The Body Politic

Episode #555: Note: this podcast episode includes frank anatomical language and extended discussion of women’s bodies, including terms for female genitalia, in the context of human rights, state abuse, and activist movements. Reader and listener discretion is advised.“[They say that] Thailand is the only country that has never been colonized. But it's not true!” Kornkanok “Pup” Khumta, an activist from Isaan, argues that the myth of sovereignty hides a colonial order, where Bangkok defines language, history, development, and which bodies are allowed to exist. Isaan, she says, is Lao in language and culture, and the borders that separate people along the Mekong are still newer than the state admits. “People in Isaan, we have been brainwashed to be Thai people,” she says, adding that even the word “Thai” itself is a recent invention. Pup describes Siam’s consolidation as violent, then sustained through schooling that punishes local speech and replaces regional memory with a Siam-centered story. The same center–periphery structure shapes “development” as extraction: resources flow to Bangkok while poverty in the northeast is treated as normal. Generations migrate to the capital for education and wages, leaving Isaan hollowed out, a place many return to only for Songkran or New Year. At Thammasat University, Pup expected democratic critique but instead found classmates aiming for bureaucratic power. She pushed back, arguing provincial governors should be elected, not appointed from Bangkok. After the 2014 coup, she tested the regime’s limits with quiet protest and was arrested, learning that visibility alone can trigger punishment. Later, after refusing to sign a pledge to stop political activity, she was sent into prison, and processed through searches that turned discipline into bodily violation. That experience sharpened her feminism. She framed organizing around bodily autonomy, using taboo-breaking protest—speaking openly about female body parts and insisting democracy includes control over one’s body. Pup then moved to extend her politics beyond borders, rejecting ASEAN’s “non-interference” policy as a cover for authoritarian cooperation, including support for Myanmar’s military. For her, constitutional change in Thailand is the hinge between refuge and repression—and survival requires joy: “I believe in fun,” she says, because despair is also a weapon. “We are at the point that we don't have to belong to any state,” she says. “I mean, we can just treat each other as a humans and we can all come together against all forms of repression.”