.....an informed and powerful essay on Thailand's gigantic commercial sex industry by the talented writer and journalist James Austin Farrell........
If you ever felt a pang of shame at the cinema in Thailand when you heard such words as
‘she’s as loose as a Bangkok whore’,
or a similar defamatory witticism in reference to Thailand’s bawdy
image, you can put your conscience at ease. Thai subtitles are not
usually so brash, while – and to some extent
therefore – many of the locals sitting near to you may not be aware that their country’s most talked about attraction is prostitution.
In spite of Thailand’s sex industry being
emblematic of the country externally, internally the game and the
players are hardly sensationalised, or even discussed critically. It
goes on with a volley of collaborative winks between users, suppliers,
non-consumers and law enforcers, who have all learned to turn their
blind eyes to – or take advantage of – the nominal law and its moral
precursors, for myriad reasons.
Marketing departments might be working hard in an
attempt to purge Thailand of its lusty image though it will be
exceptionally difficult to undermine, or even openly admonish something
that is continually very profitable, and also implicitly accepted as
common practice within the parameters of double-sided cultural values.
For this reason the sex industry has somewhat become the country’s worst
kept secret.
It was reported by the Harvard Business Review in
2000 that around sixty percent of tourists visit Thailand for sex, and
so TAT’s counter-active pastoral slogans will always be playing catch-up
to seedier images of the country, whether true or not. On the other
hand it has also been argued by various critics that those beautiful and
demure smiling girls in certain TV advertising campaigns, and other
international marketing initiatives, are complicit with the sex industry
and indirectly associated with sex tourism. Perhaps to please a varied
target audience an ambiguous image needs to be preserved, that is both
innocent and sexy. The Land of Smiles may have been a work of marketing
genius.
Outspoken critic, Professor Federico Ferrara, author
of Thailand Unhinged, writes about a nationalised, fuzzy perception of
sexual morality in Thailand: “For anyone who has ever spent any time in
Bangkok, to read the ongoing debates on morality and sex in the
editorial pages of Thai newspapers is essentially to venture into a
parallel universe – a petty bourgeois black hole whose existence is
quite distinct from the everyday reality of Bangkok’s busy streets. Even
as the country was being transformed by its rulers into a degenerate
open-air bordello – a veritable beggars’ banquet – the Thai press has
spent much of the past century nostalgically lamenting the decline of
Thai culture…” His criticism is not of sex work, but of a part of
society’s inability to conceive of its own norms, partly as a result of a
consistently naive and blundering process of socialisation. This has
created a kind of force-field that blurs the more realistic image of
culture, and so is helping to prolong the lack of substantial (other
than sex work) opportunities for the poor to egress from their social
bunkers.
Prostitution is ubiquitous throughout Thailand. It is
also illegal (since 1960), and in a sense due to the so-called rules of
Thai decency, it remains self-contradictorily immoral, mostly in view
of commandments concerning female chastity. Contradictions abound. A
hypocrisy often raised by critics is: How do women righteously protect
their virginity until married, while men fulfill their masculine
promiscuous obligations?
The Ministry of Justice in 2003 did consider
legalising prostitution to minimise its more venal, inhumane, and
criminal elements, while looking at gaining huge tax returns, though it
never happened. It’s also well known, and has been widely reported, that
the vast majority of Thai male politicians indulge in prostitution. To
promote enforcing the law, or to even condemn prostitution, would be
outright hypocrisy for some advocates, and also a great loss to their
senses.
Because Thailand is a country that for the most part
collectively embraces the ‘iceberg theory’ we know that the infamous
poles of Pattaya, and the miasmas of vaginally discharged cigarette
smoke of Soi Cowboy, are certainly just the very gaudy tip of an often
less spectacular underside of prostitution. The ‘you handsome man’ genre
of the sex business, though a large chunk of tourist revenue, plays a
minor supporting role compared to its more discreet Thai counterpart.
During the Vietnam War foreign soldiers pumped an estimated 16 million
dollars of their wages into the Thai sex-economy – the catalyst of
en-masse sex tourism – but the majority of prostitutes in Thailand work
not in the spotlight with wayfaring foreign travellers, but at the end
of the lane with local customers.
Dr. Nitet Tinnakul, while working at Chulalongkorn University, wrote in
2004 that the sex industry employed 2.8 million people in Thailand,
including approximately 2 million women, 20,000 adult males, and 800,000
minors under the age of 18. These seem like disproportionate numbers
when you consider the population of Thailand. But the sex industry
employs many kinds of workers, such as cleaning staff, promoters, etc.
Prostitution anyway is a nebulous word. What actually
defines prostitution? ‘Services’ may be rendered in flowery
circumstances between the benefactors and the sponsored, tempered with
romantic interims, though coitus on a pro rata basis might still be the
essential nature of the act. If this is sex work, statistics will always
beguile us. The now retired Dr. Nitet told me that prostitution can
mean “many things”, from “working in a bar, karaoke, massage parlour,”
or what he plainly called “service.”
In his book Paying for It Garth Mundinger-Klow writes
that European sailors reported about Siamese prostitution as early as
the 16th century. In the late 19th century F.A. Neale’s book Residence
in Siam explains how fathers traditionally took their unmarried 13 year
old (“having reached their expiration date”) daughters to their shops to
“be sold to the highest bidder”, or the even worse fate of being “sold
to Arab merchants”. Female infanticide (“nose pinching”) and abandonment
have also been reported in studies of northern villages as ways to
off-load excess baby daughters in the past. It is said that the process
of dok keaw, parents promising their daughters to buyers – after a down
payment is made at a young age – until they have ‘ripened’, was
practiced in northern Thailand until the mid ’90s.
In light of this, the freedom to sell oneself might
be looked upon as a kind of modernity that is a vast improvement
against the vagaries of cold, and self-serving, paternalism. If poverty
in the past ruled unmarried girls a bane to their families, then has
modern prostitution reversed the curse? Admittedly, with circumstances
for poor women still being dire.
The early 20th century saw women’s bodies for sale
in the Siamese 50 satang brothels. The luxurious arb ob nuad became
popular as early as the 1940s, and what one young Thai man I interviewed
called Ae referred to as the “wanking massage”, is fast becoming
popular today. After reading one of many indecisive statistics
concerning prostitution in Thailand I asked Ae if it could be true that,
“95% of Thai men over 21 have visited a prostitute,” and he replied,
“Yeah, I guess. My friends do it, if they win at gambling, then they go
to arb ob nuad.”
One particular term used for exceptionally attractive girls who may temporarily commoditise their bodies is ‘sideline’,
pronounced in Thai with the omission of the ‘d’ and ‘n’ sounds
(sie-lie). Rumours of spectacular sidelines (purportedly mostly
students) have become near to mythical all over Thailand (the Golden
Fleece in Chiang Mai being a book of photos consisting of young
students). The cost of a sideline is high due to their putative
innocence and often chimerical nature. Blogs and websites with sidelines
offering services are full of ‘normal’ girls with day jobs or upcoming
exams, complaining about lack of funds. A sideline is a ‘luxury’ item,
Ae explains, not a ‘garee’ (whore). Morally speaking, a sideline is
contrived to be a better class of prostitute, if thought of as a
prostitute at all.
How we construe prostitution will always be flapping
in the wind somewhat. A child that is sold to a brothel, and a girl who
decides to have ‘conditional’ sex with men, offer up very different
social and moral implications. One is a universal human tragedy, while
the other might be seen as taking initiative, or perhaps viewed as a
socio-economic tragedy. Slavery and entrepreneurship are in direct
opposition to each other.
Dr. Nitet explained that women, “become prostitutes
for economic reasons, and lack of education�It can’t be legalised as
society still doesn’t accept it. Women can’t admit they do it, it’s a
loss of their dignity.”
Empower, an organisation empowering and supporting sex workers
throughout Thailand, sees absolutely no reason for this aforementioned
loss of dignity. Liz Hilton, who has been with Empower since 1992, and
helps run the Can Do Bar (run by sex workers for sex workers) in Chiang
Mai Land, outlined more clearly to me the local sex industry.
“From 1992-95 there were still some locked brothels
in Chiang Mai that kept women,” she explains, though the brothel culture
mainly consisted of hilltribe, Burmese or Chinese migrants. “By 1994
there were no Thais in locked brothels,” Hilton says.
“When the new prostitution laws came in the long
rehabilitation law was changed to a 1,000 baht fine, this made it so the
police couldn’t extort a lot of money from the girls.” The threat of
three years in prison gave police leverage in ‘taxing’ sex workers, says
Hilton, though the 1,000 baht fine stopped this. The police soon
changed tactics, she says, and knowing that most girls were undocumented
in the brothels they changed from “extortion for prostitution, to
harbouring undocumented migrants.” This in effect closed down all the
brothels. “The economic pressures on brothel owners went up with all the
illegal women working for them, and because of child labour crackdowns
the police had a reason to regularly raid brothels.”
So women then went out on the streets and into places
like karaoke bars. “The women had freedom of movement,” says Hilton.
“In the last 3 years we have found only one case of enforced labour in a
closed brothel. The industry has developed. But with no political will,
it just changed by itself. Imagine development with political will and
social support!”
Hilton advocates decriminalising prostitution, for
the implementation of labour laws, improving working conditions, having
social security for workers, and improving occupational health and
safety for workers. Decriminalisation may also prevent the police from
corralling their regular under-the-table bounties – a kind of taxation
without representation.
The industry is vital to the economy of Thailand,
Hilton says, but it’s also vital to the police as it is now in its state
of illegal limbo. “The industry supports the police force, every sex
worker in Thailand pays the police, whether directly or indirectly,” she
says.
But if its illegality were to become a reality,
then Thailand would suffer a social and economic catastrophe says
Hilton. “300,000 working women, what would happen to them?” she asks.
Most of the prostitutes Hilton works with support 5-8 other adults,
“Imagine 300,000 women out of work supporting 5 adults!? There are a lot
of people anti-this and that, we know what they don’t want, but we don’t know what they are offering. They want to take girls out of one cage, and put them in another cage.”
Hilton’s analogy concerning the necessity of the
sex industry is simple. Imagine impoverished girls receiving a menu of
opportunities for life much like the scant menu of a noodle stall, and
more affluent members of society receiving the menu of a large
restaurant. Sex work works for those with very little realistic
opportunities in life to become independent and support family members
who have only paltry (500 baht a month if approved) government
assistance in old age.
Hilton then introduced me to Wan, a young Chiang
Mai karaoke worker. Wan says she enjoys her job, although she is not too
keen on some of her working conditions: “I get dressed and made-up for 6
p.m. If I’m not made-up and in on time I get fined five baht for every
minute I’m late,” she says, explaining her employers use the clock-card
system to properly enforce this rule. “It’s a big business,” she
explains, “there is PR, mama-sans, service staff and managers.”
Wan explains that she must meet a monthly quota of 60
drinks bought for her and have 50 hours of sitting time with men (many
nationalities and every conceivable occupation). “If I don’t reach this
target my salary is cut,” she says, and then explains to me that if her
job was recognised as a job under labour laws there legally could be no
such thing as wage cuts for apparent misdemeanours or failure of monthly
objectives.
“I get about 20,000 baht a month, and most of that
goes on my house, car, clothes, make-up, and family,” says Wan, and
explains that she enjoys her financial independence. “Every job has
difficulties,” she says, “no one likes their job all the time. Sometimes
we have really drunk customers, often the policemen, and they make it
hard for us and the manager when they don’t want to pay. I don’t have to
go home with a customer if I don’t want to, and I am under no pressure
to do that from the boss. I just have to meet my quota.”
As for the stigma she says, “When I go back to my
village, which is poor, and I have a car, I have money, and I can make
sure my parents don’t have to work hard, people don’t look down on me,
they’re envious.”
Wan has also worked taking care of children; she used
to mend clothes, and she has worked in factories. She doesn’t feel she
is a victim. “This service is not so different from the dowry system,
except now I earn the money myself, a man doesn’t give it to my family. I
have freedom and choice, and the payments keep coming in. It’s not just
one payment.”
“Do you want to say anything else,” I ask Wan, as she must get ready for a night’s work.
“Yeah, don’t forget a big tip.”
“We don’t want the government to go to bed with us,”
Hilton insists, and repeats that she wants to see prostitution
decriminalised, not legalised. “We need laws against rape, or child
abuse, or violence, but often laws against prostitution just create
another opportunity for extortion by the police.”
The refreshingly outspoken Australian says that the
sex business is something most people still feel coy about despite its
preponderance. “The foreigners say it’s a Thai thing, and the Thais say
it’s a foreign thing,” Hilton explains humourously, “everyone passes it
around like a hot potato.” Though the girls who work in the sex
industry, she explains, are not ashamed about the matter and are quite
open. The stigma she says is more acute in the daytime, at nighttime
it’s different.”
Politicians, doctors, most men, see prostitutes in
Thailand,” Hilton explains, “but after a lot of crap was said about HIV
and AIDS being spread by female sex workers, the stats went down to 16%
of Thai men.” During the HIV epidemic and the global publicity it
received statistics were rehashed so that blame for the disease could
not be ascribed to Thai male customers, says Hilton.
People should get rid of this image of all the
women being victims she says, “it is not at all true”, and adds that
women sometimes feel obliged to take on this image of the sad,
victimised prostitute to reflect the theories of a myopic public, and
also to consolidate Thai society’s mandatory, often hypocritical
moralism that asserts prostitutes and promiscuous sex are immovably mai dee.
This evening as nightfall descends on Thailand
shining fairy lights will speckle a network of beat-up roads and stretch
around an entire country like a series of electric arteries; within a
few hours of Thailand’s karaoke bars turning the switch the high-heeled
prostitutes of Rue Saint-Denis in Paris will have unofficially
clocked-in, and a few hours later in the predominantly middle-class
cloisters of leafy Ottawa suburbs, police will be out looking for girls
utilising their reproductive organs as a means to make money. Meanwhile
laws are repealed, amended, and reformed almost all over the globe on a
yearly basis, and are consistently basis for sincere moral ambivalence,
religious rhetoric, and interminable controversy.
While severe poverty coupled with the absence of
social welfare is certainly a direct stimulator of the sex industry, it
can’t be said to be the sole reason for it. Governments in some
countries have advanced the blanket victimisation stance, or have
bypassed their laissez-faire embarrassment, and through regulations have
afforded sex workers improved safety, labour rights, and independence
from unscrupulous agents. More so, taxation with representation
(especially Thailand) in such a mammoth industry could create
substantial revenue to be re-thread into society. Perhaps in the future
sex workers might not have to extend an embittered closed palm to the
many reaching hands of a police force that continually finds ways to
exploit the law.
The stigma attached to promiscuous sex is in some
ways inhuman. It is our ceaseless virility that ensures the industry of
the human race remains intact. Taboos are just protracted toothaches,
they require treatment. So rather than embrace the verdict handed down
to us from centuries of ‘enlightened’ moralists concerning the vice of
voluntary sex work, these so far counterintuitive principles might be
subdued and we can accept a human condition while administering human
rights to it. Maybe then there might be a happy ending, or at least a
better sequel, for the sex workers of Thailand.
...for more writings by James Austin Farrell go to his blog at the following link: http://goo.gl/PWns8