My husband went to a work conference in Thailand several years ago and was surprised that so called lady-boys were a part of the entertainment one night because his company was very conservative. But I don't think anyone asked them about it. It's so ubiquitous that the Thai folks planning the programs just included it as a matter of course I think. I do believe that colonialization (and not having that) has an awful lot to do with it. Presumably Thailand is just as patriarchal as it's other Southeast Asian neighbors.

Part of my impetus for writing this came out of several discussions over the past week where the other people were hung up on only two genders and me pointing out that in most indigenous cultures, this is not the case and hasn't been for hundreds if not thousands of years. Too many Americans (and other Westerners) think of the rest of the world as being organized just as we are, with perhaps less technology, or less amenities, when that isn't remotely the case. They believe that our culture is "natural" because it's so deeply ingrained, when it's very clearly just culture and that other places and other times had different ones.