Travels in the Skin Trade: Tourism and the Sex Industry / Edition 1

by Jeremy Seabrook

Overview

'Jeremy Seabrook is one of England's most imaginative and creative writers, with a preacher's talent for prophesy and a capacity for righteous indignation reminiscent of George Orwell.' Richard Gott, The Guardian

'It raises questions about the rights of Thai women and children and the expectations of the men who travel to the country for this service. Finally it encourages a more wide-reaching understanding of basic human rights and considers the problematic relationship between North and South.' Oxfam Review of Journals

Press coverage of the sex trade in Thailand routinely consists of ill-informed, moralising and sensationalist denunciations of the industry. Through the words of sex workers and their clients, acclaimed journalist Jeremy Seabrook reconsiders the popular conception of the sex industry and explores the complex relationship between sex and tourism. In so doing he presents an objective, unmoralising and sensitive view of the industry. Through its examination of the many paradoxes surrounding this controversial subject, Travels in the Skin Trade also sheds new light on the wider and problematic relationship between the North and the South.

This revised edition features a new preface.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745317564
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	06/20/2001
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.32(w) x 8.46(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Mark B. Salter is Assistant Professor at The American University in Cairo. He is currently working on a history of the passport in world politics.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

SEX AS INDUSTRY

The sex industry of Bangkok is conspicuous, but embraces only a very small fraction of the population. The great majority of the people of Bangkok are employed in industry and construction, in workshops and factories, in hotels, shops, in the provision of food from street stalls and restaurants, in transport and tourism, in commerce, trade, in offices, in the law and education. There are scores of thousands of young women in the garments industry. Many of them work up to 15 or 16 hours a day; they live, eat and sleep in the Tow-house' factories where they work. They regularly send money home to their families and whole villages are sustained by their remittances. In shared rooms, photographs of their parents, brothers and sisters keep memories of home alive; a battered suitcase, some clothes, a mat for sleeping. Some, no doubt, find their way into the more lucrative employment of the the bars or clubs, especially if a friend or acquaintance introduces them to it; but most women in the city remain untouched by the sex industry. The reputation of Bangkok as a sort of global brothel is both unjust and untrue.

In the last three years, I have spent many months in Bangkok, originally looking at migration, industrial workers and the process of urbanisation. Between September 1995 and March 1996 however, I concentrated more closely on the 'demand' side of the sex trade, at least in so far as this involves Western visitors, residents and tourists in the city. These categories are not always easy to distinguish and they merge into each other. Many who visit Thailand for the melancholy kind of 'fun' for which Bangkok has a somewhat exaggerated reputation, find they get hooked; or maybe enchanted. Many are drawn to come again and again. Some settle in Thailand, more or less permanently: sexpatriates.

The interactions reflected here address, for the most part, the longer-term involvement between Thais and Westerners, although there are accounts of more casual, transient visitors too. The contacts were made in a variety of ways – some through friends and acquaintances, some as direct interviews; but mainly, as encounters in bars, public places and clubs, often informally.

It is important to be aware of the limitations of such methods. For one thing, people are usually more ready to talk – particularly to strangers – about the breakdown of relationships, to dwell upon the causes of emotional and cultural incomprehension between Thai and foreigner, than they are to discuss successful, long-term attachments: these tend to celebrate themselves quietly, privately and rarely become the object of the same kind of morose introspection which follows separation or break-up. People who are disappointed or who feel that they have been deceived are more likely to express their frustrations. In that sense, these meetings and encounters cannot be said to be 'representative'. But in an attempt to reach some insight into the motives, responses and attitudes of foreign men in Bangkok, I have set out what I gained from 20 or so meetings in late 1995 and early 1996. These are mostly with Westerners (for linguistic reasons, it was not possible to speak with Japanese or Taiwanese, etc. although I did meet one or two Indians).

Some of these encounters are immensely touching: some illuminating, others pitiable, even repelling. The book does concentrate on the 'demand' side, because I wanted to discover what it is about the rich and envied societies of the West that impels so many people to travel across the world to look for experiences which are, presumably, not available to them at home. If I wanted to defend sex tourism – and there is no shortage of evidence on which to condemn it – I would perhaps quote the elderly American who said that he had never been touched by another human being for more than a quarter of a century until he came to Bangkok. When I quoted this example to some women in Britain, their response was 'Why couldn't he go to American sex workers?' They have a point, of course. The whole story of travelling abroad for sex implies that you can do things with foreigners that you cannot do at home, which is a racist assumption. But it is also true that, on the whole, Western sex workers do not regard the giving of affection as part of the deal; and this distinction is less readily made in parts of the South.

The stories the people tell reveal something of the transactions between farangs (foreigners) and young Thai women and men. One of the original reasons for writing this book was to help Thai sex workers cope with the mysterious West, in the same way that those people who come to Thailand need to know much more than they do about the destination they choose; their fascination with an East, which frequently withholds its secrets, leaves them baffled and sometimes angry. The men who narrate their stories in this book are not representative of sex tourists: they are, for the most part, regular vistors to, or residents in, Thailand. This makes them untypical, but may have the advantage of explaining deeper Western responses and attitudes towards Thai women than the views of short-term sex tourists.

One thing that clearly draws Western men to Thai women is the perceived capacity of the women for what I can only describe as tenderness; a quality conspicuously absent from the sex industry in the West. Men feel particularly cherished by what they experience as the compliance, eagerness to please and considerateness of Thai women. Many compared such responses very favourably with the more mechanistic and functional behaviour of most Western sex workers. Just how far they are responding to an unchallenged indulgence in the power their money secures for them becomes clearer through their own words.

There is a pattern in the relationships between Thai women and foreigners who return again and again to Thailand. In the early stages of their contact with Thai women, the men tend to express the delight that comes from revelation – they describe themselves as being over the moon, being on cloud nine, walking on air and wondered what they have been doing, wasting their life until now. They rarely see that this idealisation of 'Oriental' women is as racist as the subsequent disillusionment. It is easy for them to forget, as Beth of EMPOWER (an NGO devoted to enabling sex workers to achieve greater equality with their clients, by teaching them their legal rights and health education, as well as providing language classes that help them negotiate with foreigners) puts it, that 'these are working women, for God's sake'. And what is more, they are working women with families to support. When Westerners, who have become the lovers of sex workers, discover this, they frequently become angry and claim they have been cheated. It is then that overtly racist responses – which are, of course, present in the whole activity of sex tourism – become explicit. It is very difficult for people from the West to understand emotionally (however clear their intellectual recognition may be) that the family is the sole source of the social security of individuals in Thailand. This means that 'relationships', in the Western one-to-one sense, must be subordinated to the need to sustain parents, grandparents, children and siblings. Sometimes the survival of a whole network of people depends upon their earnings. When Western men discover this, they rarely understand its significance and see it instead as a personal betrayal, an affront to their generosity and good faith.

A book like this one inevitably raises more questions than it can answer. What kind of people come to Thailand in search of satisfactions that elude them at home? Do they have a history of failed relationships, broken marriages, emotional disappointment, sexual discontent? Do they feel they can make a fresh start in a strange society, where they cannot even speak the language? Do they imagine they can remain unknown in a social context unfamiliar to them? Are they looking for a place to hide? What keeps so many of them coming back, even when they speak – as many do – in negative terms of their experience here?

For me, one of the most interesting elements emerging from these pages is the way in which we rationalise our behaviour when it is at its most irrational – in the pursuit of the tangle of love, affection and sex; and that this often conceals a licence for sexist and racist behaviour which would no longer be tolerated in the West. In many ways, the sex tourist embodies archaic and disgraced social values, and can give vent to forms of power which would not pass unchallenged at home.

Much has been written about the sex industry in Thailand and the focus has been primarily on the women, their struggles, the exploitation and abuse they must suffer, their often heroic efforts to survive; all of these are, I hope, also reflected here. But the purpose of this work is also to reach some more difficult questions about the purposes and direction of forms of development that have caught up the destinies of rich Westerners with those of poor country migrant women and men in Thailand. What has set whole populations in movement in this way, what kind of uprootings and dislocations link the livelihood of the daughters of rice farmers with the vacation or retirement trip, the gilded migrations of Western tourists? And what are the consequences for some of the receiving countries? This is why the book is also concerned with the growing traffic in young women and children, as well as with the spread of HIV and AIDS. It is intended to be both a guide and help to those involved in human rights campaigns and a support to movements which are trying to modify some of the more damaging consequences of what is recorded here.

CHAPTER 2

THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE SEX TRADE

I

Bangkok is one of the most badly congested and polluted cities in Asia. Its population more than doubled from 2.4 million people in 1965 to 5 million in 1985, and has probably doubled again within the last decade. The precise figures are unknown, because at any given time, the population is swollen by up to 2 million seasonal migrant workers, whose identity card was issued elsewhere and who do not count as residents of Bangkok. Many migrants live in barracks on construction sites, in shared rooms in hot airless tenements, in slums overhanging the polluted klongs (canals). Officially, 17 per cent of the people live in slums; a figure considered by many non-governmental organisations to be an underestimate.

There have been large-scale clearances of urban poor settlements as Bangkok has taken on the aspect of a highly developed Western city, its skyline dominated by huge office blocks, financial and corporate headquarters, shopping malls, condominiums and hotels for the 6 million tourists who now visit annually.

The state of the urban environment of Bangkok is well known; not only in terms of the air quality, pollution, labour conditions, but also in the sheer amount of time it takes people to get to work – journeys of two or three hours each way are commonplace. This contrast, between the modern and efficient façade of the city and the quality of life within it is just one example of a preoccupation with appearances and the importance of a cultural concern with 'saving face.'

The commitment of Thais to the avoidance of conflict does make Bangkok a safe city: you can walk around anywhere, day or night, without threat or the fear that haunts London or New York. Social peace has been maintained in a country which has been the site of an epic upheaval and driven economic transformation in the past 20 years. It is perhaps the absorptive capacity of Thai people which helps to account for the relative calm here, their ability to tolerate what seem to outsiders unbearable degrees of exploitation (workers, many of them little more than children, virtual industrial captives in assembly and manufacturing units, especially in the suburbs), oppression and social injustice (the poorest 20 per cent earn a mere 4 per cent of the wealth).

Nowhere is the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality more clear than in official attitudes to the sex trade and sex tourism. Prostitution is illegal, under the Prostitution Suppression Act of 1960. Yet the Entertainment Places Act barely six years later, in 1966, regulated nightclubs, dance halls, bars, massage parlours, baths and places 'which have women to attend male customers'. Soon after this Act was passed, Thailand came to an agreement with the US military to allow US soldiers stationed in Vietnam to use Thailand for rest and recreation. By 1970, spending in Thailand by US military personnel exceeded 20 million dollars.

Early in January 1996, the government of Banharn Silpa-Archa gave an order that all bars and clubs should close by 1 a.m. rather than at the then prevailing time of 2 a.m. This was duly hailed as a 'crackdown' on the sex trade and widely reported in the Western media. For a few days, many places of entertainment did indeed close their doors somewhat earlier,- but within a few weeks, it was back to 'normal', that is, at three in the morning, the streets around Patpong were thronged with tourists, bars were just closing and the hotels used by the sex industry were still humming.

In the gap between the official version and the lived experience, much of the life of Bangkok in particular, and Thailand in general, is defined. To provide some insight into the circumstances in which each year millions of male tourists now seek sexual adventure in a country where prostitution is banned, I monitored the English language press for evidence of the social, moral and political climate in which this paradox can flourish. The pretence may seem hypocritical to foreigners. Perhaps it is this perception which makes them think they can get away with doing things here which they cannot do at home: they believe the culture of institutionalised mendacity gives them licence to do as they please. This apparent freedom has to be understood for what it is. There is indeed a space afforded by corruption on the one hand and also by a certain permissiveness on the part of authority, as long as that authority is not challenged. One Thai friend, a university lecturer, expressed it like this: 'As long as the people of Thailand let the government get on with its real business, which is making money, then the people will be left alone to do more or less as they like. But let them not call into question the activities of government or they will find just how limited their freedoms are.'

'Saving face' as a traditional means of avoiding conflict, is sometimes seen as one of those 'Asian values' which are so much admired now by certain Western politicians. But saving face is increasingly for foreign consumption: to present a pleasing appearance to outsiders of the Asian 'tiger' economies: Thailand's economic growth has been around 8 or 9 per cent for many years. Investors, bankers, creditors, dignitaries from abroad, who come here in great numbers, must be preserved at all costs from exposure to some of the asperities of a society which has seen growing social injustice as a consequence of its growth and 'development'.

II

On 1 and 2 March 1996, the Asia-Europe meeting in Bangkok was attended by the heads of government of most European countries, as well as those of Southeast Asia. The government declared two days of public holiday, so that the visitors should be spared any contact with the true horrors of Bangkok's traffic and pollution.

At the time of the Asia-Europe meeting, a group of farmers were marching from the Prime Minister's own constituency towards Bangkok to protest at the usurpation of their ancestral lands for the construction of a local government administration complex. The contractor for this work of indispensable development happened to be a close friend of the Prime Minister. Fearing the arrival of disaffected country people in the capital at the time of the international meeting, a group of government ministers went by helicopter to dissuade them from turning up while important foreigners were in town. The protesters complied.

At about the same time, it was revealed that parts of Bangkok have a dust-particle level of 3000 mg per cubic foot, over ten times the safe limit. In response, the Bangkok Municipal Authority announced that teams of street cleaners would sweep the dust away. Conspicuously, yellow dustcarts appeared, parked close to where squads of blue-uniformed workers assembled on the sidewalk, mainly it seems, for the benefit of the public, while they received instruction in the seriousness of their task. The dust level, exacerbated ironically by the construction of the slowest fast-transit transport system in the world, was not expected to diminish.

The government announced changes in banking hours: instead of opening between 8.30 a.m. until 3 p.m., banks would now open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This measure, the government solemnly informed people, would reduce traffic by 40 per cent. There was no detectable change.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Travels in the Skin Trade"
by .
Copyright © 2001 Jeremy Seabrook.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface to new edition Introduction 1. Sex as Industry 2. The Environment of the Sex Trade 3. Male Visitors to Bangkok 4. The Sex Industry: Economic and Social Base 5. The Sex Industry: Supply 6. Stories from a Sex Industry 7. The Sex Industry Becomes the Aids Industry 8. The Sex Market and Human Rights 9. Children's Rights in Thailand Conclusion Appendix: Useful Contacts Index

Editorial Reviews

It raises questions about the rights of Thai women and children and the expectations of the men who travel to the country for this service. Finally it ecourages a more wide-reaching understanding of basic human rights.

Oxfam Review of Journals