View Full Version : A Whole different take on "Rescue"
LaBelleThatcher
26-03-12, 06:32
Here is some extraordinary stuff from and about sex workers in the far east who do not necessarily feel like victims and are sick of being "rescued" that somebody posted on my FB page:
http://www.empowerfoundation.org/index_en.html
http://www.lauraagustin.com/
We travel for days up the mountains, across rivers, through dense forest. We follow the paths that others have taken. Small winding paths of dust or mud depending on the season. I carry my bag of clothes and all the hopes of my family on my back. I carry this with pride; it’s a precious bundle not a burden. As for the border, for the most part, it does not exist. There is no line drawn on the forest floor. There is no line in the swirling river. I simply put my foot where thousands of other women have stepped before me. My step is excited, weary, hopeful, fearful and defiant. Behind me lies the world I know. It’s the world of my grandmothers and their grandmothers. Ahead is the world of my sisters who have gone before me, to build the dreams that keep our families alive. This step is Burma. This step is Thailand. That is the border.
If this was a story of man setting out on an adventure to find a treasure and slay a dragon to make his family rich and safe, he would be the hero. But I am not a man. I am a woman and so the story changes. I cannot be the family provider. I cannot be setting out on an adventure. I am not brave and daring. I am not resourceful and strong. Instead I am called illegal, disease spreader, prostitute, criminal or trafficking victim.
Why is the world so afraid to have young, working class, non-English speaking, and predominantly non-white women moving around? It’s not us that are frequently found to be pedophiles, serial killers or rapists. We have never started a war, directed crimes against humanity or planned and carried out genocide. It’s not us that fill the violent offender’s cells of prisons around the world. Exactly what risk does our freedom of movement pose? Why is keeping us in certain geographical areas so important that governments are willing to spend so much money and political energy? Why do we feel like sheep or cattle, only allowed by the farmer to graze where and when he chooses? Why do other women who have already crossed over into so many other worlds, fight to keep us from following them? Nothing in our experiences provides us with an answer to these questions.
Sitting here, from another world and another generation I found that so easy to relate to that it was painful.
Both sides of this debate seem to have it in for men. What happens I wonder when we get tired of taking it? :D
Here is some extraordinary stuff from and about sex workers in the far east who do not necessarily feel like victims and are sick of being "rescued" that somebody posted on my FB page:
http://www.empowerfoundation.org/index_en.html
http://www.lauraagustin.com/
Sitting here, from another world and another generation I found that so easy to relate to that it was painful.
Wow! That's powerful stuff Eileen!! It's what's needed here.
I haven't had a chance to read further but will do so later.
Both sides of this debate seem to have it in for men. What happens I wonder when we get tired of taking it? :D
Which is why the client does not have a say or role in deciding how this debate will go.
I suspect any party involved would like to see us in the position of your new avatar!:o
Wow! That's powerful stuff Eileen!! It's what's needed here.
I haven't had a chance to read further but will do so later.
I was baiting her, but it seems that Ruhama and Co. mightn't be far off on the whole sex worker "witchcraft and broomstick" angle because as soon as I had posted, and got ready, the car wouldn't start.
I guess I'll read up on it now since it seems I won't be going anywhere for a while.
LaBelleThatcher
26-03-12, 12:41
Both sides of this debate seem to have it in for men. What happens I wonder when we get tired of taking it? :D
That dear, is *not* actually the way it ends, but if it helps you to sleep at night...:devils1:
Both sides of this debate seem to have it in for men. What happens I wonder when we get tired of taking it? :D
You are right, that is so true and thats the irony of it. The pro-crim side hate us for using our financial power and freedom to 'buy' the sisterhood for sex and many of the escorts themselves dislike this as well and feel that paid sex is wholly disrespectful to women in itself. Many want and need the market to exist as an alternative way of accessing funds but a few wouldnt mind us getting kicked up the ass in the process. If I remember correctly I even saw a post here where the lady looked forward to us getting locked up.! :eek:
Its a bit like being caught in the middle of ' no man's land '.
Jack in the Box
26-03-12, 14:11
These links tell it how it is. Well worth checking out. Much better reading than that anti-sex worker gutter rag the Sunday World for instance.
LaBelleThatcher
26-03-12, 14:32
Wow! That's powerful stuff Eileen!! It's what's needed here.
I haven't had a chance to read further but will do so later.
It is a whole different take on it to Ruhama. I can just relate to so many things in that statement...not just about the sex industry, but about how wrong it is to pen people in to one country, one culture, one set of limits on their expectations, just because they were born there. Here is something I wrote, long ago, about the Thai women who "married out" to Europe
For a while I was living in a very beautiful place, and a very dead relationship.
He would talk bitterly of the Thai women in a certain bar/restaurant that used to be there.
Divorced, separated, or living in a personal cold war, they spent all their money and their time (so he claimed) drinking, gambling, soft whoring.
This seemed sad to me. I was too aware of the reality of spending even one night with an unloved unwanted man to condemn them, and thus too aware of how driven they must have been to escape by that means.
If they drank, gambled and soft whored. What tale of disillusion and depression did it tell?
My attention was drawn to these Thai women everywhere, beautiful for the most part, slender lithe with two or three immaculate smiling children, and often the obligatory fat bald man (eerily reminiscent of the one I had at home) often so many years older it seemed obscene.
And their dead, scared eyes haunted me.
They had not sacrificed love and life for this, it was not offered them as an option in the first place, but had used their youth and beauty to buy a realistic standard of living, freedom from fear, hunger, prostitution. In so doing had found themselves in a world surrounded by this hitherto unsuspected element of love and life.....it must have seemed as if everyone but them was awash with it.
The final cruel irony.
In achieving one Nirvana at great cost they also opened a window on another that rendered it cruel, cold and grey.
I knew how they felt.
I never sought what they sought at any time in my life, but I am pretty sure I actually got what they got anyway.
I was dealing with a man who developed his ideas of and aspirations to relationships in Bangkok. In the same market where they peddled their youth. When he found the merchandise not entirely to his taste, he assumed that the same price would buy similar goods elsewhere on the same terms, and any suggestion to the contrary could be politely ignored.
I remember one Thai girl particularly.
She was beautiful as a reed is in water.
But cold, so cold, not there at all. She was with a party of two couples. Her partner was not unattractive, but no match for her heartstopping beauty, pasty faced, thickening, balding. They never talked TO each other, never looked AT each other.
She seemed completely unhuman, locked inside herself forever.
It chilled me.
With hindsight I realise that she and I (a carthorse by comparison) were both no more than ornaments.
Neither of us entirely voluntarily.
I had gone there choosing another quite different option to find myself trapped in this one, she had never known other options existed until she arrived there.
With hindsight my heart, once chilled to permafrost by her, thaws and grows tender.
A prison can be judged also by the determination with which people attempt to escape it.
The pain that lingers and crushes if they succeed can judge the damage it has done.
But all side tracking aside..."rescue" and a combined publicity stunt/anti-migration measure is one of the last things they need.
As all you guys are having a nice time feeling all marginalised and fragile, let me show you the other side of the coin.
One of my first clients, in London (I started as a sex worker 3, quite separate, times.) was a "Japanese", according to the cabbie...I got into the cab and he smiled at me sheepishly and said quietly, in near perfect English:
"Actually, I am not Japanese, but there is no need to embarass him"
Under light the guy was about six feet four and made Bruce Lee look like a minger...immaculately dressed, genuinely warm in a quiet way...I got his story out of him, and if you had been there you would realise that every word was true. He just wasn't the type that lies or exaggerates.
He was Burmese...he had just made it into private practice as an international lawyer. Obviously he was from a wealthy family, his father was village head man, so deep in the jungle that he had to walk more than 20 days to get home to see them in the summer.
Though they lived comfortably enough, it meant so much sacrifice for the whole family, and village (which, of course, was family too) to send him away to study that he had spent all his time studying and perfecting himself. No socialising, no girlfriends, not even any personal friends, not one wasted minute or penny in 7 years.
But now he was left young, handsome, successful, set to become wealthy (even after sending loads of money home) and he admitted hadn't got the first idea how to get a girlfriend...even though he felt he had finally earned the right to relax and enjoy himself.
He really was a lovely young man...the WHOLE PACKAGE..."Prince Charming from the jungle" and I am sure he must have a wonderful family now...but what a desperately hard beginning...even with all the love in the world (perhaps especially...he must have been so lonely cut off from home too).
Even so, if he were a girl, to this day his only real chance would be to make that 20 day walk and sell sex...
Forgive us if we get a little bitter and twisted, even on an international level?
You are right, that is so true and thats the irony of it. The pro-crim side hate us for using our financial power and freedom to 'buy' the sisterhood for sex and many of the escorts themselves dislike this as well and feel that paid sex is wholly disrespectful to women in itself. Many want and need the market to exist as an alternative way of accessing funds but a few wouldnt mind us getting kicked up the ass in the process. If I remember correctly I even saw a post here where the lady looked forward to us getting locked up.! :eek:
Its a bit like being caught in the middle of ' no man's land '.
Truly a horrific contradiction I would think, but then I suppose some ladies are here out of necessity, so while they're not coerced in the traditional sense, they do feel that they need to money and that sex work is the only option open to them to get it. I'm sure that breeds self-hatred at times, and certainly an immense dislike for the customers who you'd rather not see but you need their money.
At least that's why my emphasis has always been research and contracting with a girl on free will, or who at least has reached acceptance of it as just another job. I don't need the baggage of feeling like an exploiter and I certainly don't need a conviction, as it'd end me, so I'll always be begging for Probation or the Court Poor Box at that stage (no conviction recorded).
Dear God, Eileen, that Burmese character sounds exactly like my situation, although mine is due to a hang up about relationships which has been replaced by workaholic and alcoholic tendencies. It is truly horrific that a girl would not have had the same opportunities as that man, and it's certainly a wider issue than sex work at play there - society once again forcing people into a situation where it can look down on them.
LaBelleThatcher
26-03-12, 21:47
Dear God, Eileen, that Burmese character sounds exactly like my situation, although mine is due to a hang up about relationships which has been replaced by workaholic and alcoholic tendencies. It is truly horrific that a girl would not have had the same opportunities as that man, and it's certainly a wider issue than sex work at play there - society once again forcing people into a situation where it can look down on them.
I realised that as soon as I wrote it.
Except he didn't have much choice, not in the honourable range, you do... :D
I realised that as soon as I wrote it.
Except he didn't have much choice, not in the honourable range, you do... :D
If I was to take it as seriously as I should be I wouldn't have any life, nevermind choice. Drink, sex, and relationship must be put under the carpet in the name of achieving a First Class Honours degree, hopefully top of the class as well. Hours are intense, and this is supposedly the easy part as they only get worse once you actually go out into the world.
So, I'm definately going to need to set some time aside for some handcuff de-stressing. :p
LaBelleThatcher
26-03-12, 22:44
If I was to take it as seriously as I should be I wouldn't have any life, nevermind choice. Drink, sex, and relationship must be put under the carpet in the name of achieving a First Class Honours degree, hopefully top of the class as well. Hours are intense, and this is supposedly the easy part as they only get worse once you actually go out into the world.
Yeah, especially when you go to a college that is only accessible by car. :p
So, I'm definately going to need to set some time aside for some handcuff de-stressing. :p
Told you so!
Yeah, especially when you go to a college that is only accessible by car. :p
Well there was also the option of bus or train, but I don't think the heavens send any better sign that you're not meant to go today than your primary mode of transport being unavailable!
Told you so!
Only because I was already open minded, and you just sort of opened my eyes to a wonderful variety of options the usual standard "punt", and because it struck me that there is a whole host of beautiful ladies here to gain experience with, rather than trying to land it on some young one that I had to get drunk to work up enough confidence to meet, and can hardly see straight when the time comes.
Forgive us if we get a little bitter and twisted, even on an international level?
Fair enough Eileen, I'll bear this in mind. ;)