Reactions.

Last night we worked with a prostitution outreach and drop-in center, shadowing their social workers as they did their work in the streets and in bars. The social workers go out every night to talk with women in the prostitution business (and it is many women, thanks to the desperate measures of poverty and also the sex tourism industry here), to encourage them to stop by the center, and to hand out condoms. Can I just say, thank goodness that someone has enough sense give out condoms? It’s almost like a foreign concept here, thanks to the Catholic Church. And this is no strike to the Catholic Church at home, but the presence of the Church here is very different—visit and then you’ll understand. The women we met ranged in age from 15 to 60 years old, and they looked like just typical women walking down the street. We went to a bar as well, where women were paid to dance and also to entertain customers (there were rooms upstairs and men could also take women out). Although they are supposed to be eighteen to work there, some were as young as fifteen and sixteen. The woman I talked to had a one-year-old baby at home, and that’s why she is doing this work. She was nineteen years old, and her baby is her life (someone to love and someone to love you back). She said that the best customers are the old guys, because they are the ones who have the money. There is also a lot of debt bondage that goes on for women who work in the bars. Women are expected to work every night, and if they miss a night, they are penalized with a 10,000 php fine. To put this into perspective, Peace Corps volunteers receive an 11,000 php monthly stipend once they are on their own. It’s a lot of money. Since women can’t pay off a fine, they must continue to work to pay it off, making it pretty impossible to ever be free from the profession. On the streets, the going rate for a woman is 150 php (the equivalent to a little over $3). In addition, women usually “sell” their customers a condom for 50 php extra, to make a little bank. And 50 php of this automatically goes to the pimp. If the women sell the condom, that means they make about 150 php per customer—if they don’t sell a condom, they make about 100 php per customer (about $2.25). They might have anywhere between two and ten customers in one night.

We were talking to some women on the street (freelancers), and the social worker asked why they were so few—where were the other women that were normally there? The answer of the women surprised me—their friends were “chop-chopped”. They were murdered by customers. In almost the same breath, the women then asked us to pray that they were able to get a lot of customers that night. Of course, no one was ever caught or even looked for from these murders, because in the eyes of society it’s just one disposable person. I thought it was alarmingly ironic that directly after discussing the murders of their friends (by customers, mind you), they were hoping and praying for many customers. We are supposed to pray for their economic survival through being able to have many customers, but yet it is a valid threat that they may not even survive.

I was having so many reactions last night after this experience, and they are really impossible to even summarize or put into words. My main reaction was of anger. I am really angry at the system and the world. Why does our world make it okay for these men to completely objectify women and look at them solely as a vagina? Why is this okay? Women have personalities and hearts and feelings—they are not simply a body to oogle at. It’s a weird mix of oppression and empowerment. These women are so oppressed (and one could argue that all women feel this oppression, whether in prostitution or not), but they convince themselves that they are “empowered”. They convince themselves that it’s their choice to enter into this work in order to make a better life for their families. When the world creates only one choice for these women to earn decent money, is it really an empowered choice that they’re making? I guess there was more than anger, since I don’t want to leave you walking away feeling hopeless. There was also hope—these women have hope that what they are doing is really helping, is really making a difference for their families, is really going to help them move up in the world. And, maybe it will. It must be making some difference and at least sustaining them.

I know it is impossible to even create any sort of vivid picture via blog for you to imagine these situations, and I hope this helped to let you know what I’ve been up to. This week’s been such an emotional rollercoaster. After getting home last night, I really just needed a good cry about the world. But, fortunately, there are many beautiful things here as well. These women are beautiful, and the sacrifices they are making for their families is beautiful, because no one can say that they actually like this work or enjoy it. It’s just something that they need to do, whether others understand or not.