Thai cultural views, is overlooking the

embodiment of cross-gender behaviours and lifestyles through their membership

of social groups and personal impressions (Kang, 2015; Jackson, 2003). Thus, to

just conclude that being ‘kathoey’ is a psychological and physiological problem,

or to label it as a mental disorder and sexual perversion, is a misunderstanding

and insufficient. From this, in critiquing and debating the older sexological and

biomedical accounts of ‘kathoey’, a newer generation of Thai scholars have

contributed to a new field of sexuality studies (‘phet-withi-seuksa’) based on the

disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology, women studies as well as queer

studies (Tangmunkongvorakul, et al, 2010).

For example, Jackson and Duangwises’s study (2013) consider that Thailand has

long been a culturally diverse society in which plural forms of gender and sexuality

are found in local communities. This study indicates that Thai male and female

homosexuals are not unified as a single gay, kathoey, and tom-dee group, as is

often the case in dominant stereotypes in Thailand. Rather, queer communities

have regional and language differences, as well as educational, socio-economic,

and class-based differences within each geographical/language region (Jackson

and Duangwises, 2013). This historical and anthropological study promotes the

understanding that non-normative sexuality and other non-binary gender

practices (called, in short, ‘kathoey’) are not viewed as mental disorders and

cannot be categorised by dominant stereotypes in society (ibid). Indeed, ‘kathoey’

identities and non-normative behaviours are viewed as social and cultural

practices by which individuals creatively produce their styles of gender identity

(ibid). From this, it is evident that the recent Thai scholars in gender studies have

shifted the understanding of gender practices into cultural expression.

In other words, the research paradigm of gender studies in Thailand has moved

from a psychological and biomedical discipline to the sociocultural field in which

gender practices are arguably seen as cultural functions and/or cultural

communicative practices in specific communities. To sum up, the research of

gender studies today aims to contribute not only to knowledge in the sociocultural

discipline, but also to knowledge within a cultural and human rights frame,

including gender equality, especially for sexual minorities, such as young women,

transmen, and LGBTQ+ groups. I am interested in the shifting ways of research

paradigms in Thailand because my current study aims to make contributions to

the knowledge in the sociocultural discipline. I aim to offer more up-to-date

knowledge for Thai scholars in gender research studies related to youth and

media studies. From past to present, as the research paradigm of gender studies

in Thailand has moved from a psychological and biomedical discipline to the

sociocultural field, my current study attempts to offer some suggestions and a

more comprehensive view of cultural practices of youth in terms of gender in

contemporary social contexts – in other words, those found online. There is a

growing body of Thai literature examining the social significance of gender

performance, which is seen as a cultural communicative practice in specific

communities of youth, but little attempt has been made to map patterns of online

engagement and the interactions of young people related to sexual issues. Thus,

my current study aims to fill in the gap by providing new ways of understanding

the nature and significance of this novel social phenomenon to understand young

people's everyday gender negotiations.

2.3.2 ‘Class difference’ as the research gap in gender

studies in Thailand (Identifying the research gap)

Today researchers in gender studies in Thailand mostly focus on middle-class

families in urban areas, which limits what can be concluded from such small-scale

studies that lack diversity. There is a dearth of studies exploring other factors

related to young women’s gender performance, such as class, age,

socioeconomic status, and region. I believe that ‘social class’ is crucial as an

underlying factor influencing how young women perform their gender identity.

Hence, this section identifies the research gap, exploring the relationship between

class difference and gender performance through social media use by young

women.

Within most Asian cultures, social class impacts cultural expression and

communication between individuals. Since individuals differentially have their

social expectations from their friends, families, and other forms of adult culture, I

thus deem class difference as a crucial factor influencing young women’s diverse

gender negotiation. Although some previous studies have already explored the

relationship between gender and class differences with the implications for

healthcare (the prevention of HIV/AIDS risk in Thailand) (Thianthai, 2004), what

is still lacking is the study of social media's role in negotiating gender identities

through the focus on the class difference in Thailand. The class difference can be

seen as a major variation that influences the ways that young Thai women

express their gender identities. It is crucial to study how class difference impacts

young women’s expression since each class possesses their sexual patterns,

norms, and values. A previous study has found that upper-class young women

are taught to ‘not’ have multiple sexual partners, while upper-class young men

have more freedom to do this (Thianthai, 2004). Likewise, Fongkeaw (2000)

suggests that maintaining a virgin until marriage is a strictly social expectation for

upper-class women rather than the other classes of women. Thai cultural norms

expect women to be naive and inexperienced in sexual matters. According to the

‘rak nua sanguan tua’ discourse (to preserve the chastity), young women are

constrained to perform their gender by the notion of virginity at marriage and the

marital relationships from adult culture – as I discussed previously in the very first

section. Following the scholars’ finding above, even though there is evidence that

upper-class young women are considered more conservative, strict, and

pressured in sexual values than other classes of young women, there is a limited

understanding of how each class of young women uses social media to challenge,

contradict, conform to, or interact with those conservative values through their

meaning-making of multimodal texts on online profiles.

I consider that each class of young women might have their own discourses,

patterns, and values in gender under different social expectations. It can be said

that even though young women who come from different social classes might

have some shared experiences in common, they potentially have their own

discourses in terms of gender. Importantly, based on my own definition of class,

social class is not only an economic or educational term; rather, it is about the

traditional hierarchies of Thai society, about the aspirations of the newly emerging

middle class, and about individual’s cultural preferences and performances – as

I discussed in the introductory chapter.

However, there is a lack of critical studies exploring the class difference in terms

of young women’s gender performance on social media. I consider that social

class presents a research gap that is a key variable that my thesis aims to

investigate. Why does social class have significant implications in Thai society?

There are many studies and literature in favour of the idea that the emergence of

Thai social class potentially impacts social tensions and class struggle between

dominant and non-dominant groups. In the literature, Thailand has great levels of

social inequality between superordinate and subordinate classes, as asserted by

a report that Thailand has the third-highest social inequality in the world (Pasuk

and Baker, 2016). Thai scholar considers that social classification in Thailand is

based on a system called sakdina, which means “dignity marks” (Thongsawang,

2020). This social system causes Thailand to form a complicated structured

society which has multiple dimensions of oppression between the privileged and

underprivileged classes (Keyes, 2014). Importantly, this complicated structural

hierarchy of Thailand leads to the social tension and class struggle in terms of

political issues from 2006 until now (Sirikanya, 2014).

From these lines of literature suggest that social class matters in Thai’s everyday

life practices, especially the ways in which young girls perform their identity and

gender under the social forces and dominances. However, there is still a lack of

studies in young women's class differentials in relation to their gender practices.

I hypothesise that the girls who come from the subordinate class may perform

their gender identity with a challenge to dominant culture, while the girls from the

superordinate group may just protect their advantages from the society, and

perhaps perform their gender identity in compliance with the values of their social

group.

The research gap identified helps me shape the question ‘what is the relationship

between class and gender performance in online sites?’ Or, how does each class

of young women manipulate social media to negotiate their gender identity even

as they inhabit a dominant culture, steeped in traditional and patriarchal Thai

culture? I aim to bridge the gap to examine the class difference of young Thai

women related to their social media use in negotiating gender identity. To clarify

briefly, the class difference of young women was based on their socioeconomic

backgrounds: parents’ income, education, and occupation. Young women from

different social classes and different secondary school’s levels in Bangkok were

recruited as the research participants which I categorised into three labels: upper-

class (UC), middle-class (MC), and lower-class (LC). Further details about

participant recruitment, the significance of Bangkok setting, and other criteria are

presented in the Methodology, in the section of the MAIN study.

In summary, as a recent study suggests that the theme that social media

potentially allows young women to exert more agency in sexual matters

(Boonmongkon et al, 2013), my current study sets out to follow the theme of

whether young women truly exert more agency in terms of their gender on social

media, and how girl’s class difference impacts this exertion in online sites? I aim

to answer the main research question: how is social media used in negotiating

gender identity by young Thai women from different class backgrounds?

As I hypothesise that the social media sphere is considered a subversive space

working against normative discourses in adult culture, the class difference of

participants is considered another factor to be explored to understand how social

class potentially relates to gender performances of young women on social media

sites. In short, due to the significant implication of class difference in Thailand, I

aim to investigate the relationship between young women’s gender performance

and their social class based on socioeconomic backgrounds (incomes, parental

education, and occupation) by focusing on the role that social media plays. To

pursue this research aim, theoretical frameworks regarding gender and identity,

discourses and power, and social class and capital will be applied and discussed

in the next theory chapter, in order to conceptualise the potential themes and help

me to answer the central research question.

Chapter 3: Theoretical Framework

How is social media used in negotiating gender identity by young Thai

women from different class backgrounds? This research question aims to

interrogate processes of adaptation and resistance of traditional mainstream

discourses through the consideration of social media as an alternative and flexible

space for young women in negotiating and communicating diverse, autonomous

gender performances. In short, the study aims to explore the relationship between

youth’s gender performance online and their social class. The study

conceptualises the theoretical frameworks into three themes: 1. Identity and

Gender theories, 2. Discourse and Power theories, and 3. Social Class and

Capital theories. Each theme of the frameworks features a body of works by such

as Goffman’s the presentation of self (1959), Butler’s gender performativity

(1990), McRobbie’s post-feminism masquerade (2009). However, I note that the

scholars, the frameworks, and the concepts that will be applied in my study are

selected for a particular reason. Particularly, the scholars that will be mentioned

during the data interpretation process are selected based on the relevance to the

answer of the research question. Thus, the study will not rely on the whole

framework of each scholar, but will be select certain elements of each framework

and apply them in a particular context, to conceptualise the understanding of

youth’s gender matter online. The following shows each theme of the theoretical

frameworks.

The first theme is to discuss what Goffman (1959) talks about in the presentation

of self in everyday life: how individuals manage their impression for social

interaction, and how they present their selves on the front and the backstage

according to the dramaturgical model. This will be applied to understand how

young women present their selves and their identities in a sense of gender

through social media sites as the metaphor of the front and the backstage. Also,

when Butler (1990) proposed the term of gender performativity, this framework

can help to understand the ways young Thai women perform their gender identity

on online sites. At the same time, post-feminism by McRobbie (2009) is a useful

framework for understanding how post-feminism is undermining the progress

made by the first and the second waves of feminism. This will help to understand

the third-wave of feminism that allows young women to gain ‘choice’ and

‘empowerment’ through political engagement and politically civic affairs regarding

girl’s rights on social media (Snyder, 2008). However, McRobbie (2009) tried to

argue with this, her view was that girls were still limited in their agency to do this

due to the adoption of neoliberal values and consumerism.

Secondly, Discourse and Power will be applied as the second theme of theoretical

frameworks to understand how the ‘truth’ of sexuality is created through the

discourse and power in society which is the main concept by Foucault’s theory

(1998). After we understand how the truth or the knowledge of sexuality is formed,

the creation of subculture and resistance in youth culture by Hall and Jefferson

(1993) from Birmingham’s CCCS will be applied to understand the subversion

through social media platforms by young women.

Lastly, the third theme is to discuss theories about social class and social capital.

This sort of theoretical framework will be applied to understand the background

of how social class in society emerges, how social capital plays a significant role

in the impact and judgement of individual’s tastes, beliefs, and behaviors, as well

as how family and education position the children’s cultural capital. These related

social class and capital theories will rely on classical Bourdieu’s framework

(1970). At the same time, even though the social capital of children is positioned

by their family and education according to Bourdieu, they can have their own

strategic or tactical ways to resist those conventional objects from their parent’s

discourse or adult culture according to de Certeau. The kind of strateguc abd

tactical resistance can be applied by the work of de Certeau (2010), Walking in

the City concept. Overall, all the three key themes in Chapter 3 and some

reviewed pieces of literature in Chapter 2 will serve as useful frameworks and

concepts to explain and help to contextualise the common themes as the

research findings and to answer the main research question.

3.1 Identity and Gender theories

3.1.1 Goffman’s dramaturgical model applied to

gender identity online

As I highlighted previously, my theoretical framework will be divided into three

sections. The first section will be the theme of ‘Identity and Gender’, which

includes various theories and approaches, such as Goffman’s presentation of

identity as dramaturgical (1959), Butler’s gender performativity (1990), and

McRobbie’s post-feminism masquerade (2009). In this section, I will discuss

Goffman's theories, which are related to his dramaturgical framework, the

presentation of self, impression management, and the idealised version of the

self. Goffman’s theories are widely used in the conceptual framework by many

researchers in the media and cultural studies to understand social and cultural

phenomena, in online or offline settings. Thus, Goffman’s theories will be applied

to provide a better understanding of how young Thai women perform their gender

identity as well as how they interact with and manage impressions of multiple

audiences in the online environment.

“All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely a player.”

This is a famous Shakespearean line that helps Erving Goffman to build his

sociological perspective. He suggests that people try to instill the desired image

and try to avoid portraying one that is undesired for self-presentation based on

the minds of the audiences. This suggestion leads to the dramaturgical model

which is his key theory of self-presentation: he argues that “members of society

are constantly engaged in dramaturgical modes of interaction with each other,

meaning our behaviours metaphorically represent being on a theatrical stage.”

(Goffman, 1959). In his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman

(1959) argues that, through the process of social interactions, individuals operate

techniques to control receivers’ perceptions about their identity.

This leads to Goffman's dramaturgical analysis. In social interaction, as in

theatrical performance, there is a front region where the “actors” (individuals) are

on stage in front of the audiences. This is where the positive aspects of the idea

of self and desired impressions are highlighted. There is also a back region or

stage that can also be considered as a hidden or private place where individuals

can be themselves and get rid of their role or identity in society. Goffman used

the term ‘performance’ to refer to all the activity of an individual in front of a

particular set of observers, or audience. The setting for the performance includes

the scenery, props, and location in which the interaction takes place. The actor’s

front, as labelled by Goffman, is the part of the individual’s performance which

functions to define the situation for the observers, or audience. Appearance

functions to portray to the audience the performer’s social statuses. Manner refers

to how the individual plays the role and functions to warn the audience of how the

performer will act or seek to act in role. Erving Goffman introduced a popular

thinking within the symbolic-interaction perspective called the dramaturgical

approach (sometimes referred to as dramaturgical analysis). Dramaturgical

analysis is defined as the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical

performance. Goffman described a person’s performance as the presentation of

self. This simply means a person’s efforts to create specific impressions in the

minds of others. This is also known as impression management.

How is the concept of ‘performance’ related to a dichotomous concept between

an idealized and real identity? In Goffman’s view, idealisation is an important

socialisation mechanism people commonly employ – that is, performers have the

tendency to offer observers impressions idealised in several different ways in

social interaction. One aspect of this idealisation that Goffman delved into with

some details is the concealment of aspects of their lives that the performers do

not want the observers to see and, therefore systematically attempt to hide. In

contrast, reality is the real performance, not contrived at all, naturally occurring as

it is the unintentional and unconscious response to the conditions surrounding

him/her. In Goffman's arguement this dichotomous categorisation obscures the

scientific reality, and that there is no intrinsic or necessary relationship between

appearance/idealisation and reality.

As Goffman analysed this dichotomous concept from the perspective of the

Western culture, I would argue that this is different in Thai culture. The

relationship between appearance and reality still has significant implications in

Thai people’s self and identity performance. As reviewed in the literature,

Thailand is a society that "encourages an essentialism of appearances or

surfaces: the real is hidden and unchallenged, while the surface is taken for real."

(Van Esterik, 2000, p. 4). Most of the Thai conservative discourses – such as

‘kalathesa’ (contextual sensitivity) – are dominant to permit appearances and

truths to be radically disjunct” (Morris, 2002). In short, Thai cultural logics value

surface images or the outward appearances of individual's performance, and

these surface images have the power to mold the inner being (Jackson, 2004).

For example, being a courteous, gentle, smilley and genteel person is a pattern

of modern Thai subjectivities in order to perform identities – called ‘essential Thai

identity’ (Ekkalak Thai Tha) (Jackson, 2004). To sum up, I would say that there is

the distinction of Thai and Western cultural logics in terms of the dichotomous

concept between appearance and reality. In Thailand, the contextual sensitivity

still plays an influential part, especially in the relationship between surface

appearance and reality of individual’s identity performance.

I consider that Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis can help to understand the ways

young Thai women perform their selves and identities online as they can employ

techniques/features/tools of social media platforms to construct their desired

images of gender identity. Moreover, in terms of interaction in the online setting,

social media platforms can be seen to highly adhere to audience expectations,

and these expectations potentially shape how young women perform and

manage their desired identities, which need to be consistent with those audience

expectations. Moreover, there is the notion that offline norms impact interactions,

performances, and normative practices in virtual online settings (Tashmin, 2016).

This consideration can be further demonstrated by scholars who study

Goffmanian perspectives on Facebook and whose analytical conceptual

frameworks are explained in Figure 1 (Tashmin, 2016).

Figure 1: Goffmanian perspective on Facebook analysis throught a conceptual

framework (Tashmin, 2016).

Briefly, Figure 1 shows the metaphor of Facebook as the theater according to

Goffman’s concept. The scholar suggests that online users need to play with the

flow of interaction on Facebook. At the same time, they need to acknowledge

where is the frontstage or the backstage of Facebook to have a good preparation

for the performance of identity (Tashmin, 2016). I consider that this application of

Goffmanian perspective on Facebook is quite useful for the very first step of the

data analysis in the study. There is a clear explanation and metaphor between

the dramaturgical model of Goffman and Facebook’s elements in terms of social

interaction on the platform. However, it might be too simplistic to study

participants' online interactions in any depth. Specifically, in terms of the front and

the backstage metaphor, I suggest that it is inadequate to explain the difference

between the places in which individuals interact on social media. Simply dividing

“where the individual’s action is performed” – as the frontstage, and “where

individual’s action is oriented toward what is going to happen” – as the backstage

seems insufficient. In fact, the Facebook platform contains other modes of

functionality for social interaction. For example, there are various technical

features of the platform that provide different opportunities for users to deal with

their front/backstage. From this, I suggest that Facebook can be considered as

the frontstage and the backstage simultaneously, without division. When several

scholars adopt Goffman’s front/backstage framework to the Facebook setting,

there are different interpretations. For example, Tufekci (2008) and Lewis et al.

(2008) think of Facebook as the backstage related to the concept of privacy, while

Farquhar (2009) views Facebook as a frontstage where users perform to their

audience and present contents that can be viewed by all of them. From this

controversy, I would argue that social media, especially Facebook, can be

considered as both the frontstage – where users can present their desired images

of themselves through posting different contents, participating in different

activities, and presenting their ideal self – and the backstage – where they can

contact and interact with their online audiences and retain their offline lives.

However, there are still debates about the application of Goffman’s dramaturgical

framework with online presentations of the self. Many researchers consider that

even though Goffman’s theories were formed before the emergence of the

Internet, his ideas can be particularly valuable for studying phenomena on the

Internet. For example, Lamb and Davidson (2002) considered that Goffman’s

dramaturgy frameworks such as co-construction of identity, awareness of the

audience, and idealised of self can be used as the key bases for shaping identity,

whether in the online or offline worlds. Similarly, Hogan (2010) suggested that

Goffman’s approach is a useful grounding for studying identity construction and

online self-presentation. More recently, Pearce and Vitak (2016) used Goffman’s

theories to study the affordances of social media for surveillance and impression

management in the case of LinkedIn. Likewise, Marwick and boyd (2010),

explored the Twitter platform and claimed that users adopt the imagined audience

technique to manage their audience’s impressions. From these scholars, it can

be seen that several researchers have applied Goffman’s frameworks to study

the link between identity performance and online settings.

Nevertheless, there are still debates regarding this link. Goffman’s concepts have

been criticised by researchers in terms of the study of people’s interaction online.

For example, Ahmed et al (2014) argued against Goffman’s notion of audience

segregation that “the current online social networks do not provide users with a

fine-grained mechanism to separate and manage various audiences. Many social

network sites only provide their users with the option to collect one list of contacts,

called friends”. Similarly, other researchers highlight the difficulty of managing

multiple audiences on social media and align this problem with Goffman (Marder

et al., 2012). In the same way, Rui and Stefanone (2013) indicated that

impression management on social media was challenging because users are

faced with multiple audiences where they have to use one single front from one

hand and have no opportunity to present for specific audience members and

achieve desirable impressions from the other hand. Nevertheless, my hypothesis

contradicts the above criticism from the previous studies: my argument is that

users are dramatically creative in managing multiple audiences on social media

by adopting several features of technologies online. In other words, I propose that

young Thai women can manage multiple faces on social media platforms by

constructing different online identities and creating purposeful specific audience

zones to avoid any threat to their public image.

Although young Thai women can manipulate multiple audiences to perform their

desired identity in online settings, they might have some struggles derived from

the offline interaction which they cannot escape in the online world. There is more

criticism regarding the adoption of Goffman’s theories in terms of the performance

and the stages of interaction (the frontstage and the backstage) to the online

environment. For instance, Hogan (2010) argued that Facebook offers a group of

divided presentations which are performances that can take place in synchronous

‘situations’, and Facebook is an artefact, which takes place in asynchronous

‘exhibitions’. For him, online users are not engaged in performances, but rather it

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is a form of an exhibition where they leave artefacts for their audiences to view at

their convenience. When Hogan suggested that users employ Facebook as the

exhibition rather than performance, I would argue that users utilise social media

for both performances and artefacts to display their desired identities since they

have many strategically/tactically tools or features to operate this.

When Goffman suggested that people manage their impression through social

interaction to perform the idealised self and avoid the undesired image, I hold a

different view that Goffman’s suggestion is both applicable and inapplicable in

different respects with online studies. In one respect, Goffman’s approach can be

applied as the theoretical framework to understand how young Thai women can

present their idealised version of themselves through the use of social media in

the same way as many scholars have argued. This supports the applicability of

Goffman’s framework with online research studies. Specifically, when Goffman

stated that people (as performers) present their idealised images to their

audiences (like the performance on the theatre), online users are viewed to

present the perfect version of selves and conceal many aspects of their

personalities through several features of social media tools.

In other respects, I suggest that Goffman’s theories are probably inapplicable

when it comes to the relationship between the online and offline performances of

individuals. According to the notion of presenting the ideal self by Goffman, there

is the debate of this idea that the nature of social media provides users to present

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an online identity that is reflective of their offline self. This encourages the notion

of the presentation of a real, rather than the idealised version of the self in the

online setting. This notion is in line with many newer generations of researchers,

such as Lin et al. (2017), who argued in the study ‘you are what you post in “circle

of friends” of WeChat,’ that user interaction online reflects the user’s real

personality traits. Similarly, Gosling et.al. (2011) stated that people extend their

offline personalities on Facebook rather than escaping them. Thus, it can be seen

that many social media users perform their online identities as a reflection of their

offline identities rather than just a performance of the idealisation of self because

they have an increased tendency to connect, interact, and maintain their offline

relationships and prevailing culture in the offline setting. To sum up, the challenge

of Goffman’s theories is useful for the conceptualisation of the complexity of

performance of self and identity among young Thai women in the online setting.

Due to the complicated culture and strict norms in Thailand, studying how young

women perform their gender identity is challenging Goffman's suggestion for the

terms of the idealised self, social interaction, and audience segmentation in the

model of the dramaturgical approach.

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3.1.2 Butler’s gender performativity in online sites

To gain a deeper understanding of the gender performance of young women in

online sites, Judith Butler’s gender performativity (1990) can be applied as a

theoretical framework to develop the ideas of how young Thai women employ

online spaces to perform their gender identities. The theorist Judith Butler (1990)

conceptualised gender as a performance. In her theory, popular thoughts of

gender and sexuality have evolved through discourse and social processes.

Importantly, she argued that “gender is performative which is produced through

millions of individual actions, rather than something that comes naturally to men

and women.” (1990, p.83)

Various scholars such as Van Doorn (2011), Cook, and Hasmath, (2014) applied

Butler’s gender performativity as a queer theory to understand how individuals

express their gender identity and sexuality through online spaces. They explored

social media and found that users may also interact and communicate without

corporeal cues, such as appearance and voice. The disembodiment hypothesis

holds that social media users, liberated from the limitations of the body, can

optionally choose which sexuality or gender to ‘be’ (Marwick, 2013). This can

potentially create alternate sexual identities nothing like their own (ibid). The

user’s ability to self-consciously adopt and play with diverse gender identities can

reveal the choices involved in the production of gender, which can possibly

support gender fluidity and diversity, as well as break down the notion of binaries

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in gender and sexuality (Cook and Hasmath, 2014). From this, many scholars ae

in favour of the view that, through the framework of Butler’s gender performativity,

individuals have more gender choices and opportunities online as they can

diversely perform their gender identity and sexuality, which might not be the same

as their intrinsic gender identities offline.

In Judith Butler’s work of Gender Trouble (1990), gender is a fluid social construct

that changes with context, cultures, and periods; thus, gender is best seen as a

way of doing the body in performance (1990, p.172). From this consideration,

Butler’s performance of gender framework can be applied in the self-selected

gender in the online space. For example, young women users can select their

gender images through the profile picture and other picture postings. Given the

explosion in popularity of social media, such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter,

these platforms have increasingly become the researchers’ choices that improve

our understanding of the social media’ role in managing social relations,

expressing self and identity, and negotiating gender identity. It can be seen that

a new generation of researchers have shifted from studying gender performance

in the offline context to the online context by using Butler’s performativity as a

conceptual framework.

When Butler stated that “gender is performative produced by individual’s actions”,

this closely links to the ways young Thai women perform their gender identity in

the online setting since they can have plenty of action through the online activities

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representing their gender identity. For example, they can interact with their online

friends through the language such as commenting, status posting, and chatting,

through visual materials such as pictures, emojis, and stickers, and through non-

verbal materials such as self-video clips – like in the case of Instagram’s Stories

features or TikTok features, which show body movement, facial expression, and

some sexual action. As Butler argued in her framework that “gender is

performative by individual’s actions rather than by something that comes naturally

to men and women” (1990, p.83), this framework can be demonstrated by the

action of online activities by young women to represent their meaning-making of

gender identity.

Butler’s performance of gender is in line with the argument of West and

Zimmerman (1987) that gender is something a person does, rather than has.

From the “doing gender” concept, this performative model conceptualises gender

as an interactional achievement in society. Similarly, Cameron (1999) considered

that gender “has constantly to be reaffirmed and publicly displayed by repeatedly

performing particular acts under the cultural norms...which define ‘masculinity’

and ‘femininity’” (p. 444). She thus argued that gender identities are unstable and

variable: people perform different gender identities in different contexts. Following

these arguments, many theorists have movde beyond a dichotomous view of

gender to an acceptance of diversity as Cameron (2003) proposed that gender is

quite fluid and changeable, rather than inherent and fixed.

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To conclude, Butler (1990) presented the truth/meaning of something as being

constructed by the discourse and language in one’s society; thus masculinity and

femininity are social constructions. Gender is argued as being a socially

constructed point of view of identity (Butler, 1990). Specifically, as Butler stated,

gender is performative by individuals' actions, which can help to conceptualise

the ways young Thai women perform their gender through online activities. In my

view, they manipulate social media platforms to perform their fluid, multiple, and

alterable gender identities through many actions. As I discussed previously, while

there are still debates on whether social media offers more opportunities to

negotiate idealised images of gender or not, it is worth studying the process of

constructing and negotiating gender identity of young women on social media by

applying Butler’s gender performativity as the theoretical framework to

contextualise further research data, themes and discussion.

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3.1.3 McRobbie’s criticism of post-feminism and

girls' agency through a nuanced lens

A. McRobbie, a Critique of Post-Feminism

In The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change, McRobbie

(2009) identified post-feminism as a cultural phenomenon in popular culture and

critiques the adoption of neo-liberal values and capitalism since she considered

that it subverts the progress of feminism. In other words, she believed that the

third wave of feminism is undermining the advances made by the first and second

waves of feminism. This is because post-feminism, she argued, adopts the values

of neoliberalism and capitalism, such as using ‘beauty’ or ‘girlie’ products to

represent new feminine identities as strong and independent; the inference being

that these kinds of beauty products reinforce normative femininity, heterosexual

norms, and ultimately reinforce patriarchal values. For example, McRobbie

presented Bridget Jones, the title character in the 2001 film Bridget Jones’s Diary,

as a classic post-feminist example of new feminine characters – modern,

independent, and flirty. As Bridget is incessantly self-reflexive, weight-obsessed,

and plagued by anxiety over finding a husband, modern femininity is presented in

a way that could be called new ‘girlie’ feminism. However, McRobbie proposed

that even though popular cultural figures like Bridget Jones are liberating for girls

in practice, they are constrained by the old patriarchal forces.

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Not only did McRobbie explore the popular film Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), but

she also explored other cultural texts, such as women’s fashion magazines and

the makeover TV show, What Not To Wear (2003). She claimed that these sorts

of popular media promoting the idea of modern femininity, as flirty, smart, and

sexy, are (re)producing hegemonic patriarchy. McRobbie suggested that

although young girls (or ‘girly feminists’) seem to have power and agency, they

are constrained by these. While girls are practising in post-feminism cultures,

such as their enjoyment of beauty products and girly materials, wearing make-up,

high heels, and boots, they are allowing patriarchy and heterosexual norms to be

re-established. Through McRobbie’s argument, it can be said that post-feminism

is an illusion of girl power and agency which betrays first- and second-wave

feminism.

In 2004, the essay “Feminism and Femininity: Or How We Learned to Stop

Worrying and Love the Thong” by third-wave feminists Baumgardner and

Richards, proposed the idea of contemporary feminism, that is, the enjoyment of

feminine products, such as make-up, high heels, and thongs. They suggested

‘girlie’ feminism as a way for young women to challenge socio-historical

associations of femininity with weakness and subordination (Baumgardner and

Richards, 2004). They argued that young feminists do not need to reject

consumerism to be political; in fact, ‘girlie’ feminists often embrace green nail

polish, Hello Kitty, the Spice Girls, and Brazilian bikini waxes as they cultivate

their new feminist identities (ibid). In other words, Baumgardner and Richards

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proposed that ‘girlie’ feminism is a can-do, sex-positive, all-access pass that

allows women to be independent, strong, smart, and sexy. Even though

Baumgardner and Richards’s argument makes sense in a post-feminist context,

McRobbie claimed that they offer an ultimately anti-feminist argument. McRobbie

considered that beauty, being sexy, and girliness are used to empower feminism

in some ways, but these stem from the beauty culture and feminine goods, which

are eventually supporting normative femininity and hegemonic patriarchy. In other

words, McRobbie argued that due to the growth of consumerism of feminine

products, there have been more ‘choices’ for young women and they have more

alternative ways to choose to present themselves in society; however, this is

ultimately sustaining traditional patriarchal values. Hence, it can be seen that

McRobbie presented the opposite of post-feminist arguments drawing on the neo-

liberal vocabulary of ‘empowerment’ and ‘choice’ to represent young women as

substitutes for more radical feminist political activity (McRobbie, 2004).

Such ideas of ‘empowerment’ and ‘choice’ related to post-feminism in third-wave

feminism can be applied to understand the novel context of social media which

many young women use to represent agency, freedom, change, and gender

equality. As third-wave feminism is a political movement, it is where girls and

women are politically engaging in civic affairs (Snyder, 2008). Social media are

adopted by many girl feminists to proclaim the rights of girls to resist the

constraints of patriarchal values (Gillis, et al., 2004). For instance, in Thailand,

there is ‘Feminista’ (เฟมินิสต้า) , a feminist community of young Thai women on

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Twitter. This online community aims to promote women’s rights, agency, capacity,

and freedom as well as support young Thai women in having more choices to

present their new feminine identities. At the same time, individual young women

employ social media to express desired images of themselves in many strategic

and tactical ways on their social media profiles. From this, it can be seen that, in

the third wave of feminism, many young women mobilise social media to reflect

their capacities, freedom, and choices (Snyder, 2008). Therefore, the prevailing

social media can be considered as a useful novel platform in contemporary

feminism to empower women not only in terms of rights and equality but also for

personal choices and independence.

Nevertheless, as McRobbie (2009) critiqued the post-feminism’s argument

allowing girls to have more power, agency, choice, and empowerment, she

suggested the concept of a ‘post-feminist masquerade’ as a form of dispersed

and body-oriented gender power central to the (re)production of masculine

hegemony. This post-feminist masquerade framework can be exemplified by the

so-called fashionista. McRobbie proposed the term ‘masquerade’ as a

‘provocation to feminism’, in negative ways. McRobbie considerd that the post-

feminist masquerade and its various incarnations are a “triumphant gesture on

the part of resurgent patriarchy” (McRobbie, 2009, p. 67). For example, to be well-

educated working girls and swearing and boozing phallic girls are statements of

personal choice and female empowerment that potentially call patriarchal values

back in feminism again. How young women can enact the masquerade, such as

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dressing up and wearing make-up seem to allow them more power and agency;

however, it is a ‘false’ illusion of girl power. McRobbie claimed that feminism is

being undermined and betrayed by these ‘masquerade’ actions.

To link this with the context of social media, it can be noticed that we see many

young women post pictures on their social media profiles to show off wearing a

miniskirt, make-up, and high heels, as well as other new feminine identities, such

as sexy, flirty, and girlie characters. Also, there are many cases of young Thai

women using social media to perform as ‘fashionistas’ by fashion magazines,

photographs, and other makeover shows in popular media in Thailand. This can

be due to the cross-cultural flows, ties, and/or transmissions from Western women

to non-Western women. McRobbie stated that discourses of ‘thong-wearing

Western girls’ recreate and reinforce notions of Western superiority, possibly

transmitted to non-Western women (2009, p. 27). From these cases, I consider

that when young Thai women perform their ‘fashionista’ personae online by, for

example performing the fashionable, modern, cheeky, and fierce characters on

profiles – which McRobbie described as a post-feminist ‘masquerade’ – they

seem liberated, free and empowered; in fact, they are still oppressed by

masculinity, patriarchy, and heteronormative power. Hence, McRobbie’s

framework is useful for a better understanding of third-wave feminism and post-

feminism, which are especially related to online environments and movements,

and also for a better understanding of resultant contemporary feminism in which

girls' agency is conceived as constrained. Consequently, McRobbie’s feminism

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work can be applied as the theoretical framework to conceptualise how young

Thai women use social media to practise their gender and agency. Importantly,

the following questions have emerged: what is the process of adaptation and

resistance to traditional discourses in order to fight for their sexual agency through

the use of social media? Or how do they deal with their sexual struggle by

applying alternative spaces of online sites? McRobbie’s feminism work can be

one of the useful frameworks to help to conceptualise these questions.

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B. Girls' Agency in Contemporary Feminism Through a Nuanced

Lens

According to the Women’s Study Group (Bland, Brunsdon, Hobson, and Winship,

1978) in Birmingham’s CCCS, they integrated feminism studies with Cultural

Studies, in the Women Take Issue: Aspects of Women’s Subordination (1978).

They argued that popular culture is a site of struggle. Specifically, McRobbie

(1997) proposed that teenage girls read Jackie magazine not only for interesting

love relationships but also as a way to demonstrate social struggles against

norms, such as to challenge sexual traditional norms and patterns. Thus, if

popular culture is persistently a site of struggle, feminism is also a battling or

contesting patriarchy in the name of the agency for girls and women.

When McRobbie critiqued post-feminism as ‘false’ feminism since it subverts the

progress of previous waves of feminism and allows hegemonic patriarchy to thrive

nowadays, I suggest that we need to re-conceptualise the representation of girl’s

identities in the digital age as a playful, modern, and flirty identity through a more

nuanced lens that allows for ambiguity. This is in line with Gonick et al. (2009),

who published the article Rethinking agency and resistance: What comes after

girl power? They argued that due to rapidly changing social, economic, political,

and cultural conditions, resistance is a general uncertainty unlike what it looked

like in the past since the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s: thus, we need more new

‘complex and nuanced’ approaches to understand girl’s agency and resistance in

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contemporary feminism. Importantly, they suggest that girls’ agency and

resistance need to be theorised within the logic of the production of gender, the

body, and sexual, racial and cultural differences. It can be seen that they present

a complex embodied equation of gender subjectivities that are about contingent

and ambiguous practices of identity rather than just binary divisions between

agency (girl power) and compliance (girl victims). Gonick et al.’s argument (2009)

is in line with other recent feminist scholars' findings such as those of Harris and

Dobson (2015), who proposed a more fine-grained approach to the definitions of

agency and constraint in girls and women. Harris and Dobson (2015) theorised

agency in post-girlpower times by offering the new vocabulary of “suffering actors”

of girls. This term embodies the complexity of girls' relationships to structure and

agency. They argued that conventional ideas about girl’s agency as linked to

choice, empowerment, and voice are inadequate; they claimed a need for more

complicated notions of post-feminism, post-girlpower, and neoliberalism. This

means new conceptual frameworks are needed to allow for the kind of plurality,

contradiction, and mobility that characterise contemporary experiences of girl’s

subjectification. Therefore, ‘suffering actors’ is the new term offered by Harris and

Dobson (2015), meaning that girls are neither ‘pure’ agents, nor ‘victims’: they are

not explicitly as liberated as 'pure agents', but at the same time, they are not as

constrained as 'pure victims'. At the end of the discussion, they hope other

feminist scholars will take up the idea of 'suffering actors’ and build upon it for

more up-to-date contemporary understandings of feminism.

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Following these scholars' arguments, the implication is that girls’ gendered

agency is practiced within normative social, economic, and political processes,

while the constraints of gender and normative femininity are always a factor in its

production, expression, and resistance (Gonick et al., 2009). Consequently,

gender is never separate from its various spatialities and contexts, and the

concept of a girl’s agency and resistance is inevitably contingent and ambiguous

(Harris and Dobson, 2015).

To sum up, to understand how young girls negotiate their gender identity in the

online environment, I consider that McRobbie’s criticism on post-feminism and

her work on girl’s ‘masquerade’ in contemporary feminism should be applied in

the analysis chapter. Since she believed that post-feminism is ‘false’ feminism

that subverts the progress of previous waves of feminism and allows hegemonic

patriarchy to thrive today, I will apply this idea to conceptualise the data in the

analysis chapter in order to pursue the research question of how young Thai girls

negotiate their gender identities in the contemporary feminism, particularly in the

context of the online environment. Even though there are many traditional

discourses on Thai females that constrain girl’s agency and autonomy in gender,

I believe we need to re-conceptualise the representation of girl’s identities in the

digital age through a more nuanced lens that allows for ambiguity.

In my opinion, to understand girl’s agency and resistance in contemporary

feminism, a theory needs to be conceived within a nuanced lens – as in line with

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Gonick et al’s argument (2009) that gender subjectivities are about contingent

and ambiguous practices of identity rather than just binary divisions between

agency (girl power) and compliance (girl victims). Thus, I try to apply these

nuanced and ambiguous views to the analysis chapter so as to understand

youth’s gender matters in everyday lives online and to pursue the main research

question. There is a potential link between a girl’s agency and pleasurable

resistance in post-feminism culture, which will be discussed in the coming section.

For instance, girls' performance of playful identities, such as dressing up, wearing

a hairpiece, and applying creative make-up, are perceived as a girl’s subversion

of hetero-normative values, and, at the same time, as a pleasurable resistance.

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C. Cosplay and Pleasurable Resistance

Joel (2011) explored queer performance, that is cosplay activity, originating from

Japanese popular culture, which is regarded as pleasurable resistance. He

considerd that cosplay activity should be seen as an embodied sense of agency

in expressing pleasure since they play with dressing up, make-up, and other

props through the imitation of characters in films, comic books, or video games.

As cosplayers have an ambiguous appearance that may seem to challenge the

essential differences of the gendered body, these sorts of playful acts are

considered as the unstable simulation of the visual image (Joel, 2011).

Joel (2011) argues that cosplay performance should first be understood as an

expression of emotional attachment to the animated body, cosplay, therefore,

becomes a creative and pleasurable gesture that is at once incompatible with the

discursive effects of the gendered body. In the context of online sites, I consider

that the ways young women deploy social media to practise creative activity (like

cosplay) and perform dynamic non-normative behaviours (like lesbian identity)

can be regarded as playful subversion or pleasurable resistance. This is because

while they practise these creative and dynamic performances – as ways of

challenging dominant authorities and cultural structures – they use social media

as alternative sites for pleasure, playfulness, and everyday creative opportunities.

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More recently, the feminist scholar Valle (2020) proposed the new term “a feminist

technopolitical tactic” to understand the emergence of sexual agency/pleasure as

regards the appropriation and subversion of online gender-based violence. The

author borrows from the activist-scholar Adrienne Maree Brown’s (2019)

contention that pleasure “is a measure of freedom”, defining it as a “feeling of

happy satisfaction and enjoyment”. Thereby, Valle (2020) defines sexual pleasure

as both an element of freedom/agency of expression and as the ability to express

and feel satisfaction and enjoyment through sexuality. Specifically, for Valle,

sexuality is expressed by using technologies and platforms as vehicles and

spaces, such as sexting, sharing erotic videos, online dating, as well as other

sexual-related interactions. The concept of 'technopolitical strategising' by girls

and women explains how marginalised individual’s freedom and sexual pleasures

are expressed (Valle, 2020). This concept can help to conceptualise how young

Thai women express their freedom in terms of sexual matters since social media

as alternative spaces of digital technologies are offering users for sharing

emotion, sexting, finding partners, or flirting online. Social media can therefore be

seen as the vehicle to express a girl’s freedom and sexual pleasures according

to the 'technopolitical strategising' concept.

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D. Intersectionality – a relationship between social class and gender

As mentioned in the introductory chapter, to understand the relationship between

social class and gender, intersectionality can be applied as an analytical

framework and critical perspective. Briefly, the theory of intersectionality was

introduced to the field of legal studies by the black feminist scholar Kimberlé

Williams Crenshaw (1989). The theory originally begins with the issue of

oppression of black women in society: it is argued that this kind of oppression is

intersecting with many layers of different forms of oppression, including many

aspects of social identities such as race, gender, class, nationality, citizenship,

religion, and body type. These identities are most referenced in the fourth wave

of feminism, which broadens the lens of the first and second waves of feminism,

which largely focused on the experiences of women who are both white and

middle-class, to include the different experiences of women of colour, women who

are poor, immigrant women, and other groups. Thus, Crenshaw (1989) used

intersectionality to denote how race, class, gender, and other systems combine

to shape the experiences of many by making room for privilege and oppression.

In Thailand, there is a discussion from a Thai feminist scholar that intersectionality

provides many more dimensions of social identity to understand oppression and

privilege in Thai society. Thongsiri (2021) argued that women from all classes are

oppressed by patriarchal forces in Thai dominant culture, but women from

underprivileged classes seem to be further oppressed by a range of social forces.

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For example, poor marginalised lesbians who live in Chiangmai, a northern part

of Thailand, seem to be oppressed by not only the patriarchal forces in Thai

culture, but also other intersecting social dimensions such as their economic

status, class, citizenship, and ability. To explain this, due to the fact that they are

lesbian, they are oppressed by patriarchal forces and heteronormativity in Thai

dominant culture. In addition, since they are the poor marginalised people who

live in the northern part of Thailand, they seem to be more oppressed due to their

lower-class and poor economic status. At the same time, as they are in a northern

part of Thailand where hill tribe people called กระเหรี)ยง (Ka-ren) live along the Thai-

Myanmar border, they are the minorities in Thailand who have no citizenship and

criticised for their lack of ability. In short, owing to their social and political

identities such as lower class, limited citizenship, and lack of skills, they seem to

be more oppressed in society, compared to Bangkok’s middle-class women who

have higher economic status, class, and professional jobs.

To sum up, the theory of intersectionality can be applied to understand how class

and gender are intersected. Since my study aims to categorise participants into

three groups, the LC, the MC and the UC, it can be hypothesised that the

oppression that the underprivilege class people are under, especially the lower

class, may intersect with other layers of different forms of oppression in Thai

society, such as the oppression in terms of class, politics, economy, education,

skill levels, and residential area. These are connected to the ways in which they

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negotiate their gender identity online; plus, their own specific youth culture and

subculture on social media might also be factors impacting this negotiation.

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3.2 Discourse and Power theories

3.2.1 Foucault’s discourse and power to sexuality

This section will mainly discuss the terms of discourse and power with sexuality

according to Foucault (1990), who proposed his theory in the History of Sexuality.

As discussed in the foreground of the chapter, Foucault highlighted how the truth

of sexuality in society is created through discourse and power. In addition to

discourse and power, there are further terminologies proposed by Foucault to

demonstrate how the state or institution (called the ‘expert’) employ some

‘weapon’ to build the knowledge regarding sexuality in society. I support the idea

of Foucault that gender is a social construction through discourse, power, and

knowledge. As gender is constructed by social discourse, language, and power,

Foucault’s framework should be employed to understand how young Thai women

deal with that social construction as well as other conventional discourses by adult

culture and power. From this, the resistance and subculture in youth culture by

Hall and Jefferson (1993) from Birmingham’s CCCS will be applied in the next

section to understand the sexual struggles of young Thai women. Birmingham’s

CCCS studies will help to conceptualise how young Thai women build their

subculture through their ‘rituals’ on social media to subvert those conventional

works.

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The concept of power and knowledge by Foucault (1990) described in the History

of Sexuality, argues that: “the different discourses on sexuality are not about

sexuality, they constitute the reality of sexuality” (Foucault, 1990, p. 134). This is

not to say that “sexuality does not exist non-discursively, but to claim that our

‘knowledge of sexuality and the ‘power’ relations of sexuality are discursive”

(Foucault, 1990). Moreover, Foucault considered that “discourses produce

knowledge and knowledge is always a weapon of power: thus, it is in discourse

that power and knowledge are joined together” (1998, p. 318). This can be applied

to understand how the Thai state or social institutions constitute gender norms

and sexual values in young women through knowledge and power relation. To

elaborate, the states and institutions are not just producing knowledge about

sexuality; they also seek to produce power over sexuality. Specifically, Foucault

(1998) argued that when the power produces reality through discourse, it

produces the ‘truths’ that people live. In other words, he considered social

constructions of sexuality to be internalised by that group of people, leading them

to see sexuality as the ‘truth’ about themselves (Foucault, 1990 cited in Hall,

2001). Also, he developed the idea of ‘the discourses of institution’, recognised

as the ‘expert’, with the understanding of the human body that had effects on the

treatment of people by the state and its agent (Foucault, 1990).

To apply this, gender norms in Thai culture are mostly contextualised by the

discourse of ‘times and places’ – Kalathesa (กาละเทศะ) (or called ‘contextual

sensitivity’), which is derived from the shapers of the institution. These shapers

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seem as the ‘experts’ in the development of the social discourse, which is

potentially influenced by Buddhist orientation and Thai historical politics and

governments (Van Esterick, 2000). Furthermore, it can be seen that social

institutions in Thailand, such as educational institution, family, and the state, try

to repeat the same theme of ‘times and places’ (‘kalathesa’), which is the primary

concern in ‘surface and appearance’, rather than the concern in inner essence

gender identity (Van Esterick, 2000). This enables Thais to perceive and

acknowledge what is the proper time and proper place to express something

according to the ‘times and places’ discourse repeated by the state. For example,

young Thai women are aware of when and where to express sexual matters, such

as sexual desires, emotions, and identity according to family discourse and social

expectations of sexuality in Thai culture. In the same way, young Thai men are

also aware of gender roles that family, education, and media repeat for normative

masculinity. These include the proper way to perform selves and identities to

conform with the Thai prevailing culture. From these examples, the shapers of

Thai institutions appear to produce and reproduce the ideas of normative

masculinity and femininity, which are the ideological orientations, particularly fixed

binary gender identities and normative sexualities. This affirms the notion that

young Thai women’s gender expression is still strongly shaped by social

institutions, the state, and family: they are abstinent in gender practices and

sexual expression and need to follow the ‘good’ women dogma influenced by

normative discourses of femininity in Thailand.

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However, in Foucault’s later works, Foucault (1998) shifted his consideration

away from the directions that external forces and discourses can restrict people,

towards a focus on how discourses can bring people to “police” themselves. In

the sexuality framework, “sexuality does not have to be actively regulated by the

state, because people would be very careful to monitor their behaviour

themselves” (Foucault, 1998, p. 142). From this, Foucault’s consideration shifted

from a world constructed from ‘without’ – external discourses imposed to people

– to a world constructed from ‘within’ – the individual’s dynamic adaptation to their

surroundings (1998, p. 159). Subsequently, it can be argued that although the

wider social environment or external discourse remains significant, individual’s

subjective responses to it become more interested as internalised constraint, and

more creative resistance (Foucault, 1998).

This can be further analysed through the framework of power by Foucault (1998).

According to the power concept, it only makes sense in one particular context

because of the diverse dimensional definition of power. It cannot be simply argued

that power is held by one group; in fact, power is everywhere and plays a role in

all relationships and interactions (Foucault, 1998). Social interactions and flows

through networks of relationships are the key things that exercise power (ibid).

For example, while women can point to paths that patriarchal society encourages

men’s power, on the level of individual relationships, it is always easy to find

instances where women seem to have more power than men (Gauntlett, 2008).

Even though the external discourses and power in society still play a significant

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role in people’s gender performance, the individual’s unique subjectivities seem

to be more crucial in terms of their sexual autonomy and agency. This

consideration can be applied to understand the recent gendered culture in young

Thai women. The gender and sexual subjectivities of young Thai women appear

caught up in their desires as much as in the power of normative discourses. The

diversity and complexity of discourses – which affect women’s everyday life

subjectivities – appear fluid and changeable (Boonmongkon et al, 2013).

Particularly, women can negotiate, change, and transform the dominant

ideological discourses regarding gender and sexuality (Fongkeaw and

Fongkeaw, 2016).

As Foucault shifted his consideration away from the forces of external discourse,

towards a focus on internal individual’s dynamics, individuals are said to be

increasingly able to negotiate lifestyle choices within diverse discourses and their

own created discourses. This is in line with a previous study claiming that as a

result of progressive modernisation, Thai women’s self-presentation and sexual

expression are more fluid and inconsistent, compared with the being of Thai

women in the past (Thaweesit, 2004). This study shows that Thai women in the

working class have more choices to express their gender identity and sexuality

because of not only the openness and modernisation, but also of the devaluation

of social expectations and norms in society. In short, it is apparent the women’s

sexual subjectivity is rather considered by their desire than considered by the

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power of ideological normative discourses in society. Individuals have open

choices to perform their gender identity and sexuality with the diverse discourse.

Following on from this, notions of ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1990) in women’s sexuality

are shifting. Specifically, forms of femininity, that previously went unchallenged,

have now been subverted by other ways for women to perform their identity

(Gauntlett, 2008). This can be seen in the modern day by the changes that

constitute being a Thai woman: traditional discourses in feminine sexuality have

given way to a variety of newly emerging discourses, encouraging personal

autonomy, gender equality, modernity, and so on (ibid). Therefore, women’s new

gender identity as independent wage-earners have permitted them to resist Thai

hegemonic feminine discourses (Thaweesit, 2004). Nevertheless, indeed, these

hegemonic discourses have never completely lost their hold. To resolve the

contradiction in women’s lives in the modern world, they often negotiate their

desires against the backdrop of ideological discourses, which this negotiating

process inevitably brings about women’s incongruent and fragmented gender

expression and sexuality (ibid). Therefore, this is the reconstitution of female’s

sexual subjectivity and gender in contemporary Thailand which can be best

understood as a dialectical interplay of discursively defined modern choices and

social expectations (Thaweesit, 2004).

In conclusion, even if women appear to see themselves as being caught up in the

disciplinary regime of dominant discourses, they seem to be able to find their

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ways and assert their agency to challenge and negotiate institutionalised

definitions of traditional femininity. Overall, I consider that Foucault’s discourse

and power (1990) can be applied as the theoretical framework to understand the

origin of gendered culture in Thailand, such as to understand how the ‘truth’

regarding gender and sexuality in society is formed by the discourse, language,

and power. At the same time, the framework helps to understand the social

construction in terms of normative sexuality, such as normative masculinity and

femininity through the knowledge by the experts from the shapers of the

institution. Also, when Foucault’s shifting consideration from the force of external

discourse to internal individual’s dynamics helps to understand the recent

gendered culture in young Thai women. For example, they can create their

discourses and patterns in sexual matters as well as have own choices to perform

their sexual subjectivities. This is also in line with the concept of third-wave

feminism discussed in McRobbie’s framework that the new generation of young

women have more, ‘choices’, ‘capacity’, and ‘freedom’ in gender performance

both in the online and offline settings. Therefore, young Thai women can assert

their agency and increasingly able to negotiate lifestyle choices that challenge

institutionalised normativity and/or traditional public discourse in Thai culture. To

provide a link to this notion, the next section will discuss the resistance and

subculture in the youth by Birmingham’s CCCS studies.

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3.2.2 Birmingham’s subculture and resistance in

youth culture (Hall and Jefferson, 2006)

As I discussed previously that young women are challenging traditional public

discourses in the dominant culture, Hall and Jefferson’s subculture and resistance

concept in the book, Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War

Britain (2nd edn) (2006), is useful for understanding the ways that young Thai

women use social media to rebel against conventional works by parent’s or

institution’s discourses in Thai culture.

In the second edition of the subcultures classic, Resistance through Rituals

(RTR), published 30 years after the first edition, the original text remains the same

but the editors, Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, provided a new introduction. They

began to ask in the introduction what the RTR project was. How has it been built

upon, contested, and critiqued? What is its contemporary relevance? These

questions were discussed in the new introduction, which features the key issues

of the second edition of the book. They argued that although there are new

trajectories and new senses of contemporary (post-subcultural) youth culture,

subcultures are not different from that of the RTR subcultures (Hall and Jefferson,

2006). In the original language of RTR, they presented the ‘incorporation’ of the

hoodie in the fashion world as an example of the ‘diffusion’ and ‘defusion’ of

stylistic ‘resistance’. In short, they concluded that even though there are diverse,

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dynamic, and creative subcultures in post-subcultural youth culture, the key

argument of ‘resistance’ is still the same idea.

However, there is controversy surrounding subcultural and post-subcultural

theory in the investigation of youth cultural forms and practices. The term post-

subculture is fruitfully defined and developed by David Muggleton (2000) in his

book Inside Subculture: The postmodern meaning of style. Muggleton situated

the transition from subcultural to post-subcultural youth during the 1980s and

1990s, which he described as “decades of subcultural fragmentation and

proliferation, with a glut of revivals, hybrids and transformations, and the

coexistence of myriad styles at any one point in time” (2000, p. 47). Through the

combination of Weberian and postmodern analysis, Muggleton argued that the

pick and mix approach to style evident among the respondents in his study is due

to “the increasing proliferation of youth styles, and the prominence of the retro

market – combined with the new postmodern sensibilities of style” (2000, 48). It

is further argued that “individualism has surpassed an emphasis on collectivity as

a means by which social actors seek out desirable visual images, and construct

sociocultural identities, for themselves” (Muggleton, 2000). From this argument,

the post-subcultural theory has subsequently seen a range of conceptual

frameworks employed, most notably ‘neo-tribe’, ‘lifestyle’, and ‘scene’ (Bennett,

2011).

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On the other hand, critiques of post-subcultural theory relate to the lack of a strong

association with the social class of the original Birmingham Centre theory. It is

considered that post-subcultural theory wholly fails to comprehend the extent to

which structured inequalities continue to inform both young people’s access to

cultural commodities and their ultimate use of such commodities in the fashioning

of identities (Shildrick and MacDonald, 2006). In short, although the post-

subcultural theory has presented credible arguments as to how and why the

collective cultural affiliations of youth can be seen as changing in ways that

embrace new, more fluid dynamic, reflexive, and interchangeable dimensions,

few scholars have investigated what kinds of collectively endorsed aesthetic,

cultural and other lifestyle discourse and practices inform these (Bennett, 2011).

Importantly, it is argued that youth cultural studies should be investigated through

a “more nuanced and locally sensitive analysis of where and how patterns of

consumption, leisure and lifestyle map onto structural experiences of class,

gender, race and so on” (Bennett, 2011). Thus, I consider that the studies in youth

cultural forms and practices should be analysed through relations of class,

gender, race, and ethnicity in the formation of both individual and collective youth

cultural identities.

Even though post-subcultural scholars largely argue that young people’s tastes,

interests, and cultural affiliations are fluid and interchangeable, I suggest that

there is little in the way of reliable data to assert such claims at a wider

sociocultural level. Thus, to support what Bennett (2011) suggested, youth

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cultural studies should fruitfully draw on both post-subcultural and subcultural

approaches to address the limitations and to provide more comprehensive data

about the cultural practices of youth in contemporary social contexts. I suggest

that both these approaches be adopted to make my study's findings and

discussion more nuanced. Above all, the social class should be one of the crucial

variables with which to understand youth cultural identities as originally argued by

Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS).

As part of Birmingham’ CCCS, a classical framework by Hall and Jefferson (2006)

would be the notable one that explains the subculture and resistance in the youth.

In arguing that popular culture is a site of struggle, Hall and Jefferson (2006)

suggested the idea of resistance and subculture in youth culture as a way to rebel

against the dominant culture. In the original book, they consider that the ‘exotic’,

‘bizarre’, or ‘deviant’ forms of youth culture in England do not simply represent an

explicitly youthful or generational response to mass media's attempts to shape

their leisure activities and consumption patterns. Rather, “youth culture arises out

of and cannot be understood apart from how young people translate the

problematics of their class position into symbolic forms which both articulate the

common elements of their social experience and subvert the cultural authority of

the dominant social classes” (Hall and Jefferson, 1993). In short, youth culture is

an ideological means of resistance to the standards and values of the dominant

culture. From this, when Hall and Jefferson argued that the youth are rebelling

against norms and patterns in the dominant culture, this can be applied to the

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case of young Thai women who use social media to challenge the traditional

norms in sexuality, particularly femininity and heteronormativity in Thai culture.

For example, in online spaces, they can show their non-normative gender through

gender-switching in the cosplay activity – this can be seen as one of the notable

cases of resistance toward normative discourses or dominant culture.

Moreover, as Hall and Jefferson (2006) put forward, as youth cultures form

coherent social worlds of family, neighborhood, and school in life, the youth are

struggling with the power and privilege between the superordinate and

subordinate social classes. Specifically, the school and the labor market are the

main institutions that connect working-class families and communities to the

larger society, enabling young people to negotiate with families, schools, and

workplaces relationships (as the members of these groups) to respond to the

power relations and dominant cultures. Hall and Jefferson’s classical

consideration of power and dominant culture in British society is similar to the

dominant culture of institutions in Thai society. In Thailand, as institutions such as

family, neighbourhood, and school are also labelled as the dominant society,

young Thai people need to deal with the social struggles of power and privilege

in society. They thus find alternative spaces to challenge these to express their

dynamics and creativity through the subculture which are contradicting the

traditional public discourses by parent’s culture. In terms of Hall and Jefferson’s

framework (2006), these youthful behaviours that adults call ‘criminal’,

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‘destructive’, ‘vicious’, or ‘absurd’ are actually an expressive mode of rebellion, a

protest against an inferior status in the class structure.

From the relationship between subculture, resistance, and class structure, Hall

and Jefferson rationally suggested a return to a classic Marxist model of class

affiliation. Specifically, social class revolves around the issue of dominant

culture’s definition of right and wrong ways of behaviour and the issue of dominant

culture’s ideas about the proper distribution of economic opportunities and

resources (Heller, 2019). The working-class youth as a subordinate group tend to

be the people that potentially express symbolic opposition to the dominant

culture's moral authority in the superordinate group (ibid). With reference to this,

I consider that it is a worthwhile attempt to study how the social class of young

Thai women relates to resistance and subculture in terms of sexual matters in the

online context. As I suggest that social media can be considered as the alternative

space to subvert traditional public discourses in the dominant culture, I intend to

study how young Thai women employ these online platforms to rebel against their

families, neighborhoods, and schools (as the influential institutions) in terms of

gender discourses. Also, how does class affiliation relate to how young Thai

women rebel against these powerful institutions? To answer these research

questions, the Birmingham Centre’s model of subculture and resistance in youth

culture proposed in Hall and Jefferson (2006) is a valuable theoretical framework

that provides a better understanding of this issue. Meanwhile, some aspects of

Marxist theory and Bourdieu’s social class and capital will be applied in the next

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section for a more in-depth understanding in terms of class struggle and social

capital in youth culture.

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3.3 Social Class and Capital Theories

3.3.1 Bourdieu’s social class and capital in youth

Before we discuss the concept of Bourdieu’s social class and capital, which has

been broadly debated across cultures and social contexts, we need to consider

some brief ideas from classical Marxist definitions concerning class, which

influences Bourdieu's concept. The followings are discussions of the concept of

class: A. Classical Marxist definitions of class; B. Bourdieu’s class and capital

concept; C. Critical debates about Thai social class, drawing on Bourdieu and

other sociological frameworks, respectively.

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A. Classical Marxist definitions of class

The classical concept of class by Karl Marx (1867) offers an explanation of social

alienation and human struggle leading to the formation of class structure in

society. Political economics contributes to Marxist theories, centering on the

concept of "origin of income" where society is divided into three sub-groups:

Rentier, Capitalist, and Worker (Marx, 1867). This construction is based on David

Ricardo's theory of capitalism. Marx (1867) strengthened this with a discussion

over verifiable class relationships. He sought to define class as embedded in

productive relations rather than social status. His political and economic thoughts

developed towards an interest in production as opposed to distribution, and then

this became the central theme in his concept of class).

Marx (1867) distinguished one class from another on the basis of two criteria:

ownership of the ‘means of production’ and control of the ‘labour power’ of others.

He stated "society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile

camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie, and

proletariat”. The ‘bourgeoisie’ or capitalists refer to a group of people who own

the means of production and purchase the labour power of others, while the

‘proletariat’ or workers imply a group of people who do not own any means of

production or the ability to purchase the labour power of others. Rather, they sell

their own labour power (Marx, 1867). Therefore, in classical Marxist theories,

class is thus determined by property and production relations, not by income or

status. These factors are determined by distribution and consumption, which

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mirror the production and power relations of classes. Max Weber’s classical work

(1978), “Class, Status, Party”, from his Economic Society, volume 2, aims to

elaborate on Marx’s notion of class with a discussion on the importance of status

groups and political parties for an improved understanding of the unequal

distribution of power. The major distinction between Marx and Weber is that

whereas Marx viewed classes in terms of their relations to the “production

process”, Weber conceptualised social class in terms of “market situation” or

“exchange relations” (Weber, 1978).

Back to the classical Marxist concept of class, Marx highlighted the process of

production with two criteria, the ownership of the ‘means of production’ and

control of the ‘labour power’. Consequently, the two social classes, the

bourgeoisie and the proletariat, are two distinct classes that have been

extensively used and understood as the middle class and the working class

across the world today. To apply the classical Marxist definitions of the class in

Thai society, I argue that there are many similarities linking to Marxist’s argument.

The middle class across the world, even in European or non-Europe counties

(including Thailand), typically are people who own the means of production and

are more wealthy and have more access to education and power. This view of

the middle class across the world is linked with and similar to the terms

‘bourgeoisie’ or ‘capitalists’ in the classical Marxist definitions. The group of the

working class across the world (also Thailand) generally are the people who are

poor, do not own the means of production, and typically get a raw deal from the

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state and the society. In other words, they do the work, but they do not get any of

the rewards, only compensation from their own labour. This is in line with the

Marx’ definition of ‘proletariat’, which are viewed as the group who sell their own

labour power. This view on the working class is quite similar to the Thai lower-

class group – or industrial urban working class – who are the workers producing

the wealth for the capitalists, but not owning the means of production. Moreover,

in cultural terms, the working class typically refers to people who are under the

control of the bourgeoisie class, or who need to follow the social rules and norms

set by the dominant class. This can lead to the class struggle between two distinct

groups in society: while the bourgeoisie (or dominant or advantage) group aim to

enact norms, rules, regulation, social convention and discourses of what can be

said and what cannot be said, the proletariat (or non-dominant or disadvantage)

group potentially resist these through their rituals such as their speech, costumes,

acting, and other forms of expression. Specifically, we can see this classical

struggle between agency and structure in the parent-child relationship. As

discussed in the section of Birmingham’s Resistance through Rituals in Youth

Culture, young people can create their own subculture to resist parental

discourses through their own rituals, such as music, play, dress, speech, and

other modes of communication (Hall and Jefferson, 2006).

To conclude, I argue that social class in Thailand conforms to the ways of classical

Marxist definitions since Thai social class is similar to post-industrial society

across the world. Although the aristocracy (royal, king, and elite) has not been

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relatively significant in terms of power relation in western society today, they have

wielded significant influence in Thai society until today. As I discussed in the

introductory chapter, Thai social structure and hierarchy were developed in the

late Ayutthaya period in 1782-1873 by the sakdina system, which means ‘dignity

marks’ (Thongsawang et al., 2020). In the Thai feudal society, there are two

distinct classes that lead to the class struggle: chao (lords or king), and khunnang

(nobles), are the ruling classes, while prai (commoners) and that (slaves) are the

subordinates (ibid). In addition, the peasantry, or the peasant class, still exist in

Thai society, especially in rural provinces in the North and the Northeast, even

though there is a new political society (called “cosmopolitan peasants” or

“cosmopolitan villagers”) that has emerged in contemporary rural Thailand

(Walker, 2012; Keyes, 2014). Thus, owing to the existence of the aristocracy

(royal, king, elite), the peasantry, or even cosmopolitan peasants in Thai society,

Thai social class and structure are rendered different from that of Western

structure. In short, I note that Thai social class still conforms to the ways of

classical Marxist definitions, but with the exceptions of the role of the monarchy

and the aristocracy, and the rural groups. That is, the bourgeoisie in Thai social

class is defined as the middle class (or capitalists) – this is due to the emergence

of the newly rich-urban middle class in Thailand – while the proletariat is defined

as the working class (or called the lower-class; industrial urban working class;

peasant class; or cosmopolitan peasants). Lastly, the aristocracy (royal, king,

elite) are defined as the upper class in Thailand, including the people who work

with the king and government such as politicians, ambassadors, lawyers, and

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senior commissioned officers. All of these theories that I apply to define and

classify the research participant’s social class will be discussed further in the

Methodology chapter. The theories applied for the purposes of organising the

groups of participants will be aligned with a more schematic tabulation of social

classes in Thailand – this will be presented in detail in the Methodology chapter.

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B. Bourdieu’s class and capital concept

When discussing social class and capital, Pierre Bourdieu’s framework serves as

an influential work that should be applied to understand this concept. Bourdieu

developed theories of social stratification based on aesthetic taste in his 1979

work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. He suggested how

social classes, especially the ruling and intellectual classes, preserve their social

privileges across generations despite the myth that contemporary post-industrial

society boasts equality of opportunity and high social mobility, achieved through

formal education. Bourdieu’s social class framework is influenced by Marxist

theory, called the ruling capitalist class as ‘the bourgeoisie’ and the wage-

labourers class as ‘proletariat’ (Bourdieu, 1979). As discussed, the social class

involves the issue of the dominant culture that defines what are right or wrong

ways of behaviour. In other words, in capitalist societies, the bourgeoisie produce

social constructions of something – like the ways that Gramsci called ‘common

sense’ through the ideology (1979) – such as the construction of social norms,

patterns, and values in any fields: education, lifestyle, music, gender roles, etc. In

short, it can be said that the bourgeoisie maintains power to construct the social

patterns and to control the proper distribution of economic opportunities and

resources (Bourdieu, 1979). In Bourdieu’s term, capital has been suggested to

function as a social relation of power.

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While Marxist theorists consider social class and capital concept in terms of

economic and resource opportunities as the main points, Bourdieu (1979)

expanded such consideration into four types of capital: economic, symbolic,

cultural, and social. Bourdieu (1979) introduced the notion of capital, defining it

“as sums particular assets put to productive use”. By Bourdieu’s capital

framework, those assets could take various forms, habitually referring to several

principal forms of capital that are economic, symbolic, cultural, and social as I

mentioned previously. Bourdieu (1979) claimed that how individuals possess their

aesthetic tastes depends on their social status, capital, and position. Specifically,

children are passed on the social status, capital, and position by their senior family

members, especially their parents. For example, parents have been passing on

the cultural capital to their children by introducing them to dance and music, taking

them to theatres, galleries, and historic sites, and by talking about literature and

art over the dinner table (Bourdieu, 1979 cited in Szeman, and Kaposy, eds.,

2010). Thus, young people learn how to express their tastes, practices, and

beliefs that are appropriate for their social position adopted by their parents.

Bourdieu (1979) suggested capital be divided into four types: economic, symbolic,

cultural, and social: however, I will focus on only three of them, excluding

economic capital. In my view, the economic capital in terms of Bourdieu’s

framework is quite similar to what Marxist theorists consider: it is all about

quantitative materials of individuals, such as income, car, land, and property,

which should be mainly discussed in the field of economics even though this kind

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of capital can flow to other types of capital. Hence, the followings are the detailed

explanations of the cultural, symbolic, and social capital framework by Bourdieu.

Firstly, the cultural capital of individuals is the cultural asset, such as

competencies, skills, and university qualifications – that are derived from the

cultural norms and values of each individual’s society. To clarify briefly, cultural

capital has been derived extensively from three forms: the embodied form, the

objectified form, and the institutionalised form. The embodied form comes from

the ways that individuals are instilled from the society and family at the early age

of life; they thus possess the cultural products from their parents, such as art,

music, individual personality, and 'natural' ability (Bourdieu, 1979). The objectified

form is a ‘biens cultural’, a cultural material that is objective and cumulative, such

as a book, a draw-art picture, and a musical instrument, while the institutionalised

form includes university qualification, the reputation of the university, and the

degree of the education, all of which can increase the value in economic capital,

particularly in the labour market (Bourdieu, 1979).

Secondly, Bourdieu (1979) considers symbolic capital such as prestige, honour,

and attention as a crucial source of power. This type of capital is perceived

through socially inculcated classificatory schemes. Bourdieu claimed that this

cultural capital leads to ‘symbolic domination’ from the superordinate group

toward the subordinate group. In other words, when a holder of symbolic capital

uses the power to purpose against an agent who holds less and seeks thereby to

alter their actions, they exercise ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu, 1979). This kind

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of violence enables the class struggle between the superordinate (advantage)

and the subordinate (disadvantage) groups in society. Lastly, social capital in

Bourdieu’s framework is defined “as the aggregate of the actual or potential

resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less

institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition” (Bourdieu,

1979 cited in Szeman, and Kaposy, eds., 2010). Bourdieu stated that social

capital describes individuals’ ability to capture both the potential and actual

resources embedded in their social network. Specifically, children have been

inherited the social capital from their families, receiving the opportunity to realise

their potentials through education and then they pass on those same values to

their children in the same way when they first gained those values. Over time, the

individuals in those families have amassed the social capital that gives them an

inherent advantage over the other groups of people in society. Bourdieu believed

that because of this inherent advantage, from the past until now, there is a

variation in academic achievement in children with the different social classes. In

Bourdieu’s view, such social capital of individuals results in different levels of

respect, status, and position in society (Bourdieu, 1979). Importantly, when

individuals pursue power and status in society through politics or other means,

this leads to inequality that we see in the world.

It can be considered that social, cultural, and symbolic capital, along with

economic capital contribute to the class struggle and lead to inequality in the end.

As Bourdieu stated, these assets are transferred from one generation to the next

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generation, and they are considered as ‘natural’ assets, such as abilities, skills,

manners, and behaviours that are accumulated throughout generations from

parents to children. Particularly, education represents the key example of this

process. According to Bourdieu’s argument, educational success entails a whole

range of cultural behaviour, extending to non-academic features like gait, dress,

or accent (Bourdieu, 1979). This argument motivated me to study how different

education backgrounds of young Thai women relate to how they perform their

gender in online sites. As I consider that social class is derived from not only

economic terms, but also from social, cultural, and symbolic terms (as Bourdieu

argued), the different educational backgrounds of young Thai women will be one

of the elements in class difference which will be studied. (See further discussion

on how the social class of young Thai women is categorised and studied in the

Methodology chapter).

Bourdieu’s statement that privileged children have learned the behaviour (gait,

dress, and accent), as have their teachers, conceptualises the question of how

upper-class young Thai women express their behaviour in terms of sexual matters

and, at the same time, how the behaviour of the privileged children is different

from the children of underprivileged backgrounds in the matters of gender. When

Bourdieu considers that the privileged children fit the pattern of their teachers'

expectations with apparent 'ease', as they are 'docile', can this consideration be

applied with the upper-class young Thai women when they perform themselves

in the online context? Do children with underprivileged backgrounds (that is lower-

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class young women) need to be ‘difficult’ (to present challenges) all the time? Or

do they need to be ‘unfit’ with the pattern of their teachers' expectations both in

the online or offline contexts? These questions led me to pursue the goal of

understanding how the class difference of young Thai women relates to the ways

they perform their gender identity.

To sum up, the different levels of economic, cultural, symbolic, and social capital

in Bourdieu’s framework, enabled me to study how these different levels of capital

in young Thai women cause them to have different tastes, manners, behaviours,

thoughts, and performances in gender in the online setting. It is my argument that

the performance of gender identity on social media of young Thai women can be

significantly linked to the construction of social capital. In short, how they post,

share, like, and comment on online profiles is the representation of their social

capital, such as their educational achievements, their language, their dress, and

their aesthetic tastes – like the case of music that they shared and pictures that

they posted online.

To link the subcultural theory to Bourdieuian taste, capital, etc., I refer to the

subcultural capital concept (1995) by Sara Thornton as an additional framework

to understand this. Thornton examined the shift from live to recorded music for

public dancing and resistance to recording technology's enculturation of the

"authentic," valued cultural form. Her work analysed the dynamics of "hipness,"

critiquing Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital with her formulation of "subcultural

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capital" (Thornton, 1995). Contrary to youth-subcultural ideologies, "subcultures

do not proliferate from a seed and grow by force of their energy into mysterious

‘movements’ only to be digested by the media” (Thornton, 1995). Rather, the

media and other cultural industries are there and effective right from the start.

They are central to the process of subcultural formation (ibid). From Thornton’s

framework, it can be seen that youth-subcultural practices, for instance the case

of dance music in the club culture of Thornton’s work, form subcultural capital in

youth. It is suggested that youth’s subcultural capital is distinct from pop culture.

To illustrate, dance music in club culture (whether called “clubber” or “raver”) is

dissociated from pop music of mass consumption (Thornton, 1995). They have

their own ‘niche media’ for this kind of club culture. In short, when we interpret

youth’s subcultural practices, we should focus on their niche media and other

cultural industries as the subcultural formation in the youth according to

Thornton's subcultural capital (1995).

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C. Debates on social class in Thailand as applied by Bourdieu

In this section, I will provide some critical debates by Thai scholars concerning

how Thai social class can be theorised in a sociological framework, particularly

by Bourdieu’s class and capital. One empirical work by Rungnapa (2007), who

studied social class structure in Thailand, especially Thai elites, draws on the

framework of Bourdieu’s class, capital, and reproduction. In her study’s findings,

Thai elites include members of the royal family, descendants of overseas Chinese

businessmen, intellectuals, politicians and bureaucrats who hold economic

capital in the form of land, labour, business investments, cash and property rights.

In addition, they accumulate social capital, often formed by networking and

alliances, both within and across groups. These members of the Thai elite also

create their own cultural capital to differentiate themselves from others. Rungnapa

stated that the characteristics of Thai elite capital are similar in the periods before

and after the 1932 revolution. This seems to indicate that political change has not

significantly transformed the definition of elite capital, and that members of the

Thai elite have successfully deployed strategies to reproduce their capital over

time (Rungnapa, 2007).

Moreover, there is another Thai scholar, Supang (1991) who investigated the Thai

social structure by applying Goldthorpe’s concept of social stratification. The

tradition of Goldthorpe’s social stratification mainly discusses the issue of

socioeconomic background or status (SES) of individuals, which is associated

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with occupation, education, and income indicators through a prestige-score

ranking. Goldthorpe’s SES ranking in will be discussed further in the Methodology

chapter with the details of schematic tabulation of social classes in Thailand – to

provide how I cluster young Thai women as research participants within three

social groups, namely the lower, the middle, and the upper classes, based on

their socioeconomic status.

Supang (1991) examined Thai social stratification through occupations in the

1980s by applying Goldthorpe’s tradition. An occupational prestige scale was

developed to rank eighty-nine occupations, which were grouped into nine

categories; namely, 1) professional and technical, 2) administrative and

managerial, 3) clerical and related work, 4) sales, 5) services, 6) agricultural and

production work, 7) wage labour, 8) military and police officers, and 9) others.

Then, a prestige-score ranking, with a scale from 1 to 100, was presented to the

sample group. Finally, the study clustered the scores into four strata: the high

prestige stratum (comprising professions such as ministers, medical scientists or

directors-general), the high-middle prestige stratum, the low-middle prestige

stratum and the low prestige stratum (comprising professions such as sex

workers or bus ticket collectors) (Supang, 1991). In relation to the sakdina system,

Supang (1991) observed an emerging ‘modern’ middle, while the top and the

bottom of the social structure remained similar to the sakdina system.

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More recently, Supasit et al. (2018) studied Thai social stratification using both

occupational prestige and capital, drawing on the merged concepts from both

Bourdieu and Goldthorpe. Based on objective indicators (social origin, standard

of living, economic status and level of education) and subjective indicators

(occupational prestige, life chances and lifestyle), the research team identified

five social strata: the “leading class” (high-ranking military officers and officials,

politicians and CEOs), the “professional middle class” (managers and

professionals), “salary men” (teachers, specialist technicians, clerical workers

and craftsmen), “secured hourly workers” (lower-rank armed forces and police,

sales, technicians and service worker) and the “unsecured” (garbage collectors,

cleaners and general workers) (Supasit et al. 2018).

Specifically, to show how Thai social class can be theorised by Bourdieu’s

concept in a recent Thai study, Thongsawang et al. (2020) argued that, in Thai

society, the disposal of capital is not so much a result of competition but a heritage

that is reproduced from one generation to the next. They highlighted that in the

capitalist societies of Thailand, this legacy is passed on within boundaries of

social classes. Hence, the concept of social class in Thailand is defined as “a

tradition line that reproduces itself from one generation to the next by passing on

relevant capital and habitus traits and by symbolically distinguishing itself from

other classes” (Thongsawang et al., 2020).

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All things considered, I propose that the theoretical framework of Bourdieu’s class

and capital and also other sociological frameworks such as Goldthorpe’s SES

and even classical Marxist of class are worth being applied to conceptualise social

class in Thailand as many Thai scholars have used these frameworks as

theoretical backgrounds to understand the research context and objectives. I

present the argument that Bourdieu’s sociology allows for a culturally sensitive

approach that combines deductive and inductive aspects in an interpretative

procedure. There are several aspects that can be applied to the Thai context,

especially social class in capitalist society. Bourdieu developed his sociological

theory for European society with a long capitalist past, which seems to be

applicable to a broad range of societies and contexts globally; thus, it can be used

for conceptualising non-European settings as well.

To sum up, Bourdieu’s framework is deemed appropriate and useful for

addressing the question of social class in Thailand ,which is the key component

of my thesis. As I aim to explore how class differentials of girls impact and/or

relate to the ways in which they negotiate their gender identities on social media,

girl’s social class needs to be clustered by categorising each girl’s capital, and

then by operationalising these categories. The Methodology chapter will present

the detailed organisation of the groups of participants, with the tabulation of social

classes in Thailand. However, I would argue that to study girl’s social class in

relation to gender negotiation online, not only do we need to be aware of and

understand the concept of the emergence of social class and capital in society,

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but we also ned to look closely at other invisible forces that allow for nuance and

ambiguity such as individual practices, subjectivities, perceptions, and

discourses.

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3.3.2 De Certeau’s strategic/tactic concept related to

class struggle

In the previous section, I argue that the performance of identity on social media

is the construction of social capital according to Bourdieu’s framework. The ways

in which young women post, share, and comment on their online profiles are the

representation of their social and cultural capital, such as their education, their

manners, their tastes, and their behaviours of any matters.

It could be said that Bourdieu’s work serves as a useful theoretical framework to

understand how different levels of social prestige, status, and position of

individuals impact the ways they perform their selves and identities in both online

and offline settings. Not only can Bourdieu’s framework be applied to understand

how individual’s capital impact the ways they express themselves, but it can also

be used to understand the class struggle between superordinate/privileged

people and subordinate/underprivileged people in society where this class

struggle leads to inequality as we perceive in the world. When talking about class

struggle or battle, Michel de Certeau would be the influential name to mention

and his work can help understand this issue better.

In The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), de Certeau combined his disparate

scholarly interests to develop a theory of the productive and consumptive activity

inherent in everyday life. De Certeau considered that everyday life is distinctive

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from other practices of daily existence because it is repetitive and unconscious

(De Certeau, 1984 cited in Ahearne, 2014). In his work, The Practice of Everyday

Life, he distinguished between the concepts of strategy and tactics. De Certeau

(1984) linked ‘strategies’ with institutions and structures of power who are the

‘producers’, while individuals are ‘consumers’ or ‘poachers’, who are against with

‘strategic’ environment by using ‘tactics’. In the Walking in the City chapter (1984),

De Certeau asserted that ‘the city’ is generated by the strategies of governments,

corporations, and other institutional bodies who produce things like maps that

describe the city as a unified whole (Szeman, and Kaposy eds., 2010). By

contrast, the walker at street level moves in ways that are tactical and never fully

determined by the plans of organising bodies, taking shortcuts despite the

strategic grid of the streets (ibid). De Certeau argued that “everyday life works by

a process of poaching on the territory of others, using the rules and products that

already exist in a culture in a way that is influenced, but never wholly determined,

by those rules and products” (de Certeau, 1984 cited in Ahearne, 2014). This is

in line with the ways that Jenkins presented the example of Star Trek Fan culture,

referring that young fan can rewrite the popular texts to serve different interests,

a practice called ‘textual poaching’ and originally derived from De Certeau’s

framework (Jenkins, 1988). In short, it can be seen that the key concept of de

Certeau’s framework is the study of ‘popular culture and the everyday ‘resistance’

to regimes of power by the groups of the subordinate class or the marginalised

subculture.

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Importantly, the ‘tactics/strategy’ metaphor from de Certeau becomes useful for

a better understanding of when each class of young Thai women uses social

media as a tactic way and strategic way to perform their gender identities. My

view is that the ways in which dominant people employ their ‘strategies’ to behave

their selves and identity in a hierarchal society refer to the power that they

possess in that society. At the same time, the ways in which non-dominant people

have their ‘tactical’ ways to express these matters refer to individual’s agency and

autonomy.

In conclusion, de Certeau considered that the ‘walkers’ (a metaphor for

individuals/ordinary people) can walk on the shortcut route by using ‘tactics’

despite the strategic grid of the streets. This implies that individuals can challenge

the dominant culture through their tactically alternative methods. This can be used

to hypothesise the case of lower-to-middle class girls who may use social media

to tactically present their selves like they are walking in the street. In the

meantime, the dominant group lives in the ‘city’ where their group enacts the rules

and the structures - like the metaphor for institutions and government that produce

maps to describe the city as a unified whole. This kind of ‘city’ metaphor can be

applied to understand how upper-class girls may use social media to follow what

their parents set as the norms in gender matters.

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3.4 Conclusion

As discussed thoroughly, the study aims to investigate the relationship among

three variables: 1) gender performance, 2) social class, and 3) social media usage

in young Thai women. Specifically, the study was designed to address the

question: how does the class difference of young women impact the ways they

negotiate their gender identities through the online platform? To pursue this

question, theoretical frameworks of three themes, namely identity and gender,

discourse and power, and social class and capital, can help to conceptualise

research data in the analysis process and to understand the link among the three

factors (gender, social class, and social media), which are the key points of the

study.

By cross-referencing different themes of theories, all themes of the framework are

connected to each other's and can serve as an analytical background to

understand how young women perform their gender identity through online sites

by focusing on the relation of class. In the first theoretical theme, Goffman’s theory

(1959) can be applied to understand the basic presentation of self in everyday life

both online and offline. As Goffman argued that individuals manage their

impression for social interaction through the frontstage and the backstage

according to the dramaturgical model, a better understanding of how young

women present their selves and identities in terms of gender through social media

sites can be achieved. I suggest that social media can be considered as both

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frontstage and backstage concurrently, since it can manage both public images

of selves (everyone can see) and private images of selves (selected audiences

to be seen). Thus, how young Thai women manage their social media profiles to

present either their idealized selves, desired images, or selected images of self

can be considered as the ways they manage their impression through the social

interaction inside the online platform according to Goffman’s impression

management concept (1959).

Butler’s gender performativity (1990) can be used as the identity and gender

framework in this study, similar to Goffman’s theory. As Butler described gender

as performance, and sexuality has been derived from discourse and social

processes in society, his theory can help understand how young Thai women

perform their gender through “millions of individual actions” which are changeable

and performative. Similarly, the concept of “doing gender” by West and

Zimmerman (1987) postulates that “gender is something a person does, rather

than has”. They argued that the performative model is conceptualised gender as

an interactional achievement in society and they viewed gender as something

unstable and variable. This can be applied in the context of social media that

when individuals self-select and perform their gender identities through millions

of individual actions such as changing the profile pictures, or editing the pictures

posted, they can perform their multiple gender identities which do not need to be

fixed or identical to the biological sex they naturally have.

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At the same time, McRobbie (2009) provided a useful framework to understand

that even though girls in post-feminism seem liberated and successful in gaining

choices and empowerment of their expression of their gender and sexuality, in

fact, their agency is still constrained. McRobbie argued that a new modern

identity, or ‘new girlie feminism’, is a false identity that encourages and

perpetuates patriarchal values. Thus, she critiqued that post-feminism, by

adopting the values of neoliberalism and consumerism, eventually undermines

the progress of feminism. However, I suggest that to understand a girl’s agency

in contemporary feminism, it should be viewed by a more nuanced lens of

individual aesthetics. For example, the cosplay activity – a playful act by queer

performers – is a complex pleasurable expression involving aesthetic tastes and

embodiment of cosplay characters. Thus, to understand them, we need to

analyse not only the animation’s bodies (cosplay’s visual images) but also the

underlying aesthetics, as well as the cosplayer’s cultural taste, aesthetics, class,

capital, etc. in accordance with what Bourdieu proposed (1970). I maintain that to

study youth culture, subculture, and their constructed identity, the actual class

affiliations of young people should be analysed, as advanced by Bourdieu’s

framework of social class and capital (1970), which will be concluded in the third

theme of theoretical frameworks.

In the second theoretical theme, I conclude that Foucault’s theory (1998) is useful

for understanding of how the ‘truth’ of sexuality is created through the discourse

and power in society. As many young women need to deal with their struggle

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against dominant discourses made by societal structure, viewed as the

institutional ‘expert’, Foucault shifted the classical consideration away from the

directions that external forces and discourses can restrict people, towards a focus

on how discourses can bring people to “police” themselves (1998). This can be

applied to understand that although the wider social environment, or the external

discourse, remains significant, girl’s subjective responses become more

interested and crucial. This is in line with what a previous Thai scholar found that

sexual subjectivities of young Thai women appear caught up in their desires as

much as in the power of normative discourses (Boonmongkon et al., 2013).

Importantly, the diversity and complexity of discourse, which affect women’s

everyday life subjectivities, appear fluid and changeable today (ibid).

Hall and Jefferson (1993) from Birmingham’s CCCS presented a worthwhile

concept for a better understanding of the creation of subculture and resistance in

youth culture. As they argued against the classical notion that popular culture is

a site of struggle, they suggested that the way young people create their

subcultures through rituals is a form of resistance against the dominant culture.

Although the post-subcultural theory seems useful as the conceptual approach to

understand youth cultural identities, it lacks a strong association with the social

class of the original Birmingham Centre theory. Moreover, the post-subcultural

theory has presented arguments as to how and why the collective cultural

affiliations of youth can be seen as changing in ways that embrace new, more

fluid dynamics, reflex, and interchangeable dimensions; however, few scholars

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come out to suggest what kinds of collectively endorsed aesthetics, cultural and

other lifestyle discourses and practices inform these (Bennett, 2011). Thereby, I

support the idea that youth cultural studies should be investigated through a

“more nuanced and locally sensitive analysis of where and how patterns of

consumption, leisure and lifestyle map onto structural experiences of class,

gender, race and so on” (Bennett, 2011).

Lastly, in the third theoretical theme, I suggest that the class affiliations of young

women should be analysed according to Bourdieu’s framework of social class

and capital (1970). The framework can be applied to understand how each class

of young Thai women impacts and shapes individual’s tastes, beliefs, and

behaviors in any field, including sexual matters. As there are many types of capital

– economic, social, cultural, symbolic – in Bourdieu’s framework, family’s

education can be considered as one of the significant cultural assets that can

position the children’s cultural capital and provide a link to their cultural behaviour,

extending to non-academic features like gait, dress, or accent (Webb, et al.,

2001). For example, girls with privileged backgrounds (or higher education) are

seen as a conformity group with teacher’s and parent’s expectations: they are

considered as docile and submissive. Nevertheless, the social capital of these

children is positioned by their family and education according to Bourdieu’s

framework; they can have their own strategic or tactical ways to resist those

conventional objects from their parents’ generation (de Certeau (2010). With the

metaphor of strategic/tactical method in the Walking in the City concept, de

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Certeau argued that even though the road map and other rules in the city are

strategically enacted by the state or the powerful people, underprivileged people

can have their shortcut to walk in the city by using tactical ways. This can be

applied to understand the class struggle between privilege and underprivileged

young women in Thai society. My suggestion is that girls with a privileged

background are strategically deploying the resources of their social group in terms

of education, gender, and power to realise the advantages of their class, while

girls with underprivileged backgrounds are tactically deploying resources to

critique and oppose these dominant values. From this, it is undoubtful that

privileged girls have manners, tastes, and lifestyles conforming to those of their

social group, especially those of their parents’ culture, whereas girls in the

powerless class seem to challenge and rebel against dominant forces and/or

mainstream culture due to the disadvantages of their class.

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Chapter 4: Research Methodology

The study aims to investigate how social media is used in negotiating gender

identity by young Thai women from different class backgrounds? In other

words, the goal is to understand how 18-year-old women use social media to

negotiate and express their gender online. In Thailand, prevailing cultures and

traditional public discourses on hetero-normative sexualities constrain young

women’s gender practice and sexual expression both offline and online. The

study interrogates processes of adaptation and resistance of traditional

mainstream discourses by considering social media as an alternative space for

the youth’s sexual negotiation. A gap was identified in terms of how identity was

tactically managed and constructed within different class structures. Even though

there is a previous research study on class difference and sexual attitudes of

young women, its implication is for healthcare purposes, that is, the reduction of

the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission in Thailand (Thianthai, 2004). There is still a

lack of studies exploring the new dimension of social media’s role in the

negotiation of gender identity of girls through the focus on class difference in

Thailand. Due to this unavailability of information, my current study has filled in

the gap by addressing the question of social class. I investigated young women

who came from different socioeconomic backgrounds: the lower class (LC), the

middle class (MC), and the upper class (UC). The data was gathered through

interviews, focus groups, and online ethnographies, such as posted pictures,

shared contents, and comments on profiles, and interpreted through a multimodal

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and social semiotic lens to gain deeper understandings of women's classed and

gendered social media practices. By examining and cross-referencing qualitative

data and the construction of online profiles that had been derived from different

social backgrounds, insights were generated yielding a snapshot of the everyday

identity work of Thai young women as they responded to and resisted traditional

forms of feminine conduct.

In the study, I have adopted the ethnographic research methodology to explore

the research’s objectives. Such an approach seems to be the appropriated choice

of research methodology for a study of the youth’s lived cultures on social media,

as this approach has been shown in other social media studies such as those of

boyd (2008a) and Baker (2013). Particularly, boyd has performed multiple

ethnographic studies on social media including Facebook, Myspace and Twitter,

enabling in-depth analysis of the users on these sites (2006; 2007, 2008b; 2014).

I deem online ethnography as the appropriate approach to collect the online data

of the participants’ production of their everyday life, and to understand the ways

in which they negotiate their gender identities on the site.

However, despite the fixed tools/features, layouts, and interfaces of social media

platforms that users can exploit for the negotiation of their identities, the ways in

which they utilise their different tools are unique to each participant when it comes

to the representation of their gender identities and characteristics (Pink, 2013).

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Thus, it is worth utilising this approach to insightfully understand the

representation and communication of the participants in everyday life matters by

observing their actual practices online, such as posting, sharing, commenting,

tagging, status writing, etc. (Pink, 2013). Ethically, from the researcher’s point of

view, online ethnography enables me to step back from my position as an active

member of the participant’s social networks, to visually and critically examine the

construction of their profiles from the position of their audience.

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Self-reflexivity – A nature of the ethnographic study

A self-reflexive view is one of the crucial features of ethnographic practices that

help gain insights into the study’s subject. I will discuss this to show the link

between my positionality and the lived culture of young Thai women in the matter

of gender performance online. As my nationality and cultural contexts lived and

language used are all Thai, my positionality is quite familiar with the fieldwork, the

research context, and the study’s subject. In terms of reflexivity in the

ethnographic study, there are possibilities of reflecting on what the researchers

are doing, what kinds of knowledge are being produced, which concepts are too

rigid, and which frameworks hide more than they reveal (Gray, 2003). These are

significant epistemological questions which, if you are able to ask them of your

own work, then you have achieved a flexible and reflexive approach to your study

(Gray, 2003). Marcus and Fischer (1986) noted the emergence of interpretive

anthropology, which they use as a description that covers “a diverse set of

reflections upon both the practice of ethnography and the concept of culture”. The

metaphor of culture as a text established by Clifford Geertz (1973) opened the

doors to debates about the moments of interpretation at all stages in the

ethnographic project. There is thus a potential for reflexivity, which makes

ethnographic methods so useful for the exploration and investigation of cultural

processes and the production of meaning. It is argued that reflexivity is useful to

think it through in relation to our broader epistemological position (Gray, 2003). A

reflexive approach is one that questions the theoretical and other assumptions of

the project. A reflexive process, thus, needs to pay close attention to social actors,

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to cultural and social processes, and to the political context in the subject that the

researcher aims to study.

Positioning myself as a middle-class person, I would say that I am more familiar

with and understand the cultural and social processes and the political context

and perspectives in the Thai middle-class group. I understand that being in the

middle class is to a certain extent to be overlapped in the Thai class scheme

where we are more adaptable, diverse, and struggling with political conflicts. To

explain this, it is because we are derived from mixed social origins, which feature

an overlap between the upper class and the lower class; in addition, this is also

due to the emerging newly rich middle class in Thailand (Funatsu and Kagoya,

2003). We thus have access to educational, healthcare, economic resources

more than we did in the past; at the same time, we are the new middle class who

become wealthier and achieve some authority and opportunities to speak up in

society through social actors and social processes.

However, there is a higher social scheme in Thailand, the elite class, a politically

and socially powerful and dominant group involved with the Thai aristocracy

derived from the historically Thai social system “sakdina” (dignity marks)

(Thongsawang et al., 2020). This kind of system has caused Thailand to become

a socially complex hierarchy and far from equal until the present (Thongsawang

et al., 2020). As a result, the Thai middle class typically struggle with social

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tension between the elite and the subordinate group in society. They fight for the

social and cultural resources that the elite people have possessed in society. As

a Thai middle-class girl who studied in the Thai educational system, I expect and

assume that Thai middle-class young women potentially challenge Thai politics

and engage in civic affairs as well as political activism in social matters such as

corruption, gender inequality, the law of gender-based violence, and the

patriarchal system in Thailand. For example, I am interested in interrogating the

issues of gender performance, diversity, and political expression in the young

generation since I see a significant implication and meanings that young people

make in their daily lives in the matter of gender. I would say that the inquiry into

such social issues is derived from my self-motivation, which is not only involved

in the implication of gender issues in young Thai women, but also the political

expression, engagement, and social and cultural process in the matter of social

class system in Thailand.

According to the nature of ethnographic approach in cultural studies, Gupta and

Ferguson (1997) pointed out that “all associations of place, people, and culture

are social and historical creations to be explained, not given natural facts” (p. 4).

To explore a sociologically, textually and the ethnographically “lived culture” within

particular social and cultural settings, the ethnographer should conceptualise

culture and subjectivity as in process and flux (Gray, 2003). Importantly, Morris

(1997) provided a notion of the “critique of everyday life”, suggesting this as the

heart of cultural studies: “an investigation of particular ways of using ‘culture’, of

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what is available as culture to people inhabiting particular social contexts, and of

people’s ways of making culture” (p. 43). Overall, my view is in line with Gray’s

discussion (2003) that an epistemological sense and choices of qualitative

methodology in the inquiry of the “critique of everyday life” (Morris, 1997) is to

understand that the world is to be discovered and that knowledge and ‘truth’ are

always provisional and contingent.

The reflexive process, as it allows the project to grow and particular avenues to

be pursued, is open and genuinely exploratory (Gray, 2003). It is argued that by

the nature of the ethnographic project, the researcher can enter a range of

dialogues (Willis, 1980). The dialogues through conversational interviews and

less formal conversations provide the possibility of open work – as Willis

describes, “the potential for a surprise” (1980, p. 90). From this consideration, as

a Thai middle-class woman, I found myself dealing with a great amount of data

materials and interpretation during the fieldwork. In terms of expectations of the

study’s subject, my positionality potentially influences the interpretation that

young Thai women would have resistance against the patriarchal society,

particularly the middle-class group, since they are the group who are more open

and ‘speak up’ for sexual autonomy – as I discussed previously. In other words,

my social position and background necessarily influenced the interpretation

during the fieldworks since the study’s subject is about a dependent personal

disclosure, which is related to the process of dialogues with my research

participants’ accounts of their social world. Importantly, my positionality helpfully

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ties the relationship with the participants since the dialogues in conversational

interviews can make it less formal and allow for a more open conversation – as

Willis described, “potential for a surprise” (1980, p. 90). Hence, the relationship

between myself and the research participants helped to familiarise them with the

conversation and made them feel confident in speaking in front of me, which was

helpful for the in-depth data collection process. To sum up, through the self-

reflexivity, my positionality, and social and cultural backgrounds significantly help

to delve into the depth of ethnographic narrative and contribute to the argument

forming the basis of the research’s objective.

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4.1 Research question and objectives

Drawing on themes that have emerged from the literature review (see Chapter 2),

gender performance online among young women is considered a significant

implication for empirical study. In Thailand, as there are various traditional public

discourses for females, which still constraint young women's gender performance

in the offline context, social media platforms will therefore be the best place to

understand how they apply these sites to negotiate, construct, maintain, and/or

contradict their gender identity. This consideration led me to conceptualise the

research question: how is social media used in negotiating gender identity

by young Thai women from different class backgrounds? I note that the

research question emerged from two key research purposes: firstly, to interrogate

how young Thai women use social media to negotiate their gender identities; and

secondly, to explore how different class structures are related to these gender

negotiations online. To further explain, there are two research objectives:

1) to explore the social media’s role in negotiating gender identity among

young Thai women.

2) to understand the relationship between social class and gender

negotiation online by young Thai women.

However, I am aware of the debates concerning the concept of gender terms. As

discussed in the introductory chapter, gender identity in sociocultural discipline is

viewed as a complex internalisation of cultural systems of meaning and subject

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to variation across cultures and historical periods (Butler, 1990; Mead, 1949). In

other words, gender is defined as social and cultural communicative practices in

specific communities (Tangmunkongvorakul, et al., 2010). While gender identity

is referred to socially constructed characteristics and cultural representations,

sexuality is more complicated than just performing characteristics of being gay,

lesbian, or others through bodily appearances, but sexuality is “the experience

and expression in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, values, and relationships”

(Wongpanarak et al., 2010). In short, sexuality is a kind of sexual expression,

building sexual relationships, expressing sexual desires and fantasies,

expressing sexual preferences and orientations, as well as actually having sex.

From this, even though the study’s main purpose is to explore how young women

from different social classes use social media to negotiate their gender identity,

the study takes into account and allows other sexual-related issues – that

potentially emerge from the data – to be merged and be analysed as the research

findings. These include sexuality, sexual autonomy, sexual expression, a

courtship, building a sexual relationship, sexual desires, and emotional

expression online.

To pursue the research question ‘how is social media used in negotiating

gender identity by young Thai women from different class backgrounds?’,

I mainly make reference to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profile pages as

sites where young Thai women express and/or perform their gender identity

through the display of picture profiles, personal information, shared contents, and

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status updates. To sum up, the study interrogates the ways in which young

women who are from different class backgrounds negotiate their gender identities

on social media through online activities and multimodal texts, such as posted

pictures, picture profiles, shared videos, written statuses and comments, and

other forms of online content.

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4.2 Methodology for the PILOT study

As the pilot study aimed to explore the roles of social media in negotiating gender

identity among young Thai women, the ethnographic research methodology was

adopted to investigate the research’s objectives. Due to the nature of the

ethnographic study, qualitative methods were used to investigate how young

women negotiated and/or performed their gender identity on social media. To gain

in-depth understandings of how they negotiated their gender identity online, and

how they adapted and/or resisted traditional forms of female values through social

media platforms, I adopted three research methods to collect the data: 1) the

focus group, 2) the individual in-depth interview, and 3) the online observation

(online ethnography).

4.2.1 Sampling and the procedures of participant

recruitment

The participants were 18-year-old Thai women who used social media

(Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) and studied in upper secondary schools

(Grade: Matthayom 6) in Bangkok. Why did I choose 18-year-old women? I make

reference to the work by Wongpanarak et al. (2010), which investigated early

adolescent Thai's perceptions of gender identity. Although, arguably, it could

happen earlier, the authors maintained that the age of 18 spans an early

adolescent transition from childhood to adulthood. During this period, there is a

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significant development in terms of their gender identity. For example, they may

have doubts about their gender identity, how they fit into the world, as well as

experience potential tensions and insecurities about their self-image. Thus, this

bolsters my case for studying issues of gender and social media use by 18-year-

old women.

Participants were recruited by using a purposive snowball sampling method. To

clarify the process, I contacted school teachers through the help of existing

acquaintances to acquire permission before I had arrived in Bangkok. In this

stage, the permission letter to the gatekeeper (school director) was also sent to

gain consent before starting any data collection. In the process of ethics

application, I obtained ethical approval from UCL for conducting this pilot study

before I conducted the fieldwork in Bangkok. All ethics policies and processes

were used with reference to the ethical guidelines from the British Sociological

Association (BSA), Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), and General Data

Protection Regulation (GDPR) by reading the relevant documents and other

security, I was always concerned about these ethical issues that may arise in the

study and strictly followed the ethical guidelines as explicitly indicated in the ethics

application.

In Thailand, there is no requirement for any criminal checks (like the DBS in the

UK) to research schools. Instead, the study gained permission from the school

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director though a permission letter. After I obtained consent from the gatekeeper,

I started the participants’ recruitment process by asking school teachers to select

two groups of students. This teacher’s selection was based on a homogeneous

group of girls, such as the closeness, intimacy, and similarity in habits, lifestyles,

and personalities as girl gangs. This can be further discussed through the

framework of focus group research (Ivanoff and Hultberg, 2006). As participants

who are selected by the “homogeneity” have something in common, called “like-

mind people”, this makes them feel more comfortable talking to each other and

also more likely to talk openly (ibid). Thus, participants in the focus group study

shared some of the social and cultural backgrounds or had similar lived

experiences or some combination of these. As I wished to obtain the participants’

insights, thoughts, and experiences about sensitive issues such as gender,

sexuality, and sexual behaviours, homogeneous groups in the focus group study

were appropriate for this.

In the study, two groups of young women students who were selected by

homogeneity were asked to participate in the study, with each group consisting

of five students. In this stage, the participants were given research information

sheets and the consent form before any data collection was conducted. Based on

their willingness, both groups of young women were asked to participate in three

research activities: 1) focus group, 2) individual in-depth interview, and 3) online

observation. These three activities involved the same participants throughout the

process of data collection.

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4.2.2 Data Collection

A) Focus groups (a small group of 5):

The study started to collect the data by conducting focus group interviews. There

were two focus groups, each of which containing five students. Thus, the total

number of participants in the focus group study was ten students. Based on the

broad themes discussed in the literature review, the focus groups were structured

to assist me in answering the defined research questions while addressing the

overarching concerns. The scope of the focus groups was defined within the

framework of the participants’ practices regarding gender both online and offline.

Thus, the main five themes highlighted in the focus groups are as follows:

• The awareness/perception regarding gender identity: How did they

initiatively become aware of their gender? How do they describe their

gender identity? How do they perceive themselves in terms of

characteristics and orientation of sexuality?

• Sex education: How were they taught about gender by schools? What are

the gender issues that teachers always talked about? How do young

women think about Thai sex education, such as the lessons, the contents,

and the impacts?

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• Parental guidance/family influence: How are they guided about gender

by parents? How do they think about this guidance? If there are any

specific concerns in the family, how do they feel about these?

• Traditional mainstream discourses regarding gender in Thailand:

How did they become aware of gender discourses? How do they think

about social norms and practices in feminine sexuality, such as “rak-nuan-

sa-gnuan-tua” (maintaining virginity), “kul-la-sa-tree” (socially well-

behaved of female), and “ching-suk-gon-haum (virginity until marriage)”?

• Social media use: How do they post the contents that potentially

represent their gender identity and other sexual-related issues (e.g.,

sexual desires, preferences, and relationships)? How do they share

pictures related to their sexual matters, such as sexual orientations,

desires, emotions, and experiences? Do they tweet/retweet any content

related to sexual issues in society? If yes, how do they post these on their

profiles? Are there any tactical or strategic ways to do that?

According to the nature of focus group research, the framework of group

interaction is the hallmark of the focus group study. It is argued that this interaction

can 1) produce the quality of data and insights, 2) reveal points of agreement,

conflict, and uncertainty in any sensitive issues, including gender, and 3) unveil

the reality of the group by providing an understanding of how group members

think and express their viewpoints (Morgan, 1997; Ivanoff and Hultberg, 2006).

This framework helped to reveal that the interaction of focus groups in the study

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was about sharing experiences about gender. Participants certainly provided the

shared experiences in similar themes of sexual behaviours. It can be seen that

participants are not only the products of their environment but also influenced by

others around them (Krueger, 1988, cited in Liamputtong, 2011). Thereby, the

concept of group interaction is valuable as it can reveal the group's shared

experiences of everyday life, language, and culture, as well as cultural norms in

sexuality. Importantly, while individual in-depth interview allows the interviewer to

delve deeply into the participants’ social and personal matters, the focus group

allows the interviewer to elicit a wide range of experiences but, because of the

public nature of the process, prevents delving deeply into the individuals (Morgan,

1997). Since the focus group is the study with multiple participants sharing their

knowledge, experiences or perspectives about a specific subject, the data should

also include observative descriptions of group dynamics and the analyses should

integrate the interactive dynamics with each group (Morgan, 1997).

Overall, in the study, the focus group spent around a minimum of 45 to a

maximum of 90 minutes per one group. While conducting each group, I took notes

and recorded the video during the activity, based on the participant’s willingness

as indicated in the consent form and research information sheets.

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B) In-depth interviews:

An in-depth interview is a significantly useful method in qualitative research to

understand the informant’s point of views about their lives, beliefs, situations, and

experiences as expressed in their own words (Kvale, 1996). In-depth interviews

are among the most familiar strategies for collecting qualitative data. The different

qualitative interviewing strategies that are in common use emerged from diverse

disciplinary perspectives resulting in a wide variation among interviewing

approaches. In social science, in-depth interview seeks to foster an

understanding about individual experiences and perspectives on a given set of

issues (Crabtree and Miller, 1999; Rubin, 2005). The purpose of the qualitative

research interview is to contribute to a body of knowledge that is conceptual and

theoretical and is based on the meanings that life experiences hold for the

interviewees (Johnson, 2002). Qualitative interviews have been categorised in a

variety of ways, with many contemporary texts loosely differentiating qualitative

interviews as unstructured, semi-structured and structured (Warren and Karner,

2005). In my current study, I applied the semi-structured formats since it can allow

the interviewer (me) to delve deeply into participants’ social and personal matters

in terms of gender, which I could organise around a set of predetermined open-

ended questions, with other questions emerging from the dialogue between

myself and the participants.

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To deeply understand young Thai women’s social media use of their gender

identity performance, the study applied the in-depth interview as a second

research method to investigate the research’s aim. Also, the same participants

from focus groups were asked to join the interview individually on a different day.

As participants might respond differently to some questions as a group and as an

individual, the in-depth interview aimed to offer participants more chances to

express their voices and experiences about gender and to gain more insights into

the data. In short, the themes of questions in the interview study were similar to

those of the focus groups study but were deeper in details.

The main themes highlighted in the interviews were structured and scoped in a

similar manner to the focus groups as follows:

• The awareness/perception about gender identity

• Sex education

• Parental guidance/family influence

• Traditional mainstream discourses of gender in Thailand

• The social media use

At the end of each interview, based on the original analysis conducted for each

participant, specific questions tailored individually were presented to each of

them, to gain further details and insights and to elicit a greater understanding.

Moreover, based on their responses, additional questions were subsequently

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asked to either clarify certain responses or to delve deeper into specific

highlighted areas of interest.

To confirm the intended meanings provided by the participants, an interpretation

was also made during the interviews, which I demonstrated to the participants

with an interpretation of what the participants just said (Debatin et al., 2009). This

kind of interpretation was applied particularly in the follow-up interviews to validate

and elaborate upon preliminary findings (Kvale, 1996). It is argued this approach

is significantly useful in the qualitative study when the researcher is interviewing

participants to require the understanding of human behaviours, particularly in the

field of social and cultural studies (Kvale, 1996). After in-depth interviews were

conducted, all notes and data were transcribed and coded to generate the

common themes by using the NVivo programme. Importantly, cross-references

of different types of data, the focus group, the interview, and the online

ethnography, were made to triangulate the data and insights provided by

participants.

Overall, the in-depth interview took time per person around a minimum of 45 to a

maximum of 60 minutes. As written on the research information sheet and the

consent form, during the interview, I took notes and recorded the audio with the

consent of the participants.

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C) Online ethnography (a study of the participant’s

social media use):

As the study aimed to explore the participant’s social media use in negotiating

their gender identity, the online ethnographic method was adopted to investigate

the research’s objectives by the observation of the participants’ profile pages. This

approach seems to be the appropriate choice for a study exploring lived cultures

on social media and is used by numerous social media scholars, from boyd and

Heer (2006), to Marwick, and boyd (2011), and Baker (2013). Particularly, boyd

conducted multiple online ethnographic studies on social media including

Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook, to understand the teenage user’s practices on

these sites (2007; 2008; 2014). This online ethnography enables in-depth

analysis of users by the observation of the ways that they share, post, and update

on their social media pages. This can provide an understanding of meanings that

they have made on the platforms. From the researcher’s point of view, the key

benefit of online ethnographic research is its ability to allow me to gain insights

through first-hand observations of behaviour (Hair and Clark, 2003). According to

Baker (2013), Facebook as ethnographic resource positions the platform to serve

three functions: “as a communicative medium, as context, and as data” (p. 132).

These functions are a valuable reference for the study which aims to unravel the

meanings underlying choices online that participants have selected and made in

creating their gender identities.

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In addition, as social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

are positioned as ‘social interactive spaces’, the relevance of exploring the

participants’ interactions within the medium of these sites are underscored

(Baker, 2013). This notion of online interaction is supported by previous scholars,

such as boyd (2008), whose work focused on performing qualitative internet

research. She stated that the user’s online self-presentation can be defined

through the relationship and social groups in social networks (2008). This can be

applied to understand that young women’s negotiations of gender are arguably

framed by their social connections and audience interactions with other users on

the sites, reflected by an observable manner that they engage with their

audiences.

As my current study adopted the online ethnographic method to explore

participants’ gender practices on their social media profile pages, I newly created

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts with my UCL credentials as a

researcher and provided detailed information about the study on my researcher

profile page. Due to the security, anonymity, and confidentiality, it would be

beneficial for both me and participants to use these newly created accounts in

conducting the research only for the purposes of trustworthiness and prevention

of ethical harassment.

Online ethnography aims to study the participants’ online production related to

gender meanings, by observing their social media profile pages. The criteria that

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I used to identify gender meanings in participants’ online productions were the

posts related to the personal sense of bodily appearance and other expression of

gender, such as costumes, hairstyles, props, speech and mannerisms that are

related to gender issues both personally and socially. The criteria were based on

the definition of gender provided in the introductory chapter. As defined, gender

identity is as “socially constructed characteristics and cultural representations”

(Tangmunkongvorakul, et al., 2010). Specifically, I identified the gender meaning

of participants' production as "a person’s deeply felt internal and individual

experience of gender, including the personal sense of the body – bodily

appearance – and other expressions of gender, such as dress, speech and

mannerisms – defined by the European Institute for Gender Equality (2021).

Thus, the criteria I used to select the online production of the participants were

the posts associated with personal sense of bodily appearance and other forms

of gender expression that cover perspectives, attitudes, behaviours, and

experiences in gender matters.

Overall, in the process of the online ethnographic study, I reached out to the same

ten participants, who were fully informed by the research information sheets and

the consent form. I explained to them that they could customise what they wanted

to allow me to see on their pages. Therefore, they knew that they did not have to

give me full access to their profiles and they could also opt-out from this stage if

they were not comfortable with it. Once I obtained their fully informed consent, I

sent them friend or following requests on social media accounts to access their

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profiles, before starting to observe their online activities on online sites. Recalling

the aim of the pilot study, this study aimed to develop the research design for the

MAIN study. The pilot study intended to explore how young Thai women used

social media as the negotiation of their gender, without the issue of their different

class backgrounds, which emerged as a salient theme and dimension to be

further explored in the MAIN study. Thus, all key themes that emerged in the pilot

study were derived from the data analysis with ten participants regardless of their

different class backgrounds. In the appendix, I showed a substantial piece of work

of this analysis, suggesting the five themes that emerged from the thematic

analysis, which these themes were developed for further understanding in the

MAIN study.

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4.3 Methodology for the MAIN study

The main study was the ethnographic methodology, which was the same as the

pilot study; yet the details were different in terms of sampling and the procedures

of participant recruitment. The main study has two key different points compared

with the pilot study: to use a questionnaire survey as an initial tool to recruit

participants; to recruit participants by categorising their social classes into three

groups, namely the lower class (LC), the middle class (MC), and the upper class

(UC).

Briefly, a questionnaire survey was adopted as an initial tool to recruit participants.

The aim of using this questionnaire survey was to understand their demographic

and socioeconomic backgrounds, and also to understand the frequency and

engagement of their usage of each social media platform (Twitter, Instagram, and

Facebook). The ultimate goals were to understand which platform they used the

most, how they engaged with each platform, what kinds of content they posted

for each platform, and which modes of multimodal texts, such as posted pictures,

shared videos, updated statuses, shared emojis and stickers, they had frequently

used on their profiles. In short, the questionnaires mainly asked participants in

two main aspects: their demographic information (referred to as their

socioeconomic status (SES) – parent’s incomes, education, and occupation); and

the basic information concerning their behaviour in social media use. Based on

the richness of the information provided by the participants during the survey, the

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participants were then selected to involve with three research activities in the

same way as done in the pilot study: the focus group, the individual in-depth

interview, and the online observation, respectively.

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A. Analytical Concepts in Social Class

Since the social class was identified as the research gap, to classify the

participants’ social class, we need to apply the analytical concept or approach to

process this. As consistently discussed, since the different class backgrounds of

young women could be an underlying variable impacting and/or related to their

gender negotiation, they were thus recruited as the research participants,

categorised by their socioeconomic status (SES).

To apply the analytical concepts of classifying participants’ social class, I used a

revised class scheme by the Academia Sinica on East Asia (Hsiao, 1999) – a

modified version of the class scheme proposed by John Goldthorpe (1992), the

standard scheme in the West (Table 1).

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Table 1: The revised Asian class scheme by Academia Sinica (Hsiao,

1999), which was proposed by John Goldthorpe’s original scheme in the

West (1992).

To clarify this, Table 1 is the revised Asian class scheme by the Academia Sinica

on East Asia – a Central Research Academy in the Republic of China (Taiwan)

(Hsiao,1999), originating from the standard class scheme in the West (Erikson

and Goldthorpe,1992a, 1992b). In Table 1, both Goldthorpe’s classical work on

the West class scheme and Academia Sinica’s traditional work on Asian class

scheme mainly consider only ‘occupation’ as the SES indicator through a

prestige-score ranking (referred as I, II, IIIa…, V…, VIIa). However, I applied other

contemporary indicators by combining more recent research by the Thai National

Cohort Study Team exploring socioeconomic status in Thailand (Seubsman, et

al., 2011). They proposed the contemporary SES indicators, namely education,

income, and occupation, with the prestige-scale ranking, to study social class of

the Thai population. To clarify this, the SES indicators in the study of Thai social

class are defined by the level of education, the monthly income, and the

occupational status ranked by the prestige value in society (Seubsman, et al.,

2011).

To combine these contemporary SES indicators with the concept of original work

in Table 1, with minor additional adjustments made to suit the situations and

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contexts of Thailand, I suggest a new revised version of the class scheme in

Thailand, which is classified by three SES indicators: educational level, monthly

income, and occupational status (Table 2). Please see Table 2 below for a

detailed presentation of classification. All the information was also included in the

questionnaire survey.

Table 2: A revised version of the class scheme in Thailand (with additional

adjustments to better suit the situation of the research's context), emerging

Occupation

Income

(Thai baht)

Education

Class

Scheme

‘Aristocracy’ (royal, king, elite),

professional, technical,

administrative, executive managerial

workers, and government officials

> 50,000

Master to Doctoral

Upper

‘Bourgeoisie’ – the newly rich-urban

middle class in Thailand, e.g., small to

medium proprietor, white collar in

private company, and artisan with and

without employee

20,000 –

50,000

Secondary

education to

Bachelor

Middle

‘Proletariat’ e.g., labour worker

< 20,000

Below than

secondary

education

Lower

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from the classical work of Goldthorpe (1992), the standard scheme in the

West, and Hsiao (1999), a class scheme in Asia in Table 1.

Briefly, Table 2 includes three contemporary SES indicators (occupation, income,

and education). These SES indicators were used to finally classify participants

into three class schemes: the upper class (UC), the middle class (MC), and the

lower class (LC). As mentioned, young Thai women were asked about their SES

information (parent’s occupation, income, and education) through the

questionnaire survey in the initial stage of the research. They were then classified

into three social groups, based on the information they provided to us in the

survey. The details of classification are as follows:

In the first group, the upper class (UC) have the highest occupational status,

monthly income, and educational level in overall. This occupational status refers

to members of the aristocracy (royal, king, elite), professionals, technical workers,

administrative workers, executive managerial workers, and government officials.

To explain this, their occupational status belongs to that of the aristocracy: in other

words, the people who are part of the traditional aristocracy and work with

government departments such as politicians, ambassadors, lawyers, senior

commissioned officers, a board of directors in a government office, or university

professors. It also includes people whose jobs were not related to the aristocracy

but related to private or international companies, such as professionals in

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software engineering, managing directors (MD) in airline companies, private

banking managers, chartered accountants, solicitors, investment analysts,

college lecturers, and business owners. The average income is more than 50,000

baht per month, and the level of education is between Master’s degree to Doctoral

degree. To sum up, I would say that Thai upper class belong to the traditional

Thai aristocracy – they have obtained the privileged social position which helped

them acquire the high occupational status. However, some of them might have

their roots in the lower social group – they have worked their way up through the

system by their own hard work. Thus, this shows the complex and overlapping

group in the Thai social class scheme, which is cannot be explained simply by

occupation. Due to the high income, high professional occupations, and high

educational achievements, the upper class are considered as symbols of a hi-so

identity, which is drawn from the Western concepts of ‘high-society’ (Vorng,

2012). This hi-so identity is the new status hierarchy deemed as high-cultural

standing or social prestige. For example, they study in private tutoring schools,

they live in exclusive condos, and they shop in the elite shopping malls, located

in the expensive central Bangkok (Jackson, 2004; Vorng, 2012). It is argued that

elite people, especially those who live in urban Bangkok, possess modern

(thansamai - ทันสมัย) culture, civilised (kwaam charoen - ความเจริญ) lifestyles, and

privilege (abhisit - อภิสิทธิ2) (Mills, 2012; Wilson, 2003). Overall, upper-class people

tend to have a greater access to education, better employment opportunities, and

higher salaries than people who have a lower socioeconomic background

(Hutchings, 2000).

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In the second group, the middle class (MC) have a medium or average

occupational status, income, and education overall. The occupational status

belongs to the bourgeoisie, or the capitalist/new middle class/new rich group,

encompassing small-to-medium proprietors and white-collar workers in private

companies, to artisans with and without employees. They could run small-to-

medium businesses in the catering and hospitality industry, work as routine

editors in broadcasting companies, and routine employees in hotels. The average

income is between 20,000 – 50,000 baht per month, and the educational

attainment between secondary education/or equivalent to Bachelor's degree. Due

to the emergence of the newly rich-urban middle class in Thailand, I define the

Thai middle class as the bourgeoisie in the classical Marxist term. As considered

in the Theory chapter, the social class scheme in Thailand conforms to the ways

of classical Marxist definitions, but with the exceptions of the role of the monarchy

and aristocracy, and the rural groups. The bourgeoisie, as the Thai ‘middle class’,

refers to a group of people who own the means of production and purchase the

labour power of others (Marx, 1867). To apply this in the context of Thai society,

the emerging newly rich-urban Thai middle class are new start-up businessmen,

or entrepreneurs who started small and local businesses and expanded them into

large and national ones. They own the means of production and are more wealthy

and have more access to education and power.

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In the third group, those with the lowest average value in occupational status,

income, and education are members of the lower class (LC). Their occupational

status is that of the labour workers – or what classical Goldthorpe’s concept calls

“lower-grade technicians and unskilled to skilled manual workers” (1992). In my

own operational definition, I call this group the proletariat, as applied by the

classical Marxist term which refers to a group of people who do not own any

means of production and sell their own labour power to earn the money (Marx,

1867). In other words, the Thai lower class, as the proletariat in Marxism, are the

industrial urban working class or the peasant class. Instead of calling them the

rural peasantry, there is a new term coined for this lower-class group, that is

“cosmopolitan peasants” or “cosmopolitan villagers” (Walker, 2012). This is due

to the emergence of new political society in contemporary rural Thailand (Keyes,

2014). Thus, their occupations range from peasants and housekeepers to

draymen/truck men, messengers, local guides, semi-skilled workers of building

contractor, and daily-wage workers. The average income is less than 20,000 baht,

and the educational level is below secondary education.

To sum up, I note that Thai social class still conforms to the ways of classical

Marxist definitions, but with the exceptions of the roles of the monarchy and

aristocracy, and the rural groups. In my own operational definitions applied with

the classical Marist definitions, the aristocracy (royal, king, elite) is defined as the

upper class in Thailand, which include the people who work with the king and

government departments such as politicians, ambassadors, lawyers, and senior

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commissioned officers. This upper-class group belongs to the traditional Thai

aristocracy, which have the privileged social position that helps them get the high

occupational status. However, there are some of them who originally come from

the lower social group – they have climbed up the hierarchical system by their

own efforts. The next group is the middle class. Due to the emergence of the

newly rich-urban Thai middle class, this class would be defined as the bourgeoisie

(or the capitalists), meaning the people who own the means of production, are

wealthy, and have more access to education and power. Lastly, the proletariat is

defined as the working class (or called the lower-class; the industrial urban

working class; the peasant class; or the cosmopolitan peasants in Thailand) which

include people who do not own the means of production, are poor, and typically

get a raw deal from the state and the society. In other words, they do the work,

but they do not get any of the rewards, only compensation from their own labour.

At the same time, they are under the control of the bourgeoisie class and need to

follow the social rules and norms set by the dominant class. Overall, owing to the

existing role of the aristocracy, the power of the bourgeoisie/emergent Thai

middle class, and the situation of the proletariat who live in the urban environment,

I consider that the Thai social class scheme conforms to the classical Marxist

definitions – but with the exceptions of the role of the monarchy and aristocracy,

and the rural groups. Importantly, this renders the Thai social class a complex

structure; at the same time, we can see the overlap of classes in many schemes

such as the group between the upper and the middle, and one between the middle

and the lower. This is due to the emergence of the urban social strata in Thailand

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which have a mixture of social origins and struggles of social climbing – trying to

be higher social class by getting higher education and incomes (Funatsu and

Kagoya, 2003).

In conclusion, the main study was the ethnographic methodology, which explored

how different classes of young Thai women negotiate their gender identity through

the use of social media. The questionnaire survey was the initial tool used to

recruit the participants based on the information of the SES indicators in Table 2.

The total number of participants was 30, including 10 students per social group

(10 for the UC, 10 for the MC, and 10 for the LC). The analytical concept of social

class was inspired by the original work from Goldthorpe’s standard scheme in the

West (1992) and Academia Sinica’s class scheme in Asia (Hsiao,1999) – Table

1. However, the contemporary approach to classify participant’s social class was

developed by the SES indicators from the recent Thai National Cohort Study

(Seubsman, et al., 2011). I thus suggest a revised class scheme in Thailand

(Table 2) to be used for classifying the participants’ social class by looking at three

SES indicators: educational level, monthly income, and occupational status, as

discussed. After they were classified into their social groups, they were selected

to participate in three research activities in the same way as conducted in the pilot

study. These were the focus group, the individual in-depth interview, and the

online observation, respectively.

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B. Bangkok – the context where the participants are based

In the process of participant recruitment, the criteria for classifying the

participants’ social class not only included their parent’s SES (income, education,

and occupation), but also young women’s school levels located in Bangkok. First

of all, why is Bangkok considered as the context where the participants are

based? It is due to the fact that the capital city is seen as being diverse and

flexible, and has adopted many international values and patterns. Importantly,

Bangkok is a place where many rural-migrant students from different regions,

ethnicities, occupations, and socioeconomic statuses move around (Timpan,

2005). This is since they want to get more educational and economic

opportunities. Due to the demographic diversities, Bangkok is not only

geographically, linguistically, and culturally different from other Thai regions, but

it is also seen as the first economic, cultural, communication, and tourism centre

in Thailand (Tangmunkongvorakul, 2009). As a result of modernisation, Bangkok

has a diversity of social values and patterns, influenced by Western culture,

internationalisation, and others (ibid). Specifically, Bangkok is seen as a site of

migration for young rural residents: thus, Bangkok is a new social space removed

from the community and social support or surveillance of families and relatives

(Timpan, 2005). As young migrants live in rented rooms among strangers who

pay little attention to them, they hence gain new friends and social networks that

they define as their own culture with certain freedoms to adopt new social

behaviours, values, patterns, and eventually sexual partners (Timpan, 2005;

Tangmunkongvorakul, 2009). Not only does demographic diversity in Bangkok

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provide a diverse representative sample of young women groups in Thailand, but

it also delivers opportunities for diverse sexual patterns and practices. Bangkok

becomes the crucial context in which to study and understand the dynamics of

sexual matters for young women.

To sum up, Bangkok is the context where the participants were recruited. As

mentioned, the criteria for classifying participant’s social class not only included

their parent’s SES (income, education, and occupation), but also young women’s

school levels located in Bangkok. The participants were recruited from three

different types of secondary schools in Bangkok. The upper class (UC) were

students attending high calibre private and well-known public high schools. At the

same time, their socioeconomic status was linked to the traditional Thai

aristocracy since their parents worked with government departments with high

social positions, such as politicians, ambassadors, lawyers, senior commissioned

officers. Thus, I would define the upper class as the traditional Thai aristocracy –

they have obtained the privileged social position which helps them get the high

status of occupation. However, some of them might have moved up the social

ladder with their own hard work. Next, the middle class (MC) consists of students

who attend other public high schools and/or public colleges. Their parents

possess a medium or average occupational status, income, and education

overall. I would call this middle-class group the bourgeoisie or the capitalists, as

applied by classical Marxism. The emerging newly rich Thai middle class is the

bourgeoisie who own the means of production and purchase the labour power of

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others (Marx, 1867). Hence, they are the new rich middle-class group in the

society, working, for instance, as start-up businessmen locally or nationally; at the

same time, they are wealthier and have more access to education and power

compared to the inferior group. Lastly, the lower class (LC) are students who

study in opportunity expansion schools, such as temple schools, supported by the

government. Their parents’ occupational status is that of labour workers, the

proletariat in the classical Marxist term. The Thai lower class refers to people who

do not own any means of production and sell their own labour power to earn the

money (Marx, 1867). Due to the emergence of a new political society in

contemporary rural Thailand, there is a new term proposed for this Thai lower-

class group: the “cosmopolitan peasants” or “cosmopolitan villagers”, instead of

the rural peasantry (Walker, 2012). Thus, I would define the Thai lower class as

the industrial urban working class and, at the same time, as the proletariat

according to Marxist term.

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4.3.1 Data Analysis

The study applied thematic analysis to initially conceptualise themes for

qualitative data. Then, multimodal discourse analysis (Kress and van Leeuwen,

1996) was another supportive approach to analyse the visual and textual data for

online materials on social media such as posted pictures, shared contents,

comments, retweeted contents, and other online texts. Specifically, three different

types of data were coded and patterned as the emergent themes through the

thematic analysis. I then referred to the multimodal metafunctions framework,

representation, interaction, and composition (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996,

2006), as they appear relevant to the reinforcement of the argument. Thus, the

metafunction analysis supports the interpretation of meaning-making by the

participants as regards gender matters both online and offline.

To explain this in detail through the qualitative content analysis from the focus

group and the interview data, all audio records, video records, and fieldnotes were

transcribed and categorised into codes and common themes by using NVivo.

These potential themes were contextualised by similar patterns according to

thematic analysis. For online ethnographic data, the initial approach was to

investigate each participant’s profile page individually, which was analysed by

separate contained sections: profile pictures, personal information, status

updates, and shared contents. Then, the selected materials, such as visual

images, written contents, and still and moving images, from social media profiles

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were referred through the lens of the social semiotic multimodality framework

(Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006) to understand how these media texts

produce the meaning potentials in terms of gender.

I argue that the multimodal lens, which is rooted in social semiotics, is valuable to

the study’s data analysis as an analytical framework. As this approach is a form

of semiotics, which is a theory for the analysis of sign systems, or modes of

communication (Burn and Parker, 2003), this kind of semiotics can produce the

potential meanings of any fields, especially of cultural communication. Based on

the participants’ displays on profile pages, all online materials, such as posted

pictures, shared videos, comments, and posted statuses are recognised as

textual and visual media that can potentially provide the meanings regarding

gender matters of young women.

According to van Leeuwen and Jewitt, the multimodal discourse analysis is

primarily the domain of mediated discourse analysts, social semioticians, and

systemic functional linguists (2001). This approach considers how texts draw on

modes of communication in combination with words to make meaning (ibid). In

the definition by Kress (2009), “mode is a socially shaped and culturally given

semiotic resource for making meaning”. Images, writing, layouts, music, gestures,

speech, moving images, soundtracks and 3D objects are examples of modes

used in representation and communication (Kress, 2009). Importantly, Kress

considered that phenomena and objects which are the product of social work

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have meaning in their cultural environments: furniture, clothing, food, ‘have’

meaning (2009). Hence, many objects and cultural phenomena are also included

as modes that can be used to make meaning and communicate. Overall, this

consideration can be applied to understand the meaning-making of young women

in terms of gender matters through the multimodal texts on their social media

profiles, such as profile pictures, status updates, and retweeted contents.

By the social semiotic framework, the aim of social semiotics is to understand the

social dimensions of meaning, its production, interpretation and circulation, and

its implications (Jewitt, et al., 2016). It sets out to reveal how processes of

meaning making (i.e., signification and interpretation or what is called semiosis)

shape individuals and societies. Its basic assumption is that meanings derive from

social action and interaction using semiotic resources as tools (Jewitt, et al.,

2016). Importantly, social semiotics emphasises the agency of the sign maker.

Sign systems are shaped through social usage; they are not prior or given or

abstract; it is not possible to separate a sign system from society and its contexts

of use by people (Jewitt, et al., 2016).

There is a development of a concept of the motivated sign to account for the role

of human agency and social context in the construction of meaning and the

variability of meanings (Jewitt, et al., 2016). Motivated signs are understood as

arising out of and motivated by the cultural, social and historical experiences and

context of the sign maker: a product of the social process of meaning making

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(ibid). That is, social semiotics presents a social theory of meaning making and

communication in which modes or sign systems, such as language or images are

intertwined with their user and social context of use (ibid). In short, the multimodal

analysis grounded in social semiotic theory aims to understand the social

dimensions of meaning which is derived from social action and interaction using

semiotic resources as tools. In other words, semiotic “resources” have been used

to understand the meaning-making of the participants, which are people, places,

and things (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996). Social semiotics employs different

modes of communication to understand how such people, places, and things in

the media text say or represent meanings and how such media texts can be

interpreted.

Kress and van Leeuwen suggested a metafunction framework in multimodal

social semiotics: the three keys of semiotic work that are representation,

interaction, and composition (1996). To highlight this, the following is the chart

depicting the multimodal metafunctions drawn by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996,

2006), which I will apply as deemed relevant to reinforce the argument when

analysing the data.

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(Reference: Kress and van Leeuwen’s metafunctions, Reading images: The

grammar of visual design, 1996)

The metafunctions were applied by Kress and van Leeuwen’s multimodal social

semiotics framework (1996), and was originally derived from Halliday’s

metafunctions: the ideational metafunction, the inter-personal metafunction, and

the textual metafunction (1978). Kress and van Leeuwen described three main

kinds of semiotic work into images particularly, with the slightly different

terminology: ‘representational’ instead of ‘ideational’, ‘interactive’ instead of

‘interpersonal, and ‘compositional’ instead of ‘textual’ (1996). To clarify, the chart

includes the columns, which represent the key metafunctions: representation,

interaction, and composition; and the rows, which represent the detailed

dimensions, such as narrative structure, point of view, distance, contact, framing,

and other elements as outlined in the above table.

Jewitt and Oyama (2004) explain that “representational meaning is first of all

conveyed by the (abstract or concrete) ‘participants’ (people, places or things)

depicted” (p. 10). The representational work considers that semiotic modes, such

Representation

Interaction

Composition

A. Narrative structure

A. Point of view

A. Information value

B. Conceptual structure

B. Distance

B. Framing

C. Contact

C. Salience

D. Modality

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as ‘syntax’ of images, are sources of representational meaning. In other words,

the resources potentially indicate what is ‘doing’ or ‘happening’, who is the ‘actor’

or the ‘reactor’, or who is ‘active’ or ‘passive’ in the image. In time-based semiotic

modes such as language and music, “syntax is a matter of sequencing order, for

example, word order” (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004). In space-based semiotic modes

such as images and architecture, “it is a matter of spatial relationships, of ‘where

things are’ in the semiotic space and of whether or not they are connected through

lines, or through visual ‘rhymes’ of colour and shape” (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004).

They describe how visual syntactic patterns operate in terms of their function of

relating to visual participants and suggest that there are two kinds of pattern.

“Narrative representations relate to participants in terms of ‘doings’ and

‘happenings’, of the unfolding of actions, events, or processes of change” (Jewitt

and Oyama, 2004, p. 11). While narrative representations refer to what

participants are doing, conceptual patterns relate to "participants in terms of their

more generalised, stable or timeless ‘essences’” (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004, p. 11).

This means conceptual patterns representing what participants are being, or

having certain characteristics. Jewitt and Oyama (2004) suggest that the decision

to represent something in a narrative or conceptual way is crucial as it is the key

to understanding the discourses which mediate their representation.

The second is the interactive function. This function highlights social relations of

participants (people, places or things) through particular actions, such as gaze,

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gesture, facial expression, and body movement, as well as through many

resources such as contact, point of view, distance, and modality (Jewitt and

Oyama, 2004). In the picture frame, particular relations between viewers and the

world can be produced by the communicative modes – these modes can interact

with the viewers and provide the attitude toward what is being represented. Jewitt

and Oyama (2004) suggest four factors played a key role in the realisation of the

meanings: distance, contact, point of view, and modality. They explain that, in

every interaction, “the norms of social relations determine the ‘distance’ we keep

from each other” (p. 15). Specifically, “images can bring people, places and things

close to the viewer or ‘keep them at arm's length’” (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004, p.

15). This can be called the size of a frame of shots, for example, to see people

close up is to see them in the way we would normally see people with whom we

are quite intimately acquainted (ibid). Jewitt and Oyama (2004) suggest that the

terminology of film and television can be used to describe these. That is, an

intimate or personal relationship can be made by a close-up shot (head and

shoulders or less), while a medium shot, cutting off the human figure between the

waist and the knees, refers to a social relationship, and a long shot, showing the

full figure or wide distance, can indicate an impersonal relationship (Jewitt and

Oyama, 2004). These camera positions are the ‘distance’ in the interactive

function that produces diverse meanings (ibid). In terms of the ‘contact’, when

people inside the picture frame look directly at the viewer, they can make contact

and establish an (imaginary) relation with them. Jewitt and Oyama (2004) call

such pictures “demand” pictures: “the people in the picture symbolically demand

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something from the viewer” (p.15). For example, they can demand deference

through facial expressions and gestures such as by unblinkingly looking down on

the viewers (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004).

The third factor is ‘point of view’. “This resource allows people, places and things

to be depicted from above or below (or at eye-level), and from the front, the side

or the back” (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004, p.3). There are ranges of vertical angles

between the ‘bird's eye’ view and eye-level, and ranges of horizontal angles

between frontality and the profile. These are dimensions of points of view in the

pictures that created potential meanings diversely. In the case of the vertical

angle, this relation will be one of symbolic power. For instance, “if you look down

on something, you look at it from a position of symbolic power; in contrast, if you

look up at something, that something has some kind of symbolic power over you”

(Jewitt and Oyama, 2004, p.3). While the vertical angel shows the symbolic

power, the eye-level constructs a relation of symbolic equality. In the case of the

horizontal angle, it is about the degree of involvement or detachment. To explain

this, frontality can offer the creation of maximum involvement: it is when the

viewer is directly confronted with what is in the picture. In contrast, if something

is depicted from the side, the viewer remains on the sidelines – this refers to the

detachment meaning. However, Jewitt and Oyama (2004) thoroughly emphasise

that there are many degrees of involved or detached engagement in between.

Importantly, it is noted that social semiotics is a contemporary and post-

208

structuralist discipline, not a structuralist one – hence it is impossible to say what

the points of view of the picture will mean exactly (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004).

The last term ‘modality’ refers to the truth value of a text which is negotiated

between the text and the reader/viewer (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004). As modality is

the reality value, the claim to be real is based on different definitions of reality.

“Naturalistic modality defines visual reality as follows: the greater the congruence

between what you see of an object in an image and what you can see of it in

reality with the naked eye, in a specific situation and from a specific angle, the

higher the modality of that image (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004). On the other hand,

“scientific modality is based not on what things, in a specific situation and from a

specific angle, look like, but on how things are in general, or regularly, or

according to some deeper, ‘hidden’ truth (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004). Overall, it

could be said that the term of ‘modality’ implies to the reality the value of a text

which is negotiated between the text and the reader/viewer. However, as my data

analysis lacks access to the audience of these texts, (only the author and the text

are available), I can only analyse the modality claim – how the author/text claims

to be true or credible. Also, I consider that the metafunctions are interrelated in

complex ways – when we analyse the interactive meanings, we should think

about how these are possibly linked to representational and compositional

meanings. Therefore, I see that the modality can be analysed and be linked to the

compositional as well as representational meaning – as we can see some lack of

clarity and diverse uses of Kress and van Leeuwen’s metafunctions in the

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literature. Importantly, I will discuss an aspect of how the modality is possibly

viewed under the compositional meaning as well in the following section.

Lastly, the third metafunction is the compositional work, which considers how

layout, placement, and other relative salience of media texts can provide the

meaning potentials. In other words, the visual composition in the image, such as

the framing, the layout, and the placement, left or right, can allow us to perceive

some social meanings. There are three resources of compositional meaning:

information value; framing; and salience, offered by Jewitt and Oyama (2004).

Information values are realised by the placement of the elements of a

composition. The idea is that the role of any particular element in the whole will

depend on whether it is placed on the left or on the right, in the centre or the

margin, or in the upper or the lower part of the picture space or page (Jewitt and

Oyama, 2004). Briefly, left-right placement creates a ‘given-new’ structure. The

elements placed on the left are presented as ‘given’, which means as something

the viewer or reader already knows, or as a familiar and agreed departure point

for the message. The elements placed on the right are represented as ‘new’,

referring as something not yet known and not yet already agreed upon by the

viewer or reader, hence they must pay special attention. “The ‘new’ is therefore

problematic, contestable, the information ‘at issue’, while the ‘given’ is presented

as commonsensical and self-evident” (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004). In the case of

top and bottom placement, if some of the constituent elements are placed on top,

these are presented as what Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) called the ‘ideal’,

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whereas what is called the ‘real’ is placed at the bottom. For something to be

‘ideal’ means that it is presented as the idealised or generalised essence of the

information, hence usually also as its ideologically most salient part. “The ‘real’ is

then opposed to this in that it is its meaning potential to present more ‘down to

earth information’” (Jewitt and Oyama, 2004).

The term ‘framing’ indicates that elements of a composition can either be given

separate identities, or represented as belonging together (Jewitt and Oyama,

2004). In other words, framing ‘connects’ or ‘disconnects’ elements.

Disconnection can be created in many ways, through framelines – which may be

thick or thin – there are degrees of framing, through the empty space between

elements, and through contrasts of colour or form, or any other visual feature. In

short, through any form of discontinuity, disconnection or contrast can be visually

signified. Connection can be achieved in exactly the opposite way, through

similarities and rhymes of colour and form, through vectors that connect elements,

and through the absence of framelines or the empty space between elements.

The term ‘salience’ was used by Jewitt and Oyama (2004) to indicate that some

elements can be made more eye-catching than others. This again can be made

in many different ways through size, or through colour contrasts. For example,

red is always a very salient colour and provides a tonal contrast. In short, salience

is achieved through anything that can make a given element stand out from its

surroundings.

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There are many uses by scholars with a loose and different structure between the

three metafunctions. For example, modality is an aspect of the interactive

metafunction in Kress and van Leeuwen’s original work, but we can see some

scholars analyse modality through the compositional meaning (Jewitt and

Oyama, 2004). In the handbook of visual analysis by Van Leeuwen and Jewitt

(2004), metafunctions are shown to be interrelated in complex ways. I view that

though the modality is placed in the interactive metafunction as Kress and van

Leeuwen originally proposed, its meaning potentially relates to the compositional

meaning. This is because the compositional metafunction works to realise or

express the meanings of the other two metafunctions, so when we analyse

compositional structures, we should think how these make the representational

and interactive meanings possible. Thus, while the modality is an aspect of the

interactive metafunction since the truth value of a text is negotiated between the

text and the reader/viewer, it is possible that the modality interrelates with

compositional meanings and perhaps with representational meaning as well.

Following this consideration, the social semiotics can be seen as a useful

theoretical approach for the interpretation of sign-maker’s productions and

practices and can provide an overall stance onto meaning making. It is worth

applying this framework to understand how young Thai women represent their

feelings, meanings, and demanding regarding gender through the multimodal

texts on social media sites.

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To conclude, as an ethnographic study, the multimodal semiotic framework is a

valuable tool that helps understand how representational structure, interactive

structure, and compositional structure in media texts represent gender meanings

made by participants. The aim is to understand that how young Thai women use

social media to perform and/or construct their gender meanings through their

cultural communicative practices, such as through the tweeted contents, through

the shared contents, through the posted pictures, and through other visual media

texts in online sites. Overall, I argue that the multimodal discourse analysis

grounded in social semiotics is a valuable resource for the study’s analytical

process as it can conceptualise the complex array of semiotic resources which

are used to create meaning of the participants’ data, as well as provide insights

into how visual and textual communication in the participants’ online profile

represents gender meanings that they create.

By the use of triangulation, the data analysis was conducted systematically by

cross-referencing three data types, social media data, interview data and focus

group data. Specifically, the focus group data featured spoken language and non-

verbal language from video records; the interview data involved spoken

utterances from transcripts; and the online ethnographic data focussed on still

and/or moving images. All the different types of data were conceptualised by

cross-referencing through thematic analysis. Then, I referred to the multimodal

metafunctions framework: representation, interaction, and composition (Kress

and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006) as deemed relevant to strengthen the argument.

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In short, the qualitative data derived from the focus group, the interview, and the

online ethnography were integrated into the analytical process by using thematic

analysis. These qualitative data were categorised into similar patterns which then

became the key themes. The emerging themes were subsequently analysed by

the multimodal metafunction to reinforce the argument; in the meantime, both

reviewed pieces of literature and theoretical frameworks also served as an

analytical background to explain and contextualise the key themes that grew into

the research findings.

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Chapter 5: Lower class and the subversion by negotiated

subcultures online

This chapter interrogates how can social media used by LC participants reveal

any information about their gender identity? What will online sites tell us about

their gender performance? Is there any room for resistance to Thai dominant

discourses by the LC participants? How do they resist this? How do they build

their subcultures online to subvert the mainstream social convention of femininity

through social media use? Which platform appears as the salient political activism

site for them?

These questions will be discussed throughout the chapter to pursue the research

question: how is social media used in negotiating gender identity by young

Thai women from different class backgrounds? As the literature review

reveals, there are traditional public discourses regarding gender in Thailand which

still restrain young women’s gender performance (Boonmongkon et al., 2013).

The ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’ (to preserve chastity) value, the ‘ka la the sa’

(contextual sensitivity) idea, the motherhood and girlhood discourse, and the

‘dutiful’ daughter role in Thai families are the key feminine discourses related to

simple conceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women (Suriyasarn, 2014). With reference

to this literature framework, chapter 5 will explore how the LC participants resist

those traditional discourses through their own created subcultures online.

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Briefly, I propose that they tactically use Twitter as the salient site of political

activism to express political gender issues as well as to subvert the mainstream

social convention of femininity through their own building subcultures online. As

suggested by several lines of evidence, Twitter use is not ubiquitous in the LC

parents’ society: the parents have no Twitter accounts and are not used to it.

Crucially, from the perspective of the LC participants, Twitter appears to be the

most private platform for self-presentation, gender performance, and sexual

expression; in addition, they predominantly use this online site to voice their ideas

and opinions about gender diversity, social issues, and other political issues

which are seen as dangerous and risky topics to speak about in the offline society.

The LC participants view Twitter as the most private platform to display authentic

perspectives of users due to its functions and features: tweeting and retweeting

under anonymity. Instagram and Facebook, by contrast, are more visual and

represent networks of communication which are more interactive with other

private and public spheres of society, particularly the adult society, as evident in,

for example, the posting and tagging of pictures with others, or commenting on

posts, as a way to connect with online friends.

Furthermore, Twitter is believed to be the only platform where LC participants can

keep their privacy away from their parents, relatives, teachers, or even their

school friends, since they are not connecting to or following profile pages among

their circle of friends at school. The evidence suggests that Twitter is a crucial

platform to negotiate gender and sexual expression among the LC participants

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owing to its privacy. It is demonstrated that they speak about dangerous and risky

social issues on the Twitter space to support the subversion of traditional values

of women and to challenge the repression of Thai women’s sexuality through

textual communication online, particularly by retweeting content. Under these

considerations, chapter 5 will interrogate how the LC participants use Twitter to

subvert normative sexuality by building their subcultures online via diverse

communicative modes, such as textual communication (i.e., retweet and hashtag

patterns), and visual image communication (i.e., profile pictures on Twitter).

When we consider the resistance of youth, Resistance through Rituals by Hall

and Jefferson (1993) could be one of the valuable studies that can be applied to

understand this issue. The subcultures online enacted by the LC participants can

be suggested as forms of resistance. Youth subcultures (rituals) are interpreted

as a response (symbolic resistance) primarily to class oppression (Hall and

Jefferson, 1993). In cultural hegemony, it is argued that the dominant middle class

possesses the power to enact the rules and mobilise common sense in popular

culture through the ideology of people’s daily routines. The dominant classes are

also considered to be the producers and re-producers of mainstream discourses

regarding normative sexuality in society (Gramsci, 1971). However, these

dominant discourses and social normativity can be resisted by subclasses that

are the lower class via youth subcultures and rituals according to the concept of

cultural resistance (Hall and Jefferson, 1993). By applying this concept to the

context of gender negotiation in Thailand, we have come to an understanding that

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there is still room for resistance in Thai cultural hegemony among the LC

participants, who seem to use Twitter as the place of subversion by building their

subcultures online to resist conservative politics regarding gender normative such

as traditional feminine norms and values.

In conclusion, chapter 5 proposes three themes discussing the subcultures on

Twitter created by the LC participants. For example, they create a role-play

activity called ‘Both’, an activity on Twitter by LGBTQ+ users, especially lesbians,

with specific sexual aspirations. They retweet political gender contents by

borrowing original texts from other authors to negotiate their gender performance

and desires. To analyse this, I suggest a close analysis of one participant, known

under her pseudonym as ‘Ploy’, with supportive evidence from other participants:

Ink, Fah, Yok, Pawee, Jang, Nui, Pooh, Phat, Taew, all of which are pseudonyms.

With the data collected from these participants, the following theme has emerged:

Lower class and their subversion of cultural norms through the negotiation

of online subcultures. The qualitative data analysis was conducted

systematically by cross-referencing three data types – social media data,

interview data, and focus group data. Specifically, three different types of data

were coded and patterned as emergent themes through thematic analysis. I then

referred them to the multimodal metafunctions framework, which features

representation, interaction, and composition (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996,

2006) as deemed relevant to reinforce the argument. The metafunction analysis

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supports the understanding of meaning-making by the LC participants as regards

gender matters, both online and offline.

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Theme 1: Resistance to traditional forms of feminine conducts

and the conflict of expression by the LC participants

In this chapter, it is argued that the LC participants are the group who resist Thai

traditional public discourses regarding gender norms in Thai society. By cross-

referencing three data types in the study – social media data (particularly Twitter),

interview and focus group data, I will provide a full picture of the emerging themes

from all LC participants’ triangulated data. Ploy, one of the LC participants who

mentioned sexual restraint in Thailand, said that:

Love, affection, or sexual relation is the only one topic that I cannot talk

about with my parents. ….. I cannot let them know about this…… This is

because they don’t want me to have the same bad experience as my

mother did when she was pregnant while studying in high school. [The

expression by a quiet speech and soft and quivering speaking

suggests that she was quite afraid and/or hesitant to talk about this]

This spoken language in the interview setting suggests the representation of

oppressiveness in terms of domestic issues. This is due to the forbidden

discussion of taboo topics in offline contexts, especially with family members.

Young Thai women are prohibited from talking about and disagreeing with sexual

discourses that their parents adhere to (Thaweesit, 2004). In support of this idea,

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the representation of the oppressiveness in the case of Ploy can be further

demonstrated through the mode of speech.

The mode of speech can be considered as one of the significant resources that

produce potential meanings, such as certainty, intensity, hesitation or even

reluctance (Jewitt, et al., 2016). Also, paralinguistic features are the aspects of

spoken communication that do not involve words. These may add emphasis or

shades of meaning to what people say, such as body language, gestures, facial

expressions, tone and pitch of voice. In the spoken utterance of Ploy’s case, her

expression was a quiet speech, and soft and quivering speaking, suggesting

that she was quite afraid and/or hesitant to talk about this. Her tone and voice

implied the reluctance to speak about sexual issues in front of me (as the

interviewer). Also, when considering the word selection of Ploy’s spoken

language in detail, she used words and phrases that represented a strong sense

of prohibition in sexuality such as, the repetition of “I cannot”. For instance, “I

cannot talk with my parents.….I cannot let them know about this”. This kind of

repetition of “I cannot” demonstrates a strong sense of prohibition, concerning the

parental suppression of sexual expression.

To provide more examples by other participants, Ink, Fah, and Yok, who sat close

together in the focus group setting, revealed that they quite felt oppressed by the

Thai traditional norms and values since they refused to talk and express any kinds

of gender issues in Thai society, especially at the school and at home with the

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family members. Specifically, Yok said that “Thailand has many norms attached

to women behaviours which are very strict to us, and which I really do not like of

course”. Similarly, Pawee referred to the notion of sexual restraint in Thailand that

heavily oppresses young Thai women rather than men as she said “Thailand has

too many strict norms on women. I want to ask a question of why it should be

women, not men?” These examples from the interview and the focus group data

show that the LC participants had similar attitudes and experiences regarding

sexual restraint and that they rather disagreed with the traditional forms of

feminine conducts in Thailand since they felt oppressed by these normative

moulds.

While they hesitated to express gender issues due to the oppressiveness of

offline conditions (i.e., the family, the school, or even the interview setting), this

contradicts with online expression. To triangulate data between offline and online

settings, I show many instances of social media data where the LC participants

explicitly challenged, resisted, and engaged in political and social issues in online

sites regarding gender issues. From their photos on Twitter – as the most used

platform among the LC participants as emerged in the survey – I would argue that

there is a contradiction between the spoken and interactive meanings according

to the metafunction framework (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006).

There are many cases of retweeted content about the issues of sexual restraint

and the traditional public discourse on Thai women – from the participants named

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Jang, Nui, Pooh, Phat, Taew, and Ploy. Before giving explicit examples of retweet

messages in the LC group, I am going to provide a full picture of the Twitter

landscape as painted by LC participants – derived from both the interview data

and the survey’s outcome. Twitter is considered by the LC participants as the

crucial space for resistance regarding traditional forms of feminine code of

conduct in Thai society. The ‘retweeting’ and ‘hashtag’ features have become the

most popular tools that explicitly challenge the traditional gender-coded rules. A

finding has emerged that Twitter seems to be the online community for activism

due to the various functional advantages such as retweeting, tweeting, hashtags,

and DM. These digital features mostly appear in the form of textual

communication, as in written texts in the tweeted and retweeted contents, while

online activities in other social media platforms (IG and Facebook) manifest

themselves through visual images and moving images as modes of

communication. Due to the default setting, Twitter posts are normally set as

public, but the users can make their tweet stream private (Zappavigna, 2015).

Importantly, many media scholars argue that both the retweeting and hashtag

features afforded by Twitter are considered social semiotic resources facilitating

“interpersonal social relations” (Page, 2012). Thus, social media is a complicated

novel space in youth’s everyday social practices (boyd, 2013). As argued by

Baker (2013), young people manipulate social media to negotiate their sexual

matters since they can interact with their friends online and build relationships

through the use of social semiotic resources to make their meanings.

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In the case of the LC participants, Twitter is seen as the space for political

subversion, especially sexual politics since they can express, negotiate, and

perform their gender and sexual matters on this site. As these issues are

dangerous and risky to talk about in the offline context because of the presence

of normative heterosexuality and strongly dominant culture of hegemonic

masculinity in Thailand, they deploy the platform of Twitter instead to speak and

challenge these through the retweet feature. However, they retweet the contents

from other authors without any original contents from their own comments. The

ways in which they rely on borrowed words from others seem to be a kind of

diminished form of agency which can be related to the hesitancy that I have

noticed in their spoken discourse in the interview. There is a possibility of the LC

participants supporting or wanting to promote the ideas of political gender when

they borrow the words on Twitter. Importantly, the political gender issues that they

want to promote on Twitter can be supported by other lines of evidence from the

interview since they said what they believed through their own words. I will

proceed to show these spoken discourses after interpreting the retweet activities.

Most of the LC participants retweeted many social issues in terms of resistance

against traditional values of femininity and the subversion of dominant masculinity

in Thai society. About 8 out of 10 participants retweeted content on these kinds

of social issues. Indeed, each participant retweeted sensitive content such as this

about 7 to 10 times per day. The following are the sample cases by participants

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Jang, Nui, Pooh, Phat, Taew, and Ploy, which show how they retweeted these

social issues in terms of gender expression.

Figure 2: “I do hate the speech: “as we are women, others will look at us

badly,” a retweeted message by Jang.

Jang explicitly retweeted about the sexual oppression of Thai women on her

Twitter profile. Figure 2 rather presents a negative view on the traditional public

speech on Thai women: when Thai women do something that does not follow the

traditional form of female conduct in Thai culture, they can be looked down on

(i.e., perceived as ‘bad’ women). This retweeted content demonstrates a

perspective of gender inequality, which implies that social expectations

concerning sexuality are imposed on women only, not on men. According to the

dominant discourses on womanhood in Thailand, women should not be in the

surrounding of adultery and promiscuity (Thaweesit, 2004). In Jang’s case, when

she retweeted about gender issues (Figure 2), this conformed to Thaweesit’s

argument that if Thai women committed adultery, promiscuity, or got involved with

premarital sex, they would be strongly condemned and seen as ‘bad women’.

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Similarly, Boonmongkon et al. (2013) also maintain that the term ‘bad woman’ is

applied to women who are intimately involved with more than one man and are

therefore considered promiscuous. Even though polygamy and promiscuity have

been discouraged for the both men and women, it is women who are expected

by society to follow the rules strictly (Boonmongkon et al. (2013). Hence,

according to Jang’s retweets: “I do hate the speech: “as we are women, others

will look at us badly” (Figure 2), this evidence confirms and advances the findings

from Boonmongkon et al’s study (2013) and Suriyasarn’s study (2014).

Specifically, the emergent evidence not only concurs with the previous study

showing that the LC young women are more open to talk about their sexual

experiences than middle and upper class girls (Thianthai, 2004), but also

advances the argument that the LC is the group subverting the Thai traditional

form of feminine conducts through their own created subcultures online.

According to Figure 2, the social media data from Jang’s retweeted content can

be linked with evidence from the interview data. Jang said in the interview setting,

“I think that Thailand has so many women's discourses, for example the one that

always pops up in my mind is to ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’. Does this mean if we do

not preserve our virginity, we will look bad? This is such nonsense”. This Jang's

spoken expression shows that she disagrees with sexual abstinence and public

discourses on Thai women. Hence, it may be acknowledged that even though

she borrowed the words from others on Twitter to promote her ideas – which

appears like a very diminished form of agency – she expressed such ideas

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(sexual abstinence and public discourses on women) through her own words in

the interview, showing that she really believed in these ideas.

In the literature, the female discourses in Thailand have been shown to shape the

ways in which young women behave and perform their gender identities;

importantly, they need to perform their gender identities by conforming to the

normative discourse – to be perceived as ‘good’ women. In contrast, if they

challenge this, they will be viewed as ‘bad’ women. This is due to the

categorisation of 'good (kon-dee) and bad (kon-chua)' discourses on women

(Boonmongkon et al., 2013). Thus, the concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women is

linked to the ways in which Jang retweeted messages on her profile (Figure 2): “I

do really hate the speech that: “as we are women, others will look at us badly”.

This kind of retweeted content explicitly represents opposition to the normative

discourse. It shows that she disagreed with the discourses on women that

dramatically restrict and shape women’s gender negotiation in society. Thus, by

triangulating the data, the content from the Twitter data (Figure 2) is in line with

the spoken language in the interview data given by Jang.

There are other instances of retweet content made by the LC participants. Most

of the contents have a similar pattern as viewed within the LC group, that is, they

would rather retweet than tweet the original content to convey radical points of

view about sex and gender. In other words, they did the re-posting from others by

borrowing the words of other people rather than posting the content by

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themselves on Twitter. The resistance to the normative sexual discourse

observed in online activity among the LC participants was thus conducted through

the retweet function. The appropriate cultural semiotic sources online they used

reflect their views about sexual matters, which are all about the subversion of

traditional feminine values that still oppress them. Please see below for more

representative cases of the retweeted contents that consist of similar points of

view by the LC participants – Nui, Pooh, Phat, Taew, and Ploy.

Figure 3: “Thailand is a Buddhist country. We have so many high values

and high culture, and women should preserve their virginity, but …. ‘Tom

Tom where did you go last night?”, a sarcastic content retweeted by Nui

Figure 4: “I think the problem is that adult people like to restrict the younger

generation from knowing about sex. This is crazy. Why are we so crazy

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about fake virtue? That is not helping our society get better. We should not

constrain girls. Our society is full of debauchery and the sale of sex toys

should be controlled at most but should not be prohibited.” – retweeted by

Pooh.

Figure 5: “We are born and raised with conservative ideas; it is like we

forward this kind of dominant idea through adults, teachers, friends, and

the environment. Men and women are not that different now. We should

not be blamed for it because of the reason that we are just women” –

retweeted by Phat.

Figure 6: “Female swimsuit = G-string or thong, evening dress = sexy

dress, casual dress = mini skirt, nightdress = see-through lace dress …

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why all girl’s beauty has been linked to body and seduction insinuating that

girls entice boys for sexual activity. Girls seem like sexual objects for boys;

actually, girls just wanna play with their dressing” – retweeted by Taew.

Figure 7: “Why don’t you think that girls just enjoy and are happy with their

dress? Whatever and how she dresses, you should respect her. If you

persist in seeing her as a toy for sex, then I have nothing else to say to

you. You are so bad without humanisation.” – retweeted by Ploy.

Figures 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 exhibit similar patterns of how the LC participants

retweeted sensitive contents, i.e., the conservative ideas about femininity, the

dominant culture in Thailand, and the consideration of females as sexual objects.

They retweeted the contents from others to reflect what they thought about and

believed in sexual matters. To emphasise this, Ploy said in the interview that she

used Twitter to just share the contents that she agreed with. Thus, it is possible

to assume that the contents that the LC participants retweeted or borrowed from

other authors are the reflection of ideas and things that they believed in.

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Specifically, the things that they retweeted are about the subversion of traditional

feminine values. For example, in Figure 3, Nui retweeted the content that

“Thailand is a Buddhist country. We have so many high values and high culture,

and women should preserve their virginity, but …. ‘Tom Tom, where did you go

last night?”. This is one of the sarcastic remarks showing that Nui had a negative

view on Thai traditional values which mainly put pressure on women. The

retweeted content in Figure 3 means that even though Thailand has so many high

values and high culture, particularly in Thai women's discourses, there are still

nightclubs and free sex activities among teenagers in the nighttime – as disclosed

here “Tom Tom, where did you go last night?” – this sentence is one of the

sarcastic lyrics from a popular Thai song. Also, in Figure 3, the retweeted content

specifically includes the traditional public discourse – ‘rak nuan sa nguan tua’ (to

preserve virginity) – this emphasises the notion from the literature that Thailand

has many traditional public discourses on women that still constrain young

women’s gender performances. Consistent with the triangulated data between

the Twitter information and the interview, Nui indicated in the interview that “Thai

parents seem to shape their children to follow Thai values and norms, especially

feminine values – even, actually, it is normal that human has love, compassion,

aspiration, and fantasy towards each other”. Similarly, Ploy said that “it is so non-

humanised if we cannot express our love, desire, and fantasy. Thai parents are

overly concerned about moral principles or virtues in Thailand. So I think we

should make these issues more human or civilised in Thai society”. These spoken

languages by both Nui and Ploy reinforce the ways they express on Twitter, where

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they borrowed contents from other authors to retweet what they believed in

(Figure 3 and 7).

The ways in which the LC participants retweeted about (sexual) political contents

are in line with Snyder’s argument (2008): young girls are politically engaged in

civic affairs in the third wave of feminism. Snyder (2008) states that many girl

feminists use social media to proclaim girls' rights and equality to gain

empowerment and choice. According to post-feminism, ‘empowerment’ and

‘choice’ in third-wave feminism have been adopted by exponents of neo-liberal

values and capitalism, to represent girls as having achieved freedom, education,

and equality (Baumgardner and Richards, 2004).

However, I am now addressing the ambiguity via a nuanced lens regarding the

issues of the girl’s empowerment, rights, and resistance in post-feminism. I argue

that the political resistance of the LC participants in the above Twitter examples

shows that the LC girls’ sexual activities online seem to be equivocal: it is a

subversion of hegemonic constraints, but concurrently, these are pleasurable,

playful, and creative acts of gendered identity performances. Whilst the

empowerment, freedom, and sense of equality of the LC girls can be explained

by the notion of third-wave feminism scholars (Snyder, 2008; Baumgardner and

Richards, 2004), McRobbie (2009) on the other hand, notes that girls' activities in

post-feminism are an illusion. She provides a counterargument, describing this

theory as a “post-feminist masquerade” since it re-mobilises patriarchal values

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back to contemporary feminism. Nevertheless, I would critique that McRobbie’s

judgment may be a little too severe, in that it does not allow for the pleasures and

playfulness of girlhood. Returning to my argument, I still argue that to understand

girls' everyday sexual negotiations, particularly between their resistance and

pleasurable acts, we need to analyse them with a more nuanced lens. I thus

propose that in the act of the LC participants making certain choices and

achieving a sense of empowerment by resisting the dominant culture, they are

simultaneously playful and derive pleasure from their sexual activities online.

I now turn to a close analysis of Ploy, who expressed strong views on sexual

oppression and gender inequality in Thailand through her retweeted content on

her Twitter profile page.

Figure 8: “Why do Thai men always blame women when rapes happen in

our society? Men always think that women flirt with them by wearing a

voluptuous dress, or using sex appeal to exploit them. Please try to blame

your head and dick head once in a while. This is a super repulsive idea

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that emphasises ‘gender inequality’ and empowers ‘masculine hegemony’

considering that men are always right and powerful according to social

norms in Thailand” – a retweeted content by Ploy.

Figure 8 shows that Ploy dramatically engaged with political issues in terms of

gender inequality. She strongly subverted the mainstream values regarding

feminine conduct as well as masculine hegemony in Thai society through her

retweeted content. This kind of content could be referred to as a deleterious

expression in the offline society; the LC participants thus used Twitter instead to

share this point of view, and finally used it to build their subcultures to rebel

against normative sexual ideals.

As mentioned previously, I would argue that there is a contradiction between the

spoken and interactive meanings in Ploy’s expression and I will use Kress and

van Leeuwen's metafunction framework to explain this (1996, 2006).

At the beginning of Ploy’s interview, she spoke of sexual restraint in Thailand that

“Love, affection, or sexual relation is the only one topic that I cannot talk about

with my parents [The expression by a quiet speech, and soft and quivering

speaking, suggesting that she was quite afraid and/or hesitant to talk about

this]”. When we analyse her expression through her spoken utterances, such as

her tone and voice, volume, intonation, and certainty of speech, it is revealed that

she hesitated to talk about gender and sexual issues. In the representational

metafunction, Ploy’s spoken language (i.e. a quiet, soft, and quivering speech)

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represents the lack of confidence or uncertainty to speak about political gender

issues, such as the issue of gender inequality, gender-based violence, and victim

blaming in the case of rape in Thailand. Particularly, if we analyse her language

expression through the paralinguistic features, her tone and sound imply

quietness and hesitancy. At the same time, the repetition of the word “I cannot”

demonstrates a very strong sense of prohibition.

While the (offline) interview data represents oppressiveness and hesitation to

speak about gender issues, Ploy’s expression in the online world seems to be in

conflict with this. Though sexual restraint and other sexual matters are taboo

topics that young Thai women are prohibited from discussing in offline spaces

(Thaweesit, 2004), these issues are instead expressed by the LC participants in

online settings more explicitly: they seem confident, strong, and certain in

retweeting the content from others. Although it is retweeted content, not their own

words, it may show that they believed in such content since they were agreeing

with the modality claim of the original authors of the tweets. To explain this, if we

analyse the modality of these retweeted contents through the interactive

metafunction (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006), a high modality claim by the

LC participants will be evident. This is because most of the social media data on

Twitter by the LC participants were derived from secondary resources – they

borrowed/retweeted the contents from others. As argued, modality is the truth

value of a text which is negotiated between the text and the reader/viewer (Van

Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2004). However, my data analysis lacks access to the

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audience of the texts, only the author and the text; instead, I can only analyse the

modality claim – how the author/text claims to be true or credible. The modality in

the interactive metafunction relates to how the modality claim is judged by the

audience. In Ploy’s case, she was the audience of the texts that she retweeted

from the original author; in other words, she presented those retweets, but she

was also an audience of the person who wrote the original texts on Twitter. Hence,

we can interpret this as Ploy agreeing with the modality claim of the original author

of the tweet, and she was presenting her own modality claim by retweeting.

Therefore, I observe that while she was quite hesitant to speak about the

discourse of women’s oppression through her own language in offline settings,

she was borrowing the confidence of the tweeter to represent her attitudes and

gender politics since she was agreeing with the modality (truth) claim of the

original author of the tweet – as the audience, herself.

To present the evidence from Ploy, Figure 8 is the retweeted content with strong

discursive representations of gender politics in her Twitter feeds, which are quite

different from what she said in her interview. In other words, Ploy’s expression on

Twitter was more political, explicit and strong than the ways she expressed herself

through her language in the interview setting. The retweeted content in Figure 8

includes many gender politics which are quite dangerous to speak in the public

area such as “Why do Thai men always blame women when rapes happen in our

society? Men always think that women flirt with them by wearing a voluptuous

dress, or using sex appeal to exploit them. Please try to blame your head and

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dick head once in a while. This is a super repulsive idea that emphasises ‘gender

inequality’ and empowers ‘masculine hegemony’ considering that men are always

right and powerful according to social norms in Thailand.” All of these issues in

Ploy’s retweeted content represent particular attitudes towards gender politics (as

a part of social movement), thus resisting mainstream discourses that oppress

gender equality in Thailand. In short, I maintain that there is a contradiction

between the spoken/vocal meanings and interactive meanings in Ploy’s case. We

can see that the spoken meaning refers to the notion of oppressiveness which

she was uncertain to express through language resources such as tone and

voice, the level of sound, and certainty of the speech. In contrast, the borrowed

tweets imply a strong sense of confidence where she was more explicit and open

to debate gender issues due to a high modality claim of the retweeted content

from the original authors.

In conclusion, by cross-referencing three data types from the LC participants –

social media data (Twitter), interview and focus group data, both offline and online

data show that there are many forms of resistance to the traditional values of

femininity as well as dominant discourses in Thai culture that still restrain young

Thai women’s gender expression. Due to many traditional public discourses

regarding femininity in Thailand, as discussed in the literature review, many young

women use novel cultural artefacts (social media) to challenge this dominant

culture (Boonmongkon et al., 2013). I highlight that the retweet tool is considered

the most popular function on Twitter that the LC participants used to resist popular

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Thai culture. They tactically transmitted texts or original words from influential

people in the online society, and retweeted (or re-posted or shared) them to the

public, and their friends also repeated this with the comments made to each other.

Overall, I argue that Twitter has become the salient site of political activism for

the LC participants. For them, Twitter can serve as the most private platform to

share dangerous or risky points of view, such as the criticism of traditional norms

in females, the dominant masculinity, and the gender inequality in Thailand. Even

though the default setting and norms on Twitter are public, users can make their

tweet or retweet stream protected, or private (boyd et al., 2010). Thus, Twitter is

suggested as an appropriate choice for the LC participants to challenge the

dominant ideas through tactically creative methods, such as retweets and

hashtag features. The next section is the discussion of hashtag communication

on Twitter as the subcultural resistance. In short, the LC participants use Twitter

to rebel against mainstream normative discourses regarding sexuality by creating

their subcultures online. Subcultural activities result in online communities, which

enable the subversion of the sexual politics of girls. This notion is similar to Gillis,

et al’s study (2004), which argued that many girls feminists, in the third-wave of

feminism, use social media as a novel platform for political engagement in civic

affairs to subvert the constraints of patriarchal values. Mendes, et al. (2018, 2019)

also suggest a similar way in which some girls develop “digital feminist activism”

through social media to fight against social-political issues, including gender-

based violence, sexual harassment, and rape culture. Even though the LC

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participants were not actually engaged in the “digital feminist activism” like the

ways Mendes, et al. (2018, 2019) argue, they created their own subcultural

activities (or called pre-activism) to challenge political gender in Thailand. The

following section will explore how the LC participants create their own subcultures

online through hashtags to express their gender matters as well as to perform

their sexual activities. Further discussion on these hashtag activities on Twitter as

the subcultural resistance is provided in the next heading.

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Theme 2: Resistance through online subcultures: ‘Re-Tweet-

Fav’, ‘Re-Tweet-DM’, and ‘Re-Tweet-Follow’ hashtags

As discussed in the previous theme, I consider that the LC participants manipulate

social media (Twitter) as a form of resistance against traditional values of feminine

conduct through many tactically communicative ways. The hashtag has become

another popular feature used by the LC participants to communicate their sexual

desire and emotions. The hashtag sexual activities are used to negotiate their

gender identity and sexual expression as well as contest normative sexuality in

Thai culture. This section will show how gender involves aspects of sexuality:

sexual feelings, desire, aspirations, and imagination.

It is argued that an important dimension of social media discourse is its

searchability (Zappavigna, 2018). The hashtag is one of the key semiotic

resources supporting this function on Twitter – it is a form of social tagging that

allows microbloggers to embed metadata in social media posts (Zappavigna,

2015). Many previous scholars refer to the hashtag, an advent of Twitter service,

as “searchable talk” (Zappavigna 2018), and imply the retweet feature, a

spreadable network afforded by Twitter, as “conversational practice” (boyd et al.,

2010). Both hashtags and retweets are social semiotic resources supporting

searchable talk and social processes of ambient affiliation (Zappavigna 2018).

Many scholars explain the technical affordances of Twitter in that they can

facilitate “conversation” (Rossi and Magnani, 2012) or “discussion” (Bruns, 2011;

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Bruns and Burgess, 2011). They also view the structure of those conversations

as an “interchange” (Zappavigna, 2015). This kind of interchange leads to the

notion that “hashtags are a novel form of metadata because, rather than simply

operating on the service of information management, they also operate on the

service of interpersonal social relations” (Zappavigna, 2015). In other words, they

are involved in “interpersonal dimensions” of meaning-making such as supporting

visibility and participation (Page, 2012).

I will provide a picture of how LC participants manipulate Twitter as a form of

resistance through social semiotic resources – hashtag and retweet. As reviewed

above, both the hashtag and the retweet are “searchable talk” (Zappavigna 2018),

“conversational practice” (boyd et al., 2010), “interchange” (Zappavigna, 2015)

and “interpersonal dimensions” of meaning-making of the users. The following

section shows how the LC participants use Twitter to express their sexual

feelings, desire, and emotions, as well as how they interchange and build their

relationships with others through hashtags for sexual purposes.

To cross-reference the three types of data, I will start with the interview and focus

group data, and then will show the triangulated data from the social media sites.

When asking the LC participants about the usages and online activities on Twitter,

they revealed that creating a specific hashtag is one of the sexual activities that

have been practised among their group for sexual purposes. Ploy said in the

interview that “#Re-Tweet-Fav, #Re-Tweet-DM, and #Re-Tweet-Follow’ are the

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hashtag patterns that we use to invite others for further interactions, and of course

that those interactions are mainly for building a sexual relation”. In the focus

group setting, most of the LC participants (i.e., Ploy, Yok, Pawee, Jang, Nui,

Pooh, Phat, Taew) agreed that they had been using #Re-Tweet-Fav, #Re-Tweet-

DM, and #Re-Tweet-Follow to find the (sexual) partners.

Ink had the same experiences of these hashtag activities. She said in the focus

group that “I think most of us have been using it, and I see many of my friends,

including my group and other school friends, have been using it. I think these

hashtag activities are something close to online dating. We use such hashtags to

invite someone to follow us back or to DM back to us, and then we might some

chat with each other via DM on Twitter, and then go out for dating”. Similarly, Fah

explained more in-depth that, “these hashtag activities (#Re-Tweet-Fav, #Re-

Tweet-DM, and #Re-Tweet-Follow) are not used to just increase the number of

retweets or followers. Rather, we use such hashtags to specifically find and/or flirt

with someone for sexual purposes only. What we normally do is putting some

short sentences or phrases to make our tweet contents interesting, and then end

with those hashtags”. Ploy gave some examples of the phrases that they used

along with the hashtags that read, for example, “I’m friendly, please follow me

back #Re-Tweet-Follow”, “I’m a lonely girl. If you are, please DM to me #Re-

Tweet-DM”, “I’m not a playgirl. If you like, please Fav to me #Re-Tweet-Fav”.

With an initial insight into the hashtag activities of the LC participants, I will next

provide the triangulated data from actual social media practices – in order to

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explore the possibilities of similarities or differences between social media data

and what they said in the interview.

Figure 9: A collection of creative hashtags by the LC participants: #‘Re-

Tweet-Fav’, ‘Re-Tweet-DM’, and ‘Re-Tweet-Follow’ for sexual purposes

(i.e., finding sexual partners or forming sexual relationships) through their

Twitter profiles.

In Figure 9, the hashtags ‘Re-Tweet-Fav’, ‘Re-Tweet-DM’, and ‘Re-Tweet-Follow’

are the most tactically creative modes of communication made by the LC

participants who aimed to start a courtship online particularly. Most of the LC

participants preferred to use these kinds of creative hashtags to communicate

their gender and sexuality. Even if my research question aims to pursue how

social media used by young women can negotiate gender identity, I observe that

gender involves aspects of sexuality as well as sexual desires, relationships, and

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fantasies. In other words, the evidence obtained from the LC participants

suggests an emergence of multi-faceted sexual elements. To clarify this, while

gender is defined as each person’s deeply felt internal and individual expression

– which may involve modification of bodily appearances and other identity plays

such as dress, speech and mannerisms – sexuality is the experience and

expression in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, values, and relationships

(Wongpanarak et al, 2010). Thus, when the LC participants play their gender

identities through their dress, speech, and mannerisms, they also express their

thoughts, fantasies, and desires involved in sexuality, as in the case of hashtag

activities in which they may have imagined sexual relations or fantasies of sex

with someone online. Therefore, I present an indication of aspects of sexuality

emerging from the data since the LC participants used Twitter as a place for not

only expressing their gender identities, but also for conveying their sexual fantasy,

aspirations, desire, and preferences, which I will discuss in more detail shortly.

When interviewing them individually about the usage and engagement of such

hashtags, there were about 8 out of 10 participants who engaged with and

enjoyed these hashtags, and more than 5 times per day they posted these

hashtags to disseminate their (sexual) meanings. These creative hashtags can

be translated as: “If you RETWEET me, then I will press FAVOURITE you”, “If

you RETWEET me, then I will DIRECT MESSAGE you”, and “If you RETWEET

me, then I will FOLLOW you back” (as explained by Ploy, Yok, Pawee, Jang, and

Nui in the interview). They shortcut these communicative sentences into the short

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hashtags: ‘Re-Tweet-Fav’, ‘Re-Tweet-DM’, and ‘Re-Tweet-Follow’ to flirt or find,

or perform courtships and build relationships online.

Figure 9 is a collection of hashtags made by the LC participants on their Twitter

profiles. One of these is Ploy’s case. She retweeted that “this is my new Both, I

am so lonely, someone please come to me. RT = FF (rd) purple heart emoji =

DM”. She used the hashtag ‘#Re-Tweet-DM’ and Thai hashtag “#Rt ตามทัก”

(meaning that if you retweet me, then I will DM you back). She also used the

hashtag ‘#Re-Tweet-Follow’, plus with “#Rt ฟอลฟรี”, meaning that if someone

retweets her, then she will follow her/him back for sexual purposes. These

hashtags – which were her tweet contents, not retweet text from others – show

that she tactically created short textual communications to find or flirt with

someone online for sexual purposes. After Ploy requested the (sexual)

relationship through her hashtags on tweet contents, I found that there were

around 41 - 50 retweets by others shown on her profiles which were quite

successful. It can be seen that LC participants created diverse hashtags to

tactically express their sexual emotions, feelings, and desire. For example, in

Ploy’s case, her sentences used in the retweeted content were “I am so lonely”

and “someone please come to me”, with the specific hashtags of “RT = FF (rd) =

DM”. I consider that the use of such sentences and hashtags represents the

meanings of her sexual emotions, feelings, and desire. She desires to build a

sexual relation with someone by an invitation through her written language and

hashtag created on Twitter.

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By triangulating the three data types – the interview, the focus group, and the

social media data (Twitter), I found similar patterns of resistance and the

subculture online activities created by the LC participants. As I argued in the

previous section, the LC participants are the group who explicitly and implicitly

resist traditional forms of feminine conduct. In this section, I confirm that they are

still subverting those discourses through their own created subculture online: the

hashtags on Twitter. As Ploy, one of the LC participants, revealed in the interview:

“love, affection, or sexual relation is the only one topic that I cannot talk about with

my parents”. This shows that it is impossible for her to express those sexual

feelings and desires in the offline setting, especially at school and at home.

However, I found that there are possibilities that LC participants can express

these sexual feelings, emotions, and desire on the online sites; at the same time,

they are able to resist those traditional discourses and feminine conduct through

their own subculture – as shown in the case of the hashtags in Figure 9.

The ways in which LC participants express their gender and sexual desires

through textual communication, such as the hashtags “Rt ตามทัก”, and “Rt ฟอลฟรี”

represent the intention of flirting for sexual purposes, while the visual

communication, such as profile pictures, seems to fall in other visual dimensions

that need to be analysed further – this will be discussed in the next section.

Importantly, we can better understand the meanings and cultural communities

online among the LC participants through the explanation offered by the

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participatory practices; hence, Henry Jenkins’ concept of participatory culture

(2015, 2018) becomes useful. This helps us understand the representation of

gender and sexuality meanings made by the LC participants through their actions,

interactions, and cultural participation.

According to Jenkins, “participatory culture embraces the values of diversity and

democracy through every aspect of our interactions…which assumes that we are

capable of making decisions, collectively and individually, and that we should

have the capacity to express ourselves through a broad range of different forms

and practices” (2015, p. 2). This Jenkin’s framework can be applied to understand

online interactions, participation and expression in gender matters through

subculture activities on Twitter by the LC group. The LC participants had some

degree of social connection with one another through the use of social media

features inside the platform (i.e., hashtags and retweets) in order to communicate,

interact, and negotiate about sexual matters. In the case of Ploy, she was one of

Twitter’s community members who played and engaged with hashtag activities.

When participatory culture was invoked through the concepts of diversity and

democracy, Ploy seemed also to engage in participatory culture – as happened

online – since she was able to make decisions to express her sexual feelings and

desires as well as perform a broad range of different forms and practices on

Twitter. As she did, she used Twitter’s features as tools to express her sexual

desires and emotions as well as to perform courtship behaviour online, as seen

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previously in the hashtags #Re-Tweet-Fav, #Re-Tweet-DM, and #Re-Tweet-

Follow#, #Rt ตามทัก, #Rt ฟอลฟรี.

This consideration accords with how Jenkins makes conceptual clarification:

“social media platforms like Facebook or YouTube are not necessarily

participatory cultures; they are rather tools often used as a means of maintaining

social contact” (2015, p.3). Thus, social media used by the LC participants is seen

not only as a form of resistance against normative feminine sexuality in Thai

mainstream culture, but it is also suggested as a ‘tool’ (or ‘means’ by Henry

Jenkins’ concept) to negotiate gender matters, such as gender performance,

sexual expression, courtship display, and establishment of sexual relationships.

When “participation refers to the property of the culture where groups collectively

or individually make decisions that have an impact on their shared experiences”

(Jenkins and Ito, 2015), I argue that the LC participants employ Twitter as a tool

and a site where they rebel against mainstream cultures of femininity. This

subversion is through cultural participation as well as fan communities in which

members devise and/or invent their subcultures. This fandom culture will be fully

addressed in the next section.

My argument can be supported by many media scholars who argue that Twitter

is not universally adopted. Twitter supports an active community with its own set

of unique practices that happen in youth culture (boyd, 2013; Baker, 2013).

Because Twitter’s structure disperses conversation throughout a network of

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interconnected actors rather than constraining conversation within bounded

spaces or groups, many people may talk about a particular topic at once, such

that others have a sense of being surrounded by a conversation, despite perhaps

not being an active contributor (Zappavigna, 2015; boyd et al., 2010). In short, the

LC participants use many social semiotic resources – hangtag and retweet – to

operate on interpersonal social relations for sexual purposes. This argument is in

line with the previous studies that saw young people use social media services to

“manage information” (Zappavigna, 2015, 2018) and participate in “interpersonal

dimensions” through visibility and participation in the online sites (Page, 2012).

Moreover, Hall and Jefferson’s subculture and resistance concept (2006) can be

also applied to understand the subversion made by the LC participants. They

argue that popular culture is a site of struggle where the youth always subvert the

cultural authority of the dominant social classes through their subcultures. It is

claimed that youth culture forms coherent everyday social worlds of family,

neighbourhood, and school. The youth are thus struggling with power and

privilege inherent in superordinate and subordinate social classes (Hall and

Jefferson (2006). This is also in line with the classical Marxist model of class

affiliation (1859). As social class revolves around the issue of dominant culture’s

definition of right and wrong ways of behaviour and the issue of dominant culture’s

ideas about the proper distribution of economic opportunities and resources, the

working-class youth, as a subordinate group, tend to be the people that potentially

express symbolic opposition to the dominant culture's moral authority (Marx,

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1859). According to this concept, LC participants are the subordinate or

disadvantaged group, and they seem to find alternative spaces to challenge class

structure to express their dynamics and creativity through their subcultures.

Therefore, when the LC participants create their subcultures on Twitter as a form

of popular cultural expression, i.e., retweet content, hashtag content, and Both

(role-play activity) – which will be discussed in the following section – these

youthful behaviours, which some traditionally-minded adults may regard as

criminal, destructive, vicious, or absurd, are actually an expressive mode of

rebellion, a protest against their perceived inferior status in the class structure

(Hall and Jefferson, 2006). To sum up, I suggest that Twitter, perceived as the

most private platform, is inhabited by the LC participants who wish for the

subversion against traditional values of female conduct in Thai mainstream

culture. Not only do they use Twitter to play their gender identities, but they also

use it to express their sexual aspirations, fantasies, and relationships. They

tactically create their subcultures online through diverse communicative modes,

with the hashtag being one of the popular features employed to challenge the

dominant culture. The next theme focuses on another subculture created by the

LC group, namely ‘Both’ (or role-player), a sexual online activity on Twitter that

involves the use of profile pictures to negotiate users’ sexual orientation,

particularly among lesbian users.

Theme 3: Role-player activity called ‘Both’ on Twitter as the

negotiation of gender identity by LGBTQ+ users

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To provide a full picture about ‘Both’, role-play activities aimed at building sexual

relationships on Twitter within the LC group, I will present the interview and the

focus group data about this issue, and then will provide a triangulated data from

social media data, which is the actual practice on Twitter.

In the interview setting, many LC participants (i.e., Ploy, Ink, Fah, Yok, Pawee,

and Jang) indicated their popular social activity on Twitter that is ‘Both’. Ploy

explained that ‘Both’ (บอท) is a sexual activity by which her group used Korean

artist images, both male and female, as their profile pictures on Twitter for sexual

purposes. Similarly, Ink, Fah, Yok, Pawee, and Jang explained in the focus group

setting that after they chose the characters of Korean artists and set those as their

profile pictures, they will role-play by imagining the characters of such Korean

artists and use those roles to chat with someone online for sexual courtships. For

example, Ink indicated in the interview that “I use Taeyeon, one of the female

members of a famous Korean girl group, as my profile picture on Twitter. This is

intended to match with another player who uses a Korean female artist character

like what I did”. As Ink identified herself as a lesbian, this shows that ‘Both’ activity

in the fan community is based on a diverse range of gender identification: it can

be matched diversely between a girl and a boy, a boy and a boy, a girl and a girl,

or between other role-plays. Fah also explained further that “Both is like an online

dating activity but without using our own real profile pictures. Rather, we use

Korean artist characters whom we adore to chat with someone who also plays

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the role with which we are fascinated. So, ‘Both’ is a role-play activity created for

flirting with someone and potentially having a dating life outside the online site”.

Similarly, Yok had the same experience of ‘Both’ activity as she said that “I have

used ‘Both’ to find someone for a relationship. For example, I have had a chat

with them – it can be a call or a video call – and I have had an experience of

dating them in the offline world”.

In the focus group, Pawee and Jang quite agreed that ‘Both’ sexual online activity

is based on community participation in the fan culture. They reveal that all ‘Both’

players are fans of Korean artists. Thus, to understand ‘Both’, as an online activity

for building sexual relationships, an in-depth analysis of cultural participation,

especially the fan community online, needs to be conducted. The aim of engaging

in ‘Both’ activity is for playing and interacting with other members of the fan culture

to find sexual partners within their local community online. To understand the

meanings of the media texts they created, attempts need to be made to initially

understand how these creative texts are based on what kind of community they

are in. I propose that the ‘Both’ activity has its roots in the fan community, whose

objects of admiration are mainly Korean pop artists. As participants such as

Pawee and Jang indicated in the focus group study, they dramatically engaged

with the fan community on Twitter, which is a Korean boy band and girl group

artists. It can be said that community participation makes up a major part of the

fans’ activities on the online site. Based on the online fandom community among

LC groups, Twitter was used as a site to involve themselves deeply in

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communication with others and to create their nuances of actions and languages

through the ‘Both’ role-playing, which are supposed to be understood only among

members of their teen community. At the same time, the observation lends strong

support to the claim that they performed these unique actions within the local

online community for sexual purposes, such as building sexual relationships and

displaying courtships. However, I distinguish these online sexual activities from

physical sexual relations since there is no explicit evidence showing that they

actually have engaged in the physical intimacy of sex or relationships in the offline

world. I put forward the notion that the ways in which they playfully construct

gender identities in the online sites reflect forms of sexual aspirations, imagined

sexual relations, or sexual fantasies.

The ‘Both’ role-play activity on Twitter by the LC group can be further understood

by Henry Jenkins’ concept of fan culture or the idea of “textual poachers” in fan

worlds (1992). Jenkins characterises fan writers as ‘textual poachers’ (1992),

which became a crucial theoretical concept for fandom studies. Jenkins explains

that fans “poach” (steal) cultural resources from their idols and repurpose them.

For instance, he considers Star Trek as one kind of textual poacher because this

original media text was rerun, reread, and rewritten by fans, especially the

creation of same-sex fan texts, like the Kirk-Spock relationship (Jenkins, 1988).

From this, it could be argued that fan community practices among the LC

participants in online sites stem from the subculture of fan’s imagination, and this

is derived from the consumption of their favourite original media text, which they

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then remodel or remake into different fan stories to serve their political sexual

interests. In the case of the ‘Both’ activity, the LC participants use Korean artist

images as their profile pictures by editing, rearranging, or remaking the images to

become their own profile pictures on Twitter and use these images as the role-

play for building sexual relationships with others.

This kind of rearrangement or remake in the case of ‘Both’ activity by the LC group

has a similar pattern with the manga fan culture. There are many works of

fanfiction regarding manga characters in comic media texts in which male

homoerotic relationships fictions are written with reference to manga characters,

as well as imagine relationships between themselves and manga characters

(McLelland and Welker, 2015). Hence, this manga fan culture is in line with the

ways the LC participants play and engage with the ‘Both’ online activity through

the use of ‘beautiful’ male images (Korean pop artists) as their profile pictures on

Twitter. This also aligns with Kang's findings (2017): the ‘Korean-style soft

masculinity’ of men is linked with Japanese and Korean popular culture amongst

same-sex desiring men (Kang, 2017). To show how the LC participants use such

‘Korean-style soft masculinity’, which is based on Japanese and Korean popular

culture amongst same-sex relationships of men, the next section will focus on the

triangulated data from the social media data – to show the actual practices of the

‘Both’ activity on Twitter by the LC participants.

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Figure 10: Korean pop artist images for ‘Both’ – role-play activity – by

Pawee.

Figure 11: The profile picture of boys’ love characters for ‘Both’ (role-play

activity) – by Jang.

From the online data, I consider that, on Twitter, the LC participants employ

Korean pop artist images (set as their profile pictures) to carry out their sexual

activity online, a phenomenon called ‘Both’ – บอท, or a role-play activity purposely

designed for a display of courtship. ‘Both’ is called by Twitter’s users belonging to

the fan community of Korean boy bands. As Pawee explained in the interview

data, “Both is created for fans’ online interaction: it is not only for updating,

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communicating, and engaging with artist’s works among fandom members, but it

is also mainly for sexual purposes”. The main purpose is to build sexual

relationships online, e.g., a chat, as well as a date – if the relationship develops

successfully. The insight from Pawee’s interview revealed that she had a

successful relationship from ‘Both’ activity since she got a real dating and having

an actual relationship in a physical offline world.

Thus, I argue that LC participants use the artist images (Korean artist characters)

and play such roles for their sexual expression and gender performance.

Specifically, LGBTQ+ users are the main group who employ such ‘Both’ activity

as the subculture for negotiation of their gender identities. This especially

happens for lesbian and gay identities – as indicated by the LC participants (i.e.,

Ink, Pawee, and Jang) in the interview data and as shown by the profile pictures

on Twitter according to Figures 10 and 11. My central argument here is that

Twitter provides crucial spaces for the LC participants to create their subcultures

against normative heterosexuality. Not only do they use this site as the subversion

of the dominant culture in Thailand, but they also employ it as a form of

empowerment for fluid identities, supporting the notion of gender diversity.

Figures 10 and 11 illustrate the cases of Pawee and Jang, demonstrating how

they apply ‘Both’ online activity as the subculture against heteronormativity in Thai

culture. Figure 10 is a general portrayal of how Pawee used Korean-style soft

masculinity image as her profile picture and cover picture; at the same time,

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Figure 11 is a specific case of Jang who used a couple of boy artist images as

her profile picture for playing the ‘Both’ activity. This was affirmed by Jang through

the explanation in the interview that she played the role of ‘Both’ for finding a

sexual partner, and the relationship between her and her partner had been

developed successfully as they became a real couple in the offline world. Since

Jang’s case provides a more significant implication for the ‘Both’ activity, I will

specifically perform a close analysis of Figure 11 to understand how Jang used

social semiotic resources (images) to negotiate her gender identity by applying

the multimodal metafunction (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006).

Figure 11 is the profile picture set by Jang, who used a couple of (pretty) boy artist

images. The use of this particular artist image shows that Jang is one of the fan’s

community members of the Korean boy band. As she explained in the interview

setting, she used a Korean boy artist image for ‘Both’ activity on Twitter and

played that role to accomplish the sexual relationship with her partner. This was

successful since they ended up being a real couple in the offline world through

the use of such ‘Both’ role-play characters on Twitter.

To provide a better picture to this, she played the role of a ‘gay’ boy, who was

depicted as the left character in the image in Figure 11, and she was seeking

another ‘pretty’ boy who was depicted as the right character in the image to match

with her before embarking on the ‘Both’ dating. This implies that ‘Both’ is the

imaginary world inhabited by members of the fandom, who desire to match

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themselves with other members and find sexual partners. By analysing Figure 11

in detail through the multimodal metafunction, different meanings can be

interpreted from the role-play characters positioned on the left and the right in the

image. According to Kress and van Leeuwen, information values are realised by

the placement of the elements of a composition (2006). The idea is that the role

of any particular element in the whole will depend on whether it is placed on the

left or on the right, in the centre or the margin, or in the upper or the lower part of

the picture space or page. Briefly, the elements placed on the left are presented

as ‘given’, the elements placed on the right as ‘new’ (Kress and van Leeuwen,

2006). In other words, the left placement is seen as the departure point (or

initiating point) for the message, referring to a person who acts something first or

something the viewer or reader already knows or feels familiar or agrees with,

while right placement is seen as something ‘new’, ‘unfamiliar’, or something not

yet known and not yet already to be agreed upon by the viewer or reader, hence

as something to which the viewer or reader must pay special attention (Kress and

van Leeuwen, 1996). The ‘new’ is therefore problematic, contestable, and the

information ‘at issue’, while the ‘given’ is presented as commonsensical and self-

evident.

To combine the compositional meaning with representational meaning, I argue

that the left participant on Figure 11 – as being something akin to the ‘given’

information (what is known) – shows the self-evident meaning of being an ‘agent’

who has an active expression of gender performance. In contrast, the one on the

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right – who represents ‘new’ information – denotes the quality of being a ‘patient’

or a ‘passive’ gender identity. In other words, in the representational metafunction

for narrative structures, the ‘gay’ boy character which is placed on the left

represents a confident and active expression of gender performance, while the

other ‘pretty boy' character on the right a more hesitant and passive gender

identity.

In the case of Figure 11, the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ meanings through the

representational metafunction and the ‘agent’ and ‘patient’ meanings through the

compositional metafunction can be affirmed by other modes of communication,

such as facial expression, staring, smiling, and gestures through the interactive

metafunction. For example, through the mode of gaze, both role-play characters

on the left and right in Figure 11 are directly staring at the viewers (look at the

camera), which can produce eye contact with the audiences. This kind of eye

contact is suggested to produce a sexually “demanding” presence according to

the interactive metafunction (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996). Moreover, through

the gesture analysis, both characters in the image represent a same-sex

relationship between masculine and feminine gay men. To explain this, they do a

selfie close together by snuggling while raising two fingers for a pretty post like

feminine acting. Also, the gay boy character on the left has a closed-lip smile,

giving off a rather cool boyish and masculine vibe, while another pretty boy

character on the right defines the meaning of a girlish and feminine character with

his grinned smiling that is rather lively or cheerful. Furthermore, when we interpret

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the participants through other modes in the interactive metafunction, there is a

suggestion of intimacy between them. In everyday interaction, the norms of social

relations determine the “distance” we keep from each other (Van Leeuwen and

Jewitt, 2004). Through the frame size of shots, there are many intermediate

degrees between a close-up – referring to the most intimate relations – and a long

shot – the total absence of a relation or a “distance” (Van Leeuwen and Jewitt,

2004). For example, to see people, a close-up shot (head and shoulders or less)

is to see them in the way we would normally only see people with whom we are

more intimately acquainted. Thus, when the profile picture in Figure 11 uses a

close-up shot, this implies an intimate/ personal relationship between the

participants inside the image. To emphasise this, other modes of the interactive

metafunction symbolise their relations. Choices of the “point of view” angle allows

people, places and things to be depicted from above or below, or at eye-level,

and from the front, the side or the back which has a bearing on the relationships

between elements in an image (Van Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2004). From a vertical

angle, Figure 11 has an eye-level point of view, which denotes equal relations. In

the case of the horizontal angle, the relation will be one of involvement with, or

detachment from each other (Van Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2004). The left participant

in Figure 11 is positioned in front and therefore seems to take a more prominent

role than the right participant who is beside the image does.

These two gay characters can undergo further analysis through the ‘yaoi’ concept

from ‘manga’ fanfiction, also known as ‘Boys Love’ (BL) in Japanese popular

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culture. Briefly, since the late 1990s, Japanese BL – usually in the form of ‘manga’

comics and referred to as ‘yaoi’ or more commonly as ‘cartoon wai’ – has become

popular amongst young Thai women (Keenapan, 2001). The latest Thai study

(i.e., Baudinette, 2019), exploring the adaptation from Japanese BL to

contemporary Thai popular culture, suggests that there is a new genre of Thai

mainstream media known as series ‘wai’, and this is derived from ‘yaoi’, a genre

of homoerotic media originating in Japan. This series ‘wai’ in Thai mediascape

empowers Thai fans of Boys Love (BL) among young women's culture, especially

in online contexts. Japanese Boys Love (BL) is a genre of Japanese popular

culture specifically designed for female audiences consuming homosexual

contents that centre on the romantic relationships between beautiful male youths

known as bishōnen (McLelland and Welker, 2015). Thus, it can be argued that

Boys Love (BL) in Japanese popular culture has come to influence Thai

conceptualisations of sexuality, especially same-sex relationships as well as fluid

identities, like LGBTQ+ (Baudinette, 2019). Moreover, a broadly social process of

knowledge deriving from Japanese and Korean popular culture is contouring

contemporary conceptualisations of queer gender in Thailand (Jackson, 2011;

Sinnott, 2012; Kang, 2017).

According to the literature review, the origin of fan communities on Twitter among

the LC girls, that is, ‘Both’ (role-play) online activities can be understood to have

emerged through the foundation of manga or yaoi (male same-sex relationships),

which is derived from Japanese pop culture. I consider that the LC participants

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develop ‘Both’ online activity to push back normative heterosexuality.

Engagement with same-sex attraction from Japanese manga comics has become

the model used to create a “globalised” code, which is becoming increasingly

influential among young Thai women (Baudinette, 2019). This is in line with

Turner's (2006) theories in the field of transcultural research. The research

particularly focuses on yaoi Japanese popular culture influencing young Thai

women's online practices. The findings show that young Thai women’s fan

communities are inspired by online relationships and activities rather than by

traditional approaches that are exclusively read in print (Turner, 2006).

As interpreted previously, Jang in Figure 11 plays the ‘gay’ men role, represented

by the boyish character in the image, while she seeks another role-play of a

‘feminine’ male character for a match as her sexual partner. This case points to

Jang’s imagination of herself as a ‘gay’ man with a ‘masculine’ identity. At the

same time, it implies that Jang’s sexual orientation is towards a person who

exhibits feminine qualities. There is supportive evidence from the focus group

data that the major ‘Both’ players on Twitter are females, both heterosexual and

homosexual. It can also be interpreted that Jang who is on the left position in

Figure 11 is considered a tom (butch lesbian), and her sexual preference is dee

(cis-gendered lesbian). As argued by previous a Thai scholar, an interpretation of

gender identities and sexual orientation can be diverse due to the fluid identities

in contemporary Thai gender culture (Sinnott, 2012). For example, Sinnott (2012)

identifies tom gay king as a further refinement of tom gay, stressing an individual’s

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‘active’ sexual positioning in the relationship. Thus, this can be applied in the case

of Jang. When Jang is placed on the left in the image, referred to as an ‘agent’ or

‘active’ expression of gender performance, she can be identified as tom gay king

– as Sinnott considered (2012). Alternatively, she can be defined as a

heterosexual female who is just a fandom member fancying male homoerotic

relationships, like the Boys Love (BL) community. In short, it can be said that the

complexity of gender identity and sexual orientation owing to the influence of the

BL genre from Japanese and Korean popular culture has become common

amongst Thai women who have a fondness for male-male romance.

To sum up, with the collection of evidence from the triangulated data – social

media, interview, and the focus group data – I suggest that the role-play ‘Both’

activity created by the LC participants on Twitter is the subcultural resistance

against normative heterosexuality, arising from the Boys’ Love (BL) fandom and

community online in Thailand. The ‘Both’ role-play activity shares a similar pattern

with the creation of fan works of BL literature in Japanese popular culture (such

as yaoi, manga fanfiction) or the Kirk-Spock relationship in Star Trek in American

society. Henry Jenkins’s fan culture theory (1992), which was developed from

empirical studies related to fandom or fan culture, can be applied to understand

how the case of yaoi Japanese popular culture (or now known as Boys’ Love –

BL) and Korean pop artists in the music and entertainment industry has become

“global” codes regarding male homoerotic relationships consumed by

heterosexual females. The case of the ‘Both’ online activity in the LC group is not

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only for the interaction within the BL fans’ community, but it is also for sexual

purposes, since they play the roles to find sexual partners (like online dating) as

discussed. It can be concluded that the online BL communities allow for the

exchange of sexually fantasised fanfiction, such as slash stories, as well as for

the expression of gender identity and sexual orientation. In the meanwhile, social

media can facilitate greater awareness of non-normative sexual identities, such

as ‘gay’ or ‘beautiful’ male relationships. This could stand as a confirmation that

many fan works reinterpret Kirk’s sexuality in Star Trek away from the film's code

as heterosexual and towards pansexuality or polyamory (Jenkins, 1988 cited in

Kies, 1970). A similar interpretation can be drawn from the case of Jang, who

used a Korean-style soft masculinity image as her profile picture (in Figure 11) on

Twitter to role-play that character so as to find her sexual partner, which was

successful in the offline world. To sum up, I argue that the ‘Both’ role-play online

activity by LC participants on Twitter is seen as the resistance to the normative

heterosexuality in Thai culture, and, at the same time, they participate in this

online activity to negotiate gender identity and sexual orientation, especially for

LGBTQ+ identities users.

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Conclusion

The focus of my overarching argument is that the use of social media by the LC

participants is seen as the subversion against normative sexuality in Thai culture.

According to the key theme, Lower class, and the subversion by negotiated

subcultures online, I argue that they tactically build their subcultures online to

subvert the mainstream social convention of femininity. As mentioned in the

introductory chapter, to understand the relation between social class and gender,

intersectionality can be applied as an analytical framework and critical perspective

to understand this. Crenshaw (1989) uses intersectionality to denote how race,

gender, class, nationality, citizenship, religion, body type, and other systems

combine to shape the experiences of many by making room for privilege and

oppression. This is how I am going to explain how gender and class in LC

participants’ case is connected through the framework of intersectionality. I

observe that LC participants are more oppressed by society when compared to

other groups of participants. Specifically, since they are defined as the

underprivileged class in Thai society, they seem to be more oppressed due to

other aspects of their social identity, such as poor economic status, lower parent’s

income and education, parent’s unskilled in professional career, and living in

developing area. Due to the class oppression in Thai society, the underprivileged

class seems to negotiate their gender identity with more resistance than privileged

class in society. This is because the latter's gender performance is linked to their

political power, class opportunities, privilege in society. Thus, we can see the

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evidence in this chapter shows that LC participants use social media as the

subverting site against gender normativity and patriarchal system in Thai culture,

for example they create ‘Both’ role play activity on Twitter to resist

heteronormativity, they retweet contents to challenge Thai’s ideology and

discourse in gender.

In particular, the Twitter platform is considered the underlying proto-activism site

in terms of gender for them due to its privacy. As they revealed in the interview

data, Twitter was the only platform of which their parents had no accounts,

Facebook was the most active platform with which parents engaged, and

Instagram was the site with slight online interaction with their parents; however,

young children had their tactics to hide and conceal their identities from their

parents. This suggests that Twitter is used for expressing dangerous and risky

issues, such as sexual oppression in Thai females, gender inequality, and rape

culture. This is in line with Mendes and Ringrose's (2019) argument that girl

feminists’ strong engagement with “digital feminist activism” is a way of

challenging rape culture and gender-based violence in women. Furthermore, I

highlight that the LC participants use Twitter not only to express their gender

identities through their dress, speech, and mannerism, but also to express their

sexuality, which encompasses sexual desires, relationships, fantasies. This is

because gender identity involves aspects of sexuality such as sexual feelings,

aspirations, and imaginings as well. Even though the thesis aims to explore the

negotiation of gender identity terms only in social media, the evidence obtained

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suggests that elements of sexuality have emerged from the findings as well. Thus,

the discussion of the concept of gender identity and performance must involve

forms of sexual identification, sexual aspirations, sexual imaginings and

representation, and playful negotiation and fantasies – but not in the literal sense

of physical sexuality or physical sexual relations in the offline world in the case of

the LC participants.

Importantly, a classical Marxist theory could be applied to understand the class

struggle between superordinate and subordinate groups in society. Since the

bourgeoisie, perceived as the most economically powerful class in society, is the

group who own the means of production and purchase the labour power from

others, they create dominant culture’s definition of right and wrong ways of

behaviour and the issue of proper distribution of economic opportunities and

resources. This is opposite to the proletariat, perceived as the working class in

society, who do not own any means of production, but sell their own labour power

to earn the money. This working-class group, being in the subordinate role, tend

to express symbolic opposition to the dominant culture's moral authority (Marx,

1859). When we look back at traditional aristocracy in Thailand, the working-class

group, called a (rural) peasantry or cosmopolitan/urban peasants, are clearly

oppressed by the bourgeoisie, who are defined as the middle class or capitalists

in Thai social class (Walker, 2012). This makes the subordinate class, known as

the proletariat class by Marxist definition (1859), resist the oppressive nature of

the more powerful groups in society. Thus, this is a form of resistance to class

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struggling between superordinate and subordinate groups in society. Specifically,

I assert that the LC participants are the social group who resist traditional forms

of feminine conduct and women discourses in Thailand.

As already argued, the LC participants have been found to retweet dangerous

sexual content on Twitter instead of speaking in public offline spaces. I propose

that owing to the nature and features/tools afforded by Twitter, the LC participants

use this site as a strategy of subversion against normative sexuality by diverse

modes of communication online, such as retweet and hashtag communication.

Twitter supports active communities with its own set of unique practices that

happen in youth culture (boyd, 2013; Baker, 2013). This is because Twitter’s

structure disperses conversation throughout a network of interconnected actors

rather than constraining conversation within bounded spaces or groups

(Zappavigna, 2015). Young people thus may talk about a particular topic at once,

such that they have a sense of being surrounded by a conversation, despite

perhaps not being an active contributor (boyd et al., 2010). It has been suggested

that young people use social media services not only to “manage information”

(Zappavigna, 2015, 2018), but also to participate in “interpersonal dimensions”

through visibility and participation online (Page, 2012). The LC participants also

use such online sites to operate on interpersonal social relations for gender

performance. In short, due to the structural affordances of Twitter, LC participants

are empowered to use this site for resistance via the negotiation of the

subcultures online employing social semiotic resources such as hangtags and

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retweets. I propose three emerging themes from the subcultures online: retweet,

hashtag, and the ‘Both’ role-play activity.

Firstly, I consider that the LC participants use Twitter to subvert normative

sexualities; at the same time, there are conflicts between the offline and online

expression of them when analysing through the lens of triangulating data. I would

argue that there is a contradiction between the spoken and interactive meanings

in the LC participants’ expression according to the multimodal metafunction

framework (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006). Ploy would be one of the cases

in this conflict issue. Based on the speech mode, she was quite hesitant or

uncertain to speak about the oppressiveness in women discourse through her

own spoken utterances in the offline setting, such as through her tone and voice,

volume, and intonation. For example, she had a quiet, soft, and quivering

speech when she expressed her sexual oppression in the domestic setting.

However, she was confident to speak about her attitudes and gender politics on

Twitter by borrowing others’ tweets since she agreed with the modality (truth)

claim of the original authors of such tweets – as she herself was the audience of

the text. For instance, she retweeted the content showing explicit gender politics

in Thai society, especially about the women discourses and gender inequality in

Thailand – as shown below:

Why do wearing a skirt and doing the make-up represent the intention of

women to entice (sexually) men? This is total nonsense in the gender

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culture of our society. Why are young Thai women always taught that their

behaviour needs to conform to the social norms in the feminine discourse

and value? Specifically, most of the norms and values in femininity talk

about keeping virginity (pureness), which represents the ‘sexual morality’

in society. – retweeted by Ploy.

This case of Ploy’s retweeted content can be associated with broader issues, like

gender inequality and masculine hegemony in the presence of a patriarchal

society in Thailand. The implication is that textual communication through the

retweet mode on Twitter is seen as the way to openly and explicitly express

individual’s points of view and attitudes, particularly on risky social topics. Thus,

there is a contradiction between the spoken and interactive meanings in Ploy’s

case. We can see that the representational meaning refers to the notion of

oppressiveness, which is the uncertainty of expression through language

resources such as tone and voice, the level of sound, and certainty of the speech.

In contrast, the interactive meaning implies a very strong sense of confidence with

a more explicit and open expression of gender politics and issues due to the high

modality claim by retweeting the content from original authors.

Overall, I would argue that the LC participants use social media as a space to

resist traditional forms of feminine conducts that still restrain the gender

expression of young Thai women. This is in agreement with the previous study

in which young Thai women used novel cultural artefacts of social media to

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challenge Thai dominant culture and traditional public discourses on women

gender (Boonmongkon et al., 2013). I highlight that the retweet tool is considered

the most popular function on Twitter that the LC participants use for resistance

against popular Thai culture. They tactically transmit texts or original words from

influential people in the online society, and retweet (or re-post or share) to the

public, and their friends also repeat this with comments on each other. Thus, the

retweet, as one of the social semiotic recourses, is used by the LC participants to

represent their perspectives, opinions, and beliefs, especially in social ‘risky’

issues, such as gender inequality and rape culture experienced by females. I have

therefore put forward the notion that the LC participants use Twitter by this retweet

feature to express the gender politics and to challenge traditional forms of

feminine values in Thai mainstream culture.

Secondly, the hashtag feature has become another popular mode used by the LC

participants to resist normative discourses regarding femininity in Thai culture.

‘Re-Tweet-Fav’, ‘Re-Tweet-DM’, and ‘Re-Tweet-Follow’ are the patterns of

hashtags used by the LC group for sexual purposes. These kinds of creative

hashtags carry many significant implications. For example, they create hashtags

to communicate their sexual desires and emotions, as shown in the cases of ‘Rt

ตามทัก’ (Re-Tweet-DM) by the participants Ploy, Fah, Yok, and Pawee. Also, this

particular hashtag can be used for sexual purposes as in, for instance, ‘#บอทหาคน

คุย’ (for finding a sexual relationship) – as seen in the cases of Jang and Nui. Such

observations suggest that the LC participants tactically use the hashtag feature

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for diverse sexual matters, from displaying courtship to building a sexual

relationship. I consider such a hashtag activity carried out by the LC group to be

in line with findings from previous scholars who argued that the hashtag feature

is not only viewed as “searchable talk” (Zappavigna 2018) or “conversational

practice” (boyd et al., 2010), but also as the “interchange” (Zappavigna, 2015)

and “interpersonal dimensions” of meaning-making of the users (Page, 2012).

However, my findings point to an additional layer of the hashtag function used by

the LC participants, that they are not just engaging in a social interchange of

information or in interpersonal dimensions between their online friends. They are

also building their relationships for sexual purposes, which are manifested in the

form of courtship and personal expression of sexuality and desires.

Overall, I suggest that the LC participants manipulate Twitter as the subcultural

resistance drawing on social semiotic resources, which are hashtags and

retweets afforded by Twitter. As discussed in the literature review, Thailand has

many women discourses that still restrain young women’s sexual expression. For

example, the ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’, ‘ka la the sa’, girlhood, and ‘dutiful daughter’

values in Thai families are the mainstream public discourses linked to the

categorisation of being ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women (Boonmongkon et al., 2013),

Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). I consider that the LC participants are

oppressed by these discourses, especially in the family setting. For example, in

the discussion of Ploy’s case in the previous section, she revealed in the interview

that the only topic she could not talk with parents was the sex issue. She said that

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“this is because they don’t want me to have the same bad experience as my

mother did when she was pregnant while studying in high school”. This revelation

helps to understand why she refrained from expressing her sexuality and having

a sexual relationship due to her domestic issues. With the reason provided, this

case demonstrates to a great extent that family members of the LC participants

are still too conservative to let their daughter express sexuality owing to the parent

myth regarding bad experience in the past. Thus, it is not doubtful why gender

and sexuality remain a taboo subject among young women in Thai families.

Turning to the online context, Twitter is suggested as a choice to challenge the

mainstream and normative discourses through many tactically creative ways,

such as the retweet and hashtag modes of communication, as I have continuously

argued.

Lastly, I suggest the ‘Both’ (role-play) activity as the ways by which the LC

participants challenge normative heterosexuality in Thai society. They used

Korean pop artist images as Twitter’s profile pictures to serve a particular sexual

purpose. The ‘beautiful’ male images they employed are based on fan works

regarding same-sex relationships, like Boys Love (BL) in Japanese popular

culture. The profile images they used for the ‘Both’ online activity can potentially

produce diverse meanings through the compositional metafunction framework

(Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006). For example, in the case of Jang (Figure

11), my analysis holds that she plays the role of a ‘gay’ boy character which is

placed on the left. This left placement represents a rather sexually ‘agent’ position

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and a ‘demanding’ nature in sexuality when compared to another ‘pretty’ male

character on the right in the image. Moreover, other communicative modes in the

image, such as gesture, gaze, and smiling can produce additional meanings when

viewed from the interactive metafunction framework (Kress and van Leeuwen,

1996, 2006). The body posting/acting (i.e., a close selfie by snuggling and raising

two fingers for cute posting) can demonstrate the meaning of male homosexual

relationships. Also, the closed-lip smiling by the left male character and the

grinned smiling by another right male character in the image emphasise the visual

component of male homoeroticism. All things considered, it can be seen that there

are many visual modes of communication that can potentially produce the

meanings in terms of sexuality and gender identity. Figure 11 is an example of

how the ‘Both’ role-play activity by the LC participants can be used to subvert

normative heterosexuality. They use the ‘Both’ (role-play) sexual activity, which

arose from the fan community, to negotiate their sexual orientation and gender

identity, including not only heterosexual identities but also other fluid identities.

Besides Jenkin’s concept of fan culture (1988, 1992), de Certeau’s secondary

production concept (1984) can also be applied to understand the LC participants’

fan community on Twitter. As Jenkins proposes the idea of “textual poachers”

(1992) in fan culture, he explains that the fans “poach” (steal) cultural resources

from their idols and repurpose them. For instance, Star Trek is one kind of textual

poacher because this original media text was rerun, reread, and rewritten by fans,

especially the creation of same-sex fan texts, like the Kirk-Spock relationship

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(Jenkins, 1988). From this, it could be argued that the ‘Both’ role-play activity

among the LC participants on Twitter originates from the subculture of fan’s

imagination, derived from the consumption of their favourite original media texts,

which they then remodel or remake into different fan stories to serve their political

sexual interests. To explain this, they reuse the Korean pop artist images, set

them as their profile pictures on Twitter, and then rebuild the different stories to

serve their sexual interests – that is flirting with a same-sex partner. As

mentioned, de Certeau’s secondary production could be another concept that can

be applied to understand this.

This concept proposes the notion that mass culture is not produced or reproduced

by the cultural industry alone. The Frankfurt school refers to this as ‘passive’

consumption (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, 1992). In this view, people

can have their imaginary world both individually and collectively to produce their

cultural products (or subculture), called “secondary production” (de Certeau,

1984). To apply this in the case of fan works among the LC participants, such as

the imaginary homoerotic relationships between their Korean male artists, the

‘Both’ role-play activity is suggested as the cultural product made by their

subgroup (as members of the online fan community). Although this role-play

subculture in the online community is seen to be an unprofessional activity by

‘amateurs’ (Adorno and Horkheimer,1992), they still decide to produce their

cultural products which do not need to conform with the standardisation of the

culture industry in the mainstream culture (ibid). Hence, the ‘Both’ (role-play

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online activity) on Twitter is considered a cultural product made by a subgroup of

the LC participants. Thus, they do not have to comply with the mainstream

discourses and heterosexual norms through such a created subculture online. In

other words, they create this subculture online as a strategy of subversion against

traditional forms of female conducts, and as a means to negotiate sexual

orientation and gender identity, particularly by LGBTQ+ users.

In conclusion, through the key themes in the LC group, I argue that the LC

participants are the group who use social media to subvert traditional public

discourses in Thai society. However, I suggest that to study the ongoing types of

feminism, we should analyse the relationship between girls' agency and

resistance from a more nuanced perspective that allows for ambiguity. Even

though these LC girls seem to be able to feel empowerment, choice, capacity,

and independence to perform subversive acts and engage in post-feminist

culture, their sexual activities re-mobilise patriarchal values, as argued by

McRobbie (2009). They cannot completely disregard patriarchal forces, the

dominant culture, and normative femininity, since they are still invested in the

beauty culture/products related to capitalism (McRobbie, 2009). McRobbie (2009)

argues that girls' activities today, such as dressing up, enjoying make-up, wearing

high heels, and other props – which are adopted as statements of personal choice

and female empowerment – are like a ‘post-feminist masquerade’. It is a “form of

dispersed and body-oriented gender power central to the (re)production of

masculine hegemony” (McRobbie, 2009). In short, she argues that girls'

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empowerment and choice in post-feminism culture are a “provocation to

feminism”: it is a kind of illusion that undermines the progress of previous waves

of feminism.

According to McRobbie’s argument, it appears that girls' agency is still limited in

terms of sexual matters even though they have more opportunities to resist the

constraints of patriarchal values than they did in the past. As previously critiqued,

McRobbie’s judgment may be a little too severe in not allowing choices of

pleasures and playfulness for the youth. I continue to argue that the ways in which

the LC participants perform their online selves seem to be acts of political

resistance, and, at the same time, it appears to be the play and act of pleasure in

the negotiation of their gender identity. This can be shown by their retweeting

and hashtag practices, and the ‘Both’ sexual activity on Twitter. While they are

resisting the dominant culture through Twitter’s political activities, they seem to

derive pleasure from these playful activities online. For instance, in Figures 6 and

7, the retweeted content “girls just wanna play with their dressing” and “girls just

have fun and are happy with their dress” indicates that young women express

their agency (i.e., playing with their clothes and having fun with make-up and girlie

materials) in the sense of expressing pleasure. In other words, it can be said that

the resistance on social media by the LC participants are the playful subversion

or pleasurable resistance strategies by young women. The LC sexual activities

are therefore unstable, a challenge towards, and a resistance to Thai dominant

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culture, and, at the same time, creative, playful, and pleasurable practices for the

performance of their gender identity.

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Chapter 6: Middle class, diversity in gender performance, and

sexual autonomy

This chapter investigates how the MC participants negotiate their gender identity

through the use of social media. There are specific questions this chapter seeks

to address. How do they resist traditional discourses on Thai women? Which is

the platform they perform that kind of resistance? How do LC and MC resistance

differ? And how is the spoken discourse of the MC participants related to their

social class as well as to gender?

As discussed thoroughly previously, there is a possibility that social class exerts

influence on the ways in which young Thai women express their gender online.

Importantly, each social group possesses their own discourses and social norms

due to their different indicators of socioeconomic status (SES) such as social

background, education, and parent’s income as discussed in the Methodology

chapter. Also, each social group may differentially use social media to negotiate

their gender identities depending on the people and the community impacted on

that online platform. Instagram was the most used social media by the MC

participants since their parents, school teachers, relatives, and other adults

related to their social communities lacked access to this site. Thus, based on the

research question “How is social media used in negotiating gender identity

by young Thai women from different class backgrounds?”, this chapter

interrogates how the MC participants perform a diversity of gender and struggle

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with sexual autonomy on social media since they may constitute a social group

that is also oppressed by the elite class. Furthermore, as I proposed previously,

social media function as alternative and/or multiple spaces in which young women

have more freedom to assert their gender identity – they can play out within

contested traditional discourses in Thai society. To acquire a deeper

understanding, I suggest a close analysis of one sample participant (called Natty,

as a pseudonym) to support the emergent theme in the chapter: the MC

participants perform diversity of gender and struggle sexual autonomy

such as freedom and self-determination as regards gender identity on

social media. Also, data from the rest of the participants (June, Puifai, Perth,

Gam, Mook, Mapang, View, Bell, Top) will be discussed to show similar patterns

of the theme. This key theme has been derived from data analysis patterns across

the MC participants. Specifically, the theme has emerged after the cross-

referencing of three data types: the interview, the focus group, and the social

media by using thematic analysis as the framework. The theme will then be

deemed as relevant by multimodal metafunction as discussed in the Methodology

section.

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Theme 1: Non-binary cosplay and resistance to hetero-normative

discourses

According to the key theme, the MC participants seem to be the group making up

the most diverse gender performances online. They use social media to

communicate and/or express their gender with diversity and they are active users

who employ social media to struggle for sexual autonomy. Cosplay is one of the

online activities in which they engage to negotiate their gender diversity;

meanwhile, it is performed to resist hetero-normative discourses in Thai culture.

By cross-referencing three data types in the study – social media data

(Instagram), interview, and focus group data – I will provide a full picture of

emerging themes from all the MC participants’ triangulated data. I will start by

giving the picture from the interview and focus group data and then will present

the triangulated data from the social media site. Natty, one of the MC participants

who mentioned sexual autonomy in Thailand, said that:

Gender is an individual’s own judgment; we thus need to have a freedom

to decide our gender because this is 2020! We should have our own

decision in expression, not only of gender identity but also of sexuality.

[the intensive expression by raising the volume of her voice suggests

strength and confidence]

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Natty’s spoken utterances in the interview data suggest the representation of

struggles for sexual autonomy. She spoke for empowerment of freedom, choices,

and rights of women gender, aiming to promote self-judgment regarding gender

identities as well as sexual autonomy in Thai society. When we interpret her

speech mode, we can sense her confidence and evidently agree with what she

asserted regarding the concept of sexual autonomy. Natty used an intensive tone

(or strong voice) and she raised her volume up to show confidence in the main

point of her speech. This interpretation of the speech mode [intensive

expression by raising the volume of her voice suggests strength and

confidence] can be seen as one of the crucial resources to produce intensity in

multimodal communication (Jewitt, et at., 2016). The intensity of vocal tone in the

case of Natty can serve to stress the idea of sexual autonomy and diversity of

gender performance that she tried to assert through her speech discourse. To

conclude Natty’s remark, her tone of voice – as signifying resources of her

meaning-making – helps the audience to realise that she had a strong belief in

and perspective on sexual autonomy, gender diversity, and freedom in expression

of gender and sexuality, which is meant to challenge normative ideas, especially

hetero-normative discourse in Thai society.

Similar to the results from the LC participants in the previous chapter, I observe

that the emerging data from the MC participants have given rise to additional

issues related to the study. Even though the research question aims to focus on

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gender terms in young Thai women, sexuality has implications that are

simultaneously associated with gender. When I focused on asking the participants

about gender perception, their answers showed the link between gender and

sexuality concepts. For example, in Natty’s case, her spoken discourses in the

interview indicate that she wanted to promote the ideas of both gender identity

and sexuality – e.g., “we should have our own decision in expression of not only

gender identity but also of sexuality. This demonstrates that Natty perceived

gender in association with sexuality. In fact, the two terms are intertwined with

each other since gender is perceived much more as bodily appearances through

dress, speech, and mannerisms, while sexuality is understood as an inner

expression such as thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, values, and

relationships. Hence, similar to what I proposed in the previous LC chapter, I

maintain that the two concepts of gender and sexuality are implicated

simultaneously in the communicative intentions of the MC participants.

Specifically, when the participants expressed their gender identities through their

spoken discourses as well as through their social media profiles, they also

negotiated their sexual expression, which encompasses aspirations, fantasies,

desires, and relationships. For instance, cosplay is one of the online activities that

achieve gender negotiation through dress, hairstyle, make-up, their sexual

desires, fantasies, and relationships are indirectly expressed even these might

not be manifested in the physical sexual relationship – please see further

discussion after this.

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In the focus group setting, June, Puifai, Perth, Gam, and Mook also emphasised

the promotion of sexual autonomy in Thai society. They revealed that Thailand

has strict norms of femininity that shape the ways in which young girls perform

their gender. For example, June said that “the idea of being a dutiful daughter in

a Thai family imposes a fairly strict control on the performance of our gender since

we need to conform to what our parents say. This is not only about being the

dutiful daughter in a Thai family but also about other women discourses in

Thailand that place a high value on women’s expression of gender and sexuality.

Because we are women, we are so oppressed by these values” [this confident

expression shows the certainty of the speech]. Here, June’s expression is in

line with Natty’s spoken discourses in the individual interview previously. It

suggests that June perceived gender to have implications for sexuality – as she

said “women discourses in Thailand place a high value on women’s expression

in gender and sexuality”. Importantly, she is confident to speak about the

oppression of women by such a traditional form of femininity. This confirms the

certainty of her speech, which also corresponds to Natty’s speech. Furthermore,

in terms of group dynamic and interaction, while June expressed the issues of

traditional discourses and oppression of Thai women, Puifai, Perth, Gam, and

Mook who were sitting together in the focus group setting, showed their

agreement with June’s expression by nodding their head. Through the mode of

gesture and body language in the interactive metafunction, lowering and raising

one's head slightly and briefly refers to the meaning of agreement, assent,

understanding, or a way of giving someone a signal. This kind of signal means

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that they quite agreed with what their friends expressed when they were in a

group.

To triangulate the data, there are cases of how the MC participants used social

media sites as a space to resist hetero-normative discourse as well as other

femininity norms in Thai culture. Based on the survey’s outcome, Instagram was

the MC participants’ most frequently used social media platform; particularly, they

used IG’s stories feature to express their sexual fantasies and relationships – for

example, cosplay activity represents how they engaged in social media to express

their non-binary gender.

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Figure 12: A short selfie video (with the length of 5 seconds depicting four

scenes) on IG’s stories – by Natty (on the left)

According to the theme ‘middle-class, diversity of gender performance, and

sexual autonomy’, I propose that social media used by the MC participants not

only allows them to perform diversity and/or alternatives of gender but also

empowers them to resist hetero-normative discourses in Thailand, such as

gender binary and sexual restraints in young Thai women. The evidence reveals

that they wished to speak out about sexual autonomy and promote gender

diversity in Thai society by using online platforms to express these ideas.

Figure 12 is one of the cases demonstrating how the MC participants negotiated

multiple gender identities and sexual expression with more freedom through the

use of social media. I observe that different types of audiences, i.e., school

friends, online friends, parents, relatives, and school teachers on each social

media platform can cause different performances of gender. In other words, the

MC participants used different platforms for the practice of their different and/or

multiple gender performances – as revealed by Natty’s interview and social media

profiles. On Instagram, Natty engaged in the cosplay activity to represent her

‘boyish’ character, while she presented herself as a ‘girly’ person on her Facebook

profile. The online expression on both Instagram and Facebook to a certain extent

was in contrast with her biological sex, which is female, when we observed her in

the physical context. Such a contradiction reinforces the theme that the MC

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participants perform their diversities of gender through online communication

within different platforms. As I mentioned, they are the social group making up the

greatest diversity in gender performance through social media use, while also

being the active users who struggle for sexual autonomy.

Figure 12 is the cosplay activity posted on Natty's IG's stories, which

demonstrated the meaning of non-binary gender and sexual fantasies. To explain

this, the non-binary meaning in Natty’s cosplay activity is a form of popular culture

among teenage girls in Asia. This cultural practice (cosplay) is derived from

manga Japanese popular culture and is ubiquitous in many countries, such as

Korea, China, as well as Thailand (Leng, 2014). As reviewed in the literature,

cosplay activity originated from ‘manga’ Japanese comics, cartoons, and

animation, and has become popular among young Thai women (Keenapan,

2001). I suggest that popular cosplay sexual activities on social media are the

alternative ways for the MC participants to perform their dynamic, diverse, and

non-normative gender and sexuality. In Natty’s case, the diverse and/or

alternative gender identities can be interpreted through the gender switch role-

playing concept in cosplay activity. For example, Natty, in Figure 12, who is on

the left adopts a role play of a ‘boyish’ character, while the other participant on the

right in the image portrays a less boyish (more ‘girly’) character. It is noted that

the gender switching in cosplay activity can be altered from boy to girl, or girl to

boy, or even to tomboy. Thus, when the participants expressed their alternative

gender identities through the cosplay via switching the role-play activity, it

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reinforced the theme that the MC participants were the active users making up a

group with the most gender diversity and struggling for sexual autonomy. At the

same time, this practice possibly conveyed the notion of resistance against

hetero-normative discourses in Thai culture.

Even though the MC participants expressed their diversity in terms of gender

identity and sexual expression such as thoughts, desires, fantasies, and

aspirations in cosplay activity, there was no explicit evidence showing that they

had actual sex or sexual relationships in a physical context. Specifically, the

cosplay activity shown on the IG video infers gender roles playing through a kiss

on the cheek; not actual sex or any further sexual relationships in a physical

setting. Thus, this evidence promotes the understanding that the MC participants

engaged in cosplay activity to playfully explore their diverse gender identities; at

the same time, they mobilised sexual autonomy and sexuality since they can have

sexual fantasies, desires, and aspirations with their friends, despite the absence

of evidence claiming that they engaged in physical sexual relationships in an

offline context. With reference to the performance of their diversity of gender

identity and mobilisation of sexual autonomy through cosplay activity, I suggest

this as a form of playful negotiation and/or pleasurable resistance. This finding

can be further discussed by Joel’s study (2011), which argues that cosplay

activity, especially in queer performers, can be considered as “pleasurable

resistance”. He argues that cosplay can be seen as a sense of agency in

expressing pleasure since cosplayers can play with dressing up, make-up, and

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other props through the imitation of characters. While they are playing with this,

they are expressing pleasure and agency. In the meantime, they are resisting

normative gender practices in the dominant culture. Thus, it could be inferred that

the ways in which MC participants engaged in cosplay activity are creative and

pleasurable in nature and are accompanied by the intention to subvert Thai public

discourses and conventional norms.

Natty’s case, for example, shows that she rebelled against gender binary

practices in the Thai dominant culture through the meaningful manifestation of

gender diversity instead. There are four scenes in Figure 12 that represent

different meanings made by Natty on her IG stories. We can see diverse

meanings of gender through the acting of both participants (left and right). In the

first scene (on the top left side), when the left participant starts to kiss the one on

the right, the meaning produced is that the left participant is the ‘actor’ (performs

an action) between the two. In the meantime, the participant on the right is the

‘goal’ (receiver) of the action.

In the second scene, (on the top right side), when Natty on the left (as the agent)

kisses the one on the right (as the patient), Natty is interacting with the viewers

by looking at the camera. After that, the participant to the right uses her hand to

cover her face. This kind of gesture and body movement (using the hand to cover

the face) are performances of gender roles for that moment. She may be

performing the feeling of shyness and a passive gender identity since she hides

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her feeling by covering her face. While the right participant may perform her

shyness through her gesture and acting, the participant to the left is smiling with

confidence and staring directly at the camera.

Next is the third scene (on the bottom left side). This scene shows the opposite

meaning. When the left participant starts to kiss the participant on the right in the

first scene, this seems vice versa in the third scene. That is, the right participant

kisses the left participant back in the third scene. Hence, it is the participant to the

right who is the actor (performs an action) between the two, while the left

participant then becomes the goal (receiver) of the kiss – this action is totally

opposite to the first scene. However, there is one major difference between the

actions of the first and third scenes. For the first scene, when the left participant

initiates the kiss, the right participant still uses her hand to cover her face and

closes her eyes. This gesture and acting imply the meaning of shyness and

submissive qualities. On the other hand, for the third scene, when the participant

to the right returns the kiss, the left participant still gazes directly at the camera,

dramatically interacting with the viewers and producing the meaning of ‘demand’

according to the interactive metafunction. Thus, this major difference reinforces

the meaning that the participant to the left performs as the actor, possibly

representing the active role and identity, whereas the participant to the right

performs as the goal, inferring the passive role and identity.

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Lastly, in the fourth scene, (on the bottom right side), when the kissing action from

both finishes, the left participant still gazes directly at the viewers and smiles with

confidence (ingratiating smile); but the participant to the right gazes at the other

side, not directly to the viewers. This kind of gaze direction suggests that the

participant on the right decides to avoid making any ‘contact’ with the viewers and

may not show the symbolic ‘demand’ from the viewer. In contrast, every scene of

the left participant's gazing directly at the camera refers to the ‘demand’ in gender

performance. In the interactive metafunction framework, Kress and van Leeuwen

(2006) call such pictures as ‘demand’ pictures – the people in the picture

symbolically demand something from the viewers. This is referred to as a kind of

‘contact’ in the interactive metafunction – it is when people ‘make contact’ with

the viewers, which can establish an (imaginary) relation with them. Thereby, the

left participant is interacting with the viewers by looking at the camera which can

produce the meaning of ‘demand’ in gender performance. It seems that she is

demanding the audiences be on her side or agree with her. Her action, eye

contact, and other facial expression emphasise her sense of confidence and the

fact that she demands agreement and/or solidarity: she wants her audiences of

the image to believe and agree with her intimate relationship.

In short, the evidence suggests that the participant to the left represents herself

as the ‘actor’ who performs the action through her body movement, acting, gaze,

and facial expression. Specifically, Natty expresses the demand in gender

performance by unblinkingly gazing at the camera, which significantly highlights

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her interaction with the viewers. She also emphasises this with the viewers by the

ingratiating smile. Nevertheless, this is quite opposite the participant to the right,

who performs herself as the ‘goal’ of the action, whose performance can be

interpreted through her acting, gaze, and facial expression. She closes her eyes

in the first scene when she is kissed by Natty. She then stares at the other side,

not to the camera – an act performed without showing any symbolic demand from

the viewer. Also, she uses her hand to cover her face in almost all scenes,

implying the meaning of shyness, submissive quality, and a passive gender

identity. However, due to the nature of multimodal analysis, it can produce

numerous different meaning potentials depending on social contexts and specific

environments of that text. For example, the left participant in Figure 12 seems

also to be holding the camera, which might suggest that she is more active in that

sense too. On the other hand, the other participant’s shyness might be because

she is being recorded while she has not initiated the videoing. We can see that

multimodal analysis can produce divergent meanings due to the different social

contexts of the participants. Importantly, social semiotics emphasises the agency

of the sign maker. Sign systems are shaped through social usage; it is not

possible to separate a sign system from society and its contexts of use by people

(Jewitt, et al., 2016). I hence maintain that we need to understand the meaning

making of the participants (also for Natty’s case in Figure 12) through the nuanced

lens that allows for ambiguity. This is because the multimodal analysis, which is

grounded in social semiotic theory, aims to understand the social dimensions of

meaning derived from social action and interaction using semiotic resources –

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this can provide the ambiguity of meaning making by the participants (Jewitt, et

al., 2016). Thus, different interpretations are possible in the case of Natty. Even

if there is some ambiguity about what roles they are performing exactly, it seems

Natty is taking the role as the actor who challenges the norms of Thai society, as

we can see this meaning through Natty’s agentive movements, positions and

gestures in the image. On the other side, the girl to the right feasibly carries out

the role of the passive partner in the lesbian relationship owing to her vague action

and gesture in the image. Alternatively, the fact that she is being recorded and

has not initiated the recording, possibly explains her expression of shyness. In

short, there are many possible ways to interpret the meanings of this non-verbal

communication since the participants are performing these roles for the moment

as part of the performance of gender identity which can take diverse and complex

forms.

In terms of a range of props in visual communication, the participants in Figure

12 are made salient in the interactive metafunction through their size, position,

colour, and use of lighting. The term ‘salience’ is used by Kress and van Leeuwen

(2006) to indicate that some elements can be made more eye-catching than

others. This can be made in many different ways through size and colour

contrasts. For example, red is always a very salient colour with a tonal contrast –

in short through anything that can make a given element stand out from its

surroundings (Van Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2004). In the case of Figure 12, the most

significant representative props which are salient in the image are the dresses

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(i.e., the cosplay dress – black theme for masculine quality and white theme for

feminine quality). These dresses are recognised as symbolic attributes which are

gender performances through the gender-switched in the cosplay activity.

Specifically, Natty on the left position is represented as a more ‘boyish’ figure

through the costume of black colour, while another girl on the right is considered

to have more ‘girly’ inner through the costume of white colour. The categorisation

of black and white colour is quite linked to the cultural perception in one society

of which diversity is a major element. Black and white colour produce the contrast

meanings according to the colour theories and psychology studies (O'connor,

2011; Katz, 2013). While black is commonly associated with power, authority, and

strength, and has been used with men, white is considered as righteous, good,

peaceful, and submissive, and has been used with women (O'connor, 2011). In

other words, black evokes sophistication, power, and activeness, while white

communicates innocence, naivety, puerility, and passiveness (Katz, 2013). This

implies that black and white are opposites – a tonal contrast. In colour theory and

psychology in commercial advertisement, we can see an advertisement like the

case of Ralph Lauren’s Polo Black that uses black colour for targeting men. This

particular advertisement aims to express dark and strong, communicating

qualities of mystery, depth, and power. To apply this in the case of Figure 12,

Natty, who wears the black cosplay costume, can represent the meaning of

‘boyish’, ‘active’, and ‘agent’, while the other girl, who wears the white cosplay

costume, communicates the meaning of feminine quality – righteous, peaceful,

and submissive. To sum up, I maintain that the meanings through the visual

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modes of communication in Natty’s case are conventionally associated with

symbolic values attached to props, dresses, accessories, facial expressions, and

gestures. Thus, the symbolic values as interpreted in Figure 12 illustrate the

notion of diversity of gender identity performed via the cosplay activity, which is a

form of sexual autonomy that the MC participants struggle towards as the key

theme.

In order to support this argument, I found that more than half of the MC

participants had similar patterns in playing with their costumes in the cosplay

activity. This reinforces the argument that they are the most active users who

mobilise sexual autonomy and constitute a group of individuals who perform

gender identities with the greatest diversity. The followings are the evidence in

support of the argument.

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Figure 13: June takes a selfie of her cosplay picture showing an

‘unconventional’ expression of gender role – she subverts heterosexuality

by switching her biological sex (as female) into ‘tom’. Plus, she wrote the

caption in the image: “ผมดุนะ พี)ไหวหรอ” (I'm so aggressive, can you handle

me?) to convey the hidden feeling of sexiness and a touch of sadism.

Figure 13 is a selfie picture posted on June’s IG profile. She expresses her diverse

identities through the cosplay character who wears a black wig, glasses, a make-

up, a black necklace, and clothes. These elements convey an ‘unconventional’

gender role and identity via the switch of her biological sex (as female) into ‘tom’.

According to Sinnott, ‘toms’ and ‘dees’ are terms widely recognised in Thailand in

the context of female same-sex relationships, both of which are etymologically

derived from the English words “tomboy” and “lady” (2012). In many Western

countries, women who subscribe to these relationship roles are often casually

referred to as “butch” or “femme” lesbians. When coupled, one acts more

masculine, while the other is typically feminine. In Thailand, Sinnott (2012) terms

a masculine woman, particularly caring and attentive, as ‘tom’ (butch lesbian),

and her more feminine partner as ‘dee’ (cis-gendered lesbian). Thus, we can

interpret that June tried to convey her ‘tom’ character through her selfie picture

via many elements in the cosplay. Common characteristics of such ‘tom’ identity

include wearing masculine clothing (a black hoodie), a short haircut, a black

necklace and nerdy glasses as props that are physical in nature and are

considered in Thai dominant cultures to be unfeminine, or the domain of boys.

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Due to these props and elements, Sinnott (2012) suggests that ‘tom’ (masculine

woman) is considered as the “active agent” in the sexual positioning of the

relationship – which is similar to ‘tom gay king’ as a further refinement of ‘tom gay’

in Thai society. Furthermore, this active agent of ‘tom’ can also be interpreted

through the written caption, written on the image by June as “ผมดุนะ พี)ไหวหรอ” (I'm

so aggressive, can you handle me?). This sentence can be alternatively

translated, for example, as “I’m gonna go rough on you, can you handle me?”,

“I’m so fierce, can you go with it? Or are you okay with that? It is a slang sentence

and has become popular on social media (IG, Facebook, and Twitter) among Thai

teenagers since the band Mean, a Thai pop boyband, posted this caption on their

Instagram profile and subsequently went viral online. This sentence is a tease

between couples to convey some hidden feelings of sexiness and a touch of

sadism; also, it can be used for flirting with someone for sexual fantasies and

relationships online.

Overall, Figure 13 demonstrates an ‘unconventional’ representation of gender

identities made by June. She subverts heterosexuality by switching her biological

sex (as female) into ‘tom’. I observe that June’s exhibition of her ‘tom’ identity – a

characteristic considered typical of a boy – is the reproduction of gender

stereotype and normativity on men in Thai society. Specifically, June’s expression

in the cosplay through costume, haircut, and other props still reinforce masculine

gender norms in Thai dominant culture. However, I wish to point out that the

cosplay activity on social media allows June to subvert heterosexual norms by

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switching her biological sex to non-binary gender. I thus argue that social media

sites still provide more room and opportunity to practise gender diversity and

sexual autonomy. The following is another expression by June.

Figure 14: June shows a similar performative pattern to what was posted

on Natty’s IG stories (Figure 12). She takes a selfie with her friend (on

the right) to represent the diversity of their cosplay characters,

mannerism, and identities.

Figure 14 is a piece of supportive evidence that reinforces the argument of how

the MC participants exhibit their non-binary gender through the cosplay activity.

June demonstrates a similar performative pattern to what is seen in Natty’s IG

stories in Figure 12, showing how she alters her characters into a different gender

role through the costume, the make-up, a short blond wig, props, and also through

facial expression and gaze. By triangulating the data, the interview data

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demonstrates that June perceives herself as tom (butch lesbian or masculine

women). She said that “I’m not sure what my gender is, but my perception is that

I’m more attractive to females. My parents have asked me this question, and I

said that my preference is a type of girl, lesbian, or dee, something like that. I’m

so lucky that my parents don’t feel angry with my answer”. The evidence from

triangulated data between the interview and social media data (IG posts – like

Figures 13 and 14) indicates that the MC participants used Instagram as a space

to perform their sexual fantasies, aspirations, and desires and as a platform to

mount resistance against hetero-normative sexuality in Thai dominant culture.

The followings are other pieces of supportive evidence from Puifai and Perth

showing the same theme of argument.

Figure 15: Puifai also takes a selfie of herself in cosplay dressing showing

her boyish character which is not in line with her biological sex.

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Figure 16: A selfie picture posted by Perth, which follows a similar pattern

in playing the cosplay activity to convey gender identity with diversity.

Figures 15 (Puifai) and 16 (Perth) are examples supporting the argument of how

the MC participants engaged in cosplay activity to perform their non-binary

gender. All things considered, I argue that the MC participants used social media

(Instagram) to exercise their sexual autonomy and gender performance with

diversity. As interpreted in the case of Natty above (Figure 12), she challenges

hetero-normative practices by switching her gender roles through the cosplay

activity on IG stories. To explain this in detail, the gaze, the facial expressions,

and the position in Figure 12 demonstrate that Natty holds a more active and

confident attitude while the other girl exhibits shyness and submissiveness.

Although Natty’s portrayal of confidence as a boy and the other girl’s presentation

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as a shy girl reproduce a gender stereotype and male normativity (confident and

sturdy) and female inferiority (shy and submissive) in Thai dominant culture, I

maintain that the cosplay activity still allows them to subvert heterosexuality or

gender binary grounded in the biological attributes that comprise the male and

female sexes. In other words, the boyishness that Natty performs still reproduces

characteristics of gender roles of men, which does not contribute to the

subversion of masculine gender stereotypes in Thai dominant culture. However,

when she performs a boy gender identity through the cosplay activity, this is a

kind of ‘unconventional’ practice for her biological sex. Furthermore, her

performance exemplifies the narrative of non-binary gender allowing for diversity

in terms of characters, mannerism and identities. In short, I argue that when the

MC participants express their non-binary gender through cosplay activity on social

media, they play with their diverse gender identities that may be neither male nor

female – identities that are outside gender binaries – like in the case of Natty

(Figure 12), June (Figures 13 and 14), Puifai (Figure 15), and Perth (Figure 16).

This line of evidence supports the notion that the MC participants display the most

diverse gender performance – compared with other social groups – and that they

are active users striving for sexual autonomy.

To link my argument with previous a Thai scholar's findings, Boonmongkon et al.

(2013) propose that social media is a novel social space offering opportunities for

young Thai women to deal with their struggle for sexual autonomy. The autonomy

term made by these scholars regards young Thai women as “active agents”: they

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can use online sites to actively express love, responsibility, intimacy, and sexual

desire (Boonmongkon et al, 2013). This finding is in line with Fongkeaw’s study

(2016), which suggests that young Thai women exert agency to negotiate their

gender identities online. Moreover, these Thai scholars argue that since young

Thai women are now more active agents who express their gender online, they

achieve a certain level of sexual autonomy and can construct, negotiate, and

maintain their gender identity and sexuality through their social media profile

pages (Boonmongkon et al, 2013; Fongkeaw and Fongkeaw, 2016). Even though

what these scholars found is in line with my current findings, they did not address

the question of social class, which I have discussed here in the context of social

practices. I thus argue that the social group that uses social media to achieve

their sexual autonomy and to exert agency in gender matters is the middle-class

(MC) group. In other words, I narrow the scope of my finding to show that the MC

participants are the active agents constituting the social group that negotiates

their sexual autonomy and gender diversity.

In conclusion, the triangulated data point to the role of the MC participants as the

active agents who mobilise sexual autonomy and negotiate the most diverse

gender identities on social media. They communicated issues of gender politics

such as autonomy, freedom, gender rights and quality through their spoken

discourses (from the interview) and online interactions (the cosplay activity). In

other words, the MC participants used social media to manifest the issues of

gender politics, which are about female autonomy and freedom of sexual

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expression. This argument is in accordance with the previous scholar’s findings,

but my current study expands the perspectives on the implications of social class.

The case of the cosplay activity implies the resistance to hetero-normative

practices such as the cultural enforcement of gender binary, as shown by their

ability to switch their gender roles and play with diverse identities through their

dresses, props, characters, and manners. Thus, such a cosplay activity online

can be considered one of the explicit examples showing the process of women’s

adaptation and resistance to the traditional public discourse of femininity and

other mainstream normative ideas about gender in Thai culture. However, I

propose that to understand female sexual negotiations in both online and offline

contexts, they need to be analysed in a more nuanced light. While the MC

participants resisted hetero-normative practices in Thai dominant culture through

many tactical ways on their social media profiles, this form of resistance can be

observed as a route to pleasurability and playfulness. Although McRobbie notes

that female empowerment and rights are an illusion in post-feminism (2009), I

would put forward that McRobbie’s argument perhaps denies pleasurable and

playful dimensions of contemporary feminism. Hence, I argue in favour of the

ambiguity of how the MC participants performed their diverse genders and

mobilised their sexual autonomy in online sites. They were resisting dominant

culture and, in the meantime, exercising power through their play with costumes,

make-ups, and characters in the cosplay activity.

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Theme 2: Social media post challenges the ‘common sense' of

feminine discourses grounded in the state’s ideology

The previous section presents the MC participants as the social group making up

the greatest diversity of gender and struggling to achieve sexual autonomy. To

strengthen this argument, this section will interrogate how social media posting

can challenge the ‘common sense’ of feminine discourses underlying the Thai

state’s ideology.

As discussed in the literature review, women discourses in Thai dominant culture

have established the prevailing categorisation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women, which

has become a ‘common sense’ in feminine conduct (Thaweesit, 2004). It is

argued that ideological discourses concerning being ‘good’ women still reinforce

the virtue, submissiveness, the need to marry men, and monogamous qualities

(Thaweesit, 2004). Thai women are expected to marry men before they reach the

age of thirty; importantly, they are also expected to tolerate marital problems for

their children’s sake and to remain married until death. Furthermore, they should

avoid adultery and promiscuity: if women commit adultery, they are strongly

condemned and are seen as ‘bad women’ (Thaweesit, 2004). These normative

discourses become the ‘common sense’ of feminine conducts that are grounded

in the Thai state’s ideologies, which are enacted and perpetuated through

institutions, schools, families, and mainstream media.

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Figure 17: Gam (left) and Mook (right) post a couple picture on their IG

profiles to show their (sexual) relationship.

Figure 17 shows two of the MC participants using social media to display their

sexual relationship, a practice which challenges the ‘common sense’ of feminine

conduct. To explain this, Gam and Mook showed their couple picture, tagged

each other on this picture and posted it on each other’s IG profiles. They also

used a heart emoji (<3) as the caption to convey the feeling of love and/or the

meaning of their (lesbian) relationship. When we interpret this picture through

interactive metafunction, distance, contact, and point of view can be modes of

communication that can create particular relations between viewers and the world

inside the picture frame (Van Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2004). In everyday interaction,

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the norms of social relations determine the ‘distance’ we keep from each other

(ibid). This translates into the ‘size of frame’ of shots: to see people together in a

close-up picture is to see them in the way we are normally more intimately

acquainted. In contrast, when we see people with whom we are less intimately

acquainted, this refers to the ‘distance’ of the relationship. There are many

intermediate degrees between a close-up and distance in everyday life, and many

intermediate degrees between the most intimate relations and the total absence

of a relation (Van Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2004). Figure 17 uses a medium shot –

cutting off the human figure somewhere between the waist and the knees. This

suggests a social relationship which is not as far as intimate/personal

relationships or an impersonal relationship. In terms of the ‘contact’, Figure 17

has no eye-contact to the viewers since both Gam (left) and Mook (right) do not

look directly at the camera. In other words, there is no symbolic ‘demand’ of

something to the viewers since they appear to have limited contact from inside

the picture frame. This may be because they just wanted to show their hidden

(lesbian) relationship through the social media post. Furthermore, their facial

expression, gaze, and gestures in the image emphasise how they convey their

hidden (lesbian) relationship. For example, their gaze is not of the one looking

down on the viewers or even looking up at them, but the couple rather look at the

phone’s camera to take a selfie of themselves through the mirror. Also, they

display their lesbian relationship to the viewers without an ingratiating smile; they

rather choose to express this through the penetrating stare on the camera’s lens

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without making any contact and demand to the viewers. Overall, the image is an

expression of their (mysterious) sexual relationship.

In terms of ‘point of view’, they communicate their sexual relationship through the

‘eye-level’ vertical angle in the image, which means the equality in symbolic

power. Both Gam and Mook indicated in the focus group study that their parents

knew about their relationship and felt unsatisfied with it; however, they continued

with their lesbian relationship and made it public in the online space since they

wanted to support gender diversity and equality. Gam said that:

Even my parents don’t like the fact that I am in a lesbian relationship with

my partner, I still do it because this is my life. I have the rights to decide

what my preference is and what I can do.

Mook emphasised this idea that, “I rather make my lesbian relationship known

online instead of the offline space since I don't want to fight with my parents”.

When Gam and Mook talked about these ideas, other participants (Mapang, View,

and Bell) in the group seemed to agree. They pointed out that social media could

offer them more spaces to talk about and express gender diversity, equality, and

autonomy, because these topics are rarely raised and discussed in the offline-

adult culture as a result of the restraints prescribed by the ‘common sense’ notion

of feminine conducts in Thai state's ideologies. Returning to Figure 17, the eye-

level projection in the vertical dimension can represent the meaning of symbolic

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equality, which is in line with the issues of what they discussed through the spoken

utterances in the focus group such as the issues of gender rights, diversity,

equality, and autonomy.

Hence, based on what they said in the focus group and what they posted on social

media (as in the case of Figure 17), the overall evidence suggests that even

though they were still oppressed from expressing their gender identity by parents

and family members who adopt the key ideologies of the Thai state, they took the

opportunity to challenge the ‘common sense’ of feminine conducts through social

media posts. This lends further support to the argument from the previous section

that the MC participants are the most active users mobilising gender diversity,

equality, and autonomy; at the same time, they are attempting to resist women

discourses and traditional norms of gender in Thai society.

As discussed previously, the virtue, submissiveness, the need to marry men, and

monogamous qualities are the ‘common senses’ of feminine conduct derived from

the Thai state’s ideologies (Thaweesit, 2004). How are gender roles and

stereotypes in women such as motherhood, wifehood, and daughterhood or

girlhood (re) produced through the state’s ideologies? This can be further

understood by Gramscian cultural hegemony (1971). Gramsci considers that the

state and ruling capitalist class – called “the bourgeoisie”, the term which is also

used in Marxist theory – use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist

societies (1971). This bourgeoisie’s power maintenance produces social

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constructions in society such as gender norms and values, which are produced

and developed by the ‘ideology’ rather than by violence or command in

hegemonic culture (Gramsci, 1971). In this view, traditional public discourses on

women and other values in femininity are constructed through the state’s ideology

before becoming the common senses in Thai mainstream culture. Thus, it is

argued that hegemonic culture generates its values and norms so that they

become ‘common sense’ in gender norms (Gramsci, 1971).

In conclusion, I argue that the MC participants employ social media to challenge

the common senses of (traditional) feminine discourses, which are normally

derived from the state’s ideology. They use these alternative sites via multimodal

texts such as still pictures posted on IG profiles (as in the case of Figure 17),

moving images on IG stories (as in the case of Figure 12), and other multimodal

aspects on social media such as written captions, emoticons, and tagging of

friends’ profiles. Social media, in my interpretation, is therefore a multimodal

space for the MC participants to negotiate their gender identity and sexual

autonomy, since they can communicate the meanings of equality symbol,

diversity, and self-independence through their posted pictures and other texts

online. As discussed in the case of Gam and Mook in Figure 17, it can be

understood that their selfie picture reveals their lesbian relationship to be in line

with what they said in the interview that they came out as lesbians – even their

parents disagreed with this. This underlines their decision to come out and reveal

their relationship through a social media site rather than an offline site. The overall

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multimodal texts in online interaction reinforce the theme of the MC participants’

sexual autonomy, diversity, as well as multiple gender identities without the

boundary imposed by the parents’ (adult) culture.

Thereby, I am led to view social media as a metaphor: a city where parents,

adults, teachers, or relatives are included and excluded. And this city is where

children can find their tactics to express their sexual desires and autonomy

through their manageable profiles. This metaphorical city of social media can be

discussed by de Certeau’s Walking in the City (2010). The “city” refers to

institutions and structures of power in the country which are “producers” of cultural

practices and social norms (de Certeau, 2010). In other words, the institutions (or

producers) employ power by using “strategies” to establish such practices and

norms in society. However, “walkers” at the street level – as a metaphor for the

young generation – are never fully determined by the plans of the institution

because they can “tactically” produce their shortcut ways to walk (de Certeau,

2010). Employing de Certeau’s boundary concept, social media boundaries can

be seen as the city that consists of the presence of mainstream cultural practices

set by parents or adults. For example, young Thai women need to be neat, well-

mannered, and modest without any vulgarity in content posted online since Thai

parents see their children as victims of harmful social media usage. Nevertheless,

this city can provide alternative spaces for young women to play in and express

their intrinsic selves and identities. The underlying implication here is that even

though social media is considered the ‘city’ where girls are directed by their

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parents, teachers, or relatives, they can still ‘tactically’ manage their social media

and express their gender without having to be fully constrained by the

expectations of their parents and the adult culture. They are taking shortcuts

despite the strategic grid of the streets in the controlled city (de Certeau, 2010).

These generated tactics by young women can be seen as the negotiation and/or

challenge to mainstream culture since they can express their diverse gender

identities and alternative characters, from girly, lesbian, boyish, tomboy, to other

LGBTQ+, which can leave them some room for ambiguity. Hence, I draw a

conclusion of this theme by asserting that the MC participants use social media

to exert a level of agency to struggle for sexual autonomy and diversity in order

to challenge the common senses of feminine discourses grounded in the Thai

state’s ideologies.

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Theme 3: ‘Rak nuan sa nguan tua’ (to maintain virginity) and ‘ka

la the sa’ (contextual sensitivity) discourses contested by social

media post

Do women discourses in Thailand still oppress gender performance in young

women? How do they resist these? Which are the dominant discourses perceived

as salient factors shaping gender performance in young women? In other words,

are there any specific discourses perceived as fundamental devices in gender

matters? These concrete questions will be used to draw the discussion of how

the MC participants use their social media accounts to communicate and contest

those dominant discourses of women – to reinforce the theme of the MC’s

argument in the study.

In Thailand, there are many feminine discourses: ‘rak nuan sa nguan tua’ (to

maintain virginity), ‘ka la the sa’ (contextual sensitivity), ‘kul la sa tree thai’ (Thai

feminine qualities such as submissiveness and courtesy), ‘ching suk kon ham’ (to

preserve chastity until marriage), ‘ying klong ruen’ (wifehood and motherhood

such as women as housewife, women in the kitchen, and women’s responsibility

to take care of their children), and ‘chai chang tao na ying chang tao lang’ (men

are considered leaders, while women are followers or compliant members in the

family). Since the existence of Thai traditional aristocracy and historical tradition,

these women discourses have been viewed as salient factors that shape gender

performance in young women (Cook and Jackson, 1999; Klausner, 2000). Thai

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scholars such as Boonmongkon et al (2013), Songsamphan (2008), and

Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo (2020) suggest that traditional feminine

discourses put pressure on young women to accord with cultural dichotomy,

where they are categorised as good (kon-dee) or bad (kon-chua).

From these, I asked some of the MC participants about how they perceived those

women discourses in Thai society, and which are the most influential discourses

to them? Mapang, View, and Bell, members in the focus group study, shared

similar thoughts that:

I think we have been discussing women discourses for a very long time. I

don’t know where it came from, but I just remember that my parents,

teachers, and my surrounding have always repeated it since I was young

until now. – said Mapang.

I also don’t know where it came from, but I guess it might originate from

the way we talk in our society and we repeat it all the time in the school,

the family, the media, and the surrounding environment. – said View.

I think education is the foundation of this issue. We learn something from

what we read in books and what teachers say in class. I have heard many

times about rak nuan sa nguan tua, ka la the sa, and kul la sa tree thai in

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Thai textbooks and subjects in class, such as Thai history and social

subjects. So, I don’t think they will be gone from Thai society. – said Bell.

Following these pieces of evidence, I carried forward by asking the question about

which specific discourses they thought are the most underlying ones shaping their

gender performance. Their answers revealed two feminine discourses that are

the most impactful for them: 1) ‘rak nuan san guan tua’ (maintaining virginity), and

2) ‘ka la the sa’ (contextual sensitivity). As Bell said in the focus group: “I think the

most powerful discourse on women is rak nuan san guan tua because this covers

everything that girls need to do such as having no relationships with men,

maintaining their virginity, and/or preserving their chastity until marriage”.

Similarly, Top also agreed with Bell’s expression, as shown by “I think rak nuan

san guan tua is the most long-standing tradition. Because of its existence for a

long time, I think that it is the most underlying one shaping our expression of

gender”. Their comments suggest that rak nuan san guan tua (to maintain

virginity) is the most fundamental device that exerts influence over gender

performance since it covers the things young girls need to do or not do – as

indicated by the examples that Bell gave, that girls should have no relationships

with men and should maintain their virginity until marriage.

At the same time, Natty said in the interview that: “ka la the sa is something my

parents talk about a lot, and I think has a big impact. This is because it shapes us

to perform everything according to the appropriateness as dictated by the

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sensitivity of time and place in society”. Puifai gave an example that “if we want

to dress whatever we like, but that situation is not appropriate for us to do so, we

need to change our dress. Because of this, I think it prohibits us from doing what

we want to do, and I think Thai society is too sensitive about dressing, expression

and manners". Bell explained further that, “some Thai virtues and cultural

principles are such non-sense. For instance, why do we need to tie our hair back

(or put our hair up) when we attend graduation ceremonies? Why do we need to

change our hair colour to the original black colour when we are at school? Or why

should we wear a skirt below the knee to enter the exam room? These show that

adults are so sensitive about our dresses, bodies, and manners. I’m sure that

adult people will say ‘this is because we have the ‘ka la the sa’ value in our

society’” [spoken sarcastically].

The evidence obtained from the interview demonstrated to me that almost all of

the MC participants shared the same view that ka la the sa (contextual sensitivity)

is another major underlying discourse impacting how they dress, speak and act.

For example, the extract from Natty’s interview, “ka la the sa is

something…makes a big impact… it shapes us to perform everything according

to the appropriateness as dictated by the sensitivity of time and place in society”,

carries the implication of the contextual sensitivity concept in Thai conventional

norms (Boonmongkon et al, 2013; Songsamphan, 2008). This is in line with

Puifai’s remark that Thai society is too sensitive about people’s dresses,

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expressions, and manners with reference to the sensitivity of time and place

concept.

Crucially, when analysing their overall spoken utterance during the interview, I

observed that the language they were using was relatively rhetorical. It is a kind

of academic expression that is more sophisticated than the expression of the LC

participants, whose language was rather simple and straightforward. For

instance, Top said that, “I think rak nuan san guan tua is the most long-standing

tradition. Because of its existence for a long time, I think that it is the most

underlying one shaping our expression of gender”. To me as a researcher, the

language that the MC participants used in the interview and focus group reflects

their ability to exhibit abstract thinking and express their understanding of society

in a quite abstract way. This can be linked to their class background as the middle

class in Thai society. Due to their academic achievements and a comparatively

high socioeconomic status of their parents, they may be more comfortable with

that kind of language because it is the kind of language that their parents use as

teachers, academicians or those who have senior roles in industry-leading

companies. Hence, speaking with that kind of language reflects their native dialect

in a way that is determined by their sociocultural background, whereas the LC

participants are less comfortable, confident, and more tentative even if some of

them might be high academic achievers.

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In the meantime, what Natty said, “it makes a big impact…it shapes us to perform

everything according to the appropriateness as dictated by the sensitivity of time

and place in society”, shows the relation of the active agent and the passive

recipient. It can be inferred that she represents herself as lacking the agency or

being the passive recipient of the conventional norms in society. It is suggested

that the discursive forces by the active agency are shaping us to perform

normative identities; thus, there is a kind of social power struggle going on when

Natty represents herself as a victim or as being oppressed.

Furthermore, as they are the marker of the discourse, the language used by the

MC participants sounds like a set of rhetorical questions. Many spoken utterances

used by them signal that they tried to question society. They also seemed thankful

to me for the opportunities to be able to express their opinions and articulate them

as freely as they could. For example, Bell said, “why do we need to tie our hair

back when we attend graduation ceremonies? Why do we need to change our

hair colour to the original black colour when we are at school? Or why should we

wear a skirt below the knee to enter the exam room?”. These interrogative

expressions, such as “why do we need? why should we? suggest a form of

rhetorical challenge to social norms: it is a kind of challenging expression that

shows their emotional agitation caused by Thai society. However, it is also

followed by phrases like “we need” or “we should”. These model verbs are also

examples of imperative expression. Therefore, there are two aspects of

communication detected in their expressions. There is an imperative from the

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forces of society, as seen in “we need to tie our hair back”, “we need to change

our hair colour”, and “we should wear a skirt”. The modal auxiliary verbs of need

and should are the social imperative showing that they are forced to do what

society expects. Nevertheless, their use of language not only represents a kind

of imperatives in society, but it also refers to the challenge by prefixing with the

question, “why we need?”, “why we should?”. In short, the language they used in

the interview and focus group data reflects a form of social imperatives that are

forcing their performance of gender identity under normativity and simultaneously

contains cues that convey challenging expression.

To triangulate the data, I will provide social media data from Bell to show how she

contested these discourses through her posted picture.

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Figure 18: Bell tags her boyfriend in the picture and posts it on her IG

profile.

Through the compositional metafunction, framing, layout, placement, and other

elements of relative salience of media texts can provide meaning potentials. In

terms of ‘framing’, since the elements of the composition in Figure 18 represent

a sense of belonging together, this produces the meaning of ‘connection’ between

the elements in the picture, especially between the two participants (left and right).

In other words, this kind of connection is achieved through similarities and rhymes

of colour and form, through vectors that connect elements, and of course through

the absence of frame lines or empty space between the elements (Van Leeuwen

and Jewitt, 2004). Figure 18 has no empty space between the two participants or

other frontal objects in the picture; this means they rather connect together

without boundaries. The similarities of colour – that is white to soft blue tone – are

connecting the elements in the picture, ranging from the colour of shirts, the sky,

to the river. Overall, it can be said that the mood and tone of colours and other

forms of frame lines in Figure 18 are smooth, which allows for the connection of

the elements. The term ‘salience’ is used by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) to

indicate that some elements can be made more eye-catching than others. This

can be achieved in many different ways, through size or through colour contrasts.

The two main participants (Bell and her boyfriend) are the most salient objects in

the picture owing to their location in the centre while wearing salient white shirts

and having no empty space or contrasts of colour that disconnect them in the

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picture. These elements make them stand out from their surroundings.

Furthermore, we can interpret a similar pattern of couple pictures from another

social media post of Bell on her IG profile (Figure 19).

Figure 19: Bell posts (again) her couple picture with her boyfriend to show

their sexual relationship on her IG profile.

When we interpret the participants through the interactive metafunction, their

gaze, gesture, facial expression, and body movement in Figure 19 offer some

sexual meanings. For example, through the frame size, Figure 19 uses a shot

between a close-up and a medium shot, which appears to convey the intimate

relationships between them. However, Bell is not staring directly at the viewers,

while her boyfriend who is on the left gazes at the camera. This brings the boy in

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more ‘contact’ to the viewers and can show more ‘demand’ compared with Bell's

expression. In other words, the boy’s stare at the camera with the confident

smiling and the girl’s gaze at the other direction to conceal her feelings render

Bell a less demanding person with less eye contact with the viewers, meaning

that she chooses to keep more distance in relation to her boyfriend. Plus, through

Bell’s facial expression and acting, she pushes out her lower lip (like kissing lips)

in order to look sexually attractive and her face also inclines closely towards her

boyfriend. Overall, Bell’s expression through her gaze, facial expression, and

movement in Figure 19 can reinforce the ways she expresses her (sexual)

intimate relationship.

When we look at the interview data, Bell is the person who spoke explicitly about

discourses of women in Thailand. For example, “rak nuan san guan tua covers

everything that girls need to do such as having no relationships with men…and

maintaining their chastity until marriage”. This comment shows that Bell disagrees

with such a traditional discourse and decides to challenge this through her actual

action on social media, that is to show her relationship with her boyfriend online.

This consideration is in line with Boonmongkon et al’s study (2013), who argue

that young Thai women can display their bodies and express their gender and

sexual relationships with more freedom through the use of social media. Young

women users can tactically create their profiles to post socially desirable images

and to exert the level of agency in expressing their gender and sexual

relationships (Boonmongkon et al., 2013).

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Importantly, Bell was aware of the ‘ka la the sa’ value in Thai society – she said

that “adults are so sensitive about our dress, bodies, and manners. I’m sure that

adult people will say ‘this is because we have the ‘ka la the sa’ value in our

society’” [spoken sarcastically]. She contested this idea by not following it. Her

action on social media is opposite to such a discourse, as evident in the way she

dressed as she wanted, showed her romantic relationship with her boyfriend,

wrote captions, used emoji, and tagged her boyfriend in a picture and posted it

on the IG profile.

To sum up, the evidence obtained here suggests that the MC participants

challenge Thai feminine discourses, particularly ‘rak nuan sa nguan tua’ (to

maintain virginity) and ‘ka la the sa’ (contextual sensitivity), through their social

media activities. When compared to other groups, the MC participants are the

social group who display the most diverse gender identity and sexual autonomy.

This again leads to my presentation of and emphasis on the argument that the

MC participants manipulate social media platforms as alternative spaces for

performing non-binary gender with diversity and for mobilising sexual autonomy

in Thai culture. However, as I consistently assert, to understand girls’ sexual

negotiations in both online and offline contexts, we need to analyse them in a

more nuanced light. While their use of social media in negotiating gender identity

seems to confer resistance to public discourses in Thai dominant culture, the

ways that they perform their gender are also suggested as a route to pleasurability

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and playfulness. Although it is considered that girl’s empowerment in post-

feminism is the false impression (McRobbie, 2009), I still argue that girls in

contemporary feminism can add pleasurable and playful dimensions to their

performance of gender identity. Hence, despite the ambiguity surrounding how

the MC participants perform their diverse genders and mobilise their sexual

autonomy in online sites, what their practices have revealed is the act of resisting

dominant culture by exercising power through their play with costumes, make-

ups, and characters in the cosplay activity.

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Conclusion

According to the theme ‘middle class, diversity in gender performance, and

sexual autonomy’, I argue that gender performance and sexual autonomy are

at their most diverse and most pronounced in the MC participants. For instance,

there were cases of non-binary cosplays which are viewed as pleasurable

resistance to hetero-normative discourses, such as in the cases of Natty (Figure

12), June (Figure 13 and 14), Puifai (Figure 15), and Perth (Figure 16). At the

same time, social media posts were used to challenge the common sense of

feminine discourses – like in the case of Gam and Mook’s lesbian relationship

picture (Figure 17), which represents a form of subversion of heterosexuality in

Thailand. Lastly, there was the case of Bell (Figures 18 and 19) who seemed to

contest Thai traditional feminine discourses, namely ‘rak nuan sa nguan tua’

(remaining virginity) and ‘ka la the sa’ (contextual sensitivity), by showing her

romantic relationship on her IG posts.

The above-mentioned evidence lends support to the argument that the MC

participants tactically deploy multimodal texts, such as profile pictures and

still/moving pictures, to express their diversity of gender and to convey their

(sexual) meanings. The ways in which they communicated their gender identities

on social media are distinct from the ways they communicate in a face-to-face

setting. This is because online sites can offer more alternative, flexible, or multiple

spaces to perform gender diversity through various characters and identities. The

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discussion is enriched by previous Thai scholar’s findings. Boonmongkon et al.

(2013) argue that even though the traditional discourse on women’s chastity still

influences women’s gender performance, they can tactically create desirable

images in terms of gender identity and can exert their autonomy in expressing

their sexuality with more freedom on the manageable platforms. Similarly, the

finding from Songsamphan’s study (2008) also indicates that even if young Thai

women still cannot escape the influences of conservative discourses in offline

interaction, they have more opportunities to express themselves independently in

gender respects through the use of social media.

To build on these previous scholars’ findings, I emphasise social media’s function

as the city applied by de Certeau’s framework (2010). I describe social media as

a city in a country, a metaphor by which the Thai state or institutions strategically

produce norms, values, and discourses in society. Specifically, social media still

possess social norms and dominant cultures in Thai society due to the existence

of multiple impacted audiences in the online space such as parents, teachers,

relatives, school friends, close friends, strangers etc, all of whom play a part in

reproducing and enforcing such norms. According to Marwick and Boyd, social

media collapse multiple audiences into single contexts, making it difficult for

people to use the same techniques online that they do to handle multiplicity in

face-to-face conversation (2011). As a result, many young users need to struggle

against their “imagined audiences” on each social media platform. Due to having

different types of followers/friends on each platform, they have their techniques

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of audience management, including targeting strategies for different audiences,

concealing subjects, and maintaining authenticity in the presentation of their

selves and identities (Marwick and boyd, 2011). Thus, I argue that social media

(as a metaphorical city) is a place where young users need to struggle for their

self-presentation due to the context collapse and multiple audiences as

discussed. However, an interesting observation here is the MC participants could

employ their own tactics through posting, sharing, linking, tagging, and hiding on

social media in order to express their alternative identities. Specifically, although

the city has a map that leads people in the country to perform everyday life

activities, the walkers (young Thai participants) can create their shortcut routes to

walk on, which are never fully determined by the plans of the state and institutions

(de Certeau, 2010). In short, social media is imagined as a bounded city

consisting of many discourses and norms strategically (re)produced by adults

such as parents, family members, and teachers; young people as tactical walkers

can have their own space to play with their gender identities and deal with sexual

autonomy. Thereby, the use of social media by the MC participants is deemed to

be a challenge to mainstream discourses in Thai dominant culture. The following

is an example extract that demonstrates how the MC participants usually posted

pictures to show their alternative identities and sexual relationships and

preferences – a rare event in the offline context.

I post many pictures about my everyday-life activities with my lesbian

partner, and I also tag her in the profile. Even though some of my offline

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friends (school friends) might not know about my relationship and my

sexual preference, my online friends which are closer to me than my school

friends seem to know and accept this. I think it is not wrong to post content

related to our sexual activity or any other contents related to our preference

because I am sure that my online friends definitely agree with this.

However, I’m not sure if this can possibly happen in the offline context

because we have so many sensitivities of time and place in the adult

culture – spoke Mook.

In conclusion, the above interview response substantiates the claim that the MC

participants use social media to post their everyday-life activities including gender

identities with diversity and sexual preferences and relationships, even though

traditional forms of feminine conducts and sensitivities of the adult culture still

exist in Thai society. To pursue the research question ‘how is social media used

in negotiating gender identity by young Thai women from different class

backgrounds?’, I argue that social media offer alternative and/or flexible spaces

in the process of adapting and resisting traditional public discourses regarding

feminine values. To be precise, the MC participants use these alternative spaces

for their everyday gender negotiation and everyday pleasurable resistance to Thai

dominant culture. They use such online sites to deal with their sexual struggles,

especially the oppression of feminine discourses such as the concept of ‘good’

and ‘bad’ women as well as the notion of the ‘dutiful’ daughter, which is highly

valued in Thai families. Consequently, social media is considered a valuable

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space for them to deal with such struggles in order to achieve sexual autonomy.

Altogether, both the LC and MC participants are groups that resist mainstream

discourses and common senses of femininity in Thai hegemonic culture, although

the MC group’s resistance is more confident and assertive. As I discussed in the

theory chapter, the LC group is defined as corresponding to Marx’s proletariat,

and typically by default, they are resisting Thai dominant culture, while the MC

group appears more like Marx’s bourgeoisie who conform to such mainstream

culture. However, it is the youths who are resisting, not their parents. According

to Birmingham’s school of cultural studies, the “youth” as a kind of class fragment

resist the conventions of their parent group (Hall, 1993). Thus, similar to the LC

group, the MC participants try to manage their social media profiles to subvert

gender normativity in Thai hegemonic culture even though their parents are the

bourgeoisie, the ruling class who own the power to enact the norms in society.

When discussed that youth is as another class fragment as Hall and Jefferson

argued, I maintain that youth is the third structure that works crossing with social

class and gender. To explain this, Crenshaw (1989) suggests that the oppression

is intersecting with many layers of different forms of oppression, including many

aspects of social identities such as race, gender, class, nationality, citizenship,

and religion. Importantly, even though MC participants are defined as Marx’s

bourgeoisie – it is their parents who comply their social values, not the youth class

– as Hall and Jefferson argued. From this, I observe that class and gender

connect each other – but youth is also a segment of society that plays a part in

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the intersectionality. We can notice the evidence in this and previous chapter that

both LC and MC resist parental norms and discourse through many concrete

examples such as the cosplay activity, the ‘Both’ role play activity, the specific

hashtags used for flirting, the retweeting texts against Thai’s ideology on Twitter

Accordingly, I suggest that the use of social media to negotiate gender identity

between the LC and MC participants is similar: both groups use online sites to

mount resistance against Thai hegemonic culture. This is due to the emergence

of the newly middle class in urban social strata in Thailand. Funatsu and Kagoya

(2003) propose that there is an emerging new urban middle class with a mixed

social origin that is rooted in the urban lower class. The stereotype of the Thai

middle class as a homogeneous elite class being at loggerheads with the lower

strata is contradicted. In fact, the emerging middle class is seen as new rich social

strata in Thailand who move up from the lower class. Thus, these two strata

between the lower and middle classes are derived from a similar social

background and socioeconomic status (SES). We can see that they have some

ideas in common, especially sexual expectations, social norms, and gender

values. Thereby, due to the overlap of these two social strata, I maintain that they

are similar in terms of the social media use for the negotiation of their gender

identity and resistance to hetero-normative discourses in Thai dominant culture.

However, I argue that the MC group’s resistance is more confident and assertive

than that of the LC group. This can be explained by the finding from Funatsu and

Kagoya (2003), who assert that the new emerging urban middle class in Thailand

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possess more cultural and intellectual hegemony than they did in the past. They

have managed to obtain higher education and secure industry-leading careers.

These have enabled them to own more cultural hegemony, which has been

successfully translated into political power in Thai society until now. Because of

the increasing political power, improved education, and better opportunities in

professional careers that they have acquired, they have become more confident

in the resistance to Thai dominate culture than the LC group have.

Hence, I am firmly of the opinion that the LC and MC participants slightly differ in

their use of social media to subvert conventional discourses; in particular, the LC

participants seem to be more anonymous than the MC participants do. The LC

participants would rather take tentative steps towards their resistance against

traditional feminine discourses as we can notice from their furtive activities online,

such as the ‘Both’ activity and specific hashtags used in their Twitter community.

They borrowed the original tweeted contents from other authors and most of the

profile pictures used on their Twitter’s accounts were anonymous like avatar

profiles. There is no obvious evidence of the authors whom the LC participants

borrowed their original tweeted contents from, since those authors also used

avatar profiles. The LC participants still camouflaged themselves as they did not

want to be identified online. This suggests that they were wearing a mask to hide

themselves from others, but they would reveal their true identity to their social

group only when they engaged with their subculture activities online. Also, the

hidden agendas that the LC participants tried to express are involved with

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domestic issues such as familial concerns, while the MC participants seemed to

discuss more diverse and broader social issues in society such as topics about

non-binary gender, fluid identity, LGBTQ+, and gender inequality. For example,

Ploy, one of the LC participants said that “this is because they don’t want me to

have the same bad experience as my mother did when she was pregnant while

studying in high school”. This indicates that the oppressiveness in sexual matters

is derived from the domestic setting in their LC’s family space. Thus, the

constraints and oppressiveness in the LC’s sexual negotiations initially appeared

in an offline environment (home setting). They then tactically challenged these

through social media profiles which are rather anonymous. Meanwhile, the MC

participants seemed to be more explicit than the LC girls did in their attempts to

challenge Thai dominant culture, as seen from their spoken discourses and from

the pictures posted on social media. These patterns of behaviour explicitly reflect

unconventional practices of gender such as non-binary gender through the

cosplay activity. Owing to the emerging new urban middle class, whose origin is

in the urban lower class, there has been an overlap between the LC and MC

groups in Thai social strata (Funatsu and Kagoya, 2003). We can see that to a

certain degree, both the LC and MC participants share common experiences such

as gender performances and the subversion of dominant discourses. In other

words, both groups appear homogeneous in terms of resistance to public

discourses and mainstream norms in femininity since they possess similar social

backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses.

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In short, my main argument is that the subversion of gender matters between the

LC and MC groups is similar in pattern, as both socioeconomic groups are not far

apart in terms of their social origin and background; nevertheless, the LC

participants’ expression was rather anonymous and strongly associated with

domestic issues stemming from family-related conflicts, while the MC participants

appeared to express themselves more explicitly and confidently, with the

engagement in broader social issues as regards gender matters in society. As

discussed in the self-reflexivity of the researcher in the Methodology chapter, I

identify myself as a Thai middle-class woman who can implicate the process of

data collection and analysis with each group of participants. Due to the nature of

power imbalance, a potential recognition of my middle-class status by the LC

participants could present an issue. Their awareness of my position (as the

researcher) and educational background and social status could have a

subconscious impact on the ways they said and what they said during the process

of data collection and analysis. In other words, it might be a potential power

imbalance that affected the LC participants, causing the lack of confidence to

express their voices and attitudes in terms of gender in front of me as the

researcher. On the other hand, being in the same class and similar background

as I am in, the MC participants are considered here to be the most active agents

in the contestation against the various oppressive norms of Thai society. I

conclude this chapter by reiterating my argument that they are able to achieve a

certain level of sexual autonomy through their diversity, alternative strategies, and

dynamics of gender projected on and expressed through their use of social media.

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Chapter 7: Social media as a space for the negotiation of social

prestige by the upper class.

As discussed in the previous chapters, the LC and the MC participants used social

media as a site of resistance to conventional norms regarding gender in Thai

dominant culture. They typically negotiated social media to defy and challenge

traditional female values through many tactical ways such as creating subcultural

activities online. In this UC chapter, I aimed to investigate whether the UC

participants in this situation complied with the norms and values of their social

group and of their parents? Or, similar to the LC and the MC participants, did they

rebel against their social norms, parental discourses, and the Thai dominant

culture?

According to Bourdieu, people with privileged backgrounds are generally

considered the dominant group in society due to their high economic, social,

symbolic, and cultural capital in society (1984). Specifically, in Thailand, they are

viewed as those who work with symbols of high status, high professional

occupations, high educational obtainment, high income, and living in urban life,

whereas the lower group has fewer prestigious occupations and less educational

attainment as well as living in rural areas (Gullette, 2014). Significantly, it is

argued that children’s economic, social, symbolic, and cultural capital are partially

determined by their parents (Bourdieu,1984). Bourdieu states that, while children

have been conferred social capital by their families, they can also extend their

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potential through education and other kinds of cultural assets, both tangible and

intangible, such as abilities, skills, behaviours, and beliefs in any field. In short, it

can be said that social capitals can be transferred from one generation to the next

generation, and these capitals are considered “natural” assets that are

accumulated over generations (Bourdieu, 1984). Thus, Bourdieu’s framework can

be applied to understand the case of UC Thai families. The central question is

how UC parents’ cultural assets, such as education, manners, and tastes can

entail a whole range of cultural behaviour for the UC participants, extending to

non-academic features like gait, dress, or accent. These social capitals and

cultural assets are linked to the ways the UC participants negotiate their gender

identity both online and offline. Therefore, this chapter explores the question of

whether or not the UC participants still accumulate such cultural assets from their

parents. Or do they subvert these as the LC and MC groups did?

Even though Bourdieu’s framework applies to all classes in society, the high

social capital as well as cultural resources possessed by the UC participants

convey the notion that they might be the group who are typically concerned about

these the most. It can be hypothesised that the UC participants may have explicit

differences from the other two groups due to their dominant social status, position,

social capital, and cultural resources that their parents have earned. They may

be the group who adopts the position of social status and capital from their parents

and still accumulate these through their display on social media. To briefly explain

this, Bourdieu (1970) suggests the idea of cultural capital as a way to understand

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how power in society circulates. While Marx believes that economic capital

(money and assets) dictates your position in the social order, Bourdieu believes

that cultural capital plays an important and subtle role in this positioning.

Specifically, Bourdieu defines cultural capital as “familiarity with the legitimate

culture within a society", what might be called “high culture” (1984). He considers

that families pass on their cultural capital to their children by introducing them to

dance and music, taking them to theatres, galleries, and historic sites, and talking

about literature and art over the dinner table. This cultural capital concept of

Bourdieu has a direct impact on the academic discourse about social class, which

can help us understand the case of the UC participants using their social media

to negotiate and/or accumulate their social prestige and cultural capital. In other

words, how the UC participants negotiate their social prestige through social

media may be a function of accumulating and/or maintaining their power in

society. This accords with both Marx and Bourdieu's thinking, whose assertion is

that the more capital you have the more powerful you are. In short, it can be

hypothesised that social prestige and cultural capital are the key values that the

UC participants desire to keep and negotiate to reinforce their status, authority,

respect, and influence, not only in the offline setting but also in the online setting.

Here, the key theme is “social media is as a space for the negotiation of social

prestige by the upper class.” In brief, social prestige is the relation to one’s

authority, respect, and influence on society. For instance, individuals want to be

respected by others in the society we live in; in the same way, young people want

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to influence their friends offline or online (Balleys and Coll, 2016). According to a

behavioural development study, “social prestige stems from the human desire to

gain respect within one’s social milieu and from the individual’s need for self-

affirmation” (Marshall et al., 2005). In the twenty-first century, some scholars use

the term “social prestige” instead of “social status” to represent an individual’s

authority, respect, and influence in society; importantly, they assert that many

young people want to express this kind of prestige (or capital) not only in the

offline space but also in other alternative spaces such as online sites (Balleys and

Coll, 2016). To sum up, in this chapter, I will pursue the questions of how the UC

participants use social media to negotiate their social prestige and/or cultural

capital and whether they resist or conform to their social group norms and values

regarding gender? To do this, I suggest a close analysis of one participant, known

under her pseudonym as ‘Mew’, with supportive evidence from other participants:

Aily, Punch, Pam, Rainy, Jinny, Fang, Tammy, Pingpong, Tubtim, all of which are

pseudonyms.

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Theme 1: Upper class, Privacy, and New Media Literacy

The UC participants seem to be the social group concerned with their privacy and

involved with many aspects of new media literacy such as networking and

collaborating skills (Jenkins, 2009). How do they manage their social media

privacy? How do they post any comments or information related to the gender

matter? Is there any room for resistance in the UC participants? And, how can we

explain the difference between the conformity group in the UC participants and

the resistance of the LC and MC groups regarding gender online? These

questions will be discussed in the following sub-sections.

1.1 Upper class, the conformity and heterosexuality

To provide a context of the UC participants by cross-referencing data, the UC

participants are the group that appears less complex in terms of fluid-gender

identity. They mostly perceive themselves as straight women (heterosexual),

while other classes (LC and MC) show greater levels of diversity in terms of

gender identity and performance. For example, according to the online

ethnographic data, the LC participants have much involvement with same-sex

orientation (lesbian) on Twitter as a form of cultural resistance by creating a

subculture online. In the same way, the MC participants employ social media

particularly on Instagram to perform their non-binary gender to explicitly exert their

autonomy. For this reason, the LC and the MC participants have a tendency to

advance the notion of gender diversity and autonomy in Thai society. By contrast,

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the resistance to gender normativity in Thai dominant culture is not a feature

found in the UC group. Rather, they follow patterns of gender conformity to the

prevailing norms of parental discourse and adult culture by displaying a largely

heterosexual affiliation.

As shown in the survey, the UC participants defined themselves as heterosexual

(8 participants) and bisexual (2 participants). This numeric evidence

demonstrates that the majority of the UC group complied with their parent’s

expectations as well as norms and values in Thai dominant culture. The other two

participants were different from the main patterns in the UC group: they displayed

their unconventional identities that contradicted those of the conformity group – I

will discuss this in the last section. Overall, the UC participants seemed willing to

conform to conventional female values and their gender performances were

moderately in line with the social expectations in their social group. In contrast,

the LC participants as the subordinate group felt uncomfortable with the parents’

restrictions since they thought that it prevented the expression of their diverse

gender identities; thus, they found alternative spaces – social media platforms –

to rebel against these sexual restrictions by performing their non-normative and

autonomous identities.

Based on the evidence from the focus group and the interview data, the UC

participants said that they faced strict regulations of social media use in school,

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where students were not allowed to use mobiles phones during their study. Also,

there was a limitation on social media use imposed by their parents. Furthermore,

when I tried to access their social media profiles (to conduct online ethnography),

I found that they strictly limited the access due to privacy concerns. This evidence

implies that adult discourses – protecting young people against ‘bad’ media –

influence and control how the UC participants use social media for their everyday

gender negotiation. The fact that they limited the researcher’s access to their data

showed that they were aware of privacy implications, which are connected to the

aspect of new media literacy – I will discuss this in the next sub-section. It

appeared that the UC participants were the group that operated under the strictest

regimes in terms of social media use. For instance, they were subject to strict

school regulation, parental surveillance, and privacy concern by themselves,

whereas other classes of participants showed little adherence to these regulations

both in the school and the family setting. One of the UC participants, Mew, stated

in the interview that:

I don’t feel that using social media can help us express our attitudes,

feelings, and desires in gender or sexual expression. This is because

gender and sexuality can normally be expressed through the physical

world with nothing to hide. It may be because I don’t have anything to hide;

however, online spaces might be useful for someone who wants to express

their secret information or negotiate something that their parents don’t like

if they perform it at home.

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A possible explanation for Mew’s feeling that social media was a useless platform

to negotiate gender identity is due to her heterosexual identity, which already

conforms to normative values and practices in the Thai dominant culture. Her

displayed identities actually comply to her social group norms and values,

especially her parent’s expectations as well as heterosexual norms in Thai

society. Aily also revealed a similar thought that:

I think there is nothing to negotiate or hide our identity online: we can

display it naturally in the offline context. Social media is just a space where

I post my everyday activities in school. It contains nothing related to my

gender. I only express myself as a female through my profile picture. Also,

I have no boyfriend and nothing special to show in the online space.

Likewise, Punch provided a similar way of thinking in the interview:

I might have seen some of my friends use social media to share their

sexual experiences such as stories when they are in a relationship with

someone or even when they break up. Also, I have seen my friends alter

their identities or personalities diversly in online space, for example they

display their gay identities or post pictures of their gay relationship on their

social media profiles which this might be difficult to happen in the offline

context, especially with their parents at home, and also might be risky to

display in school area. So, others might think using social media is useful

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for them to alter or negotiate their gender identity, but I don't think so for

myself since I have nothing to alter or hide my gender.

These spoken utterances revealed by the conformity group in the UC participants

showed the collective pattern of disengagement from expressing or talking about

gender issues on social media. They rather believed that the matter of gender

can be expressed naturally in the offline context without hiding or using other

tactics – for instance, Aily said, “we can display it naturally in the offline context”

... “I have no boyfriend and nothing special to show in the online space”, and

Punch said, “but I don't think so for myself since I have nothing to alter or hide my

gender”. Importantly, the spoken utterances from them suggest that sexuality

terms are implicated in gender perception. It was noted that the perception of

gender is involved with the aspect of sexuality – as Punch said, “I have seen my

friends alter their identities or personalities diversly in the online space. For

example, they display their gay identities”, and “or post pictures of their gay

relationship on their social media profiles”. These excerpts suggest that gender

is perceived as bodily appearances, personalities, and characteristics through

dress, acting, and manners, while sexuality is known as inner expression such as

thoughts, fantasies, desires, and relationships. I observe that these two terms are

associated with and have implications on each other: when individuals express

their gender identities, they also convey their sexual expression in some respects.

To conclude, these pieces of spoken evidence suggest that the conformity group

of the UC participants tended to view social media not as a place to negotiate

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their gender since their displayed identities possess heterosexual and feminine

qualities, which are already in line with gender normativity in Thai dominant

culture. This is quite the reverse of how the LC and MC participants chose to

display their unconventional identities and non-normative practices that

contravene mainstream norms and culture – as discussed previously.

In short, it was observed that social media serves as an exhibition space for

expressing social prestige and cultural capital rather than gender performance in

the UC group. In particular, they used social media to show off their social and

cultural capital in terms of educational and social prestige. They expressed their

roles as dutiful daughters and successful students through their uses of social

media. To explain this in detail, I will elaborate on how they used Facebook

profiles as a space to maintain their social prestige in terms of ‘good’ daughters

and ‘good’ students in the next heading. Thus, I will not only demonstrate how the

UC participants used social media to negotiate their social prestige that was

premised on family obligation educational values, but I will also show how they

managed their privacy on social media and mobilised certain new media literacy

skills when expressing their social prestige online.

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1.2 Upper Class and Privacy management

As discussed previously, the UC participants used social media to negotiate

and/or accumulate their social prestige in terms of family and educational values.

This kind of negotiation can be viewed as the strategic management of social

media privacy. At the same time, social media is a platform for the display of

literacy levels in new media practices. Thus, it can be argued that the UC

participants used social media to exhibit their social prestige by manipulating their

knowledge of privacy management and new media literacy skills, the concept

proposed by Jenkins (2009), and Burn and Durran (2007). I am going to start

considering the nature of privacy management on social media, and then discuss

new media literacy. The literature related to the nature of social media privacy

supports the notion that young users manage their different audiences online due

to the collapse of context on social media sites (Marwick and boyd, 2011). Also,

the users can manipulate the privacy afforded by each social media platform in

order to present their selves and their identities due to its affordances such as its

networking, its features, and its technological functionality.

This view can be better understood by drawing on van Dijck (2013), who explores

the performance of self on social media, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. He

proposes the idea of “you have one identity” on Facebook, in that Facebook

encourages the cohesiveness of “one” identity because Facebook embraces the

increasingly public nature of its users, such as the archival narrative created

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through sharing, and the collapse of audiences, practices, and identities on the

site (van Dijck, 2013). He also believes that Facebook makes interactions more

visible on the news feed while LinkedIn and Twitter are spaces to share more

personal information in brief posts on a more regular basis. Thus, due to the

culture of connectivity, the convergence of audiences, and the digital public nature

on Facebook, teens have felt compelled to abandon Facebook, in favour of

LinkedIn and Twitter, which can allow for expression of greater gender fluidity,

divergent identities, and niche communities (van Dijck, 2013).

In the meantime, Vickery (2015) explores the Tumblr platform in non-dominant

youth users – the working classes in Texas, US. It is suggested that these young

users engage in more private practices on Tumblr. For instance, they are afforded

anonymous, disconnected disclosure, and more private interactions. Importantly,

Vickery (2015) highlights that Tumblr has similar privacy settings to Twitter. This

lends support to the finding that the LC participants as the non-dominant group

have similar practices to the working-class youth in the US in terms of usage of

private social media. The LC participants use Twitter as a space for anonymous

disclosure, identity negotiation, and the creation of niche and interest-driven

communities, which echo Vickery’s argument (2015) that the US working-class

youth use Tumblr as their private space for their niche identities and communities.

However, this differs from the case of the UC participants. While the LC

participants use Twitter under anonymity to mobilise political gender issues such

as gender right, autonomy, and diversity, the UC participants use anonymous

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Twitter accounts to engage with the fan community online only rather than share

their views on gender and political issues in society, as reflected by the limited

number of comments related to criticism in the politics of gender and other

discourses. This may be because it is too risky for them to speak out against

these matters. It can be reliably assumed that the UC participants were not in the

mode of resistance. Realizing the advantages of their class, they rather complied

and followed the position of their parents. A better understanding can be achieved

by applying Gramsci’s class concept (1971). According to Gramsci, the dominant

class possesses the power to enact the rules, norms, and ‘common sense’

through the ideology (1971). They are the group of people in society who typically

take advantage of these enacted rules and norms, while the subordinate group is

considered a disadvantaged group in society. There is no doubt that the LC

participants or non-dominant group in society need to struggle against class

oppression. This is a classical tension between structure and resistance that

many theorists argue, from Marxist theorist (1859), to Bourdieu (1970), and Hall

and Jefferson (2006). The theoretical frameworks of these scholars can help to

explain why the UC participants typically do not critique or challenge what their

parents have directed. Instead, they quite comply with what their parents have

enacted since they are the group that sets rules and discourses and takes

advantage of these in society. This is evident by the reluctance of the UC

participants to mobilise and criticise matters in gender politics such as the idea of

greater fluidity and diversity in society. In contrast, the LC and the MC participants

dramatically mobilised and challenged these social politics on social media space.

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Overall, the UC participants were rather more concerned with privacy on social

media than other classes of participants were: they used Twitter for anonymous

disclosure and anonymous identities, unlike their Facebook and Instagram

profiles that are connected to their embodied public identities. The followings are

the spoken utterances in the focus group setting indicating the UC participants’

usage of Twitter as their anonymous platform out of privacy concerns.

The only place that I will not make contact with others is Twitter. I use this

platform like a stranger – using an Avatar profile. I think it is because I view

Twitter as my safe zone and I don’t want anyone to know me there, so

there is nothing in the profile that can identify me. – said Mew.

Similarly, Aily confirmed Mew’s expression in the focus group that:

I use Twitter with an anonymous identity, I didn’t follow anyone or accept

followers, not even my school friends. I think it is important to have some

space where we can keep our privacy. Also, it can protect ourselves from

harmful things, like nowadays we have so many hackers and fake news.

[confident speaking with a clear and loud sound, without any

interruption by others; other participants also nodded their faces in

agreement with this idea]

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These spoken utterances by Mew and Aily demonstrated that they were

concerned about their privacy on social media and they used Twitter as an

anonymous platform. This can be reaffirmed by the interpretation of other non-

verbal modes, such as facial expression, body movement, and tone and voice.

They spoke about the notion of anonymity on Twitter with confidence and a clear

voice without signs of disagreement from others in the room. For example, when

one participant spoke about anonymity, Avatars, and privacy issues on Twitter,

other participants agreed with this by nodding their heads [other participants

nod their heads to give their assent to this idea]. As discussed earlier, Twitter

can allow users to participate as strangers, rather than as friends (Vickery, 2015).

Thus, the UC participants used Twitter to keep their participation in different

communities separated and disconnected; also, this platform allows them a

greater sense of contextual privacy and control. In short, I suggest that the UC

participants use Twitter chiefly to keep themselves anonymous: they do not use

the platform for mobilising gender identity politics or expressing fluid identity due

to privacy concerns. The supporting evidence will be provided in the next figure.

Through the online ethnography, a few numbers of the UC participants allowed

me to access their Twitter profiles (only 4 out of 10 participants). I needed to return

to ask them again for permission after the interviews were conducted for the first

time. This restricted permission shows the strict consciousness of online privacy.

Additionally, four participants who allowed me to access their profiles revealed

relatively limited contents and limited posts related to their gender. Most of the

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content shared on Twitter was related to the fan community of Korean pop artists.

For example, they used images of Korean artists as their profile pictures, which

represent the fan community culture online. Example Twitter profiles are as

follows:

Figure 20: Twitter profiles by the conformity group show how they used

Korean pop artists and other artists as their profile pictures to engage with

their fan communities as usual; at the same time, they shared nothing

related to their personal information; neither did they show their gender

identity.

In the case of Figure 20, it can be seen that the UC participants might have some

similar patterns with the LC participants when they expressed their gender

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identities by using K-pop artist images as profile pictures owing to the fan

community culture. Nevertheless, the difference is that the UC participants avoid

using Twitter to retweet ‘risky’ and ‘dangerous’ contents, and there were hardly

comments related to gender political issues shared through their profiles. Instead,

they preferred to use Twitter as a space to engage with their fan communities

online only in connection to the aspects of (new) media literacy, which I will

discuss shortly.

By contrast, the LC participants used their Twitter accounts to criticise political

social issues related to gender, such as gender inequality, rape, and sexual

abstinence. For example, one of the LC participants retweeted that “I do really

hate the speech: as we are women, others will look at us badly”. This indicates

that the LC group uses Twitter as the place for subverting public discourses,

especially for criticising social and gender politics along with mobilising greater

diversity and autonomy, whereas the UC group uses social media as a site to

only engage with their fan communities and express their normative practices

according to their parents’ discourse. I thus argue that the UC participants use

social media for keeping and accumulating their social prestige and cultural

capital. Importantly, the overall impression was that the LC participants were more

active at showing me, as a researcher, that they were unconventional and critical

towards gender normativity, while the UC participants did not feel confident in

sharing their positions on this with me.

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Based on the findings above, I suggest that the relation of class difference and

gender performance is about the classic struggle between the dominant and non-

dominant groups in society. The “tactics/strategy” metaphor from de Certeau

(1980) can be applied to better understand this. Thailand is a country that has

complicated social hierarchy and class affiliations. An argument to be made is

that girls with a privileged background are strategically deploying the resources

of their social group in terms of education, gender, and power to realise the

advantages of their class. At the same time, I propose that girls with an

unprivileged background are tactically deploying resources to critique and oppose

these dominant values.

The Birmingham Centre’s subculture and resistance study by Hall and Jefferson

(2006) can be also applied to conceptualise this understanding. I argue that the

LC participants, as the subordinate group in Thai society, respond to class

oppression by operating resistance through their rituals – that are their subculture

online. This kind of response is interpreted as symbolic resistance. For instance,

the LC participants were more open to talk and critique risky and dangerous

political gender issues on Twitter than the UC participants were. Plus, they

tactically created their subculture in online sites, as in the case of the ‘Both’ role-

playing activity on Twitter, representing resistance against gender normativity in

contrast with the UC participants.

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Gramsci’s notions of cultural hegemony and ideology (1971) would be another

theoretical framework to be applied to achieve a better understanding of this

finding. Gramsci argues that the dominant class possesses the power to enact

the rules, norms, and ‘common sense’ through the ideology of daily routines in

people's practices (1971). Thus, mainstream discourses, gender normativity, and

feminine values originate from the dominant class and have been adopted by the

powerless class according to the cultural hegemony framework. Through

Gramsci’s argument, it is likely that it is needless for the UC participants to feel

repressed with those normative values set by their parents or adult discourses

since their parents are the dominant people who enact those ‘common senses’

through the ideology in hegemonic culture in Thai society. In other words, it can

be said that the UC participants have been bestowed normative values and

mainstream discourses by their parents, and these are perceived as the ‘common

sense’ for practicing such activities habitually. Bourdieu’s framework (1970) can

be used to further explore this idea. He states that families pass on cultural capital

to their children, and such cultural capital is considered a way of distributing power

in society. Thus, cultural capital plays the role of positioning individuals in terms

of class and status in society (Bourdieu, 1970). This statement suggests that the

UC children adopt their position from their parents and accumulate their social

prestige and cultural capital through social media display. The next section will

show how they used Facebook to enhance their social prestige in terms of family

and educational prestige. In short, I continue to advance the notion that the UC

participants view normative values and mainstream discourse as ‘common sense’

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of practice, while deploying the cultural resources of their social group to realise

the advantages of their class.

To demonstrate this in detail, there was evidence provided by Pam and Rainy,

who alluded to common sense in gender. I asked Pam how she felt about sex

education in school by the questions, “how do you think about sex education in

Thai school? Does it help you to understand more about gender in broader issues

or the other way around?”

I feel neutral with sex education in school. I do not extremely agree or

disagree with it. I think that it is a common thing that people should know

the best about themselves of how to behave gender-wise. So, teachers

and lessons in school just serve to repeat what you should behave. – said

Pam.

I think that Thai sex education is a little bit old school since it just repeats

what and how we should manage ourselves in terms of gender. However,

I am fine with this and I think there is nothing wrong with this. I feel that the

matter of gender is what we already know when we are with family

members since our parents always repeat this. – said Rainy.

In Pam's case, the excerpt expresses a ‘neutral’ position towards school as an

institution and certainly indicates that she did not hold a critical position: she felt

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so neutral with this, without agreeing or disagreeing with this. Similarly, Rainy’s

case also demonstrates that despite her thinking that sex education in Thai school

was too traditional, she felt fine with this and thought that family was the

foundation of gender-related matters instead. It can be reliably assumed that the

reason of their expressions of a neutral position toward sex education in school

was because they quite consented to this and viewed it as the ‘common sense’

feature of life that we usually follow and apply. For example, the excerpts from

Pam’s expression, “people should know the best about themselves of how to

behave gender-wise” and “teachers and lessons in school just serve to repeat

what you should behave”, represents how she perceived gender performance as

the common sense for everyone, and school was the place that reinforced those

forms of behaviour, as most parents may agree.

Additionally, radically negative points of view toward sex education in school were

a rarity among the UC participants, unlike the LC and MC participants who were

against school teaching and culture. This can be explained by the status of school

as the social and cultural institution where ‘experts’ produce the ‘knowledge’ or

‘truth’ through discourses – as argued by Foucault (1971). One of his main ideas

is that state and/or social institutions construct norms and values becoming the

‘truth’ through the giving of ‘knowledge’ in society (Foucault, 1990). This argument

is in line with Gramsci's cultural hegemony (1971), which states that the state and

ruling capitalist classes, also known as the bourgeoisie, use cultural institutions

to maintain power and set the norms in capitalist societies. Thus, the UC

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participants are not only the social group that does not lose the advantage for

these norm setting by their parents, but they are also a social class that agrees

with the cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies as argued by

Gramsci (1971). They thus feel the need to conform to these set norms – as

habitual ‘common sense’ gender practices. Hence, the spoken evidence from the

UC participants represents their thoughts that gender normativity is the ‘common

sense’ positionality: young women should know how to perform gender properly

to comply with the social context in Thailand.

To sum up, I propose that the conformity group of the UC participants view

heteronormativity and conventional practices as the common sense to which they

need to conform. However, their act of limiting the researcher’s access to their

Twitter profiles reflected their significant privacy concerns that their Tweet

activities may contravene gender normativity and they did not wish to reveal this

to me, as a researcher. Therefore, it is reasonable to understand these

observations with nuances and room for ambiguity. In this section, I attempt to

show how the conformity group used their Twitter to engage with fan communities

under privacy concerns. In other words, they negotiated their gender identity by

expressing affiliations to K-pop fandoms by using images of artist boy bands as

the profile pictures on Twitter. In the next section, I will show how they used

Facebook as the main platform to display how they accumulate their social

prestige and cultural capital in terms of family and educational values.

Interestingly, they may try to have the best of both worlds – dutiful obedience to

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parents and school and ‘cool’ allegiance to fan cultures. Lastly, I will provide a

different pattern of social media practice to show the unconventional identities

which contravene gender normativity in Thai dominant culture. In short, I maintain

that the not only do the UC participants display themselves on social media

profiles to perform their gender identities, but they also negotiate and accumulate

their social prestige and culture capital, particularly in the form of family and

educational values. Also, they used social media with significant privacy concerns

– they prevented me from accessing their Twitter profiles. It is highly likely that

this is linked to the aspects of new media literacy, which will be discussed in the

following section.

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1.3 (New) Media literacy

The definition, concept, and framework of new media literacy will be applied to

understand the extent to which the UC participants can be perceived as operating

new literacy skills in their negotiations with social media and in the management

of social prestige. This section places an emphasis on how the UC participants

were competent and literate in some respects but lack these skills in some other

areas. For a brief clarification, they may have practical skills and an understanding

of privacy and danger issues. For example, they could manage their privacy

setting, limit access, hide people, and have other strategic ways to negotiate their

social and educational prestige online. However, they were less literate than the

other groups in terms of critical, creative, dynamic, and playful skills. As these

skills are considered the cornerstones of (new) media literacy (Jenkins, 2009;

Burn and Durran, 2007; Cannon et al., 2018), the UC participants seemed lacking

in terms of being able to mobilise critical social and political awareness.

The New Media Consortium (2005) defines twenty-first-century literacy as “the

set of abilities and skills where aural, visual, and digital literacy overlap. These

include the ability to understand the power of images and sounds, to recognize

and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute them

pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms” (p. 8). Jenkins modifies this

definition in two ways: firstly, textual literacy is still a central skill in the twenty-first

century: before young students engage with the new participatory culture in online

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sites, they should be able to read and write; secondly, new media literacies should

be considered social skills (2009). This modified definition of new media literacies

by Jenkins includes the traditional literacy that evolved with print culture and the

newer forms of literacy within mass and digital media. In the meantime, new

literacies include social skills through the emergence of participatory cultures

(Jenkins, 2009). For example, blogs or websites pages offer young people

opportunities to write, receive feedback, and gain experience in communicating

with the larger public: when they write and read these online materials, they

develop social skills through collaboration and networking. In short, new media

literacies not only involve traditional skills, but also involve new social skills and

cultural competencies.

This account suggests that new media literacies should be seen as social skills,

as ways of interacting within a larger community, and not simply as an

individualised skill to be used for personal expression (Jenkins, 2009). One

obvious example of the case of young Thai women is their participation in fan

communities. When young women participate in fan communities, they mobilise

their social skills and cultural competencies (Jenkins, 2009). For instance, when

they interact with members of the fan communities, they readily encounter people

with different cultural backgrounds, sharing knowledge and working within a

collective intelligence through social networks.

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Due to cross-cultural differences in fan communities, they reconcile conflicting

and complicated data to form a coherent picture of the world around them (ibid).

Jenkins thus argues that fan communities through new participatory culture are

related to new literacies: “they enable collaboration and knowledge-sharing with

large-scale communities that may never personally interact” (2009, p. 21). The

interpretation here is that new media literacy shifts the focus of literacy from one

of individual expression to community involvement, like the case of fan

communities where young people engage in the digital environment through

participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009).

As regards the literature review in terms of definition, concept, and framework of

new literacy, I am of the opinion that, on the one hand, the UC participants were

competent and literate in terms of networking skills in participatory culture; on the

other hand, they were less literate than other groups of participants in terms of

critical, creative, and playful skills as I critiqued at the beginning of the section.

The following examples demonstrate how they engaged with the fandom and

participatory culture on Twitter. They seemed to be engaging and collaborating

with their fan community, which can in turn show the networking and social and

cultural skills, but without the criticism from the angle of social and gender political

issues in Thai dominant culture (Figures 21 and 22).

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Figure 21: “Please retweet this if you think that BTS (a Korean boy band

artist) was accused of Fake news by other band’s fan groups. Now many

journalists have shared this fake news and spread misunderstanding about

BTS. No apologies have been made so far. I only see messages of

mockery” – Tweeted by Jinny.

Figure 22: “Big Hit consistently takes legal action against fake news of BTS

including unfair criticisms, spread of misinformation, sexual harassment

and slanders. #Thairat #BTS” – Retweeted by Fang.

The tweeted and retweeted contents in Figures 21 and 22 were based on real

events about fake news of BTS or Bangtan Boys, a seven-member South Korean

boy band artist. According to 2019 international journalist reports, BTS was

attacked by malicious posts and comments from internet users (Billboard, 2019).

Not only did the malicious slanders become fake news and spread widely, but

BTS was also attacked by sexual harassment and other personal attacks. In

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detail, BBC News reported that BTS's record label sued for libel after a series of

malicious posts: Big Hit Entertainment – a BTS agency company – took legal

action against netizens who made malicious slanders, spread false rumors, as

well as other harmful attacks (BBC, 2019). In a public statement, Big Hit explained

that they routinely monitored social media and message boards for posts about

the artists that contained ill-intentioned criticisms, the spreading of groundless

information and personal attacks (BBC, 2019). Big Hit also established a hotline

for fans to report offensive or defamatory content, as the company stated that “we

ask that you make continued use of our hotline ([email protected]) to report

any cases of abuse.” (The News International, 2020). Meanwhile, there have

been many social media activists and reporters, such as The Report Army Twitter

account, that helps BTS fans identify and report offensive content. The company

stated that “we are always grateful for the affection and dedication shown by our

fans to BTS. We will continue to work to ensure that the rights of our artists are

fully protected” (The News International, 2020). This statement shows that BTS’s

global fans enthusiastically support the protection of the K-pop boys by collecting

information on malicious postings regarding BTS and reporting these to Big Hit,

who can later report to the authorities and file criminal complaints. Likewise, the

UC participants seriously work with their fan communities to fight for justice for

their favourite boy band artist (BTS) by tweeting and retweeting content on their

Twitter profiles.

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When false rumors regarding BTS emerged, they heavily found the sources to

catch up with the situation by reading news and following international reporters

and journalists; they also discussed and shared the events with their international

fan members. Given that BTS just successfully had massive world tours

(Recording Academy, 2021), it is worth mentioning that BTS’s fan members are

worldwide, encompassing Asian and Western communities. As BTS’s fans are

universal, when fake news about BTS emerge, many global fan members can

immediately share and retweet content to help and fight for justice for their boys.

Likewise, the UC participants were among those fans who requested her

followers to retweet the contents to share the information and fight for the issue

together. In Figure 21, Jinny tweeted in her own words: “Please retweet this if you

think that BTS was accused of fake news by other band’s fan groups. Now many

journalists have shared this fake news and spread misunderstanding about BTS.

No apologies have been made so far. I only see messages of mockery”. In the

same way, Fang also retweeted about BTS’s progress of legal action (Figure 22)

to update the fan community on this issue on Twitter. She retweeted that: “Big Hit

consistently takes legal action against fake news of BTS including unfair

criticisms, spread of misinformation, sexual harassment and slanders. #Thairat

#BTS”.

These two pieces of evidence show how the UC participants collaborated with fan

members on Twitter to fight for their favourite boy band, an action that constitutes

the operation of new literacy skills. Since they robustly interact and participate

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with international fan members who have different backgrounds, they are enabled

to learn “new knowledge culture” (Jenkins, 2009). It is argued that participation

with long-distance collaborations across different learning communities is the

process of new literacy (ibid). In a detailed explanation, Jenkins (2009) describes

the participatory culture of fan communities as new literacy skills of young people

who believe that “they do collaboration and knowledge-sharing with large-scale

communities that may never personally interact” (p. 21). When they interact and

participate in the fan community, they readily encounter people with different

cultural backgrounds, and they subsequently share knowledge and work within a

collective intelligence through social networks. To apply this to the case of the UC

participants, when they collaborated and gathered with global fan members of

BTS to fight against netizens who made malicious slanders and spread false

rumors, they were able to manage complicated data, to negotiate and

communicate with people of different cultural backgrounds, and to reconcile

conflicts that could potentially happen throughout the process. This fan

participatory culture can enable young people to form a coherent picture of the

world around them (Jenkins, 2009). Thus, by actively engaging in the global

community of fans in the event of fake news about BTS, the UC participants were

said to have adopted networking skills – one of the new features of new literacy

suggested by Jenkins (2009).

Even though the UC participants were competent and literate in the respects of

networking skills – as in the case of fan participatory culture – they seemed to

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lack other social skills and cultural competencies. According to Burn and Durran,

new media literacy implies cultural competence: it is about new kinds of cultural

communicative practices (2007). It is something individuals use to claim

membership of particular social groups – similar to the way Jenkins puts forward

for the participatory culture in fan communities, with examples ranging from the

Harry Potter fan club, and players of the online roleplaying game World of

Warcraft (Burn and Durran, 2007). Also, Burn and Durran suggest the ‘3-Cs’

model, defining cultural, critical, and creative components as the three key

features of the media literacy model which relates to social and cultural

competencies. Similarly, Cannon et al., (2018) include the Cultural Studies

paradigm, such as critical thinking in digital media practices, as a dimension of

new media literacy. They expand the notion of literacy in the lived experience of

digital culture into three themes: dynamic, playful, and productive themes as the

new features of new literacy. For instance, how the LC participants produced

media content, like textual hashtags ‘Re-Tweet-Fav’, ‘Re-Tweet-DM’, and ‘Re-

Tweet-Follow’, can be viewed as productive literacy.

The LC participants had the creativity to produce what they wanted to portray

using a shortcut on the Twitter platform, thus they chose the hashtag feature as

the creative way to do this. Likewise, how the MC participants played with their

‘cosplay’ activity on Instagram to perform their dynamic identities of gender

indicates the level of productivity of new literacy. Not only did they play with

costumes, make-up, and other props but they also engaged in with digital-making

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practices, such as editing and framing the cosplay pictures and posting these on

their social media profiles. Specifically, they had a critical perspective on how this

kind of media text can help them to perform their desired images of selves and

gender identities. Thus, it can be said that they engaged in critical thinking via the

performance of their playful identities through digital media production. As

Cannon et al., (2018) suggest, productive literacy is about the digital-making

practices of young learners, I propose that both the LC and MC participants

achieve such literacy through the production of those creative media texts, which

are hashtag content, visually cosplay images, all of which are viewed as “media

crafting, critique, and artistry”. Because new media literacy is highlighted as

something cultural, critical, creative, dynamic, playful, and productive, these new

dimensions of literacy cover skills related to social and cultural competencies. It

seemed that the UC participants lacked some of these skills, especially playful,

creative, and productive skills. While the LC participants engaged with the ‘Both’

activity on Twitter, and the MC participants also enjoyed their cosplay activity and

the TikTok dances on Instagram, the UC participants seemed to avoid such

playful and creative activities in the lived experience of digital culture. Importantly,

when the LC and MC participants politically engaged in affairs related to gender

politics, the UC participants withheld themselves from displaying these critical

social and political dimensions. Specifically, the latter were less active in the

cultural communicative practices related to gender and social politics, which focus

on gender diversity, equality, fluidity whereas other groups of participants

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dramatically engage with these, especially with the issue of sexual empowerment

and girly feminism.

To support this argument, I will provide evidence from the focus group and

interview data. Tammy, one of the UC participants, revealed her concern of her

social images when she posted something on social media since it was

spreadable and difficult to manage if it went viral.

My parents always teach me that any posts on social media can affect you

in some ways. If others do not agree with what you have tweeted or posted,

they might criticise you with negative words. Also, if you do share

something personally, it will reflect on your images or reputation, which

may impact you in the future. – said Tammy.

In the focus group setting, most of the UC participants largely agreed with

Tammy’s opinion.

Criticisms related to social and political issues are very risky. If someone

is happy with your comments, that is fine. If they are not, you may get

stressful. We need to be aware that we cannot make everyone agree with

you, so it is all about individual judgements to believe or not believe in

something. In my opinion, it is pointless to critique any matters of politics

in Thai society – even I know that now the situation is so stressful. – said

Fang.

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These spoken utterances strengthen the argument that the UC participants

willingly ignored social and political issues because they viewed these as

something that could have harmful effects on their social images and/or reputation

in the future. They were less inclined to believe that social movements in any

matters such as social equality, gender diversity and fluidity could be

accomplished on social media because it was about “individual judgements to

believe or not believe in something” – Fang said. This demonstrates the opposite

attitude that was adopted by the LC and MC participants, who were active agents

in mobilising gender political issues on social media sites.

In the interview data, I found similar answers from Mew and Aily, who reinforced

the concerns of social images, reputation, and benefits among the UC participants

– this is an example of how they accumulated social prestige and capital as well

as cultural resources in their social group.

I think that when we grow up as adults, social media posts can affect us in

some ways, especially in the situation of job applications when we are first

jobbers. My father told me that many companies nowadays monitor what

you post online: they scan for posts that contain any negative points of

view on any matters that might impact society or not. So, it is difficult to

speak about social and political issues are difficult in the public space (and

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social media are largely a public space to me) since we don’t know who

will dramatically agree or disagree with this. – said Mew.

For example, if we post something that is not in line with the attitude of an

interviewer or a job trainer, or even your boss, this might lead to a terrible

consequence. So, I think that adults keep an eye on us when we post

something online. Also, I think it is useless to change someone’s mind

through tweets or online posts. For instance, if you believe that abortion is

wrong and against Buddhism values, it might be hard for you to change

your mind even though you see tweeted posts from someone who argues

otherwise. – said Aily.

The spoken evidence supports the notion that the UC participants were

concerned about their social images and benefits of work opportunities in the

future, as negative comments might destroy their social prestige and cultural

capital. Also, they seemed to obediently follow what their parents said, as shown

in “my father told me that many companies nowadays monitor what you post

online”, said Mew. Thus, the UC participants took this issue seriously and sought

to protect themselves from negative comments and action that might spoil their

reputation. It seemed that parental concerns of publicly online negative comments

towards their children happen in all social groups, the LC, the MC, and the UC. I

believe that social and political criticisms on the social media space of their

children are the concerns felt by LC and MC parents as well. However, only the

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UC participants expressed the highest level of concern on this issue and generally

complied with what their parents said, while the other two groups showed some

resistance to this. Overall, there could still be some room for the UC participants

to contravene parental discourses and mainstream norms, but the level of this

was less explicit than that of the LC group. This was due to the concern over

social prestige that might affect their social benefits in the future. Crucially, it

seemed that they were more likely involved with excessive anxiety than just a

typical concern over their privacy and surveillance from parents. The heavy

repetition of privacy concerns made it more likely that this was not just a cause of

worry about the negative impacts of social media on their social life, but the UC

participants were rather paranoid and anxious with their social images and

reputation and the potential demise of their social and capital resources by online

posts.

To sum up, the UC participants showed limited critical political engagement with

social, cultural, and gender issues on their social media profiles, while the LC and

MC participants expressed a real interest in social movements on social media

by rebelling against social and cultural politics, particularly gender politics (i.e.,

sexual restriction and oppression). In terms of new media literacy, I argue that the

UC participants were competent and literate in some respects. For instance, they

developed their networking skills through collaborating and taking part in

participatory culture of the fan communities. Also, they displayed sophistication in

privacy management on social media to cultivate social and educational capital

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very well. Nevertheless, in other areas of digital life, they were less literate than

the other groups in terms of creative, critical, and playful features of new twenty-

first-century literacy. For example, they seldom engaged in playful activities,

critiqued any political issues, or scarcely produced creative media texts related to

fancy gender identity in online sites.

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Theme 2: Daughter obligations in UC families lead to the social

display on Facebook.

How do daughter obligations in UC families impact girl’s social display on

Facebook? Are there any strategic moves that the UC participants employ to

negotiate this family value on social media? How do they use social media to

cultivate their social and educational capital through the aspect of family

obligations? These questions will be addressed by focusing on Facebook, which

was the most frequently used social media platform by the UC participants. Based

on the survey’s outcome, Facebook was the main platform in which the UC

participants engaged, which was explicitly different from the other two groups,

who seldom used the site due to the presence of their parents on this platform.

Since the UC parents were enthusiastically on Facebook, how do daughter

obligations in UC family values impact on their children’s social display on social

media?

The term daughter obligations here refers to the notion of the need to be a dutiful

daughter, which is highly valued in Thai family life, particularly in UC families. The

latest study in Thailand argues that the quality of gratitude (i.e., being a

dutiful/good daughter) is the most precious value in Thai families

(Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). Similarly, Angeles and Sunanta

(2009) suggest that family obligation is one of the influential norms in Thailand.

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This is particularly true when female children need to satisfactorily

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ulfil their

family obligations through many ways, but the very minimum obligation they must

accomplish is to ease their parents’ concerns over the daughter’s well-being. In

the Thai family’s context, many parents pass on this prevailing norm as regards

‘dutiful’ quality to their children: thus, the norm of ‘good’ daughters continues to

restrict young women’s gender negotiation both in the online and offline contexts

(Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). A recent study suggests that the

dutiful daughter concept includes the qualities of being submissive, docile, and

teachable (Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020), which are also associated

with the concept of cultural dichotomy: ‘good’ (kon-dee) or ‘bad’ (kon-chua)

women as previous scholars argued (Fongkeaw, 1995; Cook and Jackson; 1999).

In order to investigate the implication of daughter’s obligations in UC families, I

start with one of the UC participants who talked about being a dutiful daughter

when her parents became her online friends on Facebook.

On my Facebook’s friend list, there are my mother, friends of my mother,

my teachers, and my family members such as sister and relatives. They

are all very active users, especially my mother! Because of these diverse

audiences, I need to think more when posting something. – said Punch

This vocal evidence above is a reminder of the reviewed literature on the nature

of “context collapse” of social media, which leads to the presence of multiple

audiences in one site (Marwick and boyd, 2011). The main idea is that diverse-

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multiple audiences on social media are difficult for users to manage their self-

presentation on profiles. Due to the idea of collapsed context and diverse

audiences online, the UC participants needed to be very careful when presenting

themselves, as reflected by the excerpt from Punch: “I need to think more when

posting something”. Even though having family members as friends on social

media was the case in the other two groups of participants as well, there was a

difference in terms of manipulation and strategy. To explain, the LC and MC

participants decided to not use Facebook as the main platform to share their

playful activities, secrets of their romantic (lesbian) relationships, and their sexual

fantasies online, which are unconventional in the public discourses and gender

normativity. Without the presence of family members, they opted for other

platforms (Twitter and Instagram) to reveal their risky information and allow for

more diversity, dynamics, and creativity. On Facebook, they might just keep their

accounts intact, but have no updates on their profiles. In contrast, the UC

participants seemed to continue using Facebook as the main platform and comply

with their families’ values such as being obedient, teachable, and responsive. I

will show example Facebook posts in the following section to how they used this

site with the obligation to display conformity to the values of dutiful daughters and

successful students.

Before showing that, the manipulation of diverse audiences on social media by

the UC participants as discussed previously can be explained by The

Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Goffman (1959). He states that

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individuals operate techniques to control receivers’ perceptions about their

identity to manage the impression in social interaction. I would argue that social

media platforms highly adhere to audience expectations, and these expectations

potentially shape young women to perform and manage their desired identities,

which need to be consistent with those audience expectations. As Punch revealed

that her family members, teachers, and relatives were included in her Facebook

friend list, it was normal for her to manage her desired identities in accordance

with those audience expectations, which are to be I, dutiful, and teachable.

Furthermore, the literature review contains controversies over the adoption of

Goffman’s front/backstage framework by many scholars. On the one hand,

Facebook is considered to be a backstage related to the concept of privacy

(Tufekci, 2008; Lewis et al., 2008). On the other hand, it is suggested that

Facebook is a frontstage where users perform to their audience and present

contents that can be viewed by all of them (Farquhar, 2009). I would debate that

social media, especially Facebook can be viewed as both frontstage, where users

can present their desired images of themselves through posting of different

contents, participating in different activities, and backstage, where they can make

contact and interact with their audiences online and retain their offline lives. Thus,

in the case of the UC participants, they might be able to manage multiple faces

on social media or be able to present their idealised selves on profiles by

constructing different identities and creating purposeful specific audience zones

to avoid any threat to their public image. Nevertheless, I argue that there is still a

struggle of the link between online and offline interactions. The crux of the

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argument is that although young women can manipulate multiple audiences to

perform their desired images of identity in the online setting, they still cannot

escape offline interaction and/or relationships in the online world. This is the

reason why the UC participants were still concerned about their social prestige

and images according to their social status and position derived from the parental

generation.

Returning to Punch’s expression, when I asked her again in the interview, she

elaborated that even if there were no parents or teachers inside social media

platforms, she would still refrain from posting anything risky pictures or

unconventional contents. This implied that she had a higher level of awareness

of possible risks of social media posting than the other participants. To avoid the

diminishment of social and educational capital, she thus complied with what her

parents said about the filial obligations of daughters in UC families. In the same

way, another UC participant, Pam, expressed a similar thought in the interview

that:

I think it is not beneficial to me and everybody to post contents linked to

personal details. Even if my mom and dad were not there online, I would

still not post anything since I think the posted content will impact on

ourselves in some ways in the future, especially for work opportunities. –

said Pam.

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Although it was not a matter of risky and unconventional content, Pam’s concerns

over personal details shared on social media still indicated privacy concerns and

the urge to preserve good public images as well as to secure future job prospects.

Such a state of anxiety hardly happened in the other two groups of participants.

It was relatively similar to what Mew and Aily said in the interview in the previous

section: “social media posts can affect us in some ways, especially in the situation

of job applications when we are first jobbers”, and “if we post something that is

not in line with the attitude of an interviewer or a job trainer, or even your boss,

this might lead to a terrible consequence”. As discussed previously, the emphatic

repetition of privacy concerns and negative impacts of social media suggests not

only their privacy concerns but also their senses of anxiety and paranoia. It

appeared that they were not only excessively anxious, but they were also likely

to imitate and/or echo their parent’s discourse and culture. While the LC and MC

participants viewed social media as a weapon or playground where they could

enjoy themselves in any matter of social life, the UC participants seemed vice

versa. They tended to echo their parents’ discourse, which saw social media as

a dangerous place. It can be speculated that their point of view on such

dangerous media possibly arose from their parents’ culture, not from their peers

or even themselves. A reasonable assumption is that it is not the UC children but

the adults who are more worried about this. Instead, they just paint a reflection of

what their parents’ discourse dictates due to the concern about social prestige

and cultural capital. This can be further explained by Drotner’s study on

Dangerous Media, Panic Discourses and Dilemmas of Modernity (1999). It is

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proposed that there are media panics owing to the appearance of new media,

such as computer media (Drotner, 1999). It is argued that media panics are

intrinsic and recurrent features of modernity and these represent a complex

constellation of generational, cultural and existential power struggles that adults

seek to negotiate and balance fundamental dilemmas of modernity (Drotner,

1999). Importantly, this argument is in line with the classical concept of moral

panics, conceived by Stanley Cohen, who studied Folk Devils and Moral Panics

(2011). It is claimed that the discourses of violence, addiction, and danger of

media such as video games and new technologies are the moral panics that

adults have for their kids, whom they believe to be at risk from using these media.

Specifically, in Thailand, due to the “bad” social media discourse, if young women

use social media to express their sexual interests or any related issues of social

and sexual lives, they will be condemned by social institutions such as family and

school (Songsamphan, 2008). The Thai state has continually tried to block access

to some online spaces because of fears of sexual immorality (Chantong et al.,

2009). Young women’s expression online is mostly controlled through the mass

media and public policies which aim to criticise the negative consequences of

such expression. Furthermore, there is the notion that men are trying to take

advantage of women, rendering women victims in the online society (Chantong

et al., 2009). In short, adults and parents believe that online spaces put their

children at risk of being sexually violated, and they also believe that building

sexual relationships in online spaces is not safe (Boonmongkon, et al., 2008). All

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things considered, it is likely that the UC participants have adopted a form of adult

discourse, that is the discourse of “bad” social media impacting negatively on the

social life of young people (Chantong et al., 2009). They seemed to imitate the

adult discourse, especially in relation to moral panics about the media. Therefore,

I maintain that the UC participants’ view of social media was an echoing voice of

their parents’. For example, Mew said, “my father told me that many companies

nowadays monitor what you post online: they scan for posts that contain any

negative points of view on any matters that might impact society or not”.

In short, the UC participants seemed to adopt not only their parents’ culture, but

also their parents’ panics about the risks of social media: in their view, social

media has a negative impact on their social life such as diminishing their public

images and jeopardising work opportunities in the future. This provides a link to

their social display on Facebook, which was regarded as a conformity to the

values and norms of their social group’s and parents’ discourse. This might be

also because they perceived the parental norms and family discourses as the

‘common senses’ to practise. Gramsci (1971) stated that dominant people who

enact the rules and common sense through ideology want to accumulate their

advantage, power, and cultural resources, they cultivate their social capital from

one generation to the next generation; this certainly does not dwindle their cultural

resources and capital. The UC participants have therefore received the social

capital and status from their parents, and subsequently realised how to manage

and accumulate their cultural capital and social prestige to maintain power and

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cultural resources of their social group. Overall, the most reasonable

interpretation is that the UC participants did not employ social media to show their

defiance against the adult culture or parental norms, unlike the LC and MC girls,

who challenged these both online and offline. Rather, the UC participants chose

to adopt the position of their parents to continually cultivate their social and

cultural capital on the social media space.

To show a more complete picture of this, the following image is a post that

represents the value of daughter obligations in UC families (Figure 23).

Figure 23: Jinny was tagged in a picture (a cake with a birthday wish) on

her Facebook profile. This picture was tagged by one of her mother’s

friends who also happened to be Jinny’s friend on her Facebook.

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In the case of Jinny’s profile, Figure 23 is the picture tagged by one of her mother’s

friends. The tagged picture shows an image of a cake with a written caption that

gives a blessing upon Jinny’s birthday. How do this tagged picture and written

caption represent meanings? Both the picture and the written text implicitly show

the meaning of daughter obligations, which are a normative practice in Thai

families. For example, the written caption in Figure 23 is: “HBD my dearest young

girl. I wish you qualities of a good daughter to your father and mother as always”.

These written comments are not only simple texts aimed at offering birthday

wishes, but also messages that set the expectation of being good daughters in

UC families. The adult and parents’ expectation of their children represents

normativity of family obligation that is highly valued in Thai UC families. To answer

the question above: what are meanings represented in the tagged picture and

written text? It symbolises the social value standards and practices regarding

family discourse: parents expect their children to perform their selves according

to the conventional practices in families. Similarly, there was another case of

being a ‘good’ student and ‘good’ daughter on one of the Facebook profiles of

one UC participant (Figure 24).

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Figure 24: Written comments on Fang’s Facebook profile are about

celebratory messages on the event of her academic achievement – with

congratulatory comments from family members.

Figure 24 shows online interactions between Fang and her friends, family

members, relatives, as well as school teachers through the comments on her

Facebook profile. Most of the interactive comments featured congratulations,

compliments, and blessings since she got an academic offer from a law school

where she intended to enrol at. Messages of commendation were, for instances,

“Congratulations, I wish you good luck and the diligence of hard working for your

study in the coming future, and keep fighting”, and “You are so brilliant and

hardworking, I’m so proud of you”. These comments are from teachers in her

school who were also online friends on her Facebook. Likewise, other individuals

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close to her such as friends, relatives, and family members also commented in

the same way to compliment Fang’s educational success. Moreover, along with

the written communicative mode, stickers and emojis were used in the comments

as well. These kinds of visual communicative symbols, which mostly featured

stickers, emphasised the flowery language of the utterance. For example, the

visual media texts such as pink, girly, and sweetheart cartoons or emojis

represent the feminine qualities of euphemistic and amiable identities.

Again, what are the meaning potentials of these written comments and visual

media texts? My observation is that educational values in Thai families resonated

here: students will be commended if they demonstrate educational achievements

such as academic success, gaining good grades, and having a good performance

in education. Also, the performance of identities through the visual media texts

can reflect expectations of society in the form of female values. Thus, I suggest

that family obligation, here the quality of being dutiful daughter, and educational

values, shown by academic achievements, were two key factors that determined

how the UC participants displayed and interacted with audiences on their

Facebook profiles. Specifically, adults or parents expected their children to obtain

a graduate certificate and success, to fulfil the children’s dutiful obligation in Thai

families. These represented meanings embody the social prestige and cultural

capital that the UC participants negotiated on social media as argued previously.

Even though the values of daughter obligation and educational success are

normative for all groups of participants, the UC appeared to have the highest

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levels of awareness and compliance with these norms, and these practices were

manifested and reproduced on Facebook.

To conclude, through the family discourse, the mother’s voice on social and

cultural norms, particularly in the matter of gender, is highly regarded and requires

conformity to conventional expectations about a daughter’s duty

(Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). This leads to the notion that a

dau’hter's obligation in family circles curtails expression in gender among the UC

participants. I argue that daughter obligations in UC families caused children to

display their normative identities on Facebook, manifested in the qualities of being

dutiful and successful in education. This notion was seemingly absent from the

other two groups of participants, as the LC and the MC participants negotiated

social media as alternative spaces to subvert normativity and conventional values

by using online sites to disclose their same-sex identity, non-binary gender, as

well as to resist against mainstream discourses in femininity.

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Theme 3: Social media’s role as a means of academic display

rather than sexual curation.

The data review from this social group suggested that the participant’s

performance of identity complied with the values of their dominant social group. I

call this participant group the conformity, referring to the group that performed

their normative identities in accordance with their parents’ norms and values. Is

such compliance uniformly typical of this social group, however? There is one

example that seems to capture forms of cultural expression in a different nature.

I will provide a thorough analysis of this anomalous example to illustrate ‘cheeky,

gorgeous, and fashionable’ characters on the social media profile, which

represent an unconventional and dissenting act against ideologies in parent’s

culture. Thus, I will start discussing the first heading: the UC’s conformity as

normativity. The last section will focus on the UC’s different pattern of autonomy

and dissension.

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1.1 The UC’s conformity as normativity

This section will discuss how the UC participants used social media as a means

for academic display with Instagram being their main platform of exhibition. How

did they use Instagram to display their academic performance, friendships in

school, and other related school activities? This section will attempt to answer

the questions above through a multimodal lens.

As shown throughout the chapter, the UC participants employed social media to

cultivate their social prestige and educational capital. The UC participants abided

by and wished to display family obligations and educational credentials more than

the other groups of participants did. Again, when we consider social class and

cultural capital, Bourdieu's (1970) thinking comes into play. As he suggests,

cultural capital is how social class and power are maintained in society, cultural

capital thus positions individuals in terms of their cultural tastes, values, and

practices. Bourdieu’s concept can be applied to understand the acquisition of

social capital in the UC participants. My analysis is that the UC’s cultural capital

was built through their lifestyle choices, their education, and their orientation

towards any fields. The following pictures demonstrate how they displayed

educational performance on social media, as one of the ways to cultivate social

prestige and educational capital.

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Figure 25: Collection of pictures showing school activities and

interactions with friends at school posted by the conformity group, which

consisted of Mew, Aily, Punch, Pam, Rainy, Jinny, Fang, and Tammy.

Figure 25 illustrates the way the UC participants collected and arranged pictures

and contents related to school activities, memories, and relationships with friends

at school. They hardly posted any content related to their personal selves, which

were different from the LC and MC participants, who expressed their niche and

fluid identities to fight for their sexual autonomy. The UC participants were the

only group of participants who consistently cultivated their social prestige and

educational capital while avoiding posting any content related to the matter of

gender on online sites. In short, a specific interpretation can be made for the UC’s

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conformity group, that they used social media as a school exhibition rather than

sexual curation. They displayed various kinds of school activities, school

meetings, and interactions with friends and teachers, all of which were located in

the school setting. Although there might be an instance where the participants

displayed their gender identity in some ways such as through their school uniform

and dress, they seemed to use social media for the purpose of exhibiting school

experiences rather than for any portrayal of sexuality. They mainly displayed it in

a manner that was linked to educational or related school values. The following

posts provide more sample cases of the exhibition of school values by the UC’s

conformity group.

Figure 26: IG stories posted by Rainy, who demonstrated the value of

friendships in school.

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Figure 26 shows how Rainy engaged in a similar pattern of using IG stories to

collect, arrange, and catalogue school activities, memories, and friendships. In all

of the pictures posted by Rainy, she was wearing a uniform that indicated

explicitly the meaning of school moments and activities with friends. To be more

specific, the left picture posted includes textual content, such as “thank you”, “I

love youuuuuu”, and “keep in touch, my long-lasting friends”, and then she tagged

this picture on her friend’s profile. Through the mode of textual communication,

these written contents convey the meaning of intimate relationships between

participants. In other respects, it can denote popularity by having many friends

online. Previous studies suggest that teenagers want to show off their social

capital by boasting online about having “many friends” (Balleys and Coll, 2016).

Thus, the UC participant's display of a large number of friends online may suggest

a kind of social capital accumulation; at the same time, they evidently showed off

their cultural capital and educational prestige.

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Figure 27: Jinny filmed her friends from behind, showing a school activity

and friendships. She also shared the school location through her IG’s

stories.

Similarly, Figure 27 depicts the meaning of school engagement and interactions

with friends at school. Through the compositional metafunction, the ‘salience’ of

the picture is something that can make a given element in media text stand out

from its surroundings (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996). Importantly, this ‘salience’

of the picture can operate to both representational and interactive metafiction. In

the case of Figure 27, the salient element is the group of students which make up

the main part of the image. In other words, due to its central position and the fact

that they turn their backside to the image within the same direction, the group of

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students in the image becomes the salient point. It can be seen that this salience

in Figure 27 emphasises the (representational) meaning of ‘obedient uniformed

school students’; at the same time, it infers the (interactive) meaning of

'disengagement from the audience'. Thus, the salience in Figure 27 serves as the

representational meaning of a crowd of uniformed and/or obedient children;

simultaneously, this salience portrays the interactive meaning by disengaging

those students from the audience.

Also, since Figure 27 shows the backside of students sitting down together at a

school assembly, we cannot see their faces, identities, emotions, and facial

expression. These undisclosed elements in the image lead to the ‘distance’

between sign-makers (participants) and viewers (us). This is a type of interactive

metafunction showing how distance is created between the represented

participants and the interactive participants – as Kress and van Leeuwen argue

that resources in media text can bring people, places, and things close to the

viewers, depending on the ‘distance’ in the picture (1996).

Moreover, it is suggested that the frame size of shots can represent meaning

potentials. For example, seeing people in a long shot or from a distance indicates

that they may be strangers to us or people with whom we are less intimately

acquainted (Van Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2004). In the case of Figure 27, it is a

medium-to-long shot and there are no close-up details of visual elements in the

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image, which plausibly represent little intimate relationships between the

participants. This can be due to the issue of privacy, which was the most

concerned issue among the UC participants as discussed previously. In Figure

27, as Jinny filmed the atmosphere of the school assembly by including her

friends in the frame of the picture and recording the video from behind without

showing real faces and identities, she was choosing a practical option of

safeguarding privacy. When considering distance and frame size, the “contact” in

the image is another crucial interpretation through the interactive metafunction.

Kress and van Leeuwen suggest that participants (i.e., people, places, and things)

in the media text can make some “contact” with the viewers for meaning-making

if they look at the camera (1996).

Figure 27 has limited demand since the participants are not looking directly at the

camera; in this way, they do not make any contact with the viewers, and we thus

cannot establish even an imaginary relationship with them. Also, the viewers are

deprived of communicative modes that produce meanings in the picture such as

facial expression, gazing, and body movement. It is therefore difficult to make

contact with the viewers in terms of sexual command, in contrast with the demand

for sexual autonomy of certain MC participants conveyed through the interaction

and composition of images they shared.

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However, the school uniforms worn in Figure 27 (also Figures 26 and 25) can be

suggested as one mode of communication representing conventional identity and

educational comportment. By wearing uniforms, the UC participants showed

markers of conventional binary identities at work. For instance, wearing a blue

skirt represents a female identity while wearing blue shorts reinforces a male

identity. Furthermore, other accessories in school uniforms can also stress a

conventional female identity, such as a blue or white bow tie, which represents a

girlish or sweet identity. In short, these clothing and accessories in school

uniforms are suggested as the dominant costumes which reinforce

heteronormativity and other gender normativity, particularly the gender binary and

normative femininity. These dominant costumes effaced markers of fluid sexual

identities, unlike the case of the cosplay costumes worn by the MC girls on

Instagram, which promoted non-binary expression as well as diverse identities

(LGBTQ+).

To conclude, Figure 27 does not only demonstrate undisclosed identities due to

the reduced contact with the viewer, limited demand, and long-distance frame

shot in the picture, but it also implies the reinforcement of gender normativity as

well as educational prowess. The elements of interaction and composition in

Figure 27 offer obscure informational values and relative salience in the media

text: it remains ambiguous as to which components, from people, places to things,

or which specific elements are the salient parts within the frame. We can thus

perceive their sexual meanings dimly through a nuanced lens. Importantly, since

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they used social media as a means of academic display rather than sexual

curation, they showed their vague identities by managing their privacy online.

Therefore, the findings in this section support the idea that the UC participants

strategically used digital features to curate their status at school rather than

display gender identity or any activities related to sexuality and sexual orientation.

This analysis reinforces the key theme that the UC participants manipulate social

media to cultivate their social prestige and educational capital.

As I mentioned in the foreground of the section, while the majority of the UC

participants were performing their identities in accordance with the values of the

dominant social group, there was one example of a different form of cultural

expression. ‘Cheeky, gorgeous, fierce, and fashionable’ were the characteristics

presented on her profile which are the opposite of the ideologies of her parent’s

culture. What follows in the next section is an in-depth analysis of this anomalous

case.

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1.2 The UC's different pattern of autonomy and dissension

Discordant practices of the UC participants could emerge when they engaged

with digital practices on social media. Despite being in the same social class with

similar cultural backgrounds, they could have differences in gender expression.

Tubtim and Pingpong were the two participants who revealed themselves as

bisexual – as mentioned in the early section. Their online posts and activities

seemed different from those of the conformity group. They rather showed their

lifestyles, tastes, and identities that their social group would view as

unconventional. Pingpong revealed in the interview that:

I think the online space is our private zone. We can be ourselves even

though I know that my parents are not happy with it. I believe that my

parents already know that I am bisexual. They might not feel ok with it, but

they will understand this later, I hope.

Tubtim said in the same way that:

Social media is my place of freedom. I use Instagram with many accounts

due for different purposes such as to show my art pictures and to show my

diet routine. My mother and I are friends on Instagram and I can post any

activities. For example, I enjoy posting my beautiful dress in a beautiful

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location. I know that others might think my look is so fierce, but I don’t care,

and I know that my mother accepts this.

These remarks reinforce the argument that social media plays a role as a place

of freedom, a place for self-presentation with diversity as well as unconventional

practices which challenge the conservative ones. The following series of pictures

were posted by Tubtim, who deviated herself from the others' standard and

normal expectations.

Figure 28: Tubtim’s case shows a different pattern from the conformity

group of the UC participants. Her pictures posted here in her IG profile

illustrate ‘cheeky, gorgeous, fierce, and fashionable’ characters.

In Figure 28, Tubtim presented her IG profile with a collection of pictures as if they

were images in an exhibition or an art gallery. She was described as ‘cheeky,

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gorgeous, and outspoken’ through the collated pictures. She was the only one in

the group who differentiated herself from social standards, norms, and practices.

Specifically, Figure 28 represents the qualities of being cheeky, gorgeous, perky,

or fierce, striking a marked contrast with her classmates who performed their

selves according to the cultural homogeneity and social expectations in the

society where girls should be submissive, girly, benign, and unfashionable.

Figure 28 shows a sophisticated and manicured appearance illustrated by the use

of colours, mood and tone in the picture. She used a tone of warm winter and a

creamy palette with glitter effects in both landscape and portrait points of view.

Particularly, in the portrait picture, a close-up shot on her entire face represents

a close distance between her and the viewers, and there are also a sexual

connotation and a sense of fashion and aesthetics. Moreover, the props, which

feature the earrings and necklace, her facial expression, and her gaze represent

a confident, stylish, charming, wealthy and fashionable young woman. Other body

movements and postings suggest a different kind of femininity. To illustrate, the

way she used her hand to touch her ear implies a knowingly sexy and sensual

identity.

All things considered, I suggest that Tubtim was presenting some kind of sexual

insubordination. She was rebelling against societal norms by emulating the

aesthetics of high-end fashion magazine covers and all the sexual baggage that

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she possessed. Through the various multimodal texts in Figure 28, Tubtim

displayed a sense of both performativity and rebellion against ideologies and

cultural affiliations of the dominant group. For instance, she used social media in

a manner that expressed a 'demand' for sexual recognition, which was relatively

dissimilar to the key theme of the conformity group. She used online sites to

express her identity to her audiences, UC peers who were the makers of UC's

feminine identity. Above all, she strove to perform sexual insubordination

countering mainstream normativity in society, but setting unconventional

aspiration in her community.

Plus, we can see that there was an absence of pictures depicting school uniforms

posted on her profile, which made her different from members of the conformity

group. In other words, she differentiated herself from the group by posting pictures

without wearing the dominant costumes (school uniforms). Alternatively, she

posted pictures of herself on Instagram, showing contents related to travelling,

lifestyle, and hobbies, with casual wearing or informal clothes. One of the most

plausible explanations is that she used social media as a picture gallery for

personal exhibitions. This kind of personal display implies many senses. Firstly,

it is a sense of independence, autonomy, and agency, which supports the concept

of gender performativity of Butler (1990). Secondly, it can infer a sense of

dissension in ideologies and cultural affiliations of the dominant group.

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In the first strand, according to Butler (1990), “gender is performative, which is

produced through millions of individual actions” (1990, p.83). Butler argues that

gender is best seen as a way of doing the body in performance. Through this

argument, the framework of gender performativity can be applied in the ‘self-

selected’ gender in the online space. In Tubtim’s case as the deviant in the UC

group, she chose to present her identity through many performing actions, from

the body movement to the body posting of the picture. A clear example was when

she used her hand to touch her ear, which represented a sexy and sensual

identity. The girl’s ability to self-consciously adopt and play with diverse gender

identities can increase the choices involved in the production of gender, capable

of supporting gender autonomy and agency of girls. However, if we apply

McRobbie’s discussion in post-feminism to this issue (2009), girls’ choices,

agency, and empowerment will become an illusion: the enjoyment of beauty

products and girly materials such as wearing make-up, high heels, and thongs re-

establish patriarchy, heterosexual norms, and normative femininity. McRobbie

thus argues that new modern identity, also known as new girlie feminism, is a

false identity that calls patriarchal values back in again. Girls in contemporary

feminism are constrained by the old patriarchal forces due to the growth of

consumerism in feminine products and the adoption of neoliberalism in post-

feminism. From my perspective, McRobbie’s argument perhaps denies

pleasurable and playful dimensions of contemporary feminism. In Tubtim’s case,

whose pattern of gender expression was different from that of the dominant group,

I shall describe her posts as globalised mainstream feminine aesthetics. This is

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because while she enjoyed modern feminine aesthetics by playing with costumes

and make-up, she was establishing a form of pleasurable resistance against

patriarchy and conservative practices in society.

Conceivably, the uses of social media can promote girls’ autonomy and agency

in the negotiation of desired identities since the online platform allows users to

interact and communicate without corporeal cues, such as appearance and voice.

Marwick (2013) highlights this kind of disembodiment that young users – who are

liberated from the limitations of the body – can optionally choose any gender

images or identities to be presented. Hence, Tubtim’s presentation of herself as

cheeky, gorgeous, fashionable is a sense of performing autonomy and agency,

which is in line with the idea of Bulter’s gender performance.

In the second angle of my analysis, Tubtim’s case is also a reminder of a sense

of dissension in the ideologies and cultural affiliations of the dominant group.

According to Takashi, there has been an emergence and expansion of new urban

middle classes in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, that are socially coherent,

culturally and intellectually hegemonic, and politically ascendant (2004). The new

urban middle classes have arisen by educational expansion and advancement of

professional careers. These two developments enable them to possess more

cultural and intellectual hegemony than they could in the past. Then this cultural

hegemony of the new middle classes has been successfully translated into

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political power in society until now (Funatsu and Kagoya, 2002). This leads to the

overlap of social classes between the emerging new urban middle class and the

upper class in contemporary Thailand. Importantly, it is hypothesised that the

emerging new urban middle classes in Southeast Asia have been shaped by

complex historical forces. Takashi (2004) asserts that they are a product of

regional economic development, which has taken place in waves under Western

and American culture. In other words, they are a product of developmental states,

whether democratic or authoritarian; thus, their politics of economic growth and

their lifestyles have been shaped in very complex ways by Americanisation,

Japanisation, and Sinicisation. As a result, such new urban middle classes in

Thailand have become consumers of the global commodity chains that include

Italian earrings, American fragrance, English wool, a Swiss-made watch, Seiko,

Sanyo, Toyota, Wacoal, or any other un-Thai commodities and sundries (Takashi,

2004; Kasian, 2001).

To link this analysis with the case of Tubtim, I consider her to be a younger

generation of Bangkok’s new urban middle-class family who had gained higher

education and more professional opportunities than members of her parental

generation had been. This is supported by the finding that the majority of the new

urban middle class were Bangkok-born, had their roots in traditional middle-class

parents, and achieved their middle-class positions, income, and status in one

generation, thanks to their university education and career opportunities (Takashi,

2004). Also, Tubtim’s lifestyle, taste, fashion, and dreams seemed to dissent from

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the ideologies and cultural affiliations of her parents. It can be proposed that

Tubtim’s activities recorded on her social media profile were the consequences

of Westernised and Americanised consumption, displayed through her taste and

lifestyle. For example, Figure 28 illustrates a cover-like fashion and aesthetics of

the commodified globe and items such as earrings, necklaces, a fur coat, as well

as through the Western-style mood and tone of the picture. Evidently, she posted

pictures by adding the locations of London and other landmarks of Western

countries. Thus, since the newly ascendent urban middle class is rooted in the

economic growth and the product of financial globalisation, shaped by very

complex forces of Americanisation, westernization, Japanisation, and

Sinicisation, the young generation's lifestyle, taste, fashion, and dreams are

consequently incongruent with the ideologies and cultural norms, and values of

their parents’ generation. In short, I have presented the framework that ideologies

and cultural affiliations of the dominant group can produce counterreactions and

rebellion in some respects due to the emergence of the new urban middle class

in contemporary Thailand.

In conclusion, if we return to the key theme of the UC group, the central argument

is that the conformity group of the UC participants habitually adopted the position

of their parents to cultivate their social prestige and educational capital. They used

online sites as a means of negotiating social prestige and capital rather than for

any explicit portrayal of gender identity play. However, while the academic display

on social media as the dominant pattern was preferred by the conformity group,

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there was a different behavioural pattern in the UC group that demonstrated two

senses of identity: firstly, the performance of independence and autonomy and

secondly, dissension against ideologies and cultural affiliations of the parents.

The first sense highlights the idea that individuals can perform their identities

through millions of actions, supporting the framework of “gender performativity”

by Butler (1990). Another sense takes into account the impact of the emergence

and expansion of the new urban middle class in Thailand that enables the

younger generation to possess different tastes and lifestyles from their parents.

At the same time, this refers to a sense of dissension against ideologies and

cultural affiliations of the parents. In this chapter, I have presented the overarching

theme that the conformity group of the UC participants followed the position of

their parents and they were not in the mode of resistance since they were aware

of privacy concerns, public images, and prospective work opportunities in the

future, which are a formula to accumulate social capital and cultural resources in

their social group. However, the emergence and expansion of the new urban

middle class in Thailand can help bring the discordant practices of the anomaly

girl into perspective – she was understood to use social media to display her

lifestyles, tastes, and identities in accordance with the globalised mainstream

aesthetics rather than the conservative ones, which created discord between

herself and her parents, whose lifestyle and norms were different.

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Conclusion

The UC participants chiefly employed social media as an alternative space to

resist traditional female values. Specifically, digital practices on social media are

considered a subversion of conventional norms, such as gender normativity,

mainstream family values, and femininity discourses. However, something

different seems to be on display in this UC section, where the UC participants

used social media to negotiate and/or cultivate their social prestige and cultural

capital. I observed that the social prestige negotiated by the UC participants was

derived from two key domains of social discourses: family values that are being

‘dutiful’ or ‘biddable’ daughters, and educational values in school that are

highlighted by being a ‘submissive’ or ‘’successful’ student. In brief, social prestige

in the UC group was rooted in two powerful social institutions: the family and the

formal educational institutions, which are the foundational institutions controlling

and shaping the UC girl’s beliefs, attitudes, and practices regarding gender

matters. According to Bourdieu, it can be argued that the conventional values,

manners, behaviours, such as being dutiful and submissive daughters, have been

passed on from parents to children in the form of social and cultural capital (1970).

I have presented arguments that the UC families had transferred these normative

manners and behaviours to their children; thus, it was likely that UC children

realised their potentials to practise their gender behaviours by conforming to their

parental discourse and norms. This view is affirmed by Doungphummes and

Sangsingkeo’s study (2020), who argue that being dutiful daughters is still one of

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the family obligations that are highly valued in Thai families, and can impact young

women’s gender performance both online and offline. Specifically, daughter

obligations in Thai families include the qualities of being obedient, teachable, and

responsive to parent’s wishes and desires, which are often about educational

success.

Furthermore, living in the presence of patriarchal hegemonic culture, the

daughter’s obligations in Thai families have placed a limitation on gender

performance: young women need to conform to heteronormativity, especially

normative female identity, that is to be submissive and docile according to the

‘good women’ and the ‘girlishness’ of Thai feminine quality (Fongkeaw and

Fongkeaw, 2016). This notion is supported by Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo

(2020), who argued that young women perceive that the father's position

commands the highest respect in the family owing to the patriarchal society, while

the mother becomes the second person in the family as the subordinate, a person

under the authority or control of the father. Entrenched motherhood roles

influence how young women perceive, believe in, and practice their gender roles

with reference to their mother’s qualities of being subordinated, submissive, and

docile. However, there is still no explicit evidence to show the extent to which

family obligation, especially the dutiful daughter role, is practised among different

classes. There remains an absence of studies exploring the class difference in

terms of gender performance online, especially the lacek of evidence of the

relationship between the discourse of the dutiful daughter and the social class of

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young women. To bridge this gap, I suggest that family values, expressed by

being dutiful, and educational prestige, expressed by being successful students,

are ubiquitous among the UC participants, whereas they were less evident in the

LC and MC groups, who were the subordinate/disadvantaged groups rebelling

against such dominant discourses. I am led to conclude that family obligation and

educational value as well as other normative manners and values explained the

way the UC participants displayed their Facebook profiles. To be precise, they

used this site to maintain their social prestige and educational capital through

different modes of communication, such as written captions, comments, and

pictures posted and tagged on their profiles.

Based on the evidence provided, the UC participants used social media to

cultivate their social and educational capital in strategic ways. For example, they

posted pictures related to school activities, school meetings, peer relationships,

and interactions with their teachers. Additionally, the written comments on

participant’s profiles were largely about congratulatory comments made on their

academic achievements by family members, teachers, and friends. This

reinforced the discourse of educational values in the Thai UC families. The

following paragraphs will decipher the participant’s social display of Facebook in

the three themes:

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The first theme revolves around the notion of privacy concerns and the new media

literacy aspect of social media used by the UC participants. In my opinion, they

sophisticatedly managed their privacy on social media due to the concerns about

social and cultural capital. At the same time, in terms of new media literacy, they

were competent and literate in some respects, such as networking and

collaborating competencies through the fan community, but they lacked

playfulness, creativity, criticality, and performativity in terms of counter-gender

identity and other forms of diversity. For example, they chose to conform to their

parents’ discourse and adult culture, which lacked the critical stance towards

political issues in gender matters. This was moderately in contrast to the other

two groups, who explicitly showed their playfulness and creativity in negotiating

their diversity and autonomy. Even though the UC participants may show their

unconventional identities through their secret accounts, the information was

unavailable for the substantiation of this claim since they strategically prevented

my access through their manageable profiles. This suggested that they were

literate and able to manipulate their privacy concerns on social media, but the

evidence was not sufficient to claim that they were literate in the other aspects of

new media literacy. A definitive characteristic of new media literacy in the twenty-

first century is suggested to be a set of social skills and cultural competency such

as being cultural, critical, playful, and productive (Burn and Durran, 2007; Jenkins,

2009; Cannon et al., 2018). New literacy is highlighted as a cultural function and

a cultural communicative practice. The UC participants seemed to miss such a

cultural aspect of new literacy, which was crucial for identity performance. Thus,

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they were considered to be less literate in such aspects than the LC and the MC

participants were.

In the second theme, Facebook was used by the UC participants to post pictures

of being dutiful daughters according to family obligation values in the Thai UC

families. The UC participants discussed that Facebook consisted of adult society:

the friend list included parents, teachers, relatives, friends of the mothers. Due to

the collapsed or merged audiences inside the platform, they were restricted from

expressing selves and identities independently. Also, as the Facebook site was

influenced by the parental discourse, young women needed to conform and

cultivate their social prestige in terms of ‘good’ daughters. In short, it can be said

that online interactions on Facebook involve family obligation, particularly the

concept of ‘dutiful’ daughters. Young women are expected to perform their

identities of being submissive, docile, or subservient according to typical feminine

qualities in the Thai UC families. There seemed to be a limited expression and

diversity of selves and identities among the UC participants, while the other

groups of participants had more chances to perform these. For instance, the MC

participants used Facebook as an alternative space to express gender diversity

and to negotiate their sexual autonomy, as well as to empower the politics of

gender in society, such as gender inequality, rape issues, and non-binary

(LGBTQ+) inclusion.

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The last theme concerns social media’s role as a means of academic display

rather than sexual curation. As argued thoroughly, family obligation and

educational values were the dominant social discourses impacting, shaping, and

limiting gender performance of the UC participants. The UC participants curated

their academic display by collecting, cataloguing, arranging, and assembling

pictures in a gallery to show their academic achievements. In short, the curation

by the UC participants on social media was about school exhibitions, which range

from school activities, meetings, interactions, to relationships with friends, rather

than about expression of sexuality. For example, they posted a picture to

celebrate a Teacher’s Day ceremony and then tagged this picture on their

teacher’s profile.

Furthermore, as discussed previously that the UC participants had certain

elements of new media literacy, they still had insufficient agency of self-

performance since they were operating in spaces that were determined as a priori

by the dominant structures. Even though the UC participants actively engaged

and developed their digital skills by involving in producing, editing, and arranging

materials on social media, they were still less able in the degree of agency due to

the lack of cultural, creative, critical skills (Burn and Durran, 2007). In a causal

explanation, Potter and Gilje (2015) assert that the degree of agency can lead an

individual to become a literate person in a new digital practice. Thus, because

gender negotiation in the UC conformity group was impacted by the parents’

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hegemonic culture, they were limited to gain a certain degree of agency in

performing their diverse gender identity.

However, the interpretation can be altered depending on the social context and

other related social elements. A different pattern emerged to show the opposite

meaning, resonating the emerging newly urban middle class and the social class

overlap in contemporary Thailand. This different pattern found in the UC group

demonstrated the meaning of autonomy, independence, and agency regarding

gender. Tubtim in Figure 28 used her Instagram profile as an image gallery to

show the qualities of being cheeky, gorgeous, and bumptious, which contrasted

with the characteristics of the conformity group of the UC participants. Takashi

(2004) argues that the emerging newly urban middle class possesses more

political power by being "culturally hegemonic, and politically ascendant". This

causes the younger generation to adopt Western consumerism, Americanisation,

and Japanisation derived from the economic growth and the products of financial

globalisation. Hence, this results in young girls enjoying globalised mainstream

aesthetics rather than the conservative ones, putting their lifestyles, tastes, and

fashions in contrast with those of their parents’ generation. In short, a sensible

interpretation is that a sense of dissension against the ideologies and cultural

affiliations of the parents was due to the emergence of the new urban middle class

leading to the overlap of the social classes in contemporary Thailand. Owing to

this social class overlap, UC members of the younger generation have aligned

themselves with different ideologies and cultural affiliations from those of their

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parents. Such generational differences could be observed through the display on

the UC particiapants’ social media profiles, as in the case of Tubtim.

In conclusion, according to the research question: How is social media used in

negotiating gender identity by young Thai women from different class

backgrounds? I consistently argue that the UC participants appeared to be the

group choosing to adopt the position and culture of their parents, who belonged

to the dominant social class, to accumulate their social prestige and educational

capital. They were less inclined to employ social media to challenge the prevailing

norms of parents – in contrast to the ways in which the LC and the MC participants

did. To sum up, the UC participants prioritised social media as a platform to

negotiate their social prestige and cultural capital over a platform to mobilise and

challenge the political issues in gender matters.

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Chapter 8: Discussion & Conclusion

8.1 Overview of the research context, aims, and questions.

This thesis aimed to address the overarching research question: how is social

media used in negotiating gender identity by young Thai women from

different class backgrounds? The study explored how 18-year-old women from

different class backgrounds in Bangkok used social media to negotiate their

gender identity online. In my operational model of social class definition, the Thai

elite group, called the upper class, seems to partly resemble Marx’s bourgeoisie,

and partly the aristocratic class, which has effectively disappeared in the Western

model. Due to the existence of traditional aristocracy in Thailand, it is likely that

members of the upper class grow, live, and work in this aristocratic system in Thai

society. At the same time, part of them is the bourgeoisie in Marx's term: the

people who own the means of production and manage a distribution of economic

opportunities and resources. The Thai middle class seems like Marx’s

bourgeoisie as well, but some of them might have mixed social origins due to the

emergence of the new urban middle class, whose roots are found in the lower

class. This newly urban Thai middle class has emerged by educational expansion

and advancement of professional careers, which allow them to possess the

cultural and intellectual hegemony and political power more than they could

achieve in the past (Funatsu and Kagoya, 2002). Lastly, the lower class, or the

so-called cosmopolitan/urban peasants in the Thai context (Keyes, 2014), can be

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defined as a class corresponding to Marx’s proletariat: the people who do not own

the means of production, but sell their own labour power to then be compensated

by the state and society– this is like the case of the LC participants who studied

at the "opportunity expansion school", which is fully funded by the Thai

government. Owing the subordination to the bourgeoisie and the youth culture

and subculture on social media they have created, the lower class seems to resist

the oppressive nature of the more powerful groups in society.

In short, it is likely that the Thai elite class and new emerging urban middle class

comply with social norms enacted by their social groups, due to the fact that they

posse economic resources, cultural hegemony, and political power in Thai

capitalist society. Nevertheless, it is the parents who conform to these values, not

the youth class. It is argued that the youth is a kind of class fragment who typically

resist parents’ discourse and culture (Hall, 1993). Thus, even though the Thai

middle-class parents are perceived as bourgeoisie in Marx’s terms and the elite

class in the Thai aristocractic system seems to gain more economic opportunities

and social and political power than other classes, their children have turned out

to be another fragment of the class that tends to challenge their parents.

However, since the newly emerging urban Thai middle class has mixed social

origins rooted in the lower class and possesses greater wealth in economic terms

and political power than they did in the past, I observe that the children of the

middle class are likely to challenge Thai dominant discourses, while the children

of the upper-class elite group largely conform to their parents’ values and culture.

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As discussed earlier, this newly urban Thai middle class has risen to prominence

by educational expansion and advancement of professional careers, which allow

them to possess the cultural and intellectual hegemony and political power more

than they could accomplish in the past (Funatsu and Kagoya, 2002).

As my operational model of Thai social class has revealed, the class

differentiation of young Thai women has implications for how they use social

media to negotiate their gender identity. For Thailand in particular, there are

prevailing cultures and various traditional public discourses on hetero-normative

gender that still constrain young women’s gender expression (Angeles and

Sunanta, 2009; Jackson and Duangwises, 2016). As explained in the literature

review, the ‘rak nuan sanguan tua’ discourse (to preserve chastity), the

‘kalathesa’ discourse (contextual sensitivity), the motherhood and wifehood

discourses, the parental discourse, and the ‘dutiful daughters’ in Thai families are

underlying discourses on girl’s bodies and values shaping their gender

performance and expression (Jackson and Duangwises, 2016). Thai scholars

assert that young women are living in a struggle dealing with those traditional

forms of female values in Thai culture (Angeles and Sunanta, 2009;

Doungphummes and Sangsingkeo, 2020). For example, sex before marriage is

the influential value resulting in the perception of women as ‘bad’. By contrast,

those who can maintain virginity until marriage will be seen as ‘good’ women

(Songsamphan, 2008). This shows that the traditional form of female conduct is

the battle between good (kon-dee) and bad (kon-chua) qualities (ibid). Moreover,

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young Thai women have long harboured the idea that sexual matters must be

kept private, and sex has become a strongly prohibited subject for open

discussion due to the discourse of the inappropriate and distasteful nature of

gender expression in public areas (Hodal, 2012). Plus, Thai cultural norms expect

women to be naive and inexperienced in the matter of gender. Due to these

restrictions, many Thai researchers take an interest in exploring the relationship

between the traditional gender discourses and gender performance of young

women both in the online and offline setting. For instance, Boonmongkon et al.

(2008) explore how girls deal with and struggle in sexual matters to achieve their

sexual autonomy. The finding shows that due to the difficulty of sexual struggle,

young Thai women need to find alternative spaces to mount resistance against

the traditional values to gain more degree of agency in sexual expression

(Boonmongkon et al., 2008).

My current study was built on the themes of prior Thai research studies, with the

aim to explore how young Thai women manipulate social media for negotiation,

adaptation, and resistance in the context of gender relations. Here, I developed

and filled in the research gap by incorporating the issue of social class that

previous studies had omitted. The research gap was identified in terms of the

ways in which gender identity was tactically managed and constructed by

participants within different class structures. Even though there has been

research into class difference and sexual attitudes of young Thai women, its

implications are mainly for healthcare purposes, which are the prevention of

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HIV/AIDS risks in Thailand. Thianthai’s work (2004) is a notable example.

However, there is still a lack of study exploring the new dimension of social

media’s role in the negotiation of gender identity of girls through the focus on the

class differences in Thailand. To bridge this gap, I investigated young women who

came from different socioeconomic backgrounds. The participants were recruited

from different social classes and different secondary school levels in Bangkok.

The girls who came from high calibre private and well-known public high schools

were considered the upper class (UC), while the middle class (MC) participants

consisted of young women who attended other public high schools and/or public

colleges. Lastly, the lower class (LC) participants were girls who studied in

opportunity expansion schools, such as temple schools, which are financially

supported by the government. These young women with different social

backgrounds were classified based on the socioeconomic status (SES) of their

parents: parent’s income, education, and occupation. The research gap identified

above helped to contextualise the research question: how is social media used

in negotiating gender identity by young Thai women from different class

backgrounds? In other words, this research question aims to find out how young

women from three different class backgrounds, LC, MC, UC, use social media

sites to negotiate their gender identity.

To explore this, the study was conducted with an ethnographic research

methodology that adopted qualitative methods to tackle the research question.

The data were gathered through the triangulation: interviews, focus groups, and

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online ethnographies – the multimodal texts on social media such as posted

pictures, shared content, and comments on profiles. The data were categorised

into the key themes by the thematic analysis, and then interpreted through a

multimodal analysis that is grounded in a social semiotic lens to gain a deeper

understanding of women's classed and gendered social media practices. In short,

the multimodal metafunction framework (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006)

was used when deemed relevant to reinforce the findings of the study. Thus, the

data were interpreted through the cross-referencing of three data types along with

a discussion of theoretical frameworks within the three angles as discussed in the

theory chapter; Relevant identity and gender theories that were applied are

Goffman’s dramaturgical model (1959), Butler’s gender performativity (1990), and

McRobbie’s criticism of post-feminism (2009); Discourse and power theories were

incorporated such as Foucault’s discourse and power (1990), Birmingham’s

subculture and resistance through rituals (Hall and Jefferson, 2006). Social class

and capital theories such as Bourdieu’s class and capital (1970), and de

Certeau’s class struggle (1984) were also included. Plus, other cultural and media

theories were applied as relevant to help to conceptualise the study's findings,

such as Gramsci’s cultural hegemony and ideology (1971), Marxist’s class theory

(1859), Marwick and boyd’s context collapse and imagined audience on social

media (2011), boyd’s affordance and implication of social media (2010), and

Jenkins’s media literacy and participatory culture (2009, 2015).

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Social Media and the value of "context collapse" in the negotiation of

gender

To answer the research question of how social media is used in negotiating

gender identity by young Thai women from different class backgrounds, I

first suggest that social media plays a significant role in offering an alternative

space for both resisting the dominant culture and accumulating cultural capital

and social prestige by young Thai women. The evidence obtained from this study

confirms a previous finding that the power of the audience is significant in terms

of determining what is socially acceptable to post (boyd, 2010). Marwick and boyd

(2011) suggest that social media can be understood as channels contributing to

a sense of "context collapse". This creates the difficulty for users to manage their

self-presentation on profiles due to the diverse audiences collapsed in one site

that assembles parents, teachers, colleagues, and friends. However, due to its

networking functionality and its technological affordance, each social media

platform allows different styles of privacy management for users to deal with

multiple audiences as well as with the matter of social interaction on manageable

profiles.

As consistently argued, the role of social media is to provide opportunities for the

participants to both resist the prevailing culture and to accumulate capital and

social prestige. I found that each class of them had their strategies of either

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resisting the dominant culture or conforming to the values or cultural norms of

their social group. Not only have I confirmed the findings from previous studies,

but I have also aimed to advance the field from the perspective of social class

implications related to gender performance online in youth culture. This will be

discussed in detail in the next section to show how each social group has their

method of using social media in negotiating their gender identity and manipulating

their social interaction online.

As discussed in the data analysis chapter, social media is used by the participants

as a site to resist the patriarchy, dominant culture, parental norm, and mainstream

women discourses in Thai society. In other words, they use social media to

negotiate their gender identities through different modes of communication. For

example, they negotiate their lesbian identities through the play of cosplay, dress,

acting, speech, body movement, and other gestures. However, through the cross-

referencing of the emergent data, the argument has come to light now that they

not only use social media as a form of resistance to negotiate their gender identity,

but they also show specific resistance in sexuality terms. Even though the thesis

aims to explore the negotiation of gender identity only in the context of young

women, sexuality has emerged as a theme of interest in the data as well. Hence,

it is worth highlighting that while the participants negotiate their gender identity

online, they negotiate their sexual expression through their profiles as well.

According to the concept of gender identity and sexuality, there is a link between

the definitions of these two terms.

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As mentioned in the introductory chapter, gender identity is viewed as each

person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, including the

personal sense of the body, which may involve modification of bodily appearance

or function by medical, surgical or other means, and other expressions of gender,

including dress, speech and mannerisms. Meanwhile, the concept of sexuality is

defined as sexual expression, desire, orientation, preference, and relation of

individuals (Wongpanarak et al., 2010). In other words, sexuality is “the

experience and expression in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, values, and

relationships” (Wongpanarak et al., 2010). Songsamphan (2008) also explains

further that sexuality is about when individuals attract or are attracted by someone

for sexual desire romantically. Sexuality is more complicated than just being gay,

straight, or other identities. Rather, it is a kind of sexual expression, building

sexual relationships, having sexual fantasies, or actually having sex. In short, I

conclude that the definition of gender identity refers to socially constructed

characteristics and cultural representations in specific communities. For example,

the MC participants display their diverse identities through their cosplay activity

via dress, hairstyle, props, speech, and other manners in their specific fandoms

or yaoi communities on Twitter. Sexuality is developed from the notion of bodily

appearances or cultural performances of individuals into the notion of their sexual

relationships, sexual desires, sexual fantasies, sexual preference, sexual

orientation, as well as having actual sex. For instance, there are cases of the LC

participants using Twitter as the place to find sexual fantasies through their own

subculture – the ‘Both’ role play. According to what I argued, I have found

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sexuality to be an emerging theme of interest in the data as well. Thus, there is

evidence showing the participants, especially the subordinate groups, the LC and

the MC, using social media to negotiate both elements of gender identity and

sexuality. While they display their gender identity through bodily characteristics

such as their dress, manner, and speech, they use social media to engage in

sexual relationships and aspirations. This will be discussed in detail in section

8.2.1: Safe Spaces for Playful Subversion.

In conclusion, Hall and Jefferson’s theory, which is related to resistance through

youth ritual (2006) can be applied to make sense of the observations of the

participants who negotiate their gender identity online. These can be regarded as

cultural forms of resistance through rituals, such as their costumes, their

performance and hairstyle. Although they are showing such resistance in the form

of bodily physical elements, it is likely that they carry this over into the realm of

sexuality which is rather than just the appearances displayed. They seem to

engage in social media to display their thoughts, desires, beliefs, and

relationships with elements of sexuality on their profiles, as seen in the case of

participants who build their sexual relationships, reveal their sexual preferences,

and express their emotional, romantic or sexual attractions through their tweets

or hashtags on Twitter profiles. Therefore, the next section is the discussion of

each social group of participants, accompanied by the analysis that shows

similarities and differentiation to reinforce this study’s arguments.

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8.2 Discussion for each social group

According to Bourdieu’s class framework, each social group possesses its cultural

norms, values, tastes, and practices based on its family’s social and cultural

capital (1970). I develop the arguments for each class of participants to answer

the research question: how is social media used in negotiating gender

identity by young Thai women from different class backgrounds? The

arguments are based on the themes that have emerged by cross-referencing the

data from the triangulation: the interview, the focus groups, and online

ethnographies, as shown in the data analysis chapter.

8.2.1 Safe Spaces for Playful Subversion

Subversion acts against the dominant culture in Thailand appear in the LC group.

They seem to be the group that radically resists Thai popular culture by building

their subcultures on online platforms using creative and productive strategies. I

argue that the process of negotiation of their gender identity is illustrated by their

non-normative practices in subculture online. For example, they produce creative

hashtags on Twitter for their own in-group understanding, such as ‘Re-Tweet-

Fav’, ‘Re-Tweet-DM’, and ‘Re-Tweet-Follow’, which are hashtags created for

flirting purposes or finding sexual partners online. Cannon et al. (2018) provides

an additional and useful concept to help understand that when the LC participants

are involved with digital media practices, they are mobilising their new literacy

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skills. Cannon et al. (2018) suggest three themes as the new features of new

literacy: dynamic, playful, and productive literacies. The LC participants seem to

possess these skills since they have the creativity to produce what they want to

portray through the hashtags on the Twitter platform. They also organise their

creative activity online called ‘Both’ (a role-play sexual activity) on Twitter to

negotiate their sexual orientation and to perform their fluid identity, especially for

the LGBTQ+ users. Thus, it can be said that they have critical thinking skills to

perform their playful identities through their practices on digital media. As it is

argued that productive literacy is about the digital making practices of young

learners, I observe that the LC participants are literate in producing those creative

media texts, such as hashtag contents and visually role-play images in the ‘Both’

activity – these are viewed as “media crafting, critique, and artistry” (Cannon et

al., 2018). In short, I argue that they use social media to resist Thai popular culture

by building their subcultures via such creative, productive, and playful methods

online.

As discussed previously, sexuality is not just about people acting or performing

their gender identities through their costume, furniture, speech, or expression of

their physical appearance; rather, it implies individual’s sexual relationships,

sexual desires, sexual fantasies, sexual preferences, as well as having actual sex

(Songsamphan, 2008). I highlight that there is explicit evidence showing that the

LC participants use their Twitter accounts not only for negotiating gender

identities, but also for negotiating elements of sexuality. For instance, Ploy, Yok,

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Pawee, Jang, Nui, Pooh, Phat, and Taew had the same experiences of using

hashtags for flirting and/or building sexual relationships on their Twitter.

Specifically, Ploy said in the interview that “#Re-Tweet-Fav, #Re-Tweet-DM, and

#Re-Tweet-Follow’ are the hashtag patterns that we use to invite others for

further interactions, and of course that those interactions are mainly for building

a sexual relation”. Ploy gave some sample phrases that she used with the

hashtags, “I’m friendly, please follow me back #Re-Tweet-Follow”, “I’m a lonely

girl. If you are, please DM me #Re-Tweet-DM”, “I’m not a playgirl. If you like,

please Fav me #Re-Tweet-Fav”. Even though these are just sexual fantasies in

the online context, not in the offline physical world, it potentially infers to the ways

in which they request those sexual relationships through their productive and

creative ways (hashtags) for sexual purposes. In short, these hashtags can be

deemed as a kind of sexual courtship in which the LC participants engage to build

their sexual relationship and express their desires for sexual attraction online.

The ‘Both’ role-play activity on Twitter is another concrete example showing how

they use social media to negotiate their sexual desires and aspirations. They use

images of Korean artists as their profile pictures to negotiate not only their gender

identity, but also their sexual orientation, particularly for lesbian users. The

excerpt from Pawee’s interview reveals that “Both is created for fans’ online

interaction: it is not only for updating, communicating, and engaging with artist’s

works among fandom members, but it is also mainly for sexual purposes”. This

implies that the ‘Both’ role-play activity on Twitter is used purposively as a sexual

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courtship to build sexual relationships and fantasies online. Importantly, the LC

participants revealed in the interview that it was possible to shift from sexual

fantasies online, such as chatting or video calling, to sexual relations in the offline

physical world, such as dating and having actual sex, if that relationship

developed successfully.

As Pawee was one of the ‘Both’ members in the Twitter community, the insight

from her interview reveals that she seriously engages in this role-play activity to

find her sexual partner, a quite successful attempt to develop the relationship in

the offline physical context. Thereby, it can be assumed that while the LC

participants negotiate their gender identities on their profiles, they have some

tactical ways on Twitter to negotiate their sexuality as well. As sexuality is defined

as being more complicated than gender identity, the LC group appears to use

Twitter to express their sexual desires, sexual emotions, sexual fantasies, and

sexual orientation through many creative ways as discussed. Particularly, the

‘Both’ activity on Twitter is symbolised as a cultural form of playful subversion

which mostly happen in lesbian relationships and other non-binary relations.

From this argument, a classical Marxist framework in terms of the ideological

superstructure and economic base can be used to understand the LC participants’

expression of gender and sexuality. In classical Marx’s definition, the

superstructure refers to the cultures, ideologies, norms, and identities that people

inhabit, while the base implies to the production forces, the materials and

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resources that generate the goods society needs (Marx, 1867). I suggest that the

LC participants are challenging their parental norms and patriarchal norms, which

can be referred to as a symbolic or ritual strategy that resists the ideological

superstructure. Also, as supported by Birmingham Centre’s theory and Gramsci’s

hegemony theory, they are simultaneously challenging their bodies and actual

actions through forms of sexual expression, which may take place physically.

To explain this, based on what the LC participants revealed in the interview, the

focus group, and posts on Twitter, it is likely that they are not just negotiating their

gender identities through forms of symbols and rituals such as dress code,

hairstyle, acting, props, and music, but they are also negotiating them one step

further – that is sexuality through forms of sexual action and expression. The

distinction of meaning-making between symbols (or rituals) and physical practice

(or body action) must be explained. For example, their gender identities have

been displayed through rituals such as the subculture of the ‘Both’ role play,

hashtag activity, and cosplay performance in the online environment, but they

carry these sexual matters over into the offline world through their actual bodies,

actions, and identities.

To sum up, I argue that the negotiation of both gender and sexuality on social

media by the LC participants is a cultural form of playful subversion to the

patriarchal values, norms, and ideologies in the superstructure of Thai society,

manifested through their symbols and rituals. At the same time, they also

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challenge these norms and ideologies through their real bodies, actions, and

biological identities which may also in turn challenge their Monday morning feeling

in the economic base in Thai society. Remember that, youth subcultures (rituals)

are interpreted as a response (symbolic resistance) primarily to class oppression

(Hall and Jefferson, 1993). In other words, even though the dominant classes

possess the power to enact the rules and mobilise “common sense” through the

ideology of daily routine in people practices as argued by Gramsci (1971), these

rules and common sense can be resisted by subclasses and youth subcultures.

This theoretical position is in line with what I argue for the LC participants’

resistance to gender normativity in Thai cultural hegemony even if they are

subordinate to the bourgeoisie and the parental class. However, the findings in

this thesis suggest that the ambiguity of the girls’ objectification is always my

concern. I note that to understand their everyday life concerning gender and

sexual negotiation within class differentiation, we need to conceptualise this

through a more nuanced lens that allows room for ambiguity. As I discussed

previously, it seems to me that McRobbie's theoretical position does take into

account the ambiguity for girls' practices in the matter of gender online.

A more complex and nuanced lens is thus needed to understand girls’

represented identity, agency, and playful subversion in contemporary feminism.

In my opinion, living in many contested deﬁnitions of postmodern aesthetics, we

have seen opportunities for playful subversion in individuals’ everyday life

practices, especially in youth culture. While subversion aims at a clear break with

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power in society, playfulness seeks to transform this radical oppression into a

space for individual freedom. We can see that it is not a fixed relationship between

class and gender negotiation: the LC participants seem to use social media as

the safe spaces to subvert gender normativity with playfulness, even though they

are subordinate to the bourgeoisie class and ruling members of society.

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8.2.2 Pleasure, empowerment and the negotiation of

identity

The evidence derived from this study suggests that the MC participants are the

social group making up the highest diversity of gender performance on social

media. They are also active users who confront their struggles for sexual

autonomy online. Social media is used to not only allow them to perform their

diverse and/or alternative gender identities but is also used to resist gender

normativity in Thai dominant culture. One of the explicit pieces of evidence is the

popularity of cosplay activity showing how they perform their non-normative

identities online.

As reviewed in the literature, cosplay originated from manga Japanese comics,

cartoons, and animation and has become popular in Asian girls, including young

Thai women (Keenapan, 2001). They can switch their gender identities, for

example from female to male, male to female, or others, according to their

preferences through many alternative ways, such as through costume, hairstyle,

make-up, props, speech, and characters. A previous study’s finding shows that

cosplay activity, especially in queer performers, can be considered as

“pleasurable resistance” (Joel, 2011). The author argues that cosplay can be seen

as a sense of agency in expressing pleasure since cosplayers can play with

dressing, make-up, and other props through the imitation of characters. While

they are playing with these with pleasure and agency, they are resisting gender

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normativity in the dominant culture. It can then be inferred that the MC participants

engage with cosplay activity in the form of pleasurable resistance. They adopt

cosplay costumes, manners, speeches, and characteristics to represent their

dynamic and diverse gender identities, which are unconventional practices in Thai

dominant culture

To support this argument, there is a detailed picture collected from the data

showing how they represent their identities through multimodal texts of cosplay

activity posted on social media. Through the cosplay displayed online, Natty

represents herself as the “actor” who performs an action (kissing) in the picture,

while the other girl to the right seems to be the “goal”, who is the receiver of the

action (Figure 12). Especially, other modes of communication such as her eye

contact with the viewers and her confidence with a smile on her face support the

idea that she demands agreement from the audiences: she wants her audiences

to believe and agree with her intimate relationship. Thus, these communicative

modes, such as facial expression, gaze, eye contact, and left-right placement in

Natty's picture can help to understand the meaning of resistance against gender

normativity in Thai culture. Moreover, speech is one of the crucial resources to

produce intensity in multimodal communication (Jewitt, et at., 2016), as reflected

in the excerpt from Natty’s interview that “gender is an individual’s own judgment;

we thus need to have the freedom to decide our gender because this is 2020!”

[intensive expression by raising the volume suggesting strength and

confidence]. Natty seemed to emphasise her main point by raising her speaking

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volume to show the confidence she had. Thus, the spoken utterance infers that

she tried to challenge the state’s ideology in terms of gender norms and the

stigma to talking about gender in Thai culture.

Importantly, institutions’ discourses are recognised as “experts” in producing

“truth” in society according to Foucault’s concept of power and knowledge (1990).

It is argued that “discourses produce knowledge and knowledge is always a

weapon of power, thus, power and knowledge are joined together to produce

reality in society: it produces the ‘truths’ that people live” (Foucault, p. 318). This

framework helps to understand that social constructions regarding gender norms

and discourses in Thai society are internalised by the group of institutions in that

society. Importantly, individuals’ dynamic and unique subjectivities become more

focused than forces of external discourse and power in society due to a shift in

Foucault's consideration. Thus, individuals are increasingly able to negotiate

lifestyle choices within diverse discourses and their own created discourses. This

is in line with the cases of the MC participants, especially in the case of Natty,

who performed diversity in gender through her own actions online and spoken

discourses in the interview setting.

Even though the state’s ideologies in gender values are constructed by the

bourgeoisie, who is the ruling capitalist class and controls the state in Thai

society, I maintain that it is the parents, not the youth class, who conform to this

social type. Hall and Jefferson (1993) from Birmingham’s CCCS argue that

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“youth” is a kind of class fragment, resisting the conventions of their parental

group. This can strengthen the argument that the MC participants are also

another class separated from their parents and they subvert their parents' norms

and culture, even though their parents are the bourgeoisie owning the power to

enact the norms in the Thai ruling class. Crucially, through the use of social media,

they have more choices to perform their alternative images of self and gender

identity and, at the same time, to resist common sense in female values as well

as gender normativity in Thai culture.

To sum up, I argue that the MC participants use social media as a form of

pleasurable resistance to gender normativity in the Thai state’s ideology. Even

there is massive tension between different forces such as being subordinate to

the elite class and to their parental class, they can balance this tension by creating

pleasurable things online to negotiate their gender identity. Thus, the creative

resistance on social media can be considered as pleasurable tension which

potentially features characteristics of subversiveness, ambiguity, and pleasure.

As discussed in the literature review, Boonmongkon et al. (2013) propose that

social media can be seen as novel social spaces offering opportunities for young

women as active users to deal with their struggles for sexual autonomy. They

view autonomy in young women as “active agents”, implying that girls can express

love, responsibility, intimacy, and sexual desire on social media with more

freedom (Boonmongkon et al., 2013). This finding is in line with that of another

Thai scholar, who argue that young women exert a level of agency in negotiating

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the performance of gender identities online (Fongkeaw and Fongkeaw, 2016). In

short, my study confirms these previous findings as well as advance the concept

of class implications. I argue that the MC participants are the social group who

achieve a certain level of sexual autonomy and diversity through their uses of

social media when compared to the other social groups. Importantly, the

emergence of the new urban middle class in Thailand leads to the overlap and

shared common practices between the lower and the middle classes. This newly

ascending Thai middle class seems to gain more cultural and intellectual

hegemony and political power more than they did in the past. To sum up, although

the new middle class appears to possess more power to set norms and rules in

Thai society, at the same time, they are defined as the bourgeoisie who owns the

means of production and manages a distribution of economic opportunities and

resources in Marx’s framework; the youth, on the other hand, is seen as another

class fragment resisting the parental class and norms as argued by Hall and

Jefferson.

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8.2.3 The social uses of the online "masquerade"

While the LC and MC participants seem to use social media as a site for

resistance against dominant structures, the UC participants appear to

demonstrate a different pattern of usage. According to Gullette, the Thai upper

class are those who work with symbols as exemplars of high status: high

professional occupations, high educational obtainment, high income, and living in

urban life (2014). Vorng (2012) notes that they can be called “hi-so”, or high-

cultural standing, which draws from Western concepts of “high-society”. Also, the

social status of the UC group covers occupational prestige, lifestyle, education,

family names, home location, privileges of attending private tutoring schools

and/or universities, having exclusive condos, going to elite shopping malls, and

having office buildings (Jackson, 2004).

Based on this information, as the UC participants are considered as the privileged

group in Thai society, they seem to comply with values, norms, manners, and

practices in accordance with their social group and their parents, when they

engage in online activities and social interaction on social media. I argue that the

UC participants adopt such a social position and capital from their parents, and

still accumulate these through the status they display on social media rather than

the display of gender-related matters. Especially, they considerably show off their

social and cultural capital in terms of educational and social prestige in online

sites. It should be reminded that social prestige is the relation to one’s authority,

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respect, and influence in society and individuals want to gain this kind of prestige

to accumulate their social and cultural capital. Importantly, families pass cultural

capital to their children and such cultural capital is a way of distributing power in

society, as Bourdieu argued (1970). Thus, cultural capital plays the role of

positioning individuals in terms of cultural tastes, manners, and practices in any

field (Bourdieu,1970). It can therefore be understood that the UC participants'

negotiation of their social prestige through social media is a function of

accumulating and/or maintaining their power in society. This accords with both

Marx and Bourdieu’s frameworks asserting that the more capital you have, the

more powerful you are. In short, I propose that social prestige and cultural capital

are the key social values that the UC participants desire to keep and negotiate in

the reinforcement of their status, authority, respect, and influence, not only in the

offline setting but also in the online setting.

The UC participants use social media to negotiate their social prestige and

cultural capital in the attempt to remain dutiful and obedient to their parents and

to be academically successful students. This kind of negotiation is considered as

the strategic management of social media privacy; at the same time, as they

display and mobilise a certain level of literacy in new media practices. Thus, I

suggest that the UC participants use social media as an exhibition of their social

prestige by manipulating their knowledge of privacy management and new media

literacy skills. In terms of privacy management, Twitter was the platform used by

the UC participants, who control their privacy by using anonymous identities. This

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is in contrast with this the LC participants, who use Twitter for political

engagement and for speaking socially risky and dangerous issues. In addition to

the notion that the UC participants manipulate social media to accumulate their

social prestige and educational capital, they have little critique or involvement in

gender politics and civic affairs on social media because it is harmful to or can

diminish their prestige and advantages. This shows a lack of critical, social and

cultural skills in the framework of new media literacy.

As reviewed, critical, cultural, creative, and playful skills are important features of

new media literacy in the twenty-first century (Jenkins, 2009; Burn and Durran,

2007; Cannon et al., 2018). Jenkins (2009) asserts that new media literacy should

be seen as social skills, as ways of interacting within a larger community.

Similarly, Burn and Durran (2007) also suggest that new literacy implies cultural

competence: it is about new kinds of cultural communicative practices. According

to my analysis, both the LC and the MC participants are literate to produce

creative media texts, such as hashtag texts, visually cosplay images, and the

‘Both’ role-play activity online. On the other hand, the UC participants seem to

lack this set of new literacy skills, since they have a limited level of productivity in

digital making practices and the creativity to perform playful identities in the lived

experience of digital culture. Interestingly, while the UC participants seem

competent and literate in terms of networking skills in participatory culture, there

is a concrete example showing that they show strong allegiance to the fan

community in which they seriously engage. Specifically, they collaborate with the

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global fan members of BTS to protect their artists on Twitter. For example, Jinny

tweeted that “please retweet this if you think that BTS was accused of Fake news

by other bands’ fan groups. Now many journalists have shared this fake news

which has spread a misunderstanding about BTS”. On the flip side, they appear

less literate than the other groups in terms of critical, creative, and playful skills

which are the social skills and cultural competencies in new media literacy as I

discussed above. Therefore, by placing the three groups of participants in

comparison, the participants with underprivileged classes (the LC and the MC)

have emerged as the groups with a serious and active engagement in politics and

civic affairs. It is likely that they use social media with the critique, cultural, and

creative skills to fight for their autonomy and rights. In contrast, the participants in

the privileged class (the UC) appear to adopt the position and acquire

advantages, and resources from their parents, continuing to accumulate their

social prestige and cultural capital.

According to the De Certeau’s tactics/strategy metaphor in Walking in the City

(2010), I offer an interpretation that the UC participants with the privileged

background are strategically deploying the resources of their social group in terms

of education, gender, and power to realise the advantages of their class, while

the participants with underprivileged background are tactically deploying

resources to critique and challenge the current societal structure and dominant

values. There are many explicit cases where the LC and the MC participants build

their subcultures in a creative and dynamic manner to rebel against

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heteronormativity. These are shown in the ‘Both’ role-plays, hashtags on Twitter,

and the gender-switching cosplay activity on Instagram. In contrast, the UC

participants use social media to communicate the embodiment of their social

prestige and capital, as we can see in their use of social media in the sense of

academic display rather than of sexual curation.

In conclusion, I have applied De Certeau's (2010) concept of tactics and strategy

to three social groups of participants to explain that the LC and the MC

participants are both being tactical in the negotiation of gender online, whereas

the UC participants are deliberately strategic in using their cultural capital and

power to negotiate their gender online. The distinction between the LC and the

MC groups is that LC participants were less comfortable and confident during the

interview than the MC participants were. Bourdieu’s class framework (1979) can

help understand this observation. It is argued that youth cultures are formed by

the lived social world of families, neighborhoods, and schools. Schools and labour

markets are the institutions that connect working-class families and communities

to the larger society (ibid), and within these communities, the LC participants

develop relationships to respond to power relations and the dominant culture. The

LC participants seem to find it more challenging in dealing with power relations

and dominance in Thai society, compared to the other classes. This is why they

are the group that seems rather tentative and reluctant to write their own tweets

or to express themselves by using their authentic points of view. Instead, they

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make tactical use of borrowed resources such as retweeted texts from others to

resist the dominant culture.

In contrast, based on the interview data, the language that the MC participants

used suggests a confident and rhetorical tone. For example, Top said that “I think

rak nuan san guan tua is the most long-standing tradition…I think that it is the

underlying one shaping our expression of gender”. This excerpt shows the ability

to think in abstract terms and express their understanding of society in an abstract

way. Furthermore, the MC participants’ resistance to traditional forms of female

values appears to be more explicit and their uses of language come across like a

set of rhetorical questions, such as “why do we need? And why should we? It can

be reliably assumed that due to their academic achievements and the status from

their parents as the middle class in Thai society, they may be more comfortable

with that kind of language because it is the kind of language that their parents,

who might be teachers or academics, can teach to their children and might have

some experience in senior roles in industry’s leading sectors. Thus, the LC

participants seem to take more tentative steps towards their display of clandestine

resistance against traditional discourses of gender as we can notice in their furtive

activities online, such as the ‘Both’ activity and the specific hashtags used in their

Twitter communities.

Moreover, due to the social class overlap in Southeast Asia, especially Thailand

(Takashi, 2004), the participants of different class backgrounds partly have

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common and shared experiences in the matter of gender online. In the literature

review, it is argued that the Thai middle class has mixed social origins and a large

number of them have been raised from the lower urban class (Funatsu and

Kagoya, 2003). At the same time, the Thai upper class is rooted in the emergence

and expansion of the new urban middle class in Southeast Asia (Takashi, 2004).

This can be shown by Tubtim’s case of different patterns of social display in the

last section of the data analysis chapter. She represents herself as a cheeky,

fierce, and fashionable girl who does not align with her social group. In short, I

have come to a conclusion that the MC’s social root is derived from LC social

backgrounds, while the UC's social origin has evolved through the social climbing

of the MC. Hence, this is why we see a commonality of gender-related

experiences between the participants even if they have different class

backgrounds, owing to the overlap of social classes in Thailand.

In addition, Butler’s gender performativity in Gender Trouble (1990) can support

the idea of gender autonomy and agency in Tubtim’s case as a deviant social

display within the UC group. Tubtim self-selected her performance of gender

identity through many actions online, such as body movement and facial

expression via pictures. For example, she used her hand to touch on her ear to

give off a sexy and sensual identity and posted a picture of this. This interpretation

is in line with the “doing gender” concept by West and Zimmerman (1987), who

argue that the performative model conceptualises gender as an interactional

achievement in society. Also, as Cameron (2003) argues that people perform

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different gender identities through particular acts under the cultural norms.

Therefore, Tubtim’s exhibition of cheeky, fierce, and fashionable qualities seems

to accord with the acceptance of diversity in Cameron’s idea that gender is fluid

and changeable.

In conclusion, it is likely that the UC participants realise values, manners, tastes,

and behaviours regarding gender through their families’ capitals that have been

cultivated throughout generations. From an analytical point of view, they

strategically keep the advantages of their social class through the adoption of

social and cultural assets from their family in terms of education, gender, and

power and display these on social media. In my operational model of Thai social

class, I conclude that the UC group seems to partly resemble Marx’s bourgeoisie,

and partly the aristocratic class. The youth (the UC participants) seem to accept

the privileges of their parental group, rather than resist them – with the exception

of one girl, whom I discussed earlier. However, it is an unexpected finding that

the UC participants use social media to comply with their parents’ norms and

class, contradicting the practices of the other two groups of participants. As

argued that the youth is another class segment that differs from the parental class,

a reasonable assumption is that the UC participants could present their covert

resistance through their symbols and rituals via their private accounts online. This

kind of hidden resistance through subculture online can be found behind a

metaphor of a masquerade ball where they wear masquerade masks to attend a

posh event that is held with specific cultural preferences and identities. Even

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though all classes of participants masquerade to some extent in terms of online

performance and fluid digital representations of self, for the UC in particular, the

metaphor is feasibly of more relevance, as there is a sense of the instrumental

show of opulence – which is a specific characteristic of the carnival aesthetics.

We perceive that masquerade masks are worn delicately by the prosperous class

at balls which are held for members of the upper classes for entertainment and

celebrations. Thus, my point of view is that the masquerade masks symbolise the

strategy to hide one’s identity. Meanwhile, they can use different colours to

express their freedom of speech and voice their emotions and opinions without

being subject to judgement. Social media is thus a place allowing everyone to

hide their identity while affording them the freedom of self-presentation, like in the

case of the UC participants who may show their conformity as well as covert

resistance to their class.

All things considered, it can be argued that class and gender are not separate

structures, but affect each other. According to intersectionality framework,

women’s oppression in society is intersecting with many layers of different forms

of oppression, such as race, gender, class, nationality, citizenship, religion, and

body type (Crenshaw, 1989). In other words, intersectionality is used to denote

how race, class, gender, and other systems combine to shape the experiences of

many by making room for the privilege. This can be linked with the three classes

of participants in this study. First, since the LC group of participants is defined as

corresponding to Marx’s proletariat, their class relates to how they resist Thai

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dominant discourses due to the many layers of different forms of oppression, such

as their low economic status, their limited skills, and their developing living areas.

Importantly, as Hall and Jefferson argue that youth are subordinate to their

parental group, it seems that the LC participants are doubly subordinate: they are

not only subordinate to the bourgeois class in Thai society, but they are also

subordinate to their parental group. These double layers of subordination have

an impact on how the LC participants feel and act with regard to the resistance of

Thai dominant culture – as we can see in many cases from the LC participants’

profiles. Similarly, even though the MC group seems to be more like Marx’s

bourgeoisie, it is the parents who comply with social values and discourses, not

the youth themselves. The youth operates as a kind of another structure, with its

own subordinate characteristics as Hall and Jefferson argue. The Youth class is

thus considered to be within the intersectionality argument, which is another

significant factor in gender negotiation as well. Lastly, the UC group appears to

partly resemble Marx’s bourgeoisie, and partly the aristocratic class in Thai

society. They seem to accept the privileges of their parental group, rather than

resisting them due to the social identities and advantages they possess such as

wealth, education, skill, and residency in urban areas of Bangkok, the capital city.

Although they might be deemed a separate group that differs from their parental

group, their social class as the elite still confines them in various ways. Their

education, their parents’ work positions, and their occupational status intersect to

influence how the UC participants feel obliged to comply with the educational

capital and social prestige of their class. To sum up, class and gender are not

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separate structures; they are related to each other, but the youth is also a third

structure that has its own subordinate characteristics – I hence advance the

argument that intersectionality works across these three structures. However, as

I discussed the nuanced and ambiguous practices of the youth's everyday gender

negotiation, we are faced with a kind of unstable equilibrium that cannot be

understood in a clear-cut way. The intersectionality offers room for a dynamic and

unstable gender performance. The youth seems to be doubly subordinate,

especially the working-class youth, which is a form of disadvantage to them, but

there is still room on social media to provide them with the opportunities to free

themselves from the constraints imposed by their social class. Therefore, even

there is compound oppression in one’s class, there is still a place left for the

operation to compensate for such oppression and to allow for dynamism and

diversity. I draw a conclusion that class, gender, and the youth are not defined

and bound by a fixed relationship between one another; it is rather about how

each of them maintains the massive tension of their class and how they perform

their subjectivity through their own discourses and subcultures online.

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8.2.4 My contribution to the knowledge in the field of

social media and identity play

How do young Thai women use social media to negotiate their gender identity?

What are the strategies and tactics that they employ? How does social class

relate to their gender performance? How do they contradict, resist, or interact with

traditional public discourses in Thai hegemonic culture? In my concrete view,

these questions should be answered through a more nuanced lens of individual

aesthetics, class, and cultural affiliations.

All things considered, the questions above involve the concepts of agency,

resistance, playfulness, and pleasure of girls on social media. How young Thai

women employ social media in the negotiation of their gender identity is based on

their aesthetics, tastes, beliefs, and manners as Bourdieu argued. For example,

the cosplay activity – a playful act orchestrated mostly by queer performers – is a

complex pleasurable expression involving aesthetic taste and embodiment of

cosplay characters. To understand them, we need to analyse not only the

artificiality of animated bodies (cosplay’s visual image) or their underlying

aesthetics but also the performer’s tastes and cultural affiliations. Thus, I propose

that to study the relation of youth cultural identities and their gender performance,

class affiliations should be analysed, as advanced by Bourdieu’s framework of

social class and capital (1970). As Bourdieusian understandings of capital

address individual’s tastes, beliefs, and behaviours in any field, class affiliations

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of young women have significant implications on the conceptualisation of the

ways they express their cultural identities.

For instance, the MC participants, on the one hand, may be very playful, creative,

and productive in terms of engagement with cosplay activity online, which can be

considered as a method to accumulate their social and cultural capital through

everyday practices. On the other hand, while they are playing that cosplay,

including costumes, props, and make-up, they seem to subvert dominant values

of parents’ ideology in Thai hegemonic culture. Due to these interpretations, I

would argue that cosplay activity is one of the concrete examples of the complex

pleasurable expression involving aesthetic taste and embodiment of cosplay

characters as well as the performer’s cultural and class affiliations. We need to

interpret such performance through a more nuanced lens, not only through the

cosplay’s visual images or its aesthetics but also through the cultural affiliations

and tastes of the individual cosplayers.

Consequently, to debate the concepts of pleasure and resistance, I suggest that

we need to re-conceptualise the representation of girl’s identities in the digital age

with greater levels of nuance to leave room for ambiguity. This reminds us of the

classical tension between structure and agency following the concept of

hegemony drawing on Gramscian traditional theory (1971). Likewise, it is what

Butler and McRobbie maintained that youth cultural practices are always enacted

in a site of struggle. Both Butler and McRobbie were of the view that the way

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young women express themselves in post-feminism culture seems like a form of

agency, but they still negotiate gender expression within the constraints of

patriarchy. The implication is that they can never completely win the battle against

patriarchy, parental hegemony, and societal structure (McRobbie, 2009). Due to

the ongoing battle between agency/pleasure and dominant structure, Connor

(1992) suggests, in his classical work Aesthetics, Pleasure and Value, that it is

just a paradox that certain actors have to inhabit. Hence, I would conclude that

girls' represented identity regarding gender, whether in the online or the offline

world, should be seen as nuanced and ambiguous conceptualisation, as

occurring in a site of struggle. We need to theorise their sexual practices through

the nexus of aesthetics, class affiliations, sociocultural differences, and the

mutability of girl’s subjectification.

Importantly, as I mentioned previously, it is not a fixed relationship between class

and gender. The youth is another class segment separated from the parental

class, and social media is symbolised as a safe space for them to compensate

for the constraints of the parents’ norms and culture. Thus, what the data obtained

from this research shows to me is considerably in line with what I expected before

I came to learn of their identities. According to the study’s hypothesis, I expected

that the participants would use social media as a place of negotiation,

contradiction, and/or subversion to the Thai’s ideologies and values in terms of

gender. My speculation on the study's subject is that living in a paradoxical place,

such as a big city like Bangkok, is to inhabit a place of massive tension where we

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cannot win the struggle due to the presence of diversity, dynamics, as well as

multiple layers of privilege and oppression both economic and social. Speaking

as a Thai middle-class woman who lived in Bangkok, I believe that even there is

a massive tension on young women, there is still a safe space for playful

subversion to balance the pleasurable tension and deal with the parents’ pressure

and society. While the elite group owns the authority to manage the distribution

of social resources in society such as the economy, education, welfares, human

rights, and healthcare, the subordinate group seems to find a safe space to gain

compensation for the oppression and disadvantages. Living with this ongoing

social struggle, many Thai underprivileged classes come out and ask for their

benefits and resources in any matters owing to the massive tension that they are

under. Thus, the key finding of this research is consistent with what I initially

expected that the participants within the underprivileged class might use social

media to challenge Thai dominant values enacted by the ruling class.

Surprisingly, Twitter is the playful site that the LC participants use to subvert the

Thai dominant culture, which is rather an unexpected finding to me. My

assumption is that Twitter is the place for mobilising social movement by the

middle to the upper classes, such as the case of the #METOO feminism

campaign, which was started in 2006 by celebrities’ society in the US.

Furthermore, I did not expect that the UC participants would be using social media

to conform to their parents’ norms and culture. Even though the UC participants

do not show their playful identities and dynamics, I believe that we are just looking

at the surface of social media sites where real and deeper details of their identities

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lie beneath, but which they do not allow us to dig down to see. Due to divergent

sites on each platform, I am still convinced that there might be covert resistance

produced by the UC group. Hence, I argue that the participants' display of

resistance through their own rituals or symbols online is just a form of hidden

subcultural process. In the UC’s case specifically, they might be resisting covertly

or secretly on social media; I thus call this a sort of covert resistance through the

rituals of subculture on social media. As I mentioned in the UC discussion

previously, the masquerade ball can be viewed as a metaphor for the kind of

hidden resistance through subculture online where the participants wear fancy

masks to attend a posh event that represents cultural preference and identity.

Although they seem to conform to their parent's culture and class, social media is

a place like a masquerade ball event where users can hide their identity and, in

the meantime, enjoy the freedom of expression and self-presentation without

others' observation due to the disguise of the mask.

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8.3 Research Limitation and Implications for Future Study

Most of the limitations in this study concern the sample size and selection, as well

as a lack of available data (Connelly, 2013). The study attempted to select an

appropriate group of people (participants) who can provide access to the

knowledge in the field of youth culture and social media studies. 18-year-old

women in secondary schools with different socioeconomic backgrounds are

worthy representatives of the findings in relation to the research question.

However, due to the limitation of some available data in the online ethnography

conducted, there were some data that participants felt uncomfortable to disclose.

Some of them were reluctant to allow me to access their social media profiles

even though they gave their consent to be part of the online ethnographic data

collection process. There were instances when some young women set their

profile pages as private. I thus needed to make the request twice, or message

them personally to request their permission again. Moreover, some of them had

more than one or two accounts per one social media platform. I understand that

they wanted to separate their private and public spheres of online interactions

with their friends, family members, and teachers, as explained by Marwick and

Boyd’s argument that diverse-multiple audiences on social media are difficult to

manage users’ self-presentation due to the context collapse in online sites (2011).

448

Owing to this, it is therefore difficult to get all permission to access every

participant’s profile page. In my view, the major research limitation is the lack of

some available online data that might contain insights and more in-depth

personalities of the participants. It is noted that this kind of limitation often occurs

when we deal with participants’ personal spaces, especially online. There is an

opportunity for future research to overcome this weakness. I suggest that future

work should be scoped clearly as to how many or what kind of content on (which)

social media platform that researchers aim to investigate. Also, the limitation can

be minimised by other alternative approaches of data collection, such as the

method of oral narrative by participants regarding their anonymous platform.

Instead of online observation, we can ask them to narrate a story in the interview

about their online activities and contents on a private platform. Key implications

for future research also include testing of other sociocultural factors, particularly

the differences between urban and rural living of young women. I suggest that

future research should also prepare the way for a more nuanced and locally

sensitive analysis of where and how patterns of consumption, tastes, and lifestyle

regarding gender map onto structural experiences of class, gender, race, urban-

rural differences and other related dimensions.

In conclusion, my thesis contributes to the knowledge in the area of gender

studies and youth cultural studies by providing new ways of understanding the

nature and significance of novel social phenomena related to young people's

everyday gender negotiations. In particular, the study fills in the gap by

449

addressing social class differentials which have not been explored before in

Thailand. Previous Thai scholars consider young Thai women to be constrained

from performing their gender by mainstream discourses in Thai dominant culture

even though social media offers more opportunities to break free of these

(Boonmongkon et al., 2013). To fully understand this, I would argue that it

depends on the complexity of class and cultural affiliations of a group of young

women.

Arguably, groups with privileged backgrounds realise their cultural resources and

advantages of their class in a range of ways: gender, power, and education. By

contrast, the non-dominant groups, or the disadvantaged classes, potentially

challenge or oppose these due to the nature of class oppression. Remarkably,

social media plays a significant role in providing alternative spaces for the

participants who come from a range of backgrounds to create and display their

self-determined identities. The social class of the participants is an underlying

factor that determines how they conform, interact, resist, or deal with mainstream

public discourses and dominant cultures in contemporary Thailand.

Consequently, a conclusion can be drawn that girls’ represented identities

regarding gender in both the online and offline contexts, should be understood in

a nuanced and ambiguous conceptualisation, taking into account not only class

difference and cultural affiliation, but also the mutability of girl’s subjectification

and their own constructed discourses.

450

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Appendix:

Theme 1: To be courteous, neat, submissive, amiable, and benign is still

the mainstream expectation in female gender identities in young Thais’

perception

In young Thai women’s perception, the mainstream values in female gender

identities require that they need to be courteous, neat, amiable, euphemistic, and

benign, as indicated by many participants. The participants discussed that they

grew up and became aware of gender identity with the perception of women as

being gentle, polite, neat, and tidy, while men as being sturdy, rugged, robust,

and powerful. They discussed how their parents guided them to be women when

they were young. For example, the guidance was about wearing a pink dress,

having long hair, playing a barbie doll, and saying the word ‘Ka’ – ค่ะ at the end of

each sentence in the Thai language. In Thailand, the language is divided by

gender difference, and some specific words are used for females only, such as

‘Ka’, which is used by women to make the conversation more polite, whereas

‘Krub’ is used by men only. From there, it can be seen that parental guidance

plays a significant role in making young women know what gender they identify

themselves with and how to perform their gender identities properly in society,

such as how to speak, how to dress, how to behave, and how to express.

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Thus, it can be considered that the participants’ initial awareness of gender

identity and the understanding of being women came into existence when they

were young with the influence by their parents. After that, when they were around

11-14 years old, they developed their gender identities by observing people

around them. For instance, they became aware of the norms that women should

wear a skirt, accessories, and make-up, whereas men mostly do not do these.

This awareness could further develop by learning in schools when they observed

their friends, as the participants indicated that they learned many differences

between being women and men and some other diversities in school. From this,

it can be considered that the environmental society and parental guidance

engender young women to become aware of, to understand, and to develop their

gender identities since they were young. Particularly, to be courteous, neat,

amiable, euphemistic, and benign is part of the young women’s underlying

perceptions of values of female gender identities promoted by parental influence.

Due to this parental influence, the framework of the discourse of familial

obedience can be applied to better understand the relationship between family

roles and gender expression of children, especially daughters. There is a previous

study considering discourse analysis of spoken interaction in the family context

that links to gender performance in daughters (Johnson, 2007). As gender is the

crucial point of view of family roles, the spoken interaction in a family has a

significant influence on how young women express their gender. The family

discourse is co-constructed by family members and family roles are often based

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on an individual’s gender and position in the family. In this way, gender and the

family discourse are therefore inextricably linked to one another (Johnson, 2007).

Furthermore, power has always been an underlying part of the family discourse

because it is displayed through the discourse and interaction in the family. It is

argued that within a particular family unit, the foundation of the family structure is

the first thing that needs to be looked at, to understand the construction of

individual identities, especially gender identities (Johnson, 2007). Specifically,

young children have understood their roles within the family by participating in the

co-construction of narratives (Fivush, 2002). From this, the family narrative telling

and discourse influences and shapes the ways family members co-construct their

own identities. Specifically, the mother is seen as the key figure in the creation of

family identity, as well as gender identities in children, particularly in daughters.

According to Holmes (1997), through the study of “discourse of femininity”,

women construct themselves in many feminine-based roles, including “good

daughters” and “good mothers” (p.303). It can be seen that women are more

focused on performing certain roles, and on demonstrating goodness, according

to societal standards. This is in line with the concept of mother-daughter

closeness by Henwood (1993). This mother-daughter closeness refers to the

ability to confide in one another about personal things others would consider

inconsequential, and the ability to rely on one another for aid (Henwood, 1993, p.

306).

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This concept can be applied to understand parental influence in daughter’s

gender identities in Thai families. A previous Thai study proposes that middle-

class mothers maintain a strict power hierarchy in the position of a mother

(Boonmongkon et al., 2013). From this, it can be seen that in Thailand, there

remains an imbalance in power that exists between parents and children, which

can lead young women to be obedient due to the family discourse in any issues,

particularly in sexual matters. Thereby, it can be argued that Thai traditional

discourses of sexuality are mostly derived from the discourse of familial

obedience between the parents and children, which forms the foundation in the

Thai family structure.

In the study, the participants discussed that mainstream sexuality values could

be derived from the cultural norms and practices not only in Thailand but also in

other countries that influenced them. They considered that when they started

using social media, this online site allowed them to understand, develop, and be

more open about gender and sexuality with broader perspectives. At the same

time, this online space can emphasise the traditional form of female conduct and

mainstream values in femininity, such as the female norm that women should look

more gracious, tidy, and compassionate than men. Importantly, the participants

reported in the interview that they used social media for searching some specific

questions about gender which schools cannot answer. According to this, it is

referred that social media plays an impactful role in young women’s perception

regarding gender and sexuality. Particularly, social media could be seen as a

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complicated platform by the participants because they sometimes saw it as a tool

that helps to reproduce the mainstream values of female sexuality, or sometimes

as a tool to achieve more openness by perceiving other values and practices from

wider perspectives. To conclude, the perception regarding gender and sexuality

of girls is developed through many social factors, such as the influence of school,

friends at school, parental guidance, and the online environment of modern

society.

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Theme 2: Both sex education and integral subjects in school repeat the

same themes of traditional mainstream values in feminine sexuality

The participants asserted that Thai sex education was still not an open subject

that allows individuals to talk about sex, sexuality, as well as gender diversities.

The discussion in the public area was still restricted, obligated, and limited,

particularly in school. Importantly, the participants indicated that Thai sex

education reproduced the binary concept of gender and the issues that they had

been learning are limited, as in the topic of the traditional form of female identities

(to be courteous, neat, and submissive, which is linked with the previous theme).

There are no other issues related to diversity, autonomy, or equality in sexual

matters. Educators or teachers in schools think that talking about gender and

sexuality in public spaces is inappropriate for students, especially for young

female students. As a participant said in the interview that “they will think that I

am not a good girl if I ask something about sexuality in school”. This is because,

in Thailand, there is the framework of ‘ka la te sa’ – กาลเทศะ, considering the proper

times and places linked to self-performance in public and private spaces in

society. For example, Thai people need to speak, behave, or express something

at the right time and in the right place due to the concern about socially desirable

images and appearances. These social images and appearances are the

hallmarks of the ‘ka la te sa’ concept, which is the strictly social and cultural

practice for everyone in society.

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Thus, participants considered that sex education did not teach them adequately

about the understanding of gender and sexuality. Most of the lessons in sex

education are about sexual health and biological sex, such as body parts, fertility,

sexual reproduction, and sexual protection. Also, sex education still restrains

open discussions about sexual relations, sexual expression, and sexual

preference. Therefore, it is implied that sex education plays a significant role in

shaping young women’s gender expression through the concept of female-well-

behaved sexuality in society. This is one of the salient social regulations

controlling how females should behave and express their gender and sexuality.

Moreover, most of the classical textbook of Thai language subject includes the

framework of how female should conduct their gender within the feminine

sexuality norms. The contents of textbooks discuss the proper ways by which

women should behave themselves when they face the opposite sex. For example,

they should not go out with a man one by one, and they should not hold hands in

the public area. It is shown that the contents of classical school textbooks

reinforce the salient mainstream discourse in femininity, namely ‘Kul la ta tree’ –

กุลสตรี. It can be seen that sex education still influences young Thai women in terms

of sexual constraints and repetition of the same theme of traditional mainstream

discourses in femininity, which potentially shape and control how young women

express and/or perform their gender identities offline or online.

Nevertheless, besides sex education, other integral subjects in the classroom

also (re)produce these mainstream norms. These normative discourses in

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femininity had been produced and reproduced through the integration of Thai

education (textbooks, classroom, lessons, and activities) since the participants

were from 4 to 19 years old, as they discussed in the interview. Specifically, the

integration included textbooks in many disciplines, particularly in social science

and sociology subjects, such as Thailand history in the political aspect, the system

of government, the regime, the monarchy, the religion, and beliefs. All of these

subjects in the classroom are the repetition of the same themes regarding

feminine discourses, which remain significant until now. Particularly, the subject

of the history of Thailand, for example the origin of Thai sociocultural norms and

Thai language, including Thai proverbs, idioms, rhymes, and poetry, emphasises

traditional public discourses regarding femininity such as the need to maintain

virginity until marriage.

In addition, the participants indicated in the focus group that “in Thailand,

normative discourses exist for feminine sexuality rather than for masculine

sexuality”. They discussed that mainstream discourses in sexuality fell heavily on

women rather than on men. Specifically, they implied that as gender discourses

were initially derived from the political history and the monarchy in Thailand. This

led to gender roles that enabled men to have more power than women in society.

One of the participants said, “as you can see, the most powerful political person

is the man who has military control, not a woman, and this norm has remained

until now in Thailand”.

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To sum up, the traditional mainstream discourses in feminine sexuality are

repeated not only by sex education but also by the integration with other subjects

in the classroom, as exampled by the political history of Thailand and the origin

of the Thai language. As the foundation of the social institution, the integration of

many lessons of Thai education have still repeated, impacted, and/or controlled

how young Thai women express their gender identities and sexuality since the

early days until now.

488

Theme 3: The social norms and values in feminine sexuality empower

gender stereotypes and roles in Thai society

There are many social and cultural norms in sexuality in Thailand. Most of these

norms are about gender stereotypes and roles which explicitly distinguish women

from men. As a result, the participants viewed these norms as the underlying

elements that influenced the ways they expressed their gender identity and

sexuality. There were three mainstream social norms and values in feminine

sexuality by which the participants certainly claimed to have been taught and

influenced significantly. These three main norms of feminine sexuality were 1)

‘Rak nuan sa nguan tua’ – รักนวลสงวนตัว, 2) ‘Kul la sa tree thai’ – กุลสตรีไทย, and 3)

‘Ching suk kon ham’ – ชิงสุกก่อนห่าม. Furthermore, the participants discussed that

there were also other social norms and practices in femininity, expanding from

those three mainstream norms. These were 1) ‘Ying klong ruen’ – หญิงครองเรือน and

2) ‘Chai chang tao na ying chang tao lang’ - ชายช้างเท้าหน้า หญิงช้างเท้าหลัง. These

expanded norms discuss gender stereotypes that explicitly distinguish the roles

of males and females in society. For example, the ‘Chai chang tao na ying chang

tao lang’ norm considers men to have the leading role in the family, while women,

as wives or mothers, should follow men. Specifically, this norm is semantically

divided into two sentences of opposite meanings. ‘Chai chang tao na’ means that

men are in the front, and ‘Ying chang tao lang’ means that women are behind.

From this, it is evident that this norm empowers the idea of male superiority in

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power, by comparing ‘the front’ as the leader, while the one staying ‘behind’ as

the follower.

In other examples, Thai traditional mainstream norms in sexuality consider that

men are ‘superior’, and women are ‘subordinate/inferior’. This conforms with the

traditional mainstream norm of ‘Ying klong ruen’, assuming that women should

be in the kitchen and at home, while men should go to work outside. Besides,

other mainstream sexuality discourses and norms expect women to appear more

loosed/damaged/harmful than men if they have a sexual relationship or make

love. This is in accordance with the norm of ‘Ching suk kon ham’ considering that

the role and burden of keeping virginity heavily falls on women; yet this does not

apply to men. From these examples, it is clear that Thai traditional mainstream

norms in sexuality mostly emphasise the gender role of women as

inferior/followers and men as superior/leaders. This finally engenders the

stereotypes of femininity and masculinity, which see women as sensitive,

gracious, and obedient, while men as sturdy, rugged, robust, and powerful.

This concept can be analysed by the postmodern theorist/ social constructionist

Judith Butler (1990). Gender is currently conceptualised as being a socially

constructed aspect of identity (Butler, 1990). Depending on cultural norms, people

perform different gender identities in different contexts due to social practices and

values. In Thai culture, young women have to publicly express their gender by

490

repeatedly performing particular acts under the traditional sexuality norms which

define ‘femininity’ as submissive, sensitive, and obedient qualities.

The participants discussed how Thai traditional mainstream norms and values in

feminine sexuality were produced and reproduced through every fundamental

social institution and the state in Thailand. They indicated that family was seen

as a starting point of everything, followed by the school, as one of the participants

said, “From when I was little until now, my parents and teachers always repeated

these feminine sexuality norms which have happened both at home and school”.

Not only do these norms impact their expression of gender identity in physical

terms, such as how to dress, how to say, and how to behave, but these also

influence how they perform their gender identities in inner terms, as in how to

think, how to feel, and how to decide in sexual relationships and preferences.

From this, it can be argued that the feminine sexuality norms and values are the

implicit and explicit elements that empower the gender stereotypes and roles in

Thai society.

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Theme 4: Different worlds of each social media platform facilitate different

forms of realistic gender performativity

“I look at Twitter as the realistic world, and Facebook as the unrealistic world.

Facebook is seen like the Fairly Ponies tale, which is a children’s cartoon with

characteristics of being pretty, beautiful, amiable, and colourful, but is invented by

someone, not a real one” – said participant C.

The participants discussed that social media can facilitate the representation of

their personality, characteristics, and identity, including gender identity on their

profile pages. However, they believed that different social media platforms can

offer different opportunities to present their selves and gender identities

depending on the features, tools, characters, and aims of each platform. This can

be considered through the identity theories by Goffman (1978) and Butler (1990).

According to Goffman’s dramaturgical approach (1978), this is a metaphorical

technique used to explain the identity performance, including gender identity. The

metaphor considers life as a stage for activities that people can engage and

perform. This performance is in line with Butler’s gender performativity (1990),

which argues that gender is performative and produced by the actions rather than

by something that comes naturally to men and women (1990, p.83). Both Butler’s

and Goffman’s identity theories can be applied to suggest that social media

activities of the participants are a public network for the performance of gender

identity. Especially, Goffman’s theoretical framework can explain the construction

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of gender identity on social media and conflict owing to the use of multiple fronts.

According to Goffman’s front/backstage concept (1978), social media platforms

can be seen as the front stage for the public performance of self and gender. In

other words, front-stage performance is “what people do when they know that

others are watching or aware of them” (Goffman,1978). Therefore, social media

users can perform the desired images of gender and selves within a variety of

interconnected audiences, as well as present publicly an idealised version of the

self on the sites. Goffman’s and Butler’s identity concepts provide a useful and

extensive explanation for the understanding of gender performance in the online

context as many researchers have applied in their works. boyd and Ellison (2007)

argued that social media constitute an important research context for scholars

investigating the process of gender performance, self-presentation, and

impression management. This is because social media provide a variety of tools

and features which potentially compromise and facilitate the desired images of

self according to the social values (p. 10).

From this, in the study, the participants indicated that they mostly had more than

one account in each platform for different uses. For example, one of the

participants had two accounts on Instagram, two accounts on Twitter, and one

account on Facebook. She thought that different platforms offered different

capacities in self-representation of sexuality. Similarly, another participant

demonstrated that “Twitter offers the most realistic representation of myself as

there is no need to provide my personal information on the profile page such as

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name, age, school, and the picture of the face, while people can see pictures of

my face on Instagram and the personal activities there can indicate who I am.

Facebook is the most unrealistic world for me as I think it needs the information

of who I am, what my real name is, where my school is, and who in the list of my

online friends are”. Significantly, she said, “my Facebook account has diverse

audiences, including my parents, my teachers, and my school friends. This could

be the hardest thing I need to deal with”.

It is implied that if someone wants to access the participants’ Twitter and

Instagram profiles, they need to request full permission. They cannot see any

pictures on those sites, whereas, on the Facebook platform, he/she can still partly

see participants’ pages. From this, Facebook can be considered as a less

controlled platform in terms of privacy. Due to this privacy issue, the participants

thereby ranked their most realistic platforms as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook,

respectively. It can be argued that how young women express their real selves,

gender identities, and sexuality depends on the capacity of privacy control of each

social media platform. One of the participants said, “If I make the comparison

between these platforms, Twitter is the realistic world, while Facebook is the Fairy

Ponies world. The Fairly Ponies tale is a children cartoon featuring a pretty,

beautiful, amiable, and colourful world which is invented by someone, not a real

one”. This shows that Twitter is the best place where the participants can be their

(intrinsic) selves, while they might pretend to be someone else on profile pages

of Facebook. For example, they might pretend to be pretty, amiable, neat, and

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well-behaved on Facebook, showing characteristics that represent the socially

desirable images of female gender identities in Thai society. Thus, when using

Facebook, they need to perform their gender and sexuality according to these

feminine mainstream values and practices in society.

Moreover, each social media platform has different features, functions, and

special tools that serve different purposes. For instance, Instagram and Facebook

have story tool functions, while Twitter does not have this. This famous IG stories

tool is a new feature that lets users post photos and videos that vanish after 24

hours; besides, the content shared through this tool will not appear on the profile

grid or the main Instagram/Facebook feed. This stories tool is the most popular

feature among young women who use social media for sharing their activities,

while Instagram’s stories tool is seen as more convenient and widespread than

Facebook’s tool. The participants discussed that they posted so many pictures

and video contents through this feature with sufficient privacy control, since they

could control who was going to see their posts, and these contents vanished after

24 hours without appearing on their main profiles. Because of the privacy control,

the participants hence considered Instagram to be the most convenient platform

to show their activities, including their sexual behaviours, sexual relationships with

boyfriends, and other sexual matters. To conclude, it can be argued that different

social media platforms facilitate different forms of realistic gender performativity

depending on the features and tools, the capacities of privacy control, the aim of

using, and the online friends that participants have in each platform.

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Theme 5: Thai traditional mainstream sexuality norms still influence social

media use in young women

Although the participants discussed that social media could provide them an

opportunity to express their personalities and identities, it still had a limited

offering in the performance of gender identity and sexuality due to the overlapping

relationships inside the platforms. As young women are constrained, shaped, and

controlled by the traditional mainstream sexuality norms in the offline context,

these normative public discourses still have their presence in the online context.

Thai traditional sexuality norms and practices are mostly derived from the basis

of social institutions, such as family and school, which are linked to the previous

theme. The feminine sexuality values are developed by the integration of

education, the educators in school, parental guidance, and other social

discourses which initially happen in the offline world. The participants indicated

that they could not abandon these when they move from the offline world to the

online world, as they said, “most of my offline relationships, such as my friends,

my parents, and my teachers are entirely included in the list of my online friends

on Facebook”. Other relatives and acquaintances were also adding them as

friends and had some online activities together such as comments, likes, and tags

of pictures on their Facebook profiles. Due to the connection and interaction

between people living in the offline and the online worlds, it can be argued that

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there is a significant link between these worlds that cannot dissociate from each

other.

One of the participants said, “my father and mother are both my online friends.

They requested to be my friends on Facebook, which I cannot reject. This is why

I have to beware of posting something”. Similarly, another participant said, “I think

my parents always observe what I share and post. When I post a picture with my

boyfriend or a picture of myself, they think that it is not appropriate to do, and

finally, those posted pictures are deleted since my parent say these are not the

right thing to do in the public space. Because of this parental surveillance, it

makes me think that the mainstream norms and traditional female values

reinforced by people in the offline world still influence my activities on social

media”.

Moreover, the participants considered that they always deleted or hid the posts

from their parents on their profile pages due to the concern of socially desirable

images in society. This presents supportive evidence that they cannot leave their

parents, relatives, or teachers behind in the offline world and entirely move to the

online world. Young women are still influenced by the traditional public discourses

and mainstream values regarding sexuality because of they are bound to both

offline and online interactions and/or relations on a daily basis.

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In addition, I propose that the issue of different levels of impact that the audiences

have on each social media platform is another factor determining why

traditional/mainstream public discourses in sexuality still impact girls’ social media

usage. Each platform has different features and opportunities for expressing

gender identity and sexuality. As discussed previously, the Facebook platform is

the most unrealistic world because it contains lots of diverse audiences and adult

people such as parents, relatives, and teachers in school, while Twitter is the most

controlled and private platform where the participants can selectively share

personal information and control how their online friends see their activities; in

addition, their parents are mostly not active on this platform. From this, a

reasonable assumption is that how young women express and negotiate their

sexuality are dependent on what kind of relationship they have or the level of

impact that their audiences have when interacting with them on each platform. In

other words, the more girls interact with high-impact audiences online such as

parents, teachers, and relatives, the more they obscure the true presentation of

their intrinsic gender identity and sexuality. By contrast, the more girls interact

with low-impact audiences online such as friends, close friends, school friends,

and acquittances, the more they show their real selves in terms of gender identity

and sexual expression.

Hence, the overlap of high- and low- impact audiences online is seen as an

underlying factor that influences how young women perform their gender identity

and sexuality online. Because these online diverse audiences have direct

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interactions with traditional mainstream practices and values in the offline context.

Thus, it can be argued that the traditional public discourses are still significant

and cannot be shaken off from the offline world when the youth move to the online

world to engage in sexual negotiation.

This argument can be reinforced by Goffman’s impression management concept

(1978) to better understand why the social normativity and the significance of

audiences online potentially impact the ways girls perform their selves. Goffman

asserted that “people create an impression on others that will enable them to

achieve their goals” (1978). Besides, he highlighted that life on the stage of

performance is an “activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked

by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has

some influence on the observers” (1978, p. 22). These observers are also present

on social media platforms, as one of the participants explicitly indicated that they

could not escape their parents and teachers on the sites, “My parent always

observe what I share and post. I cannot be myself on Facebook”.

In addition, according to Goffman’s impression management, people convey the

impressions for the whole group as “they are part of broader collectives” (1978,

p. 30). Goffman thus claimed that people work together to share impressions due

to the desire to obtain a mutual agreement from a group member (1978, p.47).

This can be linked to how young women use social media to negotiate their

gender identity. Since social media is the publicly broader collective space and

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young women desire to achieve the goal in mutual agreement with the social

groups they live with both offline and online, they thus need to be concerned about

the impact of the audiences, the peer culture, and the social norms regarding

sexuality both on the offline and online sites.

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Conclusion

Based on the outcomes of the pilot study, there are five themes of argument that

discussed girls’ perception of gender matter both online and offline. Firstly, it can

be argued that to be courteous, neat, submissive, amiable, and benign is still part

of the strictly mainstream values of gender identities in young Thai females’

perception. This argument highlights the girls’ perception and awareness of

traditional public discourses as well as the traditional forms of female conduct in

Thai culture. For example, it was revealed that the awareness of these discourses

and forms came into existence during childhood and was influenced by parental

guidance, the environment, and schools.

Secondly, as a social institution is seen as the underlying factor in the creation of

traditional mainstream discourses in feminine sexuality, the argument is that the

integration of education in Thailand is both production and reproduction of the

mainstream norms in sexuality. Specifically, this integral education does not only

include the subject of sex education, but also other sociological subjects, such as

the history of politics in Thailand, the Thai monarchy, the religion and beliefs. This

kind of integration of education, from lessons to textbooks, class activities, and

educators, potentially enables the repetition of the original themes of feminine

discourses in society.

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Thirdly, it can be argued that feminine sexuality norms and values empower

gender stereotypes and roles in Thai society. These norms and values mostly

emphasise the role of women as inferior and men as superior. This finally

reinforces the stereotypes of women as weakened, sensitive, and obedient

figures, while men are seen as being sturdy, rugged, and powerful.

Fourthly, due to the different capacities of privacy control, features, tools, and

different levels of impact of the audiences on each social media platform, it can

be safely assumed the different worlds of each platform facilitate different realistic

forms of gender performativity. Particularly, this can be further discussed by the

concept of the audience’s power. As the power of the audience is significant in

terms of young women’s attempts to determine what is socially acceptable to post

or what can be understood by the engaged readers (boyd, 2010), they tactically

express salient and/or desired aspects of their gender identities for others to see

and interpret on their profiles.

Lastly, Facebook is principally concerned with physical friendships and

relationships that are initiated offline and then relocated online (Georgalou, 2015).

This implies the connection and social interaction between people living offline

and online who cannot leave each other. Thus, it can be argued that traditional

mainstream norms and values in the offline interaction remain significant in the

online interaction, and also impact how young women manipulate social media to

negotiate their gender identity.

how is social media used in negotiating gender identity.pdf

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