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   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: hannity_is_gay@fox.net   
      
   Thailand: The World’s Sex Tourism Capital   
   Pulitzer Center Pulitzer Center.   
   Deena Guzder, reporting for the Pulitzer Center   
      
   Hot stuff   
      
   BANGKOK, Thailand —Imagine standing naked under   
   flashing lava-red disco lights and gyrating to blaring techno   
   music before dropping to the ground, splaying your legs like a   
   starfish, and using your pelvic muscles to pop a dozen   
   ping-pong balls out of your vagina for the amusement of giddy,   
   affluent, and intoxicated foreigners. Now imagine shoving live   
   turtles into your vagina and dancing around a pole before   
   ejecting the turtles into an aquarium (“Wow, the turtles can   
   still swim!”)  Imagine repeating the same act with, say, a   
   large frog or bagful of goldfish. Welcome to Bangkok,   
   Thailand’s Red Light District.   
      
   Unlike brothels or strip clubs, “Ping   
   Pong Shows” do not lure clients through   
   promises of sexual arousal, but promises of sexual perversion   
   if not sexual torture.  They offer freak shows where women’s   
   bodies are reduced to grotesque objects exploited for tourists’   
   entertainment.   
      
   Thai women who have lost their jobs   
   in villages during the economic downturn often travel to cities   
   such as Bangkok for work and are hired not as sex entertainers,   
   but circus animals. One older woman with a scar across her   
   belly from a c-section confides after her performance at a Ping   
   Pong Show, “I don’t like being here, I feel dirty.” She adds,   
   “I left my village when my factory closed.”  Nobody knows when,   
   exactly, Ping-Pong Shows began, but they’re increasingly   
   raunchy and dangerous as tourists’ threshold for shock   
   increases. One Bangkok organization, EMPOWER, even instructed   
   women in bar prostitution how to insert and pull out razor   
   blades from their vaginas, according to Melissa Farley,   
   Executive Director of Prostitution Research & Education. “This   
   is understood to be a job requirement in the bar-show setting   
   where tricks are sexually excited by the possibility of the   
   genital mutilation of Thai women,” notes Farley.   
      
   The vast economic disparities between Thai locals and   
   Thailand’s tourists have long enabled affluent foreigners to   
   request massages with “happy ending specials” or “rent a   
   girlfriend/boyfriend” for a holiday. Now, the global economic   
   crisis has spawned new, dangerous ways of objectifying,   
   commoditizing, and demeaning women. Thailand’s sex tourism   
   industry is more risqué, less regulated, and more dangerous   
   than ever before.   
      
   Thailand’s   
   tagline is “Land of Smiles,” a beach   
   paradise full of lithe coconut trees lazily swaying under a   
   lapis lazuli sky.  But, who’s smiling and who’s   
   wincing in pain? This is a story of destitute Asian women   
   subjecting themselves to extreme degradation for the guffaws of   
   affluent Western benefactors. This is a story where the messy   
   intersection of class, race and sexuality are taken to their   
   disturbing logical extremes.  Behind the brothels posing as   
   massage parlors and strip clubs is a painful story involving   
   women trafficked from Burma, minors exploited by pimps, and a   
   global economic disparities that forces women to sell their   
   bodies.   
      
   While many variations of Ping Pong   
   Shows exist around the world, the prevalence of such shows   
   across Thailand—a tourism hotspot for Westerners—makes this   
   story especially worthy of exposure.  North Americans comprise   
   25% of sex tourists in the world and are directly complicit in   
   economically supporting this industry—an industry that often   
   involves prepubescent girls—so this story is largely about our   
   own responsibility.   
      
   Thailand is often called “Disneyland for   
   pedophiles” and has up to 600,000 AIDS cases. The huge   
   sex-for-sale industry is driven mostly by Australian, European,   
   and American tourists. The number of prostitutes in Thailand   
   ranges from 800,000 to 2 million of which 20% are 18 or   
   younger. U.S. citizens traveling abroad to exploit minors can   
   be held responsible under U.S. laws; however, neither U.S. laws   
   nor international human rights declarations address the   
   culpability of tourists engaging in sexual voyeurism and   
   exploitation of women in the so-called Land of Smiles.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)