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Why Cambodia's sex workers don't need to be saved


Cambodian sex workers wait for customers at a public park in Phnom Penh

BANGKOK, Thailand — Eyes gouged out for insolence, moms selling daughters to pimps, girls showered with maggots — if it happened in a Cambodian brothel, the story is never too shocking for Westerners to believe.

These tales, all propagated by fundraising charities in Cambodia, depict the nation’s sex trade as an otherworldly hellscape.

In the last decade, these groups have relied on such anecdotes to raise millions toward “saving” Cambodian women from prostitution. And in promoting this crusade, they’ve painted a picture of pitiful girls swallowed by an underground industry that is downright demonic.

Well, it turns out most of these women aren’t so clueless and weak, says a professor named Heidi Hoefinger.

Hoefinger is an anthropologist and Berkeley College professor who’s spent more than a decade befriending, interviewing and, at times, living with women who work in Cambodia’s hostess bars. These are street-side joints, drenched in neon, where 50 cents buys a mug of beer and $20 buys an evening of female company.

Continue reading: http://www.globalpost.com/article/67498 ... rcher-says

Doesn't matter if there's money to be made, and quite a few of the Khmer elite are invested in the aid business. Wasn't a prominent politician's wife the patron of one of the more egregious anti-trafficking charities?

They don't need saving but they do need a good cycle of doxycyline .

ot mien kampf wrote:Doesn't matter if there's money to be made, and quite a few of the Khmer elite are invested in the aid business. Wasn't a prominent politician's wife the patron of one of the more egregious anti-trafficking charities?

Quite a few more of the elite have invested in those giant blockhouse-style KTVs that litter the landscape.

Old news...but her name still makes me laugh - Hoefinger ...childish, yes

It's easy to see why some girls would prefer to work in the sex industry or subsidise their salary by doing a few tricks. We always hear how the workers in the clothing factories are on low salaries and of their working conditions, but spare a thought for the girls working in restaurants etc, A girl I know recently got a job in a well known restaurant and is paid $140 pm, hours from 4 pm to 1 am, and her sister , in another well known restaurant has just started on $100 pm. Hours from 5 pm till 2 am,
On salaries like these , less than $5 a day it is about the price of a standed meal in Cambodia [ my opinion only ].
Imagine if you were paid the price of a standed meal, for a days salary in your own country ?

The world over there is a queue of willing participants in the sex trade. In the year the UK Police decided to crack down on trafficking they raided more than 1,000 brothels. Number of trafficked victims discovered? Zero. Not one.

It turns out when sex pays better than factories; people would rather lay on their back and get pounded than get pounded for 60 hours plus a week in a garment factory. Who'd a thunk it?

I've said for years the claims of 90% are forced into it are bullshit.

Most countries prostitution pays as much as being a doctor or lawyer. Not sure why these aid groups think they can convince women to quit to work for tiny wages. But I bet if they took the ones that can read & write English and taught them to bea webcam performer they could get some women to switch.

steve230 wrote:I've said for years the claims of 90% are forced into it are bullshit.

Most countries prostitution pays as much as being a doctor or lawyer. Not sure why these aid groups think they can convince women to quit to work for tiny wages. But I bet if they took the ones that can read & write English and taught them to bea webcam performer they could get some women to switch.

Who benefits from a woman selling sex? The woman, and probably a local small-business entrepreneur who gets the bar-fine.

Who benefits when women are encouraged to work for next-to-nothing in a factory? The business owning elite and foreign corporations.

No wonder why NGOs prefer the latter. Who funds them?