Crisis In Thailand
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The twentieth century has seen the rise of the world marketplace. In this new world market, Thailand has stepped in to play the role of whorehouse to the world. This is facilitated by developing agents having disregarded the development of women's opportunities for economic independence, leaving prostitution as the highest paying job readily available to many women of Southeast Asia. While these countries have benifited from tourist presence and the resulting foreign exchange, the women who actually put themselves out for their countries development process are to a large extent victims of threefold oppression on the basis of gender, class, and the particular role of their homeland in the games of international political economy.
The idea of a "tour" for sexual pleasure in Asia dates back at least as far as pre-Communist China, where brothel trains, given the euphemism of "comfort wagons" were a long accepted part of social life. The boom of prostitution in Southeast Asia really started with the presence of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. There were at least 20,000 prostitutes in Thailand in 1957; by 1964, after the U.S...