The Strive Towards Genuine Sapphic Representations in Thai Queer Cinema Continues

Analysis on the pre- and post-pandemic GMMTV’s WLW representations, the discursive construction and resignification of sapphic images, and the fracture between commercial and LGBTQ+ rights advocacy goals

Abstract

Based on the current representations existing in the media market from the 2010s to now, many queer feminist
audiences, including myself, deem various Thai women-loving-women (WLW) media texts problematic due to its
maintaining of the normative heterosexual gaze upon queer women. There is an urgent need to investigate the
coherence of these media texts with the realities of queer women. More importantly, whether there exist genuine
representations or whether they are still retaining in patriarchy. Furthermore, media texts about queer women in the
context of Thailand are still less than in terms of production, dissemination, and accurate representation compared to
the West and to its counterpart within the same queer romance genre that is Boy Love (BL) 1 . Thus, it is necessary to
explore the patterns of meanings disseminated through WLW media texts, what they reveal about the perceptions
towards the actual WLW community in Thai context, and how all of these can be tied to the reluctance to grant
Thailand’s LGBTQ+ community the Equal Marriage Law.