Jim Algie Read online

  But the book’s core is language, and it’s manifesto to challenge stereotypes and clichés. ‘Bad girls’ they define in both Thai and English as, “Any woman who behaves or thinks outside the space society maps out for them; name of Empower’s newsletter”. As synonyms they list ‘revolutionary or rebel’.

  In the introduction of the book, Pornpit, the coordinator of the Chiang Mai office, wrote about how thrilled she was to attend the AWID 10th International Forum (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) held in Bangkok in 2005. At the same time, she said, “It was also hard to be labelled a ‘victim’ and a ‘prostituted woman’ rather than be respected as the hard working sex worker, family provider, community leader and human rights defender that I am. It was hard to be the only sex worker in a room when the USAID representative declared that the mighty US government and herself believe that my work degrades all women.”

  Only a few months before that conference, Pornpit had won the inaugural prize as a ‘Women’s Rights Defender’ from the Thai National Human Rights Commission. That left her wondering, “How could I be both… a recognised women’s rights defender and a disgrace to women at the same time?”

  The dictionary addresses these contradictions and academic constructs. “The right to define, to create, to adapt words and language is often seen as the right of academics alone. They alone claim the right to invent terms like ‘indirect prostitute’ and have them accepted even though the very people it refers to do not use, acknowledge or identify with the terms in any way As sex workers, we must be one of the most talked and written about groups in the world, but most of the words used about us have not come from us. We have our own vibrant living language and understanding of the terms used about us.”

  Incorporating their signature style of cheekiness and outrage, Empower shuns the expression ‘flesh trade’: “Not our business…we don’t cut off our flesh and trade it! We entertain our customers. We sell services not meat. That would be a butcher or abattoir. Preferred: Entertainment Industry.” They are quite right in noting that terms like ‘prostitute’ and ‘whore’ have become meaningless. Everyone has misappropriated variations on them, from Nirvana satirising themselves on the band’s T-shirts that sported the slogan ‘Corporate Rock Whores’ to Thai politicians flinging the insult at their rivals to label them as ‘corrupt’ or for buying votes.

  Noi believes that their work over the last 27 years has opened up wider channels of communication on the debate about the ins and outs of sex work. Having delivered lectures at universities in New York and Seattle, as well as at many international conferences, and becoming a Harvard Law School fellow in the International Human Rights programme, Noi said the dialogue is not as shrill or scholarly as it used to be. “We can talk about sex work now in universities. Before we could only talk about sexual abuse. Everyone took it that women selling their bodies equalled sexual abuse.”

  Does she feel much freer now to discuss her pet peeves and passions at conferences?

  “Everywhere I speak, I don’t care, I don’t mind, I will say what I want. People can listen or not,” she said with a grin. “But I only accept invitations to speak on the subjects that Empower specialises in: HIV and AIDS, tourism and sex work, and the cross-border migration of sex workers in Southeast Asia, from countries like Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Vietnam and China. It’s a growing problem. If tourists can travel freely through these countries, then why can’t women in search of work?” (A 2003 report published by the NGO spelled out the differences between ‘migrant sex workers’ and women forced into prostitution.)

  Thanks to their worldwide reputation as iconoclasts, the Empower centres have become hotbeds of intellectual tumult, with scholars, lawmakers, policemen and representatives from both governmental and non-governmental organisations descending upon them. Many visitors have their preconceptions challenged. Tanyaporn Wansom, a Thai who grew up in America and returned to her homeland on a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to do work on HIV/AIDS, had some of her feminist theories called into question through teaching English at the centre. “I’d just graduated from a kind of liberal school in the United States which was big on women’s rights and women’s studies, and I think I had more of a black and white view [of commercial sex], like it’s all disgusting and it’s all bad. But after working here and meeting some of the people, I can see both sides more and I’m less judgmental.”

  Having young scholars like Tanyaporn as volunteer teachers has also boosted the learning levels of the students and their self-esteem. Chumporn noted a dramatic improvement in the English and educational levels of the women who come to the Patpong office. “Five or ten years ago some of the women could barely read and write. Today they’re much better. I don’t think the education system has improved, but women are going to school for longer now.” As an art instructor at other schools for the young, who puts on ‘imagination workshops’ in performance art and socio-political theatre for the women of Empower, he said their creativity is no greater than many of his other students, but “their life experiences are totally different. They’re better able to deal with society and take care of themselves. They’re also much less shy, and when you’re less shy you can produce a lot more.”

  To keep up with the students’ learning prowess and shifting interests, the classes at Empower have changed over the years. “We don’t need to teach them so much about IT and computers now,” said Chumporn. “They know more about these subjects than we do.” He smiled. “But we’d like to do more with ‘tourist guide English’ as many of the women are escorting their customers on trips throughout the country.”

  For Empower, and many other such NGOs, decriminalising prostitution is the biggest concern. Doing so, they say, would usher in more protection in the form of laws and rights for male and female sex workers, while ridding the profession of criminal elements and police corruption. In this regard, they have allies in high places. Liz Cameron of their Chiang Mai office pointed out that decriminalising prostitution was endorsed by Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, during the UN High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS in 2008. The secretary-general claimed that this would also help to stem the flow of HIV/AIDS, which has been making a comeback in recent years.

  During the 15th International Conference on HIV/AIDS held in Bangkok in 2004, Empower stole the show with one of their performances. They set up a small bar where women danced in bikinis. As Noi recalled, “You should have seen all the different people lining up to watch the women pole dancing. There were religious leaders, NGO people, cops and even the security guards. It was fun and people should have something different at these conferences. But it wasn’t like a porn movie and the dancers didn’t take off their clothes. It was part of a demonstration about different lubricants, such as water or oil based, and how these can affect or even break various kinds of condoms. Many people still don’t know about this.”

  Among the 20,000 delegates at that conference were more than 100 sex workers from 21 countries, as well as a large contingent from Empower who, in the middle of the ‘Global Village’, created the ‘Bangkok A-Go-Go Bar’ with a mamasan, bartenders, MCs and dancers. The multi-nationality contingent of sex workers put on plays and puppet shows, ran workshops, did poetry readings and even presented research papers. Many of them also took part in different demonstrations against pharmaceutical companies, as well as in the official parade.

  Quintessentially Thai in many respects (as is Noi with her laugh-a-minute personae), Empower has always coupled entertainment with edification. Besides the dictionary, they have put out T-shirts, a ‘Bad Girls’ calendar featuring sex workers in provocative poses but sporting serious slogans such as ‘Free Trade Agony’ stenciled across a mini-skirted bottom. Up north they run radio shows. In Bangkok they sponsored a pole-dancing competition where Thai health officials watched from the sidelines. No matter how earnest their messages are, Noi said, “We still have to make it fun.”

  In recent years, the NGO has spun 360
degrees. With support from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, Empower has embarked on a new HIV/AIDS awareness programme that includes 50 volunteers handing out condoms and leaflets at hotspots for sex workers and their customers in Bangkok.

  But they have also remained true to their grassroots in that their 11 offices across the country still serve as community centres. One of the most demoralising aspects of the job is bearing the social stigma attached to it and the estrangement from families and friends. Dee, the male go-go dancer, said, “I don’t trust people outside the ‘business’ and all my old friends deserted me when they found out I work in a bar.” With downcast eyes, he added, “I really wanted to be a good example for my brother and sister, but it was impossible to do so and still make enough money to help them.”

  Dee and many of the women who come to their offices are drawn by a similar spirit of solidarity. On this afternoon in July 2010, a male and female duo of music teachers was giving singing lessons to about 20 women and several ladyboys in the karaoke room of the Patpong centre, which also serves as the Sex Worker’s Museum. Do not expect to be titillated by the sight of a few photos of go-go dancers, a story taped to the wall about the smash hit ‘One Night in Bangkok’, a few sex toys in a glass case and an enlarged map made in Berlin back in the 1980s that exposed different enclaves of male, female and transgendered sex workers in the capital.

  Dressed in casual clothes and chit-chatting about the same subjects that obsess young women all over the planet—clothes, makeup, family problems and gossip—no one would have pictured these women as ‘ladies of the night’.

  The students had decided that they wanted to learn an R&B hit by one of their heroines, Tata Young, a half-Thai/half-American singer who has amassed a considerable following all across Asia for tunes such as ‘Naughty, Sexy, Bitchy’. Lined with lyrics that mock the good-girl fairytales of Snow White and Cinderella, the song the students wanted to learn had struck a few power chords with them through its message of self-determination. As the chorus of ‘Cinderella’ kicked in, 20 voices rose in an outcry of disquieting harmonies:

  I don’t wanna be like Cinderella

  Sitting in a dark old dusty cellar

  Waiting for somebody to come and set me free

  I don’t wanna be like Snow White

  Waiting for a handsome prince to come and save me

  On a horse of white unless we’re riding side by side

  Don’t want to depend on no one else

  I’d rather rescue myself...

  For the ‘bad girls’ of Empower, it sounded like their theme song.

  A Cross-Section of the Third Gender

  I’d only been in Bangkok for about a week and was waiting for a bus on a street swarming with passersby and cars. Along the sidewalk sashayed a statuesque ladyboy, balancing a rattan tray on her head piled high with jasmine garlands. Not only was she more attractive than any transvestite I’d ever seen in the West, she also walked in a much more feminine way, without the exaggerated wiggle. But the most surprising thing was that none of the Thais at the bus stop even gave her a second glance. Nobody yelled anything rude at her. Nobody gossiped behind her back. Nobody (and I could easily imagine this happening in the West) pushed her so that the tray of garlands spilled all over the ground.

  As I spotted more ladyboys around town, eliciting the same non-reaction from Thais and the same snorts of derision, along with the occasional cock-eyed leer from the foreigners, I had to conclude that Thailand was one tolerant country. But many travellers come to these facile conclusions after only a short time in a new place. It took a few years to realise that Thailand is superficially tolerant of the third sex. Behind the face values of Buddhist compassion, bigotry runs much deeper than bad blood.

  Seemingly every soap opera or comedy cabaret has some hideous caricature of a shrieking drag queen (kathoey) who is the butt of the jokes and plays a servile role. Strutting around and preening in any of Bangkok’s sex-for-sale zones are a few ladyboys and a gaggle of older grotesques who have not aged well and seem bound for the gutter or a fatal addiction.

  Few living kathoey have experienced more of this persecution than ‘Aunty Nong’. Now in her early 70s, still unable to read or write and disowned by her family at a young age, she is not even sure when she was born. Nevertheless, on the first Monday of July, she celebrates her birthday by making merit at a temple. “I pray to the gods to forgive me and to watch over me, because it’s a miracle I’m still alive,” she said.

  Aunty Nong (real name: Suwing Nisgonsen) lives in a decrepit one-room tenement off Surawongse Road. The room, stacked high with her belongings, reeked of stale cigarettes and cat urine. She grew up during the Japanese occupation of Bangkok during World War II. As with architect Sumet Jumsai and many others interviewed for this book, the Allied bombing of Bangkok left deep craters in Nong’s reminiscences of adolescence. When recounting the time she carried her young nephew under her arm during one such bombardment, past pulverised bodies, and taking refuge in the Royal Temple of Wat Bowoniwet, her wizened eyes filled with tears. Overcome by a surge of emotions, she brushed the tears away, saying, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  Bantering with Nong, and the writing duo of Susan Aldous and Pornchai Sereemongkonpol, who were researching a book called Ladyboys: The Secret World of Thailand’s Third Gender, the conversation wound down a series of ever-darker passageways. Like many older people, Nong’s mind has become warped with time, flitting from era to era and episode to episode, in a few short sentences. For the elderly, events of 50 or 60 years ago are often perceived with greater clarity than something that happened last week.

  Nong’s father was a combat veteran of the Indochina wars. By the time she was born, the youngest of six siblings (all deceased except for one sister), her Chinese dad was a comatose opium addict. Her mother hawked Thai desserts from a pair of baskets she lugged around on shoulder poles. To make matters worse, her older brother beat her up on a regular basis, because of the feminine mannerisms she displayed even as a youngster. There was barely any money for food. There was none for school.

  Her only respite from the drudgery of reality was watching the traditional Thai dances and dramas at Wat Saket and the Golden Mount. “I wanted so badly to be beautiful like the dancers,” she said, kneeling on the floor of her hovel—which had no chairs—clad in a blouse and a flowery sarong. “I wanted to be appreciated.” Besides the temple, her other refuge was the Penang Cinema (which has long since closed) near Khaosan Road, where she liked to watch the handsome matinee idols of the time like Gregory Peck and Tyrone Powers, whenever she could sneak in without buying a ticket.

  At the age of 15, Nong’s mother told her that their family was imploding and she could no longer afford to take care of her. So the teenager ended up sleeping on streets and in public bathrooms, doing odd jobs like pulling rickshaws and, finally, with the help of a group of transvestites, she began dressing more effeminately. At first the results were hilarious, she said, laughing. After putting on lipstick for the first time, Nong remembered eating a bowl of noodles only to notice afterwards that her entire mouth and chin had turned scarlet.

  But the abuse she suffered was not nearly so amusing. Many people called her and the other kathoey ‘seea chat gert’, or a ‘waste of a reincarnation’. “I couldn’t help it. I was born this way. I can’t change,” she said. At least there was more solidarity amongst the transvestites in those days, she said, and the other ‘girls’ would give her odd jobs like cleaning their apartments in return for free room and board.

  She met her first male lover when she was still a teenager. They met by the bridge of Saphan Put, which was a pick-up spot then, and a hyperactive night bazaar now. Although he knew that she was a female imposter, they lived together for a while. But her lover was pathologically jealous—to the point where he used to beat her thighs and legs so she couldn’t leave the house, or barely even walk.

  In time, Nong’s looks, flair
for fashion and dancing skills allowed her to remake herself as a professional dancer, performing at funerals, ordination ceremonies for novice monks, private parties and temple fairs. Sometimes they would even put on shows in rural areas, riding buffalo-pulled carts through the moonlit rice paddies. She also worked at the old dance halls in Bangkok. Men would buy tickets and then approach a woman they wanted to dance with. Many of them had no idea that their dance partners were not biological women. “All the men were drunk. Sometimes they’d even fight over the girls and shoot their guns in the air,” said Nong, in the craggy voice of a serial smoker. “It was so much fun.”

  But as a professional dancer, she was always teetering on the edge of destitution. To supplement her income, she used to work as a street-walker along Silom Road. The hookers feared sadistic clients much less than they did the police corps. Many of her sisters of the night ended up doing long jail terms for soliciting or not giving enough bribes to the bullies in brown. One night Nong was chased down a street by two cops. She ran into a construction site, jumped into a pit and covered herself with mud and dirt so the police could not spot her with their flashlights.

  Over the course of her 70-odd years, Nong has seen many positive changes for the third sex, such as the installation of special bathrooms in schools and the formation of various self-help groups and NGOs, but her own progress has been scant. The streets of Silom where she once trawled for customers and the tenement where she now lives with a cat as her sole companion are separated by a few blocks and 40 years. To make ends meet, she walks around the red-light zone of Patpong hawking lighters by night. As befitting her status as the grand dame of Bangkok’s transgendered underworld, some of the sex workers buy her wares and give her handouts.

  When we got up to leave, Aunty Nong gave each of us a personal blessing for happiness, good health and prosperity. “Don’t forget about me,” she said. “Please come back and visit whenever you want. Sometimes I’m afraid that if I die here alone nobody would even find my body for days.”