Understanding Thailand’s Widespread ProstitutionTo start, Thailand is overwhelmingly Buddhist, and has been so for centuries, with the latest census indicating that among the nation’s 67 million citizens, 63 million identify as Buddhist (94%). At no point in Thailand’s history has its small presences of Christianity and Islam combined for over ten percent of religious affiliation (currently 6%). Much like Christianity and Islam, Buddhism promotes patriarchal social structures and traditional family ideals while also revering motherhood. Where Buddhist influence may allow greater tolerance for prostitution, it has also seemed less inclined to criminalize prostitution through law or drive prostitution from public view by perpetuating social stigma.
As far as societal attitudes toward prostitution, “Among many Thai people, there is a general attitude that prostitution has always been, and will always be, a part of the social fabric of Thailand” (to quote Wikipedia). Part of this general acceptance is due to the economic benefit prostitution provides to households. Where families of course urge their daughters against taking up prostitution, the extra money sent by prostitutes back to their families has, over the decades, softened views against adult daughters that do. All the while, Thailand’s central government has consistently voiced defiance against outside criticism and pressures against their nation’s overseas reputation for prostitution, with a recent president declaring it nobody’s business if a tourist wants to find a prostitute. And not a few high-ranking politicians have earned their wealth and names through owning and growing their own networks of Go-Go Bars and brothels.
Unfortunately, tolerance and defiance have at times left Thailand’s large prostitution industry particularly exposed, as during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s, when prostitutes in Thailand died in greater numbers and at higher rates than elsewhere across Southeast Asia. The HIV/AIDS crisis also reduced the practice among married Thai men to take up prostitutes as their “minor wife.” And in more recent decades, foreign crime syndicates have taken root within Thailand’s prostitution networks, exploiting them for money laundering and human trafficking.
