The Triangle...In the Golden Triangle

Ok.  So.  I know I already made two cultural posts but I really wanted to write about this because I think it's really important and fascinating.  And I just wrote a paper relating to this topic and it is on the brain and it won’t go away until I get it out.   So I'm writing about it.

Sex trafficking in Thailand is a flourishing business that exploits mostly women (over half of whom are minors) both from within the country and from other countries in the Mekong region.  Despite humanitarian and UN efforts, the industry only continues to grow.  This is because sex trafficking is actually deeply ingrained in Thai culture, and I believe this phenomenon can be explained with Practice Theory, in which ideology, structure, and practice all exist in a continuous loop, affecting and effecting one another.

Ninety percent of Thai people practice Theravada Buddhism, which is the oldest school of Buddhism.  Before I go on, I'm going to take a moment to briefly explain Buddhist philosophy with regards to gender equality. The Gautama Buddha, who is the Buddha of this age, preached that men and women were equals and that they should always act as such.  However, he also provided a hierarchy of living things.  At the top was the king or ruler, and after him were the monks, then the wealthy, men, women, cripples and destitute, and finally the animals.  The Buddha in this hierarchy did not teach that one was subject to the other, but that the hierarchy determined wealth and servitude in the inverse.  The king's job was to serve the people, the monks were to guide them, the wealthy were to provide for the common and poor, the common man and woman were to care for those who could not help themselves, and everyone was supposed to care for nature and the earth.  Most modern Buddhists translate the passage thus, and also interpret that women are not below men, as this is in contradictions in other teachings.  Their separate mention signifies that the Buddha recognized them as distinct but equal (in the best sense–not in a segregated sense).  However, Theravada Buddhism looks at this passage with a bit more of a literal interpretation.  Women are below men, but they are to be cared for by their husbands and fathers so they in turn can provide for children.  In Thailand, however, the hierarchy has been imposed as it is written.  Women are subject to men, and they have been for centuries.  Women cannot attain nirvana as they cannot enter the priesthood.  In fact, this idea is taken so far that women in Thailand often express that the best thing they can do with their lives is attain enough good karma to be reincarnated into men.

Yes, this is going to be long.  Bear with me.

Until the early twentieth century, polygamy was legal in Thailand.  As women were subject to men and therefore property, a man's success in life could be measured by his women.  A successful and wealthy man typically had three wives.  The first was the most important wife, and she ran the household and gave birth to children.  The second wife was below her in status, but her roles also included childbirth and child-rearing.  The third wife, however, was for sexual gratification.  Thus did ideology create a structure.  Over time, this institution became naturalized, and even common men began to take secondary and tertiary wives for sexual purposes, until the structure was practiced across the country.  But the structure and widespread practice in turn created a new ideology: sex was a man's right.  As women were subject to men and men needed a wive for sexual purposes, a woman's job was to provide that.  If a woman was able to provide sexual gratification to her husband, she was attaining good karma and might be a man in her next life, which was one step closer to nirvana.

And so this new ideology perpetuated the structure with perpetuated the practice which perpetuated the ideology and so on.  Until one fateful day in the 1920's when royal decree outlawed polygamy.  The structure and practice that had been in place for so long came to a grinding, gritty halt.  But the ideology remained, as law cannot wipe out thought.

Prostitution was there to pick up the pieces.  A man could still claim his right to sex, but he now had to pay for it.  Prostitutes, however, can be pricy (please note that I do not speak from experience).  They set their own rates, and their rates can be high depending on demand.  And when polygamy first went out, demand was high.  The poorer men could not claim their rights as they could not afford to.  And then the solution appeared: the Hill Tribes.

The Hill Tribes are peoples in northern Thailand who live in extremely poor communities.  According to tradition, caring for the household is the responsibility of the eldest daughter after her older brothers are married.  Sometimes girls from the Hill Tribes make their way to the city in search of jobs so they can send money home to their families.  As a woman's role was to serve a man, it was almost natural that girls took up such occupations.  They needed money more, so they charged less than higher class prostitutes.  But demand was still high, and prices higher still.  Then pimps began to create a system to reduce prices.  Girls were kept in the sex industry by means of accrued debt for housing and meals and random interests.  This effectively spawned a new kind of structure to provide for the ideology.  Women were kept as sex slaves, for if a woman was not free to determine her own worth, her services could be afforded by all men, and all men could claim their sexual rights over women.  And so did the ideology of class and natural rights spawn sex trafficking.

The industry boomed, and continues to do so today as even the poorest of the poor can afford at least an hour with a woman (the average sex slave goes for $5 an hour, while a high-class prostitute goes for at least several hundred).  In this we see how ideology creates a structure that results in a practice that influences new ideologies that solidify structures that encourage continued practice and on and on it goes.  Even when a structure is abolished, ideology will find a way to fulfill itself.