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Gender 305 Human Rights Conversation is a podcast by the University of Victoria Gender 305 students of 2022 and 2023. Topics span Abortion Rights, LGBTQ2S+ rights, gender-based discrimination, and gender-based violence through the lens of human rights. Thank you to Tamara Gonsalves and all the students of Gender 305, who have spent much time and effort to educate and bring these critical topics to the community.
Tune in weekly for more conversations on human rights and international human rights developments.
Music used in the introduction and outro is the track Wonder by respectful child recorded during CFUV's 2017 Basement Closet Session. https://cfuv.bandcamp.com/track/wonderSession
Speaker 1 0:01
Hello and welcome to our podcast. We have Madi Downey, Tyler Horsman, Victoria Tang, Sydney Demuth and Emma Whyte in our group. Our podcast is about the Thai sex industry. Our focus is on the present situation and the history of the country. Additionally, we consider the legal and cultural ramifications.
My part of the research was exploring the sex industry and cultural factors. Before the 1950s. I decided to use Hofstede five dimensions of culture, and I linked the sex trade history in Thailand to cultural patterns. In addition, I would like to discuss the importance of social attitudes. I believe it's important to start this section of information by telling you listeners about social attitudes and why they're so important. Social attitudes are just as they sound. We accept attitudes about social positions and behaviors and then create attitudes towards others and situations. This is all based off of our experience. Social attitudes are important when it comes to cultural views on gender and often shape cultural norms. 93% of Thailand's citizens are Theravada Buddhists, and most believe in reincarnation. In Theravada Buddhism, women are not able to reach bodhisatta, which means one who can reach Nirvana, but chooses to stay and help those in need. The reason why women cannot reach Nirvana is because, get this, women are not considered human in this religion. They also describe women as having done bad things or made mistakes in their past life, and that's why they were born women in this life. This inherently puts women at a disadvantage in Thailand. If 93% of the population is Buddhist, that means there is a good amount of people, more likely older generations, who still have these social attitudes towards women. This may just be my personal Western view, but I find these attitudes degrading and demeaning to women, because we are human and we do deserve equal rights.
Now I want to talk about Thailand and its history. The country was a polygamous society until it was outlawed in 1935. Prior to 1935, men of high status would have three wives. The wives would be categorized as Major Wife: she is chosen by the husband's parent; the Minor Wife: this wife should have the husband's children; and the Third Wife, or as referred to: the Slave Wife. Her only purpose is sexual gratification for the husband. So I think there's room here for discussion. Inherently, slavery and forced marriages are wrong, and consent, in every sense, is the most important thing when it comes to sexuality or marriage. If there isn't consent, there isn't sexuality or marriage.
Now I'm going to discuss Hofstede's dimensions. These are all measures of culture, and it is often related to how a culture works. Hofstede's first dimension is power distance, and it relates to how society reacts to different levels of power regarding social class. Thailand scored 64, which means that upper class citizens have accepted that there are substantial economic and social classes that have led to an unequal wealth distribution among citizens. They also are more inclined to control information within the workplace and home, and general inequalities are usual and common, especially when relating to class. Girls, female adolescents and young women from rural communities are being moved to cities so that they can pay for everyday essentials for themselves and their families in Thailand through sex work. And in many cases, this is actually slavery, or sex sexual slavery. There's also a serious issue of girls and women being sex trafficked in Thailand, and this dates back in their history for quite a while, and is still a huge issue today.
The next measure is whether a culture is individualistic or collectivistic.If they score low, they're more likely to care about their communities, rather than just themselves. Thailand scored 20 on this, and that means they value long term commitment to the family. This can often put all women at a huge disadvantage. They already have to deal with the fact that women are essentially socially second class citizens, but now it's also essential to provide a good relationship with their family. Now the only way that they can do this is by providing money and other gains to the family. This is why women's families will send them to bigger cities. The next measure relates to whether a culture prefers to renew society and keep with times, pragmaticism, or if they highly value traditions and want things to be similar as they were in the past. Normative. Thailand scored a 32 which resulted in them being a normative society. Thailand values traditions, and this can account for the normative views on women and their roles and experiences within the sex industry. Thailand has not ratified CEDAW. The state also accepted, in many ways encouraged, sexual slavery of women. Until 1935. The USA abolished slavery in 1865 and the damage still hasn't healed there, nor has their community ties been strengthened. So it's safe to say that slavery causes trauma and can therefore cause disparities in the future, in the children of enslaved people.
The fourth dimension is masculinity. If a country scores higher than their culture values competition in being the best in their certain field. If they score lower, they are considered female and value loving and caring about their job rather than being the best. Thailand scored 34 so they are a feminine society. They are motivated by taking care of their loved ones and loving their job rather than being the best. This, once again, puts vulnerable girls in a poor situation. It's important to love your family, and so these girls have to do what they have to do in order to survive.
The last measure was indulgence. This measures how society can use self control, specifically when dealing with impulses and desires, and if a culture or country scores higher, they would have more restraint. Thailand scored 45 and was not given status of indulgent or restraint. This makes sense to me, because you do have two very opposing views, that sex work is okay and is accepted and is a part of their culture, and the fact that sex work is illegal.
Speaker 2 8:37
To start the conversation about sex work in Thailand as it currently exists, I've pulled a few statistics from an article by the Thailand Development Research Institute. In a 2015 study, it was estimated that there's about 13 point 8 million sex workers globally, with around 250,000 sex workers within Thailand. Additionally, the study estimated that about 3% of Thailand's GDP comes from what they call the Thai flesh trade. 3% might not sound like much, but it's equal to $6.4 billion dollars. These statistics don't particularly surprise me. I, like many others, know about Thailand's reputation as a sex tourism hot spot. This is all despite the fact that prostitution and sex work is prohibited in Thailand. However, as one may imagine from the sheer volume of money moving through the industry, officials often turn a blind eye to the Red Light District because they are aware of the positive impact it has on the economy and tourism. The importance of sex work on Thai society can be seen very clearly when looking at the impact that the pandemic has had. In February of last year, NPR ran a story titled "How the Pandemic Has Upended the Lives of Thailand Sex Workers", where they interviewed sex workers about the impact that closed borders had on their lives. One woman interviewed said that pre-pandemic, a good night could be $100 - $200, whereas the night before the interview, many women made nothing at all. In all the articles I read, they mentioned that for many people working in theThailand sex industry, it's a way to get out of the rural towns they were born in and move into the city, while also sending money home to their families. Not only the lives of sex workers have been greatly affected without the income of tourists, but also the lives of their families. If you'd like to know more about the history of the sex tourism industry in Thailand, I'd highly recommend the Thaigers spelled T, H, A, I, G, E R, article and companion video on YouTube titled Thailand sex industry, a brief in history. With a runtime of about 10 minutes, it tells a comprehensive story of how the sex tourism industry grew in Thailand from the 60s onwards.
Speaker 3 10:43
The history of sex work and international law begins several years before the UN was established. If you remember anything from high school, you'll remember that the first attempt of something that resembled anything like the Global Assembly of nations, such as the UN, started after the First World War, and was called the League of Nations. As the war just happened, the league's priority was to make sure that peace was maintained amongst its members, kind of like the role of today's NATO. Only later did the league decide to draft conventions related to human welfare. In September of 1937 the League of Nations council was presented with the convention for suppressing the exploitation of the prostitution of others. This convention didn't go too far, because we all know that there was another war brewing, and the League of Nations dissolved shortly after. However, 10 years later, in 1947 this convention made a comeback, and it appeared in the new and improved United Nations. This time, the convention actually made it through all of the necessary bureaucratic drafting stages and was adopted by the UN in 1949, opened for signatories in 1950 and entered into force in mid 1951. So to give you an idea about the tone of this convention, the preamble basically states that prostitution is incompatible with human dignity, right? The whole thing essentially seeks to punish those involved in any way, anything to do with prostitution or trafficking, and it's basically attempting to criminalize prostitution. This includes sex workers, people buying sex, and people who run brothels or set up these kind of things.
So let's take a step back and analyze a little bit about what we know. So this convention uses the term prostitution to talk about sex work, which is just a way to create a bit of a disconnect or to make the work seem less legitimate. I also just want to mention that this whole convention discusses sex work and human trafficking as if they're the same thing. Sex work is consensual, and I'm pretty sure no one is consenting to being trafficked. Speaking of consent, Article One basically says sex work is bad, blah, blah, blah... "even with the consent of that person." Pardon me? Let's make this clear, sex work without consent is rape. So at that point, we're no longer talking about sex work. We're talking about rape. Anyways, this is the last that you had mentioned sex work in any other conventions until 1979. So the next convention is called the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women or CEDAW, and it's a pretty significant document, and it's one of the major conventions that the UN has. So in this document, we're concerned with Article Six of the Convention, which states that state's parties shall take all appropriate measures, including legislation to suppress all forms of traffic and women and the exploitation of the prostitution of women. So let's talk about it. This article has the same problems we talked about with the 1949 convention, and it uses the term prostitution to talk about sex work in an attempt to delegitimize it. And this article does the same thing where it talks about sex work and trafficking as if they're the same thing, which they're not. So if there was a Venn diagram of sex work and human trafficking, there would be a little bit of overlap, but it's kind of the same as if there was a Venn diagram of pharmacists and drug dealers. They're not the same thing, but a pharmacist has a little bit of risk in becoming a drug dealer. You know what I mean. Anyways, it's clear that the UN has not shifted its perspective on sex work since even before its inception in like 1937. And this document and the previous convention of 1939 basically just reflects the current international atmosphere on sex work
Speaker 4 15:09
In contemporary society. sex work is viewed in two distinct ways. The first, according to Cecilia Benoit, Michaela Smith, Michael Jansen, Priscilla Healy and Doug Magnusson in their article on prostitution policy is that prostitution is principally an institution of hierarchical gender relations that legitimizes the sexual exploitation of women by men. The second which we are more inclined to is that sex work, like all labor under capitalism, is exploitative and in which intersectionality causes inequalities. These conflicting ideas on sex work have led to around four different models of legal policy to deal with sex work.These models are criminalization, neo-abolitionism, also known as the Nordic model, legalization and decriminalization. Each of these models have pros and cons associated with them.
Criminalization means making the sale and purchase of sex work illegal. Criminalization keeps the sex industry underground, removes the ability of workers to exert their rights or redress wrongs and violences committed against them, and places people in a cycle of arrest and incarceration.
The Nordic model criminalizes the purchase of sex work, but not the sale. Although this may sound like a great model that protects sex workers, and simultaneously deters the purchase of sex work, in reality, it makes sex work more dangerous. The decriminalized sex work campaign does an excellent job explaining the problems with this model. They say that the Nordic model leads to sex workers who are financially dependent on criminalized clients and are compelled to accept clients who refuse to give their legal names, exhibit nervous behavior or insist on a remote location. This means that sex workers are unable to practice harm reduction strategies for safety. Because sex workers are surveilled by police who are looking to arrest clients, reasonable people start to insist on a location of their choosing, rather than a place where the sex worker feels comfortable. This makes it easier for predators to lure sex workers to their robbery, rape or death.
Legalization may seem like the best response to the failures of the Nordic model as it legalizes both the sale and purchase of sex work. However, there are some major issues with the legalization framework. This includes some models that require sex workers to go through licensed brothels, which, according to Laurie Schrag from the Florida International University, can subject sex workers to control by others who exploit them or to criminal prosecution when they work outside of legally approved venues. Other aspects that come with legalization can be requiring sex workers to mandatory registration and regular health examinations, which can contribute to negative stereotypes surrounding sex work.
Finally, decriminalization of sex work removes punishment for both the sale and purchase of sex work. This allows sex workers to work in whatever environment they prefer, access protection, report abuse and keep records of clients. This is the framework that is supported by most sex workers internationally, as well as the model we agree is best. Victoria will go into more detail on the specificities of the different models of sex work and the benefits of decriminalization
Speaker 5 19:03
As Tyler mentioned, we agree decriminalization is the best approach to advocate human rights for sex workers. I will discuss the benefits of decriminalization in more detail. According to Amnesty International sex work is not legalized everywhere, and its regulation varies even within countries. Therefore, individuals have different attitudes toward sex work. As a result of criminalization, sex workers are at risk of sexual abuse, lack of health protection and lack of authority supports.
The criminalization approach considers sex work to be illegal and strengthen restrictions on it. In this approach, the assumption is that individuals enter the sex industry involuntarily, and the purpose of abolishing sex work is to maintain social harmony. Because of this, the general public often excludes sex workers from the protection of human rights. Many individuals believe that criminalizing sex work prevents Women Objectification. However, in reality, criminalizing sex work for the marginalized sex workers, makes it more difficult for them to earn a living and to seek assistance
Regarding the legalization of sex work, sex workers are considered high risk victims. In countries where sex work is legalized, law enforcement often attempt to charge sex workers with other crimes and humiliate them for their occupation. People who work in the sex work industry rarely seek assistance from authorities due to the fact that they are frequently threatened by them, and if they do seek assistance from authorities, they are likely to be banished by their own groups and lose business opportunities. Having a legal ban on sex work makes the situation even worse. The criminalization of sex work prevents sex workers from reporting abusive behavior for the fear of jeopardizing their career. They are placed in a vulnerable position. It is difficult for them to seek support, and their customer and boss will use it as everage to abuse them. In addition, due to the stigma associated with sex work, it is difficult for them to obtain reproductive protection information and use. Last but not the least, human trafficking related to sex work has become more prevalent and more challenging to check because of the criminalization.
Decriminalization, on the other hand, brings many benefits to sex workers. They would be working in a safer environment once the stigma is removed, and if they experience sexual violence, they will be more likely to seek assistance from authorities. Also, the authorities can better distribute their resources in order to combat human trafficking in sex work.
Speaker 6 22:01
As heard earlier in the episode, the sex work industry in Thailand is extremely storied. Thailand has gone through a few different legal models, and the country's views on the industry have also seen major change over time, as the views and recommendations by the UN have also changed. Today, Thailand is known for its sex tourism industry.Despite its thriving sex tourism industry, Thailand currently criminalizes sex work. As of 2018 the UN formally encouraged the government of Thailand to focus on better regulating the entertainment sector and ensuring full application of labor laws to sex workers in Thailand and in general, has adopted decriminalization as their stance on the legal framework surrounding sex work with the support of sex work organizations around the world. Despite this, many countries, including Canada, do not adopt this policy. The UN can and should amend CEDAW to directly include sex workers rights and advocate for the decriminalization of all sex work although many argue Article Six, which states: state parties shall take all appropriate measures, including legislation to suppress all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution on women can and should be used to justify the decriminalization of sex work. A more direct article would be much stronger at getting this point across. It is our opinion that this would make the recommendation much more powerful and should be the goal of the UN in.