Here we go again...
Here we go again.
CNN execs must be getting worried about their falling ratings, so it's time for yet another salacious story on the
Global Sex Trade!!!.
I'm sure that the show will contents elements of truth. It is indisputable that some women are tricked or forced into working as prostitutes by criminal gangs or pimps; some women are illegally transported from poor countries to rich countries to work as prostitutes; and some underage girls working as prostitutes are cruelly exploited by their relatives, criminals, corrupt officials or clients.
But how many women and girls? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Millions? Even if it's a small number, it's a cause for concern and a significant problem for law enforcement and aid workers. But the truth is that no one really knows the scale of the problem. Nevertheless, news media like CNN always report the same old (very alarming) statistics as if they were indisputable facts.
For example, "Around the world, more than 1 million children are exploited in the global commercial sex trade each year, according to the U.S. State Department." When one digs deeper into the source of these "statistics," it always turns out that the ultimate source is a "guesstimate" made by some agency or individual who has a vested interest in exaggerating the scope of the problem.
Here is a more balanced view of the "global sex trade" as it is practiced in one country that is famous for sex tourism, Thailand. The article is from
Prospect, a very reputable British monthly magazine. The article is authored by a British citizen living in Thailand who knows the country and has no vested interest in exaggerating the problems associated with the international sex business. So watch the CNN exposé if you want to be shocked and angered, but read this article if you want to get closer to the truth of the matter.
Learning the Thai Sex Trade
May 2005 | 110 » Witness » Learning the Thai sex trade
Thailand generates fantasies, both for tourists in search of sex and for aid workers peddling lurid tales of trafficking. The tsunami created more false horror stories. What are the facts of the trade?
Alex Renton
Alex Renton is a contributing editor of "Prospect"
January was ugly in our part of Bangkok. We live near Soi Nana, off Sukhumvit Road, a famous tourist site catering for a specific sort of visitor: middle-aged western men. They come to Nana for one reason—to have sex cheaply. November to January is high season in Thailand for holidaymakers from northern nations, and the bars and pavements of Nana are packed with hundreds of people buying and selling sex. January was busier than ever this year. It took a struggle every evening to get through the ranks of skinny Thai women and the pale men in shorts picking them over.
It was the tsunami, of course. Patong beach, one of the worst hit parts of Phuket island, is among Thailand's best known destinations for tourists seeking sex. So the men transferred their holidays to Bangkok. Happily for them, there was a drought in northeastern Thailand at the end of 2004. The poor rice crop that resulted sent more young girls than usual down from their impoverished villages on the plains of Isaan to harvest the tourists in the big city. This seasonal migration goes back, historians of the sex trade will tell you, to the Vietnam war and the establishment of Thailand as a brothel for American GIs on leave. Prostitution for foreign visitors developed into a major industry, although official Thailand shrouds its economic and social significance in misinformation and a variety of interesting hypocrisies...
