Exploring gender, cults and spirituality in Southeast Asia
- Text by HUCK HQ
- Photography by Mariette Pathy Allen
Mariette Pathy Allen has been capturing the world’s gender non-conforming communities for nearly four decades now. Using the power of writing, academic study and visual storytelling, the American photographer has spent her career giving a voice to the voiceless – sharing the experiences of the transgender, genderfluid and intersex people who have been left behind by their societies.
So far, Allen’s dedication has manifested itself into four books. Her first, Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them (E. P. Dutton, 1989) and the Lambda award-winning The Gender Frontier (Kehrer, 2003), were celebrations of gender non-conforming people in the US. They were followed by TransCuba (Daylight, 2014) – a colourful and poignant examination of Cuba’s transgender community.
Her latest book, Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Thailand and Burma, builds on this further by exploring gender variance among the spirit cults of south-east Asia.
“I was drawn to Burma and Thailand because of the similarity and differences of those cultures,” the activist tells Huck. The focus lies particularly on the gender non-conforming mediums of both countries. “I was fascinated by the idea that spirituality was what created the acceptance of homosexuality and transgender.”
Transcendents is a collaboration with Professor Eli Coleman, the director of the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota, who researches sex and gender variance in Juchitan, Mexico, French Polynesia, Burma, and Thailand. The book features several text and essays from him, which run alongside Allen’s intimate portraits.
“The spirits are known by their names, stories, and behaviour, and even by the advice they might give when they speak through the mouth of the medium they possess,” Allen explains. “There is no way that I, as a westerner, can understand the magic that transpires during a trance dance, or when mediums are possessed as they perform a story. I reign in my western thinking that asks for proof before belief. I just sit and observe, and allow myself to be absorbed.”
Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Thailand and Burma is available now from Daylight books.
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