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Chanelle Gallant

ISSUE 4.2 (2008)

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting in a noisy dance bar in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai with three local sex workers. Hip-hop pounds out of the speakers. The bar is filled with mostly Western tourists and a few Thai folks. My three friends are students in the English class I’ve been teaching for Empower, a national sex workers’ support organization. We drink our whiskey and sodas, yell over the music, dance to the latest Rihanna hit, and scope the crowd. Sex workers frequently work in regular bars and tonight my friends may or may not be working, depending on whether they see any clients they find desirable. So I ask P. if she thinks anyone at the bar is cute. Yes actually! she says. Smiling, she points to three young English men, dancing in a manner I can only call erratic. They’re all drunk and dancing with their sunglasses on. Indoors. I look at her incredulously.

“Really?”

“Yes!” She nods enthusiastically.

“Those guys?!”

“Mmhmm!”

Another woman in our group shakes her head and tells me she doesn’t like the young men. She prefers men with white hair and points to an older guy, in his late 60s, sitting with a pretty young Thai (working) woman. She thinks they’re more handsome and better clients. You mean one of those guys that everyone thinks is a horrible sleaze for hooking up with twenty-somethings? Yep! That’s the one she’s referring to!

I’m stunned and even more amazed by my own assumptions: where exactly did I get the idea that Thai sex workers must dislike or resent foreign clients?

Sex Tourism

I came to Thailand packing 250 condoms donated by Toronto sex shop Good For Her and sex work agency Maggie’s, in full support of Thai sex workers and thrilled to be working with them. But when late one night I saw a white guy with a buzz-cut wearing a sports jersey bearing the number sixty-nine that read “Sex Tourist,” I felt ambivalence. Even though they are a minority compared to Thai clients, foreign clients are one of the most controversial elements of the industry, disdained by Thais and Westerners alike.

Without exception, every non-sex worker I’ve met in Thailand assumes the worst about “sex-pats.” Not a day has passed where I don’t hear a disparaging comment about the men we see daily, walking around hand in hand with their pretty new Thai girlfriends. They’re seen as sleazy, misogynistic losers, “fat, old white guys” who aren’t able to “get a woman” at home so come to Thailand to use the advantage of their relative wealth to exploit poorer Thai women.

But this isn’t how they are seen by the women here, many of whom have boyfriends they met via sex work. They painted me a much more complicated (but also simpler) story about foreign clients. Just like Western sex workers, the distinction they draw isn’t between foreign and Thai clients (and the vast majority of clients are Thai) but between good and bad clients.

So what gives? How have foreign clients come to be perceived as jerks out to exploit a poorer nation’s sex workers? In working with Empower, I came to see how stereotypes about sex work, racism, and fat-phobia have blinded many Westerners from seeing a realistic picture of the relationships between foreign clients and local working women.

The “Poor Victimized” Thai Woman

Every story about the supposed exploitation of Thai women starts with the Western assumption that “Asian” women are submissive. Liz Cameron, one of the organizers in the Chiang Mai Empower office, summed it up: “It’s racism underlying the mistaken idea that sex tourists exploit Thai sex workers. Westerners think that customers get an easy time with Thai women because they are so poor or so desperate that they can’t set boundaries. But really, underlying this, there is also the belief that Thai women are submissive and simply don’t know how to be strong and capable.”

Sex workers everywhere are assumed to have reluctantly entered the industry. In Thailand, this is compounded by the racism that allows a Westerner to envision Thai women as submissive and pliant. Occasionally more educated (non-sex working) Westerners compare the Thai sex work industry unfavorably to Amsterdam. Because there, they assure me, women are safer (read: smart and capable enough to take care of themselves). But these same Westerners don’t know a thing about the industry in Thailand and are shocked to learn that sex workers here frequently refuse clients, are often out to their families, and of course will not have unprotected sex on request. Even when Westerners are trying to be supportive, they often reveal outrageously racist assumptions. Like the middle-aged French woman who said to me, “Ze Thai women, zey are very clever, even ze prostitutes.”

It doesn’t help that the only English books published by or about Thai sex-working women portray them as victims. Books like Miss Bangkok or My Name Lon allow the Western reader to voyeuristically peak inside the life of an unhappy sex worker and confirm their established prejudices—that sex work is awful and no one does it voluntarily. Just like anywhere, there are sex workers in Thailand who are sick of their jobs, women and men who want to do something else but stay because the money is great and they have a family to support. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily make it any different from driving a taxi or nursing the sick. There are also women like Thanta (aka Ping Pong), a worker-owner at the collectively owned “Can Do” Experitainment Bar, who told me “I did twenty-one jobs before this one, so I know it’s the right one for me. Even if I move onto something else, it will always be my hobby.” Like most workers I’ve met, Thanta uses her real name with clients and is completely out about her work. “Why not? We’re confident about what we do so there’s no reason not to be open.” But Thanta’s story doesn’t fit the stereotype, so you won’t hear it in the mainstream media.

Som, who manages the Bangkok office, puts it simply: “Foreign clients aren’t all good or all bad. We welcome them if they are good clients. Bad ones, we don’t want.” By bad clients, she means those who are cheap, who steal from workers, who use date-rape drugs, or who want sex all night long. When I asked Lek, another worker-owner at “Can Do,” what message she wanted to send to North American sex workers, she said, “Send us your customers!” On the second floor of the “Can Do” Bar, full of offices and classrooms, they have a male mannequin they call The Perfect Customer. Mr. Perfect sports an Empower T-shirt, a full wallet, and a single red rose. He packs his own condoms and is dressed sharply. In short: supportive of sex worker rights, pays well, is presentable and a little bit romantic. What more could a working girl ask for?

Customer/Funder/Boyfriend

In fact, many women long for a customer who becomes a boyfriend/long-term financial supporter, a man with whom she can pursue a relationship that provides both love and financial support. If she’s lucky, a woman won’t have to work too many years before she finds one. She may keep working or not, depending on the level of support she receives, her financial needs, and her interest in the business. The tourist biz is fickle and low season can be hard on a woman who is raising kids (the majority of sex workers have kids and, according to Empower, are supporting on average of five to eight family members including their parents). Regular support from a boyfriend can ease that burden.

Another stereotype Westerners often have of Thai sex workers is that they all want to get out of Thailand for a “better life” in the West. In fact, I met few who wanted to relocate permanently. Rather, if a woman finds the right guy to settle down with, she may pursue a dream to open a small business not far from her family with the money invested by her boyfriend.1

I met one such couple in Chiang Mai. Together they’d opened up a little flower shop outside of the city that was doing quite well. She managed it year-round and he visited a few times a year. He happened to be in town the night I joined in for the weekly outreach in the city’s bars. He came with us, sitting alongside us all on the truck ride into the neighborhood with the highest concentration of sex work bars, praising his girlfriend for her work with Empower. “She’s always helping people!” he beamed. In fact, relationships between Western men and Thai women that began through sex work are some of happiest relationships I’ve seen. Not all, of course, but they serve as a reminder that the two people involved in a sex work relationship are perfectly capable of figuring out an arrangement that serves them both well.

FAT Is Still a Four-Letter Word

“Oh, but I just couldn’t . . . with him.” Just about every sex worker has heard that one, and it brings us to some of the more visceral reasons for opposing sex tourism: Non-sex-working Westerners think the clients are gross. They whisper about how wrong it is to see older, fat white men with beautiful, young, slender Thai women. It offends their sense of the order of the universe. They don’t deserve it—they’re not beautiful enough. Fatness and age are always mentioned as the qualities that make the clients unacceptable. The two are not evenly matched, according to Western standards.

Empower recently released a Bad Girls Dictionary where they take the reins over the language that has long been used to define and marginalize them. In it, they have an entry for the word Fat: “Many fat old men are very respectful, kind, entertaining, generous, and polite customers. We don’t discriminate.” Accepting and desiring a wide variety of bodies is a skill that sex workers across the world bring to their jobs.

Hiring a Sex Worker Is Like Sunning on the Beach

What is a “sex tourist?” Am I a “massage tourist” because I’ve gotten about half a dozen Thai massages while I’ve been here? The women of Empower reject the division between so called sex tourists and regular tourists, describing sex tourism as “when tourists visit our workplace at nighttime, though they may visit other places, like temples and palaces, during the day time” and “a form of tourism that creates jobs for many of us.” So-called sex tourists come to Thailand for the same reasons that non-sex tourists do: a tropical country, wonderful people, delicious food. Non-Thai folk want to learn about another culture, roast on a beach while it’s minus five in Munich, go snorkeling, learn how to cook Thai food, or get a Thai massage. In short, they want things they can’t get at home—either because they don’t exist or are too expensive.

The same goes with so-called sex tourists. They want to do all of the above and spend time with a sex worker who offers services that are more abundant and affordable than those in the West. For example, workers here often offer a service called “long time.” It means she is offering to be your companion from anywhere from overnight to a few months. If you’d like, she (or he) will show you around the city, take you to the major tourist destinations, translate, and introduce you to Thai life and food. Essentially, be a fun and expert guide, a friend as well as a sexual companion. What’s not to love?

The cost varies but—as Lek put it—“whatever it is, it’s less than a North American sex worker makes.” So Thailand offers services not readily available at home at prices a middle-class guy might be able to afford. I interviewed one gay male client, a Thai-American painter in his late twenties who told me that he found Thai sex workers more fun, less into drugs, and of course, more affordable—an important factor for a working artist. But to the majority of folks I’ve spoken with, enjoying a beach side bungalow for seven dollars a day in December is perfectly acceptable, but spending time with a Thai sex worker is not.

We Are All Customers

Global tourism is complicated. It is made possible by the massive wealth disparities between the global north and south—and it is precisely through the theft of the South’s resources that the north is wealthy. Some see it as a matter of rich people coming to culturally “consume” another culture and in the process turn a distinct culture, economy, and environment into a cultural Disneyland. On the other hand, many people I meet in Thailand wish more of us would come—and bring our money with us.

I’m not arguing that tourism is politically neutral—just that “sex tourism” is subject to the same critiques as tourism in general. Everyone in the tourist industry wants good customers. Some tourists are considerate and thoughtful of the country they are visiting. Some are asshole yobs with imperialist attitudes. While sex tourists are no better than non-sex tourists, they aren’t any worse either. It’s our responsibility to ensure we learn how to be good customers and make thoughtful choices about how our visit is going to impact the country (e.g. environmental impact, animal rights, observing religious and cultural mores).

Trafficking! Coercion! Child Abuse!

In the West, we’re regularly inundated with horror stories about women being tricked or sold by their families to human traffickers, made into what are salaciously referred to as “sex slaves.” The problem is that in general, Western media ignores the difference between a migrant worker and a trafficked person—and it’s easy to do so when this story lines up so nicely with the popular belief that no one really chooses sex work. Just because a woman is working without documents does not mean she was tricked or forced into working.

If women in Thailand were being coerced into working, you wouldn’t see hundreds of them heading to and from work on the bus, chatting with friends on their cells, munching on green mango. Coerced means “locked-in.” It means unable to leave of your own volition. According to Empower, there have been “locked-in” brothels in Thailand, but most of them disappeared in the late nineties after new legislation was introduced that substantially reduced penalties against adult prostitution (a thirty-dollar fine and no jail time. In Bangkok, littering will net you a heavier fine) but heavily penalized hiring underage or undocumented workers. Once the owners of regular brothels were no longer willing to pay bribes to police (why, when fines are a pittance?), the police switched to extorting those with undocumented or underage workers. Suddenly it was no longer economically advantageous to hire the workers normally used in locked-in brothels—trafficked and migrant women—and the practice all but stopped.

And as for the grisly stories about girls sold by their families? Here’s what Som and Tuk, both Bangkok sex workers with years of experience, had to say: “Yes, twenty to thirty years ago, girls were pressured by their families to come to Bangkok to work and make money for the family. But now, no. Now girls decide for themselves if they want to work. No one can control you. Before girls didn’t know [anything about sex work], they were scared. Now they come to Bangkok and they’ve already had a boyfriend, they have been to school and studied. They decide for themselves.”

Of course, when trafficking does happen, it’s an atrocious human rights violation. Since 2001 though, the United States has pushed for trafficking to be treated as a crime and not a human rights issue, which means overlooking issues related to the rights to travel and to work safely. Even the UN’s anti-trafficking protocols make no distinction between voluntary cross-border migration for sex work and situations where force or coercion are employed. Incredibly, consent to engage in sex work is described as “irrelevant,”2 meaning that resources are wasted on search and rescue raids on voluntary sex workers.

With increased policing comes increased risk. In April of this year, fifty-four Burmese people were found suffocated to death in the back of a truck crossing the Thai border. According to one Empower source, “All the trafficking border control stuff is doing is making it more dangerous. People used to come across the border in open trucks but now they keep them closed to avoid detection. People used a footpath that’s now being patrolled, so instead they have to use landmine fields. And as for deporting women to Burma? For fuck’s sake thanks for all your help! Everyone is busy looking for imaginary victims because it’s tied to aid money.”

By the Thai government’s own figures, they “rescued” 900 workers from forced labor situations last year. But looking more closely at the figures, 800 were from one shrimp factory and fifty-eight women were from two karaoke bars. They spent thirteen million baht (over $400,000) to send 900 people to be locked up in “rehabilitation centers” or deport them back to dangerous situations. Empower helps 5,000 to 10,000 women per year and no one gets locked up or deported in exchange.

A more accurate picture of the situation in Thailand is provided by the 2007 Survey of Sexual and Reproductive Health of Sex Workers in Thailand, conducted in part by Service Workers in Groups (SWING), a sex work organization that works with male and transgendered workers primarily. In their report, they found that the average sex worker is twenty-eight and entered the sex industry at twenty-three, typically after a marriage broke down and she suddenly became responsible for providing an income.

This confirms what Empower reports about the sexual abuse of children—that it is happening but well outside the sex work industry in Thailand. (I spoke to an NGO worker in Cambodia who confirmed that this “trade” has moved to Cambodia.) And please, let’s distinguish between children and the adult Thai women that Westerners often perceive as minors. One woman told me a story about two Italian journalists at the “Can Do” bar who guessed two workers ages as sixteen and seventeen. Everyone had a good laugh—they were twenty-four and twenty-six.

Sex workers should not have to constantly defend against assumptions of trafficking and child exploitation—these are issues affecting many industries but only the sex industry is relentlessly and inaccurately perceived as a major offender. With regard to the concerns that Western sex workers have for the safety and well-being of sex workers in Thailand, the message I heard over and over was this: “Thanks for your concern, but we’re all right!”

Thai sex workers do not need our help—as women, as Thai people, or as sex workers—but they could do with our solidarity. So if one of your (good) clients is heading to Bangkok for business, don’t hesitate to suggest he pack a phrasebook, a wallet full of baht, and some condoms and head over to Patpong or Pattaya beach to enjoy the company of one of Thailand’s lovely and friendly sex workers. He just might end up a flower shop owner.

CHANELLE GALLANT is a white, working-class, queer femme-inist activist, writer, and educator. Her jam is lifting up the leadership of those most directly impacted in queer and sex working communities. She is the cofounder and editor of the prison abolition site Everydayabolition.com.

1. In the 2007 Survey of Sexual and Reproductive Health of Sex Workers in Thailand, only 3.4 percent of women surveyed would like to live overseas after leaving sex work. 67 percent said they’d like to start a small business. The survey can be downloaded for free at www.ipsr.mahidol.ac.th under “Publications.”

2. Janice G. Raymond. Guide to the New UN Trafficking Protocol, 2001.