On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > > To summarize: I am not arguing that there is no exploitation of women doing > sex work -- there is plenty, especially of the non-white workers. But that > does not mean that sex work work should be abolished (as they did in Cuba or > China which -- I strongly suspect-- was an expression of patriarchal petty > bourgeois morality than anything else), just as the dismal conditions in the > "Satanic Mills" did not justify abolishing textile industry altogether. It > means that sex work should be treated and protected in the same way as any > other kind of work. > This seems nuts to me. After Castro took over, the government was faced with the appalling legacy of Cuba as the fleshpot of the United States. It was used for sex tours the way that the Philippines is used today by American or Japanese tourists. In the current issue of the Village Voice there is an article on a Queens travel agency that takes men to a 10-night sex tour of the Philippines. The article states: "But if Big Apple is withering, the sex-tour industry is thriving.Fueled by giant disparities in the global economy and the ever increasing ease of travel, international gender exploitation has blossomed into what may be as much as a billion-dollar industry, according to ECPAT, an international children's rights group that says its name stands for End Child Prostitution Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes. A growing number of companies organize trolling expeditions of the sex industry, which group up around Western military men in poor Asian countries. Advertising in magazines such as Asia File and Soldier of Fortune, most will also happily send you videos and related merchandise... But the draw is not just plentiful cheap sex, but also the chance to feel desirable. Filipina 'ladies are interested in all American men regardless of age, weight, or looks,' promises Bushwhackers, a Nevada-based tour company. 'It's like being an attractive woman in America,' one satisified customer has been quoted as saying. 'You look like Tom Cruise and you're that rich!' Sex-tour leaders also tap into plain old hostility toward 'American bitches who won't give you the time of day,' as one brochure puts it. Tales of toe kissing, hand laundering, and other forms of Asian-female subservience are juxtaposed with nasty swipes at feminist foes of sex tourism, whom Alan Gaynor of Philippine Adventure Tours has called 'a bunch of jealous, frustrated trouble-makers who don't know the truth.'" My guess is that the Philippine revolutionary movement calls for the end of such sex-tours and would probably ban prostitution on taking power. This sort of goal has nothing to do with the movement in the United States to legalize prostitution. Many women in the United States who are in the sex industry put forward arguments that we are hearing here and should be judged on their own merits. The question of prostitution in countries like pre-revolutionary China and Cuba and the Philippines of today involves all sorts of issues related to colonial oppression and require a different approach. It would be foolhardy for Western Marxists to rationalize what is going on in Thailand, India or the Philippines. Louis Proyect
