Jonathan Morris, an American translator who has worked with NGOs close to the cause and has lived in Northern Thailand for eight years, helped clarify the above questions through our conversation over email. In translating interviews with women who have been sex workers, Jonathan said that it did break down both ways. “I would say most entry into the sex industry was semi-voluntary. That is, while there was some of just throwing a girl in a room and saying she will have sex with a customer, there was also a lot of, ‘Today you are a day waitress, tomorrow you are a night waitress, why don’t you sit with that customer because he looks like he’ll give you a good tip?’ Then it just all goes from there.”
Where it goes is that many women decide the money is good enough that they stick to the path, or stay in it in hopes of meeting a farang, or Western man, who will marry them and care for them and their family. Jonathan agreed. “I would say that the vast majority of girls in the sex industry in Thailand enter via free will, even if economic pressures or just general unfairness toward women motivates it. One woman, who I know pretty well, had a bachelor’s degree and was very upfront about her reasoning. She said something to the effect of ‘Look, I have a choice, I could make 6,500 baht being treated like crap in a government office or I can make 30,000 baht a month here having fun [she worked at a tourist bar in Phuket]. I view this as just a short-cut to what I want to do.’ She said she was just short-timing it in the industry, but I am not entirely convinced that there is much short-timing in the industry beyond getting married to someone much, much wealthier than yourself.”
And the sex trade isn’t stopping at Asian borders. It’s now exporting itself onto other continents. Human Trafficking.org reported last week that twenty Thai women, all in their mid-twenties, would be deported back to Thailand after going to South Africa on a thirty-day visa exemption to serve local customers. The demand has brought the supply, but the reasons are all the same, since the women said in their statement that “they were destitute in their home country and came to South Africa to improve their financial situation.”
PREVIOUS PAGE
