Bangkok Blogs

One of the most controversial debates of all time in Thailand, especially Bangkok, is whether prostitution should be legalised and the extent to which it has become part of the Thai society so that people will just get on with and accept it. As a born Bangkok citizen, I’d like to share my view with you here.

To begin with, we must accept the notion that the Thai culture has always been male-dominated throughout history. Men are allegedly the master and women are treated as the obedient and hardworking creatures. Sex relations outside marriage by Thai men are outrageously unlimited and can even be considered unusual. However, any children resulted from such casual relations will be the responsibility of women. Many women, as a result, cannot support their children financially and have to turn to prostitution.

Judging from what I have experienced, a large percentage of Thai men have had sexual relations with concubines and mistresses. More wealthy Thai blokes will tend to see countless concubines throughout their sexually active years and to me that is in fact possessive prostitution. Thai society is widely rife with this sort of female mistreatment. It is also causing an awful lot of shortcomings as well as financial hardships. And anyone trying to alter it will have a real mountain to climb.

I would also like to point out that such problems are happening elsewhere too. It can be hugely common in countries with lack of economic developments and a large percentage of poorly educated population. Parts of Asian and South America are no different to Thailand when it comes to such an issue.

In countries with a good welfare system, governments will unwillingly support the break-up of family and in turn promote deviant behaviour. In non-welfare countries, prostitution seems to be closely related to economic and unfortunate events, whereas in the developed world, it is more of a personal choice or possibly a career path rather than economic pressures. There are also different forms of prostitution besides sleeping with paid customers. As one may argue, certain forms of social prostitution, for instance, even do exist in big business corporation through short term agreements involving female staff you know what I mean.

And just out of curiosity did you know that less than 10 percent of Thai prostitutes actually serve foreign punters, with the other 90 per cent or more available to the local men. I reckon it is this vast majority of blokes that keep prostitutes down and treat them like dirt so more women have increasingly turned to foreign customers with more money power and possibly better treatment.

I have also learnt that quite a good number of working women can leave the profession whenever they like though many still have no other choice. Thanks to the poor education in Thailand coupled with a male dominated culture it is hardly surprising that loads of working girls prefer to stick with the profession despite having made absolute fortunes. That way will just earn them more and more money and hardly any different treatment, so their career stance is perfectly understandable, well at least to me.