Getting trafficked into a marriage you didn’t want sounds at least as bad as getting trafficked into the sex industry, because on top of the need to have sex when you don’t want to you will be very isolated and forced to do housework and other manual labour. Migrant women from Myanmar recruited for jobs in China and then passed on as wives are being forced to marry (in contrast to different sorts of ‘arranged’ marriages by families of two more-or-less witting spouses).
Lured into a trap, Global Post, 9 September 2010, with photos by Katsuo Takahashi
Last year Chinese police freed 268 Burmese women who had been trafficked and forced into marriages with Chinese men. Human rights activists believe that this represents only a small fraction of the growing number of Burmese forced to marry Chinese husbands.
The causes of this disturbing trend lie both in China and Myanmar (also known as Burma). Seeking to escape Myanmar’s military regime and the horribly mismanaged economy, young women are often lured by recruiters who speak of well paid employment. Many of the victims are from rural areas near China’s Yunnan province and belong to Myanmar’s persecuted ethnic minorities.
Beijing’s “one-child policy,” combined with the long-held national preference for male heirs, has resulted in a grossly lopsided male to female ratio; 120:100 in 2005. The massive shortage of potential brides drives many lonely Chinese men to resort to buying a foreign spouse.
Those women who are lucky enough to have escaped often tell a remarkably similar story. Usually they are recruited in their rural village and brought to the bustling towns on the Chinese side of the border. At this point they are handed over to another trafficker who will take them as far away as Beijing for their “job interview.” The price of a bride depends on her age and beauty, but a Chinese buyer will typically pay between 40,000 to 50,000 yuan (roughly $6,000-$7,500).
Once married, escape is difficult, as the new bride is forced to do housework or farm for long hours. Her husband or his family members watch her at all times. Those who have escaped tell stories of rape, physical abuse and dire loneliness.
I collect images of the sex industry, as part of a project to educate myself and others about the diversity actually involved, rather than staying with an oversimplified, unilluminating idea about prostitution. A lot of my picture collection can be seen here. The silent video below from Satoshi shows streets in a Yokohama red-light district with rows of small shops or cubicles used for sex work. Similar arrangements of sheds or ‘cribs’ were called chon-no-ma, and, until fairly recently, were open and staffed by non-Japanese women. Chon-no-ma were the target of anti-trafficking drives from about five years ago.
A few things strike me about this display. First, the silent, steady, slow movement of the camera. Second, the similarity of the windows and doors we’re taken past, like suburban shopping strips developers impose a style on. Third, the absence of humans, who would ordinarily be the object of our attention (perhaps the video was made in the early dawn). The result is mesmerising.
US government issues annual report card threatening to cut off aid from countries that don’t make the right efforts to combat trafficking
Threatened countries comply by passing legislation
And then instructing local police to carry out raids in order to ‘rescue’ victims
Police go to sex businesses, pick up all the workers and claim to have rescued them
Police say victims (sex workers) will be ‘rehabilitated’ via detention and forcible participation in an ‘alternative work’ programme, whether rescued people want this or not
Threatened national governments point to these actions to show US that they are fighting crime
US gives them a better grade on the next report card
Problems? Well yes, several, including the overtly neocolonialist coercion. In the following story which pointedly uses the word rescue, the police try to blame foreign devils for the existence of sex businesses, make sure to point out that some of those rescued were ‘only waitresses’ (which perfectly shows what they think about prostitutes), and, most important, if compliance with US aims to ‘convict’ traffickers is what’s needed, how does detaining and forcibly rehabilitating 200 victims help? What we’ve learned over and over is that some large number of the detained women do not want to be rescued, or not by the police, or not from sex work but possibly from poverty or the fear of disappointing their parents. I have unfortunately had to comment repeatedly on such stories, including recently on Cambodia. There are other ways to help people.
Manila, Philippines – The government’s anti-human trafficking task force on Thursday night rescued at least 200 women from a girlie bar in Malate district in Manila.
Retired military officer Jesus Kabigting of the government’s Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking said the raid was conducted in response to the US State Department’s report on human trafficking in the Philippines. The US State Department said the Philippines remains in the Tier 2 list of countries whose governments have failed to show improved efforts to curb human trafficking.
Representatives from the Manila Police District, Department of Social Welfare and Development and Department of Labor of Employment raided the LA Cafe at the corner of M.H. Del Pilar and R. Salas streets in Malate around 10:30 p.m.
Kabigting said majority of the women are being peddled to foreigners in Malate district. He said some of those rescued were only waitresses, but are also considered as victims of forced labor and human trafficking.
He said the women, particularly the prostitutes, will be “rehabilitated” and provided with alternative livelihood.
“Anti-human trafficking operations ito… Iyon ang dahilan kaya nagsagawa tayo ng walang humpay na operation against human trafficking (This ia an anti-human trafficking operation... That is the reason why we are conducting operations against human trafficking),” Kabigting told reporters referring to the US State Department’s report. He said similar raids will also be conducted nationwide.
Kabigting assured that charges will be filed against the owner of the bar. “Whether they have a permit to operate or not, they are committing acts in violation of the anti-human trafficking law. We will investigate them,” he said.
The US State Department was critical of the Philippine performance in all three benchmarks (prevention, protection and prosecution). It said that despite several labor trafficking cases were filed, the Philippine government never convicted any offenders. “Despite overall efforts, the government did not show evidence of significant progress in convicting trafficking offenders, particularly those responsible for labor trafficking,” the US State Department said in its report.
I don’t think brothels are a bad thing and I don’t think brothels are a good thing – not per se. Businesses that offer sexual services to customers who drop in to select a sex worker are a kind of shop and a kind of workplace. Some people like to buy in that kind of shop and some people like to work in it, with managers, set shifts and rules. Some rights activists wish all sex workers would be entrepreneurs working independently or organise themselves in small collectives, but many people like being employed and having a boss and colleagues. Like an office or plant, a brothel can function as a reassuringly ordinary place, with its attendant office politics, opportunities for learning, quarrels with managers and struggles for better conditions.
When this form of conventional workplace has been banned, getting brothels back can feel progressive: thus a Swedish parliamentarian’s suggestion and the legislation described below in Western Australia. Australia’s states and territories make up a patchwork of different sorts of sex-industry legislation. In the case of Western Australia (capital city Perth), prostitution has been ‘illegal’, which means ‘criminalised’, but also ‘tolerated’ until recently.
Note, however, that the classic brothel system assumes that sex workers must be obligated to undergo regular, frequent tests to make sure they are free of sexually-transmitted infections – while clients are not. If the interest is in containing disease, everyone ought to be tested equally frequently: There is no defensible reason to make prostitutes more responsible for disease-containment than anyone else who has sex. Unfortunately, this sexist and stigmatising practice is frequently mentioned as an inherent condition of brothels.
Western Australia is set to legalise prostitution in a bid to improve health standards and keep brothels out of residential areas. Hundreds of suburban brothels are expected to close when WA Attorney-General Christian Porter ends decades of “turning a blind eye” and starts regulating the sex industry next year.
Prostitution is illegal in WA but police rarely lay charges unless they are related to underage sex or unsafe practices. Under the new legislation, brothels will be licensed and confined to designated commercial and industrial areas, and police will be given powers to investigate and forcibly close those which fail to comply.
Sex businesses will need to follow health and safety standards to obtain and maintain their licences. Individual sex workers will need to register with a central agency and will undergo compulsory health and blood checks.
They may also be required to carry ID cards.
Mr Porter said suburban operators would be given a grace period from next year to either close or move to a licensed area. Applications for brothels would first be put to local councils and then assessed by state regulators. Mr Porter said the new regulations would limit problems in non-residential areas.
WA brothel madams welcomed the move over the weekend but feared the bid to register individual prostitutes would drive some underground. While most agreed the new regulations would improve health and safety in the industry, they said some sex workers would be loath to have their personal records on file. This will lead a lot of workers into going underground,” North Perth brothel owner Donna McGuirk told The West Australian newspaper on Saturday.
“We are quite lucky in WA in that we don’t have girls working with organised crime, but the sensitivity of this information that they want the girls to hand over means that many will try to work outside the system.” Kalgoorlie madam Bruna Meyers told the paper she was opposed to a central register but welcomed plans for a licensing system and health checks. She said it would crack down on operators advertising unsafe sex, which was currently illegal but not widely policed.
Opposition attorney-general spokesman John Quigley said confining brothels to industrial areas would create “sex ghettos”.
Japanese graphic styles in sex-industry advertising. The Sex Information Center in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district shown below explains how the industry works to anyone who steps up to ask.
The shop below makes business cards for hostesses.
If you look closely, you can see the cards themselves.
Migrant sex workers, medieval Japanese A scholar of medieval Japan, Janet Goodwin, reveals how sexual mores changed from liberal and accepting to disapproving a thousand...
I’ve been thinking about the different kinds of help sex workers are offered. The old-fashioned term still being used around the world is rehabilitation. – surprising, really, since the moralism behind it is so overt. That is, to talk about rehabilitation is to say that one’s present self is a mess, one is living some wrong way, one is self-harming and so on. Within that frame, rehabilitation means We will help you get clean and healthy. That’s good if you feel unhappy about your present lifestyle yourself – morally, I mean. The usage meant to replace rehabilitation talks about Exit Strategies, but media reporters repeat the old clichés with gusto. In a report from Korea, purveyors of rehabilitation admitted no one wants what’s on offer:
. . . Months of harsh police crackdowns on red-light districts in Jangan-dong in northeastern Seoul have succeeded in driving more than half of brothels there out of business. . . But what has been neglected is the rehabilitation of those who were “laid off.”
. . . “More than 110 prostitutes have been summoned and instructed to visit a rehabilitation center to look for a new `legal’ career,” . . . But according to a rehabilitation center run by Dongdaemun Ward Office, no prostitute has submitted to undergo either rehabilitation programs or consultation.
The office runs under an annual budget of 800 million won ($602,000), providing former prostitutes with rehabilitation programs. “We expected the number of consultation-seeking sex workers to increase but it hasn’t,” a ward official said. “We speculate prostitutes whose workplaces were disrupted continue to sell their bodies in secret rather than seek new lives and jobs through rehabilitation programs.” – Rehabilitation Absent in Brothel Crackdown, Korea Times
One would hope this might have made Rescue Industry personnel pause to think, yet one described as a ‘campaigner’ said: “Most prostitutes are forced to borrow money from pimps or private lenders to be employed. At the beginning, they used the money to beautify themselves without realizing it would lead to a self-made, inescapable pitfall. When they realize it, they find themselves in heavy debt. That’s why despite crackdowns, they have no choice but to engage in the sex business to repay their debt.”
This describes a contributing factor, of course, but look what another ‘official’ says next: “The government has asked police to encourage arrested prostitutes to take optional rehabilitation programs.We need to come up with measures mandating the programs.”
Delightful – forced rehabilitation for women who don’t know their own minds.
Cambodia Ladyboy Rescue Goes Wrong Here’s an attempt to help young people selling sex that’s put them in more danger. The article employs well-known rescue keywords. Best...
After interviewing 772 sex workers, Otago University’s Gillian Abel found workers are more empowered to insist on safe sex and assert employment rights with both brothel operators and clients. Relationships with police have also improved.
‘When it was criminalised, the negotiations were much more covert to try and enforce condom use, whereas now they’ve got the law behind them. One sex worker in Christchurch has taken a client to court for removing a condom. ‘
Ms Gillian believes more work has to be done though, particularly to protect those under 18 entering sex work and in providing support for trans-gender youth, who are particularly vulnerable to being drawn into the industry.
She fears a negative stigma still prevents some workers from seeking the help they need and many still do not tell people what their real profession is. ‘Whether it’s family, friends, or health professionals, there’s still room for improvement around things like the emotional health which goes with being a stigmatised population.’
‘This decree brings about gender equality in our criminal justice system.’ – Attorney-General and Justice Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, on Fiji’s new prostitution laws.
So it turns out to be easy to bring about Gender Equality! Just pass a law saying that the buying of sex is a criminal offence and voilá, Women’s Rights are ensured.
Although simple hatred of prostitution is still given as enough reason to institute these laws (see comments in Israel’s Knesset last January), Gender Equality is increasingly given as the argument for legislation aimed at men who buy sex or facilitate its buying and selling (the vague categories pimps and traffickers).
As laws, they are difficult to enforce: it’s too hard to get the evidence to prove most cases and no police force is granted the immense funding that would be necessary to pursue every possible instance of sex-buying, and keep at it over and over, until consumption theoretically ceased. Socially, the laws probably just move transactions to less visible venues. And as possible promoters of cultural change, which is what people really want, these laws are impossibly crude (prohibiting people the fulfillment of their desires rarely works). All of which those in favour of these laws know on some level. But as symbolic moves aimed at performing Gender Equality, anti-demand laws capture the imagination across the globe.
Now, coming back to Fiji, here is the analysis of an economist there:
‘Prostitution is a social redistribution mechanism, and to try and forcefully stop it can lead to some dire consequences. ‘- Sunil Kumar, a senior lecturer in economics at the University of the South Pacific, Suva
‘While prostitution is looked down on by society, there are some positive outcomes from it that cannot be denied.’ He cites the example of single mothers who do not earn enough from regular work, or those who do not receive state social support. Some of them turn to sex work to feed and educate their children, he says.
The new decree now targets people who hire sex workers and all those who benefit financially from the trade. Even those living with sex workers are now liable under the new law, which took effect on February 1. Section 230 of the law’s prostitution offences says that a person living on sex-work earnings or persistently soliciting faces a jail term of up to six months. ‘Selling or buying’ minors for immoral purposes is now punishable by 12 years’ imprisonment. Brothel keepers face five years of imprisonment as well, or a fine of F$10,000 (US$5,000), or both.
Those concerned about justice for sex workers focus on the law. If you’re interested in culture, however, you find that the sex industry looks and acts quite similar no matter whichprostitution law is in place: the scene – the milieux – tend to be similar everywhere, with stylistic local differences. The health problems, the economics, the labour issues also are remarkably alike across cultures and borders, so that what workers experience in Ghana resembles what they experience in Thailand or France, and so on. Not so long ago I published a vague but suggestive story about the diversification of the sex industry in Pakistan, Now here’s another story from there about how that old favourite ‘street prostitution’ has changed with the times, so that mobile phones play a big role. The reporter’s tone is pleasantly neutral, and note that he ends with my point about the law: ‘In a country where commercial sex is officially prohibited, it is usually available just a few minutes’ drive away.’ Note: 100 pkr = 0.89 euro
Karachi, Pakistan: In the simmering heat of the afternoon, two ladies, one in her early 20s wearing shalwar kameez and other in a burqa, stood on the pavement under the shadow of a tree. Several cars and motorcycles queued up beside them. A young man on a motorcycle talked to the ladies, the one in shalwar kameez shook her head in refusal and the man left.
Then a man in a car came by, rolled down the window, and spoke to the women. However, he left as well. Then another motorcyclist spoke to them for a while and the girl in the shalwar kameez went with him on his bike. The lady in the burqa stayed back. The queue was over and all of them went their way. This was a typical scene out of the many that take place daily outside the nation’s founder Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s mausoleum, where dozens of street prostitutes stand and wait for customers. Many of them have their own places where they can take their customers to provide their services.
Gone are the days when the famous Napier Road in the downtown area of the city was supposed to be the centre of commercial sex. One can find street prostitutes waiting for customers at different spots while driving around the Mazar-e-Quaid, near the Do Talwar roundabout, on Shahrah-e-Faisal, MA Jinnah Road, Tipu Sultan Road, Main Korangi Road, etc. Their presence also becomes a nuisance for the other ladies taking a walk or waiting for buses, since the people ‘on a hunt’ often mistake them for sex workers and bug them. In recent years, Karachi has become a major market for prostitutes and attracts sex workers from other provinces since they can fetch higher rates for their services in the city.
One can find sex workers of different ages and ethnicity in Karachi. From a 15-year-old girl to a woman as old as 50, they could be of any ethnicity or even foreigners such as Russians and Burmese. The rates start from around Rs 400 and could go up 10 times this amount depending on the time, service, age and features of the sex worker. According to a sex worker, more than 150 street prostitutes roam inside the premises of Mazar-e-Quaid during the day. They usually sit on a bench in the lawn of the mausoleum so their customers can single them out easily.
Usually, they have regular customers, who know which spot they prefer and the sex worker then takes her customer to her home. “It is a risk to go with just anyone, so usually we rent a home and when we find a customer, we take him to our place. We charge extra amount for this service,” a sex worker told this scribe. She said the employees of the mausoleum know about their presence. “Sometimes we find two or three customers in a day, while on some days there are none.”
Convincing a street prostitute to let this scribe visit her house and speak about her business was not an easy job. However, when one finally agreed to it with the help of a politician who is her customer, this scribe drove towards the place thinking that the place would be something out of the movies, situated in a narrow lane, have a long row of rooms and sex workers turning up in odd make-ups, etc. But surprisingly, it was nothing like that and in fact, it was situated in a double-storied building in the Lighthouse area, where a young lady, who only told this scribe her nickname ‘Bindia’, lives with two of her colleagues. Bindia said cell phones had made their business much easier and the role of the ‘middlemen’ was almost finished now. She said that usually they manage to evade police, but if caught, they are asked for bhatta, which is provided in the form of a free-of-cost service. “most of the girls in this business are unaware about sexual diseases,” she said.
In a country where commercial sex is officially prohibited, it is usually available just a few minutes’ drive away.
More evidence of how police raids to save people are unwanted and counter-productive, this time with statements from UNAIDS and a Cambodian sexworker group. Those suffering under the crackdown are not traffickers and arrested sex workers were not trafficked. The rhetorical move to call completely old-fashioned raids anti-trafficking strategies is orwellian double-speak creating confusion amongst those who don’t know what’s going on.
Cambodian sex worker Soeum Rotha is active in Women’s Network for Unity
. . . In Cambodia, the government recently decided to target the sex industry in a move it thinks will combat the trafficking of women. 60 brothels, karaoke bars and massage parlors have been raided in Phnom Penh and across the country in the past month alone. Some 300 sex workers are thought to have lost their jobs since the crackdown began in early March. . .
Organizations that help sex workers worry it is driving them away from established venues, and limiting their access to sexual health services. Tony Lisle, the country head of UNAIDS says the crackdown is the latest in a series of similar moves by the authorities in recent years, which do not have very positive effects. “From the perspective of UNAIDS, the crackdowns create significant difficulties for organizations working in HIV prevention to reach those who are most at risk from HIV infection effectively, particularly sex workers and women working in the entertainment industry.”
Important to separate prostitution and trafficking
Moreover, although the authorities say this drive is part of an anti-trafficking campaign, so far no traffickers have been arrested – only sex workers. Lisle says it is important to separate the issues of prostitution and human trafficking. A survey last year found that no more than 7 percent of sex workers had been trafficked into the trade. “However, they are often the victims of the crackdown,” says Lisle.
Sex workers are losing out
Ly Pisey is a technical assistant at the Women’s Network for Unity, a collective that advocates rights and sexual health for sex workers that holds meetings for sex workers so that they can pass on information on sexual health and rights. She says that “the situation is very difficult” right now and it is hard to access sex workers. “We are like thieves. If we want to send out a message on safe sex, we have to call some of the sex workers whom we know and who trust us to come to our drop-in centre. Sometimes we meet one and ask them to share the information and tell them to continue to have hope,” she explains.It seems highly unlikely that the government’s move will fulfill its stated goal of eliminating prostitution – not least since one in three Cambodian men are thought to pay for sex. However, the wave of arrests is certainly driving sex workers underground and away from the assistance they and their clients need. It seems very likely that if the crackdown continues it will result in a higher rate of sexually-transmitted diseases.
Cambodia Ladyboy Rescue Goes Wrong Here’s an attempt to help young people selling sex that’s put them in more danger. The article employs well-known rescue keywords. Best...
If we want having sex with all sorts of people to be accepted, whether money is exchanged or not, can we accept those who prefer having sex with virtual characters? Last year I wrote about cosplay, in which dressing up has a big role in erotic scenes. Now here’s an article that explores erotic and sexual practices associated with otaku, a Japanese word referring to people devoted to or obsessed by anime, (animation) manga (comics) and video games – geeks of a particular type. Fantastic worlds peopled with fabulous characters, but here entrepreneurs have evolved dating-entertainment business opportunities to appeal to this group often sidelined in stories about sex – the social prejudice being that people without conventional attractive looks and personalities can’t expect to find partners. Jobs entertaining these customers involve informed conversation about their subcultures. The traditional sex-industry image of the erotic maid is used, too – the service they provide being, in the first place, ‘soul care’, performed interest in customers’ concerns. Temporary girlfriends, virtual girlfriends, maid escorts – this is a real hybrid phenomenon. Note: 1000 yen = 8 euros
Benjamin Boas, 11 March 2010, Japan Subculture Research Center
. . . Otaku have been booming in the popular consciousness since 2005, when Fuji TV aired its prime time drama Densha Otoko, a beauty and the beast romance starring an otaku. Women’s magazines raved about how the show championed otaku as new potential partners for middle-aged career women, but otaku remained incredulous. That same year, Toru Honda wrote Dempa Otoko, a manifesto calling for otaku to abandon “love” for human females and embrace moe for two-dimensional characters. His book sold 33,000 copies in three months, and fans planted signs in Akihabara reading, “Real Otaku Don’t Desire Real Women.”
But Honda is the voice of an extreme minority. “We may have sworn off dating, but that does not mean we don’t have sex,” says Hiroyuki Egami, 23, a prominent voice among himote, a catchall for otaku types unpopular with the ladies. By Egami’s estimation, paying for sex is easier and more honest than wining and dining women to prove oneself a worthy mate.
Those who share Egami’s assessment may head to one of dozens of cosplay cabaret or image clubs found in Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ikebukuro. While many just use the terms of otaku culture such as moe to make a splash, some take pains to attract a demographic deeply involved with media images of the opposite sex.
“Pure-cos” in Shibuya caters to all of the fantasy wishes of its customers by offering close to one hundred costumes based on famous anime heroines. Employees are expected to talk the talk as well; on its hiring page, Pure-cos warns potential employees that customers will expect them to talk and converse about their favorite anime and manga. Staff are rewarded with all the manga they can read during breaks and coupons for the local Mandarake store.
The shift to more physical pleasures is also apparent in Akihabara. The omnipresent maids used to just pour tea, but the boom surrounding Densha Otoko has put cafes in fierce competition and encouraged a diversification of services. Royal Milk, for example, offers its customers “soul care,” 60 minutes of one-on-one talk time with a maid for 9,000 yen. With a market of lonely men that ripe it was only a matter of time before talk shifted to sex.
The area in front of The Radio Kaikan used to be called Maid Row for all the costumed girls passing out fliers there. However, adverts for maid escorts—costumed girls who play the part of a temporary girlfriend–began to outnumber those for cafes, and authorities chased the maids off the street in June 2007. Today, many men shopping in Akihabara have one or even two maids escorts by their side. They pay 1,000 yen per 10 minutes for the company and compliments on computer-buying skills. Maid escorts ostensibly work between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m., the operating hours of most stores in the area, but local authorities warn of “maid enjo” prostitution after dark.
It remains to be seen how purely “otaku” any of this is. Even as clubs using the otaku vernacular are on the rise, the major buzz in the community surrounds games such as Love Plus and Dream C Club. In the former, players can use their Nintendo DS to interact in real-time with a virtual girlfriend. The latter is a virtual hostess club, which simulates an ultra-real experience down to the overpriced drinks. Real money is exchanged for virtual currency to enjoy an array of services. While otaku imagery in the mizu shoubai world may be on the rise, it seems that otaku still prefer to pay for the not so real thing.
Masseuse is sometimes a euphemism for prostitute or sex worker: an annoyance for many massage therapists who offer no sexual contact. But given the common misuse, and given the social context of mostly male military personnel, it’s interestingly odd to see a Swedish official advocating that women must be allowed to perform massages on soldiers – as a logical necessary consequence of a policy of Gender Equality. Of course opportunities to work on government contracts should be gender-equal. And the ‘unequal’ policy is probably grounded in ‘protecting’ women as a general principle, which is no good. However, there could be some old-fashioned realism involved in the exclusion, given mostly male armies and the longstanding covert use of massage to signify prostitution. I wonder how many female massage therapists there are in Afghanistan who might like to take up this opportunity?
A Swedish army gender adviser in Afghanistan has taken the Armed Forces to task for only employing local men to perform massages on troops stationed in Mazar-E-Sharif. In a written internal document submitted from Swedish headquarters at Camp Northern Lights, Gender Field Adviser Captain Krister Fahlstedt of Afghanistan force FS17 took exception to an army contract specifying that on-base massage services should be provided exclusively by men.
“The agreement specifies, with no further explanation, that the physiotherapists (masseurs/masseuses) should be men,” wrote Fahlstedt in his November submission. The captain’s investigations showed that the recommendation was followed to the letter, as two men were brought in to perform massages.
“It is the opinion of FS17 that there are no reasonable grounds for gender to be one of the profile requirements,” he wrote. Fahlstedt further stressed that his force was committed to strengthening the position of women in society by helping create the conditions in which they could become self-sufficient.
“It’s not important as such whether women eventually get the job, what’s important is that there’s equality of opportunity and they are treated on the same terms as men,” Fahlstedt told The Local. “Contracts of this kind must always be gender neutral, and this is actually the only time I’ve seen an army contract worded in this way,” he added.
Fahlstedt, active in both the Centre Party and the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (RFSL), returned earlier this month to Sweden from service with the FS17 force. He remains hopeful that the army will rectify the situation and begin considering the possibility of employing Afghan masseuses. “I haven’t received a formal response yet but I have been led to believe that the necessary changes will be made to the contract,” he told The Local.
A scholar of medieval Japan, Janet Goodwin, reveals how sexual mores changed from liberal and accepting to disapproving a thousand years ago. The above picture depicts sexual entertainers in a small boat – nomadic sex workers – soliciting passengers in a larger boat. Note how positive perceptions changed to negative, and how the disapproving attitude towards prostitution was accompanied by negativity towards women in general.
Ayub Khattak, 13 January 2006, UCLA International Institute
In medieval Japan, sexual entertainers and their customers enjoyed great freedoms until a growing orthodoxy stifled their trade, Janet Goodwin tells a UCLA audience. An early Heian period painting shows three women in a boat rowing alongside a larger boat carrying male passengers, some dressed richly and some ascetically—aristocrats and monks. The kimono-clad women were asobi, or sexual entertainers, singing their siren song to lure the aristocrats to some temporary pleasure shack.
With the monks in the rear . . . the large boat was probably on its return from some chartered pilgrimage to a sacred site. The asobi knew well the sea lanes for pilgrims who were ready to unburden themselves of their journey’s abstinence. . . weaker pilgrims might have looked for the asobi even on the way to sacred sites.
. . . once liberal perceptions towards sexuality would give way to a conservative sexual orthodoxy in both the Heian (794–1185) and the Kamakura periods (1185–1333) Entertainments provided by the asobi were not exclusively sexual. The women’s high-priced services included folk songs, sometimes lyrically composed of Buddhist sutras, and traditional dances, Goodwin said.
Goodwin drew on such sources as courtier and courtesan diaries, records of judicial cases involving the asobi, and divorce settlements to argue that the Japanese embraced a very liberal attitude towards sex in the early Heian period. Men were polygamous, women serially monogamous, widows sexually active, and divorce common. Prostitution was merely risqué, not shameful, according to Goodwin.
But as time went on, Goodwin said, people began to look on the asobi with distrusting eyes. Celibate monks, their chastity perhaps threatened, began to decry the women as a wicked bunch out to distract and corrupt Buddhist men. . . . Beyond temptations and conflicts, social considerations began to prompt change, Goodwin argued. With the emergence of the shogunate during the Heian period, greater emphasis was placed on a strict patrilinear system. Penalties for adultery grew more strict, in part to prevent feuds among legitimate as well as illegitimate offspring. Women who seduced high-level aristocrats came to be known as keisei, or “castle topplers,” after one lady was sent by one lord specifically to enslave a rival through seduction, finally coaxing him into giving up his holdings.
Meanwhile, the asobi were gaining a reputation as a public nuisance because of their itinerancy. Although some settled in “pleasure districts,” they were largely nomadic, drifting about in search of work. “They live in animal-hair tents and drift from place to place in pursuit of food and water, just like the northern barbarians,” wrote a twelfth-century observer, Ôe Masafusa, in a sharp departure from the tone he had adopted in an earlier description of the asobi. (“Their voices halt the clouds floating through the valleys, and their tones drift with the wind blowing over the water. Passers-by cannot help but forget their families,” Ôe had written.)
Gradually, and as the asobi came under harsh scrutiny from a ministry set up to regulate prostitution, the stigma attached to sexual entertainment prevented many aristocrats from indulging in it.The sexual orthodoxy that reigned in the asobi had broader consequences for the liberties of Japanese women, Goodwin said. Divorce was increasingly frowned upon, and widows were expected to remain unattached and to pray for their dead husbands, perhaps entering a nunnery. Attitudes changed not merely towards physical acts, Goodwin suggested, but towards gender roles, affecting especially the lives of women.
Gentrification always tries to make street life more orderly, less messy, more suited to middle-class tastes. Recently I published stories about city ordinances in Spain and Italy that name specific activities to be banned in public places: bathing in fountains, eating sandwiches, selling sex. This story about Mumbai describes how a traditional red-light (and slum) area is replaced during gentrification, with interesting attention to shifting social alliances and ideas about the sex industry.
Till about four years ago, garishly painted women in glittering attire were a common sight on Cursetji Shuklaji Street, a busy road in Mumbai’s notorious red light district, Kamathipura. Once known as Safed Gully (White Lane) on account of the European prostitutes that it housed during the British Raj, Shuklaji Street was the place where, for years on end, one could find sex workers plying their trade. These days however, they’re out there not to solicit but to await the private taxis that ferry them to dance bars in the suburbs.
From 50,000 sex workers in 1992 (a statistic recorded by the BMC as part of its AIDS documentation ) to a mere 1,600 today, Kamathipura and the adjoining Foras Road are a mere shadow of their former selves. The street-facing brothels have given way to little shops vending CDs and mobile phones; there’s also a clutch of video parlours where boisterous youngsters throng to catch the latest Telugu blockbuster.
Gentrification is slowly descending on Kamathipura , like it has on many of Mumbai’s distinctive boroughs. The one-storey, ground-hugging structures are making way for dizzy skyscrapers – two, of 35 storeys, have come up on Shuklaji Street, while another two, 47 storeys each, are nearing completion. Salim Balwa, director of DB Realty, the company that’s busy making over the area, is planning several more projects here. “The space crunch in Mumbai has meant that you go looking for land where no development has happened,” he says. All the towers overlook Kamathipura.
Balwa, who’s developed 10 lakh square feet in the area and is in the process of acquiring another 3.5 lakh, is sure that he’s on to a good thing. “All said and done, the place is centrally located, and it is better than living in far-off Mira Road,” he says. The present residents, most of whom live in houses that are about 100 sq ft in size, will get 300 sq ft after redevelopment, says Balwa. And, of course, there will be a more-than-neat profit for him.
It was the twin factors of AIDS and the Maharashtra government’s redevelopment policy that played a major role in getting sex workers to move out of the oldest profession in the world and subsequently out of Kamathipura. The AIDS scare led to the first serious government intervention in the area’s prostitution dens: Dr Jairaj Thanekar, Chief Executive Health Officer, BMC, who worked in Kamathipura for 15 years to implement the AIDS intervention programme, says the corporation played a key role in reducing the number of prostitutes . “From organising raids on the Yellappa markets down south – the main source of girls for Kamathipura – to raiding the brothels, we made it difficult for prostitution to function,” he says. “From 1999 onwards, the number of sex workers started dwindling.”
When the BMC intervened, the rate of transmission of HIV was a shocking four per cent. By then a large number of sex workers had died. “Brothel owners, faced with sex workers who kept falling ill, moved them out to other brothels in Mulund, Bhandup and Ghatkopar, but procuring new girls was also becoming difficult,” says Thanekar. This and other factors – a reluctance among landlords, newly aware of AIDS, to lease out their premises to prostitution, spiralling rents, police raids, and the emergence of a new generation of financiers who got into more lucrative ventures – hastened the downward spiral of prostitution in Kamathipura.
The reconstruction wave of dilapidated buildings completed the process. “Several people were bought out by the builders,” says a brothel owner. “Gangubai Chawl on 11th Kamathipura Lane was among the first to be torn down and reconstructed into a six-storey building by a private developer. Normal households moved in.” The stigma attached to Kamathipura began to dwindle somewhat, and the newly reconstructed prostitution dens began to be put to other uses – for the last four years, businessmen have been renting out the infamous rooms to small manufacturing units. Mohammed Israr, a 22-year-old native of Bihar, who assembles travel bags for a local manufacturer, has rented 600 sq feet in a one-storey structure in Kamathipura. He pays a stiff monthly rent of Rs 12,000 for the space, but says that it’s worth the money, given the central location.
Abdul Sattar, a local pan-beedi stall owner on Lane 13, has been in the business for the last 15 years. “Earlier, sex workers’ clients frequented my stall,” he says. “There were a lot of goons and hangers-on around. Now, proper businessmen come here. It’s a welcome change, as people working in the vicinity are no longer looked down upon. There was a time when we were ashamed to tell our relatives that we lived and worked in Kamathipura . But not any more.” Adds Sadiq Ismail, who owns a consumer goods shop on 12th Kamathipura Lane, “I live in a house above my shop with my wife, three sons and a daughter. There is nothing shameful about living here any more.”
Street named desire
Kamathipura is Mumbai’s oldest and Asia’s largest red light district. It got its name from the Kamathis (workers) of Andhra Pradesh. They worked as labourers on construction sites. The neighbourhood also had Chinese residents who worked as dockhands and ran restaurants. Kamathipura was formerly Lal Bazaar, an area set aside by the British for their troops’ sexual pleasures. By the end of the 19th century, Lal Bazaar was known as a “tolerated area” as prostitution was illegal. At the time, Bombay and to a lesser extent Calcutta were the most important cities in an expanding prostitution network. Cursetji Shuklaji Street in Kamathipura was called Safed Gully as it was home to European prostitutes. The brothels here were classified into first, second and third class. In 1916, the British set up the Venereal Disease Clinic, the first of its kind in Bombay. The BMC took over the clinic in 1925. Continue reading →
Red lights, sexual warmth, paid sex Red-light districts use red, pink and orange light for a reason: the warmth we feel at being bathed in them....
Cambodia Ladyboy Rescue Goes Wrong Here’s an attempt to help young people selling sex that’s put them in more danger. The article employs well-known rescue keywords. Best...
How many laws would most mayors feel free to defy on the grounds that they personally don’t agree with them? What’s striking in this Australian story is the politician’s ease in announcing his defiance as a virtuous, moral stand. Apparently he does not fear any authority might insist that he respect the law. His disapproval may not be for prostitution itself but for the size of a brothel – big enough to employ 50 sex workers. It’s a weak moral ground that feels okay about something when it’s small and discreet and repulsed when it’s big and visible. The above picture shows a large sex club somewhere in Spain
Tweed Shire mayor Warren Polglase and several of his fellow councillors have voiced their opposition to a proposed brothel in South Tweed Heads. The planned development has been dubbed a ‘super’ brothel because it will employ 50 sex workers in an industrial building that occupies 300 square metres. Cr Polglase was unashamed to admit he objected to the proposal on moral grounds.
“Lots of these issues are more to do with your own personal conscience,” he said. “The argument would be, well the legislation says you must approve them if they meet the requirements in certain areas. But my personal opinion and principles are that I will not support that kind of thing and what cost do you put your principles at?”
Janelle Fawkes from Australian sex workers association the Scarlett Alliance said it was not the first time a local government body had objected to a brothel based on moral rather than planning issues. “It’s a problem we’re experiencing all around New South Wales,” she said. “Unfortunately what we’re seeing around the state is local councils acting up in this exact way we’ve heard the mayor describe. Sex industry businesses are legitimate businesses in New South Wales. Sex workers have the right to safe work environments and councils need to be making decisions based on amenity impact and planning grounds, not on moral attitudes.”
Ms Fawkes said Tweed Shire councillors should not be judging sex workers for their choice of career path. These are people, this is a workplace where people have the right to good occupational health and safety standards and that’s one of the roles that council should be playing – not this attitude that is really based on fear, misunderstanding and misconceptions,” she said. “Many people are studying, many have another part-time job, many are mothers. Sex workers are part of the community and we deserve to be treated the same as everyone else. I’m afraid what I’m hearing from your mayor and councillors is discrimination against sex industry workers and businesses.”
Calling escort websites online brothels is silly, a typical editor’s attempt to make a mildly interesting story sensational. Police raids are a widespread tactic for suppressing prostitution, but are often said only to move the business from one place to another (see, for example, a story about Goa and another about Italy and Switzerland. Here, the place is online, and some of the sex workers were mobile anyway, not originating in a red-light district. But referring to mobile businesspeople or vendors as ‘gypsies’ is also dumb. I also don’t care for the implication that mobile workers are inherently vulnerable just because they move! Still, it is plausible that, as policing increases, more sex-industry headquarters move online. The non-online, red-light kind in Singapore look like this.
Singapore: Online brothels offering girls from various nationalities are becoming increasingly popular among Singapore men looking for a quickie, especially the youth. Frequent raids on the red-light district of Geylang had forced the freelance prostitutes to retreat to cyberspace to solicit for customers. As many as five new websites have appeared in the last few months alone offering a myriad of “services” from sexy massage to discreet sexual encounters from freelance prostitutes. Some appear to be websites set up by organized syndicates while others are hosted by independent freelance prostitutes themselves who are here in Singapore to make a quick buck.
Online prostitution is not new in Singapore. Famous sex forum Sammyboy has a dedicated “freelance” section to allow prostitutes and pimps alike to post their services and contacts. One owner of such a site claimed he is a “landlord” who is helping his PRC tenants to earn some “extra cash”.
The photos of the girls are listed on the site including their “statistics”, prices, types of services offered and “field reports” from previous patrons. Propsective clients have to contact the pimp directly using the handphone number provided who will inform him of the time and venue for the “transaction” to take place. Such online brothels are seeing an increase in business lately as they offer customers the flexibility to choose their time and girl as well as a place outside the usual red-light district to pursue their pleasures.
When interviewed by the Straits Times, Dr Carol Balhetchet, director of youth services at the Singapore Children’s Society, said: “The scary part is prostitution has come to your doorstep – and it’s not just available to adults…..the scary part about the young is, they want to experiment. Now, they don’t need to go to Geylang…Prostitution can be more gypsy-like…In that sense, it’s risky.”
Unlike licenced prostitutes working in designated brothels, freelance prostitutes who ply their trade online do not have to go for monthly medical examation and blood tests to detect sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV. With the two Integrated Resorts set to open this year, the demand for such online sexual services is likely to increase especially with Singapore’s lax immigration and travel restrictions.
Foreign prostitutes, especially those from China, often come to Singapore to “work” on a one-month tourist visa. Others come on a two-year student visa ostensibly to study in private institutions, but end up working in KTV lounges. Asked about the online brothels by the Straits Times, the police would only say: ‘Police will investigate reports made and take action if any offence is disclosed.’ The police did not say whether anyone has been arrested in connection with the online brothels which have been in existence for Singapore for a very long time already.
I take the view that we know little about the sex industry. Most of what we hear is polemical, rhetorical or simply abstract. The laws that governments of all kinds debate and impose nowadays are mostly lame: primitive prohibitions with little chance of success. Until we know a lot more about what’s going on, it will be impossible to make laws or regulations that actually function fairly. In the case of Pakistan’s sex industry, information is so scarce that I am posting excerpts from an article whose sources appear to be anecdotal: blogs and youtube, but the information is suggestive. The author’s disapproval and moral bias come through too clearly for my taste in the original; if you want to hear it all, go to the source. If you’re interested in more about the cultural study of commercial sex, read the original conception and then what came later. Note: 1000 Pakistan rupees = 8.28 euros.
. . . quickly after his arrival in the capital, he realized the house next to his own was a Chinese brothel.
. . . The local sex industry comprised of Pakistani prostitutes has also grown in recent years. . . . videos show unabashed red-light areas of Lahore. . . house after house with colorfully lit entranceways always with a mamasan and at least one Pakistani woman in traditional dress. The women are available for in-house services for as little as 400 rupees (US$6) to take-away prices ranging 1,000 to 2,000 rupees. These districts are mostly for locals, but foreigners can indulge at higher prices.
. . . More upscale areas like Lahore’s Heera Mundi or “Diamond Market”, cater to well-heeled locals and foreigners. At these places prettier, younger girls push their services for 5,000 to 10,000 rupees for an all-night visit, and the most exceptional can command 20,000 to 40,000 rupees for just short time.
. . . “The Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi sex scenes are totally changing and it’s easier and easier to get a girl for [sex],” another blogger wrote. “Most of the hotels provide you the girls upon request.” Bloggers also reported that it is easy to find girls prowling the streets after 6 pm, and foreigners can find young women hanging out near Western franchises like McDonald’s and KFC. Such women, the bloggers claim, can lead the customer to a nearby short-time accommodation.
. . . Pakistan can also accommodate the gay community with prostitution. . . A Pakistani blogger wrote, “. . . [In Pakistan] the wives are only [had sex with] once or twice a year. There are lot of gay brothels in Peshawar – the famous among them is at Ramdas Bazaar. [One can] go to any Afghan restaurant and find young waiters selling sex.”
The fight for urban space: that’s what a lot of sex-industry news could be called. Jakarta cafes that provide opportunities for commercial sex are complained about by people who live nearby. The solution to tear down buildings en masse seems draconian compared with the manipulation of city ordinances common in Spain. The latter seek to get sex workers and clients off the streets and indoors, where they won’t offend certain residents’ sensibilities. In Jakarta, the offending market is already indoors. I know nothing about these particular businesses but suspect that a little work in the area of zoning or city planning might help avoid mass destruction of functioning businesses. It’s set to happen this week.
East Jakarta Municipal Administration is planning to conduct a raid on dozens of illegal cafes located in the area of Seruni flat, Pulogebang, Cakung next week, following public complaints over the existence of the cafes.
“We have sent letters to the managements of the cafes, urging them to immediately demolish their business places by themselves. We will tear down the buildings should they not conduct the order by next week,” said Murdhani, East Jakarta Mayor.
Agung (30), a local resident, said the cafes had become places for illegal sexual activities involving commercial sex workers. “The cafes also make noises, annoying the residents living nearby,” said Agung. There are around 20 units of cafe which also provide billiards located here. Every night, they are packed with visitors,” he said.
In the meantime, East Jakarta Public Order Police Squad (Satpol PP) head Tiangsa Surbakti said he had prepared a number of personnel for the operation. Regarding to the operation schedule, it is still waiting for the decision from East Jakarta mayor.
Sex workers leave home to work during the holidays: at least, according to one old tradition. It’s a way to enjoy a journey without spending too much money: take advantage of travellers and partygoers whose way of celebrating is to open their pocketbooks. Mobility is associated with many sectors of the sex industry; here, workers from around India converge on Kolkata. Another story, about changing prices in Sonagachi, the city’s enormous red-light district, receives hundreds of visits every day and numerous comments (some of which I prune.)
Kolkata: The euphoric mood in the city over Christmas and the New Year has rubbed off on the world’s oldest profession. Sex workers from different states and West Bengal’s small towns and villages have descended in Kolkata to make a quick buck, while the locals are also minting more money.
North Kolkata’s red light area Sonagachi, considered Asia’s largest, has become the temporary residence of a large number of outstation sex workers. Every year from Christmas to New Year’s Eve, there is a sharp rise in number of sex workers coming from outside.
“Every year during Christmas and New Year, hundreds of sex workers from different parts of the country come to Sonagachi to earn more as during the festive season, there is a sharp rise in the number of customers. The sex workers from Sonagachi also move to other metros and cities,” said an official of Durbar Mahila Samannay Committee, one of the largest NGOs working in the city’s red light areas.
During the season, the income of a sex worker in Kolkata goes up by 50 percent.
Anju (name changed), a commercial sex worker, has come from a remote district in West Bengal to earn more so that she can bring up her three children who are back home in the safe custody of their grandmother. “Every year during New Year’s Eve I come to Kolkata with a hope to earn more so that I can bring up my children in a better way. The city has never deserted me,” she said.
黄(huang2) (yellow) means pornography and prostitution. 扫黄 (sao3huang2) means sweeping the yellow, referring to police crackdowns, also known as cleanup campaigns and rooting out ‘vice’ and consisting of general harassment of sex workers. Such a sweep is underway in Dongguan, a manufacturing centre in Guangdong province known as China’s sex capital. What’s more interesting is how this city’s sex industry uses modern business techniques. Southern Metropolis Weekly’snew cover shows a typical sms message advertising sex services received by visitors and explains how Dongguan’s manufacturing practices have seeped over into the sex industry in the form of standardised services. Complaints aboutt the uncertain nature of services provided by ordinary sex establishments go like this: ‘Whether you pay 300 or 1,500 yuan, what you pay for isn’t what you end up getting. Say there’s a girl who claims to be skilled in a particular service. She’ll actually be rough and clumsy. And because it’s all grey-market, if they overcharge you, you just have to accept that you’re getting screwed.’ The following excerpts explain how standardisation works, including how sex workers train themselves. Note: 100 yuan = 10 euros
. . . The catchy phrases manage, in the space of a few dozen characters, to clearly lay out an establishment’s offerings — usually “Dongguan-style service” — price, and contact person. The goal is clear: practically all men of means across the Pearl River Delta will receive these messages. Mai, the manager of a mass SMS distribution company in Houjiezhen said, “For just 200 yuan, you can have a company send a text message to 7,000 car owners in the Pearl River Delta.”
. . . The saunas of Dongguan and its surroundings are known for the following: for 400 to 600 yuan, sex workers will provide 15 to 30 different types of services over the course of two hours. These sex services are standardized, from the opening strip tease and the sex worker’s expression to the number of times the customer can climax. The rise of the manufacturing industry in recent years has brought ideas about standardized production along with it. Workers in local manufacturing who frequent Dongguan’s sex industry jokingly call the sex standards the industry’s “ISO,” which even has its own ex-post evaluation system. Practically all of Dongguan’s hotels and saunas will ask customers for an itemized assessment, and if any girl is thought to be slacking off or is no longer attractive to customers, her wages will be cut.
To keep up turnover rates, saunas in Dongguan are set up with many rooms on multiple floors, all of which are furnished with the waterbeds and dance floors needed for services, but the steam rooms and lounge areas found in ordinary saunas are not found. Reporters found that because of “ISO,” competition revolves around the opulence of furnishings, and the size or particular characteristics of its group of sex workers . . .
Reporters found that no one in that line of work could say with certainty where these services originated. Some described them as coming from the “Thai baths” (aka body massage) that are familiar to men in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but in training centers, sex workers typically used adult videos from Japan as their source for new techniques. The training process is more intense than the technical training given to factory workers, and its contents include the use of fruit to increase sex workers’ mouth strength. “A dozen days of training is enough to take the skin off your knees,” one sex worker who recently entered the profession told this reporter.
Getting trafficked into a marriage you didn’t want sounds at least as bad as getting trafficked into the sex industry, because on top of the need to have sex when you don’t want to you will be very isolated and forced to do housework and other manual labour. Migrant women from Myanmar recruited for jobs in China and then passed on as wives are being forced to marry (in contrast to different sorts of ‘arranged’ marriages by families of two more-or-less witting spouses).
