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by Trude Jacobsen, Ph.D

Cambodia records female slaves known as “Born-for-love,” “She-who-laughs-for-penis,” and “She who eats penis”; also “Penis hater”

Slaves were ubiquitous throughout precolonial Southeast Asia. Only the very poor had no slaves at all, and even modest households had one or two. They were necessary for labor, for security,and sometimes for entertainment. They came from all levels of society due to the many pathways into slavery; it would therefore not be uncommon to find an educated, elite man serving in the household of another until his debt was paid.

We know that some slaves were expected to perform sexual acts—famously, the inscription known as K. 74 from Cambodia records female slaves known as “Born-for-love,” “She-who-laughs-for-penis,” and “She who eats penis”; “Penis hater” (Cœdès, 1954,p.18).3They were, as Foucault (1985)described in another context,“sexual objects” because their social status rendered them unable to resist or defend any “use” oft heir energies, bodies, and presence (pp. 215–216).

A free man who, seized with love for a young slave-girl,takes her to his house without redeeming her, feeds her, keeps her and lives with her as if married, without having informed in advance her master, observes neither the law nor the custom of the land; consequently, whether there are or arenot children of the union, he is condemned to pay a fine of 30 damleong to the master of the slave-girl who has lost the use of her labor. Moreover, he must pay a third of the price of the slave to her master, and two-thirds to the slave-girl. If, of the union, are born children, they inherit their mother’s condition and belong to her master [Article 37]

The French method was not concerned so much with preventing women from entering into the sex sector as keeping French men away from them. To this end, barely 20 years after the designation of Cambodia as a French protectorate, the French police were empoweredto arrest sex workers and close down brothels.

One of the hardest aspects of the sex sector to understand, from the perspective of the colonial administration, was why women chose to remain in it when they were given alternative options.For example, in 1909 a Vietnamese woman age 32 was “liberated” from a brothel in Canton after claiming to have been ill-treated. When asked how she came to be placed there, she responded that she was raised in the house of a European in Tonkin; as a result of some small theft or misdemeanor, she was sent to another house nearby. The householder sold her to the brothel in Canton. The French authorities arranged for her repatriation to Tonkin, her birthplace; but a matter of months later, the woman was back in the same brothel, having pledged her labor in exchange for a lump sum of cash that she required for some unknown purpose (CAOM, 1909, F76/19620).The French Consul’s tone in the letter ranges from aggrieved to bewildered. Given precedents such as these, it is hardly surprising that the French authorities had difficulty contextualizing situations that to them seemed not to fall into the category of coercion

One matter about which all the Sawbwas were anxious, and regarding which they appealed to me,was the treatment of slaves. Slavery is universal among the Kachins, and to enter on a crusade against it would mean rousing the whole of the tribes into fierce and active hostility. It is the usual way in which a debt is paid....Otherwise I would leave this “domestic institution” untouched. With the cessation of raids the chief source of supply will be cut off. Time and civilization will work out the rest. So far as I can learn the slaves fare as well as the Kachins themselves, and are merely labourers,many of them under contracts freely entered into [India Office Records (IOR), 1891].

Cambodian culture, therefore, is not one in which a “free agent” operates at any level—there are the constant demands of obligations to be met. Choice is always constrained to some extent. The status quo is never rejected, however, because as successive generations of khsaeare replicated, so the norms inherent to its function are repeated. As Judith Butler explained in her examination of performativity in relation to stereotypes of sex and gender,

full https://www.middlesex.mass.edu/globaled ... endebt.pdf