Tourism prostitution in Asia

Use Lenze 

This article appeared in German in Frauen in der Dritten Welt 1/2, February 1978, under the title "Prostitutionstourismus in Asien". It is also available in French in the Bulletin Thai d'Information, May 1978, published by the Comite de Solidarite avec le Peuple Thai', c/o M. Luc Thibeaut, 9 rue du Dauphine, 93600 Aulnay-sous-Bois, France.

The sexual exploitation of women in the dependent developing countries has been a problem for about a hundred years now. To the patriarchal mind, it seems to be a natural corollary of war and trade. Sex-tourism has now been added to this. For the West German society of today, this is nothing new, nothing exotic. When the West German women's movement and the rising level of consciousness since the 1960s brought up the issue of the domination of women by men - and its similarities to imperialistic structures - patriarchal society sought and found new and docile sexual servants in the dependent countries of she Third World. These investment paradises have become tourist paradises as well - for men of all classes

The complicity of the press

The complicity of the press is seen in the approval reflected in the articles by male journalists on Bangkok, the mecca of trade in women - an approval accompanied by winks of the eye and camouflaged with a fig leaf of concern. We have the Suddeutsche Zeitung speaking of "smiling Thai girls who, with their fine and tender hands, massage the huge lobster-red male bellies" (SZ nr. 271, 1976).

The Culture of Prostitution

 

For hundreds of years the patriarchal societies of East and South East Asia had, in their cities, systems of prostitution with their own culture.For the men of the landowning classes, marriage represented essentially an economic contract and an institution for procreation. They sought love and romance in the world of brothels of "flowers and green pastures". The line of demarcation between concubine and prostitute was often unclear. Due to her education and her function as entertainer within the culture of the brothels, the prostitute had a certain measure of self-esteem.

 

From the male point of view, prostitution is often discussed as a service rendered. I see it rather as work carried out in a condition of dependence. In the traditional Asian societies this dependence was constituted, on the one hand, by the patriarchal family structure within the class system -- girls were sold as the last " commodities " to alleviate the misery of the family -- and, on the other hand, by the relationship of dependence of the prostitute with the managers of the brothels. Even after the suppression of serfdom and the trade in women in most of the East Asian societies in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, prostitutes continued to live and work in a condition of dependence on their families, brothel managers and procurers.

 

With the suppression of the structures of agrarian subsistence and dependent industrialization following the imperialist intrusion in East and South East Asia, prostitution widely overflowed the wall of the quarters of " flowers and green pastures" and infiltrated all levels of society. In Thailand, for example, since the 1950s, the military has appropriated a large part of the land, especially in the vicinity of the cities, so that the previous owners who were cultivating it , no longer have any land. When the daughters of these peasants left f o r the cities, they had the " choice " of unemployment, some occasional badly paid and petty jobs in factories or in families, or else a good source of income in the bars.

 

From misery to the bar Now I will let t w o women, among many similar ones, speak. Soaporn Rakachua: "I was born in Udon Thani where my parents are still living. My father works in an auto repair shop. With his salary, he has t o feed his ten children. Because of this, I could only go t o school until the fourth grade (Pathom 4). For many years I didn't have any work and so I helped out in the house. Then a friend convinced me to go to Bangkok. I first found a j o b as a waitress in a restaurant, but it was very hard work and the 500 baht (70 DM) that I earned was hardly enough to live on. That's why I am now working in a bar. My parents don't know anything about this. I don't know what they would say if they found out. I didn't have any other choice".

 

Noi, who is twenty years old , looks for clients independently in the evenings in the cafes and works in a battery factory during the day. " I get 25 baht per day but this is n o t enough t o cover my expenses. How could this be enough to pay for my rent, my food , my bus tickets and other expenses? And I can tell you, I am thrifty " . Noi's eight brothers and sisters live w i t h their parents, peasants from Ayutthaya , whose only means of sustenance comes from Noi. " I have to find work at night so that I can send money to my parents. I don't live in a brothel so that I can be free to go to work during the day " (Bangkok Post 27.8.77).

 

Khunying Chintana Yosunthorn, substitute rector at the University of Ramkamhaeng, strongly reacted when the causes of prostitution were ascribed to the women themselves and not to the tensions resulting from modernization. She stated that the problem of prostitution in Thailand will only be resolved once the general level of women's lives is improved {Bangkok Post 30.5.77).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Structural crisis

 

Mass prostitution is thus an expression of the structural crisis of agriculture and cottage industry. When the daughters of the families involved go t o the city , they do not f in d the possibility to earn enough for themselves and their families because of the huge industrial reserve work force and the patriarchal agreement between the indigenous elite and the foreign investors to keep down the salaries of women. Thus, they go into prostitution . Some girls are forced in to it -- some are sold
for a few dollars by their impoverished parents to save the family from hunger, some are attracted to Bangkok, to be closed up there in the brothels; sometimes they are even beaten or become drug addicts {Far Eastern Economic Review FEER 9.1.77).

 

The Far Eastern Economic Review (9.1.77) cynically wonders whether US intervention in Indochina might not have lasted so long if it were not for the " exotic female war booty" given t o each American soldier as a " consolation and consoler". In Saigon alone in 1975, there were about a million prostitutes. The brothels of Bangkok, the striptease bars of Manila and Taiwan are all part of the heritage of the w a r in Indochina. We should recall that after 1945 too , Japanese women were placed at the disposal of the US army of occupation by t he Japanese governmental organization RAR (association f o r rest and recreation).

 

 In the new neon-lit recreation centers, the old image of t he prostitute as entertainer and romantic object has been definitively lost. The dependent work of the prostitute has been brutally reduced to a purely sexual function , becoming an object of mass consumption. Not that we should regret the loss of the old form of prostitution - but t he new f o rm has meant a great depersonalization and a loss of culture . At t he same time alcoholism and an increasing crime rate has appeared in the cities. The foreign soldier seems t o prove the superiority of his country through the force of its arms, its commodities, its currency. For these reasons, the principal aims of the revolutionary wars of national independence in South East Asia included the liberation of women and t he demand for a culture based on human dignity . The militant participation of the Vietnamese women in the liberation struggle of Viet Nam was a determining factor.

 

 Demonstration of South Korean women Among numerous other actions against sex-tourism. South Korean women organized a demonstration at the airport
where the kisaeng (sex-toui) airplanes land. They carried placards in Japanese saying: "We will throw you beyond the sea, Japanese sex-monsters!". The demonstration was put down by the police and t w o women were arrested. These events led to a process of conscientization among the Japanese women's movements. Certain groups decided to take the offensive against Japanese economic and sexual exploitation of Asian women and t o support the women's struggle. There have even been militant demonstrations against the kisaeng tours in Japan itself. In 1977 these women's groups published a magazine Ajia to josei land participated in trade union activities against the policies of the Japanese businesses in S o u t h East Asia.

 

The solution t o the problem

 

The People's Republic of Vietnam has had a great deal of difficulty in resolving the problem of uprooted prostitutes, educated solely for sexual work . There are reeducation centers and a program t o transfer prostitutes to other regions but prostitution continues clandestinely, albeit in a reduced measure. Not much is known about Laos and Cambodia. According to testimony of overseas Chinese who regularly visit the Chinese mainland, it seems that even in the People's Republic of China there are some vestiges of prostitution (PEER 9.1.76 even though women have attained important positions as middle executives and in the factories and, in fact, there is no lack of alternatives. Although the causes of mass prostitution i.e. the impoverishment of peasants and artisans and mass unemployment influenced by imperialism, have collapsed in the People's Republic of China and in Vietnam, it appears that a true suppression of prostitution would be possible only if, in the process of economic reconstruction, the patriarchal structures are not once again consolidated.

 

What could the women do?

 

But what could the many women recruited by poverty and imperialism do once the US troops left Indochina? In the countries which remained under the influence of imperialism, the new motto was ( prostitution ) tourism. In Thailand the number of tourists doubled between 1969 and 1975, reaching 1,100,000 (PEER 9.1.76), with US and German citizens as the main clients. Among the 241,111 women working in the region of Bangkok, about 27,000 are employed in the restaurants, bars and night clubs and about 11,500 in special services such as beauty and hair dressing salons and massage parlors. But an estimated 100,000 women work as prostitutes in the region of Bangkok,70 per cent of w h o m are reported t o have venereal diseases (Stern 9.9.77); that is, 3 0 per cent of women workers have diseases as a result of prostitution!

 

The business climate 

 

Although a large number of clients are Thai , business is nevertheless strongly directed towards the foreign client. The  reigning business climate is oriented to Uncle Sam and Uncle Willy throughout Bangkok: tailors hang signs in their windows in English and German "Slacks 20 D M " , bar girls approach foreigners in German or English. If mass tourism should decline due to the economic crisis in the industrialized countries, the women who have been used to make Thailand a center of sex-tourism will remain without hope for a better future , for there is no alternative.        

 

Officer Somchal Hiranyakit , head of the governmental tourist organization, notes that although tourism fosters prostitution, it is also caused by the poverty of the country . But since it creates employment, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages {PEER 9.1.76), all the more so as Thailand takes in foreign currency in  this manner. Nonetheless, the Thai government has taken measures against the more scandalous traffic of women to t he Federal Republic o f Germany {Stern 9.9.77). So too the Park regime in South Korea in 1973 too k only superficial measures against the kisaeng tours (despite the massive protests of South Korean women) which are regularly organized for Japanese businessmen who of ten fly to South Korea for a single night to visit the prostitutes in the former Japanese colony.