Evidence Of a More Natural "Sea Level" For Prostitution In Thailand?
According to the decidedly non-sex blogger Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution, Thailand's turning into a case history for the virtues of ditching the antediluvian "virgin/whore" dichotomy. Check out his excerpt from annoyingly titled "The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS" by epidemiologist and HIV/AIDs researcher Elizabeth Pisani.
Thailand used to fit the the classic 'virtuous girls, philandering boys' model. At the start of the 1990s, 57 percent of twenty-one-year-old men in Northern Thailand trooped off to the brothel to do their philandering. More than half the sex workers who soaked up their excess energy were HIV-infected....
Then...the Thai economy boomed. Girls were getting better educations than ever before...Educated girls were waiting longer before getting married, but not before having sex. By the end of the 1990s, 45 percent of girls aged 15-21 in northern Thailand admitted to having sex with boyfriends before marriage, compared to less than a tenth of that in a nationwide survey in 1993.
...So at the end of the decade, we have a lot more premarital sex and not all that much condom use with girlfriends. But now that these young, cash-strapped guys can have sex without paying, they've stopped handing over cash for sex. By the end of the 1990s, only 7 percent of young men were paying for sex, and HIV prevalence in sex workers had come down too.
....In short, more women having premarital sex equals less HIV.
Tabarrok (and possibly Pisani) see this primarily as a triumph against HIV. And it really is a triumph. But I'd just point out it's *also* a "triumph" against prostitution and, by extension, *sex* trafficking (though not, unfortunately *labor* trafficking.)
Too bad it works in a way that's exactly antithetical to rabid anti-prostitution types like the Southern Baptist Convention and their admirers who, by extension, imagine an outlaw prostitution *and* sexual agency for women approach -- while evidently refuted at least amongst Thai nationals, at least so far -- would be more to their liking.
And no, as always, I'm not saying prostitution is bad or wrong. I'm just saying I think the standard theory whereby a small number of women are sacrificed to prostitution in order to preserve the "purity" of "good" women from the "scourge" of horny men just kind of... sucks. For prostitutes who have to survive their designation as second-class citizens, for customers who have to endure the schizophrenic assumption that they're such superior beings they degrade anyone they have sex with, and with non-sex worker women who are expected to pretend that except for childbearing life exists entirely above the belly button.
Evidence from Thailand and, according to Kinsey, the U.S. over approximately the last century, the "virgin/whore" dichotomy accounted for something like 90% of all contacts with prostitutes, to the benefit of no one and increased peril for almost everyone. And actually, given that current customers give roughly the same excuses of "asexual" or unadventurous wives and "seed-spreading" men, I'm guessing the natural market for unencumbered prostitution might be even lower. Which might sound negative except...
Except that it really would be great both the sex workers who really are are currently trafficked and "prostituted" and if the much larger number who turn to sex work out of social or economic circumstance rather than affirmative desire were no longer required to meet the remaining demand. it would be cool for people like RenegadeEvolution and "Belle de Jour" as well who actually *enjoy* what they're doing because they wouldn't have to perpetually worry about getting knocked off by psychopathic customers, overzealous prosecutors, and people who are dead sure they're still somehow being forced into it.
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