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.

I'd hope that CEOP were doing a lot of that stuff anyway - as part of their paedophile investigations. I should imagine it's highly likely that men who view child sex images online are the same people who go to Thailand for child sex.

It's what I would do if I was in CEOP - I am not sure if their remit covers actual sex tourism or if it's only online stuff.

We need border controls anyway. It's ridiculous we don't know who's leaving our country. With a focus on Thailand and a check on lists of sex offenders.

Yunno I am not a politician or an ambassador or someone with particular power. I'm just a standard white western woman with white western privilege. I can't do much to change world economics and power. What I can do is call out white western privilege and male entitlement and privilege within my culture. And that means challenging the fact that white western privileged men exploit and abuse women in other countries (and of course at home).

And that means naming the problem, naming the perpetrators, naming the colonialism, naming the misogyny. And saying that it is wrong. First step is admitting that it happens and calling out those who walk among us.

Whataboutthemenz feelings is definitely not helping. And I doubt that decent men condone it.

So do you think there is a lack of will on the part of the Thai government?

Also surely much sex tourism is a by-product of business travel - the bars in Bangkok grew up to entertain flight crews allegedly.

You may hope for it justa but it's not happening because there are no controls or oversight on who is going to Thailand or why they are going. And apparently it's horrendously offensive to ask men this question.

ps "designed sex tourism areas" = "designated sex tourism areas" in pp.

Ukbi1 where are you going with all this whataboutery? How does it relate to things we actually can do and accomplish in our own country?

Very interesting discussion (when focused on the original AIBU). My husband works for a company with offices all over, and it is just understood that the Thailand office is a place many of the single men want to go visit and often invent some work that they are needed to perform there to justify a work jolly. Amsterdam and Isreal are other highly sought after destinations for similar reasons.

It is an open secret and I have heard my husband and others discussing those trying to find excuses to visit in a disparaging way. However, I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't thought about many of the issues raised in this thread.

I am in no way possessive of my husband, and never feel jealousy or worry about what he's getting up to when away on business, but I will be very unhappy if he ever has to go to Thailand now, as while I was aware of the sex trade before, I didn't really connect it to the men 'we know and love' going and supporting.

I'll be a lot more vocal in future discussions; more challenging and less accepting, so thanks Grennie et al.

Ubik We have an active sex trade here which I am sure does very well out of business conferences and tourism

Yes indeed, and this affects the women who are on business trips and are effectively excluded from the male bonding opportunities that strip joints and the like afford unless they are prepared to join their colleagues on the jaunts to strip clubs. I know a large number of women who have found themselves in the very uncomfortable position of seemingly approving of it all -- both the abjectness of the women working in the clubs and the spectacle of their married colleagues luvving it all. The effect of the normalisation of buying sexual services aimed at the heterosexual male is the maintenance of a very macho working environment, where women are openly objectified and those who refuse to take part are excluded from business opportunities.

When buying sexual experiences is seen as a reward for meeting sales targets, or a consolation prize for being away from home, or a leisure activity that can be combined with business opportunities as golf used to be, women find themselves in the position of outsiders just as they used to be when business was transacted on the golf course. Should women adopt the attitude 'if you can't beat them join them'?

The existence of the sex industry affects women everywhere.

Technophobic It's not just demand but the supply chain. Business is a two way thing so the issue needs to be tackled at both ends.

You are 100% mistaken if you think women or men would become prostitutes if there wasn't demand for sexual services. What would be the point? Do you think they sit around masturbating when business is slow?

Prostitution exists because of the demand. End of.

And you are even more than 100% wrong when it comes to prostituted children.

Sorry, Technotropic

Holly, if you're still here --
^"Just because an assumption involves members of one sex in particular doesn't make it sexist."
Replace that with the word race or disability and that makes things racist and disabilist.^

It's not racist, sexist or disablist if it's the truth. It's simply a fact.

Just because the truth may be unpalatable doesn't mean it is not true.

Justanotherposter

Challenge the sex industry, yes. Challenge potentially innocent Menz, no. That isn't caring about the Menz more than those poor women/children but just doing things in a less indiscriminate manner.

How does one challenge the sex industry without challenging its customers and potential customers? It's the granddaddy of all demand led industries. In order to end it the demand has to be exposed, challenged, and stamped out.

You can't separate the Thai sex industry from the customers or the potential customers. It simply would not exist without them. If it's going to be stamped out, men have to see it and men have to care enough to stop buying sex from Thai women and men, and to stop raping Thai children.

Without being challenged, how are men going to notice the misery all around them in Thailand or start thinking of it as a problem?
Do you think they see it right now?
Do you think they care?
If they see it and consider it a problem, how do they show that?
If they don't see it or don't care, how are they to be made aware, and without awareness and action based on that, how is the sex industry going to be wiped out?

In general, are problems dealt with while huge numbers of people go about their business blissfully unaware?
In general, are problems that are perpetrated by one specific group tackled as long as that group goes about its business unchallenged?
If individuals do not consider themselves part of the majority group whose behaviour and attitudes constitute the problem, how can they be identified in order not to be singled out for the necessary challenge?
If they are not saying or doing anything to challenge what the other members of the group are doing, how can they claim to be different from the offending members of the group?
What do men whose motto is 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' contribute to the solution of the problem?

Do you believe the objection of women to prostitution and the sex industry in general makes a difference to men or do they think of that at all?
Do men think of prostitution as a problem that affects all of society, including men, or do they see it as a 'women's problem'?

It is awful to think it is men we know and love who use prostituted women and children, both in Thailand, and elsewhere. But that is the reality. The numbers are far too large for it to be down to a few dodgy blokes that we would all avoid naturally anyway.

You are 100% mistaken if you think women or men would become prostitutes if there wasn't demand for sexual services. What would be the point? Do you think they sit around masturbating when business is slow?

Prostitution exists because of the demand. End of.

And you are even more than 100% wrong when it comes to prostituted children.

The trouble is, when you have tunnel vision you completely miss an opportunity to see the whole picture.

I'm not talking about children but the OP that discusses 'women' and 'men' so will keep my attention on that side of things instead.

IMHO if you try and understand the motives for prostitution and why people feel the need to pay for sex then you go some way to some sort of solution. Although men are part of the problem they are exactly that, 'part of the problem'. Believe it or not, some women are also part of the problem. Women pay for sex too so the situation is complex. The trouble is, whilst these threads are very thought provoking they tend to be unbalanced and focus on how we can change the bad 'menz'

Sadly the profession is older than history books go back so it is impossible to tell what came first. As with all things business related, demand does not always come before supply and studies with animals have found that prostitution is instigated by both females and males alike.

Exploitaton needs to be stopped. It goes without saying. However, there will always be women out there (like it or not) that will willingly enter the industry for the cash incentive. Studies have shown that many private (as opposed to street prostitutes) enter willingly, therefore quashing the notion that 'all' women are coerced or forced into it.

It may be possible to stop the exploitation and sincerely hope this happens very soon. But if there are women out there that will happlily prostitue themselves then there will always be men ready to maintain the demand.

Grennie

Depressing yes, but fortunately we are at least one of the better countries for decent men so maybe we don't know many men at all who visit prostitutes.

prostitution.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004119

It is also awful that some of our mothers, sisters, aunts, friends and even Mumsnet members may have paid for sex too.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7914639.stm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_sex_tourism

Techno - It is wearing that you keep trying to pretend that women do it too the same as men. Yes a tiny number of the overall punters do this. But this is largely men doing this.

In terms of some women choosing to be prostituted - why do you think more poor Het men do not prostitute themselves to other men? If this is just about poverty, surely that would be the case?

Ok, so women buy sex too.

But there are some major differences :-

It is not on the same scale as men buying sex
Male sex workers do not suffer the same physical abuse as female sex workers
Male sex workers often have another source of income and are not entirely dependent on prostitution
Male sex workers don't start from the default position of being the oppressed sex class.
Women who buy sex are treated with disregard and disdain to a greater extent than men who buy sex.

The different dynamics involved in women purchasing sex as opposed to men purchasing sex lessen the degree of exploitation considerably.

Technotropic, you are full of balloon juice. It is not a complex situation. It is not in fact impossible to tell what came first. Do you think prostituted men and women sit around masturbating when business is slow? Or are you one of those people who thinks women who become prostitutes do so because they love sex so much? I see you trot out the myth of the happy prostitute.

Demand is what keeps it going. Not the huge enjoyment women get from servicing every punter who has the right amount of money in his wallet.

Along with demand is the idea of punters that women are put on this earth to serve men regardless of the best interests of the women themselves, and that they are entitled to use the bodies of women for their gratification or to make up for whatever inadequacies they have within themselves. These are ideas that predate the history books.

And 'women do it too' is beyond pathetic.

Technotropic:
'Depressing yes, but fortunately we are at least one of the better countries for decent men so maybe we don't know many men at all who visit prostitutes.'

LOL.

Seriously??

(And where is the clamour for stats?)

"It is also awful that some of our mothers, sisters, aunts, friends and even Mumsnet members may have paid for sex too."

Wow. The cognitive dissonance in your posts is startling Tech. Whatever it takes to get you through the day, eh? Applying a feminist analysis is challenging and can be difficult to accept that all is not lovely and rosey in the world. It's often easier to pretend things aren't as bad as you think by applying false equivalence.

Blistory I agree with all of that.

Woah, vapours for simply stating the fact that women buy sex too. How refreshing.

Your reaction(s) speak volumes about your ability to engage so I'm going to respectfully bow out of this one

That's not what you did. When you state that 'women do it too' you are implying some equivalence.

Are 4.5 million women travelling to Thailand annually to buy sex?

Make sure you keep your fingers in your ears and your blindfold firmly clamped over your eyes so you won't have to face the truth.

Haha, bye then. Are you off to tell the vegetarians that animals eat people too?

Make sure you keep your fingers in your ears and your blindfold firmly clamped over your eyes so you won't have to face the truth.

This ^ is about the long and short of it for many.