Sexploit

Many years ago, I was in Bangkok, having a drink with my girlfriends at a restaurant of a budget hotel.(No, I wasn't in Patpong, the red light district)Then, I saw a huge farang in jeans and shirt heading towards the guy at the counter. Then, I saw the guy making a phone call.

That farang trudged towards us and retired himself next to our table. After a while, the guy at the counter came over with a beautiful local girl. Then, I got the picture- a pimp, a sex worker, a client and it was merely seen as a business at face value. Nowadays, destroying someone's soul has become a business.

The lady seated herself next to the farang. Silence hung in the air like a wilted hope. I turned around to look at her cos I sensed she was looking at me. I looked into her eyes searchingly and she looked into mine. Before I could say a word, the farang stood up and she tailed behind him.

I saw her back disappearing through the door of the lift, where she would be propelled into the darkness with her pride and dignity brutally stripped off and trashed until the beast inside him was wholly satisfied. At the moment, I could feel despair seep into my heart. By then, I had learnt well enough that the world had other ways of breaking a human being.

Being a Malaysian woman of Chinese-Thai parentage and a minor to be exact, I had gone through sexism and racial discrimination in my life but because of God's grace is always sufficient, for his power is always made perfect in weakness, I somehow didn't drift into self-destruction. (To befriend gays, sex-workers, transvestites and gangsters is not really called self-destruction, is it?)

I remember there were times when disappointing reactions and verbal harassments were thrown at me simply because of my ethnic background. Of course, I would stand up to confront and correct them in order to reclaim what is rightfully mine, dignity.

When I started to trace my roots in Thailand, I was deeply shocked and distressed to see the insidious impact Imperialism, or in other word means Tourism has been doing to Thailand. It is really clear that the descendents of the ex-imperialists have come back with a vengeance and the hearts to complete what their forefathers had failed to do (Thailand has never been colonialized.). This time with more brutal tactic-sexploit!

It really perturbed me a lot every time I saw an old farang with his rented` Thai wife' who was young enough to be his granddaughter. This is not just a sexploit; this is a way for them to prove their superiority! They are here to torch the self-esteem and dignity of the Thai women in order to boost theirs.

There are here to bait the Thais into believing that the only way to get out of poverty is to work as a sex worker to serve the farangs. Then, they cunningly twist the plot around and masquerade themselves as some kind of Messiahs, who are here to part the sea of poverty and lead people to a so called better life!

I know prostitution has been wrong-footed in Thailand long before the American G.Is flooded Bangkok and Pattaya on `Rest and Recreation' tours that had opened door to sex tourism in Thailand back in the Vietnam War era. You, as a visitor or expat in Thailand, do you think this is a positive contribution or being respectful towards your host country?

Is prostitution the only way to get out of poverty? I doubt it and certainly do not buy this idea. Unfortunately, there are many Thai women (ok, I know in Thailand they are called `Isan' women, not 'Thai' women. You see, they are even despised by their own people) have embraced this erroneous belief and this erroneous belief has been driving them. If one person telling you that it is better to work as a sex worker because there is nothing else you can do better than this, you will probably ignore it. Imagine when 10 people are telling you the same thing, you will surely consider it. You become what you believe, as simple as that.

Deep in my heart, I believe that there will come a day when sexploit against the women of my ancestor's land will end just like how I believe that one day the great dragon will be hurled down- that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who has been leading the whole world astray!