In the mid to late 90s, internet came in and became popular in Bangkok. The trend of Java-based gay online chatting that was popular in Western world, such as ICQ, gay.com and Palm Plaza online forum, eventually penetrated Bangkok’s gay dweller’s lifestyle. The gay dwellers start to find an encounter online. The phone dating service started to vanish as the internet chatting service took off. Java-based chat, however, was far less advance than the typical chatting we know nowadays. Exchanging text was pretty much what the service could deliver. However, that was still far more convenient than taking through a phone. The users could also exchange pictures with another online platform without relying on post anymore. At this period, however, the computers were not owned by many dwellers. The internet café, thus, became popular to cater those who did not own a computer and internet connection. All in all, the popularity of both physical and virtual space for gay-dwellers started to complement each other. A momentous formation of gay-oriented public facilities, however, fundamentally began as soon as the firstborn gay bar in Soi 4 contaminated the surrounding bars to be gay-specific business, and then, the business network expanded wider to the surrounding area, such as Soi 2 of the same road, to create more diverse business, such as dance club and go-go bar. Today, the neighborhood – or what western lingo refers as pink neighborhood – is connected with even more diverse gay-themed businesses such as gay porn DVD shops, underwear stores, sex toy selling booths, gay massage parlor and gay accommodations that are found within the walk from one soi to another. Silom, consequently, has been the epitome of Bangkok’s gay urban space6. Such an existence of gay urban space is, therefore, as mentioned before, a considerable factor in causing the influx of gay rural people to the city in 20th century. Take the waiters in the bars of Silom’s soi 4 as example. They are mainly from the provinces outside Bangkok, such as Isan and southern provinces; hoping that Bangkok can fulfill their gay lifestyle aspiration as well as their needs to afford the above-the-poverty-line life. Jakarta, on the other hand, was not in the same pace with Bangkok. Urban proximity does not seem to positively affect the tolerance towards gay minority. The adequate medium, such as Bangkok’s less judgmental Buddhism teaching, was evidently absence in Jakartan society. Instead, Islam – a religious view that condemns homosexuality – prevailed significantly. In retrospect, the theory of proximity still works in a sense that it spreads intolerance as the city connects closed-minded people to each other. Thus, many gay-oriented activities were catered secretly in internet as soon as the internet usage began its 6
Urban space is defined as a dynamic aspect of urbanization in which it play synergistic and structural aspects. The
term gay urban space comes to the surface to signify how gay urbanites signify such synergistic and structural aspects. In a synergistic perspective, the emergence of particular area of the city that is virtually flocked by gay visitors (such as Bangkok’s Silom or Paris’ Le Marais) or inhabited by gay inhabitants (such as San Fransisco’s Castro) entails how gay urban space conforms to the criteria of large quantity such that they are situated in a space that makes them noticeable by both heterosexual and homosexual individuals. In a structural perspective, the created “gay space” then formatively contributes to the city through financial flow (and its taxation) and law compliance.
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