Thai the Knot!

It's party time in Thailand, as same-sex couples take to the aisles in their thousands to mark the passing of the Marriage Equality Act into law. But for many, it's just the first step for a country whose image in the west as an LGBTQ+ paradise masks some inconvenient truths

TARANG MOHNOT

“It was a dating website – ‘mytransgenderdate.com’, or something,” says 39-year-old Ratiwat NoNie Wachirakanok, a Thai trans woman. That’s where she met Gilles Baderspach, 43, a gay man from France. Three months in, he’d flown down to Thailand, where the pair had spent two weeks together. Within a week of returning home, Baderspach proposed. Maybe the U-Haul syndrome wasn’t exclusive to lesbians after all. “I’ve been waiting for this!” NoNie told him and, within six months, they’d married twice – first, in a religious ceremony in Thailand, and later, through an official marriage registration with the French government. Today, the couple live in Montreux, Switzerland, and there’s talk of getting married for a third time. On January 23, 2025, Thailand became the first country in south-east Asia to legalise same-sex…

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Dazed & Confused (Digital) - 1 Issue, Spring 2025

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