Thai Prostitution is Not Immoral
Joseph Aaron Lippert
Mateef C. Bergert, Esq.
Graduate student/Business Administration-Entrepreneurship.
Preface: I’m sure the title itself is enough to condemn me to “Sexist-Hell” in the minds of a certain segment of readership. If any Thai exchange students want to discuss-phom pood nit noi-I will return to Ice Hell right about thaw time. I’m a decent guy who’s calling this one how I see it. Those who automatically denounce me can suck my balls…
Dear UWEC, how’s things? Classes started and a new semester began, eh? Not for this graduate student cat this term. I’m gone on an Asian wander, but will be back soon enough. The world will keep spinning, shit will still happen, and I’m sure you’ll get on just fine…
Congrats on that stellar freshman retention thingy. The website told me about it when I went to check my E-mail the other day. It looks like all those alcohol classes and respect seminars and ‘You’re special and deserve to be coddled’ speeches are paying dividends, or, as I prefer to consider the situation, allowing the weak to advance.
Just my harsh, asshole opinion: If you can’t deal with normal, life-progressive changes to the human condition, maybe you should withdraw and shrink inside yourself, get depressed, drop out of school, start doing smack, and probably kill yourself soon enough; or at least do something different, something that feels right. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. If you do decide to leave us, please don’t curse Mother Earth with more defective genetic material while heading for the exits…
The shit of college is about seeing if you’ve got the balls and stick-to-it-iveness to remain on some manner of defined path, while being tempted at every turn by the real world. As someone who’s been around and seen some things, on the scale of life difficulties, UW-Eau Claire is definitely manageable. Pussifying the process may make for nice statistics and mothers who sleep well at night, but it doesn’t do any long-term good for the legions of bottle-fed soft-c*cks that will be graduating in three years time, except soften their minds and retard their social development. Yeah, Junior may have done it (at least the classes) and gotten the degree and all, but his sheltered ass will have the real-world understanding of a veal calf, and I won’t be at all surprised (probably a bit sickly amused…) when watching the slaughter…
Ok, sorry, that was off topic. So I’m posted up in Thailand right now and have somehow come to believe that there is nothing immoral about the couple million women, of all ages, who sell themselves in this country. Yeah, sometimes it’s sad, but I can’t really find anything morally wrong unless children are involved, or it’s some caged Burmese (another story…). Most of these women are just dutifully doing what is right for themselves, and their families. They are not Satan’s spawn.
This is a Buddhist country. These people don’t see anything wrong with expressions of sexuality, even if strange or not congruent to Judeo-Christian ideals. Simply put, if you have the means to arrange a dual midget dominatrix session, complete with chains and whips and all manner of leather restraints, well, have a go at it. ‘Sex tourism’ is one of the biggest contributors to Thailand’s domestic GDP. Those reinforcements you see on the country people’s huts; those were paid for by some daughters’ “boyfriend(s)”.
Standards of living have risen country-wide since the Vietnam War, and the rent-a-girls have a lot to do with it. The ‘tourism’ part of the bump’n’grind is mostly middle-aged to old Western men-who are either single or sick of pounding away (if they get it at all…) at their bitchy old wives, and want something small, warm, loving, and pleasant for a change-but the Thai’s do pretty good work on their own kind too.
Despite the cash infusions from deep-pocketed white men, it’s actually little brown guys that keep much of the country’s skirted economy ‘humming’. Most Thai women, even if they don’t work the corner, ‘date’ for economic reasons. A boyfriend is someone who’s getting nookie for tangibly contributing; a spouse is someone to create another generation with; fulfilling one’s role is of utmost importance. Yeah, Hollywood has snuck in some of her bullshit, but ‘true love’ (the warm, fuzzy, “you’re the one” shit) isn’t so easy to find, although kindness and affection comes quicker than McDelivery…
Complete sexual fidelity is almost non-existent in this culture-unless you’re the wife of an organized crime overlord, and kept locked and watched constantly. The occasional partner is monogamous, but their spouse still probably doesn’t believe it. No, society isn’t sex-crazed or anything, they just take sex for what it is: natural urges and expressions of humanity.
One time, after watching another young Thai girl walk hand in hand with some old white guy, I asked a Thai friend what his people thought of sex. My friend had been born and raised in Thailand, and was typical from everything I knew of him. His response is something I will never forget, and a sexual philosophy which seems to be pretty easy on the minds of the general populace: “When you have an itch, you scratch it.”
That was it. No complicated discussions of different types of love or lust or desire. No explanations of “this is Ok in this case, but not in this”. Nothing like that. No bullshit. Simple, straightforward, “When you have an itch, you scratch it.” So what if someone makes a few baht working out your tickles? Speaking of, my nads are getting sweaty from this ninety-degree heat. What’s it back there, eight or so?
So yeah, after watching this weird dance for awhile, and attempting to understand the cultural continuum that it operates within, I can’t really see anything wrong with the money. Life must be business sometimes. And that money brings a better standard of living to these girls and their families. “Dating” spreads money all around Thailand, and there certainly aren’t any cultural or religious institutions making people feel guilty about decisions in their best interest. It just is.
How can I say these things? Well, I’ve gotten to know a few of these girls (not intimately). You wander in to a place, get a beer to nurse, play some pool, and lightheartedly have some fun. Buying the girl a drink is never a bad idea, especially when bogarting a pool table and occupying the merchandise despite no intent to purchase, but it’s not required. Pleasantly getting to know another person is rarely a bad thing. And after doing this a number of times with “working girls”, I’ve found an interesting thing: on the whole, most of them are pretty happy. Most have families and lots of life within. They are a hell of a lot happier than you over-medicated parent-loathers…
So yeah, these girls selling their va-jjs in the streets and bars of Southeast Asia, who are helping their families and making the best life possible, and don’t have a culture that judges sexual decisions; they’re not doing a damn thing wrong. The only wrongs in this world are the sick fucks that bring some of these women here by force or coercion, or stick those Burmese in cages, not the free decisions of the girls.
To the haughty, stuck-up, daddy’s-girl bitches that read this and say, “That’s horrible”, “that’s disgusting”, or, “don’t they know they have other options?” I pose a question-Would you, Miss self-important, my-vagina-is a gift from God and more special than the three billion others in this world, have the toughness, love, and sense of selflessness to go selling your poontang so that Mom and Dad can have a bigger shack and still eat when their backs give out to decades of rice farming? Would you? Or would you rather dance around your self-constructed tower of self-importance and Western morality. Your choice is fine too, but don’t judge what’s merely different. “Let he or she who is without sin cast the first stone…”
No, Thai prostitution is messy and sometimes sad, but in this place, where sex is just a human impulse-not some strange holy sacrament, to be celebrated and shared with just one special person, blah, blah, blah. It’s an itch to be scratched. And why shouldn’t you be allowed to sell something that you can give away for free…?
Yeah, you suburban princesses ain’t got shit-spiritually or morally-on those tough-ass Isan bargirls working the sois of Bangkok, Phuket, and Pattaya; not by a long shot…
You wouldn’t sell your vagina on the streets to make a better life for your family, eh? And you think these girls who are doing what is best for them are going to burn in hell? Well, if that’s how you roll, you’re probably the type of person who’d do something infinitely worse, and endure the greatest of scorn in the name of your “personal space”…I bet you’ll put your parents in a nursing home for their final years…