In assuming most men going on holiday alone to Thailand, are going to have sex with prostituted women or men?

[Grennie]

It is estimated that about 1% of Thailand's GDP is earned through sexual exploitation tourism.

In 2003 (the last year for which full figures are available) some 545,000 British residents arrived on visits. If you remove the children, and the British citizens visiting for business or reasons other than a holiday, you arrive at about 489,000—314,000 men and 175,000 women. That is 139,000 more British men than women coming to Thailand for a holiday—a gap of 28 per cent.

In no other international holiday destination, is there such a big difference in the number of women and men travelling there. There is no obvious reason for this apart from prostitution.

Perhaps grennie wanted to concentrate on the male sex tourists that perpetuate the sex industry?

What are you, the thread police? Telling women what they should have posted? Jog on.

Presumably you would have no sympathy for your Nigel if a band of mums net feminists bullied and harassed your husband, accusing him of being a rapist and supporter of the sex trade?

PMSL

Like that was ever going to happen in, yunno, real life.

The sexual abuse and exploitation of women and children in Thailand is actually happening however.

So no, no sympathy for my Nigel for a hypothetical situation that hasn't happened and isn't going to happen. My sympathy is kind of used up on the abused real women and children in prostitution. I think my Nige and his menz feelingz will be alright.

I imagine in the more realistic situation of a woman in Thailand striking up a conversation with him, and challenging him as a man as to his position on sex tourism, he would be just fine and able to express his humane sadness that it happens and disgust with his fellow men who abuse and exploit poor Thai women and children. He is a priviledged white man who has bodily autonomy - he doesn't need sympathy on the subject of sex tourism.

So why don't you wipe this clean and start a new thread to get the important discussion that is needed about this appalling industry?

The sex industry exists because men support it, including men we know. Men who are our brothers, husbands, colleagues and friends. Until men stop thinking this is okay to do it, it will continue. That is why my OP was about the men, not simply about lots of MNers posting - oh yes taht is terrible, as if it has nothing really to do with any of us. That is easy. That solves nothing.

sabrina

This thread will just end up with trading insults and will get nowhere.

A new thread will start an important discussion.

What's more important - the discussion or point scoring. Do you care about those women or would you rather spend this thread point scoring?

Justanotherposter -Because the industry exists on such a massive scale because of the sex tourism?

I don't think grennie needs you to tell her what she should have posted.

Why does it touch such a nerve for you - that the OP is concentrating on the sex tourism angle?

Your choice - but I think this thread will not serve any real purpose.

And that's not good for the real victims here.

What is more important is that we understand that this is our issue too. That it is men from the UK who we know, that keeps this sex industry going

I think the feminists posting here have made this a very thought-provoking thread and I am quite astonished by how defensive posters with Thailand-visiting dhs are getting.

If sex tourism exists on this scale, of course people are going to start wondering what your dps are going there for and making assumptions which are not to their credit. There's no point in throwing your toys out of the pram about it.

Alternatively we all have to go around pretending that there is no chance whatsoever of anyone's dp paying for sex and given that we know that many, many men are, that's just not realistic.

What's not good for the real victims here is that people either ignore or excuse the sex tourists that fuel this abuse on such a large scale- as exemplified on this thread.

Then what are you going to do about it?

Talk to men we know and make it clear that we won't have anything to do with men who do this

Do what?

Go to Thailand on holiday?
Or Amsterdam?

I doubt very much that there is a great deal that foreign westerners, no matter how well meaning we are, can actually do about the situation in Thailand.

What we can do is try to change ourselves. Our country, our culture, our attitudes, our men.

So that our men do not feed this industry and exploit and abuse the women and children in it. So that it is considered unacceptable and deeply misogynistic and racist to use prostituted women in Thailand and other poor countries. So that men who might be tempted to use prostituted women abroad think about what they are doing and are aware that even if it is normalized in Thailand, it is deviant, sexual offending behavior and most likely rape. Men don't like being told that their actions are rape - they should think about why that is and behave accordingly as the decent human beings they most likely wish to think of themselves as. And they should behave decently to all women, not just privileged western ones. Otherwise they are misogynists and rapists and they should have that pointed out to them.

First step is of course to admit that a fair number of men behave like this. Which, goodness me, appears to be the point of this thread

So you tell a bunch of divers (mainly male) that if they go diving to Thailand, you won't have anything to do with them.

So they don't go. So the company loses business, the local economy loses money and the loss of money leads to woman and children being forced to find sex work.

Then what are you going to do about it? is the perennial bolt-hole for all who have lost an on-line argument.

But I won't travel to Thailand because of this - nor China, nor anywhere where I know human rights abuses take place.

And please don't turn this into a list of places where I would holiday - that would be sooo dull.

beachcomber

It should be obvious to most posters on here how such a thread would have gone.

I'm sure Greenie didn't want it to happen but it was predictable.

No Sabrina - just trying to get away from all the "Nigel" stuff.

Unless you would rather keep arguing and not talk about the sex victims?

I do think changing western attitudes to sex tourism - making it totally socially unacceptable - would be the way to go.

It's just so normalised.

It's not just the West. I think a lot of it is Thai men as well plus China and Japan.

But yes - I agree it's too easy to go there and find someone.

It's normalised here to a degree - lap dancing, pole dancing, objectification. Just part of a whole culture.

So for example, when I talked to my DH about his trip to Thailand, it wasn't because he is a poor naive soul - it was because he is a man and has male privilege and sometimes needs that pointed out to him. So that he can have a think about stuff he doesn't usually need to think about what with being a white man in male dominated white supremacist society and all...

Yeah I thought it was obvious how this thread would go too - I thought there would be a lot of agreement that western men paying to fuck poor Thai women and children is deeply misogynistic and racist and that we as a society need to look at why British and American men make up a large proportion of those who sexually abuse and exploit in this way. I thought we would talk about colonialism and its aftermath and how the situation in Thailand was fueled in the beginning by the Vietnam war. I thought we would talk about how in countries with good records of gender equality and awareness, sex tourism is much less prevalent.

I quite honestly did not expect to read this thread when it popped up in active conversations to be bursting with a load of flannley shite demands for numbers/stats/studies on abuse that we know happens on a grand scale and a load of 'not my Nige'.

We can wring our hands all we like about Thai poverty and rape culture but we won't change much.

Our role is to shine a light on OUR culture and the behavior of our men and tell them to stop it. If we want to do that we have to first admit that these men exist. And they are friends, husbands, neighbours, cousins, fathers, etc.

I don't doubt that lots of men go to Thailand, for sex. DH has some friends who travelled around Australia, New Zealand and SE Asia for about six months, after their degrees. There are three of them and they were 21 at the time. On visiting Thailand, they did one night at lapdancing club, for the cultural experience (something about ping pong balls), but none of them had a prostitute. They were disgusted at the thought, and hated seeing all the very young girls with 60+ men. They only did one night in Bangkok (and lapdancing club) before moving onto the coast. I believed them that they didn't pay for sex, but to be fair, they were still part of the sex industry.

The sex tourism has put me off ever going to Thailand. I'm quite prudish.

And it is not true anyway that the cause is poverty. Het men do not become prostituted when they become very poor. This is about the demand from men to sexually exploit and rape children and women. That is why we need to tackle the men who are "demanding" this

"cultural experience", that is a novel way to describe the exploitation of women.