Margaret Mead Japan China Religie en seks Moral panics Seks en robots De seksuele ontwikkeling van jongeren Seksualisering Leeftijdverschillen Geweld en misbruik Consent Sexting Prostitutie PornografieIncididunt nisi non nisi incididunt velit cillum magna commodo proident officia enim.
Heather MONTGOMERY"The prostitution of children is not an easy topic to research, to read or to write of about. It is a supremely emotive issue, which stands as an affront to accepted notions of appropriate sexuality, to the nature of childhood, and to the responsibilities that adults have towards children. It is unsurprising that so many voices of protest have been raised against it in recent years and that it has become so important an issue for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). It is equally unsurprising that few academics, outside departments of social work or social policy, have shown much interest in it. In some respects, there is little that many people wish to say about it except that it is a deviation, a distortion of adult/child relationships and of accepted sexual norms. There is an understandable squeamishness about inquiring too deeply into the nature of such abuse or in looking too closely at the effects it has on the child or the abuser. It is too disturbing to do anything other than condemn it. Certainly, it is a subject that supposedly dispassionate academics have been reluctant to involve themselves in, not least because it means confronting issues of morality and ethics head-on, which inevitably leads to suggestions and recommendations, becoming ‘part of the solution’."(1)
[Dit zit vol met waardeoordelen in het taalgebruik zelf. Ik hoop dat het niet zo doorgaat. Ze bedankt de ECPAT tevoren. Christelijke invloeden ....]
"Instead the field of study has been left to NGOs, activists and others with an explicitly interventionist agenda which relies less on research and more on demands for action. "(2)
[Precies. En dat zijn mensen die niet nadenken maar doen vanuit alle mogelijke vooroordelen. ]
"Child prostitution is quite clearly a moral issue, and whether it is examined by an anthropologist or by a social activist, the underlying moral framework of the researchers needs to be made explicit. NGOs are categorical in their stance: child prostitution is ‘a form of slavery’, ‘an evil’ or ‘the rape of childhood’ (ECPAT Newsletters 1991–1993). Despite the sensationalism of the rhetoric, it is hard to disagree with the morality behind this. There are few people who support child prostitution, or indeed sex between children under the age of consent with adults, who do not have ulterior motives. Various paedophile groups, often claiming the language of children’s rights, have argued that children have a right to express their sexuality in whatever way they wish and that if they wish to have sex with an adult, they should be allowed to. It is not worth discussing these arguments in too much depth here when they have been so convincingly demolished by Ennew (1986) and Finkelhor (1979b) who draw attention to the enormous power imbalance behind the adult/child relationship and the subsequent impossibility of informed consent being given by a child to have sex with an adult." [mijn nadruk](3)
[Waarom is het moeilijk om het daar niet mee eens te zijn? Omdat de meeste mensen tegen zijn? Dus dan is het moreel gezien verwerpelijk? En wat precies is die machtsbalans tussen volwassenen en kinderen? En wat heeft dat te maken met dat kinderen geen toestemming kunnen geven? Vragen genoeg hier. ]
"However, I do not believe that morality is a single, uncontested category which precludes all further discussions. There are other issues and circumstances, such as the economic situation and family background of a child, which inform morality. Economics is integral to morality and issues such as child prostitution must be understood in terms of both. Prostitution is a form of labour, albeit an extremely exploitative and dangerous one where children are concerned, and it is only by viewing it as such that it is possible to understand the children and the decisions they make. Divorced (as some activists would have it) from the labour market, it is positioned as a unique evil, unrelated to economic forces, and linked instead to degeneracy and wickedness. While this may be morally satisfying, it denies and obscures other ways of understanding. Comprehending why prostitution occurs, and explaining the economic and social reasons behind it, does not make the condemnation any less strong. Indeed, morality should be placed in such a context if it is not to degenerate into self-righteousness.
In writing this book, I have no wish to justify the abuse that children suffer in prostitution or to offer any apologies for men who perpetrate this abuse. However, I am interested in children’s rights and children’s participation in research, which means taking children seriously as both research subjects and as analysts of their own lives and circumstances. Those who defend sex between adults and children wilfully distort the language of rights and participation (for a critique of this literature, see Scheper-Hughes and Stein 1987). Giving children rights must include the right to protection from harm. It does not include burdening children with responsibilities which they are not ready to handle. A sexual relationship with an adult is predicated on a large power differential which exposes the child to harm and abuses the concept of rights." [mijn nadruk] (3-4)
"An anthropologist or an activist cannot speak for them or be their interpreter; they have their own voices and their own analyses which are equally valid."(4)
[Kun je dat nog beweren na al die eerder gegeven waardeoordelen? Dat klinkt nogal als: ze mogen hun eigen stem hebben als ze maar zeggen wat wij willen horen.]
"It is simple to claim that children have a right to be heard and believed and much harder to put it into practice when children do not say what they are supposed to say. In common with other researchers and journalists, I went to Thailand with a clear picture of what I expected from a child prostitute."(4)
[Het eerste: ja precies. De laatste zin is is schokkend: dan benader je de zaken niet met een open houding. ]
"The children in the community within which I worked, however, painted an infinitely more complicated picture of their world which challenged any simplistic dichotomies of good and evil, abused and abusers. It proved disturbing and disconcerting that their analyses of their lives were far more nuanced and far more sophisticated than mine. Listening to what they had to say meant jettisoning many of my own beliefs and certainties about child prostitution but also acknowledging the strength of my own feelings about it. It is an emotionally charged issue which I could not view without prejudice. Despite a stated intention not to get involved – to be a dispassionate ‘participant observer’ in anthropological terminology – I found this impossible, and in many ways undesirable.
The realities of child prostitution are difficult and to stay neutral in such circumstances rides dangerously close to complicity. It is important not to become too blasé about this abuse and not to forget the physical and emotional damage inflicted on a child. There is far too much prurience in discussions of child prostitution; too much furtive enjoyment in breaking the taboo of talking about sex with children. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that a child’s body is not made for penetrative sex with an adult and that when this occurs the physical damage is great. It is extremely shocking and very upsetting to see a boy return from a client bleeding after a sexual encounter and it is easy to sympathise with campaigners who do not wish to understand but only to condemn." [mijn nadruk] (5)
[Erg tegenstrijdig. Open en totaal niet open. En seks staat weer eens gelijk aan penetratie? Dat is de enige manier waarop volwassenen en kinderen seks met elkaar kunnen hebben?]
"One of the recurrent points of this book is that outrage is not enough and ultimately does little good if it is not accompanied by a more profound understanding. This understanding is only possible if emotions are disentangled from the research and the situation is understood, if not neutrally then objectively. It is impossible to study the situation of child prostitutes without prejudice. I have made little attempt to do so and my own views are clear. However objectivity is more feasible. By maintaining an intellectual, rather than an emotional, distance it is conceivable to see the wider contexts in which these children live and to go beyond simplistic responses." [mijn nadruk] (6)
[Ook totaal tegenstrijdig. Wat wordt het nu? Houdt ze haar gevoelens er buiten? Ja, dat moet om een beetje objectief te kunnen zijn. Nee, dat kan ze niet.]
"Although they frequently offered explanations as to why they worked as prostitutes, no-one enjoyed it or felt that it was a ‘good’ way of life. Given different circumstances or better opportunities, many would undoubtedly have left."(7)
[Dat is een bewering. Hoe objectief is die dus? Hoe betrouwbaar is wat ze zegt als ze zich zoals ze zelf zegt door gevoelens laat leiden? ]
"In such a deprived environment, their love for their families, and duties towards them, were a way of gaining self-esteem and one of the few things of which they could be proud. Despite this, however, I sometimes felt that perhaps the children would be better off without their families. Whatever parents felt about their children, clearly they were inflicting great damage on them. There was no malice in this, there obviously was great love between parents and children but, nevertheless, the children did suffer through poor parenting and deprivation. There were certainly times when I felt that the community should have been broken up, and families separated, if the cycle of prostitution and poverty were ever to be broken." [mijn nadruk] (7)
[Of zou het - zoals altijd en overal - toch aan de armoede liggen en aan een beroerd economisch systeem waarin rijken en armen? Waarom niet streven naar een verbod op toerisme of zo? De ene westerling komt om seks te hebben, de andere westerling om dat te veroordelen. Laat om te beginnen dat land met rust. Misschien dat dat land dan economisch een andere richting kan inslaan.]
"These chapters are based on twelve months of fieldwork which I carried out between June 1993 and September 1994. I was based in a small slum community which I have called Baan Nua (North Village in Thai) where the children lived with their families and worked part-time as prostitutes in order to supplement the family income. This slum was on the edge of a town with many tourists and the children’s clients were exclusively Europeans. Other than that information, I have deliberately kept the town I worked in anonymous and the region of Thailand within which it is located unidentified. The children that I know are too easily identifiable and I do not wish them to suffer any further intrusion in their lives because of what I have written about them."(10)
"Anthropological convention dictates that all names of informants should be changed, which I have done to protect their privacy as much as I can."(11)
[Wat alles weer oncontroleerbaar maakt voor anderen. Wat onzinnig.]
"Each group with a vested interest in these children, including the children themselves, need their stories. It is important to look not only at what they are saying but why they are saying it. What I shall do is to suggest reasons why these groups need these particular versions of the truth and why the current campaign against child prostitution has been so successful. In less than fifteen years, it has gone from an issue which very few knew about to near saturation coverage. It has eclipsed the major concerns of the 1980s, such as child labour, or street children, or in some cases subsumed them; street children are interesting now to the extent that they might sell sex." [mijn nadruk] (12)
[De narratieve benadering: Iedereen heeft zijn verhaal, iedereen heeft zijn eigen waarheid. Kun je dat nog zeggen na alle eerder gegeven dogmatische standpunten?]
" It is possible to see the root causes of prostitution as the abuse of the vulnerable and innocent by the powerful and degenerate, but this morally satisfying position does not necessarily bring long term solutions." [mijn nadruk] (13)
[Wat is er nu zo 'morally satisfying' aan zo'n etiketje? Dat je roept wat iedereen roept, zonder na te denken? ]
"Anthropologists have long talked about children, and works of popular anthropology such as Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa take children as their central theme, yet they remain largely silent about childhood itself. Childhood is thus constructed as a universal phenomenon; a time of weakness, powerlessness and ignorance. According to Mead, some children may have better or less repressed childhoods than their counterparts in the Western world, but everywhere children are passive objects and receivers of adult practices." [mijn nadruk] (15)
[Wonderlijke tekst dit. Zijn kinderen in de ogen van Mead werkelijk passieve objecten en niet meer dan ontvangers van volwassen praktijken en opvattingen en zo? Ik geloof er niks van. Wat zegt zo' n abstractie? En wat zegt deze auteur zelf werkelijk op dat punt?]
"Children have thus long been effectively marginalised in anthropology, or studied only tangentially. The beginning and end of childhood have been of interest, but the nature of childhood itself, or how it is socially constructed, have been of little concern."(15)
" Instead of looking at children only as recipients of culture, or of childrearing practices, children were re-conceptualised as active agents. The roles they played in shaping their society and their social importance to their families were increasingly acknowledged. Not only they were affected by their communities, but they affected their communities in turn."(17)
"Increasingly childhood was recognised as a culturally constructed, social phenomenon rather than a stage in developmental psychology or a time of universal dependence and powerlessness. Children could no longer be seen as a homogenous group with views and priorities that depended only on their physical advancement, but they were acknowledged as interesting for, and in, themselves."(17)
"Children can act as independent agents, and yet it must be recognised that practically children are constrained because of their age, their physical size and also other people’s reactions towards them (James and Prout 1995)." [mijn nadruk] (18)
"In a similar way to the study of childhood, until recently, issues of sexuality have been either passed over by anthropologists or related to issues such as reproduction or maternity. The sex act itself is viewed as a biological universal, even if it takes different cultural forms (Vance 1991). Studies of how sexualities have been created and imagined, and their links with the wider political economy, have been muted, and it is only very recently that there has been such an explosion of interest in the subject (Hyam 1990, Dollimore 1991)." [mijn nadruk] ()
"The work of other anthropologists such as Fordham’s work on Thailand (1993, 1995, 1996) or Parker’s work on Brazil (1991) has celebrated the sexual cultures in these places and attempted to understand sexuality as a part of a wider political and economic culture. They have also tried to break down distinctions between ‘deviant’ and ‘normal’ sexualities, especially in regards to prostitution. Prostitution has proved a difficult area of sexual behaviour to deal with."(19)
"At the very outset then, the stereotypes of child prostitutes that are received must be recognised and challenged."(21)
"Both sides are telling the stories that are expected of them, while never recognising that the narratives which they present as truth, are only partial. Any examination of child prostitution must be an analysis of the discourses surrounding child prostitutes and the stories and mythology that influence views of them. What stories do the children tell each other and themselves? What do they tell an anthropologist, a journalist, an advocate, or others who demand their stories? What stories do these people then tell others?" [mijn nadruk] (21)
[Zeker, maar gebeurt dat hier? En is zo'n postmoderne narratieve aanpak wel realistisch en eerlijk aangezien die even goed op jezelf van toepassing is? Waarom is dan jouw verhaal meer waar dan het verhaal van anderen?]
"I will give just two examples here of the myth, before going on to argue that the stories these articles tell fulfil the needs of the campaigners and advocates, not those of the children."(22)
"Bo and the anonymous child in the second article have familiar stories. Abandoned by their parents into brothel life, they are rescued by good outsiders for a brief period of happiness before dying. In countless other articles, the pattern is repeated: betrayal, abuse, rescue, death."(23)
"There is an inherent bias in many studies of children that sees them as ‘less than’ rather than ‘different from’ adults and therefore their opinions and behaviour are interpreted and analysed by adults as incomplete and incompetent (Waksler 1991). When children speak, especially in relation to sensitive topics like prostitution, they are usually dismissed. They are accorded no authority for their views, and are seldom allowed to decide what is in their own best interest. On an issue like prostitution, it is assumed to be so apparent what the child’s best interest is that there is little room for dissent from the child." [mijn nadruk] (24)
" In all the literature that I had read on the subject, the voices of the children themselves were noticeably absent."(24)
[Dat is de kern van de zaak. Maar toch heb ik weinig vertrouwen in de auteur wat dat betreft als ik het voorgaande lees. Zij etaleert daar toch ook alle vanzelfsprekendheden en weet daar toch ook wat goed is voor die kinderen.]
"The extreme form of prostitution that journalists and NGO workers portray does exist, but it is not the only form. The media coverage of brothel raids, human trafficking and forced debt-bondage causes a hierarchy of child prostitutes. The more innocent, unknowing, and pathetically victimised the better. Yet there are different forms of child prostitution, different motivations for entry into sex work and different ways of interpreting the situation. Those who concentrate on the extreme, ignore the mundane, and run the risk of glamorising and exoticising everyday poverty. Daeng’s story makes uncomfortable reading because it challenges some fundamental ideas of what is appropriate for a child to know or decide." [mijn nadruk] (28)
[Waaruit maar blijkt dat de meeste volwassenen geen idee hebben van wat kinderen denken, willen, of meemaken. Er wordt in gemakkelijke clichés gedacht.]
"The child is innocent, forced into prostitution and traumatised to the point of death by it. Most importantly, the child is powerless, totally controlled by adults and has been abandoned by her parents, and especially her mother. It upsets no notions of the ‘correct’ role of either families or children and reinforces ideas that childhood is a universal phenomenon with universal features. It is not the conception or the ideal that is wrong, but the individual circumstances." [mijn nadruk] (28)
[Elke keer als de auteur iets goed zegs, bederft ze het weer met een dubbelzinnig waardeoordeel.]
"For NGOs, the commercial sexual exploitation of children became one of the most important issues of the 1990s. The Jubilee Action Trust (n.d.), the Michael Sieff Foundation (1996) and Christian Aid (1995), all brought out position papers and reports on the subject and there were numerous newspaper articles concerning the issue in the UK alone. Again, despite all the information, there is little understanding. There are certain questions that have not been answered and many assumptions that must be questioned. For example, is the problem of child prostitution actually new or simply newly discovered?"(29)
[Veel conservatieve religieuze invloeden, veel Amerikaanse invloeden hier. Dat hele idee van die kant van het beschermen van 'onschuldige kinderen' zonder oorzaken als armoede aan te pakken zou iedereen wantrouwig moeten maken.]
"The history of child prostitution as an international problem is closely linked to the history of certain NGOs which have campaigned so successfully on the issue. The fact that child prostitution is currently such a topical issue is largely due to the tireless campaigning of an NGO called End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT)."(29)
"ECPAT was formed in 1991 as an off- shoot of ECTWT (The Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism). This group was founded because ‘the churches in the ecumenical movement realised tourism was doing more harm than good to people and communities in the Third World’"(30)
[Zoals gezegd: religieuze met name christelijke ideologie.]
"The specific issue of child prostitution was not the primary focus of ECTWT’s early campaigns but the issue of the commercial sexual abuse of Thai children by foreigners became increasingly more central to it so that in 1991, a dedicated agency, known as ECPAT, was launched to focus on the problem. Although technically separate from ECTWT, it shared many of its founding agency’s concerns over tourism and retained much of the original ideology of ECTWT. The overall policy and direction remained the same and as it was still staffed with ECTWT personnel or their spouses; this was not surprising. At its launch, the ECPAT policy was clearly stated, and although its background was excluded and no mention was made of its origins, the similarities between the two organisations remain." [mijn nadruk] (31)
"Many activists might respond to these criticisms by claiming that it does not matter how many children are involved: the violation done to one is as bad as the abuse of thousands. This is quite reasonable, and there is a sense in which numbers do not matter, but why then is there this fixation with ‘evergrowing’ numbers? Why is there so little academic or intellectual rigour in the production of these statistics?"(37)
"Ultimately, numbers can tell us nothing about the lives of the children themselves . To claim there are a million child prostitutes in Asia tells us very little. It does not elucidate who these children are, how they came to be prostitutes, what gender they are, or their ethnicity or nationality."(37-38)
[Dat lijkt mij toch ook. Zoals aangegeven worden die cijfers zwaar overdreven, al is het maar voor de sensatie of om meer geld los te peuteren als NGO, of wat ook.]
" The child who sells sex once or twice, under particular circumstances, is not necessarily a child prostitute, and certainly may not want to be classified as one for years to come. There are other children who work only part-time as prostitutes; when they are not working, are they still prostitutes? There are other children who do not die of AIDS or abuse. Once they have left brothels or bars, are they too classified as child prostitutes for ever?" [mijn nadruk] (39)
"ECPAT, Christian Aid, or any other NGO, are not being dishonest in what they say: clearly their stories have meaning to them and fulfil a particular purpose. Yet it must be remembered that they need their belief in one million child prostitutes far more than individual child prostitutes need to be included in this imaginary fellowship."(40)
[Wat zijn we toch aardig voor die NGO's. Met andere woorden: zelfs de definities deugen niet. Kortom: het doet allemaal weer erg aan morele paniek denken. ]
"For the media and for NGOs, the easiest and most accepted way of dealing with child prostitutes has been to claim that children who currently work as prostitutes are the victims of foreign paedophiles, who come to Thailand because their sexual preferences are considered perverse and illegal in their own countries. When there is historical evidence for child prostitution, this too is blamed on outsiders, usually the Chinese. This view is only partially true. Despite protestations from NGO groups, such as The Foundation for Women, there are certain factors which provided the right conditions for the alleged explosion of child prostitution in the 1980s and 1990s. These go some way to explaining why child prostitution has such a high profile in Thailand but not in other countries with equally high levels of tourism or foreign involvement.
Child prostitution has a longer history in Thailand than many NGOs would wish to admit. There is some evidence that children under the age of eighteen (as children are currently defined) have worked in the brothels of Thailand in the past, and that they have even had foreign clients for some time. As a social problem, child prostitution did not emerge out of a vacuum in the 1930s or even the 1960s; it has a much longer history, which can contextualise the current situation. Both Thai and Western historians have noted the long history of indigenous prostitution in Thailand." [mijn nadruk] (40-41)
"There are no statistics to show how many of the prostitutes, now officially called sopheni, were children or indeed under the age of eighteen before 1905, but it would be reasonable to believe that the prostitution of younger women and girls from poor families was common. Based on the results of his studies in the 1950s, Fox, in his submission to the Department of Public Welfare, claimed that 90% of prostitutes were between fifteen and twenty and he found evidence of some as young as thirteen (Fox 1960). Under the new Penal Code of 1908, the seduction of minors under twelve was criminalised and abduction of those under ten was made punishable by law. However, for children between the ages of ten and fourteen, the penalties did not apply if the child had consented to the abduction. Thus prostitution was legal for ten-year-olds with their consent (Truong 1990). (...) For poor families, now freed from slavery but having to fend for themselves, the temptation to sell their daughters, or at least encourage them to enter prostitution in order to boost the family income, must have been strong." [mijn nadruk] (42-43)
"Orientalist stereotypes about the sensuality and availability of Thai and ‘Oriental’ women meant that Thailand’s reputation, especially in the West, had always included elements of erotic fantasy. "(44)
[En waar komt dat precies vandaan? Ik denk dat dat veel te maken heeft met de door de religieuze moraal veroorzaakte Westerse preutsheid en de natuurlijker omgang met seksualiteit in veel Oosterse landen. Maar wat weet ik.]
"There is so little documented evidence about child prostitution that a book like Dream Lover is extremely useful in its hints and suggestions about the situation in pre-1960s Thailand. That child prostitution existed, especially among those under eighteen (as child prostitution is defined today), appears obvious and that it was institutionalised and taxed as part of a wider acceptance of prostitution seems equally indisputable. However, in the 1960s, Thai prostitution undoubtedly changed and the campaigners against child prostitution are correct in placing some of the origins of its current manifestations in the 1960s and in the influx of large numbers of foreigners. It is during the Vietnam war that ECPAT and other NGOs start their own history; placing there the origins of Thailand’s child and adult prostitution problem. Certainly, at this point prostitution changed dramatically, partly because of the large foreign military presence, but also because Thailand was undergoing rapid social change." [mijn nadruk] (46)
"At the end of the 1960s, with the Vietnam War spilling over into Thailand’s neighbour Cambodia, the Thais recognised the necessity of accommodating the Americans. They allowed the Unites States not only to station troops in Thailand but, more importantly, allowed American servicemen to use Thailand as an ‘R and R’ station. Given the huge numbers of young men with large amounts of money to spend, the foreign sex industry quickly became organised with bars and brothels set up, for the first time, explicitly catering to foreign men. Based around Western music and Western food, the girls were encouraged to learn English and to attend exclusively to foreign men. Many women became very mobile, leaving their home provinces and moving to Pattaya or Bangkok in order to find the most lucrative work among the Americans (Malee 1986). To many young women whose families were losing out in Thailand’s programme of industrialisation, sex work became an easily available form of work. The social effects of the Americans were compounded by the economic effects as the American presence unleashed a vast amount of money into previously poor communities." [mijn nadruk] (46)
[Eerst veroorzaakt de Amerikaanse militaire aanwezigheid prostitutie, en als ze weg zijn komen de Amerikaanse NGO's / christenen en Amerikaanse feministes vertellen hoe moreel slecht prostitutie.]
"By 1975, the majority of the troops had gone, leaving behind the infrastructure of the sex industry and also an illusion and stereotype of beautiful, pliant and docile Oriental women, who offered much more than paid sex. Here was a society where dreams of romance, every bit as fanciful as those described by Black Shadow, could be fulfilled at a small price. With the Communist take-over in Laos and Vietnam, and the suppression of prostitution by the Communist authorities, the only country left in southeast Asia where these fantasies could still be satisfied was Thailand. That these fantasies were fuelled by men and drew on Orientalist stereotypes was never questioned, and in time, they became self-fulfilling. Thai women and children had to be docile and subservient because that was what was expected of them." [mijn nadruk] (47)
[De conservatieve christenen en feministes zouden het communisme dankbaar moeten zijn. Maar nee, die zijn atheïstisch ... ]
"There are many reasons to go to Thailand other than to buy sex, but it would be naive to assume that the images brought back by soldiers, journalists and others from the Vietnam War, which idealised Thailand as a haven for cheap, available sex, did not affect the tourist industry. As tourism became more important to the Thai economy, the role of prostitutes within that wider economy also became more important."(48)
"What is unknown, however, is the link between adult and child prostitution. Even those who may support prostitution as a necessary, job-creating evil, would not necessarily condone child prostitution. It is an unasked, and maybe unanswerable question, but does the existence of adult prostitutes necessarily lead to the existence of large numbers of child prostitutes? ECPAT, among others, would claim that it does. They claim that children are desired as the ultimate sexual perversion by jaded Westerners who have tried everything else (O’Grady 1992b: 82). In many ways, their analysis seems reasonable; it would be naive to think that children are unaffected by the sex industry or that their bodies are immune from being commercialised like any other commodity. They sell their bodies simply because they can and because prostitution is, and always will be, an industry that lays a premium on youth. As Ennew has pointed out ‘an old prostitute is a redundant prostitute’ (Ennew 1986: 11). In a job that requires beauty, which is often synonymous with youth, prostitutes will invariably be young, and if children are defined as anyone under the age of eighteen, then rates of child prostitution will always be high. Other children in the tourist industry will also be affected." [mijn nadruk] (48)
[Open deuren. En als dat zo is kun je er dus nooit iets tegen doen. Maar doe iets aan uitbuiting, geweld, etc. ]
"Research on issues such as child prostitution can never be definitive. Concepts such as childhood, sexuality and prostitution are notoriously hard to define cross-culturally even though they are often treated as unproblematic. Yet when definitions change, the problem also changes and again, questions as to who is or is not a child prostitute are contested. As long as the only image of a child prostitute in the public arena is that of a tragic martyred child, the debate cannot move on or be widened to embrace the full moral complexity of the issues." [mijn nadruk] (49)
[Dat lijkt mij ook. Maar waarom dan dat boek beginnen met eigen soortgelijke vooroordelen en nu pas komen met dit soort afwegingen? Maar ook hiet komen de 'universele principes' weer naar voren, kijk maar:]
"Admitting ambiguities is difficult and raises many uncomfortable questions. Any attempt to offer alternative explanations invokes the suspicion of extreme moral relativism or facile. The main red-light centres catering for foreign tourists. appeals to cultural difference and for some people there is little difference between exploring complexities and offering justifications for abuse. It is seen as one area where there are universal absolutes which must be enforced internationally. Article 34 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is unequivocal. It states: ‘States Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.’ There is no room here for moral ambiguity or relativism.
Stating that the situation is more complicated than it first appears is not a sign of moral relativism or equivocation. Indeed, simple moral absolutes are extremely limiting. They can only lead to witchhunts of individual parents, children or clients, while leaving the larger structures that support and encourage child prostitution untouched. As long as there are absolute standards of morality imposed on children which admit no ambiguities, and say they must be wholly good and their parents wholly bad, then, once again, the voices of the powerless are marginalised. It should not be necessary to rely on stereotypes and simplified case histories to know about the causes and effects of child prostitution." [mijn nadruk] (50)
[Het is net alsof ze voortdurend bezig is haar onderzoek te rechtvaardigen en ze tegenstanders ervan al bij voorbaat wil duidelijk maken dat ook voor haar prostitutie van kinderen altijd verkeerd is.]
"Before these children are introduced, however, it is important to lay out the theoretical frameworks that will inform this book, and to deconstruct the notions of childhood, sexuality and innocence."(51)
Eerst een 'A History of Childhood in the West'.
" It is assumed to have certain universal features such as innocence, dependence and happiness which are the ‘natural’ state for all children, regardless of culture or geography. Yet, it is obvious that these ‘natural’ standards are nothing of the sort and that childhood is socially and ideologically constructed. ‘Adulthood is always a matter of social definition rather than physical maturity’ (La Fontaine 1986: 19). There are no universal standards for childhood, except for those imposed by the industrialised West and the United Nations. Children become adults at different times and in different ways throughout the world." [mijn nadruk] (53)
[Nu beweert ze weer het tegenovergestelde. ]
"Article One of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that a child is ‘every human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is reached earlier’ (1990: 4). Certain Western women’s groups are trying to take the definition of a child even further ... (...) The impracticality of this is obvious; even in Western, industrialised societies, eighteen is not a definitive boundary of childhood when it is accepted and enshrined in law that a person under this age can marry, fight for their country, and earn a wage. Applied to developing countries, or newly industrialised countries, such as Thailand, it becomes untenable. Such extended childhoods are a luxury of twenty-first-century, Western thinking." [mijn nadruk] (54)
[Precies.]
"There is a widespread tendency to assume that children are not exploited within their families, it only occurs with the interference of outsiders or when the family is no longer functioning ‘properly’ (La Fontaine 1990). Thus notions of what is a ‘correct’ childhood, and what is a correct path of development, become political, with a contrast set up between the sheltered and privileged life of ‘developed children’ and the miserable and pitiful situation of those who are forced to work in a contradiction of their ‘natural’ role as children."(57)
"The West, or the Westernised elites in other countries, are therefore given the ‘right’ to intervene in the social structure of the Third World poor, and thus definitions of childhood change from culturally conditioned and locally understood concepts into universal moral imperatives which demand and justify interference." [mijn nadruk] (57)
"Middle class Thais often did not know the legal marriage ages and among poorer people with less education, they simply did not believe it. Having been married long before seventeen in most cases, there was widespread incredulity that the government had any say at all in dictating a minimum age for marriages. Therefore, to discuss childhood in Thailand, legal categories and definitions have to be regarded as largely irrelevant. Also, different areas of the country have very different traditions regarding childbirth and childhood, and there is no way to discuss ‘traditional’ Thai childhood without specifying which area of Thailand is being referred to or without problematising the very notion of what is traditional." [mijn nadruk] (58)
"The other important family dynamic is that, in many areas of rural Thailand, children are seen as an investment which will quickly pay returns because children can work on a farm from an early age. They can contribute to the household economy when young and support elderly parents later on. It is usually the youngest daughter who looks after her parents in their old age and in return she inherits the house (Piker 1975, Blanc-Szanton 1985). Van Esterik claims that this expectation of return is explicit and in direct contrast to Western notions of parental sacrifice for children."(59)
"Land is often given to a couple at the birth of their first child, rather than on marriage, as it is parenthood and not marriage that is a sign of the couple’s maturity ... " [mijn nadruk] (60)
[Heel goed. Iedere gek kan trouwen, niet iedereen kan kinderen opvoeden. ]
"This ability to look after people, whether emotionally or financially, is very important. Therefore earning income, to the people of Baan Nua, is a sign of maturity. One child in Baan Nua was working to support five family members and she was consid- ered an adult, even though she was ten years old." [mijn nadruk] (61)
"This change in the official view of childhood has obviously affected the middle classes and those who live in the urban areas more strongly than those in the rural areas. To talk now about the ‘modern’ view of childhood, is to talk about the view of policy makers and the educated, urban middle classes." [mijn nadruk] (62)
[Het Victoriaanse tijdperk ... again ... ]
"So often, I was told that Thais loved children and looked after them better than those in other countries. It was certainly true that children, especially very young ones, were welcomed anywhere and treated with a great deal of tolerance, and yet the idealisation of childhood innocence and freedom was confined to those with exposure to Western ideas and concepts. The love of children was there in all classes but the traditional pity for the powerlessness of the child that I found in the rural areas, had been replaced by envy for the child’s freedom among the middle classes.
As childhood is increasingly seen as a time of innocent freedom and release from the pressures of the adult world, the issue of child labour becomes problematic. Work belongs to the adult world and should be forbidden to children (Ennew 1986). "(63)
[Lees 'Westerse' en waarschijnlijk zelfs vooral 'Amerikaanse invloeden'. Daar is dus niets meer universeels aan dan dat het Westen het Oosten nu op een andere manier koloniseert, namelijk op het vlak van waarden en normen rondom kinderen.]
"As the school-leaving age is twelve, inevitably many children have to work at this age, even though they are not legally supposed to until the age of fourteen. Others cannot even afford this primary education and start work much younger. As argued previously, economic necessity and cultural norms sanction this early entry into the work place, and work during childhood is a reality for the majority of children (Schildkrout 1979, Elson 1982, Lai 1982, Ennew and Milne 1989, Fyfe 1989).(...) However, paid labour is not the same as exploitation (Ennew and Milne 1989, Morrow 1995) and earning their own money is not inherently corrupting to children. Rather the exploitation comes from the very low wages, poor working conditions, and lack of control over their labour." [mijn nadruk] (64)
[Nee, echt?]
"In the case of child prostitution, already there have been calls for specific penalties for parents who allow their children to become prostitutes. Dr. Saisuree Chutikul, the Secretary-General of the National Youth Bureau, has stated that parents whose children become prostitutes should lose all their parental rights and even be actively discouraged from having children in the first place. Likewise, NGOs working in the North have already begun to advocate and implement the removal of ‘at risk’ hill tribe children from their villages to raise them in a Thai-speaking community away from the traditions of their families (DEP n.d.)."(6)
[Zoals gezegd: opnieuw de Victoriaanse tijd.]
"The control of the family is fundamental to the creation of the nation state of Thailand. The children most likely to be removed from their families are those children who are from the marginal groups such as the hill tribes or the very poor, underclass, elements. By removing them to a place where they can be inculcated with the three virtues of a Thai citizen – respect for the ‘monarchy, military, and monastery’, the government also ensures a better integrated and hence less volatile next generation. By promoting obedience to the government as a form of merit-making, acquiescence to government intervention in the family is given religious sanction (Jacobs 1971)." [mijn nadruk] (66)
[Dat hoort daar ook bij, ja.]
"...the thinking behind keeping children in school for another three years seems more concerned with lengthening the period of state control. There have been no suggestions as to how to improve the quality of the education they receive, just panic that so many children are leaving schools and becoming prostitutes so quickly. By keeping them in school for longer, it is hoped that this will keep them out of prostitution for a few more years." [mijn nadruk] (67)
[Inderdaad: morele paniek.]
" There is a Western teleology present in narratives of child prostitution in which the Western view of childhood is imposed as ‘normal’ on other cultures and which has a tendency to misinterpret, and sometimes even to demonise, their attitudes to children." [mijn nadruk] (68)
[Precies. Maar wat doet de auteur hier nu precies mee? Zie het volgende stuk tekst: gaat ze nu mee in de richting van een universele moraal en die 'universalising instinct' - wat een uitdrukking - of houdt ze het bij relativisme? Ze zegt het laatste eigenlijk, maar doet het eerste volgens mij.]
"Anthropology has traditionally been associated with a relativistic understanding of moral issues, a position which is increasingly problematic in a period of globalisation. The creation of an international community, sharing the language of human rights and the values of liberalism, considerably complicates the way anthropologists now have to think about the specific cultures with which they have engaged. Local understandings of culture, which anthropologists have hitherto emphasised, no longer seem to do justice to the demands of an increasingly global culture. Contentious issues such as child prostitution raise important concerns as to whether a universal morality can exist, and, if so, what form it can take. The local knowledge of the anthropologist now has to engage with this universalising instinct. The following three chapters will help to problematise this new perspective, not least by emphasising how local variations and traditions challenge any simplistic reduction of local phenomena to universal facts." [mijn nadruk] (68)
"Child prostitution was not an easy research topic. First, the Thai government was not issuing research visas to anyone studying prostitution (Odzer 1990, Gilkes 1993) and therefore I had to conduct this research on a visitor’s visa, leaving the country every three months to have it renewed. Second, shortly before I arrived, the Prime Minister at the time, Chuan Leekpai, announced a crackdown on child prostitution which had made brothels, clients, and the children themselves fearful. Therefore it was not easy to gain access to working children who were willing and free to talk. I also arrived in Thailand at a period of intense media interest in prostitution. "(70)
[Die punten zeggen alles: ontkenning van achterliggende oorzaken, gebrek aan zelfkritiek, mooi weer willen spelen, en zo meer. ]
"I therefore had to talk to children who did not work in brothels. Despite the image that all child prostitutes are kept caged in brothels, this is not the case. There are different forms of prostitution for both women and children, and there are different ways in which children become involved in prostitution. Although some activists claim that all child prostitution is involuntary (Ireland 1993) and therefore in one category, I believe that there are distinctions. There are three main types of child prostitution in Thailand. First that involving trafficked children, kidnapped against their will, usually from neighbouring countries (Centre for the Protection of Children’s Rights 1991, Asia Watch 1993). Second, that involving children sold or debt-bonded by their parents (Heyzer 1986, ISIS 1990, Lee-Wright 1990, Koompraphant n.d., Muecke 1992), and third, that involving ‘free children’ who live with their parents and work on a part-time basis. Increasingly, there is also a group of street children who have run away from home and live on the streets and who survive through prostitution, which may constitute a sub-group of ‘free children’ (Graham Fordham, Griffith University, personal communication, 1995). My work involved children who lived with their parents in a slum community, and who worked part-time in prostitution." [mijn nadruk] (71)
[Let op het voorzichtige taalgebruik: "sommige activisten zeggen dat alle kinderprostitutie onvrijwillig is, ik denk dat er onderscheidingen zijn" en niet "dat is gewoon niet waar" of zo. Typisch voor dit boek.]
"There were fourteen households in Baan Nua, composed of six families, members of which, over a period of approximately fifteen years, have married, had children and settled in new households of their own. The slum was located on a piece of land for which the people paid rent to a local landowner.(...) All of these households contained some children who worked as prostitutes, and child prostitution was the main source of income in the slum. There was a certain amount of adult prostitution also, but it was mostly the children who worked. The number of people who live in Baan Nua fluctuated between seventy-five and one hundred people depending on the time of the year or the number of people imprisoned. The high level of gambling, drug selling and other forms of illicit business in the village meant that people were regularly arrested and sent to prison so that I never met some of the people who were considered to be integral parts of the village. (...) During my time in the field, I talked to sixty-five children from several communities, not all of whom worked as prostitutes. Although I concentrated on the children who were already working in some part of the sex industry, there were certain children who either did not work at all or who worked in other jobs. The core group of my informants, however, were twenty-five children who lived in or around Baan Nua. There were forty-eight children under fifteen who lived in the village itself, and the others came regularly to the Baan Nua to visit friends there."(72)
"I talked to many of the younger children, but that proved very difficult as often they did not have the vocabulary to discuss what they did and they had often started prostitution only recently. The longer life-histories that I collected, therefore, are all from children in the older age groups who found it easier to talk to me, and who had a clearer understanding of what they were doing. The younger children are very important to my analysis, but because they were often unable to articulate what they did, their voices do not occupy the same space in this study as those of their older siblings and neighbours. However, their voices are there in other, more indirect ways. There was a definite ‘career cycle’ of prostitution and it was possible to see a distinct pattern in the life-histories of the older ones. " [mijn nadruk] (73)
"As I was associated with a group that the villagers trusted, it was relatively easy for me to gain acceptance into this community and to find out the extent of the child prostitution that occurred there. However, there was a confusion about my role, and what I was doing there, which made research problematic and which made writing about them even more fraught."(74)
"The people in Baan Nua were very uncomfortable with questionnaires or formal interviews. They did not like me asking too many direct questions, especially about issues such as prostitution. When I attempted such interviews, people would often refuse to talk or would just walk away. Much more productive were informal methods of research, simply sitting around in the slum chatting to people or eating with them."(74)
"The main problem with this was the level of alcohol use in Baan Nua."(74)
"The threat of violence, however, was never far away and my most productive times were when the children attended a rudimentary school. At the time of my arrival, the NGO had started a new project to collect the children from Baan Nua and other slum villages and bring them to a centre in town for a few hours a day in order to teach them, feed them, and also to remove them from the drink and glue sniffing that otherwise took up their afternoons. I would drive to the villages in the morning to pick up the children and return them there in the afternoon."(75)
"Life-histories and case studies, therefore, were rarely collected at any one sitting. I would build them up in my notes over the course of my time in the community, checking facts and incidents when I could with other people. "(75)
[Als ik dit allemaal lees denk ik: heel eerlijk en open, maar wat is dat hele onderzoek dan waard?]
"The sensationalism promoted by sections of the media and the ideology of the anti-child-prostitution lobby obscures much of the reality of prostitution. For the majority of those involved, it is not about kidnapping or virginity being bought for high sums, but it is about the scarcity of choice and opportunity for those who are poor and vulnerable. In none of the cases that I studied is there any of the straightforward greed and wickedness that informs the stereotypes of child prostitutes and their families in so many stories about them in the media. There is certainly apathy on the part of the parents, but what is most apparent from these cases is the dearth of opportunities available to these children: prostitution becomes the easiest way out of short term difficulties, and it is then extremely difficult to leave. " [mijn nadruk] (76)
"Again, it may be easy to dispute this reasoning as an outsider, but the sense of duty they have to their families is overwhelming, and is used by them to inform and contextualise what they do. The duties of kin towards one another are used by the children who work as prostitutes as a way of explaining and condoning what they do, and it is through the obligations that kinship entails that the public vice of prostitution is turned into the private virtue of support for the family. (...) It is the duty of children to support their parents as soon as they are able, and to repay the care that has been given to them. In a traditional rural setting, this meant working on the family farm, or more recently, working in a factory in a nearby town, and sending money home (Ford and Saiprasert 1993). The children in Baan Nua have a similar obligation towards their families, and they feel that it is their duty to support their parents financially. However, with no family land to farm and limited options available to uneducated children from the slums, there are few ways to earn enough income to support a family. In these circumstances, prostitution is the only job which brings in enough money, and many children turn to prostitution as a way of fulfilling these obligations." [mijn nadruk] (82-83)
"For many outsiders, the complicity of mothers in their children’s prostitution is regarded as the ultimate betrayal of family relationships and an abdication of the parental role of protection and care. To the people of Baan Nua, however, there is no such feeling. The responsibilities of parents towards children are seen very differently; no-one in Baan Nua believes that they are harming their children by allowing them to work as prostitutes. Life is difficult for all of them and children, just like their parents, have to do the best they can. "(85)
"The Western clients who visit the children in Baan Nua have obvious financial and structural power. Yet despite this, the children have been able to manipulate these men to such an extent, that, in certain cases, the men have been made to enter into some sort of reciprocal arrangement with the community, with responsibilities and obligations."(86)
[Een belangrijke constatering. Het is niet altijd gewelddadige machtsuitoefening.]
"Although campaigners against child sexual exploitation are quite correct in pointing out the huge power imbalance between child and client that helps to push the child into prostitution, they fail to take into account the children’s perceptions and reasons for selling sex."(88)
"In studies of adult prostitution, the issue of force versus choice, or voluntary versus involuntary prostitution, are crucial (Day 1994, Delacoste and Alexander 1988, Bell 1987; in contrast to Barry 1984). These debates are notably absent in discussions concerning children. Those, such as Ireland (1993), who do address the issue, claim that there is no need for discussion: all child prostitution is involuntary and therefore forced." [mijn nadruk] (89)
[Erg gemakkelijk ... En dan ook nog uitgaan van de leeftijd van 18 waaronder iedereen als kind wordt gezien. Moet je je voorstellen: iemand van 16 die geen eigen afwegingen maakt en beslissingen neemt? Iemand van 10 doet dat vaak al, zo niet jonger. En helaas komt die onzin van mensen als Ireland ook allemaal terecht in de wetgeving.]
"While I do not believe that any child would choose to become a prostitute if they had any other real alternatives in the form of reasonable income, I also believe that, having become prostitutes, the children do not passively accept exploitation."(90)
[Ze gelooft dat ... Haar eigen waardeoordelen spelen hier een rol. ]
"Campaigners against child prostitution may prefer terms like ‘children exploited by prostitution’, but this phrase is never used by the children. It is, however, common for children or their parents to say that they go out for fun with foreigners (pay thiaw kap farang), catch foreigners (jap farang), or even have guests (mii kheek). After a client has returned three or four times, he is simply known as a friend. I never heard anyone refer to themselves as a child prostitute (sopheni dek) or even a business woman – a common slang term for prostitute (ying borikan). They are keen to downplay the importance of prostitution in their lives; it is what they do, not who they are. As Lek said, “it’s only my body”. The children are acutely conscious of the social stigma which surrounds prostitution, and for them to be called a child prostitute is a great insult and deeply hurtful. It is much easier for them, and much less damaging to their pride, to construct an image for themselves which turns their clients into ‘friends’ and their prostitution into ‘going out for fun’." [mijn nadruk] (91)
" The issue of child pimps therefore is central to an understanding of child prostitution, but it is one that many campaigners would prefer to overlook. In the classic myth of child prostitution, pimps are middle-men or middle-women who procure a child and take her away from her parents either by force, trickery, or financial inducement. It is simply inconceivable that children should pimp for each other and take a cut of the earnings of another child who has become a prostitute. Yet this is exactly what does happen as part of the children’s survival strategies (for further evidence of this see International Save the Children Fund 1991)." [mijn nadruk] (92)
"Despite recognising the commercial nature of the sex they perform, the children use the terminology of love and romance in order to deny the connection between the money they earn and what they have to do in order to earn it. The children refuse to use the word prostitution, and prefer to construct a view of the world where their customers are guests, boyfriends, or simply friends. One of the ways in which this is made easier for them is that there is no fixed rate for prostitution. The men pay them after sex, but this is given as a ‘gift’ or a ‘tip’."(96)
[Tegenstrijdig. Voor hen is het ook gewoon niet iets met een commerciële natuur, dat is een Westerse beschrijving van de auteur.]
"It is noticeable that all the children over seven years old work and bring in income to the family, and that the vast majority of these jobs are related to the sex industry in some way. In both the ten-twelve and the thirteen-fifteen age range, all the children rely on sex with foreigners for their earnings."(96-97)
"Within Baan Nua, selling sex is an accepted part of their lives, and while no child says that sex in this way is pleasurable for them, it is still seen as an easy way to earn money. Many of them have tried other jobs, but those that are available for poor, unskilled, women and children in the town are badly paid and often backbreaking." [mijn nadruk] (98)
[Zou ze daarover gepraat hebben met deze jongeren? Ik denk alleen in zeer algemene zin. Niet over plezier bij seks vermoed ik, omdat ze er waarschijnlijk van uit gaat dat alleen het seksplezier van hun cliënten centraal staat. Maar is dat zo?]
"For many campaigners against child prostitution, a child selling sex is the ultimate horror, and one that must be avoided at all costs, but for the children themselves it is often viewed as yet another hazard to be negotiated in a life full of difficulties and poverty. "(99)
"They certainly do not like prostitution, it is a job which carries an immense social stigma, and it has serious risks."(99)
[Die opmerking zegt dus niets. Vuilnis sorteren of bedelen is evenmin leuk en ook riskant. En ik vraag me af of de auteur dat sociale stigma rondom prostitutie zelf niet enorm opblaast. Als je het wat verderop hebt over 'denial' en over rationalisatie in de manier waarop deze mensen praten over hun leven met prostitutie, dan leg je toch bepaald waarden en normen neer. Zie het volgende citaat:]
"I found the children’s justifications for prostitution problematic in other ways. Their rationalisations of their work and their motivations for doing it make life easier to cope with, in that they are able to claim a control over their lives even if this may appear illusory to others. It also enables them to reject the wider society before it rejects them. It is easier for them to say that they have tried other jobs and discarded them than to admit that they cannot be employed. They are unable to see the selling of their sexuality in its wider political context, and whatever they say about sex work, they do not have the knowledge to make a fully-informed decision." [mijn nadruk] (100)
[Zei de rijke dame uit het Westen. Mijn hemel, wat een stelling in die laatste zinnen. De meeste mensen zien nergens ooit de politieke context, de meeste mensen of hebben niet de kennis om weloverwogen beslissingen te nemen.]
"Although they reject rubbish sorting and factory work as too dangerous, prostitution brings serious physical risks. Apart from the risk of an abusive client, there are the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases, of which AIDS is but one. Any disease, however, to a child with poor health and a weakened immune system, can be devastating. Also, the physical trauma involved when a pre-pubescent child has sex is immense. A child’s body is ill suited to penetration by an adult; the damage is painful and the effects long-lasting." [mijn nadruk] (100)
[Ze vliegt hier compleet uit de bocht. De rijke dame uit het Westen wil ze beschermen. Seks is in haar perspectief weer alleen penetratie. Als dit zo zou zijn dan zouden die kinderen zich niet steeds weer opnieuw kunnen prostitueren. Ik vraag me werkelijk af of ze het met die kinderen ook werkelijk gehad heeft over wat ze precies doen met hun cliënten. Ik denk het niet.]
"The children always deny that they take drugs to cope with prostitution, and indeed many claim to have started to use drugs before they began prostitution. They are quick to deny that they turn to drugs to help them cope with the specific stresses concerned with prostitution. However, I feel that this must be seen within the context of other statements that they made." [mijn nadruk] (101-102)
[Ze leven volgens de auteur dus in ontkenning. Daarmee heb je zelf natuurlijk gelijk dat prostitutie altijd slecht is voor kinderen. Maar die kinderen leven in ellendige omstandigheden, drugs zijn dus zoals ze ook zeggen 'leuk' ('fun'). Waarom dat gedrag meteen koppelen aan de prostitutie?]
" One of the main arguments of the anti-child-prostitution lobby is that once a child has been abused in prostitution, there is no point in rehabilitation because the child is too deeply scarred and beyond help. These activists see little point in trying to undo the damage done to a child, because within their ideology what has been permanently deforms and degrades the nature of a child."(103)
[Dat is letterlijk wat die lobby al zei in de 19e eeuw, het Victoriaanse tijdperk. Zie Jackson, 2000.]
"However, discussion of these lesbian interludes was the only time that I heard the children identify sexual experience with personal fulfilment. On the whole, sexuality and the possession of sexual responsiveness were not considered salient issues for the children and they did not necessarily expect sexual satisfaction in personal relationships. Unconsciously, however, the children did appear to create a way of having more satisfying sexual experiences by turning to their own peers, who had the same background and lifestyle, for sexual gratification. These relationships were unstable and inadequate in the long term, but they did temporarily produce a safe space for the children to explore a sexual part of themselves which was given no other outlet." [mijn nadruk] (121)
[O, onbewust. Niet zo betrouwbaar allemaal, deze conclusies. Ik weet niet eens wat ze die kinderen gevraagd heeft op dat punt. ]
"Recently, however, there has been a growing acceptance within the media, and in middle class Thailand, of Westernised concepts of psychology, and sexuality is becoming increasingly thought of as fundamental to personality (ten Brummelhuis 1993). Such a discourse is crucial in understanding the clash between the children’s view of prostitution and that of the campaigners. In Baan Nua, neither the children nor their mothers perceive their sexuality to be integral to their personality so it is not the focus of their identity. Identity is so bound up in status, prestige and hierarchy that sexuality is a means to those ends rather than an end in itself. The campaigners against child prostitution, however, have a very different ideology. In their understanding, children are ‘ruined’ through child prostitution because their sexuality is identified very closely with their personality and, therefore, if one is damaged, the other will be too." [mijn nadruk] (122)
[Het Westen maakt seks superbelangrijk en dat is helemaal niet slim. Toch leggen ze die ideologie op aan de rest van de wereld. Vreselijk.]
"Middle class attitudes towards sexuality and prostitution did start to have an effect during my time in Baan Nua, and the children did begin to feel vulnerable and insecure. They were aware that being a prostitute was considered shameful by wider society and that inappropriate sexual acts, such as prostitution, would be policed and punished. The children became increasingly wary about talking about prostitution towards the end of my time with them. During my final month in Thailand, they stopped talking about it altogether, calling it an ugly (nakliat) thing that they did not want to discuss. " [mijn nadruk] (123)
[Vroeger waren het de Westerse missionarissen, nu zijn het de Westerse NGO's en onderzoekers als zij die die waarden en normen overbrengen. ]
[Dit hoofdstuk is verder niet zo interessant. Als het om de hoofdzaken gaat is er ook veel herhaling.]
"Child prostitutes are problematic because they challenge many notions about childhood itself, especially what is considered to be appropriate behaviour for children. (...) They exist in an ambiguous category which challenges notions of childhood and which threatens Western constructions of children."(133)
[Met andere woorden: het is een normatieve kwestie. Aangetoond zou moeten worden waarom dat Westerse kindbeeld zo geweldig is en zo veel beter is dan andere.]
"When childhood is seen as a time of innocent freedom and a release from the pressures of the adult world, issues of child labour and child sex cause a great deal of anxiety. In the ideal construction, both are seen as concerns which belong exclusively to the adult world and must be forbidden to children; but in many instances this is not possible. The twenty-first-century Western conceptualisation of the child is as a non-worker, yet for many children, work is not a choice but an economic and social necessity. This ideology assumes a separation between parents and children into dichotomous spheres of work and play and its implications, especially for children in developing countries, where such a division is not always possible in reality, are immense. The image of an innocent child, free from the responsibilities of labour, has little resonance in communities such as Baan Nua, where children cannot afford to stay in school and have to work to support their families." [mijn nadruk] (135)
[Dat geldt echt niet alleen voor de typische ontwikkelingslanden, maar overal waar armoede is, zoals bijvoorbeeld in de VS. In feite is het opnieuw het kindbeeld van de midden- en hogere klasse die zich kunnen permitteren om kinderen die eigen wereld te geven.]
"Children’s innocence is no barrier to their exploitation, and may indeed be a contributing factor to their abuse. Working children, whether they work in factories or on the streets, do not need innocence. They need knowledge of their rights, appreciation of all their options and ways of protecting themselves. UNICEF estimated that 95% of children who work do so because of family poverty, and of those children 93% claim to work willingly (UNICEF 1989). Child labour is a difficult issue because it involves conceptualising the child as an active social agent who can make choices and decisions and who needs to be empowered rather than protected. As long as the notion of ‘the child’ involves notions of weakness, dependency on adults, helplessness and innocence of the adult world, then child labour remains a problematic contradiction." [mijn nadruk] (136)
[Precies.]
"Sex, like work, is increasingly seen in middle class Thailand as something that should have no place in the world of children. Such reasoning however, assumes a level of affluence to protect children and a certain lifestyle which is alien to many children. (...) Sex is not something that can be entrusted to children as, like work, it is inherently corrupting to a child and so must be avoided. Experimentation and sexual experience can only lead to harm, to a girl becoming a dek jai taek, and so, like work, it is forbidden to the child, for her own good. The distinction between labour, sex and exploitation becomes blurred by such reasoning. If all sex and all work are exploitative, then intervention in both is a necessity and a moral imperative. In fighting all child labour, the middle classes are fighting the traditional independence and autonomy of the working or peasant classes. In tackling the problem of child prostitution, they are also tackling the problem, as they see it, of promiscuous, lower class youth. " [mijn nadruk] (136-137)
[Het zijn allemaal waarden en normen van de middenklasse die vervolgens ook nog eens opgelegd worden aan anderen, met name aan de 'lagere klasse'. Het is echt niet anders dan in de 19e eeuw in het Victoriaanse Engeland.]
"There seems to be a willing blindness to the sexual experience of the children and youth of the elite classes, although, from time to time, I was told of rumours of young women from private schools working as prostitutes in order to get money for designer clothes and jewellery. I never came across these girls and I suspect that these rumours had more to do with another concern of the middle classes, fear of consumerism and Westernisation, than any observed reality." [mijn nadruk] (138)
[Blijkbaar is de auteur even blind ... Natuurlijk komt dat voor, het is vergelijkbaar met enjo kōsai in Japan. Het gaat alleen niet altijd om seks, maar om 'compensated dating'.]
"The loss of virginity, in whatever circumstances, is viewed as crucial to the child’s life and, therefore, prostitution is only an extreme form of the deviant behaviour that takes place after virginity has been lost. It is the innocence of the child that is important, and once that has been lost, through sexual experience, then that child is innocent and childlike no more. Some NGOs have claimed a direct connection between loss of virginity and prostitution."(138)
"Again, despite the repetition of certain stereotypes, there is next to no information on who buys sex with children and why."(139)
" Preferential abusers are men who actively seek out sex with children of a particular age (also known as paedophiles) while situational abusers may have sex with a child if offered, but such intercourse would not be their sexual preference."(140)
[Opnieuw is seks voor de auteur neuken. ]
" When these are deconstructed, it is clear that campaigns against child prostitution are linked to certain views of children and families and to wider discourses about Thai society and the nature of that society as it has come into contact with the West and with globalisation. This is intended as no criticism of these campaigns. Their morality is widely shared, and few would condone the sexual abuse of children under any circumstances." [mijn nadruk] (147)
[Daar gaan we weer, hoor. Geen consequenties trekken uit wat je eerder constateert. De auteur wil / durft gewoon geen kritiek te hebben op de NGO's of die campagnes die een bepaald kindbeeld opleggen, al zijn die campagnes volkomen zinloos en gericht op totaal verkeerde dingen. Wat zegt dat nu, dat die 'morality is widely shared'. Dat maakt het nog niet de beste moraal.]
"In a society where public expression of anger and confrontation are considered unacceptable, the success of ECPAT has been in finding the one issue where such anger is justifiable. ECPAT and others have successfully harnessed the fear and resentment of foreigners by focusing on the individual men involved in exploitation of Thai children. This is not to accuse ECPAT and other campaigners of cynicism or opportunism. There is a real problem of child prostitution in Thailand, of which the children in Baan Nua are but a small part." [mijn nadruk] (152)
[En opnieuw. Als dit geen opportunisme is, wat dan wel? Maar de auteuer verontschuldigt ze weer. Waarom? Omdat ze het zo goed bedoelen? ]
"Despite similarities in their lack of structural power, children’s issues and interests are very different from gender ones, and a feminist explanation of child prostitution places it very firmly in a discourse about child sexual abuse which is in turn linked with wider issues of ‘male damage’ (Jenkins 1992: 47). However this takes no account of the fact that it is not only girls who are prostituted and it is not only men that exploit. It could be argued that, because the women in Baan Nua do most of the recruiting, and are the ones that encourage their children to bring home family income, it is they who are most culpable. Gender is only one of the many forms of power relations in Baan Nua and it would be misleading to prioritise gender over age where children are concerned.
Currently the moral climate in the West is such that anything other than outright, unqualified, condemnation of child sexual abuse in all circumstances is impossible. This can hardly be faulted except that in placing a premium on child sex, it ignores many other forms of exploitation that children suffer. By placing prostitution firmly in the realms of morality, any discussion of economics, or structural inequalities, can be ignored." [mijn nadruk] (156)
[Nee, echt?]
"In presenting child prostitution as a unique evil, all other social patterns and inequalities are ignored, and thus the fundamental status quo of the prevailing social relations remains unquestioned."(157)
"So many people who campaign against child prostitution treat ‘children’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘prostitution’ as unproblematic categories which they clearly are not. The archetype of a happy, innocent, childhood is a product of Western ideology which is an impossible ideal to impose cross-culturally." [mijn nadruk] (159)
"A clash is inevitable therefore between the middle classes, represented by the state and the NGOs, which have adopted many Western definitions of these subjects, and others, like the people in Baan Nua, who continue to use older models of the role and status of the child. There is a contradiction within the activist ideology between their rejection of all things foreign and their enthusiastic, if unacknowledged, adoption of almost all Western discourses on childhood, sexuality, labour and prostitution. The idealisation of ‘the golden childhood’ is very much a Western notion which has been imported into Thailand and one which finds little historical basis within Thai society." [mijn nadruk] (160)
[En voor de rest bevat dit boek eindeloos veel herhalingen. Maar het geeft weinig aan oplossingen.]