Matcha Phorn-in

As a lesbian feminist woman human rights defender, Matcha Phorn-in has been passionately promoting human rights and gender and SOGIESC justice. She has worked for 17 years to empower people from the most marginalised communities, including LGBTIQ, indigenous people, ethnic minorities, young women and girls, stateless and undocumented refugees, disability and migrant workers, and advocates for family equality for LGBTIQ parents.

Matcha Phorn-in founded and serves as the Executive Director of Sangsan Anakot Yaowachon, an organisation that works with young people from marginalised communities living in disaster-prone Thai villages near the border with Myanmar/Burma. At the global level, she serves LGBTIQAN+ as the co-president of the organisation International Family Equality Day (IFED). In the fight to end gender-based violence, she serves as a Thailand Coordinator for V-Day [Facebook], a global movement.

APWLD interviewed Matcha in February 2021 and below is her story.

Becoming a feminist and human rights defender

I was born on the border of Thai and Lao. My first language is Lao, but I hold Thai citizenship, so I faced many challenges in my childhood for belonging to an ethnic minority in Thailand. We were invisible in Thai society because we were not even recognised as an ethnic minority back then. Marginalisation almost always leads to poverty, which was true in my case. I also had to deal with domestic and gender-based violence, being a rape survivor. My experience made me a very strong activist in defending gender justice and human rights, particularly for ethnic minorities.

When I grew up, I moved to Northern Thailand as a student activist and became involved in the indigenous people’s movement. That was when I started working in the NGO (non-governmental organisation) sector. Later in 2006, I founded my organisation for the empowerment of indigenous women, especially young women, girls and young LGBTIQ. I welcomed young indigenous women—particularly those who defined themselves as peoples with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC)—to join my organisation not only as members but also as board members because I knew from experience that they were often denied the opportunity to join a movement. They were being marginalised for their young age! Coming from my ethnicity and being a young woman once myself, I could not impose on young women what I had to fight against.

I noticed that even within the movement then, there was a kind of exclusivity and compartmentalisation. I was greeted with a warm welcome when I spoke about the rape issue in support of the feminist movement. But when I spoke about indigenous women’s issues, I was pushed out because indigenous women’s issues had no place in the feminist movement then. The same held true for the indigenous community movement. They were pleased if I discussed land rights and socio-economic and cultural issues but did not acknowledge that there were LGBTIQA issues within the indigenous community as well as feminist issues. When I wanted to bring these issues up, I was also pushed out by the indigenous people’s movement. These experiences led to the realisation that we needed to develop a framework that could address the intersectionality of the marginalised groups rather than further segregate them. We needed a framework—a mindset that would foster inclusion, linkage, and solidarity. 

To achieve that, feminism should be our guiding principle for all the different issues. This has been one of my missions, bringing a feminist perspective to different movements. 

To break out of gender and ethnicity-based marginalisation, we need to first recognise that all the issues share these four common roots: patriarchy, militarisation, fundamentalism, and globalisation. The roots are why we face pushbacks when we disturb the current social structure. We also need more women representatives from diverse communities. It would be nice if heterosexual men want to take part in the movement, but we do not need them to speak for us and make decisions for us, especially on issues like abortion and gender reassignment. The dominant gender from the upper social class has no place in making decisions for us.

Because we aim to create a just and equal society, we cannot, in our movement, eliminate other marginalised groups, because this goes against what we believe. On the contrary, we need to involve as many as we can, especially the currently marginalised communities, like the indigenous communities and LGBTQIA+ communities. This is the only way we can achieve true inclusion and democracy.

Growing together with APWLD

When I was 35, I joined the global movement on MDGs (Millennium Development Goals). The platform was very high-level, and I had difficulty connecting with other regional organisations covering the same constituencies. That was when I realised that a regional network was an urgent need. Then I found APWLD in 2015. In the same year, APWLD announced the FLTP (Feminist Legal Theory and Practice) training and I applied.

My first training with APWLD was amazing. I was so impressed by the inclusivity and the rich knowledge and techniques shared during the workshop that I wished I had joined APWLD sooner. Through APWLD I met so many Southeast Asian (SEA) feminists who were not only proficient in feminist theories but also worked on the frontlines of women’s struggles. I got to know more about other countries’ feminist movements, their strategies and their methodologies. 

My first encounter with APWLD prompted me to join the Peoples’ Forum. Linking national movements and creating a regional movement with a shared cause became possible. Together, we can better hold our respective governments accountable. APWLD is key to linking the seemingly disparate movements, because, as APWLD has clearly shown during the training, behind land rights, indigenous people’s rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQIA rights, the shared enemy is the patriarchy and class system rather than any individual. 

The shared goal is an equal society that respects human rights.

Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) is another important feminist tool for linking activists, especially those who are not from the oppressed communities and have an academic background, with the grassroots communities. FPAR not only allows activists and grassroots to work together, promotes the concept of collective rights and success achieved with the support of the communities, but also connects, for example, the Thai indigenous people’s movement with that of the Philippines, thus creating regional linkage and solidarity. 

I find the GFMP (Globalisation, Fundamentalism, Militarism and Patriarchy) analytical framework very powerful and explains many SEA countries’ situations perfectly. In Thailand and Myanmar/Burma, firearms are known to be employed to stop people’s peaceful protests. In many SEA countries, the military has the most power, then there are men. GFMP is a good tool for understanding and explaining our political, social, and cultural contexts. It is comprehensive, yet effective and easy to understand.

I hope that in the future, APWLD will be able to bring FPAR and FLTP to the marginalised communities, strengthening national movements while promoting regional solidarity and collaboration. It would be of tremendous help if APWLD could offer more resources to its members at the national level. I hope APWLD will consider removing the language barrier facing grassroots organisations and activists. 

Lastly, I hope APWLD will take more action to protect its members. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our community was hard hit. Solidarity doesn’t have to mean understanding our situation but means supporting us by providing much-needed resources. APWLD can better consider the issue of safety and security. Online platforms are often not very safe. Activists and unionists are not safe because many countries nowadays bust unions and arrest activists and unionists. What can APWLD do more of? It is a difficult but highly meaningful question to answer.

Grooming the Future Feminist Leaders & Fostering a Stronger LGBTQIA+ Movement

As I have already mentioned in the beginning, I make a point of paving the way for young women who are passionate about feminist causes. Partially because I understand the difficulty young women face when they just get into any movement and that I am against any kind of marginalisation but also to foster more young feminists who will eventually become next-generation leaders.

Besides removing as many roadblocks as I can for young feminists, I also make sure our organisation has young feminist representation in every space that we create. I practice what I preach: equality for young feminists too! Let them teach themselves, let them find their voices, and speak in their own voices, and let them develop new frameworks and new knowledge. You cannot have next-generation feminists if you don’t let them learn and grow freely and become themselves. 

We provide training and learning opportunities, and especially support those feminists who are from grassroots communities. In every space we have, I make sure half of the people occupying our spaces are young feminists. This is not just for the benefit of the younger generation. I think of every opportunity of interacting with the younger generation as my chance to learn as well. They are not behind-the-scenes learning-from-the-grown-ups, they have their own voices and perspectives, and we need to put our strength together, join our forces, and eventually let them take over. This is my practice. Young women and LGBTQIA+ people will at least have their due representation in my organisation. 

I hope that regional platforms like APWLD will play a role in connecting more young feminists from the Asia-Pacific and make the regional feminist movement stronger than ever. 

The LGBTQIA+ movement is still divided. A lot of transgender women are attacked by TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) as non-women. When I publicly identify as a feminist, I sometimes get attacked by our trans community. I firmly believe that the transgender community, or the LGBTQIA+ community in general, and the women’s community share the same goals: achieving gender equality. There should exist a space for correcting the wrongs and healing the wounded. In doing so, we can bridge the forces that rightfully belong together. There should exist more spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community in any movement because we are everywhere. APWLD has members whose constituencies are the LGBTQIA+ people, however, I would like to see even more LGBTQIA+ community representation in APWLD at every level. I would like to see a programme devoted to this community. 

Feminist theories are developing, young feminists are growing, the LGBTQIA+ community is also developing and growing, and we all need to catch up. This will be how we groom the future feminist leaders and foster a stronger LGBTQIA+ movement, which will in turn strengthen our causes as well.