ABSTRACT
Taking on gender is not possible at a moment’s notice, but is a subtle and strategic project, laborious and for the most part covert. The socialization of children requires the internalization of understandings and practices associated with a range of social dimensions: kinship, age, religion, class, sexuality and gender and so forth. While not necessarily sharing the same performative aspects across each dimension, the production of masculinity and femininity is an integral part of this process. While all children are socialized to accord deference to the elders, at the same time, they learn that males differ from females. In Thai conceptions, to be born a male indicates that the child has more karmic merit than were it born a female. Some decades ago receiving education pertaining to anything beyond the immediate domestic surrounds was the sole privilege of the male child who attended monastery schools.
