Eye – March 23, 2006
Love Bites
BY SASHA
Almost two months ago, I published some facts about sex workers in Asia that conflict with many Westerners’ understanding of the situation (“The foreign fuck,” Feb. 2). ( Article below, on this page.) I received a lot of mail about this. People were outraged that I would even think about putting a positive face on third-world prostitution. I sent some of the responses along to EMPOWER, a sex-worker rights organization in Thailand. Here are some of their thoughts:
We read Sasha’s article and we read some of the responses. Unlike Sasha’s article that includes our voices, the responses do not. What is it that makes you so confident to speak on our behalf? Is it that we aren’t white? Is it that English or French are not our mother tongues? Is it because our country is not as rich as yours? Is it that we are smaller than you?
Whatever the reason, we never said we needed you to be our heroes, we didn’t fight patriarchy to have it replaced by matriarchy, so just stop it. We are not little children in need of your protection. We are adult women that need our rights. Our right to speak for ourselves, our right to work in safe and fair conditions at whatever work we choose, our right to make our own decisions, including the right to make bad decisions just like you and the right to improve the conditions in our industry. You don’t have the right to judge our decisions. You have no right to tell us who to be with. You don’t like to see us with rich American or European men, so who do you want us to be with? Are we meant to only be with poor Asian men?
Trafficking is a social problem that we sex workers are more than willing to help society solve but we can’t solve it alone. How can we help you when you relegate us to the role of victims who are so stupid we don’t even know we’re victims? Most working women in the world do not have multiple options of what work they will do. We work to put food on the table and to build a good life for our families. Most women are not academics, astronauts and businesswomen — most are cleaners, factory workers, sewers, nurses, hawkers, cooks, sex workers and waitresses. True, there aren’t enough options, but let’s change that together. Removing one option does not increase the options, quite the opposite.
As for poverty, can you imagine the number of sex workers there would be if every poor woman in Asia sold sex? For customers and all those concerned about our welfare, support our call for recognition of our rights as workers, like protection under labour laws and social security, occupational health and safety standards and decriminalization of adult sex work. That’s it, no heroics required. Give us our rights and we will do the rest!
There you have it, straight from the whore’s mouth.