Surveilling the Robes: Monastic Photos on Social Media in Buddhist Thailand

In contemporary Thailand, lay Buddhists’ surveillance of monks on social media is ubiquitous. Especially sexual surveillance, in the forms of photographs of monks displaying feminine behavior and sexual desire for women, leads Thai Buddhist laity to decry the decline and destruction of their religion. Normative Buddhist monastic masculinity in contemporary Thailand would demonstrate an ability to tame desire for sex and expressions of femininity. Using scholarship on Buddhist masculinity, masculinity studies, and Foucault’s concept of docile bodies, I analyze contemporary surveillance of monastic sexual behavior through the lens of media and photographs. Data from Thai news sources, flashpoints of male heterosexuality and feminine behaviors of monks, and focus group interviews with Thai Buddhist laity, reveal that the distance of media and possibilities of surveillance through photographs narrate the current state of Thai Buddhism and how laity contextualize this recent disciplinary tendency.