Hating my job about now... writing about Thailand.

[politicat]

So I've been working for this travel agency that does some really custom work into East Asia. (Wanna play elephant polo or have CIA level Vietnamese cooking lessons in Ho Chi Minh City? Wanna spend a week in a luxury tent (with king sized beds, hot running water and rugs on the floors) on a maharaja's private game reserve? This company can hook you up.)

And I'm doing research on Thailand right now, and I can't go more than a couple hours before I'm sick and I have to walk away from it. Because the sex industry has become so pervasive that even the most innocuous searches bring up porn sites and sex tourism sites and pure exploitative garbage. (Safe search cuts my results to a point where I can't get work done.) Thailand is incredibly wealthy in natural and cultural resources, but everything that is geared towards the west is just soaked in sex.

Up until this phase of this project, I considered myself pretty okay with the idea of a society more open to sexuality and more accepting of the idea of a sexual artist who deserves to be paid for her or his art. I recognize the empowerment that women with a strong sense of self and convictions can get from the industry as it is, though I don't see it happening very often; I can see where consenting, informed adults should be allowed to make decisions for themselves that may include an exchange of goods and services. But that's here, and now, and in a better world than the one we live in. Not in Thailand, and definitely not with children and teenagers.

It's just so sick that there are so many people who are willing to go thousands of miles for what is at least statutory rape and, in my mind, something so much more vile that I don't even have a word for it. And the fact that there's so much marketing involved in getting a western audience to even consider doing this... what does that say about us, and the way the rest of the world views us? Millions of dollars are spent every year in Patapong, most of them from Europe and North America.

This part of the project is so disturbing for me that it's taken me three weeks longer than the others have. I have to stop working after a couple hours because I'm so disturbed. And it's not going to get better in the next couple -- I have Vietnam and Cambodia on my plate next.

[Warpy]

1. Vietnam may not be as bad

because they were communist for a period. They are a mixed economy now, but the communists were big on ending prostitution, and not by heavy handed, punish the women methods.

It could be worse. You could be writing about the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, or a dozen other countries in our own hemisphere where suburban daddyrabbits go to fuck children.

[politicat]

2. Vietnam is personally difficult for me.

I am the child of a vet. It's writing about the place that stole the person that was my father before the war.

[Warpy]

5. I know vets who went back

and came home much more healed. Part of the hell of that war was getting rotated in and out one at a time, leaving everybody in your unit behind to face that hell once you'd gone home.

Going back and finding familiar territory at peace has been a healing experience for the friends of mine who have been able to afford to do it.

Whatever happens, I hope your dad finds a way to heal.

[cally]

3. I'm surprised about Thailand because

I know many who have travelled there and not for sex. I think most of us try to block this as much as we can. I don't know how it helps to know the details. If I were you, I would try to figure out how doing this research will help. Put all the really bad stuff in a file and just do a information dump to the media or blogs. Think about doing a series of posts about it. Post, and then leave the thread. That way, the research will have some purpose other than your own rage. :hug:

[politicat]

4. Thanks, that's a really good idea.

If nothing else, raising awareness never hurt anything.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Male writers frequently claim, "Asians have a much healthier attitude

towards sex than we do."

Translation: Many Asian countries have massive sex industries. They don't have healthy relations between equal partners. They have middle-aged and older men buying much younger women and girls (and sometimes boys) who were either sold into prostitution by destitute parents or tricked into it with promises of conventional jobs. Significantly, they don't have vast neighborhoods where women can buy time with an enslaved man.

From what I've seen in Japan (another place that is said to have "healthy attitudes towards sex"), it's all about catering to the fantasies of men who can't relate to real women. Single women in contemporary Japan have an even worse time finding a suitable male s.o. than women in the West, and there are even a few "host bars," where women can pay to flirt with a handsome man, but there are overwhelmingly more "hostess bars," where men can pay to flirt with a pretty women, and thinly disguised brothels, such as the "soaplands" (similar to "massage parlors" in the U.S.).

[politicat]

7. Exactly.

This isn't about healthy sexuality, this is about exploitation and submission to the will of those with the money. There's no joy to be seen in the faces of the women pictured in the ads - they're trying to look lustful and willing, but I've made that face in the bad old years before I figured out what I was worth to myself -- it's the face of someone trying to fake interest, but actually thinking about what color to paint the kitchen, or where breakfast is coming from.

[femrap]

8. From what I've read Thailand started its

'sex industry' during the Vietnam war....this is where the soldiers were sent for R & R. That is when the brothels started. And now today it has reached a level beyond comprehension to most.

There have been many documentaries on Thailand....AIDS is rampant.

How do men get so sickly perverted?

[politicat]

9. Yep, that's exactly when it started.

Patpong was a known red light district during WWII, and while Thailand was officially neutral in the war, they allowed Allied troops to R&R there. The area really exploded during Vietnam, and now it has just gone beyond all logic, reason or sense. They have a 20% AIDS rate, almost as high as in sections of Africa.

I don't know where the impulse comes from... Maybe because many cultures only allow men to display anger, lust and dominion, all of the other emotions that a person normally feels get channelled into these negative paths because that is all that is available? Prostitution does seem to do better in cultures where men are given few emotional outlets...

[femrap]

10. Aren't there a bunch of Buddhists in Thailand?

Aren't those men allowed to show kindness?

What culture in this world DOESN'T encourage men to be lustful and display anger easily? I'd like to visit.

[Greyhound]

12. Every culture that is sexually repressive (usually religious) creates

sexual perversion. The more repressed, the more perverse.

[ismnotwasm]

11. Sometimes I cruise this website

For information.

http://www.catwinternational.org/index.php

Some of the citations are older, but I don't imagine things have improved much.

I have a friend who keeps track of Filipino politics. If you ask her what the Philippine's major export is, she'll tell you "Labor". Unfortunately, that labor includes a significant number of sex workers.

This is from an article in The Journal of Sex Research; November 2005

"The scope of human trafficking is hard to measure, but it is estimated that from 700,000 to 2 million women (United Nations , 2000), with some estimates as high as 4 million women and children, are trafficked across borders to work in the sex industry each year (Estes & Weiner, 2001; Raymond, 2001; U.S. Department of State, 2002). Estimating the numbers of WTSW is difficult since not all of those trafficked for prostitution were recruited for this occupation. Although most of the women and children are recruited for work in prostitution, sex tourism, or the mail-order-bride business (Watts & Zimmerman, 2002), many are trafficked to work in the garment industry, to join family members, or to work in domestic services; but they may find themselves pressured to provide sexual services as part of their duties (Richard, 1999). At the destination, some women are duped into sex work, and others voluntarily leave low-paying, dead-end jobs for the lure of higher-paying opportunities in prostitution"
-------------------
"Even when trafficked women are identified, few request help or cooperate with humanitarian aid or welfare agencies. For example, in 2001 and 2002, a UN Mission on Special Trafficking Operations Program (STOP) conducted 720 "raids" in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they interviewed 2,120 women and girls working in clubs. They reported that 25% (530) of interviewees were trafficked, but only 230 requested assistance from the STOP mission. However, non-government organization (NGO) experts working with the UN mission concluded that the statistics collected on these women were "woefully unreliable" (Human Rights Watch, 2002).
-------------------------
A study of trafficked women conducted in five countries--Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela, and the United States--found nine factors responsible for the worldwide increase in human trafficking (Raymond, 2001):

* Under economic policies of globalization, many services that used to be state-supported, such as education, health care, and social welfare, are now being transferred to private hands, increasing the economic burden on families who must pay for these services. This is particularly true in the countries of the Former Soviet Bloc, where basic health and educational services were provided under Soviet rule, but now need to be financed out-of-pocket in free-market economies. Often, the women and children are sent abroad to earn foreign currency to pay for these essential services. For example, women we interviewed reported entering a trafficking contract to finance expensive health care for family members or their own university education, items that had once been provided by the state (Cwikel, Chudakov, Paikin, Agmon, & Belmaker, 2004).

* The sex industry is becoming more globalized, with recruitment and transport being conducted in larger and more sophisticated trafficking networks. Sex industry advertising is accomplished over the internet, offering further opportunities to provide international sex business (Hughes, 2000, 2001, 2004; Jeffreys, 2002; von Struensee, 2000).

* The male demand for sex services is a hard market to saturate, suggesting that "the way in which sex has been tolerated as a male right in a commodity culture is all part of this demand" (Raymond, 2001, p. 2; Batros, 2004; Yea, 2004).

* The social structure in most of the world is built on women's inequality and economic dependence on fathers and husbands and male relatives. This inequality has allowed an almost endless supply of women who are desperate to earn money, particularly in developing countries and emerging industrialized countries such as the former Soviet Union.

* The commodification of women's bodies as sexual objects, and therefore for sale, is common (Long, 2004).

* Child sexual abuse, in particular, puts young women in a vulnerable state that may be exploited in order to pressure women to work in prostitution (United Nations Children's Fund 2003; Widom & Kuhns, 1996).

* The stereotype that "the exotic is the erotic" has fueled the demand for foreign women to enter prostitution, further inflating the demand for trafficked women (Batros, 2004). This has been a traditional marketing angle in the sex industry, dating back to Roman times when the hetaerae, or foreign women, commanded the highest prices for sexual services. Today, there is an even broader selection of source countries for recruitment.

* War or a military conflict has fueled the demand for women to be brought to places of conflict so they can provide sexual services for troops. Where a permanent military presence is established, there are always brothels and prostitutes in the vicinity and places for the troops to rest, relax, and be entertained (Mirkinson, 1997).

* Restrictive immigration policies do not offer working opportunities with legitimate travel documents for those who want to work in non-professional jobs. (Harcourt, 2004; Raymond, 2001"

[bloom]

13. That does sound depressing.

http://www.glamour.com/news/feature/articles/2006/07/31/globaldiary06sep?currentPage=1

"“She says she was sold by her mother when she was seven. She gripped her mother’s ankles and begged her not to leave her with strangers.” The price for Pouv: the equivalent of $10.

Somaly continues the tale. First Pouv was “fattened up and given treatments to whiten her skin,” a common beauty practice in Asia. Then she was sold to a man who chained her to a bed and raped her until she fainted. Angry, he returned her to the brothel, where she was punished by being held in a chicken cage; the pimps put chili peppers in her vagina and beat her. “She finally broke,” Somaly says. “For the next three years, she had up to 30 clients a day.”"

"Men pay the equivalent of a dollar for sex, but most of that money goes into the pimp’s pocket. The girls themselves get a salary of about $15 a month, which amounts to mere pennies for each sex act."

_________________________

http://afesip.org/


I do hope that all of those "tourists" who have sex with children know that they are rapists. And even "rapist" sounds like too "nice" of a word for what is happening. "Torturers" might sum it up better.

[bobbieinok]

14. and is it true that many of the highest politicians and policemen

are engaged in the 'trade' so there is no incentive to halt it??

And what about Karr (Jon-Benet case) and a Bush brother?????

With all the hoopla about Karr, was there any/much discussion of the SE Asia 'sex tourism??'