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How They Get
Trafficked
Traffic in women is by
no means new. It is as old as the earliest civilization and
continues to this day. In written history, there are references to
slave auctions of women who were bought either for domestic labor or
brothel bondage. As late as 1991, we hear of kidnapped women at the
Pakistan-Afghan border being sold in the marketplace for R600 per
kilogram.
When does it stop, how
do we stop it? Traffic in women and children has not only persisted
but has increased in magnitude. It is now a crisis of global
proportions. Part of the reason for its continued existence is the
cunning by which traffickers have adapted to the changing times,
enabling them to circumvent country laws on trafficking. Another
reason is the uneven development among nations that puts rich
countries in the position to demand women and children as part of
their consumable imports from countries that are poorer. But
overarching this is the patriarchal notion that some women should be
placed into such service for men. Thus, male populations of poor
countries use prostituted women and some women citizens of rich
countries are in prostitution systems.
While the slave
auctions of old often sold men and women captured by conquering
armies, today's trafficking in women is perpetuated not only through
abductions and false promises of good jobs or marriages, but also
through the up-front sales pitch that women can earn more through
prostitution.
A study in India
indicates that many young girls are entering the trade in emulation
of those who have gone before and are now enjoying improved
lifestyles. In the Philippines, a study on child prostitution had as
one of its respondents a 17-year-old bathhouse attendant who said
that many women in her tiny impoverished village had worked in
massage parlors and were looked up to for helping their families
raise their standard of living. She hoped to do the same herself. In
Thailand, the risk of being prostituted or the nature of the job of
prostitution is not of as much concern as earning money or getting a
work permit and passport to be able to live abroad. These economic
imperatives perpetuate the idea that some women enter prostitution
voluntarily.
But in studying the
reasons why some women trafficked go into prostitution, or why once
there -- through violent means or trickery -- they opt to stay,
there exists a convergence of circumstances that practically propels
them into situations where they experience harm to their personhood.
In almost all cases, there is the grinding poverty that they wish to
escape. Add to this the Asian tradition of helping the family by
whatever means. And in certain countries where discrimination
against female children is much more pronounced, daughters are made
to keenly feel their financial obligation to the family.
The "green rice
season," when farmers are short of money while the rice grows, is
the prime season for girl-hunting in the rural and hill tribes of
Thailand and Burma. In Thailand where prostitution is gaining wide
acceptance and may even someday be added to the national accounting,
prostitution agents introduce themselves as they are and recruit
girls or buy them from their parents. In the Philippines, despite
official and non-government efforts to dissuade women from going to
Japan or other countries as entertainers, or entering into marriage
with foreign men they hardly know or only through letters, Filipino
women continue to go abroad in an unrelenting wave mainly for
economic reasons, aware of the risks but still hoping for the best.
Debt
Bondage in Prostitution
The argument that
prostitution actually benefits in women because it gives them jobs
is a fallacy. In 1991, Filipino, Thai and Taiwanese women were being
sold in Japan, often to the Yakuza, at $2,400 to $18,000 each. The
promoter resold a woman to other sex business owners at double the
price. Sometimes the women were simply rented at a monthly charge of
$1,600 to $6,400. The woman herself may receive a small percentage
as commission, but very often, she would not be seeing any of this
money until she has repaid the expenses for her passport and travel
papers.
In Australia,
trafficked women are saddled with a $15,000-$18,000 debt at the
outset. It is only after they have had about 200 customers at $45 a
customer that they can start earning for themselves. In Thailand,
the brothel network has a system of rotation that keeps its victims
perpetually in debt. The brothel owner sells a girl to another
brothel just before she has paid all her debts. At the new brothel,
she starts again from ground zero. After she has paid her debts, a
woman often stays in the brothel circuit to be able to earn money.
In India, the debt bondage forces Nepalese and Bangladeshi women to
work longer hours and have more clients than local women. They often
work without condoms and undercut prices to get enough clients.
The Sydney Sexual
Health Centre in Australia claims that many women work in pain and
with active infections, pelvic inflammatory diseases, acute herpes
and traumatic pelvic syndromes, as a result of the pressure to serve
clients and to be able to pay off their bonds as soon as possible.
The market for Asian women emerged and grew in the 1980s when local
prostituted women insisted on the use of condoms.
Fake Jobs
Nepalis and
Bangladeshis, lured by visions of a glamorous life in the city or
career prospects in show business or simply the promise of jobs in
factories or households, find themselves locked up in brothels in
India or Pakistan. False employment hopes have also victimized
Indonesians. Thai women bound for Canada, expecting to work as
hostesses, salespersons and waitresses, are prostituted instead.
Filipinas go abroad as housemaids and entertainers and are sucked
into the sex industry. Vietnamese women go as tourists to foreign
lands to look for work, and then the agencies that arrange these
tours force them into prostitution in those countries. Sri Lankan
women have fallen victim to training offers in Japan and Korea where
they are brought ostensibly to undergo job training, and then they
disappear.
Who Profits from
Trafficking
Prostitution does not
benefit its victims, but it does benefit bar owners and
brothel-keepers, pimps and procurers. It benefits recruiting
agencies, airline companies, hotels, resorts, travel groups and
marriage bureaus. It benefits underworld syndicates cashing in on
the global demand for cheap labor and the sexual services of women.
The Australian federal police estimated in 1988 that illegal
prostitution was grossing A$30 million a year. And trafficking
benefits the states that receive the women's remittances. It is
believed that it is the billion dollar earnings of Filipino overseas
contract workers that has been keeping the Philippine economy afloat
for two decades now. This is seen as part of the reason why many
governments have turned a blind eye to the widespread, wholesale
traffic of women. And when they are confronted with cases of their
citizens being abused abroad, they often treat the stories of
brutality or murder as isolated cases that must not be allowed to
upset delicate foreign relations, especially regional ties. The
trafficking issue is ignored due to prejudice. Bangladeshi women
victims are seen as "fallen, undeserving." The Australian government
feels that international drug rings involved and the question of
women being trafficked is a secondary issue to the drug traffic.
Crime Syndicates
International crime
syndicates are involved because of the high profit potential and the
difficulty of detection and comparatively low penalties from
prosecution. Aside from passport fraud and visa offenses,
multimillion dollar profits are untaxed and moved offshore for money
laundering purposes, pointing to the large-scale use of fraudulent
documents. These activities touch upon the responses of government
agencies, both in the receiving country and in the sending country.
Every successful syndicate has cohorts in the bureaucracy.
Trafficking would be greatly stymied with out bribe-takers among
travel document processors, immigration officials and airport
inspectors, among border patrollers who may have first pick of the
women being trafficked into their country, among the police who get
regular pay-offs from sex establishment owners and thus have a
vested interest in the continuance of the trade.
In some countries
trafficking today is sophisticated, technologized, there are still
cases like the account of 74 Bangladeshi women and children who were
on their way to be sold in Pakistan. When they were rescued, they
were found bound and gagged in the cargo hold of their boat, a scene
reminiscent of American slave ships bearing kidnapped Africans in
the 19th century.
Trafficking must be
analyzed not only in terms of structural inequality between Third
World and industrialized countries, but also in terms of migrant
women's low status as women and as populations of poor countries.
Men who look for jobs abroad do not face the problems and horrors of
sexual exploitation. Thus while providing economic alternatives, the
basic question of the status of women in society must also be taken
into consideration as well as the legal and business structures that
perpetuate the commodification of women's bodies.
Operations of
Syndicates
The massive migration
of women for work abroad, however, has also been facilitated by
state policies and programs and the international demand for cheap
labor. It is the combination of a legitimizing system that involves
government and private sector recruiters and marketers, the local
pressure of unemployment, the growing demand for bought sex and the
operations of international crime syndicates, that have led to the
worldwide explosion of the traffic in women.
The following are two
examples of how syndicates operate:
·
In the
Philippines, women who want to work in Japan as entertainers apply
to a promotion agency where they are given, free of charge, training
in singing and dancing. Recruiters for such agencies also go out to
provincial towns and villages to encourage girls to avail of
opportunities offered them. After training, official auditions take
place to certify them as entertainers. Sometimes, Japanese agents
come to the Philippines to pick out women themselves, for their
skills and looks,
Generally, the women
bound for Japan are given their passports in sealed envelopes at the
airport before departure. Often, names and ages have been changed.
The fake passports are not detected because collusion by airport
personnel who allow the women to board the plane without being
checked by inspectors. In Japan, the women are met and housed by
maintainers, often Yakuza members, who rape and brutalize them
before taking them to the nightclubs where they will work. The women
are prevented from leaving by threats of violence. Should they
manage to escape, they get no sympathy or assistance from the
Philippine Embassy in Japan. Sometimes, they are even returned to
the club.
·
In Australia,
the brothels are supplied by international syndicates, or brothel
owners go overseas and escort their victims to Australia. The
documented case of an arrested Thai bearing a Singaporean passport
sketches the stages of recruitment and deception. The woman was made
to believe by an agent in Thailand that airfare, accommodation and
employment as a waitress awaited her in Sydney. She traveled to New
Zealand on an authentic Thai passport. Upon her arrival, the
passport was taken from her and she was made to travel with a male
escort to Perth. Then she was flown to Sydney. There, she was met by
woman who took her to a brothel and then informed her that she owed
the brothel $15,000 for travel expenses and documents.
There are an
increasing number of prostituted Asian women in Australia who have
permanent residence. Some have married Australians, but these seem
to be contrived marriages. However, it would appear that at present
Australian authorities are not as concerned about trafficking in
women as they are about the trafficking of drugs for which
prostitution provides a cover. According to the federal police,
prostitution provides drug traffickers with the following: financial
resources; associates in drug source and transit countries;
transport for illegal drugs via the frequent movement of prostituted
women and escorts; and access to distribution networks via organized
crime contacts in Australia.
Crime syndicates
obtain women from various countries to counter law efforts. Where
Filipinas were once predominant, Thais and Malaysians are currently
more numerous. Recently, there has been an increase in Indonesian
women.
How
to keep millions of good women down
The twentieth century
has seen the rise of the world marketplace. In this new world
market, Thailand and the Philippines have recently stepped in to
play the role of whorehouse to the world. This is facilitated by
developing agents having disregarded the development of women's
opportunities for economic independence, leaving prostitution as the
highest paying job available to many of the women of Southeast Asia.
While these countries
have benefited from the tourist presence and the resulting foreign
exchange, the women who actually put themselves out for their
countries development process are to a large extent victims of
threefold oppression on the basis of gender, class and the
particular role of their homeland in the games of international
political economy.
International Political Economics
"Ja, I like Bangkok
very much. It's the last place in the world where you can still be a
white man." - a German Bar Owner1
The idea of creating
designated areas for sex tourism in Asia dates back at least as far
as pre-Communist China, where "[b]rothel trains, given the euphemism
of 'comfort waggons' were a long accepted part of social life... .
Once lusty Europeans could book a ticket to erotic pleasure on some
of the specially chartered trains out of Shanghai."2
But it was to be the
Japanese who set up the most comprehensive network of "comfort
waggons" staffed by forced prostitutes, or "comfort women." Many
women "lived as captives of the military beginning in 1932, when
Japan invaded China, to the end of the war in 1945."3
Forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers, the women were drawn from
the Asian countries conquered by Japan, and included "Japanese,
Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, as well as Dutch women captured in
Indonesia, then a Dutch colony."4
While the Japanese had
fostered prostitution on a limited scale to serve their own needs,
"the boom in Southeast Asia started with the U.S. presence in
Vietnam. There were 20,000 prostitutes in Thailand in 1957; by 1964,
after the United States established seven bases in the country, that
number had skyrocketed to 400,000."5
It was this boom, and the resulting slack after the war that was
taken up by tourism, that introduced prostitution as a large-scale
business to the region.
This whole process was
overseen by the governments of both countries. In 1967, Thailand
agreed to provide "rest and recreation" services to American
servicemen during the Vietnam War, which the soldiers themselves
called, "I&I, ... intercourse and intoxication."6
How did the governments of these countries respond to becoming, in
the words of Senator J. William Fulbright, "an American brothel"?
One South Vietnamese government official responded, "The Americans
need girls; we need dollars. Why should we refrain from the
exchange? It's an inexhaustible source of U.S. dollars for the
State."7
In fact, the Vietnam war was responsible for "[injecting] some $16
million into the Thai economy annually, money that tourism would
have to replace after the war was over."8
Whereas traditionally,
the military forces of foreign powers have utilized women of
Southeast Asia as prostitutes, or "comfort women," now the soldiers
of the countries themselves have taken over. In a survey of Thai
students, soldiers, store clerks and labourers, "[a]mong the
respondents who have ever patronized prostitutes, the soldiers are
the most likely to have visited a prostitute recently: 81% respond
that they have visited a prostitute within the past six months."9
In addition, "[t]he median number of visits during the past six
months ranges from two for the students to five for the soldiers..."10
A survey of military conscripts from the north of Thailand yielded
that "73% of them lost their virginity with a prostitute and 97%
regularly visit prostitutes."11
Current government
complicity in the "illegal" trade of prostitution can be seen on
many fronts. From the soldiers to the politicians, the tourism
bureau officials to the police forces, every sector of the
powers-that-be have a vested interest in the continuation of
prostitution; "many politicians, officials and policemen invest in
the sex trade or benefit from it. In the northern province of Phrae,
a senior Thai official says, policemen own some of the brothels.
Thai newspapers sometimes suggest that certain politicians own
chains of brothels."12
Indeed, in a pernicious twist to the idea of official complicity,
taken to the point of collusion, "there are several recorded
instances in which police, especially in rural areas, have handed
escaping girls back to their abusers."13
One story in particular illustrates the forces arrayed against women
caught up in this enterprise:
When a group of
prostitutes managed to escape from a brothel in Thailand earlier
this year, they were reportedly caught by the police in Burma, lock
up, assaulted and raped, and then released. They were almost
immediately picked up again by the racketeers and returned to
Thailand.14
In Thailand, the
official position on prostitution is that "prostitution does not
exist because it is illegal,"15
which is explained by the fact that "massage parlours, restaurants,
motels and tea houses may well offer sexual as well as other
services, but they do not count as brothels."16
This side-stepping the issue "is a severe handicap to campaigns that
seek to provide safeguards for prostitutes and to limit the spread
of AIDS."17
But this doublespeak is vital to maintain a supposed clean bill of
health for foreigners considering Thailand for their next sexcapade.
Ultimately, much of
official complacency with prostitution is tied to the view of
prostitutes as a national resource. During a South Korean
orientation session for prostitutes, the women were told: "You girls
must take pride in your devotion to your country. Your carnal
conversations with foreign tourists do not prostitute either
yourself or the nation, but express your heroic patriotism."18
These women play a vital role in the tourism industry which,
"including group sex tours, is Thailand's largest single source of
foreign exchange."19
Ultimately, what it comes down to, is that "young Thai country women
are just another kind of crop."20
During the Vietnam
war,
the World Bank
recommended that Thailand pursue mass tourism as an economic
strategy; and the
economic initiatives
consequent on the bank's report led to what is routinely described
today as a $4-billion-a-year business involving fraternal
relationships among airlines, tours operators and the masters of the
sex industry. In this sense, sex tourism is like any other
multinational industry, extracting enormous profits from grotesquely
underpaid local labour and situating the immediate experience of the
individual worker - what happens to the body of a 15-year-old from a
village in Northeast Thailand - in the context of global economic
policy.21
Class
Looking at the problem
of prostitution from the perspective of class yields a dichotomy
between the wealth and opportunity available to the city-dwellers
and the poverty that is the legacy of the rural sector, the source
of the vast majority of prostitutes in Southeast Asia ("One study of
1000 Bangkok massage girls found that seventy percent came from
farming families"22).
This is reinforced on multiple levels, including education, rate of
development, development resources allocated and economic
statistics: while "only 15% of the population of Thailand lives in
the Bangkok area, [it] accounts for half of GDP. Income levels in
Bangkok are nine times higher than in the north-eastern part of
Thailand, where one-third of the population lives."23
The example of Thailand's development strategy serves best to
illustrate this phenomena:
the burden of Thailand
urban industrial growth has been borne by the peasantry. In the
first place, the much needed foreign exchange earnings for
Thailand's initial industrial development were derived from
agricultural exports, particularly rice. Secondly, Thailand's
ability to attract foreign investors has depended upon its ability
to guarantee low labor costs.24
This policy of
artificially lowering the price of rice to encourage exports, and
maintain low food costs for urban labourers, "...operates to
transfer income from the countryside to the city..."25
Thus the perpetuated poverty of the rural areas encouraged migration
to cities; and "[w]ith this migration process, the peasantry made
its third contribution to Thailand's industrial development. It was
now sending its sons and daughters to comprise Bangkok's swelling
labor force."26
In the 1950s, these immigrants were men, but "comparison of the 1960
and 1970 census data on migration shows that the most notable change
has been the increased proportion of females migrating to Bangkok,
especially single migrants 10-19 years old."27
These women, once in
the city, are then cajoled, coerced and condemned to take up
prostitution as the highest paying job available. Then, once they
have begun to make some money, in most cases, they send large
portions of those earning home. An International Labour Organization
study "found that of fifty prostitutes interviewed, all but four
send money home. Most remit one-third to one-half their earnings,
sums essential to their rural families' survival."28
That, or the women start off indentured to prostitute themselves to
pay off loans their families accept from their daughters's future
employers.
It has been
established that "access to education is an important indicator for
establishing the extent to which a community is benefiting from the
changes that accompany economic development."29
In the case of rural Thai women, that access has been severely
limited, due in part, it seems, to their rural placement and not
their gender. At a very basic level,
[w]here countries such
as the Philippines and Malaysia have concentrated on a quantitative
expansion of education to expand and meet human capital
requirements, Thailand has maintained a strong tradition of making
educational opportunity highly competitive and taken an elitist
approach to higher education.30
Not only does this
attitude translate into fewer schools, but also "this emphasis on
quality, up until the 1980s at least, saw Thailand concentrate the
bulk of its higher educational institutions within and around
Bangkok. By implication, this saw educational opportunity largely
confined to this one major urban region."31
In the rural sector, figures from 1986 bore out 7,157,713 children
enrolled across the six years of primary school in 1986, and
1,277,619 enrolled across the first three years of secondary.32
But while these
systemic shortcomings effect all of the students in the rural
districts, male and female,
the shortage of
government schools and teachers in rural areas has meant the
continuation of traditional pagoda education conducted by monks and
therefore not available to girls. Today, 30,459 temples still
provide the main opportunity for schooling, and thus social
mobility, for Thailand's rural poor - males, that is, not females.33
Evidence of this
educational inequality can be found in illiteracy rates after a half
a century of compulsory education, 6.3% for men and 17% for women.34
Gender
Once the problem is
reduced to gender differences and inequality, some clear trends
emerge. The most prevalent of these being that the continuing
success of the prostitution trade rests on the perceptions of the
clients seeing the women as both desirable in their exoticism and
willing participants in the exchange.
The women of Southeast
Asia are subject to age-old, deeply ingrained stereotypes and
pre-conceptions; "[s]ex tours primarily market Asian women,
described as exotic and docile..."35
There's the perceived "mystique of the Asian woman - beautiful,
obedient, available..."36
Some descriptions are even more overt: "[a] Swiss tour operator
describes Thai women as 'slim, sun-burnt and sweet ... masters of
the art of making love by nature.'"37
These are the qualities that appeal to the foreigners; take, for
example, this testimony by a "sexile" or a "sexpatriot," an aging
European foreigner who went to Southeast Asia looking for sexual
adventure:
Now, ... he is reduced
to buying himself a bit of affection, some excitement, illusions of
comfort and consolation. He has contempt for Britain, where, he
says, everyone has gone soft, men are no longer men and women have
got too assertive. This is a recurring subtext in the testimony of
the sexiles: Filipinas are anxious to please, they don't ask
questions, are docile and submissive. "What d'you expect in a
woman," says Mike defiantly.38
Even, when you
approach the subject of development programs that might offer some
hope of redemption, some opportunity "...to create viable income
producing alternatives in poor villages that can compete with the
earning powers of prostitution,"39,
women are denied solely on the basis of their gender; "Aid
programmes and information, when available, are almost invariably
channeled through men."40
In the midst of this
analysis of political economy and gender and class, and the effects
they have on prostitution, a moment must be taken to examine the
deleterious effects of prostitution on the women who work it.
Disease is a constant threat to these prostitutes, some of whom have
sex with upwards of eight or nine men a day. Studies have shown that
in some locales, more than forty per cent of the prostitutes have
venereal disease.41
Also, when, as is often the case, they are started young, "boys and
girls are more vulnerable to infection because they are prone to
lesions and injuries in sexual intercourse."42
And risk is also increased when the women continue prostituting
through their menstrual cycle, as they are wont to do, to avoid the
fines levied by bars for taking time off for their periods. Besides
those risks, the women often "go deaf because of the incessant loud
music in the bars and suffer intestinal disorders because they are
forced to throw up so as to keep ordering expensive drinks."43
The physical suffering
borne by these women is often unbearable without the aid of drugs.
Take, for example, this story of a young prostitute:
After having my body
ravaged by several customers in a row, I just get too tired to move
my limbs. At times like this, a shot of heroin is needed. This
enables me to handle five or six men in a single night. I can't help
but take the drug in order to keep myself in working condition.44
A United Nations study
of a thousand Thai prostitutes revealed that a quarter were regular
users of speed, barbiturates, and heroin. All these serve to keep
the women indebted to and dependent on yet more unhealthiness.
Finally, the question
begs itself: "How does a young Thai woman, normally very shy, dance
naked in front of strangers or sleep with them? 'You make yourself
very empty,' says Noi, a former prostitute..."45
And after they have been through this experience of prostituting
themselves, often there is a need for "counselors for the girls who
had been mentally affected by their ordeal"46
- a need, of course, which remains unmet for the vast majority of
Southeast Asian prostitutes.
The men, on the other
hand, ride the other end of the equation. Whether foreign or local,
the men are willing to use the women to satisfy their sexual needs
at an incredible rate. This often without regard to disease or any
common moral restraints, including age: prostitutes as young as
seven are often bartered alongside their older counterparts.
While the foreign
aspect of prostitution in Thailand and the Philippines may garner
the most attention and money, most of the customers, patronizing the
cheapest establishments, are native: "[a]ccording to reliable
surveys of sexual behaviour, every day at least 450,000 Thai
men visit prostitutes"47
(emphasis mine). Thus, much of the impetus sustaining the incredible
rate of prostitution in Thailand is cultural; "Thai men think it is
their right to have cheap sex, ... and there are enough poor Thai
women to make it possible."48
Prostitution in many cases has become integrated with initiation
rights: "[f]or many Thai men, a trip to the neighborhood brothel is
a rite of passage, a tradition passed from father to son."49
Certainly, prostitutes play a large part in forming the sexual
identity of young Thai males; "a demonstration of heterosexual
orientation by having sex with a female prostitute is an important
rite of passage for some groups of Thai men."50
This is borne out by the available statistics: "[s]tudies show that
the majority of Thai men have their first sexual experience with a
prostitute - the act is often a part of high school and university
hazing rituals - and that 95% of all men over 21 have slept with a
prostitute."51
In addition to rites of passage, the activity of visiting a
whorehouse has become a social activity in many cases, "'Sex with
prostitutes seems to be a way for men to enjoy each other's
company,' notes Barbara Franklin of Care International, ... 'It is
often part of a night out with friends who share food, drink and
sometimes even sexual partners.'"52
This fosters a deep
imbalance in the attitudes most Thai men have towards women and sex;
"[m]ost men consider women to be either sexual objects of obedient
homemakers."53
And the rift between the sexes deepens when one considers the sexual
roles prescribed each:
And while it is
perfectly acceptable for men to visit prostitutes, premarital sex
between men and women who are dating is strictly forbidden. Many
Thais believe that this double standard has helped create the
thriving sex trade. "In Thailand, women are supposed to be chaste
until marriage and monogamous afterward," says writer and social
critic Sukanya Hantrakul. "Men are supposed to be promiscuous."54
Indeed, a survey of
both sexes by the Deemar Corporation in 1990, bore out that "80% of
males and 74% of the females responded that it was 'natural for men
to pursue sex at every opportunity."55
Opportunity
The forced migration
of rural women, girls in many cases, to the cities cannot be solely
explained in terms of coercion. Many women "find their way with open
eyes, drawn by the prospects of much higher rewards than they could
ever earn even in a government job, let alone doing unskilled work
in industry or agriculture."56
In the Philippines, "Hospitality girls can make as much as [US$49] a
night, almost the average monthly salary in the Philippines."57
In a 1982 study by Pasuk Phongpaichit, a Thai sociologist, for the
International Labour Organization "[estimated] the income of sex
workers at twenty-five times that attainable in other occupations.
Entire families in the countryside are supported on the earnings of
one daughter in Bangkok, and entire rural villages are made up of
such families."58
The International
Labour Organization in Geneva surveyed 50 women who had made the
migration to Bangkok to work in massage parlours to examine the
women's rationale behind their work in the sex trade. Their findings
summarize the economic thinking behind their decisions:
The migration gave
them an earning power which was simply astounding relative to normal
rural budgets. A couple of years of work would enable the family to
build a house of a size and quality which few people in the
countryside could hope to achieve in the earnings of a
lifetime...They were engaging in an entrepreneurial move designed to
sustain the family unites of a rural economy... Our survey clearly
showed that the girls felt they were making a perfectly rational
decision within the context of their particular social and economic
structure.59
Prostitution, in some
sense, allows the women that are able to take advantage of it the
opportunity to live the American dream, to enjoy and extend
increased consumerism to their families: "[m]odernization and
sophisticated advertisements have also brought new desires for
consumer goods to villagers and a shift towards a cash economy."60
On the other end of the motivation spectrum, there are student
prostitutes at the University of the East, in Manila, who "are
putting themselves or their siblings through college"61
by prostituting themselves, primarily to other students.
In perhaps the most
sad permutation of the prostitution situation, for some Filipino
women, an
almost religious
belief in the promised land - America - adds to the attraction of
the hospitality business. Many of the girls pin their hopes on
prostitution as a way of achieving their ultimate dream: marriage to
an American. For these young women their customers are people who
can give them things, like blue-eyed kids and a condo, not AIDS.62
This scenario, however
unlikely, was plausible during the existence of active U.S. bases on
the Philippine islands. A 1989 article in The Economist
reported that "around half of America's young, single servicemen
leave their posting with a Philippine bride"63
- which, of course, left most of the rest of the women to be
"rewarded only with sexual diseases... and unwanted babies."64
Now with the bases
gone, there are few customers who stay around long enough to develop
this sort of relationship with the women, in fact, there are far
fewer customers overall, leaving the women without clients, and
without skills, hence without jobs.
The
Advent of AIDS
Perhaps what will be
the final arbiter in the struggle over prostitution is the advent of
AIDS to the brothels of Thailand and the Philippines. AIDS is spread
rapidly and efficiently by the brothels because, basically, "[m]en
do not like to use condoms, and the women can ill afford to refuse a
customer who will not."65
The rapid onset of the
disease is imminent, if not already in progress, simply because,
"[m]ost of the men visiting prostitutes reported having
nonprostitute partners as well. Of those men who had both types of
partners (prostitutes and nonprostitutes), most men who had
unprotected intercourse with prostitutes also had unprotected
intercourse with nonprostitutes."66
Without a hint of irony, "[w]hile Thai men will wear condoms for
family panning, ... they object to them with girlfriends and
prostitutes"67
- meaning that the men that patronize prostitutes bring the disease
home to their wives, and ultimately, their children.
The brothels also
serve to export AIDS internationally as well. When foreign
prostitutes become infected in the brothels of the cities of the
Philippines or Thailand, they are often sent home to Burma, or
Cambodia, or Laos, where they continue to spread the disease. In
addition, "returning sex tourists have probably imported HIV to
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan."68
This is an area where
women can no longer endure their second-class status in silence;
"women have a 10 times greater risk of contracting the AIDS virus
from men than men do from women."69
According to one estimate, "at the current rate, at least 1.5
million Thai women will be HIV-positive by the year 2000, and so
will one third of their children."70
U.S. News and World Report provides an economic breakdown,
predicting that "AIDS could mean $8.7 billion in lost income
- $2 billion a year in foreign funds is at risk - AIDS health
costs could jump by a factor of 65"71
all of this meaning that prostitution could end up exacting a higher
human toll than was ever estimated - leading to speculation that
perhaps AIDS is some sort of retribution for the wholesale abuse and
expliotation of the women of these countries.
Ironically, "no sector
of the Thai economy has more to fear than the $5 billion tourism
industry."72
In fact, sex tourists are already beginning to shy away from some of
the hot spots of Bangkok and Manila. The combined human and economic
costs of AIDS should soon jar the governments of these countries out
of their complacency and denial, or else they could very well have a
catastrophe of epic proportions on their hands.
Conclusion
Perhaps what best sums
up the reasons for the continuing willing participation of many
prostitutes is this remark of a 28-year-old Filipino prostitute: "Of
course, I hate this, but there is no other way to make this much
money."73
A young Thai woman asks, "Why work in a factory for 2,000 or 3,000
baht a month [$80 to $120], when one man for one night is maybe
1,000 baht?"74
As long as there are no other high-wage jobs available for those
women, and as long as prostitution continues to pay more than the
less detrimental alternatives, women will continue to choose
prostitution in Southeast Asia.
And meanwhile, the
official attitude of coercion and condonement is currently fixed
because too many people make too much money off the prostitutes. I
have spoken of prostitution as among the highest earning jobs a
women can get in Southeast Asia, but in fact, "Korea Church Women
United estimates that prostitutes receive less than one-thirtieth of
the fees their patrons pay."75
Indeed, "Airlines, travel agencies, hotels, madams, pimps - all take
a chunk of the prostitutes' earnings"76
- not to mention paid-off policemen and politicians. In one
particularly astonishing case, it was reported "in 1979 that the
Manila Ramada made forty per cent of its income from extra fees for
prostitutes."77
If one can ignore the egregious human costs, the toll that is
exacted on the young women involved, prostitution, simply the
commodification of a basic human, basic male, desire, is profitable
for all persons involved. In this world marketplace, taking into
account our unrelenting pursuit of mammon, prostitution, as
practiced in Southeast Asia, is merely an efficient, unrelenting
articulation of our modern market values applied to male sexuality.
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