Cambodia's first gay town

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Along the train tracks in one of Phnom Penh's
ubiquitous slums, the noise never stops and everything is changing. Longtime
residents are fearful that they'll soon have to move. This place isn't safe
anymore, they say. It isn't moral anymore.

Along these same tracks, roughly 100 new residents, in search of asylum and
community, have trickled in over the last several years and now lead lives
of shocking desperation. Most of them only sleep during the day. Some
perform acts of prostitution. Others dress as women. Almost all of them are
homosexual men. And this place, Beoung Kak 2, has become a home: Cambodia's
first gay town.

But this isn't Boystown in Chicago, nor the Castro in San Francisco. This
isn't a place where homosexuals can celebrate sexuality, individuality,
love. Make no mistake: It's a place for survival.

Every month more newcomers arrive, and as this community expands and
supplants longtime residents, it represents both a burgeoning confidence
among Cambodia's gay population, as well as the difficulties that lie ahead
for homosexuals here struggling for acceptance and equality.

As two worlds converge and clash in Beoung Kak 2, each seems allegoric, as
though re-enacting a bigger national issue. The young, radically sexual
newcomers stand juxtaposed against a traditional set of neighbors that are
baffled, and sometimes frightened, by the swelling number of openly gay
Khmer down the road.

"We're scared that more [homosexuals] will keep coming here and make more
terrible activities back there," said Srey Oun, 48, who lives behind her
now-defunct hair salon in Beoung Kak 2. "Everyone is scared like me. Khmer
culture isn't changing, but the people are."

Since 2004, the number of "out" homosexuals in Phnom Penh has exploded from
around 900 to approximately 10,000 today, according to nongovernmental
organizations that track the city's gay community. Other provinces have seen
such staggering growth among their gay communities as well, census records
show.

For years, the ever-growing number of openly gay Khmer had scattered
themselves, meeting socially, but living separately, NGO workers say. Last
March, however, Prime Minister Hun Sen castigated Cambodia's reputation as a
destination for sex tourism. Soon after, police shuttered brothels and
karaoke bars across the capital, where many transgenders worked and lived.
Destitute and homeless, some staggered to the slums of Beoung Kak 2.

"If we're not with each other, we're scared everyone will look down on us or
beat us," said Kong Chan Rattna, 24, amid eight fellow transgender
homosexuals inside a hut stilted above a stream. "Together, we can have
happiness - we can go anywhere. Nothing's a problem."

Cambodia's definition of homosexuality and gender challenges Western
notions. In Cambodia, there's a third gender - frequently called "lady boys" -
that falls somewhere between male and female. By all appearances and
mannerisms, they're female and identify as such though born male; most
haven't undergone any sex-change operations, they say.

Transgender homosexuals inhabit the shadows of Khmer society. Though they're
emphatically proud of their lifestyles and sexuality, such proclamations
might come out stilted or forebode some admittance of shame. Don't tell my
parents. Don't use your real name. Don't go home. Don't.

Of the many narratives that have taken Beoung Kak 2's homosexual residents
into this fetid and cramped place, the story of a slight, curly-haired
transgender named Srey Pisey seems emblematic. Pisey, gregarious and bright
despite little formal education, has always had a secret inside her.

Pisey, now 28, was 13 when she realized she was different. Living in rural
Kandal just outside Phnom Penh, she couldn't stop the thought that she
wasn't right in this body, that she couldn't relate to her family or anyone
in her village. She felt alone. She felt scared. She said she knew she was
supposed to be a woman, and the recognition was tortuous.

"I tried to kill myself twice when I was a child," she said at home in
Beoung Kak 2. "I took too much medication. I was very upset and disappointed
that I was gay and my parents beat me and wanted me to go away from my home.
I tried to change myself into a boy, but I couldn't. Because, me as a woman,
it's natural."

In 2002, Pisey's parents disowned her and kicked her out, she said. So,
without any skills, she came to Phnom Penh. She hasn't been home since and
says she misses her family every day though not sure what they would think
of her now, a homosexual prostitute in Phnom Penh.

"I don't know how to read," Pisey said, echoing a theme in many stories
here. "I don't know how to write. I only know how to be a prostitute."

Meanwhile, around 100 meters down the tracks, longtime resident Kaulap Kho
sat inside her wooden shack rocking her 5-month-old son in a hammock. While
she talked and her baby slept, Kho became angrier and angrier. This squat
woman, with her husband, Tho, has lived here selling clams for 10 years. It
has become their home. Where they want to raise their four children. But
soon, she said, they'll have to move back to the provinces to find work.

Kaulap's profits selling clams have recently plunged 50 percent from $5 per
day to $2.50, and the homosexuals, she spat, are to blame. Good Khmer folk
don't come to shops near such "sinful" people, she said. And so Kaulap
broods as she rocks her baby, hatred in her eyes.

"These people are not the same as the general people; they talk and act very
differently" said Meas Chanthan, executive director of Cambodia's
Corporation for Social Services and Development, one of Phnom Penh's dozen
non-governmental organizations that study and assist the country's
homosexual population. "They talk loudly, they scream and they're not afraid
of their neighbors."

Meas continued, "These homosexuals think they've become isolated and that
they have no one. They don't like the general people either so they have no
choice but to live together and so the homosexuals are so sad."

Isolation seems an insurmountable and profound thing for some transgenders
in Beoung Kak 2. At 9 a.m. on a recent Friday, while most residents here
were already thinking about lunch, five transgender homosexuals slept inside
their shack on a wooden floor. They had gotten back late the night before.
No one had purchased them, and now they didn't have enough money for rice.

Yet deep into midmorning, despite the light, the hunger, the noise spilling
inside, the transgender homosexuals snuggled together, eyes closed: The rest
of the world firmly outside.

(Article by y Terry McCoy - Special to GlobalPost)