Overview
What kathoey means.
Kathoey (กะเทย) is Thai. It belongs to Thailand and to Thai people, including Thai people living a long way from home. Related words exist in Lao and Khmer. It did not come from a forum and it cannot be picked up from one.
The word is deliberately wide. Over time it has covered intersex people, trans women, and people who live as women without ever using that word about themselves. Where the edges sit is argued over, in Thai, constantly.
It is contested as a word too. Some people use it about themselves without flinching. Others hear the playground in it and prefer สาวประเภทสอง (sao praphet song, second-type lady) or ผู้หญิงข้ามเพศ (phuying kham phet, trans woman). All three are in live use right now, and no one gets to settle it for everyone else.
There is no ceremonial role attached. Kathoey are not ritual specialists the way some other cultures organise a third gender. This is an ordinary social category — everyone in Thailand knows what it is. That is not the same as being safe.
Thailand is famous abroad for being relaxed about this. Inside it, you can be on television and still be นาย on paper, still be steered into four careers, still be the punchline in the sitcom. Visible is not equal.
If you are not Thai, read on, but the word is not yours to take. The tourist reputation is not an invitation. What you are looking for is probably trans woman, or non-binary, and those pages will fit you better.
A Thai term for transgender women or effeminate men, with deep cultural roots in Thai and Buddhist traditions.
Kathoey in one line
Origin
Where the word comes from
Kathoey (กะเทย) is a longstanding Thai word, also used in related forms in Khmer and Lao, that has historically covered intersex people, transfeminine people and effeminate men without drawing sharp lines between them. It is not a recent coinage and has no single documented origin point or inventor — it is an inherited term whose scope has shifted across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as Thai society, medicine and activism have changed.
As transgender identity became more medically and legally visible in Thailand, many Thai trans women began favouring more specific self-descriptions such as phuying kham phet (transgender woman) or sao praphet song, partly to distance themselves from a word that can carry mockery or reduce them to entertainment and sex-work stereotypes. Thailand's marriage equality law took effect in January 2025, letting kathoey and other Thai people marry regardless of legal sex, but Thai law still has no mechanism to change the sex marker on identity documents.
- Where
- Thailand, Cambodia and Laos; long-standing usage, not a modern coinage
Signs people describe
Common experiences
None of these is a test. Most people recognise a few and shrug at the rest.
The word reached you first as a taunt, from a boy in your class, years before you would ever have chosen it.
You learned early which sentence particle gets you through a given room without incident, and you can switch it in under a second.
At school you stood in the boys' line at assembly, in the boys' uniform, hair cut to the boys' length, and everyone including the teachers treated it as paperwork.
Relatives have been calling it a phase you will grow out of for eleven years and counting.
You know which pharmacy sells the pills without questions, and roughly what your friend paid.
You are dreading the twenty-first birthday draft, or you have already stood in that hall and been looked at and written down.
Someone told you that you are beautiful and, in the same conversation, that you should keep your ID card face down.
Careers advice at school was makeup, hair, or the stage.
Never the thing you actually said.
You are the child who sends money home, and everyone has quietly agreed this is the arrangement.
Strangers have photographed you in the street on their holiday and assumed you would not notice.
At the temple you can give alms, and you know without asking that ordaining is not on the table unless you go as a man.
You have a hospital story: which ward they put you on, or the name shouted across the waiting room.
You are used to being liked and not taken seriously, and you can tell the two apart in the first thirty seconds.
Day to day
What it looks like on a normal Tuesday
Morning is the easy part. Face, hair, the outfit that keeps arguments off you for the day. You already know which carriage on the BTS, or which seat on the bus, and which security guard is fine.
Then the small tolls. The delivery app that greets you as คุณ plus a name you do not use. The new colleague who is friendly and a little too interested. The toilet decision, made in advance, every single time.
Work is mostly just work. Someone does the voice, does the joke. You laugh, because today not laughing costs more than laughing does. It goes on the pile.
Evening: money to your mother, the group chat, and news that a friend was turned down at an interview with a smile and no reason. Nobody is surprised. You sleep and do it again.
Across the parts of a life
Open the area you came here for.
Straight answers
What people get wrong
Thailand is a paradise for people like you.
Thailand is used to you. That is a different thing. You can be a household name and still carry an ID that says Mr, still be quietly filtered out of a government job, still be put on the wrong ward.
Kathoey means cabaret, or means sex work.
Those jobs are visible, especially to tourists. Some kathoey do them, some by choice and some because the other doors shut. Most work in shops, salons, offices, kitchens, clinics and schools, and nobody films that.
It just means an effeminate gay man.
Some people the word gets thrown at are men. Many are women and say so plainly. The word does not sort this out for you, which is precisely why a lot of Thai trans women have dropped it.
It is karma from a past life.
You will hear this from relatives, from monks, from strangers on a minibus. It is a folk explanation, and it usually arrives attached to a suggestion that you accept less. Thai Buddhism holds more than one view, and the harshest one is not the only one.
You did all this to catch a rich foreigner.
Said constantly. Meanwhile Thai men date kathoey in enormous numbers and mostly do it where their families cannot see.
Every kathoey wants surgery, and every kathoey is beautiful.
Surgery costs more than most Thai salaries, and your ID does not change afterwards anyway. Plenty put the money into a face, a voice, or a roof for their mother instead. Plenty want none of it.
The word is a slur, full stop. Or: the word is completely fine, full stop.
Thai people disagree about this out loud. Age, region, tone and who is speaking all change it. A friend using it across a table is not a stranger using it on a bus.
Take care
On the hard days
The paperwork days. The ID handed back with a second glance. The draft at twenty-one, in a hall full of men, waiting to be examined and recorded — the exemption used to be written up as a mental illness, and it took years of campaigning to get that wording changed.
The joke days. The sitcom, the radio bit, the colleague doing the voice at lunch. You laugh, then you sit in the car for a while before going back in.
The unsafe days. Violence against kathoey happens, and it is not always investigated with much energy, and everyone knows a name.
And the quiet one that catches people off guard. Being popular. Being everyone's favourite. Then noticing that nobody has ever asked you a serious question about your future.
Pronouns
Pronouns
In Thai, the argument is not about he and she. เขา (khao), the everyday third-person word, carries no gender at all. What carries gender is how you speak about yourself.
Most kathoey end sentences with the female particle ค่ะ (kha) and use ฉัน (chan) or ดิฉัน (dichan) for I. Plenty use their own nickname instead, which sidesteps the whole thing. Many switch: kha with friends, ครับ (khrap) at the bank.
Your ID card still says นาย (Nai, Mr). Colleagues may call you คุณ (khun) plus your name — polite, and committing to nothing. Sometimes that is kindness. Sometimes it is cowardice.
In English, most kathoey use she and her. Some use they. If you do not know, use the person's name and wait.
Consider another path
This might not be your word if…
- 1You are not Thai and have no life in Thailand. Reading about it is fine. Wearing it is not.
- 2You visited, loved it, and felt something. That was a holiday, not a gender.
- 3You were assigned female at birth. Whatever you are, this is not the word — look at tom, at trans man, at phuchai kham phet.
- 4You are a feminine gay man who is clear that you are a man. People will aim this word at you anyway. You do not have to accept delivery.
- 5You are a Thai trans woman who finds the word demeaning. Then it is not yours to be. Phuying kham phet is right there, and nobody gets to file you under this.
- 6You want a spiritual or ceremonial third gender. This is not one. Kathoey has no ritual role and has never claimed one.
- 7You want the glamour without the ID card, the draft hall, the interview that goes nowhere and the money you send home every month. That is a look, not a life.
Questions people ask
Frequently asked questions
Is 'kathoey' an insult?+
It depends who says it, how, and to whom — and Thai people genuinely disagree about it. Between friends it is ordinary. From a stranger on a bus it lands like a slap. If you are not Thai, do not use it about anyone; use their name, or trans woman. If you are Thai, you already read tone better than any page can teach you.
Is kathoey the same as being transgender?+
Overlapping, not identical. Many kathoey are trans women and would say so in either language. But the word also covers people who do not call themselves women, and it drags a whole social position along with it — the jobs, the jokes, the family arrangement — that the word transgender does not carry.
I'm not Thai. Can I call myself kathoey?+
No. It is not a treat you are being denied; it is a word that belongs to a specific place and to people who pay its actual costs. If something in the description felt like you, the honest names for that are trans woman, or non-binary, or still working it out.
Can kathoey change their gender on their ID, or get married?+
Marriage, yes — Thailand's marriage equality law came into force in 2025, so you can marry a man; it registers as a same-sex marriage. Legal gender is the piece still missing. As things stand there is no way to change the sex recorded on your Thai ID or the prefix on your name, no matter what surgery you have had. Bills have been drafted more than once. Check where it stands now before you rely on it.
The flag
Poster (mongoose_cheesecake, 2017-04-10) recorded, but the design is a diagonal cross of the Thai and transgender flags, not stripes; no hex values.
Sources
- Kathoey — Wikipedia General overview, terminology and regional distribution; fetched 2026-09-06.
- Why are there so many kathoey in Thailand? — Sam Winter Academic discussion of the term's contested and shifting meaning; fetched 2026-09-06.
- The Appearance of Identity, Body, and Social Territory of Kathoey in Southeast Asia (1927–1973) — Damrong Journal Peer-reviewed historical treatment of kathoey identity in the 20th century; fetched 2026-09-06.
Still figuring things out?
Twenty questions, four minutes, and a few words worth trying on.