D
<<        >>

Sex slaves: trafficking of women in Asia

Chapter One: The Market, part 2

Part 2: 7: pimps and prostitutes - 8: trafficking women - 9: Asian sex problems - 10: repression, control, and poverty


Demonstrator: 1 minute - 1 woman or child is sold on the world: "Every Minute Of The Day... A Woman Or A Child Is Sold" [24] -
mostly the victims are sold to WOMEN traffickers in beautiful clothes and with jewelry promising jobs "in the city" without control,
and Asian "women at home" want to be "clean" and are sending their husbands just into these brothels where these girls and women are sold.
More perverse this Asian system cannot be rejecting of good sex at home and sending men to brothel prisons where the sex slaves are working...

by Louise Brown

presented and with subtitles by Michael  Palomino (2013)

1.7: General indications about pimps and prostitutes

General indications: violence - variety of consumers and girls - call girls, hotels, apartments, clubs, bars, massage locations, health clubs, restaurants - noodle shops, teashops, roadside cafes, truck stops - brothels and street

Sex for sale is big business. In Asia, just like everywhere else in the world, it is an expanding and frequently violent business. It is also very hard to monitor because it is often illegal, linked to organized crime and constantly changing in form. It has many, and varied, faces. Like other industries the business of selling sex is highly (p.15)

stratified and there are innumerable sub-sectors. A similar basic product is packaged and costed to appeal to different types of consumers, and the transaction takes place in different types of venue.

At the top end of the Asian market is the high-class prostitution of call girls, who work in expensive hotels, luxurious apartments and who service wealthy men. Inevitably, this sector is most active in affluent Asia but it also exists on a small scale even in the poorest societies. There are exclusive clubs catering to businessmen who visit for sessions of corporate bonding and sexual recreation. Then there are bars, nightclubs, massage parlors, health clubs, restaurants and karaoke clubs that offer sex well as other forms of entertainment and services. In less-developed Asia there are noodle shops, teashops, roadside cafes and truck stops that operate a lucrative trade in girls.

Sometimes, these girls are displayed when they serve meals and drinks. At other times they are kept in a back room, especially if they are very young. Down at the lowest end of the scale there is brothel and street prostitution. At the budget end of this already cheap sub-sector are child street prostitutes and the oldest women working in squalid surroundings.

General indications: Japan with highest brothel standard - poor countries with poor conditions - sometimes without fluent water

Physical conditions within the brothels vary according to a country's level of economic development. So even a dreadful brothel in Japan will at least appear  to be hygienic. It is a different story in poverty-stricken Asia. The women who work in cheap brothels in Cambodia, Bangladesh and India, for instance, endure living conditions that are comparable to those of other impoverished people. Women service their clients in overcrowded rooms or tiny cubicles. Sanitary conditions are minimal and, in some cases, they do not even have access to running water.

Examples of prostitution cubicles with prostitution for local Asian men
Prostitution cubicle in Nepal [18]	Prostitution cubicles with curtains in a brothel in a town in Asia [19]

General indications: Asian prostitutes with different characters and conditions

There is no stereotypical 'Asian prostitute', just as there is no single type of sex industry establishment. In order to make some sense of a very complicated industry, however, we can divide prostitutes in the region - as elsewhere - into various categories. For a start there are part-timers and full-timers. Some women will engage (p.16)

in prostitution for a short spell and some for many years. Some women repeatedly join and then leave the trade according to their financial needs.

1: Well educated women from middle-class making sex business by their own choice

The prostitution hierarchy is shaped like a pyramid. At the top are a small number of elite prostitutes, the majority of whom have chosen their work because they can earn substantial sums in a very short time by selling sex. These women have a select clientele and service a limited number of men. They are usually exceptionally beautiful, relatively well educated and with a good command of English. They tend to be from middle-class and well-off families and they are not selling sex simply because they are poor and have no other way to make a living. Short stays in top hotels in major cities and resorts throughout Asia were enough to convince me that many of these highly polished young women are doing very well financially from servicing wealthy tourists and businessmen. Yet, these women are not typical prostitutes and they do not represent the majority of women in prostitution.

2: Women from poverty making sex business for local middle class many times without a free choice

2: In the middle section of the pyramid are a much larger number of prostitutes who cater to less affluent clients. Many of the women in this category have not made a positive choice to sell their bodies. Many have entered the profession because they have limited options and are forced to sell sex because of economic hardship. The further you descend in the prostitution hierarchy the less real and the less meaningful the element of choice actually becomes.

3: Women from poverty making sex business for poor men mostly without a free choice, forced or sold

3: At the base of the pyramid are the girls and women belonging to the mass market. These women constitute the largest number of prostitutes and they service society's poorer men. Very few of these girls and women have freely elected to become prostitutes. Most will have been forced into sex work by acute poverty and enormously restricted life chances. Some will have been physically coerced and some simply sold into the trade.

General indications: "Underground activity" in the sex industry is just "another business"

Attitudes to the sale of sex vary throughout Asia. In parts of the region prostitution is metamorphosing from an underground (p.17)

activity into a fully fledged industry that is accepted by society - even though this fact is never recognized in official statements. In some affluent parts of the region, and in other areas where prostitution is well entrenched, sex work is rapidly becoming just another business.

General indications: middle class girls having regular sex meetings with middle-aged businessmen for gifts and cash - example Japan (endo kosa)

A phenomenon known as endo kosa has emerged in Japan during the past few years and is a good illustration of this trend in the sex market. Girls, who are middle class, well educated and often still in high school, arrange 'dates' with middle-aged businessmen through telephone clubs or informal networks. The dates turn into sexual liaisons and the girls are rewarded with gifts and cash. Some say that it is not prostitution but is only a bit of fun. The girls are not poor and no one forces them: they need the money to buy the latest cute designer handbag and to keep up with their friends in a frenetic fashion competition. It is not a phenomenon that is restricted to a tiny minority but is a widespread activity among teenage girls. It may reflect a vacuous kind of existence constructed out of the pressures of an intensely materialistic society, but it is the girls' very own choice. Perhaps these girls really are the 'happy hookers' of legend [4].

[4] I am indebted to Yayori Matsui, Director of the Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center, Tokyo, and to Rutsuko Shoji, Director of the HELP Asian Women's Shelter, Tokyo, for providing me with much of the detail on this phenomenon.

['Endo Kosa' is not only a working method in Japan, but the more money is needed the more women students are selling their body for businessmen and even have fun with them because businessmen also need a diversion, and it can be that the sexual relation turns also into a job relation or protective relation when there are other troubles, for example with familiar difficulties. That's why this pattern is giving a joy and safety to BOTH sides, on all continents. And that's why an age of consent of 18 is pure nonsense because the only important thing is the performance in school and the bodily healthy. At the same time young men are envious and have not such an "easy" possibility for making cash which gives to young men a very bad feeling. They are stimulated to learn and read much developing intelligence].

General indications: Courtesans in books and films are only rare in reality - mostly prostitution is in sad conditions and also "horribly brutal"

A lot of nonsense has been written about prostitution and has been portrayed in films. This nonsense links sex work with a romantic image of the successful courtesan who provided genteel and intellectually stimulating entertainment (as well as discreet and presumably artistically refined sex) to powerful and charming men. Perpetuating myths like this is irresponsible. Only a few elite women ever became highly accomplished geishas or bejeweled and fragrant courtesans patronized by leading men. What is more, even their power rarely lasted longer than their beauty, and the conduct of the leading men could be just as charmless as that of their brothers in the lower social orders. Most prostitution was, as it is today, just plain sad and rather sordid. A lot of it is also horribly brutal.

General indications: brute sex business for poor girls and women: ordered to be sex worker, sold and lured girls - examples of lethal victims in Thailand

The world of the average sex worker lies very far from the world of elite prostitution. And it is the widespread abuses in the industry's (p.18)

mass market that this book concentrates upon. It tells the story of girls who are raised to be prostitutes, the story of girls who are sold into the trade and the experiences of those who are tricked and lured into the profession. It purposely avoids recounting some of the worst examples of abuse. We have all heard of teenagers who are burned to death while chained to their beds in Thai brothels, and of children who die from the internal damage caused by their sale to adult men [when a big penis is destroying the body of a little young girl]. However, it is unfair to judge an industry and the business of selling sex by focusing exclusively on horrendous but relatively unusual tragedies. I have tried instead to reflect broader patterns and to screen out the most ugly and shocking stories. In this way I hope to avoid sensationalizing both the women's experiences and the industry in which they are involved. Sadly, the reality is so shocking that it does not need to be sensationalized in order for it to be almost unbelievable.


1.8: General indications about trafficking of women for prostitution by luring them also to other countries

More boys than girls in the sex business in Pakistan - because girls are highly restricted there

The trafficking of women and the use of women in prostitution is the focus of this book because females form the overwhelming majority of sex workers. Male prostitution exists in Asia but it is not on such a wide scale and it has little in common with female prostitution. One exception to this rule may be Pakistan where the prostitution of boys appears just as rife - and perhaps more so - than the prostitution of girl children [5].

[5] National Commission for Child Welfare and Development, Ministry Women: Combatting Child Trafficking, Sexual Exploitation and Involvement of Children in Intolerable Forms of Child Labor: Country Report on Pakistan (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 1998).

Boys of between ten and fourteen are in great demand with clients. In part this is because the movement of females is so highly restricted in Pakistani society. These boys do not work in brothels but as 'assistants' in garages, on buses, at truck stops, in small restaurants and in bathhouses. Their function within these establishments is not so much to 'assist' the proprietors as it is to attract the clients.

The recruitment system for male sex workers is not highly developed and the boys are not sold into prostitution and locked inside brothels. Recruitment is often achieved by more informal mechanisms. In less-developed Asia boys migrate to the towns and cities and some then become involved in sex work. They respond to peer (p.19)

pressure and to the pressure of poverty. They realize that they can earn substantially more by selling sex to men than by begging, running errands or working in a factory or shop. Like the girls in prostitution their options are limited but their range of choices is actually far greater than that of female sex workers. Overt homosexuality may be despised in large parts of Asia, and its existence may even be denied, but a gay sex worker will not be as roundly scorned as a female prostitute. There is nothing in male prostitution that is really comparable to the trafficked girl forced into selling sex in a closed brothel.

Luring: faked promise to be a 'domestic help', hostess, singer - the end in a slavery for 15 men per day, with sadistic bullies, or in a sex prison

Pakistan, here the poor village of Damadola after an "U.S." air strike of 2006 and people affirm that they never supported anybody bad [20]. Poverty provokes that offers of jobs "in the city" are accepted without control. And the government "does not know" how to evade poverty in the own country...

Some girls are sold directly into prostitution but, in terms of sheer numbers, the most common path to sexual slavery is that walked by girls who are searching for an escape from poverty. Ironically, these girls are frequently highly entrepreneurial and ambitious to improve upon their humble beginnings. Typically a girl or young woman is offered a job in some distant place, perhaps in a city or in another country. Yet once she gets there she finds that the job is very different from the one she was initially promised. In poorer parts of the region she might have thought that she would work as a domestic help in a rich person's house. In reality she is forced instead to provide sexual services to fifteen men a day.

In more affluent Asia some women are offered lucrative jobs as hostesses or singers entertaining a few select and wealthy gentlemen in a luxurious club. In fact the select gentlemen turn out to be sadistic bullies, the girls do not get paid and the luxurious club is a terrifying prison. If this happened to one girl it would be bad enough, but it happens to thousands every day.

No statistics about Asian brothels because almost all about prostitution is 'secret' and illegal in Asia

One of the difficulties in writing about the sex industry is that it is hard to find accurate statistics. Prostitution is illegal in large parts of Asia, as is the trafficking of people. Estimating the numbers involved in the business of selling sex, or the numbers who are trafficked, is fraught with difficulties, and anyone who engages in guesswork runs the risk of losing their credibility. Many of the (p.20)

figures that are bandied around have been pulled out of a hat, and exaggeration is so commonplace that it only creates disbelief and, ultimately, diverts attention from a genuine problem. Governments do not have adequate data on the scale of trafficking or sexual slavery. Either they are not capable of producing it or, in some cases, they do not want reliable data on the grounds that they would then be obliged to do something about it. Undoubtedly, however, the numbers involved are very large. Millions of females sell sex in Asia. Some of these are children. Some of the women have not consented to being put on the open sex market. And some of them are locked into a contemporary form of slavery. It is a scandal of appalling proportions.

Trafficking of women - discussions if prostitutes are migrant laborers or not

The trafficking of women and sexual slavery are two separate issues. They are, however, interrelated because trafficked women are the easiest targets for the sex industry and form its most reliable supply of sex slaves. The trafficking of human beings is a complicated subject. It is much more complicated than the trafficking of drugs or arms. Part of the difficulty is the confusing overlap between migration and trafficking and the muddled debate that has surfaced over definitions. Migrant laborers, and especially illegal migrant laborers, frequently find themselves forced into exploitative working conditions. In this sense they are just like the victims of trafficking. But migrant laborers have not necessarily been tricked or deceived during the migration process. Trafficking, on the other hand, refers to the transportation of people within countries or across international borders using force, trickery or the abuse of power [6].

[6] My definitions are taken from Marjan Wijers and Lin Lap-Chew: Trafficking in Women, Forced Labor and Slavery-like Practices in Marriage, Domestic Labor and Prostitution (Utrecht: Foundation Against Trafficking in Women, 1997), pp.36-8

Trafficking: the aim for the brothel owner are lower wages for foreign prostitutes than for local prostitutes - loss of the family and perfect manipulation in the new location

People - men, women and children - are trafficked in order to channel or to start with and they will accept lower wages and tolerate worse working conditions than local laborers. In the poorest parts of Asia they may expect little more than food, clothes and a roof over their heads. By (p.21)

transporting people from their homes, and often out of their original countries, traffickers make these vulnerable people even more vulnerable. They remove them from their social support networks and they place them in an environment in which the language, customs and work patterns may all be unfamiliar. Trafficked people are easy to manipulate and exploit because they are made to be dependent upon others. Until they can acclimatise themselves to their new surroundings they lose a large element of control over their own lives. This is why the sex industry likes trafficked girls. Sometimes trafficking victims are employed in sweatshops or on building sites. Sometimes they are trafficked to work as domestic servants, as beggars and sometimes as prostitutes. Certainly, not all women who have been trafficked are prostitutes. And not all women who are forced into prostitution have been trafficked. A trafficked woman who is prostituted, however, will almost invariably find herself in the very worst of exploitative situations.

Trafficking the most powerless: the poor and poor children - learning 'commodities' - NGOs claiming rights for women - national trafficking or cross-border trafficking

The trafficking of women has been given media coverage both in Asia and the West for well over a decade. The issue has also exercised humanitarian agencies and human rights groups, and mountains of reports have been written on the subject. Unfortunately, this has done little more than to push trafficking and sexual slavery further underground and to encourage the sex industry to conceal its most gruesome aspects. The fate of trafficked girls is just about the most unsavory aspect of this ugly business because trafficked girls staff the lowest tiers of the sex industry. They are recruited because they are available, cheap and powerless. Tragically it is a recruitment strategy that the Asian sex industry has fine-tuned to perfection.

Trafficking patterns are simple. Girls and young women are taken from poor countries, and from poor regions, to more prosperous ones. When girls are trafficked from prostitution they then become commodities that can be purchased by the more affluent societies' men.

Poor village in Mekong Delta in Vietnam [21]. When a trafficker woman in beautiful clothes
and with much jewelry comes, parents sell their daughters for "good jobs"...

Great attention has been given to international trafficking by a host of non-governmental organizations and, more recently, by (p.22)

international agencies. It has become something of a cause célèbre in these circles and is the subject of frequent seminars and report writing. Yet, it appears as if domestic trafficking - that is from poor regions to more prosperous regions within a single country - is every bit as important as cross-border trafficking. The results for the women, moreover, can be just as devastating.

Trafficking: the hierarchy of the Asian 'sending' countries (Bangladesh, Vietnam and Nepal) and 'receiving' countries (Japan)

An international trafficking hierarchy parallels Asia's economic pecking order. At the bottom are the poorest nations. These are the 'sending' countries that export their women. They are typified by Bangladesh, Vietnam and Nepal. These countries do not import women because there is no one else poor enough to consider it financially worthwhile to sell sex in these desperately poor societies. At the top of the pecking order are 'receiving' countries: those rich societies that host sex workers from the poorer sending countries. The best example of a receiving country is Japan, which imports women from just about everywhere.

Trafficking: India and Thailand as "hubs"

In the middle of the international trafficking networks are countries that have multiple functions: they are transit countries acting as brokers in the trafficking process and they can also be both receiving and sending countries. India and Thailand are the prime examples and both run an incredibly busy trade in women. To give just a few examples of the way the trafficking networks operate, there are thought to be well over a hundred thousand Nepali prostitutes in India, hundreds of thousands of Burmese women in Thai brothels and over a hundred thousand Thais and Filipinas in Japan [7].

[7] There is no consensus on the numbers of women involved. I have therefore taken 'average' figures based on the most authoritative studies.

Trafficking: Japan with 'Little Bangkoks' and 'Little Manilas' etc. - Filipina women lured for being "entertainer" sold into Japanese brothels

The existence of 'Little Bangkoks' and 'Little Manilas' in Japan is well known. And now there are also 'Little Colombias' 'Little Russias' and 'Little Romanias' too. The list goes on. Name a country with economic problems, limited opportunities for females and a flourishing criminal underworld and you can guarantee that at least some of its women will be recruited for Japan's vast and very demanding sex industry.

World map indicating the import of prostitutes to brothels and secret brothel prisons ('snacks') in Japan:
from Romania, Russia, Thailand, the Philippines, Columbia etc.  [22]

So many Japanese men wish to buy sex that the country has (p.23)

resorted [orientated] to the wholesale importing of women for use in the commercial sex sector. Naturally, not all the women who go to work in Japan are trafficked and forced into prostitution. Some migrate to work as prostitutes in Japan because they can earn comparatively high wages while they are there. Even so, there are many other women who are trafficked to Japan and who are forced to prostitute themselves. The majority of Filipina women who travel to Japan to work as entertainers, and who are known as 'Japayuki', do not know that they will be sold for sex. Or, if they are aware of the nature of their work, they have a seriously mistaken impression of the kind of prostitution they will be involved in and the conditions under which they will have to sell their bodies [8].

[8] Based on interviews with Aida Santos and the staff of WEDPRO, Manila

Fishing village in the Philippines [23]. Women traffickers in beautiful clothes and with jewelry come and promise good jobs "in the city". But there is no control...

1.9: General indications about big Asian sex problems with 'good women' who don't want sex

General indications: analysis of the customers hardly exist - brothel is considered 'normal' in many Asian countries

One of the most puzzling things about the sex industry is how often the customers disappear from the debate. Of course poor and vulnerable women will form a ready supply of recruits to the industry. There are no surprises here. But there has been little analysis of the demand as opposed to the supply side of this industry. Who are these invisible customers who buy the bodies of so many children and young women? My guess, at least in large parts of Asia, is most men. This includes men from all social classes, religions and ethnic backgrounds.

General indications: the basic sex problem in Asia: 'good women' in Asia 'do not like sex'

There is an assumption in many Asian societies that men must inevitably want to buy sex: that it is a kind of natural function. This assumption is shared by both men and women. Good women - the kind who are socially respectable and whom men marry and provide with economic security - do not like sex. Sexual partners who are not a man's own faithful wife are, by definition, whores who can be purchased by all those legions of sex consumers frustrated by passive spouses and unavailable, or chaste  girlfriends.

Not every Asian man will buy sex and some would never dream of doing so. To claim that all Asian men are prostitute-users is as ludicrous and unbalanced as claiming that Asian males follow strict (p.24)

and morally determined sexual codes. We need to be far more accurate about these codes and their claim to virtue.

The truth: "normal Asian women" don't want to know how good sex is going - and Asian governments don't permit it! The truth is that "normal women" in Asia don't know or don't want to know about lubricants or hot oils or sex oils for having good sex without pains. Here are some products which are missing in the Asian sleeping rooms. Any simple baby oil can also serve for a good sex event. More sophisticated oils with special smell can enrich sexuality at home. Only put the oil before the sexual act and don't lick it. One can also put the oil on the whole body so the bodies get slippery. All this is not known in Asia because porno films or broadcastings about sexuality are forbidden until now in Asia but Asian women are sending their husbands to brothels so the "woman at home" is "clean" - and this "woman at home" is always suffering vagina inflammations - what an inhuman nonsense and torture ordered by Asian governments with their stupid and mentally and sexually retarded WOMAN Ministers of Education, of Family, or of Culture!
Personal lubricants for good sex without vagina pain, examples from Wikipedia [27]	Personal oils, sex oils, hot oils with different smells for good sex without vagina pain [28]. "Asian normal women" don't know about it and sent their husbands into brothel prisons...
Good sex is a human right!	Good sex is a human right!

General indications: the official code (family life) and the unofficial code (sex in brothel slavery) for the Asian society

There are, in fact, two types of code. The first type is the public code and the type held up to the world as a great model of social and sexual propriety. And then there is the second type: the unofficial code which tells men that they can have a string [file] of mistresses [women servants] and that they can buy sex on the open market. The only caveat [limit] is that it is best if the men do not get caught in the act. [Who knows where are the secret brothels in Asia with sex slaves? Taxi drivers know].

[WRONG: women are luring and preparing the victims
1: mothers are selling the daughters to women traffickers in beautiful clothes and with much jewelry
2: many times also the traffickers from town to town are women
3: mama-san, the woman brothel prison owners are torturing, manipulating and extorting the girl and the young women so they will "work" for the men
4: mama-san, the woman brothel prison owner is determinating how many customers a girl or young woman has per day, can be up to 15 or 20 per day
5: mama-san is making a double profit from the girl / young woman and the men customers].

Demonstrator: 1 minute - 1 woman or child is sold on the world: "Every Minute Of The Day... A Woman Or A Child Is Sold" [24] -
mostly the victims are sold to WOMEN traffickers in beautiful clothes and with jewelry promising jobs "in the city" without control,
and Asian "woman at home" want to be "clean" and are sending their husbands just into these brothels where these girls and women are sold.
More perverse this Asian system cannot be rejecting of good sex at home and sending men to brothel prisons where the sex slaves are working...

[WRONG: Why men go to brothels? "Normal women" in Asia do not know anything about sex and don't want to know about good sex
There could be observed during one year in sexy Thailand (!!!) that
1: Asian government prohibit speaking about sexuality
2: normal Asian mothers prohibit everything concerning sexuality of their daughters so nobody knows about sexual stimulation of women
3: normal Asian women don't know anything about their own feminine sexuality or sensitive points in their vagina or about their feminine orgasm
4: and normal Asian women don't know anything about lubricants and oils for a good sex with many orgasms without pain also with condoms
5: thus normal Asian women have many times vagina inflammation already after 3 minutes of sex and are rejecting long good sex and send men to brothels and at the end there is no sex at all in the Asian home and all sex is reduced to short sex in a brothel or even in a brothel prison.
That are the reasons why Asian men go to brothels. We thank to the women in the Asian governments, mostly the Minister of Culture, Minister of Family, or Minister of Education, for their prohibitions to speak about the most important topic of mankind: sex. And then men go to brothels and Asian women have no sex during 20 years and never had any orgasm during their life. Asia really has big sex problems...]

1.10: Sex slavery by repression, control, poverty - they mostly remain poor

General indications: factors for sex slavery: sexual repression - degree of control over women - strict sexual codes - male-dominated societies - poverty - wide income disparities

Significantly, the extent of prostitution, trafficking and abuse within the sex trade is inseparable from the level of sexual repression within a society and the degree of control that is exercised over women. It is no accident that life for poor Pakistani prostitutes is abysmal because it is also pretty tough for most Pakistani women. There is a beautifully neat symmetry: strict sexual codes and rigorously male-dominated societies are mirrored by widespread systems of sexual slavery and a regular supply of trafficked women to the sex trade. When these unhappy factors are added to poverty and to wide income disparities the results are catastrophic for the most vulnerable women.

Sex workers' organizations and parts of the feminist movement become irritated when attention is concentrated upon trafficking and forced prostitution. They claim that an emphasis upon the grisly aspects of the industry discredits all of it when, in fact, some parts of the business are potentially just fine. Trafficking stories are victim stories and they give an incomplete and distorted picture [9].

[9] The best book on prostitution written from the perspective of pro-sex work groups and individuals is: Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema: Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition (London: Routledge, 1998).

General indications: many prostitutes would like other jobs when other jobs would be available - brothel prisons as a 'home' against poverty

Certainly, not all sex workers are victims and not all are forced to sell their bodies. Some of the women like their work - but not many - and we can question which proportion would choose prostitution as an occupation if society had offered them any other reasonable option.

For lots of women - especially in impoverished Asia - prostitution is all about survival. Even a lousy brothel is good for some poor and dispossessed women because it gives them the means to eat. The heavily made-up and brightly dressed girls and women lining the (p.25)

streets of India's red light areas, for instance, have rarely chosen sex work as a career.

Example of a mother with 2 children in Pakistan in Heera Mandi District in Lahore (also called Hira Mandi) - the daughters will also be prostitutes

Lahore, houses in Hera Mandi District [25]

Lahore in Pakistan, belly dance "murja" in a restaurant in Hera Mandi District [26]. Since 2009 judges in Pakistan want to prohibit murja dance as a gesture for Islamists and Taliban...

In Pakistan, I spent an evening at the home of a prostitute who is anything but a sex slave. She has her own house in the traditional red light district of Heera Mandi in Lahore and entertains a number of middle-class businessmen on a regular basis. She is not well-off but she makes an adequate living. She has few qualms [doubts] about her trade. It is, she said, her choice to sell sex, and I believe that she told me the truth. She seems contented and at peace - at least most of the time.

She began to teach me some of the dances of a courtesan and how to jangle [make noise] dozens of bracelets in just the right way and at just the right moment. She also taught me how to drink half a liter of vodka without passing out and how she had begun to sell sex when she was abandoned by her husband and left destitute with two babies to feed. This woman is in her mid-thirties. She is beautiful, but you can see the traces of wear on her face. She knows she is getting older. Some of her clients are not as attentive and as generous as they were and her income is beginning to decline. I asked her what she was going to do in the future and, as I did so, her two daughters ran into the room. One was about thirteen and a little plain and very quiet. The other was about eight and as pretty and as vivacious as her mother. This child will be her mother's future and, within a few years, prostitution will be her trade. She is being groomed [educated] to sell sex. Even as a child she is dressed like an adult sex worker. What kind of choice, I thought, did this mother and her young daughter really have?

[Other cases: prostitutes loosing their money
Many prostitutes also have no control over their income and are spending their money for alcohol and many beautiful clothes instead of saving it for their families and therefore remain poor].

General indications: sex industry combined with economic theories lets grow this sex industry and also trafficking and trade of women

The sex industry has arranged a happy and profitable marriage with the neo-liberal economic theories that have enamored the world for the past couple of decades. According to this economic agenda everything has a price, and a free and unfettered marketplace must determine that price. For a large number of the poor, and especially for poor women, the magic of the market has yet to work its wonders. It has, however, given a new impetus to the sex industry. It has (p.26)

increased the number of women and clients involved in the trade and, in more affluent societies, the industry has acquired the veneer of a serious and legitimate business. It is controlled and regulated by managers worthy of an MBA and it is protected and promoted by an astonishingly effective public relations effort.

Economic liberalization policies have meant that a lot of people in Asia have become poorer while some have become a lot richer. People are moving more easily from one country to another as border controls have been relaxed and as people migrate in search of a livelihood. The trafficking of women, in a sense, is part of a much larger pattern of migration and social change. More people are increasingly desperate; more people are on the move; more women are mobile because they have grater opportunities; and more men have the finance to buy sex.

General indications: economic split into rich and poor supports prostitution for the rich - sometimes a chance for women

Limousine of rich men [29] for a girl is like the trip on a	roller coaster, here one in Catalonia in Spain [30]
And the girls will want always more and more and don't learn anything and don't learn any solidarity in life. This would be the "normal" development. But in Asia girls and young women are often lured for jobs "in the city" and then tortured, manipulated and extorted for sex slavery - mostly by Asian WOMEN, with the legitimation of Asian WOMEN Ministers of Culture...

In an increasingly materialistic and unequal world it is largely inevitable that more women will end up in prostitution and that more men will buy their services. Asia's traditional cultures are rapidly being overlain by modern consumer cultures. This is a massive bonus for the sex industry because women's customary low status in Asian societies permits vulnerable women to be more easily manipulated for men's pleasure and for the sex trade's profit.

Prostitution is giving some disadvantaged women the ability to improve their financial lot in life and to achieve a degree of social and economic mobility that otherwise would be out of their reach. But, although this is true, our first question should be the morality of a power structure that makes the provision of sexual services the only realistic path a young woman can follow if she wants economic security and the chance to lift herself and her family out of poverty.

Prostitution is a quick financial fix in places where inequitable patterns of economic growth have excluded the poor from the excitements of the consumer boom. Selling sex - or being sold for sex - is a form of work that the poor and badly educated can easily enter. The only necessary qualifications are youth and an element of (p.27)

physical charm.

General indications: the big majority of prostitutes remain poor - prostitutes from India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Burma, Pakistan, Cambodia, Philippines

Scheme about women and girls trafficking in Central and South Asia, graphics Women and girls trafficking in Central and South Asia, graphics [31]

Women and girls are trafficked from poor regions (Nepal, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, rural China) to the medium Asian states (Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, India, and Thailand). From there the career can continue to Malaysia, or to states with western standard but with heavy mafia systems: Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia. Women and girls are sold in poorest regions by their mothers (WOMEN). Poverty is provoked by Asian governments which are rejecting installing any social network and which are racist against the population in the countryside leaving them without good jobs with the industries. Girls and young women are lured to jobs "in the city" mostly by WOMEN traffickers wearing beautiful clothes and jewelry. Then the girls and young women are arriving in the brothel prisons and are tortured, manipulated and extorted by debt bondage systems. The brothel owner (WOMAN, mama-san) claims that she had to pay a certain price for the new girl or young woman and thus the girl or young woman has to work this price off first. Thus they have to work for men customers who see the girls and young women often only during some minutes or are even helping the victims. And at the same time "normal Asian women" are sending their husbands to brothels because "normal Asian women" don't know anything about good sex with lubricants or body oils - because it is never shown in any movie in TV because porno is forbidden in Central and East Asia. But brothels have to be with sex slaves in Asia. What a perverse Asian mess!

Prostitution is also a form of work that will continue to ensure that the poor, apart from a lucky few, remain poor and badly educated. It is, nevertheless, an employment trend, or a survival mechanism, that is fast becoming acceptable in large parts of Asia. It is acceptable to countries like Thailand and the Philippines, which see the sale of their women as a development strategy. It is acceptable to some families who will sell their children into prostitution. It is acceptable to girls who are raised and educated for little else, and acceptable those women who see it as a lucrative career option.

Nepali women figure prominently in this record of the sex slaves of Asia's brothels. And so do Indian, Bangladeshi, Thai, Burmese, Pakistani, Cambodian and Filipina women. The stories come from women who are both the victims and the survivors of sexual abuse. Many of these women have had little say in the narrow options that have determined their fate. Some have had absolutely no choice. A few of the accounts tell of irredeemably shattered lives. Most stories, however, are a testimony to the capacity of individual women to cope with exploitation and to survive it with an inspiring dignity.

I have written this book after hearing a similar, appalling story from girls and women all over Asia. It is a story that tells something about the depths to which humanity can sink. More accurately it tells of the depths to which some men can sink and how women often abet them in the process. I hope it will convey something of the rank hypocrisy of societies that preach about sexual morality, and make a fetish out of virtuous womanhood, but simultaneously utilize the youngest ans most vulnerable females for sexual pleasure and as the living material upon which men can exercise the thrills of domination. Neither those people who promote prostitution as work nor those who are implacably hostile to it will like this book. Many Asian men - and substantial number of women - will hate it. That is all the more reason to write it. (p.28)

<<        >>

Photo sources
[18] prostitution cubicle in Nepal: http://www.lisakristine.com/sex-trafficking-nepal/
[19] prostitution cubicles with curtains, Asia: http://www.agefotostock.com/en/Stock-Images/Rights-Managed/PCG-1743
[20] poor village Damadola in Pakistan after "U.S." air strike in 2006: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/pakistan_condemns_zawahiri_strike_20060114/
[21] poor village in Mekong Delta in Vietnam: http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Row-Boat-on-the-Mekong-Delta-Vietnam-Posters_i4062932_.htm
[22] world map with Japan and the origin countries of prostitutes: http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=15493.0
[23] fishing village in the Philippines: http://joshweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/community-loans-part-ii/
[24] demonstrator: 1 minute - 1 woman or child is sold on the world: http://sharonbuchbinder.com/blog/2011/10/04/human-trafficking-its-in-our-back-yards-part-i/
[25] Lahore in Pakistan, houses in Hera Mandi District: http://www.urbanpk.com/forums/index.php/topic/17740-lahore-walled-city-gates/page-3
[26] Lahore in Pakistan, belly dance "murja" in a restaurant in Hera Mandi District:
http://lahorenama.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/painting-prostitutes-pakistani-brushes-off-religious-hard-liners/#more-1164
[27] personal lubricants for good sex without vagina pain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_lubricant
[28] personal oils, sex oils, hot oils with different smells for good sex without vagina pain:
http://www.alibaba.com/productshowimg/ciaekstrom-11571904-10988696/Dione_Hot_Oil.html
[29] limousine of a rich: http://www.themarysue.com/delorean-limo/
[30] roller coaster in Catalonia in Spain: http://www.spanien-newsletter.de/index.php?id=627
[31] women and girls trafficking in Central and South Asia, graphics: http://www1.american.edu/ted/thaiwomen.htm

^