The Southeast Asian “ladyboy” phenomenon is not one that I know much about, nor am I particularly interested in researching. Like “running amok,” I’ll just have to chalk it up as one of those Mysteries of the East.

But the prevalence of ladyboys in Southeast Asia and the lurid problems they tend to get into with the not terribly stable men who love them provides high-minded American media outlets the perfect opportunity to have their cake and eat it too: to indulge in tabloid coverage under the cover of tsk-tsking over other outlets’ using inappropriate terms like “transsexual” instead of “transgender.” From the Washington Post:

Paper’s ‘transphobic’ coverage of a brutal murder-suicide prompts outrage in Australia By Abby Ohlheiser October 7 at 11:26 AM Australian police responding to reports of a foul odor emitting from a Brisbane apartment found a gruesome scene: the dismembered body of a woman. The murder was widely covered in the Australian and British press for, among other reasons, the unconfirmed reports that the woman’s body was found cooking on the apartment stove. The woman has since been identified in several media reports as Mayang Prasetyo. She met the man believed to be her murderer, Marcus Volke, while the pair worked on international cruise ships. Volke worked as a chef; Prasetyo was reportedly the breadwinner for some family members who live in Indonesia. … Coverage of the story, however, has focused details of the victim’s backstory that have no connection, as of yet, to her death. Namely, that Prasetyo was transgender. The story has also served as a reminder that the media has a lot to learn about how to cover stories involving a transgender person. Mayang Prasetyo is repeatedly referred to as a “transsexual” by the International Business Times. Although some individuals do identify as “transsexual,” the term is often viewed as old-fashioned and not an appropriate umbrella word. News.com.au, the second-most-read news site in Australia, calls her a “transsexual ‘high-class’ prostitute.” Many of the articles covering the murder are laden with provocative photographs of the victim in a bikini, as if any story about a trans person is an excuse to view and scrutinize trans bodies.

I suspect, though, that that’s how the poor late ladyboy would like to be remembered: it’s tragic to die young, but at least you went out on the cover of a tabloid in your bikini.