A little bit of context…

from the creator of Love Friends

I’m Marisa Amberson, a transgender lesbian woman from Bangkok, Thailand. With Love Friends, I aim to represent experiences and struggles LGBTQIA+ people face everyday in a way that’s often under-represented or misrepresented in media, especially Thai media.

In Thailand, we have had LGBTQIA+ people on our media for quite a long time. But they are often presented in the same old ways that had led to wrong, and sometimes harmful stereotypes, that made most people see them as facts about us. It even made some LGBTQIA+ people ourselves think that “that’s the only way we can be.”

We might not have a lack of representation here, but we certainly haven’t had much representation outside of the same old ways the media have always seem to depict us. And that’s what we hope to help change, even if we might not be able to do much.

For me personally, this has been a big part of my experience in discovering myself. I grew up in this Thai society that always seems to depict trans women as “men-obsessed, over-the-top, funny, talented, etc.” Which made me back then, and most of people here even to this day (and even trans women ourselves), thinks that “That’s the only way we can be.”

Of course, looking back in hindsight, it’s easy to say and understand that that’s just stereotypes. But trans women had been depicted in this way on mainstream media since basically forever. And one thing that helped broke down this wrong misunderstanding for me is seeing the other ways trans women can be. Mostly from knowing other trans people in the global online communities.

As Sally Ride, the first US woman to go to space, once said “You can’t be what you can’t see.” I think it certainly applies here as well. As soon as I realized that I don’t have to be like how Thai media often depicts trans women, and as soon as I realized that I can be a trans woman that’s into women, it all clicked in for me and I suddenly realized that that’s who I am.

I hope Love Friends’ stories help to achieve the same thing for other people, who might not realized what they are, because they didn’t know that it’s possible to be that way. I hope we can represent under-represented identities and stories of LGBTQIA+ people, so people know that they exist, and that they can certainly be that way.

Marisa Amberson
Creator of Love Friends