White, western imperialist pimps out Thai women

[delphyne]

Sister still speaking to him -

"My brother was a pimp

Olwen Jones

Saturday June 16, 2007
The Guardian

When I arrived in my brother's new home town, I had a fair idea what to expect. Google "Pattaya Thailand" and "go-go girls" appears next to "beach holidays". But I wasn't worried. My brother likes women. Some of his best friends are women. I count myself one of them.
We got to my hotel mid-afternoon. As my brother, his young Thai girlfriend and I relaxed by the pool, two middle-aged Americans - both weighing in at around 20 stone - waded in, followed by two tiny Thai women. Two hippos, two gazelles, a beach ball and some epic splashing. As I sat with my mouth open, my brother's girlfriend laughed. Not the laugh of a 20-year-old, but one who understood that these men - unfortunates on home soil - were in heaven.

Next stop was my brother's bar. Three Thai women bustled around a single customer, while I asked a few questions. How were suppliers, margins, business? My brother - a former mechanic with no bar experience - nodded at one of the women and said, "She's got it covered."
I went for a walk, and that's when it hit me. Central Pattaya is one big bar, divided into sections. There must be 3,000 in an area two miles long and 300 yards deep. All open-fronted so customers can view the merchandise: thousands of bored young girls in short skirts and high shoes. Pattaya is prostitution on an industrial scale.

I felt like a hospital patient who'd just woken up in a zombie movie. In a world of fat, balding, middle-aged men and Thai girls young enough to be their daughters, I was the only single white western female.

"How can they stand to sleep with these vile old men?" I asked. "The older and uglier the better," my brother said. "They're more grateful. Young blokes want it for free and can go all night. They don't want that."

I spoke to men in the bars. "Girls here know how to treat a man," they said. "At home all I can get is a fat, ugly bird." Or, "You take them back to the hotel and when you wake up they've washed your socks for you!"

A few days later my brother introduced me to another staff member. She was small, pockmarked with acne, in a black dress with the side cut out to reveal a tiny ribcage. We shook hands. She had a big smile and sad eyes. It was awkward.

Later I found out why: he told me her job was to sleep with customers. If they liked the look of her, they'd pay the bar a "fine" to take her back to their hotel. She would get 1,000 baht (£15); the bar kept 200 (£3).

I went to bed that night and cried. The T-shirts were right: "Good guy go to heaven, bad guy go to Pattaya." I was in hell.

Over the next few days I tried to get my brother to see things from my point of view: "They're human beings, not pieces of meat." He told me in Pattaya young girls were on a par with beer: if he didn't sell them, he wouldn't have a business. "If I don't do it, someone else will."

The "girls" (no one ever used the word prostitute) earned about £75 a month in a shop or office, whereas a few years in Pattaya could set them up for life. "Most have kids. Their Thai blokes knock them up, then piss off. Besides, if they don't like the look of a geezer, they can say no."

"How often does that happen?"

"Not often."

I was dumbstruck. My little brother, the boy I had taught to make apple crumble and play conkers, was a pimp!

More surprising still was his reaction. Everyone else accepted it; why couldn't I? "You work in advertising," he added. "You sell loans to people who can't afford it!"

I came to the conclusion that in my brother's world, most men are decent blokes who need a shag now and then. In his world the bar girls sing a song about meeting a rich farang (foreigner) who will whisk them off to a life of luxury. It's a world in which a girl falls in love with a customer every minute of every day.

I pleaded with him to leave town with me to get a new perspective. He agreed, but only after he'd thrown a birthday party for the girl with the sad eyes. He'd promised her a roast pig, balloons, maybe a mobile phone or an iPod?

She asked for a teddy bear.

Six months on, he has given up the bar. Did my words convince him? Probably not. All I know is he has a new Thai girlfriend with a young daughter. When the little girl holds his hand, he says it "kills him". I guess that's the most powerful argument of all."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story ... 53,00.html

[MarySunshine]

Thanks for this. Makes my blood run cold, but this is the reality.

[delphyne]

Hey Mary, it's great to see you here.

It's horrifying the lack of humanity that men have towards women. This one is giving me flashbacks to when I was a very lowly clerk in investment banking and all the bond dealers there used to go on two-week breaks to Thailand (so much for the old desperate men theory - these were all men in their twenties with girlfriends). They never said what they did (what happens in Thailand stays in Thailand) but it was obvious they were going to use prostitutes. The fact that their Friday lunchtime trip out was to an East End strip club was also a giveaway. They were "lads" before lad culture got a hold in Britain - the prototypes.

I wish I hadn't been quite so young or unformed in feminism, because I'd have tried to wreak some revenge on them.