Introduction

An article published in the Financial Times in 1987, describing Bangkok, remarked that ‘there are marvellous restaurants wonderful shopping … and, of course, there is the sex …’ (Financial Times, 1987). In the intervening years, this perception of Thailand has prevailed, despite the efforts of the Thai government to play down this association.

While this chapter talks about prostitution in Thailand, it also highlights certain tensions involved in attempting to say what Thai prostitution is, and how and why people become involved in prostitution. The chapter stresses that, while it is possible to make broad statements about prostitution in Thailand and to sketch out certain commonalities, it is important to remember that ‘facts’ about this phenomenon have been motivated in particular ways and often present prostitution as a singular reality, as if ‘it’, once located and defined, can be assessed and contained.

In particular, many of the narratives that frame the issue in Thailand fail to convey the reality of prostitution as a negotiated process that is the sum of various intersecting relationships. In addition, existing research and writing on the issue are gendered in certain ways, almost always produced by women and focusing on adult female prostitutes serving men. Male prostitution is a growing industry in Thailand, and research shows that clients are both men and women (see The Nation, 2003, and Bangkok Post, 2003, for example); yet a disproportionate amount of literature has been produced on the subject, and tends to be couched within analyses of Thai homosexuality (see, for example, Jackson, 1995; Jackson et al, 1995). Is this because it is harder to gather information on male sex workers; is it because men working in prostitution are regarded as less vulnerable; or is it because there is a fundamental unwillingness to accept this aspect of the industry where explanations are blurred and do not always fit the neat rationales framing Thai prostitution? Missing too are detailed studies of children and teenagers working in prostitution, although the reason for this may be – as I note later in this chapter – that a heavy-handed approach to this issue has driven these activities underground, requiring more investigative approaches to research that many are unwilling or unable to undertake. Studies of child prostitution instead centre on the mechanisms that sustain trafficking of children into the sex industry.