Empower! On sex work and stereotypes in Thailand

I just came back from a month in amazing Laos but before I left for Laos I spent a week morning, noon and night (late night!) with the women of Empower in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I'll be hanging out/volunteering at the Patpong Empower office in Bangkok too. Here are a few stories.

Empower is the national organization by and for sex workers. Importantly they are not an ‘exit agency’ attempting to save women from sex work. They have offices in four cities and run their own sex work bar in Chiang Mai called Can-Do!

And they Can. And Do. They offer high school equivalency classes that are sensitive to sex workers and at times that workers can attend. They offer English classes to women who need it for working with foreign customers and Thai classes to migrant women who need it to work and survive in Thailand. And more! Safer sex materials, public education, political advocacy at local and national levels, they negotiate with workplaces directly for safer conditions and keep track of the appearance of any “locked in” brothels (aka trafficked women). In short, they do it all and I wanted to come to Thailand in part just so I could meet them and deliver a gift of 250 condoms donated by Good For Her and Maggies.

The night I arrived in Chiang Mai, I wished to the universe for a ride on one of the ubiquitous motobikes here. I didn’t know the answer to my prayers would come in the form of a big garrulous chain-smoking Aussie named Liz. Liz, with brown hair just past her chin and eyes that squint when she smiles. Liz is the one foreign member of the Empower organizing committee—she’s been with them for over a decade. She picked me up at 11:30 am on a Sunday and spent the next 12 hours talking sex work politix with me. A lot of what I learned in the next week was confidential so I will share just a bit of it here.

At 6:30 we went to a demo inside a temple to protest the detainment of Shan political prisoners in Burma (organized by the Shan women’s Action Network and Shan Youth Power). It was my first time at a demo 1. inside a temple, 2. involving monks offering prayers 3. shoes off (off course. No shoes ever in a temple).

Thai TV were there covering the demo as it was technically illegal—Thailand has been under martial law since the September 2006 coup. As we exit the temple carrying little candles, into the glare of the TV lights, Liz snorts “hope you didn’t want a visa for Burma! Ha!”.
Ha.
We walk three times around the temple’s stupa--it looks so lovely against the stars in the sky--before planting the candles on it with wishes for peace.

In Empower I see an organization with strength, size, success and solidarity that I have never witnessed in Canada. And in our endless conversation about thai politics it is clear to both Liz and I that one obvious reason for the difference is the lack of ego involved in Empower’s organizing. Empower has been around for over 20 years and no one has ever left in a blaze of recrimination or created a splinter group. They have no formal decision making process—no need for one. They have hundreds of members but no formal hierarchy. When funders ask about their structure, they draw a picture. One year it was a spiral. Another, a tree.

This is an organization so integral to Thai politics that after the coup, they were one of the organizations to address the 100,000 people who gathered at a demo in Lumphini park, Bangkok. Can you imagine any of this at home?

More than anything else their solidarity astounds me. They have a relentlessly “client-focused” approach. Nothing comes before the sex workers they serve and this shows in even the tiniest details. I amazed at their success and how little conflict they've experienced. When I mention this to Liz she says “we’re in a revolution, we haven’t got time for bullshit”

Oh yes, right. Bullshit. I see how ego (mine included) has divided much of the organizing I’ve been a part of. I’ve had a lot of time to observe my own ego--mostly with amusement and exasperation. After a long meditation one day in Laos, I see how my ego is like one of those bossy 8 year old girls I saw playing in a laos school yard. I expected to be humbled by this trip and in fact, I have been. My experiences are ordinary and predictable for a woman like me. I’ve read bestselling books, walked around confused, started meditating, found god in a bamboo shoot and realized that nature is like, really pretty. Amazing huh? Heaven forfend i should be just like everyone else.

I learned so much on just that first day that I went home and wrote 15 pages straight. I wrote about the end of trafficking in Thailand in 1996-7, on how male sex workers seduce foreign women, on volunteers-who-implode, on the human rights awards that Empower has been granted, working with the UN, how the sex work markets differ in various parts of Thailand, on political strategies and why strikes don’t work, on the law, pay ranges and more. 12 hours worth!

Over the next week I learn tons more from the workers themselves. I hang out all day at the drop in centre which feels like a beauty salon (and in fact it is: I got my hair dyed and finger nails done), I help with outreach on Valentine’s day going into the bars where the women work, I go out dancing with them at night, I sing karaoke at the Can-Do, I teach English and give a little sex seminar late one night with some of the most warm and gracious women I’ve ever met. It’s amazing.

Over the course of my week, so many of my expectations were blown away. Here is one of my favourites:
We were out one night at a dance club with many foreign men. Sex workers frequently work in regular bars and tonight my friends may or may not be working, depending on whether they see any clients they find desirable. So I ask P. if she thinks anyone at the bar is cute. Yes actually! She points to three young drunk English men, dancing terribly with their sunglasses on. Indoors.
Really?!
Yes, she nods enthusiastically.
Them?!
Yes!
Huh.

Another tells me she doesn’t like the young men, but prefers men with white hair. She points to an older guy, in his late 60’s sitting with a young thai woman. You mean the guys that everyone thinks are skeezy for hooking up with 20 somethings?
Yep. Him!
Huh. Well…Oh.

And I learn one of many Big Lessons: everyone is beautiful to someone. And that's a good thing. Did I think they were dragged into working with foreign men that they secretly disliked? Why—because that’s how I’d feel about these guys?

Over the course of the week, one stereotype after another bites the dust. Another of my Big Lessons was: Why Sex Tourism in Thailand is Perfectly Fine. Ask me if you wanna know more.

Within a few weeks I realize that relationships between Western men and thai and lao women that began through sex work are some of the most loving, happy and honest relationships I’ve ever seen. Not all of course! But wow, I can almost hear the bombs dropping on my stereotypes about Farang (Western) clients.

Speaking of bombs, eventually I have to leave the country in order to renew my visa so I head up to Laos for what was supposed to be a 2 day visa run in the world’s most heavily bombed country ever. For a few reasons, this turns into a month in lovely landlocked Laos. And that I think I will tell that story next time…

xo
cg
Oh, here’s a fun experiment! Tell someone (ANYONE) that you are working with a thai organization by and for sex workers. They will get this pitying look on their faces and say how generous you are because gosh, those sex workers really need help getting out. Say “why would they need to get out?” and watch them stumble over their words with shock. I have been doing a lot of my own “outreach” among the travellers on why sex workers in Thailand are doing just fine thank you very much. It’s my own little contribution and my ego loves it.