Bangkok gym offers safe space for transgender men looking to get fit
For a transgender man, the road to transforming your body doesn't necessarily stop at hormones or surgery.
Transfit, a gym in Bangkok owned and staffed only by transgender men, hopes to help the trans community achieve the workout plans they desire.
The gym's owner, 27-year-old Jyb, told Mashable that he started the place a year ago in hopes of sharing his training experience with others who were assigned female at birth.
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Jyb, himself a part-time model, does a fine job of showcasing what workout and diet can do for you.
"I opened the gym because I wanted to help tomboys and trans men to have nice bodies," he said.
While Jyb hasn't personally had bad experiences at mixed gender gyms, he said he's aware that some transgender men and butch women have felt awkward being stared at in other gyms.
Transfit has a smallish regular clientele at the moment of about 15. "We mostly train people one-to-one in private sessions, so we don't have too many," he said.
Jyb, whose full name is Phanyapad Maha-Udomporn, started going to the gym three years ago.
This is Jyb on a TV show in Bangkok talking about himself and the gym:
Compared with its Southeast Asian neighbours, Thailand is generally known to be more embracing of the LGBTQ community, and regards transgender people as the "third sex" -- Jyb himself uses the term.
There are magazines in the country such as Tom Actz, which is dedicated to LGBTQ issues, with a focus on the butch community, or "tomboy" scene, as they're more popularly called in Thailand.
This is Jyb on Tom Actz's December cover:
Eventually, Jyb hopes to open another Transfit outlet in Thailand, if the gym generates enough revenue.
He's also saving up for an eventual expansion to other countries in the region, where the trans community is underserved, he said.
[h/t PRI]
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Topics LGBTQ
Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
