Date of Publication:
20 October 2025
Timethius J. Terrell
Visiting Scholar, Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University
Suggested Citation
(APA) Terrell, T. J. (2025). Proposing a Theoretical Framework for Queer Human Rights: Insights from an Ongoing Study on Thai University Discourse. EAYSA Anchor. https://eaysa.org/anchor-articles-proposing-a-theoretical-framework-for-queer-human-rights/.
(MLA) Terrell, Timethius J. “Proposing a Theoretical Framework for Queer Human Rights: Insights from an Ongoing Study on Thai University Discourse.” EAYSA Anchor, 2025, https://eaysa.org/anchor-articles-proposing-a-theoretical-framework-for-queer-human-rights/.
(Harvard) Terrell, T. J., 2025. Proposing a Theoretical Framework for Queer Human Rights: Insights from an Ongoing Study on Thai University Discourse. EAYSA Anchor. Available at: https://eaysa.org/anchor-articles-proposing-a-theoretical-framework-for-queer-human-rights/.
Abstract
This article examines the role that linguistic differences and institutional discourse play in the application of international human rights principles—especially as they apply to LGBTQ+ empowerment in colleges/universities. Despite many examples of higher education institutions’ power to harness their innovative power to establish inclusive environments for LGBTQ+ students, such support resources are typically underdeveloped or absent within the Thai context, limiting their potential to impact broader society. To investigate underlying causes for this trend, my team employs Preston and Hoffman (2015)’s critical framework on Traditionally Heterogendered Institutions (THIs). In this article, I present our preliminary findings illustrating the roles that cultural norms of tolerance, institutional messaging, and linguistic conflations play in limiting the application of human rights frameworks in Thai institutions. I conclude by proposing opportunities to enhance the application of said frameworks, such as the Yogyakarta Principles and the Sustainable Development Goals, by using the AI-driven analytical methods being refined in this ongoing study.
Keywords: Yogyakarta Principles, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Traditionally Heterogendered Institution (THI), Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Narrative Analysis
Background of this Article: Statement of Positionality
The study described in this article is an ongoing investigation for which I have collected preliminary data, applied innovative critical frameworks, and engaged in collaboration with local scholars for its replication and expansion.
My approach to this work is deeply intertwined with my lived experiences as a queer, Black man who grew up in the Deep South and later navigated the complexities of higher education in both the United States and Thailand. My early life was shaped by overt racism and homophobia, which forced me to develop resilience and a commitment to social justice. This background informs my work as a scholar-activist, particularly in my efforts to support LGBTQ+ communities in Thailand, where I recognize both significant parallels and considerable divergences from my own experiences. This research investigation began, for the most part, as a tool to inform my own advocacy efforts as a mentor and support group facilitator for LGBTQ+ university students in Thailand.
Largely, I wished to provide empirically-supported guidance to my administrative partners who were searching for more ways to support marginalized students, whose experiences at this particular university had not been well-documented prior to this study. My identity and experiences drive my commitment to creating inclusive spaces and advocating for marginalized voices, both through my research and community organizing. And my unique perspective as an outsider-insider—someone who has experienced systemic oppression first-hand yet works within academic and activist spaces—enables me to approach my work with both empathy and a critical eye.
While my perspective has certainly been influential in my analyses, I am not leading this study with the belief that Western advocacy and demographic labels are somehow more correct or encompassing. Rather, I work closely with students to observe the impacts of certain norms and co-create solutions to any prevailing gaps. My goal was to bridge vital cultural and systemic gaps in LGBTQ+ institutional advocacy that might otherwise go unnoticed, advocating for true inclusivity and equity, particularly in educational settings.
To accomplish this in the present article, I first explain how Traditionally Heterogendered Institutions are identified and classified. Second, I describe an ongoing investigation, illustrating a case where this queer critical framework is applied in Thailand. Next, I highlight initial findings from this investigation to demonstrate the critical framework’s utility in unearthing gaps in LGBTQ+ human rights for Thai students. I conclude by outlining potential implications at the global scale and propose that the AI-inclusive discourse analyses methodologies be used to address these challenges.
Introduction: Global Emergence of University Support Systems and their Challenges
The worldwide shift towards LGBTQ+ acceptance and legal protections, largely inspired by Western activist movements and subsequent state-level advocacy, has been accompanied by the creation of advocacy organizations and resources centers both supporting LGBTQ+ communities and defending their human rights. In many instances, these have been incorporated into university programs aimed at bridging gaps for minoritized students (Preston and Hoffman, 2015). With research institutions being important vehicles for the advancement of international human rights, the inclusion of such structures reinforces their overall impact by putting theory into practice.
However, fully institutionalized, queer-inclusive diversity education and student support programming are rare outside the West, even for Thailand, a country seen as a leader in LGBTQ+ inclusion in Asia. Furthermore, multiple studies from the past decade have found that anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, prejudices, and barriers persist in various forms within Thai academic spaces (Ojanen et al., 2016; Chintaradeja, P., 2021), despite claims that universities might make publicly.
A recent study evaluated the extent to which Thai universities protect LGBTQ+ human rights found that even within the relatively few institutions that even aim to offer inclusive programming or implement policies fail to holistically meet the unique needs of LGBTQ+ students (Khaikham, L., 2022). The absence of substantial, non-performative programs is surprising, considering Thai universities’ documented commitment to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Building upon this prior research with primary evidence, our study proposes that Thai universities should be classified as Traditional Hetereogendered Institutions, despite their country’s global reputation and public commitments.
Applying the THI Framework in Thailand: Tolerance vs Acceptance
The term Traditionally Heterogendered Institutions (THIs), coined by Preston and Hoffman (2015), refers to institutions that, “while attempting to support LGBTQ people, inherently uphold a heterogendered discourse through [their] structures and foundations” (Terrell & Cortes, 2025, p. 169). This framing helps reveal how universities may outwardly present as inclusive, yet reinforce norms that marginalize non-heteronormative identities through silence, omission, or superficial engagement.
An ongoing study that I am conducting in collaboration with scholars at Mahidol University and the University of Pennsylvania harnesses Preston and Hoffman (2015)’s framework to examine how the stories told within a Thai university and the language used in student narratives reflect and perpetuate dominant social norms that may favor traditional gender roles or otherwise contribute to the othering of LGBTQ+ students. The preliminary findings have been reported in Terrell and Cortes (2025).
Thus far, seven Thai university students who identify as LGBTQ+ were recruited using a snowball method and then participated in semi-structured interviews. These students, enrolled in an international college within a larger university system, shared stories about their social experiences, awareness of certain resources, and identity disclosure on campus. Their responses were evaluated using narrative analysis, taking consistent themes from across all of their stories to construct a central narrative that describes key aspects of the queer Thai university experience.
In parallel with the student interviews, we are conducting a critical discourse analysis (CDA), so far including 26 publications — 13 in Thai and 13 in English. Our publication sources include academic articles, institutional reports, online blogs/opinion editorials, and news stories. The publications were selected based on their relevance to LGBTQ+ topics in Thailand and their authorship by native Thai speakers, ensuring cultural and linguistic alignment with the broader context of the study.
The goal of the CDA was to examine how public and institutional discourses construct, frame, and/ or omit LGBTQ+ identities. Each article was analyzed line by line with the aid of ChatGPT-4o to identify recurring themes, the tone of LGBTQ+ representation, and patterns in language use. Attention was given to how terms like sexual orientation and gender identity were used, how LGBTQ+ inclusion was framed within traditional cultural values, and whether discussions reinforced or challenged heteronormative gender expectations.
The CDA revealed that even articles promoting LGBTQ+ inclusion often did so within cautious or constrained narratives, balancing reformist language with appeals to cultural harmony or tradition and reinforcing a heteronormative understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity. Complementing this, the narrative analysis revealed that many participants engaged in selective self-disclosure—choosing to come out only to trusted peers—as a strategic choice to minimize harm or discomfort.
Although most students initially stated they had not experienced overt discrimination, follow-up questions often prompted recollections of subtle microaggressions or bias. Both their hesitation and the discourse found in many CDA sources might be due to the Thai culture of tolerance, also called kreng jai. The culture of kreng jai in Thai society, which prioritizes social harmony over open discussion (Potgieter, n.d.; Jackson, 2016), also appears to heavily influence LGBTQ+ students’ willingness to openly report instances of prejudice and express their needs.
Implications for Human Rights in Thailand: Incorporating Insights
Past studies on discrimination and inclusion suggest that centering tolerance as a countermeasure against systemic oppression fosters superficial acceptance of marginalized communities rather than genuine inclusivity (Adelman et al., 2023). In the current study, we have already noted that “tolerance appears to have become a psychologically-conditioned response to uncomfortable social experiences” (Terrell & Cortes, 2025, p. 172), which can suppress necessary discussions about inequality.
Thus, while this cultural norm promotes civility, it has the dual effect of discouraging outspoken conversations about LGBTQ+ issues within certain contexts, allowing harmful behaviors to persist beneath the surface and making students hesitant to speak up about discrimination and stereotypes when they arise.
A key source of reported harmful behaviors is apparent misunderstanding of how gender identity and sexual orientation interact and contribute to individuals’ intersectionality. As shared by a student interviewee:
Um, they just like, regard me as a man. Like, they say like I like women just means that I’m like their guy friend. They talk about those stuff like I don’t really comfortable about learning about… Like the genitals and stuff, and I was like ‘why would do like this stuff in front of me?’ (as quoted in Terrell & Cortes, 2025, p. 170)
The conflation of the two concepts, which reflects the way that gender is treated as a combination of sex, gender, and sexual orientation within the Thai language, conflicts with modern-day understandings of LGBTQ+ identities.
In summary, Thai higher education institutions’ hesitance to fully identify with and actively shift the THI label, combined with the omission of the concept from the language of international frameworks, hinders the realization of LGBTQ+ human rights. Furthermore, attempts at blending traditional Thai concepts with Western and internationally-recognized LGBTQ+ identities, without respect to the inherent differences in the two frameworks, has led to a lack of clarity in how students with these identities experience their own lives, limiting the effectiveness of support systems.
Within Thai higher education spaces and beyond, we must continue to examine more critically how language and cultural practices interact to maintain subtle forms of discrimination that may otherwise go unaddressed.
Implications for Human Rights Worldwide: Adopting New Methodologies
On a global scale, these findings also suggest that, even in an effort to achieve human rights objectives such as the SDGs, barriers arise when the language and terminologies attached to these goals are interpreted differently in various cultural-linguistic contexts. A huge reason for these different interpretations is that explicit mentions of LGBTQ+ identities are intentionally absent from SDGs due to divergent philosophies held by the various UN member states (Guiry, n.d.).. In this case, a specific consequence is that, even for member states that seek to further LGBTQ+ under the SDG umbrella, the lack of explicit framing allows for efforts to be more performative and/or underinformed.
As a supplement, the Yogyakarta Principles—a set of guidelines on the application of international human rights law on LGBTQ+ rights— begins by explicitly framing the intended meanings of sexual orientation and gender identity. In practice, the Principles could serve to fill major gaps left by the human rights goals outlined in the SDGs, if they were a focus of institutional conversations on gender and sexuality.
For example, the Yogyakarta Principles plus 10 specifically call for the “inclusion of comprehensive, affirmative and accurate material on sexual, biological, physical and psychological diversity, and the human rights of people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions and sex characteristics, in curricula” as well as “affirmative and accurate material on sexual, biological, physical and psychological diversity, and the human rights of people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions and sex characteristics, in teacher training and continuing professional development programmes” (International Commission of Jurists [ICJ], 2017).
However, even then, all of these frameworks fall short of emphasizing the key differences between tolerance and acceptance in regards to their impact on student support and experiences. To fill this gap, any applied principle must incorporate evidence-based guidance that clarifies what tolerance and acceptance look like in practice, beyond policy and legal frameworks. They must consider discourse more deeply to understand how underlying messages will be interpreted in diverse contexts.
A way of pursuing this necessary shift is the adoption of replicable, interdisciplinary tools/instruments to audit higher education institutions for alignment with global human rights standards based on discourse and lived experiences, rather than relying on administrator and government reports. In the current investigation, my team uses ChatGPT-4o to enhance the coding and analysis of both the articles and interview transcripts, helping to cross-linguistically identify recurring themes and discursive patterns across both data sources and position them in conversation with one another.
The application of a large-language artificial intelligence model to analyze two qualitative, multilingual data sources for discursive trends provides a foundation for replication, enabling future investigators to more readily assess the impact of discursive climates within institutional spaces. Adopting similar processes as progress evaluation tools, while maintaining awareness of environmental impacts of AI, provides opportunities for institutions around the world to transform human rights rhetoric into meaningful reflection and necessary change.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to Dr. Krista L. Cortes, a long-time collaborator who has supported this work for the past two years, as well as our faculty partners at Mahidol University’s Institute for Population and Social Research for facilitating its development and expansion.
Biographical Note of the Author
Timethius J. is a Visiting Scholar at the Mahidol University Institute for Population and Social Research where he spearheads a student-driven intervention for university sexual violence prevention, mentors a student group focused on empowering marginalized students through mental and sexual wellness, and leads an interdisciplinary project investigating barriers faced by queer Thai university students. He was the youngest inductee into the Middle Georgia State University International Psychology Honor Society chapter and leads an international virtual exchange of HIV/AIDS researchers under the Penn Center for AIDS Research. His contributions have been recognized with honors such as the Bangkok Business Rainbow Award (2025) and the Makuu Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Outstanding Leadership and Service (2024).
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